A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters (23 page)

Tonight, his ability to cope with the fact Tony had gone all Harry Potter was moot. He needed to get Vicki and the kids back. Tony was the only one he knew who might be able to do it.

Who
could
do it.

“All right.” On the other end of the phone, Tony took a deep breath. “Was one of them a sixty-year-old Asian dude?”

“No, I told you . . .”

“I know what you told me but I had to check. That means the girl who opened the portal wasn’t actually a wizard; she just found a spell and had enough willpower and need to make it work. So all you have to do is repeat exactly what she did.”

Mike glanced around the mausoleum at the bowl and the candles and the chalked circles. “
All
I have to do?”

“Send me pictures of everything she used. As much detail as you can. Doesn’t matter how small or insignificant. I’ll run it through my database and see if I can identify the verbal portion.”

“You have a database for this sort of shit?”

“Yeah, well, I like my shit organized.”

“She burned a dead mouse.”

“She probably killed it first. Send me the pictures, then go looking for a mouse of your own.”

A mouse of his own? “Tony, where the fuck am I going to find a live mouse in Toronto at one in the morning?”

“No idea. You may have to use your badge and go all fake official business on a pet store owner.”

“I can’t . . .” He rubbed at his temples and sighed. “Yeah. Maybe. Pictures are on their way . . .”

 

The ruins were dry and didn’t smell too bad, and if something skittered away while Vicki checked the first floor, well, it was skittering
away
. Good enough. She let Ren maneuver her friends through the partially blocked entrance while she kept watch, then slipped in behind them.

The gaping windows threw patches of gray against the marble floor. Ren tucked the other two at the angle where the gray met a pile of fallen masonry. Hands clasped, knees drawn up to their chests, they stared out into the darkness and shuddered at every sound.

As Vicki moved past her, Ren grabbed her arm and snarled, “Leave them alone!”

The scent of blood was still too strong for Vicki to push the Hunger completely back, but she damped it down as far as she could before she turned. Not quite far enough if Ren’s reaction was any indication but, in spite of a surge of fear so intense Vicki could all but taste it, the girl maintained her grip and repeated, “Leave them alone!”

“I’m not going to hurt them.”

Ren snorted. “Yeah, right.” She tipped her head to one side, exposing her throat. “Come on then. If you’re going to do it, do me.”

Tempting.

“Let’s table that offer until I have to feed,” Vicki sighed. If she hadn’t fed before meeting Mike at the cemetery, she doubted she’d have been able to tear her gaze away from the pulse throbbing hummingbird fast under the pale—and slightly grubby—skin. As it was, she glanced down at the fingers still clutching her arm and said, “Let go; I’m only going to put them to sleep. Give them a bit of a break from this place.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because I’m asking you to, when I could be telling you to.”

“Oh. Right.”

When Ren released her, Vicki ignored the way the girl’s fingers trembled, nodded once, and moved to deal with the other two. A command to
“Sleep. Dream of pleasant things”
wasn’t the way she’d been trained to deal with shock but hey, whatever worked. Star’s hoodie was back in the mausoleum, so she shrugged out of her jacket and spread it over them before straightening and returning to Ren’s side.

“So how was it supposed to be?” she asked from just behind the girl’s left shoulder.

Ren flinched but kept her gaze locked on the road outside the entrance to their shelter. “How was
what
supposed to be?”

“This. You told me that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. So . . . ?”

“It was supposed to be . . .” She swiped at her cheek with the palm of her left hand. “I thought it said, it was the home we always wanted.”

Vicki waited.

“My grandma died,” Ren continued after a moment. “I hadn’t seen her since we moved to Toronto, like four years ago, but she wanted me to have her Bible. My mom, she checked to make sure there wasn’t any money in it but totally missed this piece of stuff like leather that had writing on it. Probably because it was in Greek and my mom never learned to read Greek. My grandma taught me when I was little.” She paused to swallow a sob and rub her nose against her sleeve before repeating, “I thought it said this was the home we always wanted.”

“What was wrong with the homes you had?” The look Ren shot her suggested she not be an idiot as clearly as if the girl had said the words out loud. “So no one cared that you were sneaking out at night?” None of the kids looked like they’d been starved or beaten but Vicki knew that didn’t have to mean anything as far as indicators of abuse went. “And no one’s going to care if you never make it back?”

Ren snorted. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Actually . . .” Vicki didn’t bother finishing and Ren clearly didn’t need her to.

“This is my fault. I told them about this. I convinced them to come.”

“You didn’t force them to come here.”

“I didn’t tell them we were coming
here
.”

“True.”

“You’re not very comforting.”

“Not my . . .”

The skittering returned.

Pulling Mike’s Glock from where she’d tucked it up against the small of her back, Vicki whirled and blew the head off something that looked like a cross between a rat and a rottweiler seconds before it took a bite out of Star’s leg.

“. . . job,” she finished, ignoring Ren’s scream in favor of grabbing the rat thing by the tail, carrying it outside, and whipping it about forty meters back toward the flock of scavengers. On her way back inside, she scooped up a double handful of gray sand from where the building met the road.

She could feel Ren watching her as she scattered the sand over the blood and brain spatter on the floor.

“You have a gun. What kind of vampire carries a gun?”

“One that’d like to keep us all alive until morning,” Vicki told her, rejoining her at the door. With any luck the bang had scared off the rat things and hadn’t attracted anything else. “The gun’s Detective Celluci’s. He must’ve tossed it through as the portal was closing.”

They turned together to face back down the road where the arc of ribs stripped clean of flesh gleamed in the spaces between the black birds.

Vicki could hear Ren’s heartbeat and breathing speed up. “We’re never going back, are we?”

“Please.” Given the light levels, Vicki made sure the eyeroll could be heard in her tone as she stretched the truth a bit. “This isn’t our first portal; Mike’ll work it out.”

“The cop?”

“He’s got resources.” He’d probably been on the phone to Tony before Vicki’d hit the ground on the other side and Tony’d know how to fix this. Tony had to know how to fix this.

“But he’s a real cop?”

“He is.”

“And you’re a real vampire?”

“I am.”

“Oh man, that’s totally like a bad romance novel!” And this time, Vicki could hear the eyeroll in Ren’s voice.

She grinned, thinking of Henry. “Kid, you don’t know the half of it.”

Something skittered in the background but didn’t come close enough to shoot. Ren’s shoulder pressed up against hers, although Vicki doubted the girl had consciously sought out the contact. “You’re a vampire, right? And given the whole nonsparkling, lack of emo thing, I’m guessing you’re like a traditional vampire?”

Vicki frowned, decided not to bother translating the teenspeak, and shrugged. “Traditional enough, I guess. Why?”

“If there’s like even a sun here, what happens to you when it rises?”

 

“All right, I’ve got the mouse.” It was in a little green plastic carrying cage and Mike felt like shit every time he looked in at it. He’d had to drive out to the Super Wal-Mart at Eglinton and Warden to get it and that went on the growing list of experiences he never wanted to repeat.

“What color is it?”

“What fucking difference does the color make?”

“It’s probably safest if we keep as close to the original ritual as possible.”

Setting the cage on the crypt, Mike took a deep breath and reminded himself that he—and more importantly, Vicki—needed Tony. “Probably?”

“Well, magic is mostly a matter of will so you should be able to bull through any minor variations but . . .”

There was a whole wealth of things Tony clearly didn’t want to say in that
but
. And that was fine because Mike didn’t want to hear them. He shone his flashlight down into the bowl and scowled. “I can’t tell what color it was—too burned. She must have used an accelerant.”

“That was the spell working. Is there dirt in the bowl? Toss it out and get fresh,” Tony instructed when Mike grunted an affirmative. “I’ve sent you the symbol you have to draw in the middle of the circles.”

“That’s not what was there before.” Mike squinted down at his screen. “It’s, I don’t know, backward.”

“It’s supposed to be. This thing’s a cut-rate gate; one way only. This is the inbound symbol.”

He found a broken piece of sidewalk chalk, no doubt tossed aside by the idiot teenager who’d gotten them all into this mess. “I’ll call you back when I’m finished.”

“Don’t take too long, remember . . .”

“You don’t have to fucking remind me about the time,” Mike snapped and hung up. Sunrise hadn’t been his friend for some years now.

Returning from disposing of another rat thing’s body, Vicki glanced up at the sky where the stars were definitely a little dimmer. Clearly it had been too much to hope that this shithole would be a shithole without a dawn. Sitting down next to Ren, she sighed. “Okay, I didn’t want to do this, but can you shoot?”

“A gun? Eww, no. Guns are stupid.”

“Guns are dangerous. People are stupid. And we don’t have time for that lecture right now.” Vicki pulled out Mike’s weapon and held it resting across her palms. “If I shut off at dawn, you’re going to have to keep us all alive until sunset.”

Ren shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Kid, you opened a portal between worlds. In my book, that says there’s not a lot you can’t do if it comes down to it. Hopefully, it won’t come down to it, but if it does . . .”

“I don’t even like first-person shooter games!”

Vicki ignored the protest and held up the Glock. “How much can you see?”

“What?”

“I can see in the dark. How much can
you
see?”

Frowning, Ren leaned away from the gun. “It’s not as dark as it was.”

Not an answer but it would have to do. “Okay, these are the sights—ramped front sight and a notched rear sight with white contrast. You aim with them but I’ll use some wreckage to build a shelter with a limited access so all you’ll have to do is point and shoot. Now the Glock has a triple safety system to prevent accidental discharge, but once you’ve released the external safety, here, the two internal safeties automatically disengage when the trigger is pulled.”

“Forget it!” Ren shoved at Vicki’s arm. “I’m not going to shoot anything!”

“Would you rather be eaten by a giant rat?”

“No, but . . .”

“Then pay attention.”

 

“It’s arunda-
ay
!”

“It’s nonsense!” Mike protested. “It doesn’t mean shit!”

On the other end of the phone, Tony sighed. “It means we get Vicki back,” he said quietly. “Try it again from the top.”

One hand gripping the edge of the crypt, Mike glanced over at the square of sky he could see through the grill, took a deep breath, and started again.

And then again.

One more time before Tony muttered, “Close enough.”

“Close enough?”

“Look, like I said before, it’s mostly a matter of will. The rest is just a way to focus power.”

“I don’t have that kind of power.”

“How badly do you want Vicki back?” The phone casing cracked in Mike’s grip and although he couldn’t have heard it, Tony snorted. “That’s plenty of power, trust me. Light the candles and get the mouse.”

The mouse seemed oblivious to its fate. Mike thanked heaven for small mercies. He couldn’t have coped with a terrified animal. “Why . . . ?”

“Its death symbolizes the journey from one world to another. I don’t like this either, but I don’t think you can skip it. Put it in the bowl and cut its throat then set it on fire and start the chant. When you finish, the gate should open.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I’ll be on the first plane to Toronto. Don’t hang up, just set the phone down. I’ll chant with you.”

“Will that help?”

“It can’t hurt.”