The Late Night Horror Show (32 page)

He may even have screamed a time or two as they rocketed through a busy intersection without slowing. This time, he heard more than the horns of agitated motorists. He heard a crunch of metal. And then another. And another. Another glance at the mirror showed a column of flame rising into the air behind them.

Holy shit.

“Um…I think there may be a cop or two on our trail now. You’re sort of leaving behind an unmistakable path of carnage.”

She kept her eyes on the way ahead. “I don’t care.”

“Right. Of course not. I’m just sayin’…”

Now she looked at him, frowning. “What?”

Monroe frowned, too. “Um…what?”

“You said you were just saying. Saying what?”

Monroe closed his eyes a second.

Give me strength.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Nothing. Just a stupid expression. Look…I know we’re off on a serious mission-of-vengeance type deal here, but, uh…any idea what we’re gonna do when we actually get back to the mansion. Do you have, like…a plan?”

Her gaze went to the road again. “My plan is to kill as many fucking humans as possible before they take me down.”

Monroe kept frowning. “Oh. Well…that works. I guess. By the way, how you dealt with the chauffeur…that was some hardcore fucked-up shit.”

She glanced his way again, arching an eyebrow this time. “Problem with it?”

Monroe gave his head a brisk shake. “No. No no no. Hell no. All I meant was
wow
, that was totally fucking crazy. But in a cool way, of course.”

“I was very angry.”

Monroe turned his head aside a moment so she wouldn’t see the reflexive roll of his eyes.

No shit, lady. You were like the fucking She-Hulk or something there. On crack.

He looked at her again. “You really think we’re gonna get killed trying to stop these people?”

“Probably. From what we know, they had the numbers and the element of surprise. It may already be too late to do anything about it.”

Though a part of him—that still-lingering remnant of his humanity—wanted very much to help Kira, the colder, vampiric side of him felt ready to embrace the notion of futility. Maybe if things looked sufficiently hopeless once they arrived back at the mansion, he might stand some chance of convincing Melissa to abandon any thought of retaliation and take off with him. They could start over again somewhere else, maybe establish and build a vampire colony of their own, similar to the one reigned over by the rich old vamp.

Except…hold on…why follow the blueprint set here at all?

It was kind of a weird deal, after all.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Make it fast. We’ll be there soon.”

“Why in fuck did Victor keep a nest of attractive, young-looking vampires in that fucking weird underground adult-playpen type of place?”

“Why not?”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

She glanced at him, frowning again. “Is this really the kind of thing you want to know right now? We could be dead—
really
dead—in a matter of minutes and you want to discuss trivial things?”

“Forget I asked.” Monroe’s eyes got wide and he cringed backward into his seat. “Look out!”

Melissa’s head snapped back toward the road. She saw what was coming and jerked the steering wheel to the right just in time to avoid a full-on rear-end collision with a stalled Camry. The Phantom’s fender, instead, clipped the Camry’s rear bumper. The Phantom careened out of control for a fraction of a second as it shot toward the guardrail beyond the road’s right shoulder. She wrestled the car back under control with amazing quickness. Those vampire reflexes at work again. Monroe felt certain a human driver would have gone crashing through the guardrail to the embankment below.

Melissa’s hands were gripped very tightly around the steering wheel now, her eyes locked on the road in front of her. “How about you keep the chatter to a minimum from this point on?”

“Good idea.”

They drove on in near silence for maybe twenty minutes. The only sounds were the hum of the high-precision engine and the roar of the wind audible through the shattered window. Somehow Melissa had shaken their police pursuers.

During the silence, Monroe did some thinking. He had a theory on the underground vampire nest, one he was relatively certain hewed pretty close to the truth. A truth Melissa’s “why not?” response addressed rather aptly, now that he thought about it. The model for this world was a bad B-movie. He kind of kept forgetting that in the midst of all the excitement. And very often in those movies things sort of just happened. Odd, random things. For no good reason. Or for almost logical but totally insane reasons, as in any typical Troma film. So this little mystery was sort of like that. Or it wasn’t. She was right, though. It didn’t really matter much, so he decided to stop thinking about it.

Which was a good thing, as they were nearly out of time.

They came around a bend in the wildly curving, tree-shrouded road and Victor’s multistory mansion loomed into view. This was the first time Monroe had gotten a really good full-on look at the thing. It was massive. The kind of abode you usually only saw in movies about absurdly superrich people. It was very Gothic and ominous-looking.

Monroe said, “Gulp.”

Melissa looked at him. “Did you just say ‘gulp’ out loud?”

“Yep.”

“Thought so.”

Melissa slowed as they neared the gate in the towering iron fence surrounding the property. The gate stood open and a number of vehicles were parked haphazardly in front of the mansion. These were all nondescript black vans with tinted windows. Some were parked on the lawn. One had slammed into a statue of some sort, knocking it over. Pieces of marble were scattered across the circular drive.

Monroe heard sounds of shooting from inside the mansion as they stopped just outside the gate. He also heard screaming between rounds of gunfire. Whether it was human or vampire in origin, it was impossible to tell.

Melissa and Monroe exchanged a troubled glance.

Monroe said, “This is not good. They seriously arrived in force.”

“They do seem to mean business.”

Melissa stared at the mansion and thought things over a moment longer.

Then she backed the Phantom up, executed a quick three-point turn, and headed back the way they had come.

Monroe hoped his relief wasn’t too obvious. “Probably the only real option, I guess.”

Melissa grunted. “Oh, we’re not running.”

“We’re not?”

“No.”

“Oh…well…good. I guess.”

If Melissa noticed his reluctance, she didn’t show it. “There’s a little access road we passed on the way in. It’ll take us to a secret rear entrance.”

Monroe suppressed a groan.

Of course it will. We are so fucked.

Minutes later they were speeding down the very dark and narrow access road. Monroe didn’t see how Melissa could see well enough to keep them on course in the depths of such darkness. More advanced vampire skills, he guessed. Still, it was a harrowing journey. He would have prayed to God to keep him safe until they arrived at their destination, but he knew how much of a joke that was. He was a vampire. A monster. A killer.

God, if such a being existed, didn’t care about him.

Not anymore.

A dim light ahead pierced the darkness. The promised rear entrance, probably. Monroe’s mind had barely formed this thought when the already much-abused Phantom crashed through a closed gate with a ringing screech of rending metal.

Victor came striding back into the master bedroom only moments after the first faint sounds of gunfire erupted. His gait was purposeful but unhurried, the set of his features conveying grim determination but no panic. Kira was still cradling the corpse of the one-eyed blonde girl she had failed to turn into a vampire, despite careful coaching from Aubrey and Jenna.
 

She had gotten carried away and had bitten out too large a chunk of her tender throat. Determined to make the best of a plan gone awry, Kira had endeavored to consume every remaining drop of blood from the girl’s body, a goal she had nearly achieved by the time the mysterious assault on the mansion began.

Victor took in the sight of her blood-drenched, nude body and gave a terse nod of approval. “Good. You’ll have your strength up. You’ll need it.”

“What’s happening out there?”

“An attack by an army of vampire hunters. We need to leave this place. Now.”

Kira let the dead girl’s ravaged body slide from her arms to drop with a
thump
on the floor. “I need clothes.”

“No time.” He snapped his fingers at Aubrey and Jenna as he crossed the room to stand before a painting hanging on the wall by the fireplace. “Girls, escort your mistress to the helipad at once. Protect her at all costs.”

The servant vampires made sounds of assent and each seized Kira by an arm. They dragged her to her feet and steered her toward the bedroom door. Kira allowed them to lead her away, but en route to the door she turned her head to address Victor. “Where are we going?”

Victor felt along an edge of the painting and triggered a hidden latch. The painting swung away from the wall on hinges, revealing a safe with a combination lock. Victor quickly spun through the combination, opened the safe, and began removing documents. He flipped through some of them as he addressed Kira. “Somewhere safe, my bride. I have several other uncompromised residences in various parts of the world. That’s all you need to know for now. The rest can be arranged once we are safely away from this place.”

“But—”

But there was no more time for interrogation. Aubrey and Jenna dragged her out into the corridor and steered her to the left. Kira glanced over the ornate, polished railing at a scene of carnage and chaos two stories below. A number of Victor’s black-clad security goons were tangling with an opposing force of men and women also clad in black. The invaders swarming through the massive foyer also wore black ski masks and were armed with scary-looking automatic weapons. Victor’s men fought bravely, but they were outnumbered, even with many of the vampires in residence fighting alongside them. The guns of the invaders chattered endlessly as body after body fell beneath the fusillade. Most shocking to Kira was how easily the bullets blew apart the bodies of vampires.

Aubrey was right behind her and seemed to sense her thoughts. “I’ve seen this before. Wood-tipped bullets.”

“Where the fuck have you seen this shit before?”

Aubrey gave her a less-than-gentle push in the back to get her moving again. “During the war. Keep moving.”

“War?”

“World War II. In Europe.”

Right. Of course. Aubrey looked like a gorgeous young woman, barely more than twenty. But she was a vampire. Which meant she could be hundreds or thousands of years old. But the ongoing rattle and chatter of the guns was a powerful reminder that existence as a vampire could easily be cut short.

So she picked up her pace as she followed Jenna’s enticingly nude backside down the long hallway. The gorgeous vampire’s long red hair trailed backward behind her, a flowing vision of beautiful crimson, as she shifted to a run and met the first invader successfully able to breach the third floor.
 

The enemy combatant’s lithe figure marked her as female. She screamed as Jenna grabbed her and lifted her above her head. The masked woman whipped her arm outward, raking the railing with a wild hail of automatic fire. Kira and Aubrey cringed back against the wall, miraculously avoiding being struck by ricocheting bullets. Jenna let out a shriek of rage and flung the woman back down the staircase, bowling over three more masked assailants in the process.

Kira and Aubrey followed her as she got moving again.

As they passed the staircase, a stray round fired by one of the fallen assailants ripped through Aubrey’s skull, sending a spray of red arcing through the air. Kira stopped in her tracks and stared in paralyzed shock as the body of her beautiful servant tumbled dead to the floor. Then she glanced down the staircase and saw one of the fallen assailants struggling to get to his knees. He paused for an instant and looked right at her. His eyes looked dark and hateful behind the holes in his mask.
 

Kira was briefly possessed by a wild impulse to fly down the stairs and rip him apart. She was enraged. She hadn’t known Aubrey long at all, but she had nonetheless felt a very strong sisterly connection with both her and Jenna. They were sisters in blood. And now that connection was gone. Dead. A beautiful creature’s long existence wiped out by a single fucking bullet.

The assailant shoved the body of a fallen comrade away from him and began to bring his weapon to bear. Another second longer and she might have been just as dead as Aubrey, but Jenna grabbed her by an arm and pulled her out of range just in time. Wood-tipped bullets
thunked
into the wall behind where she had been standing an instant before.
 

They continued down the long hallway, Jenna pulling her along at a pace nearly faster than she could match, until they arrived at a metal door.