Maggie Get Your Gun (10 page)

“Killian!  Think we can reach that one?” I asked, pointing
to one of the sturdier looking dwellings.  It was sort of on the way to the car
and looked like it could give us some cover until things settled down.

He gave me a nod and we made a dash through the sagebrush. 
Killian stepped lightly, his fairy feet barely touching the ground as we picked
our way up the narrow, dirt path.  But my big, fat, noisy human feet slid on
the gravel and knocked a couple stones down the hill.

A vampire jumped out right in front of us.

He licked his fangs.

“Are you a good vampire or a bad vampire?” I asked.

“Master Vaclav sends his greetings, Tracker Maggie.”

“Bad vampire.  Got it.”

The vampire hissed, “Give me the comb.”

“I’m sorry, I am fresh out of combs,” I replied. 

“You lie, Ms. MacKay.”

“Really, we just want to go home,” I replied.  “It’s late. 
Tell your master I have no interest in combs.  As soon as I find it, I’ll make
sure to know how he can find my listing on eBay.”

“You shall not leave here with a Comb of the Empress on
your person!”

“Come on, dude.  I’m tired and cranky.  Don’t make me kill
you.”

The vampire laughed, “My master will be most pleased when I
tell him I have recovered the comb AND destroyed you.”

“I hate setting someone up for a world of disappointments,
but I'm afraid I'm going to have to break your heart.  Try recovering this,
jackwad!"

Now, I have this thing I do.  My dad dubbed it "The
Maggie Move" the first time he saw me pull it off.  If I hadn't gone into
tracking, I seriously would have pursued a career in professional baseball.  I
take my stake and I can throw it right through the heart of a vampire.  Dad and
I even went down to the batting cages once and clocked my pitch at 90mph.   It
is killer.  It hits those vampires right in the strike zone and they go down.  Done
and done.

But I was standing on a gravelly, rocky outcropping in the
middle of the night with a great big heavy backpack on my back.  I was a little
off balance and just as I was about to let that vampire have it, I stepped on
one of those rocks wrong.  My ankle turned and I felt something pop.

The vampire was on me in a second.  I flung him to the side
and he rolled down the hill.  Killian caught me under the arm and we ran. 
Okay, I limped and Killian hauled me along as he ran.

The vampire launched himself into the air and landed in
front of us.  Killian blasted him with some energy thing from his hand.  It
flung the vampire one hundred feet to the side.

“Hey!  I thought you couldn’t do magic without someone
owing you?”

“That was for me.”

“Glad I could glom on.”

“We could pretend you owed me, though.”

“Don’t push it, buddy.”

We made it inside the apartment and I slammed the door
closed behind us.  The vampire flung himself against it and the windows, but
the iron bars held the threshold.

I slid down to the ground and rubbed my ankle.  Damned
rock.

“Maggie, we cannot allow him to leave here alive,” said
Killian.

“Killian, I can’t fight with this dumb ankle,” I said.  It
was turning a horrible shade of purple and was already swelling up.  Any old
witch doctor on the Other Side could have pointed their finger and healed me on
the spot.  Unfortunately, I only had an elf.  “Can you zap me and make it
better?”

"I have long dreamed of having an opportunity to 'zap'
you, Maggie," Killian said, sounding like a man interrupted just before he
could bite into a hot Kobi burger, "But the healing magic to fix you requires
a boon, and unfortunately, if I died before it was collected, the boon would
pass along to my victor.”

Meaning if something got Killian, I’d owe a favor to a
vampire.  And taking a wild guess, it wouldn't have been half as much fun.

"I could not place you at such a risk..." he said
as he nailed me with his baby blues, clearly trying to figure out how big a
risk it actually was.

"Take the risk!" hissed the vampire from the
window.

"Shut up!" Killian and I shouted back.

Fucking vampires.

"Give me your stake,” Killian said, holding out his hand.

“Come on, Killian, I can’t let you go out there," I replied,
trying to talk him down, "Can’t you just blast him from here with that
self-preservation magic you just fired off?”

“It was a prepared spell I had constructed.  I do not have
another."

"Oh, the mighty elf has no more magic.  He is trapped
with his whore and is scared like a baby," the vampire taunted, and then
started mumbling a little song and dance about how we were stuck in a hole and
he was going to kill us.  Great.  Death by dinner theater.  It was a new
strategy but surprisingly effective.

"I'm shocked this didn't have a Broadway run," I
said as the vampire finished up a verse with something that looked dangerously
close to jazz hands.

Killian shook his head, "If I had held off a few
moments longer to allow him to come closer, my magic might have inflicted some
damage…”

“Listen, everyone has prematurely blown up a spell before
they meant to.  It’s perfectly normal.”

“Do not make me feed you to the vampire, Maggie.”

“We’ll wait him out until morning.  This’ll be fun!” I said,
pointed at a rusty bed post and a broken chair that were there in the hovel
with us.  “I’ll be like a slumber party.  A very, uncomfortable slumber party. 
With vampires.”

“If we wait any longer, he will tell his master he found
us.”

“Don’t use logic with me, Killian.”

“You know I am speaking truth.”

"He is!  I shall tell my master!  I shall tell my
master all about the little mousies I have caught!" the vampire shouted.

I looked at Killian and sighed.  I was beat and this pain
in the ass vampire needed killing.  I pulled out my stake and handed it to him,
“Don’t get yourself dead.”

He nodded.

“And take this,” I said.  I spun the locks on my neckguard.

“I cannot…” Killian started.

I took it off and rubbed the scars a vampire had once given
me when I had tried to fight without protection, “I’m going to have a tough enough
time taking down one bloodsucker, let alone two if he turns you.  Consider it
an investment in my own long term survival.”

Killian took it from me and clicked it into place.  He gave
me a nod and took a deep breath.

"Hey!  Vampire!  Is that Vaclav?" I said,
pointing off at the horizon.

Sure enough, our little thespian looked over to see if the
biggest director of vampire drama was catching this act.

Killian had sucker punched him before the guy even had a
chance to figure out I'm an excellent liar.

I heard the sound of scuffling and roars of anger.  I pulled
myself up, clawing my fingertips along the side of the wall.  I propped my
elbows on the window ledge and peered out.

Killian and the vampire were scrapping on the ground, the
vampire trying to hold the stake away from his heart and push it into Killian’s
chest.  The vampire's skin hissed every time it hit the ground.  Too bad about
that silver allergy.  Still, Killian had his work cut out for him just trying
to stay alive.  It was a down and dirty street brawl.  The elf wasn’t half
bad.  You know.  For an elf.

But Killian got him.  He flipped the vampire over and
nailed him through his back.  I was impressed.  Score one for the living.

Killian turned and looked at me, standing over the
vampire's corpse with the stake in his hand.  He was all wild and manly and
sweating and out of breath with the moonlight spilling on him.  Under different
circumstances, a girl might have been talked into playing a round of some Texas
Hold ‘Em.  Git along little doggie.

Killian grinned, I’m pretty sure reading my tells like a
champion poker player, but he just came in, swung his head under my arm and
said, “Come on, Maggie.  We should get to the car before something eats us.”

The reminder that we had some baddies out there waiting to
rip our throats out and only one neckguard between us killed the mood.  I
grunted as I accidentally put too much weight on my foot.  Slowly, we inched
our way down to the parking lot.

“This fucking sucks,” I said.

“I am the one who defeated a vampire,” said Killian.

“I wore him down for you,” I replied.

Killian shook his head, “I would pay any price for a cool
cup of ambrosia and a hot spring to soak in…”

“You and me both.  I might trade the ambrosia for a couple
shots, though.”

We were halfway down the hill.  The cross at the top of Boot
Hill stood starkly against the bright night sky.

Killian leaned me up against the car and opened the door
for me.  We both were looking at those graves in the cemetery, hoping none of
them decided to spring forth with new undead life... again…

The moment we were in the car, I pounded the locks closed
and Killian revved the engine.

“Gentle, Killian,” I said.  “Breaking down over here would
be a very, very bad idea.”

We slowly crunched our way across the parking lot, over the
huge pointed rocks and out onto the highway.  I waved goodbye to the entrance
as we drove away.

I think I officially had my fill of the wild, wild west.

Chapter 16

“Okay, Mr. Smith,” I said as Killian and I walked into
MacKay & MacKay Tracking Other Side HQ.

I had been psyching myself up for the drive out to Ghost
Town, but my voicemail was blinking at me from the moment we crossed over from
Earth.  There was a message from Mr. Smith to meet him at the office first
thing.  I guess there was no way of him knowing that we had already found the
comb.

I made a quick trip to the local witch doctor, who fixed me
up good as new, and Killian and I headed over to the office.  I was bone weary
from the all-nighter and didn't mind one bit not having to drive the comb out
to Ghost Town.  I tried calling my dad to get him up to speed on the 4-1-1, but
he didn't pick up, as per usual.

The office was open.  Seemed a little rude to come in while
the door was locked, not to mention illegal, but the more I learned about Mr.
Smith, the more I got the idea he didn’t wait around much for anything.

“Listen, we got it, Mr. Smith.  Now, I’d like to give this
to you to crush beneath something heavy, but I got this note from Vaclav…”

Mr. Smith was lying on the ground next to my desk, beat to
hell, his little mouth opening and closing like a guppy gasping for air.

“Killian, call the police!” I said as I crouched down next
to the old dude and started checking his vitals.  “Come on, Mr. Smith.  You’re
not allowed to die before I kill you.”

“Maggie?  Is that you?” he asked, his eyes barely able to
focus.

“It ain't the stake fairy.  Come on, stick with me.”

“I was discovered.  They found me.”

“Well... these things happen,” I said lamely.

“It is important you continue my work...”

“Come on, you’re going to continue your own work,” I said. 
My brain was racing.  God, the blood was everywhere.  It could have been
vampires, but my threshold should have still been intact and, besides, it was
broad daylight.  I didn't see any puncture wounds in his neck.  There were
chunks missing from my furniture and deep scratch marks in the floor that made
me think werewolves.

“This is much larger than me.  This is much larger than my
life.  They stole the jade comb...” he coughed.

I got chills down my spine, “From my dad...?"

"No.  From me.  Here."

"Good.  I mean, not good that they got you here, but
good... that it wasn't..." I was blowing it in the "meaningful final
moments" department.  "Don’t worry.  We’ll get it back.  Where’s my
dad, Mr. Smith?”

“In Ghost Town.  He’s safe.  Protected.”

“If you are lying to me, I will hunt you down and end you
myself, old man.”

“Too late…” he smiled a pained, blood-soaked grin.

“Who did this, Mr. Smith?”

“Vaclav...”

He paused, the end of the sentence trailing of.

I gave him a little shake, “Come on.  Dying on me doesn’t
help.”

He gasped, "You must… take your comb… to Ghost Town… your
father is safe… hidden… you must… find the necklace…  Ghost Town...”

And he slipped away.  Just like that.  One moment here, the
next gone.  Killian placed his hand on my shoulder.

We were on our own.  We had a world of hurt barreling
towards us down the shotgun of life and the bad guys just showed they weren’t
shooting blanks.

Fucking double fuck. 

Fuck.