Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (59 page)

A girl with long blonde hair who seemed to have only sustained a broken leg hobbled up and reached toward him and began speaking in French, all nonsense syllables amounting to
Help us
and
Save us
and
Please
and
Please
. Everything came out amongst pained sobs, her hair in her face, snot running down her upper lip.
 

The man in the black suit grabbed her by the throat in a movement that was too quick to see, then used both hands to hold her up to his mouth. There was a crunching sound and a scream, and then the vampire drank as the girl went limp. Her two companions began to scream and thrash, but they were both more injured than she was and could only crawl, and within moments he’d disposed of them, too.
 

Nikki’s hand tightened on Reginald’s shoulder. They both slunk back further, out of sight. Reginald could feel Nikki’s breath on the back of his neck. Nikki might be able to take on the newcomer, but she’d have to stumble through the wreckage to get down to him, and that would give him time to turn and respond. Besides, Reginald could tell from her body language that she was too shocked to do anything. Plenty of vampires killed humans, of course, but Nikki had always been so careful to “sip and ship” — glamouring her victims and sending them along instead of letting them die. She’d always vowed, privately to Reginald, that she’d never forget that she herself had once
been
human, and that she’d once been frightened of the world’s monsters, too.
 

The man in the black suit walked across the length of the train car, stepping over the three new bodies, wiping his mouth and goatee on a hanging blouse from someone’s spilled suitcase. There was carnage everywhere. Too many dead humans to count. Too much twisted metal and broken luggage and detritus to believe. The man walked across the piles of bodies and wreckage, casually scanning the seats. As Nikki and Reginald watched, he found two more survivors and killed them using only his hands. He didn’t bother to drink. Then he reached the end of the car and, finding the door jammed, kicked it hard enough to punch a hole in the metal. He widened the hole with his hands, stepped through, and was gone.
 

“What the hell was…”
 

But Reginald put his finger to his lips, his pulse quickening. His heartbeat was loud enough in his ears that he felt like it might give him away, and for the thousandth time, he wished that vampire lore had turned out to be true. He should be a beautiful, thin corpse by now, not a fat nervous wreck.
 

“What?”

Reginald tapped his finger more insistently against his lips, his eyes widening. It was the silent version of yelling at her to shut up, irritated that she hadn’t taken the point the first time.
 

He pointed.
 

Two more black-clad vampires — a man and a woman — had entered the car through the hole made by the first. A second man then climbed in from the outside through a shattered window — a shocking accomplishment, since the windows weren’t made of glass. All three of the new vampires wore the same vintage black suit as the first man, but these three were being far more thorough than he had been. They were peering under every pile of debris, checking every seat. They were opening compartments and moving aside huge pieces of metal as if they weighed nothing. The first vampire had been a quick initial pass. This was the cleanup crew, here to make sure that nothing survived.
 

The first thought Reginald had about the crash that didn’t involve pain and blood had been that this must be the work of vampire radicals — the kind that had stormed his old office and killed those inside because they were “only human.” This was supposed to be about rebellion and panic and the preservation of the great vampire race… but that was
all
it was supposed to be. Kill some humans. Cause some chaos. Have some laughs. It wasn’t supposed to be so methodical. So deliberate. So cold.

He watched the three vampires, all in suits that matched perfectly enough to be uniforms. He thought of the two-pass strategy — a blitzkrieg attack followed by a careful second sweep to finish any surviving enemies.
 

This is an extermination.
 

And here they were, hidden but in no position to fight. Reginald was useless even under the best of conditions, and right now he didn’t even have his spooky pain invulnerability to give him a layer of protection. Nikki could fight, and in theory, Reginald could guide her as he had back in Columbus, and make her better. But he didn’t trust himself. Everything had felt new again recently. His strategic mental muscles felt tired and rusty. He couldn’t block pain. And worst: even if he
could
direct Nikki to dodge and weave and evade and kill as needed, they’d never make it down to where the vampires were without alerting them. And no matter how much he could slow things down and move Nikki like a puppet, that wouldn’t change how prepared they’d be to take her on if she gave them enough time during her descent.
 

No, they were trapped. As long as they could hide in their nook they’d be safe, but what were the chances that they could stay hidden?
 

“Check under that pile,” said the first man, who was as tall and thin as a scarecrow. He had an angular face and big, blue eyes.

“Don’t tell me how to do my fucking job,” said the woman. There were undertones in the way she said it, and Reginald suspected that the tall man had been nagging her for a while, probably pointing at every pile in every car they’d come through.
 

“Just do it. Nobody has found Stromm yet.”
 

Nikki turned to Reginald and mouthed:
Karl.
 

Reginald nodded.

“They won’t,” said the woman. “Jesus, this is stupid.”

“It’s not the main reason he did it, Wynona. Chances are that Stromm healed and ran. But would you like to be the one to tell him that Stromm
was
in fact here, pinned somewhere, and that we just
missed
him? So stop bitching and
check under that fucking pile.
”

The man pointed again and the woman glared at him. She was half his size, but that meant nothing. Maurice looked like a hollow-chested teenager, but at two thousand years old, few vampires could stand against him if they met on equal footing.
 

Finally, with a huff, the woman and the tall man broke their tableau. The woman blurred to the pile of debris. Reginald watched as she hunched over it and, with the air of a child having a tantrum, seized a collapsed bulkhead with one hand and pulled it upward so fast and so hard that it exploded through the top of the car, sending bits of new debris raining down. The impact jolted the entire compartment and the two other vampires fell to the ground, sprawling over the bodies of the French teenagers.
 

“Fucking
cunt!”
yelled the tall man, righting himself. He was across the car in a blur and had the woman by her black vintage lapels. Then they spun and he pushed her hard into the exposed metal wall of the car, denting it outward with a pop. “Do you think we have all the time in the world here? Do you think that there might not already be human authorities on their way? Are you trying to expose us?”
 

The woman, a small, wry smile on her face, nodded her head toward the place where the collapsed bulkhead had been laying.
 

“He’s not under there,” she said. Then she grabbed his crotch and began to rub.

The third vampire
 

(Claude)

was watching the fight / grope session. He rolled his eyes and said,

Knock it off, dammit.

“Knock it off, dammit.”
 

The woman looked at the man, who was was built like a brick wall. His shoulders were so wide and his back so thick that he transformed his formal dress into an oddity. It was as if someone had dressed the Incredible Hulk in a suit just so that they could watch him rip the seams and burst out of it.
 

“You want some too, don’t you, Claude?” She made a gripping, stroking motion in the air toward him.
 

The sooner we can finish the sweep, the sooner we can get out of here.
 

“The sooner we can finish the sweep, the sooner we can get out of here,” he said.
 

Reginald realized he was hearing the big vampire in his head before the man spoke. He looked at Nikki and mouthed,
Can you hear that?

Nikki:
What?

Reginald enunciated more clearly, exaggerating the movement of his lips:
Can. You. Hear. That?

Nikki, aloud, in a whisper: “What?”

The big man named Claude jerked his head upward at the sound. But that was okay, because Reginald had heard Nikki’s voice twice — once in his own ears and once through Claude’s. And with that, he knew what it all meant.

Claude was the vampire who’d stood on the tracks, who’d taken the collision and derailed the train. It was Claude whose eyes he’d seen through before. And because Reginald was sharing his thoughts, that meant that somehow, in some way, Reginald’s blood was related to Claude’s. And
that
meant that if he wanted to, Reginald could control him.
 

“There’s someone up there,” said the tall vampire. His big blue eyes looked up toward the fold in the car. And the tall vampire began to climb.
 

Climb
, Reginald told Claude.
 

The big vampire began to climb up the nearly vertical seats in the folded section of the car.
 

I’ve got this,
Reginald thought.

Claude climbed over while moving up, putting himself between the other vampire and Reginald. Then he put a hand out, placing it on the thin vampire’s chest.
 

“I’ve got this,” he said.
 

“I want a taste if there’s anything human up there,” said the tall vampire, smiling a humorless smile as his fangs popped out.
 

Keep searching.
 

“Keep searching,” said Claude.
 

Now come up,
Reginald commanded,
and look me in the eye.
 

Claude’s big face came into view in front of Nikki and Reginald. He had a square jaw and a massive scar curving from his forehead down to his neck — a souvenir he must have gotten before turning and would be stuck with it forever. Reginald found himself wondering with fascination how Claude, as a man, had gotten the scar and how the injury hadn’t killed him. (Or, Reginald amended, maybe it
had
killed him.) His eyes were hazel. His face seemed almost friendly.
 

Reginald watched Claude’s face, watched his own face through Claude’s eyes.
 

There’s nothing up here,
Reginald thought at him.

“There’s nothing up here,” Claude shouted to the others.
 

Now go. You saw nobody.

Claude jumped down to the bottom of the car in one big leap, landing on what might have been a severed arm and faltering before righting himself. Then he moved on, toward the hole in the other end of the car.
 

The others followed him. A few moments later, they were gone and Reginald and Nikki were alone.
 

S
NICK

REGINALD AND NIKKI WAITED A few more minutes to make sure that no more vampires in black suits were coming through the car before moving. There was no rush. After the group of three had moved on, Reginald told Nikki that he’d been keeping tabs on Maurice,` and that Maurice had found Karl. He’d told Maurice, in the same way he’d Claude, to leave them and head back to the Chateau. There was no point in making a stand. Whatever group was clearing the train, they were organized and there were a lot of them. There would be no helping the humans, most of whom were dead already. Reginald and Nikki were safe, and they’d leave when the coast was clear. The best strategy would be to retreat and regroup, then compare notes.
 

“You told him all of that like… like an ESP message?” Nikki asked. They were walking across a damp French field, and she was wearing a long night shirt that had a giant picture of Alfred E. Newman on it above the laconically stenciled legend
J'en ai rien à foutre.
Before they’d left the wreckage of the TGV and set out on foot, Nikki had pulled the shirt from someone’s luggage to hide her upper-body nakedness. Reginald had found a robe to hide his own, but he did so with the air of protecting onlookers rather than depriving them, which was what Nikki was doing.

“I pretty much just told him to leave,” Reginald admitted. The truth was too complicated to explain. It was as if he’d planted a subconscious suggestion. Maurice would think that it had been his idea. Reginald would, once they returned, feel honor-bound to explain that he had sent Maurice the imperative, and Maurice would be furious because he felt that Reginald manipulating him was a violation, which of course it was. But Reginald would take Maurice’s fury over his death, and that’s what would have happened had Maurice felt compelled to search until he found them.
 

“And that other one. That big guy? When he started climbing up, I thought we were screwed. But you…?” She raised her eyebrows. It was dark, but there was a moon, and Reginald saw her gesture just fine.
 

“Yeah. Apparently he and I… and therefore he and you… are related.”
 

“Related?”
 

“Well, we’re all related, ultimately,” said Reginald. “Especially if the Cain legend is true. But I noticed I could hear his thoughts. It was his eyes I saw through before the derailment.”
 

Nikki was quiet for a few seconds. The only sounds were the squishing of their shoes in the soft ground.
 

“You can glamour vampires,” she said finally.