Chapter 7
seven
. . .
I drove down to the docks, the ones with zombies lurking, and called Tom.
He didn’t answer. What should I do with the bodies?
He’d burned the zombies and the vampire.
Burning seemed like a good idea, but driving to the movie theater back lot so I could use his burn barrel felt intrusive.
Also dangerous if vampires were around his place after he’d gotten taken in by them.
I didn’t like waiting in the car with them, particularly in the backseat, where it would be so easy for them to grab me and make me freak out if they came back to life.
A loud thud hit the roof, and I screamed. I screamed again when the freaky face of the vampire from the other night peered at me through the windshield, but upside down, hands on the windshield, feet on the roof.
Once I’d gotten over the first wave of fright, I honked at him and turned on the windshield wipers.
“Come out and talk, or I’ll put a hole through your windshield or the roof,” he said right before he got bopped by the wiper.
Could he really put a hole through my car? It seemed unlikely. “How did you find me?”
He didn’t answer, except to disappear and then reappear by the back door. He punched through the window in a spray of glass, setting off the car alarm, and then opened the door and started examining the dead bodies, now covered in glass.
He wasn’t threatening me, probably because I was a weak human who he could deal with later. “Where did you find these gentlemen?”
“In my living room. They were replacing a window, then they got gross and hairy. Not that it’s any of your business.”
He pulled back the hoods and sunglasses, so he could examine the death wounds. “They attacked you in your own home? But they didn’t kill you. They wanted to capture you, not kill. Don’t you think that’s interesting, that the zombies marked you, and the werewolves tried to kidnap you?”
“And the vampires tried to kill me,” I added.
He showed me his fangs. “Vampire. One, not multiple.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, you’re not going to try and kill me?”
“I am the Grand Master. I don’t try to kill people. I just do.”
This was the Grand Master? But he seemed so small and easily distracted to be the ruler of all the world’s vampires. “Ah. Such a fine distinction. If you’re going to kill me, get it over with and put me out of my misery.”
“Are you so miserable? In that case, I will be happy to serve you. To me.” He grabbed me and bit me, holding me in his cold and intractable grasp.
Vampire bites are glamorized as all kinds of pleasant, but the reality was incredibly painful.
He wanted it to be painful, because there was no reason for his teeth to be so dull.
I’d seen his fangs. No, he wasn’t breaking through the skin.
It was too painful to be pleasant, but he wasn’t eating me.
After only a few seconds, he stopped biting my neck and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “What are you going to do with the bodies?”
I rubbed my neck and stared at him in horror. He acted like that had been completely normal. “What is wrong with you? Don’t bite me unless you’re killing me! I’m married!”
He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “You don’t have the scent of any man on you.”
“Of course not. I don’t want him to get zombie-marked. I’m not a monster.”
“Ah, you’re keeping your distance to protect him. How noble of you. What are you going to do with the bodies?”
Maybe he wasn’t that easily distracted. “I want to burn them, but I’m not sure where a good place would be. That’s what we did with the other monsters.”
“We?”
“Oui, French for yes. I don’t speak French, but if I did, I would tell you how incredibly rude it is to break someone’s window, particularly after the last glass replacement people tried to kidnap me.”
“You’re protecting your partner. Is he also your lover?”
“You have an unhealthy interest in my sex life.”
“Do I? Perhaps I’m interested in you. Shall we see?” He leaned over and gazed into my eyes, his own disgusting orbs black from rim to rim and completely unattractive, and as for mood, zombies under the dock, dead werewolves in the back seat, yeah, you don’t get more romantic than that.
He brushed my cheek with his fingers and everything went golden and sweet, like the first taste of the elixir.
I should resist, but I couldn’t remember why, couldn’t think anything other than how long it had been since I’d touched anyone, and how good he smelled.
He didn’t smell like death, but like a woodsy cologne and the wind.
My eyes drifted closed as his hand moved down to the side of my neck, sending shocks of warmth and happiness through me, centralizing on the place where he’d bitten me.
He felt so good. So right. So not undead.
I felt the breath of his lips on mine and parted them, but something about Hazen losing his job meandered through that intoxicating labyrinth of desire and euphoria, enough so that I bashed his face with my forehead instead of kissing him.
He released his hold on my neck and the pleasure dissolved like sugar in a rainstorm.
“I told you that I’m married!” I gripped the knife that I was getting really fast at drawing, pointing it at him.
How could I kill him? I had to kill him if he was going to make me cheat on Hazen.
“Also, you’re a disgusting corpse! What’s wrong with you?
You don’t go around trying to corrupt perfectly nice housewives! ”
He studied me for another beat before he nodded. “You hit my face with your forehead. Did you crack your skull? I’m a vampire. You can’t fight me as though I’m a regular human. Come on.”
He reached over me to open the driver’s door then climbed out over me and yanked me out after him. “Your grip is terrible. Let’s start with that. I’m a vampire. I have very few vulnerable spots. Do you know anything about slaying vampires?”
“No.”
“But you did kill one?”
“It was more that she got caught in the zombie trap. Fire and explosions seemed to work well.”
“True enough, but you have a knife. It’s a good knife, with enough silver in it to do permanent damage to a werewolf, but how can you defeat a vampire with it?”
“Chop off your head?”
“Have you ever tried to chop off anyone’s head before?”
“No, but I did knock off a zombie’s head with a big bottle of schnapps.” I shuddered. “And then we burned it.”
“That French yes. Why are you protecting him?”
I glared at him and said nothing.
“He’s your great and wise martial arts master that you love with a pure affection?”
“I’m not talking about him.”
“But it is a male.”
I rolled my eyes and gripped my knife how he showed me. “So, how do I kill you?”
“You don’t. I’m the Grand Master. I’d have to work very hard to help you to kill me for it to stick. I’ve been burned. I’ve been staked out in the sun. I’ve been eviscerated. I’ve even had my head chopped off. I’m telling you how to kill other vampires.”
“Wouldn’t you prefer the vampires stay alive instead of me?”
“Are vampires alive? I thought that we were disgusting corpses. Don’t say that to vampires. It’s rude, and they will kill you for it.”
“They’ll try.”
“Don’t be cocky. You’ve accidentally blundered into this slaying business, but don’t act like you’re all that.”
I straightened up and lowered my knife. “What are you doing? You definitely have no business helping me in any way, but particularly not to slay your own kind.”
“You won’t be slaying any vampires any time soon.
There aren’t as many of us as zombies, but we are much harder to kill.
Still, you’re clearly determined to involve yourself in my world, so we’ll make the most of it.
You killed my favorite zombie exterminator, so you’re going to replace her.
You can’t do that if you’re an embarrassment.
That means you have to have some defense against vampires.
Comprende? That’s French for, do you understand? ”
I crouched down and raised my knife. “What kind of Grand Master uses nice housewives for their zombie exterminators? Still, I guess that explains why you aren’t eating me or just killing me right off the bat. I’ll try to appreciate it, although you will probably get me killed slaying zombies.”
“But you’ll be useful to me in the meantime, which is important for someone who stole something so valuable to me.”
“So, how do I kill a vampire?”
“You’ll focus on disabling them and then running away. You’re faster now, right?”
I blinked at him. He knew about the potion. “Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to club the werewolf to death or stab the other one.”
“You aim for the usual delicate organs, heart, kidneys, brains, and then, after you’ve stabbed two of those places, you run. Probably come find me and I’ll introduce you properly to the vampire in question. Or kill him.”
“How will you kill them?”
He smiled the most creepy, terrifying, Grinchlike grin, such a large smile it swallowed the entire world. “There are so many ways. I wouldn’t want to give you nightmares. Developing new methods of torture and death are some of my favorite things.”
I shivered and looked down at my knife. I was not asking him any more questions.
I did drills with him, there at the docks, for hours, until the sun faded from the sky and a beautiful sunset spread over the river.
I had no idea a knife could be held so many ways.
When it was almost dark, the zombies started coming.
I gasped when I saw movement in the shadows behind him and edged back towards my van.
“Where are you going?” He hadn’t given me anything other than orders for hours.
“I think there are undead behind you,” I whispered.
“They’ve been waiting for hours. You only sensed them just now?” He tutted like I was seriously deranged or pathetic. “Come back here and keep working on your defense.”
“But the zombies will…”