Chapter 15 Satan
SATAN
Having Astrid and Lizard barnacled to my legs was an odd sensation. I was sure I was walking bowlegged as if I’d just ridden a horse for the last twenty-four hours. It was outstanding that they were half-sized. If they were full-sized, I’d be waddling.
“Go up to each door and listen,” Astrid advised from my pants.
“On it,” I replied.
Pressing my ear to the first closed parlor door, I detected nothing. My niece poked her head out and listened too. She gave me a silent gesture to move on. It was unusual to be given orders. It was even more unusual for me to follow them, but I trusted Astrid. And it appeared she trusted me.
The first four parlors showed no sign of life. An odd choice of wording since the enemy was technically dead, but it worked. Two more to go.
“It’s the last one,” Astrid whispered, squeezing my leg. “I can feel Ethan.”
“How many old-school fucks are with him?” I asked.
It was a nifty little trick she had being able to sense her own kind down to the exact number.
I could sense my people but only as a vague sensation of them existing near me, and certainly not how many of there were. I’d have to ask her to teach me.
“Move to the last door and I’ll tell you.”
I moved quickly and silently. However, I almost screamed when Martha and Jane appeared, crawled up the back of my leg over my ass, and into my pockets.
“Motherfucker,” I hissed. “Do not scare me like that or I’ll step on your sorry asses.”
Two bony middle fingers connected to two bony hands popped out of each pocket. They were as rude as Hell. Not a bad thing in my book, but I wasn’t as enamored when it was directed at me. Some might call that hypocritical, I called it common fucking sense.
“Did you glue the coffins shut?” I asked.
This time two bony thumbs up appeared.
“Excellent work, hookers.”
It was time for the grande finale. “How many?”
Astrid pressed what I presumed was her ear to the door through the pantaloons.
It took her a moment, but she answered with conviction.
“Ethan and eight others. That makes the twenty I expected to be here. The two dead ones at the door. Ten glued into their coffins upstairs and eight about to die violently.”
“Should we go back to full size out here?” Lizard questioned in a whisper. “All three go in together with swords out and lop some dang heads off?”
I felt Astrid shake her head without being able to see her. Her hair, or rather mine, tickled my shin.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s best to take them by surprise. It could buy the seconds we need to get Ethan out alive. He’s not doing well. Something is seriously wrong.”
“Close to death?” Lizard asked with concern.
Astrid refused to answer. I felt her hands squeeze my leg even tighter.
Reaching down, I patted what I thought was her head.
Could have been a shoulder or possibly a butt.
I hoped she realized it was the thought that counted just in case I’d accidentally copped a feel of her rear end.
Technically, it was my rear end, but semantics didn’t matter right now.
However, there was a question I needed answered.
“If we can sense them, can they sense us?” That nifty little fact hadn’t been on my game card, but if they were close to a thousand years old, the chances were that they were skilled.
I got my answer before Astrid could reply.
The door opened slowly. A Vamp, so damned pale he looked transparent, stood in door frame backlit by a fucking torch.
It was like a shitty B horror film. I almost laughed.
He wore a long, red, hooded cape clasped at the neck with what appeared to be a human bone.
His fingernails were obscenely long and his scent was sour—musty and dank.
I half expected his hair to be in a weird coiffed manbun on his ghostly white head.
When he eyed me with disgust from head to toe, the hood of his robe fell back and sure enough, the fucker had a manbun.
If he’d gotten laid in the last several hundred years, I’d be shocked.
“Astrid,” he said in a voice laced with hatred. “So good of you to come and die.”
“Your name?” I demanded. If I had to smell the loser, I wanted his name. I made an attempt to look over his shoulder and spot Ethan, but the torch was too damned bright.
His eyes flashed and he bared his fangs. “You know who I am, despicable one.”
“I forgot, dude,” I said flatly. “Tell me again, bun man. Or, I can just call you bunhead, or blood breath, or dick cheese. Your choice.”
I felt Astrid dig her fingernails into my leg.
I wasn’t about to walk it back. Getting bunhead pissed would make him sloppy.
If the bastards in the room had a collective age of around eight thousand, any extra advantage on our part would be helpful.
Astrid and I were impossible to kill. But Lizard, Martha, Jane, and Ethan weren’t in the same position.
No one in the Pantaloon Platoon was going to bite it this evening—including Ethan, who was an honorary member.
But bunhead and his cronies? That was an entirely different story.
“I’m waiting,” I snapped, crossing my arms over my chest and tapping my foot impatiently. “Name. Now.”
His eyes narrowed. “Fine,” he snarled. “I’ll play your little game, false prophet. I’m Charles Randolph Edward the 3rd. I’m the esteemed leader of the Oklahoma Vampires.”
“Awesome, Chuck. Good for you!” I raised my hand up for a high five. I was pretty sure I heard Astrid giggle down below, but it could have been Lizard. The man tended to giggle like a girl in times of high anxiety.
Chuck left me hanging. Not a big surprise.
Pushing past him, I flicked on the light switch, and scanned the room.
Each of the eight dirtbags shielded their eyes for a moment.
Overhead lighting clearly wasn’t their bag.
With a wiggle of my finger, I made the switch impossible to turn off.
I liked it better that way, mostly because they didn’t. I was nice like that.
“Where’s Ethan?” I demanded. “Chuck, Chucky, Chuck, I’m really disappointed in you and all your stinky friends. I was told to come here and trade my life for Ethan’s. I don’t see Ethan. Now that’s a FUCKING PROBLEM, CHUCK.”
I was positive I heard Astrid mutter, oh my fucking God, but I ignored it.
The bun boys weren’t used to a devilish Astrid.
They were probably used to a more compassionate version of my niece.
Compassionate wasn’t in my vocab. Today, it was the new, and in my not so humble opinion, improved Vampyre Princess.
Chuck and his buds were taken aback. However, that didn’t last for long.
One of the shart stains lifted a heavy red velvet blanket off of a chair with a flourish and a diabolical laugh. A barely alive Ethan was underneath it. It was fucking bad.
“What the actual Hell?” I ground out.
“I do believe it’s time for you to take his place,” the Vamp snarled. “Your prince only has about thirty minutes left.”
“Name?” I growled. He stared back blankly. I didn’t like that. “I asked you your name? Now, you have two choices, you tell me your name, or I beat it out of you. What’s it gonna be?”
The irreverence took the imbecile by surprise. So much surprise that he answered me. “Sherman Collier Adams the 4th.”
“Great,” I said. “So, Schmuck, you think this was a good plan? Messing with the Prince of the North Fucking American Dominion? You think?”
“Shut your insolent mouth,” Schmuck cried out, furious. “I am your elder. I will not be disrespected.”
“Wow! Fascinating,” I said, nodding my head slowly.
“You wanna know who your fucking elders are, Schmuck? Do you? I’m sure you do.
” The Vamp was wildly confused. No one expected for Astrid to have lost her shit.
She hadn’t, but I was about to. I was about to lose my shit on them.
Reminding myself I was Astrid and not me, I let old Schmuck have it.
“My grandmother is Mother Nature and she’s certifiably insane.
Of course, that makes her Ethan’s grandmother-in-law.
And trust me on this, Schmuck, she’s going to be pissed.
She loves Ethan because he lets her pole dance in his compound.
Oh! And then there’s my devastatingly handsome Uncle Satan.
The man. The myth. The legend. By marriage, he’s also Ethan’s uncle. Did you think about that? DID YOU?”
Schmuck wasn’t quite sure what was happening.
If Astrid had been in her own skin, she would have traded herself already.
That would have ended very badly. Thankfully, and I never in a million years would have thought I would say it, but it was good that my batshit crazy mother had switched us. I was going ham on these fuckers.
I glanced back at Ethan. What they’d done was beyond inhumane.
The Vampyre was chained in silver from head to toe.
His skin sizzled under the metal that was poisonous for Vamps.
He was shirtless and his head lolled back and forth as if he just came out of a boxing ring and had lost handily.
That would be impossible. The man could hold his own with me.
There was a needle in his arm connected to a tube and a plastic bag of something clipped to a pole.
My guess was silver. Silver literally destroyed Vamps and these fuckers were using it way too freely for my comfort.
When another Vamp put a silver dagger to Ethan’s neck, I shook my head. I was over this crap. “Name?” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
Again, the shock of my question made him answer, or maybe it was the volume. Didn’t matter.
“Franklin Wilhelm Boggins the 5th.”
“Great, Fuck. Chuck, Schmuck, and Fuck. You guys just kill me. I’m going to recommend that you don’t put that dagger into Ethan, because if you do it, Fuck, I’m going to be compelled to shove it up your ass, twist it and yank your intestines out. Capish?”