Hunter of the Dead (37 page)

“Perfect. Perfect! Thank you. Hold that for just a…”

Renee raised her iPhone and started to open her picture app when suddenly the monster woman reached over and grabbed Ava’s hair, snatching the scalp from her head in one swift motion.

“Is…is that…” Jon muttered, sounding dazed.

The monster woman lifted Ava to her nose and sniffed at her now exposed skull. Ava was screaming bloody murder. Apparently not liking what it smelled, the leader tossed Renee’s daughter over her shoulder and the other eleven creatures in the Flying-V scrambled to snatch Ava to pieces.

Renee’s phone dropped to the ground, shattering into a thousand component parts, all scattering to Hell and gone. Before she even knew what was happening, her arms and legs were pumping and she was charging full tilt at the monster woman, an unholy war cry on her lips.

The monster snatched her out of the air and held her up, squeezing her head like a ripe lemon. Jon was running too, and then he was in the monster’s other hand.

“I’ll kill you! What did you do to my daughter?”

The creature held Renee up to its face and as its hot, angry breath struck her full in the mouth, she realized that the missing jaw and the sallow skin was no makeup. This was a real monster. Then she felt the strength ebbing from her, a coldness spreading through her body. In its other hand, Jon was convulsing, frothing at the lips, and an instant later blood began spewing from his mouth, ears, and eyes.

Renee opened her mouth to scream some other obscenity, but her own mouth was sticky with blood, too. She felt the blood rushing out of her every orifice. The warm, flowing redness in her veins was replaced with an aching cold. She shuddered, shook, and finally a moment later was flopping. Blackness descended on her.

When she awoke the world was violet and she was throbbing with hunger.

Four

A knock came at the doorjam. It registered somewhere in Price’s groggy state but not sufficiently for him to actually rise from his mattress.

“Price!”

“Go away,” he muttered into his pillow.

“Price, this is ridiculous. I’m coming in.”

He turned his head just enough to the side so that his words might register to whoever was on the other side of the tarp which he had used to cover the missing door.

“Oozit?” he slurred.

Professor Kasprzak stepped through the tarp and planted her hands on her hips.

“Where’s the boy?”

“What boy?” Price muttered, finally rolling over onto his back.

She stomped in and stopped in surprise, just short of the huge hole in the floor.

“Are you allowed to live in here like this?”

“Probably not.”

“This place should be condemned.”

“I should be condemned,” he said, pulling the pillow over his face, “Condemned to Hell. Go away, Holly Ann.”

She snatched the pillow away from his face and grabbed him bodily, surprising him with her strength. She shoved his head under the kitchen sink and turned the water on. He struggled to get away, but she held his head under.

“How are you this strong?” he groaned.

“I’ve wrestled snakes more impressive than you. Now are you going to wake up?”

“Yes, yes, I surrender!”

He held up his arms as best he could, sputtering under the water. She let him go. He looked up, blinking at her.

“Where is Nico Salazar?” she repeated. “Your apprentice.”

He shrugged.

“Hopefully on a plane back to Puerto Rico.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

Price slumped into his chair. He scrabbled at the ground, trying to find a bottle that might have some hair of the dog left in it, but they were all empty and his flask was in his jacket, half a world away on the other side of the room.

“He left me, Holly Ann. Probably the smartest thing the kid ever did. Hung around me much longer he would’ve died, just like my last apprentice. Tired of getting kids killed.”

“So you have no idea where he is?”

Price screwed up his eyes.

“Why are you so interested all of a sudden?”

Kasprzak leaned against the kitchen counter.

“You know both you and the vampires come to me for information.”

“Yeah…”

“Well, the word on the street is that Nico Salazar alive is worth his weight in gold right now.”

“The kid? What the fuck for?”

“I was hoping you might tell me.”

Price scowled.

“If I had to guess…I’d think it has something to do with Cicatrice’s new…”

Price paused.

“What?”

“…Heir. He’s dead, Holly Ann.”

“Well, that’s the rumor, but…”

“It’s no rumor,” he stated flatly. “Which means she’s the matriarch now.”

Kasprzak looked as if she was about to lay an egg. But before she could say anything else, a breathless Nico came hurtling into the apartment. He very nearly tumbled into the hole, but Price jumped up and grabbed him.

“What happened to the door? What happened to the floor?”

Price shook him.

“Where you have been? Why’d you leave without telling me?”

Nico stared down at the floor and shuffled his feet.

“Remember how you told me not to be fooled? That vampires aren’t people no matter how much they look like us?”

“Ah,” Kasprzak said, “so the lad’s got a case of coffin fever.”

“You son of a bitch!”

Price slammed Nico in the stomach with the butt of his shotgun. He doubled over in pain and dropped a water bottle he had been carrying to the floor.

“That’s for not listening to me.”

He held out his hand and helped Nico to his feet.

“Jesus Christ,” Nico muttered when he got his wind back, “you could’ve just said, ‘Told you so.’ What’s the professor doing here?”

“She was worried about you, as it happens. Apparently you’re the new toast of the underworld. Jesus, I need a drink.”

Price grabbed the water bottle Nico had been carrying and unscrewed the cap. He put it to his lips.

“Don’t drink that!”

“Why not?”

“It’s holy water.”

“Holy water? What the hell would you get holy water for, kid?”

Price replaced the cap and tossed it back to Nico.

“For…for fighting. Don’t you two know what’s going on?”

Kasprzak and Price exchanged a glance.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…the city’s on fire. They need us, Carter. They need us now. This…this is what the Inquisition is here for, isn’t it?”

“If Cicatrice is dead, it would mean utter chaos in the vampire community,” Kasprzak said, “I would recommend we all head down to the Aztec,
tout suite
. If anyone can put this genie back in the bottle, it’ll be Cicatrice’s new heir. Who…if I’m following everything correctly…you have a rather good relationship with, Nico?”

“Uh…that day has kind of passed.”

“Well, sorry, kid, nobody likes talking to their ex, especially when they’re a goddamned vampire matriarch, but the world’s at stake, so you’d better swallow your pride.” He hissed as he took a few steps. His leg was still bothering him. “I’m in no mood to walk. We’ll take the Caddie.”

“Let’s just hope she hasn’t done something stupid,” Kasprzak said.

***

Price, Nico, and Kasprzak entered the Aztec. No guards stood to bar the way as they had before.

“What’s going on here?” Kasprzak asked.

“I thought the guards had standing orders not to let Inquisitors through.”

“Well, where the hell are they?” Price asked.

Price glanced at the booth where the guards normally stood. A telephone sat there, every single one of its dozen or so incoming call lights blinking an urgent red. He exchanged a glance with Nico.

“What? What is it?”

“I think your girlfriend did something stupid.”

“Oh my,” Kasprzak said, tugging on Price’s jacket, “‘stupid’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”

The professor pointed at the cage in the center of the casino where chips and slips were turned into bills and coins. A hulking gray Damned vampire approached the cage.

“Shit!” Price said, pushing Kasprzak and Nico behind him as he drew his machete.

The coin-changing clerk had obviously been working in Vegas a long time. He took a glance at the strange gray monster and without batting an eye, said, “How many chips would you like, sir?”

The Damned reached between the bars of the cage and took hold of the clerk. He pulled him through, though his hips got caught where his head hadn’t, and in spite of his screaming, ripped the clerk in half. The Damned held the torso of the poor clerk, even as the end of his spinal cord dangled, and granted him the Long Gift. Like a dead frog kicking its legs while being electrified, the half-clerk twitched and jerked in The Damned’s embrace until finally the jagged bottom of his torso opened up like a floodgate and a wave of blood poured out. The Damned dropped the newly-minted half-vampire to the floor, where he pulled himself along furiously, afflicted by the hunger of all newly turned nightcrawlers.

“There’s not just one,” Kasprzak said, pointing.

Price glanced around the casino. No wonder all the guards had been called away. He counted no less than five Damned, stalking through the badly lit, loudly beeping place. The bings and pings of the hypnotizing machines and games which served in normal times to keep players focused on the games instead of the world outside were keeping them equally distracted from the encroaching carnage.

A tourist couple in Aloha shirts walked by the stunned Inquisitors.

“What’s going on here, Bertie?” the man asked loudly.

“Must be some kind of a floorshow.”

Price watched with terror as one of The Damned swooped down from the ceiling and snatched up the couple, one in each distended hand, and poured its dark power into them.

“We need to…we need to protect the people!” Nico cried out.

“The hell with that!” the professor exclaimed. “We need to protect ourselves. Let’s get out of here!”

“Both of you, relax,” Price said, trying to keep his breathing even.

The Damned were distracted by a smorgasbord of easy targets. Bluehairs lined up at the slot machines pulled away at levers, blissfully unaware of their disappearing neighbors as they traded their Social Security checks for paltry returns. They refused to even look up as their neighbors screamed their heads off. “There’s only one safe place in this city right now. And we’re only a few hundred feet from it.”

He pointed at the gaudy plastic pyramid in the center of the Aztec. The distance between them and it was slick with blood and littered with bodily excretions and other effluvia. Freshly-minted vampires and ghouls prowled the floor, the ghouls licking at the blood and gnawing the entrails, the vampires disinterested. All started to turn towards the three breathing heroes. It seemed they were surrounded.

“Only a football field,” Kasprzak muttered, “but what a football field.”

Nico swallowed a lump in his throat and hefted his bladed baseball bat.

“We have an advantage,” Price said, “They’re brand new which means they’re weak. The lust for warm flesh is still on them so they’ll lash out foolishly. We can make it.”

“In any case we have no choice,” Kasprzak said sourly.

Nico brandished his bat and pulled out the bottle of holy water and pressed it toward her.

“Do you need a weapon, Professor?”

“You may as well not even bother, son. Holy water is about the worst choice in vampire-fighting equipment.”

“What…what do you mean?”

“Kid,” Price said, “for a holy icon to work it has to be in contact with a person of faith. As soon as you toss that, it becomes nothing but regular water.”

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, stuffing the bottle back into his pocket.

“Not to worry. I didn’t come unprepared.”

She unfurled the satchel from her shoulder and placed it on the ground. She busied herself for a moment constructing something. A moment later she rose with a device that resembled a long wand, with three rotating buzzsaw blades arranged vertically along its length. The handle was designed for two-handed use, to keep it steady and horitzontal. Leave it to the curly-headed professor to be full of surprises.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “if this is to be my last stand, I am proud to be making it with you.”

“Likewise,” Price said, nodding at his friend and his apprentice.

“Jesus,” Nico shouted, “you two talk like we’re dead already. I’m way too young and beautiful to die.”

Price clapped Nico on the shoulder.

“Come on, pretty boy.”

The three heroes plunged boldly forward, swinging and slashing their weapons. Price picked off a few ghouls with his shotgun, which sent the others scattering. The vampire who had been Bertie jumped at Nico, emboldened with fleshlust, and managed to duck a devastating swing from his bat. Once she was within his guard, his feet betrayed him and he slipped on a pool of blood, tumbling to the ground, his bat rolling away from him.

The vampiric tourist ripped at him like a dog with its favorite toy. Price hissed in empathy as she ripped four long chunks out of his face with her scrabbling fingers. He kicked her hard in the ribs, but even a brand new vampire was not so susceptible to physical force. He hesitated to bring his machete down, worried that any swing that would take her head off would end up lodged in Nico’s chest.

Luckily, Kasprzak felt no such compunction. With clinical precision she brought her whirring blades down gently on Bertie’s neck and watched as the vampire’s throat pulverized below her. When the vampire stopped moving, she lifted the buzzsaw away. Nico shook off his burden like a dog shaking off the rain and rose to his feet, grabbing Price’s hand for help.

Nico turned and nearly instantly returned the favor, smashing his bat into the face of a ghoul loping towards Kasprzak’s back, arms outstretched like a mummy. The ghoul toppled to the ground, dead.

“Hey, these gray things are a bit easier than the regular vamps,” Nico said.

“No shortage of those either.”

The monsters began to scatter as they realized their easy meal was more porcupine than bunny. Nico nearly took the first step of the plastic pyramid on the chin, but Price grabbed him and helped to prop him up. The three humans stumbled up the steps and plunged inside. Cicatrice’s inner sanctum, which had been previously buzzing with activity, was eerily quiet. A few emergency lights glowed, and there were signs of struggle and leftover body parts hinting at the fate of his renfields, but the room was otherwise empty.