Hard Times (A Sam Harlan Novel Book 2) (21 page)

A well-placed footstep is such a simple thing, and yet so hard to recover from if suddenly taken away.

My foot twisted and my ankle blazed in pain. I slipped and tried turning it into a rolling fall while squeezing the trigger on the Kimber, but Santiago was dodging out of the way even as I fired.

I hit the floor, and the dirty carpet did nothing to cushion my ribs. They ached before, but when I landed, a knifelike stabbing took my breath away.

If they weren’t broken before, they are now.

Santiago was still moving and I saw his foot catch Tommy in the ribs. Tommy came off the ground and flipped over, his Glock flying from his hands, and there was a meaty crack that reminded me of a chicken bone cracking.

I tried to aim the Kimber, but Santiago kicked it from my hand. He grabbed me by the trench coat and raised me from the floor, slamming me against the wall. The shock of the impact was bad, but the pain as my head slammed into the drywall was worse. The wood beams in the wall cracked with the impact and I saw a wash of stars.

I dropped the Kimber. My only chance of filling the vampire with silver thudded to the carpet. Light from the television still filled the room, and I saw the static glinting in Santiago’s eyes.

“Missed me,” he hissed as his mouth opened in a delighted grin, his vampire fangs on display. “Bad for you … but good for me.”

* * *

“I want the girls back,” I croaked out, barely able to meet Santiago’s eyes. My vision had developed a pulse, a bright light that flashed in the center with a ring of black around the edges.

Santiago howled with laughter. “You joking?
They
are
mine
. What you going to do about it? Kill me? I’m going to bleed you, little man. You and them,” he growled, nodding at Tommy and Callie.

He glared at me. His hate was a personal thing directed fully at me. He leaned forward, those terrible fangs going for my neck, and I stabbed at him with the wooden stake still in my left hand.

It snagged against the collar of his button-up shirt, missing him completely. He snarled and yanked it from my hand and threw it across the room, where it embedded itself in the drywall. “Missed,” Santiago sneered. “
Again
.”

I swatted feebly at the side of his face with my fist, but he laughed it off, pulling me away from the wall and slamming me against it. I blacked out for a moment. When I could finally focus my eyes, his face was twisted into a wicked smile.

“I will
enjoy
bleeding you, little hunter.”

I wanted to beat the smug bastard to death but all I could do was spit out, “I’ll see you in Hell.”

He laughed, a harsh guttural sound that chilled me to my core, and bent forward to open the vein in my neck.

It was at that moment that Sister Callie’s faith filled the room with a blinding light.

I say blinding light, but there are no words for what she wrought. She managed to sit up, holding the crucifix, and unleashed the full wrath of God. The light was like a living thing, but amazingly I could still see.

It wasn’t the love of the New Testament Jesus Christ. No, it was the fury of the Old Testament Jehovah. Even with my aches and pains, I wept at its beauty while feeling a deep terror at God’s divine retribution.

It made the depths of the vampire’s hunger feel like a candle before a forest fire, and it touched me, touched my soul, and I was awed. A roar filled the room, the roar of creation. It was the beginning of the universe, of life itself. It was the sound of the void being beaten back by will and purpose.

Through the fury I heard Callie scream in a voice that was more than human, “Don’t you dare touch him!”

I watched through bleary eyes, tears streaming down my face, as Santiago started to smoke, his skin blackening, the fat below the surface turning liquid and flowing in rivulets. He let out an unholy shriek and then fled, as fast as lightning, out the door and into the night.

I collapsed, my body having reached its limit, and everything went black.

* * *

The void was so peaceful, so soothing, and I didn’t want to leave. I floated in a warm current of and felt no pain. No loss.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t hurt.

I wanted to stay there, where my body didn’t ache, where nobody
depended
on me and nobody
died
because of me.

From a long way away a voice called out. “Sam.”

Who?

It was a word without meaning in that place.

Sam was a man’s name, and I was merely a whisper in the wind, a long-gone shadow in a faceless void.

“Sam!”

The voice was insistent, full of pain and desperation.

That’s not me, is it?

Leaving the warm liquid around me would be foolish. I could stay forever and would never again know pain or suffering.

“SAM!”

The voice was louder, more insistent. Whatever the voice wanted, whatever it
needed
, was important. Too important to ignore.

But I want to stay here.

You can’t
, a voice whispered. It was a man’s voice, rough and full of age, and oddly familiar.
You got to go back, boy.

I was falling down a hole, gaining form and substance. Where before I was wind, now I was man, made whole.

A man who hurts like a sonofabitch.

I opened my eyes and found Callie leaning over me. She was ghostly pale in the reflected light of the television, and her face was contorted in pain.

“Thank God,” she said, before collapsing on the floor.

“Yeah. Thank Him,” I managed, before rolling to my side and vomiting, loosing great heaves of dark bile in wet splashes against the carpet next to Tommy. He moaned and clutched his side, but pulled away so that none of the bile landed on him.

When there was nothing left, I sat up and shivered. The room was empty except for the three of us. Santiago was gone, but the rank odor of burnt flesh stung my nostrils.

If there had been anything left, I would have vomited again. “How long was I out?” I asked.

“Couple of minutes,” Callie said, her voice cracking.

“How bad are you hurt?”

She coughed and almost choked on her tongue. “My back,” she said, when she could finally speak. “It hurts. I’m dizzy.”

Tommy struggled to his knees. “Let me see.”

“How are you?” I asked.

He grunted as he rolled Callie to her side. “Broken ribs. Hurts to breathe.” He wheezed, then spat out a gob of saliva onto the carpet. “I guess I’m alive, ’cause I hurt too much to be dead.”

He inspected Callie’s back. She groaned as he raised her jacket, the material rustling like paper in the sudden quiet. “Slashes down to the muscle. She’s bleeding. Badly.”

It took every ounce of energy to stand, but I managed it, then grabbed Tommy and hauled him to his feet. “Can you walk?” I asked.

He nodded, swaying unsteadily. “I can. I think.”

“Get the truck,” I said. I bent over to grab his Glock from the floor and almost collapsed. I took a halting step, found my balance, then tossed him his Glock and my keys. “I’ll get Callie,” I said.

He caught them and frowned at the Glock, then held up the keys. “What about Santiago?” he asked.

I had already felt for him but there was no hint of his evil presence. “He’s gone.”

He nodded and left to get the Chevy. I stooped down and grabbed my Kimber and holstered it, then picked up Callie. My muscles screamed in protest, but I held her tight against me and managed to carry her through the door. I leaned against the exterior wall for support while Tommy pulled the truck up in front of the motel room. He got out and held the passenger door open for me while I placed Callie gently in the seat of the truck and shut the door.

I nodded my head to the motel room. “Get her shotgun.”

He went to retrieve it while I walked around the truck and stood, hand against the truck’s doorframe, inspecting the dirt lot around the motel.

Santiago’s Ford Explorer was gone.

Tommy came out of the motel room carrying Callie’s shotgun and brought it to my side of the track, crawling in next to Callie, gingerly placing the shotgun against her chest.

I sighed. Getting into the truck was going to hurt.

I stared at Callie and Tommy, who were waiting on me, both barely conscious.

Standing around like an idiot isn’t getting it done.

I slid in and saw stars again as the pain in my ribs and back intensified. I held the steering wheel in a death grip and waited for the agony to pass. When I could finally see the motel room through the Chevy’s windshield, I said, “That’s the killing ground.”

“What?” Tommy asked. He shifted back and forth, trying to settle himself.

I pointed to the motel room. “We were set up,” I said. “How could I have
been
so
stupid
?”

“You think—” He stopped and sucked in air, clearly in pain. “You think Santiago knew we were coming?”

“Yes,” I said. Henry’s words came back to me. Something was off, he said. Now I knew what. “Leticia sent us into a trap.”

* * *

I slewed the truck around in the dirt and we fled the scene. “How long do we have if someone called the police about the gunfire?” I asked Tommy.

“A few minutes,” he said. “I’m the officer on duty tonight. If they can’t reach me, they’ll call my backup, assuming they don’t just call the city police.”

I didn’t know if anyone had heard the roar of the Kimber or whatever Callie had done, but I wasn’t taking chances. The motel was overgrown with trees and bushes, sheltering it from the main road, but gunfire carried in the night and I didn’t want to have to explain to another officer why we carried a wounded nun and a clearly injured deputy from an abandoned motel.

I pulled onto the pavement, tires chirping, and headed east, back to Angie Bent’s house. If I was right about Leticia…

“You really think Mrs. Mendoza set us up?” Tommy asked.

“Think about it,” I said. “Who else knew we would be there? Angie Bent didn’t show any signs of manipulation. Elias? He’s the Mendoza who had the least contact with Santiago.” Callie moaned softly and I sped up. “We need to get Angie and Elias safe. Then we need to take care of Callie’s wounds. Yours, too.”

Tommy was silent for a moment as I drove. Then he said, “What happened back there?”

“We were set up,” I repeated.

“No. That thing with the light.” His voice was soft and filled with reverence. “I was trying to help you, to shoot that bastard, when the light came.”

I knew what he meant. I had seen Katie’s crucifix glow with light when we fought Silas and his family of younglings. I had seen Callie’s crucifix glow when Santiago attacked me in the alleyway.

The light from her crucifix in the motel room hadn’t been anything like that. It was something greater.

“I think it was the will of God,” I said, tears running down my cheeks.

Where was God when Stacie turned Lilly? Where was God when I plunged my knife through Lilly’s chest?

I couldn’t argue whether God existed anymore. Callie had unleashed His will and it had driven Santiago away.

God did exist, and His power responded to Callie. I acknowledged that fact while wondering what it meant. Why did He allow vampires to exist? Why hadn’t He helped when Silas attacked my family? Why had He abandoned humanity to a cruel world full of evil?

It was unfair, but I was struck by a feeling of anger and jealousy directed at Callie. Her faith never wavered, even after losing Katie, even after watching as I killed Lilly.

Why was she so lucky? Why was it so easy for her? It wasn’t as if I hadn’t fought the good fight. I did everything in my power to save my family.

Is this my punishment?

Those questions rolled around in my head as we approached Angie Bent’s house. The street was quiet, her house standing lonely vigil against the dark. As we got closer, I noticed Elias’s Honda was still in the driveway, but Leticia’s white Nissan was missing.

“Santiago isn’t here,” I said, feeling for the vampire’s presence.

Tommy grunted in pain, careful not to disturb Callie. He stared at the driveway. “Neither is Leticia.”

I started to speak but there was nothing else for me to say. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

“You don’t
believe
that,” Tommy said.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

I parked the truck in the driveway, next to Elias’s Honda, then got out and made my way to the front door. The house was deathly quiet and as still as a cemetery. I hoped I was wrong about what we would find.

Every shadow became a vampire as I climbed up the front steps. The carved jack-o’-lantern leered a knowing smile, a hint of the madness I prayed I wouldn’t find within.

Let me be wrong. Please, Lord, let me be wrong.

The doorknob spun freely and I pushed on the door. The inside was dark, and I stepped inside, reaching for the light.

I needn’t have bothered. The smell of blood and bowel and death hit me and I finally found the switch and turned on the overhead light.

Angie Bent’s body was a mishmash of pieces strewn across the floor, a leg here and an arm there. It almost didn’t look real, except for the bright red blood.

Angie’s head lay sideways on the couch, glassy eyes staring at the television like she still watched it. Elias was stretched out next to her. His body was whole, in stark contrast to his girlfriend. He looked so peaceful, so full of life, reclining on the couch.

If only his head hadn’t been twisted around until he stared at the wall behind him.

I heard footsteps and turned to find Tommy at the door, his arm under Callie’s, steadying her. Tommy took in the sight and I knew what he saw would haunt him for the rest of his days.

“Oh, Elias,” he said.

Callie swayed, her eyes taking in the awful room of death. “Lord, give them eternal rest and may your light shine on them forever.”

My stomach churned as I listened to her prayer. We had made a terrible mistake. Leticia had been working with Santiago the entire time.

Tommy stooped to
pick up Angie’s arms and legs, determined to make order out of the chaos. He wasn’t worried about disturbing the crime scene, he told me, because he knew
exactly
what monster had committed the crime.