Texas Hold 'Em (26 page)

Jacob remained in his office, totally stationary. He showed no sign of going anywhere. The order the vampires gave him kept him rooted to the spot.

I abandoned Lacey and Bryan to hurry back to where Jacob sat splayed out on the floor.

“Jacob, we have to go!” I bent down and tried to lift him, but he was heavy and I was not at one hundred percent.

“Bryan, come here and grab him.” At my command, my brother trotted back, and together we hoisted Jacob off the ground. When it was obvious he still wasn’t going to move under his own power, Bryan picked him up and threw him over his shoulder, despite Jacob’s feeble protests.

While my brother positioned Jacob into a fireman’s carry, I spared a glance at the monitors. The two vampires I had earlier seen loitering outside of the elevator were gone. It dawned on me what had been bugging me about that picture earlier: they had been on
this
floor.

Another camera showed one of Christian’s minions waiting at the front of the store while another pair crossed the parking lot, aiming for either the back door or the fire escape. That meant a minimum of five vampires, plus any the cameras didn’t see. And that didn’t count Christian, who was on his way to where my mother waited in the van.

Most of the vampires should be young and therefore relatively weak. At least, that was my theory. The last month must have taken its toll on Christian’s team. He had certainly been busy replacing the ones that had died, but that took time, and he could only create so many.

My brother had Jacob secured and, for the second time that night, ran after me carrying a body. We moved down the corridor after Lacey, but we had lost precious time and I knew we couldn’t beat Christian to the van— assuming it was even still there.

God, I hoped Kevin had left. Would he have heard the gunfire? Seen the vampires at that distance, in the darkness? He’d better have. Even if Megan was healthy, she would be no match for Christian, and the nine- millimeter I had given Kevin was more to boost his confidence than to be of any real value against an ancient vampire. Their only hope was that the kid was smart enough to hightail it as fast as he could at the first sign of trouble. He
should
have heard the assault rifle. He
should
have left.

Bryan and I came to a stop at the sound of Lacey’s incantation. The light from the office area was a distant memory and we couldn’t see. Lacey’s fluid words spilled out from somewhere in front of us. It was impossible to tell exactly what was going on, but at least one of the vampires must have found her.

Apparently it got a little more than it bargained for: an inhuman scream tore out of the darkness in front of us, followed by a thunderous cacophony that shook the floor, which could only be loaded twelve-foot- tall steel shelves crashing down.

“That way’s blocked!” Lacey yelled, right before running headlong into me. She didn’t bother apologizing. She pushed past me, circumvented my brother and Jacob, and headed back the way we had come.

I pulled myself up off the floor and followed her.

“What did you do, bring the whole place down on it?” I called.

“Nah, that was all him, though I might have given him a teensy bit of encouragement,” Lacey hollered over her shoulder.

Bryan did an about face and started after Lacey, Jacob bouncing against him as he ran. “Can someone please make up their mind? This dude weighs a ton.”

The four of us spilled back out into the office at the same moment a pair of vampires emerged opposite us. I actually did a double take. If it wasn’t for the aura coming off of them, I wouldn’t have believed it.

They were the oddest-looking undead I had ever encountered. For starters, they were old for vampires, and I don’t mean literally—I mean, they were turned when they were somewhere in their sixties. That alone was weird. Vampires usually turned people they found attractive, which meant that a lot of twenty-something hunks and hotties joined the undead ranks.

The next oddity was their clothing. The majority of vampires I ran into tended toward the stylish. Not necessarily as extreme as Megan with the designer cocktail dresses, but they at least had some flair. Not these two. They were dressed like caricatures of American tourists, complete with Hawaiian shirts and oversized khaki shorts held up by belts. The dude even sported ankle-length white socks tucked into sandals, along with a wide-brimmed hat. Not to be outdone, the lady carried a large straw shoulder bag. The only thing missing was a camera with a telephoto lens.

It probably should have been obvious who they were, but it didn’t come right away. It wasn’t until my brother pulled up alongside of me and I heard Jacob’s sorrowful “David.” Then I put two and two together.

David spoke up, his voice cheerful. “Sorry, Jacob, nothing personal. But Betty was terminal, and Christian offered us a second chance.”

“Christian?” asked Jacob. He was still draped over my brother’s shoulder, but did his best to turn so he could face David as he spoke.

“Can I drop him yet?” Bryan asked, turning slightly so Jacob could hold a conversation from where he was.

David nodded. “Yes, can you believe it? To see Christian after all of those years—it was the biggest shock of my life. Well, second biggest, after learning Betty had cancer.” He gave his wife’s hand a squeeze.

“There he was, after all that time, standing right in front of us. Even though I had only seen him briefly that one day, I still remembered him and everything we did to his family. I thought I was dead. And honestly, with Betty the way she was, all the pain she was in, I was ready to go. We both were.” The couple looked at each other and smiled.

“But Christian didn’t outright kill me. He sat us down there on the boat docks and said he wanted to talk. He wanted to know why we had done it. So I told him. I told him I was sorry for what I had done, and that Betty was terminal, and that I was ready to go. We ended up out on that pier for quite some time.

“And that’s when he made us the offer. He said he would spare us, cure Betty, let the two of us be together forever like he should have been with his wife and kid. What could I do, Jacob? I made the deal.

“I had to give up the rest of the crew, but it’s not like we didn’t deserve it. And everyone has lived a long life. No one else except for poor Fred was married or had kids. What did any of us have to live for anyway, especially after what we’d done? Paul was a cripple, Robert was a loner, you’ve been hiding from everyone for I don’t know how—”

I’m sure David had plenty more justification for his betrayal, but we never got to hear it. Martin, one of Christian’s remaining elder vampires who’d tried to drain me in the theater, had been crouched atop one of the shelves. He chose this moment to pounce.

I wasn’t sure if Martin knew that Lacey was a witch, or if he simply had a thing for pretty girls, but she was the one he landed on. She went down screaming.

Bryan acted fast, unceremoniously dumping Jacob onto the floor. With Martin all over Lacey, he wouldn’t be able to get off a clean shot, which he thankfully realized. In a rare moment of clarity, he reached for a stake instead of his gun. Bryan dove on Martin, bringing the stake down in a vicious arc.

I turned my attention to the geriatric duo in front of me. I brought up the AK and emptied the remainder of the magazine in a sweeping arc. Despite knowing what they were, I did a double take at how fast they reacted.

David had been ready for it and dodged most of the rounds meant for him. Unused to combat, Betty wasn’t as quick to move. Her orange Hawaiian shirt became even more garish as she spurted from multiple wounds.

David had hit the ground and rolled. Then he did something completely unexpected: he cheated. As if he’d forgotten the natural weapons now available to him, David came out of his roll clutching a Beretta 92 semi- automatic pistol. I moved as fast as I could, but knew I didn’t have enough time to react. The only thing that saved me was that he was out of practice. David only hit me once, but even that was almost enough. I felt the pinch in my side and knew that I’d been shot.

I ejected the magazine out of the bottom of the AK, snapped another one in, and took aim. I was still functioning, meaning it had either been a flesh wound or I was in shock and running on adrenaline—or a bit of both.

Rusty or not, David was already moving. I caught a fleeting glimpse of his turquoise shirt with its magenta flamingos fading down a dark aisle. I sent a stream of 7.62-millimeter lead in hot pursuit.

Betty wasn’t a trained fighter, but she had more than enough chutzpah to make up for it. Out of her handbag came an Uzi. However, it took only one burst to confirm that she had no experience using it. Even with her heightened strength, she fought to control the compact submachine gun. This fact provided little comfort as I dove for cover while a hail of lead indiscriminately sprayed everything in the office.

Before I hit the deck behind a computer tower, I saw Bryan sail by, thrown by Martin across the room. It took him out of the line of fire and into the mini-fridge, where he landed with a crunch.

When the gunfire stopped a few seconds later, I knew she was empty. Thirty bullets went quick at 600 rounds per second. I popped up from behind my cover to find that, like her husband, the lady hadn’t stuck around. She was already halfway down the corridor, running after David.

Lacey had used the opportunity caused by Bryan’s unsuccessful staking to squirm free of Martin, and she was now crab-walking backward, away from the vampire cowboy. Martin went after her, a leer hanging off his mustached face. The stake my brother had driven into his back was still embedded a few inches below his heart.

Martin was about to strike Lacey, and she was in a bad position to defend herself. I was out of ammo for the AK so I dropped it, then pulled out the Glock and fired. Bullets tore into Martin, but he ignored them and kept moving until he loomed over Lacey, who turned her face away from him. At first I thought she didn’t want to witness her inevitable death. But when I realized she was focused on me, I frowned.

Martin looked back and saw me holding the smoking Glock. I ejected its magazine and was frantically fishing for a replacement as he reached for her, grinning.

“Sorry, babe, but your boyfriend ain’t gonna be able to save you.”

“Who, him? Save me? Give me a break. I’m going to do that all by myself.” Lacey flung her arm toward me then whipped it back toward Martin.

I realized then that I was indeed her savior, but not in the way I had envisioned. My blood leapt to her will in a red whip, arcing toward Martin. I shouted as, in her fervor, Lacey not only yanked all the blood that had already drained out of me, but a bunch that had managed to stay inside.

Martin’s eyes widened as the stream altered in mid-flight. The blood thinned and fanned out, becoming a six-foot-wide, one-foot-deep, razor- thin sheet of crimson. This vampire was old enough and smart enough to want no part of whatever was being aimed his way. He released Lacey and leapt straight up to the ceiling, hoisting himself up by an exposed pipe. He didn’t clear the arc in time. The bloody scythe caught his legs, severing them clean right below the knees. Any sound the stumps made as they hit the floor was muffled by Martin’s howl of rage and pain.

Lacey got up to prepare another spell. I caught her eyes, vehemently shaking my head. I was done being used as ammunition. She reluctantly acquiesced, dropping her arm and ceasing her incantation. I slapped a new magazine home and took aim at Martin, but he was already fading out of sight. He moved along the piping that lined the ceiling, one arm in front of the other like a kid crossing the monkey bars.

The immediate threats removed, my body stumbled forward involuntarily. I put a hand out against a shelving unit to steady myself.

“You’re hit,” said Bryan. He had extracted himself from the mini-fridge and moved to help me find my footing.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I said, risking a glance down. The bullet had entered my left side just above the belt line. The initial bloodstain had gone after Martin, but a new one was happily re-forming. “I’m okay. Lacey can patch me up after we get out of here.”

At my words, something crossed Lacey’s face that I didn’t like, but I didn’t have time to question her about it. I grabbed the empty AK off the ground, slung it over my shoulder, picked a hallway that led in the same general direction as the fire escape, and took it.

Bryan and Lacey followed, and the three of us were soon feeling our way past packed shelves. It was almost pitch black; the only lights had been in the office. The vampires could probably see, but we couldn’t, and I was fading too fast to allow us to prolong our escape. I hated to do it, but I unslung the AK and turned on the flashlight affixed to its barrel.

I longed for night-vision goggles. The flashlight was a beacon. Its glow in the vast dark loft would lead anyone right to us—though I had to admit, until that happened, the light sure helped a lot. We were able to make our way to the fire escape fairly quickly, only to find a welcome party waiting for us.

There were two of them, probably the ones I had seen earlier on the monitor crossing the parking lot. They weren’t ancient vampires but, given the shape we were in, it didn’t matter. One of them was built like a brick house. He must have been some sort of pro wrestler or college football player before he was turned. The other was a diminutive Latina with a lopsided grin that said she held herself in high regard and us, not so much.

All I had left was the 17 rounds in the Glock, so I decided to use them. I dropped the empty AK, fast-drew the Glock, and fired. Most newly made vamps still fear bullets out of reflex. The big guy was no exception. He avoided the gunfire by jumping out of the large open window behind him, landing on the fire escape we had used to enter the loft.

The little one laughed as I emptied what was left in the gun at her.

“Is that the best you can do?” She folded her arms and cocked her head, the dim light of the flashlight showing several holes in her top where my rounds had hit home.

My brother once again dumped Jacob on the ground, but instead of pulling out his revolver, he did something unexpected. He charged the big guy, who had popped back up to peer into the window to see if the shooting had stopped. Bryan dove straight through the open window, planting his shoulder right in the guy’s chest.