Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) (11 page)

“Go,” I said again.  A growl from my lips.

You might expect that my own redundant speech made me feel ashamed for making fun of Long Face.  It didn’t.  And it wasn’t only my voice that was changing.  I felt the tooth thing happening.  It’s the one vampire cliché that’s not really a cliché.  They grew long and they grew pointy.  It’s the lowers too, BTW.  Not just the uppers.

Good, kind of.  I might have additional explaining to do to my friends but fangs out meant I was ready for battle.  A good thing, given Number 3 pretended he went for my feint in order to give Long Face time to smash some kind of club—obviously I never saw it because if I had, Long Face could never have smashed me with it—into the side of my head.

The blow threw me off balance, but in a fortunate way because I ended up sprawling across the path the demons would need to pursue my friends.  Demon 3 tried to vault me and give chase to the bagger gang.  Wrong move.  My head rang like one of those gongs in a Chinese restaurant and my eyes watered.  I’d like to say I saw everything in slow motion because a slowdown in events was just what I needed to shake off the blow to my bean. Overcoming diminished clear-thought capacity was a daily exercise for me so I easily tracked the steaming glob of demon doing the Baryshnikov just above me.  I reached up and snagged one its six feet as it bounded over me.

I almost laughed when I when I saw the ridiculous pose Number 3 made as he stopped still in the air.  But I’d save laughing for later because we all know the one about “he who laughs last.”  So what do you do when you’re lying on the ground with a handful of leaping demon?  Crack the whip.  My horizontal position turned out an advantage as I snapped my wrist and cracked Number 3 against the cement floor. 

A sickening noise like an exploding watermelon and I notched another bad guy.  Temporarily. I already said you can’t kill those things, but temporary might prove sufficient.  Three left.  And in addition to the head-popping squish I might have heard something else too.  I think Number 3 let one, but the overwhelming sulfur smell demons naturally radiate made the place a veritable free-fire zone.

Demons might not
like
working together, but that doesn’t mean they
can’t
work in concert.  I think they realized I could take them all if they came after me one-by-one. And hey, I did feel indestructible. Except for the headache, but I’d deal with that later.  So my teeth were out and I’d reached supernova vampire power.  Great, but everything has a price.  I’d need to feed, and soon.  On the bright side I wouldn’t need to worry about feeding if the demons ate me first. 

While I suited up for battle Long Face and his two pals were busy improving their tactics.  The three inched closer to me—I was still lying on the concrete—none of them moved in to attack.  They had time enough to deal with me and chase down my friends.  They’d probably leave any Germans they encountered alone.  Professional courtesy.  I got to my feet.

That’s when Number 4 and Number 5 jumped me.  Eight hundred pounds of angry demons smashed me back down into the floor.  I heard and felt the concrete beneath me crack. 
Maybe not concrete
.  It might have been my ribs because for the second time that night I found breathing impossible.  They pinned my arms and maneuvered me over on my stomach.

“Let him see,” said Long Face. 

I was pretty sure it wasn’t because he’d hired a magician and was concerned I’d miss out on the entertainment.  Two big hand things on my head and I felt them twist me Exorcist-style.  It turned into a battle of vampire strength versus something other-worldly.  My spine could snap.  And if it did, I’d need a few hours to mend things if I wanted to move.  I didn’t think they’d wait around comparing hand puppets or practicing origami while I regenerated.  A severed spinal cord would mean a knockout in the third round. 

Down goes Frazier.

I concentrated my strength and pushed against the extraordinary power of demon hands. Stalemate.  My stamina could last all night.  The demon recognized a lost cause and released my head.  They had me face-down anyway and nearly defenseless to whatever they had in mind.

“Let me taste,” said Long Face. 

His voice sounded—and smelled—closer, and I didn’t think he was talking about one of those hard, salty German pretzels.  I felt the demons scuffling over me.  Team play only went so far when a fresh victim lay beneath them.  Something sharp bit into my leg and crushed my calf muscle with the force of an iron vise.  Demon teeth.

The bite continued through my leg and stopped only when the teeth met somewhere inside my flesh.  A brief tugging and Long Face ripped a large piece of me free.

I screamed in a voice not heard by humanity for millennia. I yelled the war cry of the old German tribes as we rained down to destroy the Roman legions trapped on the narrow paths of the Teutoberg Forest.  I screamed not in fear of my own death, but rather as a warrior demanding entry into the afterlife and at frustration that this life would offer no further opportunity to destroy more of my enemies.  I was human back in the ancient days of my German people.  I was vampire and living in the days of what my people had become.

I was going to die.  A death in battle, my friends defended and escaped.  My father would smile with pride.  His son, Gaius Teutoberg, Prince of the tribe and citizen of Rome, trades his own life for those of his comrades.  That would be OK with me.

Chapter 17

There are fates worse than being eaten alive by demons, though I’d need a million years to come up with one.  Long Face took another bite, this time from the fleshy part halfway between my knee and my bottom.  I howled in rage.  He was working me over like an ear of corn. I even considered initiating the doomsday sequence and putting some solid seasoning in my pants.  You know, butter up that next bite.

If I’ve felt pain like that before I’m glad to have forgotten about it.  Several things happen automatically when I reach fangs-out, full vampire mode.  One of them: regeneration becomes instinct and not something I need to concentrate on to make happen.  Don’t think that helped in any meaningful way because the size of Long Face’s bites outperformed the additional capability.  And when his two friends eventually joined him at the Gare-trough?  It was all over for me.

I didn’t just lay there and let the demons have their way, I mean, I’m not
that
easy. I struggled enough to push Numbers 4 and 5 off balance a few times, but they still kept me face down to the concrete, both of my arms stretched and pinned, and their bulk positioned far enough toward my knees to make my legs useless for fighting but great as appetizers for Long Face. Rage boiled and I screamed promise of revenge in the old German tongue.

Long Face didn’t seem to understand my accent because I sensed little concern as he smacked on his third piece of me. Muscles quivered in anger and I bucked hard enough to make Numbers 4 and 5 smack heads.  Small victory, but a victory none the less.  Another death-yell, another explosion of raw vampire strength and I managed to twist my body from belly to one side.  Now I could see more than ground. 

Long Face in my peripheral vision.  Perfect.  Now I had the video of both his feeding frenzy
and
his poor table manners. We locked eyes.  His grin revealed bloody bits of me stuck between his teeth.  I roared and twisted.  My right hand came free.

I caught a flash of denim and orange, and at the same time I pulled my arm from under Number 4.  Number 5 loosened up on his own.  Long Face’s look changed from an evil sort of smirk to stupid shock.  Served him right if he’d popped a crown.  Or maybe something happened to alter the course of the fight.

I threw Number 4 against the wall and glanced around as I got to my feet.   What I saw frightened me far more than the notion of being eaten alive by five demons.  Sister Christian, J-Rod, Bonny Prince McDonald, and Watanabe lined up like those selfie-stick photos you see on Facebook. 
Crap
.

Turns out J-Rod and Watanabe combined their strength to heave a trash can at Number 5.  Hence the orange flash.  They’d beaned the big ugly fellow.  Or maybe it was an big ugly chick.  Not important.  Demons aren’t used to humans fighting back, so the audaciousness probably stunned it more than the garbage can. 

Watanabe tried a roundhouse kick.  The shocking thing is that it looked like a real one you’d expect to see in cage fights.  Unfortunately he missed Number 5 and clipped the Prince in the chin.  Poor dude went down like an Iranian gunboat.

Long Face stood frozen and his lieutenants hesitated.

“Get them all,” he said, but I think his buddies had seen enough once they took a good look at me on my feet. 

I don’t think they were afraid of me as much as they didn’t want to work more than anticipated for their piece of the vampire.  Maybe Demon Union rules protect average workers from the management abuse of uncompensated overtime.  Because except for Long Face, all the demons vamoosed.

My turn to smile.  I stepped in front of my friends to prevent them from committing further stupidity.  My voice came out as a growl originating somewhere next to my soul when I said, “Stay behind me.”

Nobody moved. If I’d been thinking about more than the destruction of Long Face, I might have wondered then what I’ve thought about since.  Once my friends had a good look at Long Face and a good look at me…who frightened them more?  The question would have broken my heart back in the tunnel. But then, how much would that have hurt compared to the large bites of missing flesh?

“Now,” I said.

This time they moved. I turned all of my attention on the thing that had just devoured several hanks of my hide and who’d demonstrated every intention of eating me alive until the alive part ended…the uninvited beast whose presence threatened my friends and the secrecy, and thus continuation, of the life I’d cobbled for myself in Germany, at the disgusting thing who chewed meat with his mouth open.

“I,” I said, “will rip your face off.”  A pause, “And shove it where hellfire doesn’t shine.”

The first part, I intended on fulfilling.  The second, just a bluff…an American colloquialism.  Long Face still wore that shocked look, though it morphed just a bit.  Instead of the blank face of the completely baffled, he wore the expression of a German who’d seen my dog crap on the sidewalk and me not pausing to retrieve the sculpture.

Good.  My threat got through to him.  You know how I said demons show no rational fear?  Long Face could be the poster boy for that truism.  He snarled and produced a dagger from under his coat. 

Abra-ca-freekin’-dabra
.

Long, black metal, curved. Big deal.  Long Face didn’t know I had the twin of his pig-sticker embedded in my lung not more than four hours previous.  Uncomfortable?  Yes.  Slow me down?  A little.  Make me miss out on ripping a demon’s face off his head and shoving it up his keister?  Never.

Long Face rushed me. Maybe an over-the-top literary word for what happened, it’s just the more accurate “walked awkwardly toward me” doesn’t sound sufficiently action-oriented. And it would have been funny had death not sat in the equation.  Still though, it was the same kind of girly sliding waddle women use when wearing those tight, two-sizes-too-small, full-length evening gowns.

Defense isn’t my specialty.  I’m good enough at it, but my boiling blood insisted on taking the offensive.  That means I rushed Long Face—rushed is no literary exaggeration this time because I moved like a scalded-butt monkey.  No evening dress for me. 

Duress tends to supercharge the brain…make it more efficient.  Despite the short distance between Long Face and me, and an acceleration on my part that would make a formula one driver jealous, I analyzed many and varying scenarios for the face rip.  In retrospect I’ve named it the 50 Ways to Leave Your Demon engagement.  Yeah I know, I’ve already used that Paul Simon song. You’ll probably hear me use it again.

I arrived first.  You may be wondering how someone can arrive first when two people are moving toward each other.  I still arrived first…I can’t stand losing a race and I did
not
lose that one. Long Face reached for my throat. Do they spend
any
time at all practicing on the Judo mats at demon certification school? 

I ducked his paw and the knife it contained and slammed my fist into where a sternum should be.  If I know nothing about physiology, I know less about what holds a demon’s guts together.  My choice of a fist landing zone seemed OK because it threw Long Face several yards down the corridor.  The knife flew even further.  Long Face did the comic slide thing with his butt and the back of his head touching pavement.  Safe!

He remained down while I walked toward him to continue the part of the night that would end in me ripping the face off the thing that wanted to eat me.  Notice I said walk?  No more running this way or that.  No reason.  As I said, I’d already won the race.

You know that demons don’t display fear when they should.  Education is a good thing.  You can quote me. How are fear and education linked? Long Face was about to find out because he’d won a free training course on identifying appropriate scenarios for fear.  He’d thank me someday.

I tried my best to loom as I stood over Long Face.  And it looked like I was getting through to him because old Long Face tried a kick to my Rocky Mountain oysters.  Juvenile move in a desperate situation.  Since most of my dates end with a knee to my crotch, my reaction came swiftly and automatically.  When a chick practices punting with your footballs you step aside, make an apology, and yell goodnight loud enough for her receding form to hear as she flees.  It’s different with a demon.

No need to step aside.  The approved solution is to grab the offending foot.  Pull it close, and snap the leg at the kneecap—in the opposite direction it bends.  Unlike his departed associate of the six legs, Long Face possessed the more typical two.  He screamed loud enough to shake dust out of the knotholes dotting the plywood walls.  Good.  He was beginning to get the fear thing and I felt the same tingling of satisfied pride a teacher must feel when a student catches on to an elusive concept.

“You wanted to eat me?”

I think I was screaming too because more dust floated down from the walls and the ceiling.  Long Face didn’t respond in words, but the look on his face said everything.  No more surprise, no more arrogance.  I saw anger.  They say anger and fear are two sides of the same coin—or maybe I just made it up.  No matter the source, I decided to give the coin a flip and see if it landed on heads—anger—or tails—fear.

“Well then take a bite.”

I kicked my right leg—my aching, missing a pound of flesh right leg—out and drove my elbow through Long Face’s jaw.  My weight combined nicely with my vampire strength and I felt whatever structure holding his mouth together powder under the force.  Somehow my elbow ended up embedded a couple of inches into the concrete.  No worries at all.  I rolled over to my knees.

Long Face did not move.  He kept his eyes on me alright but eyeballs were the only indication he was still with us.  I’d like to think I saw pleas for mercy in those eyes.  If so, the mercy department closed at five.  He’d need to leave a message at the beep. 

One demon face obliterated beneath the eyes.  Nice.  Long Face writhing in agony. Nicer. The time had come for a pop test to gauge student progression.  Pen and paper weren’t handy so I made it an oral test.  Too bad my student had no mouth.  A bit shortsighted on my part perhaps but I thought I could work around the issue.  I bent nearer to the place where Long Face used to have a mouth.  I brought my voice down to a whisper.

“Did that taste good or do you prefer more leg of vampire?”

No response though I’m certain he found my elbow a bit too bony.

“What did I promise?” I said.

Again, no answer.  To be fair to Long Face he was in no position to speak.  My question wasn’t quite rhetorical, though I already had the answer.  I spread my palm over his face and I felt the sharpness of my extended teeth as they waited for action near my chin.

The hunter came forward to join the vampire and I’m ashamed to say it was the vampire that added sublime joy to the mixture.  No mercy.  Not tonight.  Not for a demon.

My hand came down hard with fingers extended.  Long Face finally rewarded my teaching efforts with a look of abject terror.  Graduation time.  That expression lasted less than a blink because I knifed my fingers into Long Face’s eye sockets.  He moaned.  I groped inside to find proper leverage and I pulled upward with a clean, powerful jerk.

The result sounded more like a rifle shot than it did a dry stick broken in two.  I was on my knees in the temporary construction tunnel at the Bad Homburg main train station.  And I was holding a demon’s face.  Well, not the whole thing, but enough of the major components that I could pass an audit.  Long Face went still.

I considered turning him over to deposit the pieces into the proper orifice, but decided a demon butt was a thing best kept covered.  As the saying goes, less was definitely more.  I threw the parts aside and stood up to evaluate my handiwork.  My vampire engines were already braking and a small measure of sickness rose in my throat when I saw how completely I’d taken the demon apart.

Long Face—if I could call him that anymore...No Face seemed more appropriate—remained alive in whatever way demons live.  Alive yes, but he could kiss his acting career goodbye.  He’d just have to face the facts.  You know, puns aren’t just for breakfast anymore.

Call me insensitive to the plight of suffering demons but I had my reasons.  I needed to reverse all engines before turning to face my friends because, if I could calm my vampire thing, then the teeth would retract.  The process took about a minute, and timing started as soon the anger ended.  It must have been a vampire who invented the line about laughter being the best medicine.

I felt the disobedient buggers returning to base camp.  No way for sure to know how much time we had before No Face did the Lazarus thing and we started the deadly tango back up.  I didn’t think we’d see the rest of the demon horde again because I felt certain their calendars were stuffed with appointments to commit mayhem in several additional locations before daybreak.  Demons work hard when it comes to terrorizing those they feel are weaker.  That makes them kind of human.

My friends behind me hadn’t moved from the moment I vaporized No Face’s jaw with my elbow.  I can only guess as to how much easier things would have been if Sister Christian and company had run away when the squad of demons departed and left the main event to No Face and me.

Ripping the creature’s face off by the eye sockets should have impressed them…in the worst of ways.  An even chorus of shallow breathing was all I heard behind me.  And my darn teeth remained extended beyond my lips.  No way to cover them without making an exaggerated mean-man face.  So I concentrated on funny.