Bloody Acquisitions (Fred Book 3) (4 page)

I burst through the front door, hitting it so hard I shattered the glass and knocked the metal frame out of the wall. Another shot and the sound of more breaking glass told me that he’d been able to follow at least the basics of my movement. I was about to start racing down the street again when my eyes fell upon the beat-up sedan that had pulled into the gas station. While I didn’t know how he’d managed to find me, this was obviously how he’d been able match my vampiric running speed. If I could disable his ride, I might be able to shake him for good.

It would have been a simple matter half a year earlier, when a drop of dragon’s blood was augmenting my strength to incredible levels. Then, I likely could have flipped the whole thing over, or put a fist through the engine. Vampire strength on its own wasn’t quite up to that level, however, so I was forced to take a far more unpleasant option.

Darting to the side, I raced up to one of his tires, opened wide, and sank my fangs into the rubber. While I usually considered keeping my sense of taste a true blessing, at that moment I’d have traded all the fine cooking and wine in the world to have a dead palette. I’d bitten into fire extinguishers that were less disgusting than the mouth full of tire I had to chew on. If I were able to throw up, I doubtlessly would have, but since vampires lack that reaction, I instead pulled back, ripping out a massive chunk of tire and then spitting it to the ground. Awful as it had been, my goal was accomplished; there was no way he was going anywhere until he got a new tire, and by then I’d be long gone.

The sound of footsteps on broken glass alerted me that he’d left the station, so I didn’t waste any more time. Keeping clear of the pumps, because he definitely seemed like someone crazy enough to shoot at gasoline containers, I began another sprint, running as hard and as fast as I could away from Colin the hunter. I kept up the pace for a solid ten minutes, ignoring the strange stares of the few people out and about as I whipped by them at inhuman speeds. While I usually preferred discretion at all costs, it was definitely taking a back seat to survival.

Finally, I slowed down and tried to get my bearings. This section of Winslow at least looked a little familiar, and I realized that I’d run to a part of town not far off from Richard Alderson’s office. Ordinarily, that would have been as good as salvation, since the local head of the therianthropes (the general term for all were-creatures) was a client and a friend who certainly would have offered me shelter. Unfortunately, he, along with his young daughter Sally, were also guests at Krystal’s surprise party, which by now had likely kicked off, cake or no. I could try and approach the office anyway, but most therians had a bit of suspicion as far as vampires were concerned. My kind had a bad history of feeding off therians to increase our own power, so I was tolerated only due to my usefulness to Richard.

Of course, there was always the possibility that Gideon, the King of the West, was still in the office. I was never really sure where I stood with him, though. The ancient dragon who masqueraded as a child didn’t appear to loathe me, but I wasn’t certain he’d intervene on my behalf, either. And if I strolled up to the front doors with a madman on my tail, that could put the other therians in danger. There was no way they were going to look kindly on that kind of stunt. But I might be able to talk someone into letting me use a phone, which was still my best bet at salvation.

Eventually, I decided to start heading in that direction, keeping my eyes open for better options. I didn’t want to endanger another innocent person, but I still had no idea how to get to Charlotte Manor outside of using the highways, and someone racing down the road in that public of a spot was bound to be noticed. Scary as Colin the crazed hunter was, I still preferred him to Krystal’s Agency being pissed that I put parahumans in the public eye. They were not well known for their kind or forgiving nature.

As the sound of my loafers echoed through the empty street, I fell into something of a pensive state, my mind no doubt trying to find some solid ground after braving the tidal wave of crazy that was my night so far. I imagined how nice it would be to finally make it back to Charlotte Manor, where everything in the world I cared about currently was. It was strange to think that all of my friends and loved ones were gathered together right now, safe and happy and nowhere near the danger that was bloodying my clothes piece by piece. The oddness was not that I begrudged their being out of harm’s way—it was a far cry better than seeing them in peril—but because it was usually those friends who got me into trouble in the first place. Tonight, however, was completely my own doing. My arrangement with a hospital had been the clue Colin used to find me. If I’d never gone to my high school reunion, never met Krystal and by extension everyone else, this still would have been happening. And part of me wondered, without those friends constantly exposing me to some measure of adventure, how would the old Fred have handled things?

Truth be told, I didn’t think he would have survived that first encounter. Even if they weren’t actually here at the moment, the experiences my odd little family had given me were what kept me alive. It made me long to be back with them all the more, and I finally noticed that I’d unconsciously quickened my step. I was hurrying toward Richard’s building, carried by feet that were too ready to be done with the evening to fear being turned away at the door.

With no other real options, I decided that perhaps it was best just to roll the dice. I needed help, there was no shame in admitting that, and without his car, the odds of Colin tracking me were negligible. Even if he did somehow know where I went, at most he’d have cause to think I went to a big building full of offices, and one garish club, to try and use their phone. At least, that was the thought process I hoped he’d have.

I could see Richard’s building when I was suddenly spotlighted in the headlights of a car pulling out from the road in front of me. My body tensed, ready for Colin to point a gun out the window or try to run me down, but then I noticed the bright yellow color of the vehicle and realized it was just a cab, probably taking someone home from a late night at the bar.

Unfortunately, my tense body turned out to be smarter than my logical brain as the tires beneath the cab began to spin and it lurched forward, trying to turn me into nothing more than a smear on the road. As it raced toward me, I caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel.

Sure enough, there were the mad eyes of Colin as he floored the accelerator, trying with all he had to run me over.

5.

While in life my reaction speed was always somewhere between “abysmal” and “for the love of heaven don’t let Fred hold anything too valuable,” the turn to undead had sharpened my reflexes significantly. Granted, they were nowhere near as potent as they would have been if I were even remotely physically gifted when alive, but sometimes all you need is good enough. In this case, good enough was allowing me to leap out of the way of an oncoming taxi cab as it careened toward me, only dodging the bumper’s left corner by a few inches.

The screech of tires filled the air as Colin jerked the wheel around, trying to get another run at me, but now that the element of surprise was gone, he had no hope of outmaneuvering me. I began to race up the street again, when a sound unlike any gun I’d ever heard filled the air. Pain, dull and muted but still present, filled me as I looked over at my previously unshot shoulder. Now, the tip of a large metal claw was sticking out, smaller tines already dug into my flesh. Unbidden memories of watching nature documentaries filled my head as I recognized the iconic shape.

“Did you just harpoon me?”

“Modified it a little to cling on to you slippery bastards.” Colin was leaning out the window, spear gun in hand, and that was when I saw the length of metal cord running from the back of my shoulder to the butt of the gun. Not wasting any time, Colin jerked it in, bracing the gun against something unseen inside, and threw the taxi into reverse.

While I might have physically been able to react in time, I was mentally still processing the fact that someone had
harpooned
me in the middle of the street, which was why I didn’t understand what Colin was doing until the cord pulled taut and my feet went out from under me. I bounced off the road once, then twice, then finally got my feet under me and ran along rather than be dragged. Had Colin floored it again, not even I would have been able to keep pace, but he seemed content to keep the speed manageable. He was leading me, trying to get me to a place without as much room to run.

I tried to pull out the harpoon, but every time I reached for it Colin accelerated, knocking me off balance if not outright sending me sprawling. It still might have been manageable, even with the shifting speeds; however, my own regeneration was working against me. The wound around the spear had almost completely sealed up, meaning that instead of just pulling it back out through the same area, I had to try and rip apart my own resilient vampire flesh.

Much as I disliked Colin, I couldn’t say he hadn’t come up with an effective method for ensnaring vampires.

We didn’t travel far, only a few blocks down the road. Colin backed the cab into an alley behind a closed noodle shop I’d loved to order from before they went out of business, and killed the engine. He stepped out from the cab, dark coat still flapping, showing off the wide array of weapons he had tucked about inside. The spear gun wasn’t one of those, as he left it wedged in the cab even as he stepped away. I was still on a line, and unless I found a way to yank the harpoon out or drag an entire cab along with me, he’d finally managed to take running away off the table.

“You are a tricky one,” Colin noted, pulling out his pistol again. “Silver has stopped every vampire I’ve dealt with, so why didn’t it work on you?”

“Kind of a long story, and honestly, I doubt you’d believe me.” My hands fumbled with the harpoon, tugging at it as I tried to get free. The hooks were made to keep me from pulling it back out, which meant forward was the only option. Of course, then I’d still have a metal rope running through me, and I wasn’t sure my hands alone could snap something like that. There was the option of biting through it—I’d met very little a vampire’s fangs couldn’t pierce—but that was a lot of steps to freedom, and Colin wasn’t going to wait patiently while I did them all.

“You’re right, there; I’d never believe one of your lies.” He reached into his coat with his free hand and pulled out a small squirt bottle, like the kind that go on bikes for long rides. “I’ve hunted a couple of your kind already, but you are far and away the worst of the lot. At least the others had the decency to own what they are. You, you burrowed into society like a tick, pretending to be normal, to be human. You tried to infiltrate us, and that makes you much too dangerous to live, even long enough to interrogate.”

“There is another, far more logical explanation,” I pointed out. “I lived in an apartment because it’s my home, I bought my blood because I didn’t want to hurt people, I kept working a normal job because I love what I do. This is just me. I’m not a monster, just a guy whose life took an unexpected turn.”

“Whoever you might have been is dead. I know what lives inside you creatures, and there’s no goodness there. Just death and blood.” He popped the top off the bottle and took a sniff, his nose recoiling slightly.

“Funny, by my count, you’re the one who shot at an unarmed clerk, tortured a doctor, and, I’m assuming, stole a cabbie’s car at gunpoint.” My hand rested on the top of the harpoon. Maybe I didn’t need to bother with the rope; if I just popped the hooked part off, I could yank the rest out and get free. That was still no easy task, but it seemed more viable than biting through the metal rope. And, more importantly, it seemed faster, which was starting to feel like a very important element in this encounter.

“Sometimes, you have to be a monster to a kill a monster.” Colin stepped forward, gun at the ready, and squirted me with the contents of the bottle. Even if I didn’t have an incredible sense of smell, I’d have recognized the scent immediately: gasoline. He squeezed the bottle until it only spit out droplets and empty wheezes, then dropped the plastic container to the ground.

“Have you ever noticed that not once, despite everything you’ve done tonight, have I attacked or even tried to make a threatening move toward you?” Panic was slipping back into my voice, and with good reason, because while I might be immune to silver, there was no reason I would have any such resistance to fire. I knew for a fact that vampires could burn to death; it was the one death I’d witnessed up close and personally. Though, at the time, Krystal had been the one doing the burning, and the vampire in question was not one I’d miss.

“You sell the lie well, but I’m not going to be fooled.” Colin reached back into his coat and pulled out a silver lighter, the old-fashioned kind without safety measures to keep it from burning without a thumb on the plunger. Behind him, I noticed a shadow move beyond the taxi. It was difficult even for my eyes to see, though, and I wasn’t sure it had even been real.

“Colin, please listen to me, you’re making a big mistake. I get that you hate vampires, I really do, and I don’t know what you’ve had to do to survive before this, but what you’re doing right now is murder. Beyond that, it’s stepping into a world you
really
don’t want to be a part of. Please, go turn yourself into the cops, do your time for the car theft and the gas station shooting, and then go on to live a normal life.”