An Unattractive Vampire (30 page)

“Indeed,” agreed Simon, now holding a hatchet he definitely hadn’t had a moment ago.

Phantom released Amanda and took a step back. “Please, Amanda, you have to help me,” he uttered in a soothing voice. And when the dreamboat star of
The Phantom Vampire Mysteries
uses a soothing voice, you stay soothed.

Suddenly, Amanda was a lot less sure about escaping than she had been a moment ago. She took a step backward to steady herself. “We’re leaving.”

“Uh, Phantom,” Berwyn said.

“Come on, Amanda, You don’t have to do this,” he said, rising slowly, his voice all kinds of comforting. It promised hours of cuddling preceded by hours of precuddling activity. “Just come back with us. This can all work out, I promise.”

Mesmerized, Amanda stared into Phantom’s soulful brown eyes. Her grip slackened. The crossbow lowered. Departing suddenly lost its urgency.

That was when Nora arrived and punched Phantom right across the face.

“What the hell?” he screamed from the ground. All the softness of his voice was gone. Now it was high, nasal, and
furious
.

“What are you doing?” Nora retorted, her hands on her hips.

“The Doctor said to keep her here,” Phantom said, now back on his feet and suicidally within punching distance again. “Uh, guys,” Berwyn tried again. No one paid him any mind.

“Only so the other vampire would come for her. And guess what? He did. So there’s no reason to keep her anymore. And there’s definitely no reason for you to get your flirt on to do it,” she spat back.

“Jealous, are we?” he replied.

Meanwhile, Amanda was shaking off the effects of Phantom’s glamour. “There isn’t a safety on this thing, is there?” she asked her brother.

“Why would I need a safety?” he replied.

“Good.”

She pulled the trigger. The crossbow bolt shot out at the distracted Phantom. Fortunately for him, she hadn’t bothered to raise the weapon back toward his heart. Unfortunately for him, she hadn’t bothered to raise the weapon back toward his heart.

He screamed, now furious and in immense pain. “You crazy bitch!”

That word reverberated around the room. Despite being preoccupied with pulling six inches’ worth of shaft from his shaft, Phantom became keenly aware of the fact that he was surrounded by women. Nora looked livid. Amanda stared daggers at him. Even the short, kind-looking woman took off her sunglasses to reveal half of the ugliest, angriest stare he had ever seen. And one cloudy pinprick eye, too.

“Simon,” Amanda said too calmly, “reload this for me.” Her brother took the weapon from her and immediately handed it back, magically ready again.

“You should go, Phantom,” the short woman said. She was smiling now, but her smile did not reach her gaze. In fact, the murky eye looked like it had never seen a smile. Or a sunrise. Or this side of hell.

“I can’t,” Phantom replied through gritted teeth. With one hand, he carefully extracted the arrow without taking “the boys” with it. “I can’t let you leave.”

“What about the vampires?” she asked.

Phantom blinked. A few cogs clicked into place, and his attention was drawn away from Amanda and toward the very
empty
lobby. Under cover of quarreling couples and crossbow bolts, the elder vampires had sneaked away. At least, that’s how Phantom would have described their loud and deliberate walk into the heart of the building.

“Son of a . . . ,” he cursed, though a look at Amanda’s crossbow stopped him from completing his expletive.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Berwyn said.

“Come on,” Phantom urged. They took off at full vampire speed through a set of double doors.

“Thank you,” Amanda said.

“Just go,” Nora replied tersely. The ashes of Cassan still clung to her pants.

“You could come with us,” suggested Catherine, putting her sunglasses back on.

Nora considered it. Part of her cherished the idea of leaving Phantom to face the monsters alone. After all the frustration and heartbreak he had caused her over the years, it would serve him right. But even as she thought it, as so often happened, she thought of the boy Phantom had been when they’d met: sweet, sincere, unsure of himself. They had both of them been just beginning to explore their newfound beauty and powers. And they had started that journey together, in each other’s hearts and beds. Sure he had become Grade A douche, but was that really enough justification to let him be murdered?

And, of course, there was the fact that Phantom wasn’t alone. There was Berwyn to consider, the only other member of their posse left, not to mention The Doctor Lord Talby, who was in the most danger. He had chosen her. He had peered beneath the acne-scarred skin, the flat butt, and the barely visible chest and seen in her something spectacular. Could she just abandon the man who had welcomed her into his family? Who had given her everything? Who had been like a father to her? An old, breast-augmenting father?

Nora hadn’t said a word, but Amanda understood. She placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder and nodded to her friend.

Nora turned and sped off after the vampires.

“Damn,” said Catherine, watching her leave. “I wanted to get a picture with her.”

No twisting dark forest nor fathomless abyss of stygian caves nor intricate system of endless crypts is quite as labyrinthine as a corporate office building. Even illuminated as it is in halogen lights, what it lacks in darkness, it more than makes up for in an exacting homogeneity, which can be achieved only by way of mass production and mediocrity. One corporate hallway looks very much like another, with doors and windows laid out in the exact same pattern. Not even the fake potted plant can appear anywhere other than the designated “fake potted plant corner.” And just as in the dark forests and underground realms, some people never find their way out of this maze of hallways. These people are called office managers.

The point of all this is to explain how six vampires managed to become irrevocably lost.

At a crossroads of four halls, Yulric stood weighing his options. Thus far they had taken two rights and one left before doubling back, moving up a junction, and facing the same decisions all over again. He had already tried magic, scent, and logic to guide them, and each had failed in turn. This time, he went with random guesswork.

“This way,” he called to his companions. There would have been mutinous whispers, except that none of the others could sense the correct path, either. Even Tezcatlipoca’s excellent jaguar nose was thrown off by air fresheners, which puffed out the same random blasts of sweet-smelling spray each time they passed. And so they followed Yulric around the corner.

Whoosh!
Something ran past, down the hallway they had just left. The collection of vampires turned as a second figure ran past. And a third. As a single entity, they glanced back at Yulric.

“That way,” he growled in embarrassment. The vampires shuffled around the corner to find their way barred by an action tableau.

On the right side of the hall, Nora faced them, her eyes narrowed, her hands on her hips, the drape of her jacket baring a shoulder for a bit of sexy attitude. On the left, Berwyn faced them, cracking his knuckles as menacingly as one can when one is completely terrified. And in the center, Phantom stood, seemingly unconcerned, his hands casually stuffed in his pockets.

“No farther, monster,” Phantom said, his voice now a well-practiced calm.

“I have no interest in you.” Yulric took a step forward. The beautiful vampires twirled unnecessarily to counter his movement and wound up in a new tableau: Phantom, crouching, knees bent and hands clawed; Nora, a hand over her head as she leaned back on one leg and held the other outstretched; Berwyn, standing over both in anime-power-up position. “Yulric Bile,” intoned Phantom. “I challenge you for leadership of this coven by the laws set down by the united elder councils of the vampire nation.”

The ancients looked to each other and then to Yulric, murmuring in a handful of dead languages. The younger immortals mistook this to be a sign of dissension or fear. Really, they were asking each other, “What did he say? Laws? Since when do we have laws?”

Yulric himself was staring down the hall, past where Phantom was standing, to the far door of what his vampire eye told him was a conference room and what his nonvampire eye told him was a blur. Then, both his eyes focused on Phantom. He raised a hand, and everyone fell silent. Since elder vampires don’t like being shushed, it was a very pissed silence.

“I accept your challenge,” he said, his voice filled with restrained wrath. Yulric had no intention of hurting the boy. What he had decided in that moment was to bind both Phantom and Nora with black mucus and stick them to a wall. He had not considered, however, that Phantom might have a plan, too.

As soon as the first bullet hit, Yulric knew something was wrong. He’d been shot before, by both Amanda and her brother, and by comparison to the gun they had used, Phantom’s firearm looked practically demure. The pain from the actor’s, however, was tenfold what the Linskes had previously managed. Combined. This bullet burned—literally burned—its way through him, even setting his robe alight as it passed.

He was struck a second time. Then a third. While he couldn’t have said that the pain was like nothing he’d ever experienced, it definitely ranked in the top one hundred wounds, which, for a thousand-year-old vampire who’d been hunted, tortured, and nearly murdered more times than he could remember, was pretty good. A fourth bullet hit, and he was backing away.

A fifth, and he was kneeling on the ground. His chest heaved with pain rather than with breath. A click from above alerted him to the proximity of gun and shooter, who, distracted as he was, he had not noticed approaching. Phantom stood over him, gun pointed right between his eyes.

“Any last words?” asked the firearm-toting vampire.

Yulric spat out some blood, being sure it hit the fool’s pristine and probably very expensive tennis shoes. Phantom’s smile disappeared. His finger pulled the trigger. Yulric Bile, the great and dangerous vampire, fell to the ground in a heap of finality.

“I did it,” cried Phantom, first in disbelief and then in rising excitement. “I did it!”

Any sort of dignity or style that a great noble hero is supposed to display upon defeating his enemy was momentarily forgotten. Phantom forgot Nora was mad at him and lifted her up in a great big spinning hug. Nora also forgot she was mad at him and let him. Berwyn, feeling left out, came over and, with his huge arms around the pair, hoisted them both in the air. They all three laughed. It was the happily-ever-after moment, where in a single action, all the wrongs of the season are set right, all the leftover bad guys melt away, all the relationship missteps are forgotten, and everything goes back to the way it was until the reveal of next season’s main villain. In other words, damn fine television.

And just like on television, this perfect moment was being watched.

“Oh. Oh right,” said Phantom, remembering that there were still five other hideous monsters to deal with. He raised himself impressively, and his voice deepened as he assumed what he meant to be a commanding tone. “As your new leader, I command you to leave this place. Disperse. Go back to your dark and secret places, return to the sleep of ages, and do not rise till you hear my voice or the trumpets of judgment day. Do you understand?”

It seemed they didn’t. None of them moved. None of them blinked. A few turned their heads to the husk of what Phantom assumed was a woman and a hunchbacked black man.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” Phantom asked the collection of grotesques.

The stony woman’s empty sockets met his soulful brown eyes. “The recommencement of battle.”

“Uh, what?” he said, all dignity and command gone from his voice.

“Round two,” rasped a desiccated voice behind him. Phantom’s face fell, as did his stomach and his hopes. His testes, meanwhile, went up. Yulric Bile was on his feet once more.

The young vampire raised his gun to unleash a fresh volley into his eldritch opponent. His mind gave the order to pull the trigger, but nothing happened. For some reason, he could no longer use his gun. He could no longer even feel his gun. And now there was an intense pain coming from the end of his arm. Upon closer inspection, he found that both problems had the same cause—the hand holding the gun was gone.

Phantom let out a tear-filled scream of pain. He clutched at the stump, interspersing the high-pitched noise with frantic pleas of “Oh God! Oh God! My hand! My hand!”

During this din, Yulric Bile was prying the gun from Phantom’s cold, severed fingers. After pressing several catches on the firearm, the part that held the bullets fell out and clattered to the floor. Everyone except Phantom leaned in to see that each and every bullet was etched with a cross. A shiver ran through the elder vampires.

Yulric approached Phantom, who was still rocking on the floor, mourning the loss of his hand, beauty, and career, though not in that order.

“You probably thought yourself wise,” Yulric said, “shooting me with these. But you forgot one thing, dear boy.”

He held up a lumpy, indiscernible piece of metal next to Phantom’s face. “Musket balls deform when they strike.” The younger vampire gulped as he stared into Yulric’s eyes. Reasonable, rational, fan-of-the-show Yulric had checked out. Only the psychotic killer remained.

Phantom had less than a second’s warning. One moment, the creature was kneeling down next to him, showing him the bullet, the next, he was whirling his medieval battle-ax through the air where Phantom’s neck had been. Were it not for the small twinkle of warning that had appeared in the old vampire’s hazel eye, he’d have been fit for only a Sleepy Hollow adaptation. Instead, he rolled out of the way and started dodging.

Yulric chased him. Not by running, the hallway was too small for that. He simply kept swinging his ax anywhere his prey landed. Phantom evaded the blade each time by smaller and smaller margins until one swipe caught a few hairs from the young vampire’s head. Phantom felt his scalp, just as dismayed by the violation of his haircut as he had been for his hand. Yulric roared triumphantly, certain that his next swing would be the end of it.