Ah, yes. I prize my quiet moments sometimes, when my biggest worry is paying the next bill.
Just kidding. Killing is way more fun.
First came the broken glass, then Jessica’s scream, then Amanda shouting, “Kelly!” But I was already smiling and rubbing my hands together in anticipation.
Brand ran out the door yelling, “It’s killer time!” as I vaulted my desk.
“Call you back, Grandma!” Ramona jumped up.
“Stay put!” I called over my shoulder.
“Nope!”
“Fine. Just keep out of my way.”
Amanda and Jessica stood in a protective shield. Three vampires surrounded them, two women and a man. Instead of using mind control to persuade Amanda to drop the magic, they banged on the clear shield with their fists. With every hit, colors zig-zagged across the magic field like the surface of a soap bubble.
“I thought you said they were smart zombies,” Amanda yelled to Brand.
“Well, the human ones are.” He slashed at the nearest vampire, a guy who looked like he’d been turned in his late teens and grateful he’d been spared from a life in retail.
“And what’s driving them? I don’t hear any music.”
“Beats me.” The vampire blurred as he moved on Brand, faster than any I’d ever seen. He punched a hole in Brand’s chest.
My Sekutar senses sharpened and the room went slow-mo. A second vampire detached herself from the shield and shot at me. She matched her companion’s speed. I didn’t have time to draw a weapon. I’d dressed quickly that morning, so I only had half a dozen on me anyway, but I’d chosen them well.
She came within my reach and I roundhouse kicked her. That gave me enough room to pull my specialized tonfa. Ever seen a police baton? These are the Asian ancestors. I lined the longer ends up with my forearms while the shorter ends stuck out. Tonfa are made of thick hardwood and designed to protect the forearm from long weapons and sharp blows. But mine are different. I don’t need the protection. My tonfa are thinner, easy to conceal. Made of aspen, ends sharpened to wicked points.
I assumed the shiko-dachi position – feet at forty-five degree angles lined up with my shoulders, knees bent. The vampire recovered and I blocked her next attack with my arm, tonfa-side out so she hit wood. I pushed her far enough away to swing the long end of the tonfa forward. Against a normal opponent, I’d let the tonfa connect with her face and send her into the next life. Doesn’t work with a vampire. So I did the thing that does work.
I thrust forward with all my strength and sent the sharpened aspen wood straight into her heart. I let go of the tonfa, kicked her, and she fell to the floor.
I felt the vampire who attacked Brand charge behind me. I readied for the attack. But he wasn’t after me. I turned as he went straight for Ramona. She stopped outside the office doorway and reached for the pouch around her neck. Her mouth opened as the vampire closed in.
I heard a series of clinks as a manriki-kusari flew past me. The weighted chain wrapped itself around the vampire’s throat. Brand pulled back on the chain and stopped the thing in its tracks just as he reached for Ramona. Then Brand was on top of him, hog-tying hands to feet with the rest of the chain.
“Not bad for your first zombie rodeo,” Ramona said as she watched Brand.
The third vampire ran at us. I had one tonfa in my hand. With my back to her, I decided to take her out with gedan barai – a classic move that sent my tonfa backward into the vampire’s heart. I had a moment of disorientation, like when you’re pulling your car forward while the car next to you is backing up, as the sharpened end of my other tonfa simultaneously jutted out of my middle.
Blood splattered across Ramona’s nice gray suit. She looked at the wooden point of the tonfa sticking out of my gut and then at the blood decorating her jacket. Her pupils dilated and she swayed. “How…?”
“Told you to stay put.” I kicked backward at the asshole vampire. She lost her grip on the tonfa skewering me as she fell. I turned around to see the first vampire I’d taken down. The second one had pulled the tonfa out of the first on her way to killing me. With the tonfa out of her heart, the first vampire stood back up unharmed. She fixed her stare at me and bared her fangs.
And then I heard it. Faraway music. A flute. So beautiful. Compelling. I stopped to listen. Had to hear it. Speaking to me.
Ramona wrenched the tonfa out of my back. And with the blood-covered tonfa out of me, the music faded, but didn’t quite disappear. Disoriented, I staggered. The first vampire blurred and then she had me in her grip. Fangs sank into my throat. I’d never been bitten by a vampire or tainted by one’s blood.
Brand’s fist slammed into the vampire’s head, right on into the skull. Gore splashed over his forearm. I touched the place on my throat when her fangs left two gaping holes. I felt them close up under my fingers.
Brand’s tied-up vampire broke its chains and made a clumsy but fast grab for Ramona.
She jumped back, dodging the hand that went for her bare foot. Then Ramona leaped over the vampire and ran past us to the busted door. She disappeared into the night outside.
“I’ll get her,” Jessica yelled. Amanda had dropped the shield once the vampires stopped attacking them. Jessica ran after Ramona.
“Don’t! Stay here!” Amanda said.
Jessica ignored her and kept on going. Amanda rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air.
She pulled up more magic and hurled it. The chain still wrapped around the vampire’s neck tightened. His eyes and tongue bulged out as he frantically clawed at the links. Several wet popping and tearing sounds later, his head hit the floor.
“Nice job,” I said. It was fun to watch Amanda kill things. Educational too – it let me gage how much her power grew under DGI.
Amanda walked toward us. “I used to do that to dandelions when I was a kid. Squeeze the flower and flick it off the stem with my thumb,” Her voice turned sing-song. “Mama had a baby and its head popped off.” She rubbed her hands together, savoring the last of the magic before letting it snap back to the nearest ley line.
I surveyed the damage. One headless vampire, one incapacitated by a tonfa, one quickly becoming a vampire smoothie under Brand’s fists.
“I think you got it, babe.” I leaned down and kissed the top of Brand’s head.
His punches slowed. “I. Hate. Vampires.”
“One more thing we have in common.”
“What’s that?” Amanda pointed toward the door. Blue and green lights glowed steadily brighter, outshining the orange streetlights.
“Probably nothing but bad.” I sprinted to the door with Amanda and Brand close behind. Jessica and Ramona were out there, and Colfax was rough enough without occult help.
The first thing I noticed was the obvious lack of traffic, like the night Brand and I drove to Tally’s. Just a few street people shuffled down the sidewalk going about their business. And the air just crackled with potential.
Jessica and Ramona stood on our side of the street. They faced another familiar-looking pair across the way. A man and a woman, dressed in black leather moto jackets and artificially-distressed skinny jeans.
Brand called to the Hipsters on parade. “Trix! Eleventh!”
Of course.
They gave the appropriate DJ response of music and a light show. Trixster raised a flute – the flute – to his lips. Red-orange light like the fires of sacrifice surrounded him and his body grew, expanded out from the core to become a hunchbacked figure that was not quite human anymore. The first flute notes danced across the street through the hanging green and blue light.
My head filled with effervescent fuzz and my skin tingled. I fought off the urge to listen to the music, to do its bidding, as good as that sounded.
It had to be the residual vampire blood still in my system. If my healing abilities failed to clear it out by then, it meant my body saw the blood and its vampiric powers as beneficial, and was in the process of incorporating it.
I could become a vampire through my own misguided healing powers.
That thought threatened to shut me down, so I concentrated on something else. Where was the other light coming from? I grabbed onto that question like a life preserver and looked around.
To discover the light came from Dr. Ramona Honani, quantum physicist and anything but mundane.