The Wielder: Sworn Vengeance (The Wielder Series) (30 page)

My sword
is very happy when I tell it we will be addressing a vampire’s nest. It doesn’t tell me as much as I sort of feel it.  I’ve been told it takes some time to build the connection to the sword where actual direct communication takes place with the angelic spirit bound to it. Gunter tells me his sword is quite the chatter-box.

I join Vets and Karen out in the living room, apparently Sil and Shey
are still having a conversation.  I don’t hear any screaming or breaking of things so I have to assume that it is going as well as it can.  How bad could it be? Sil is yet again telling Shey she’s let me out of a promise.

I plop down on the sofa next to Vets and look at Karen. “Ok General Karen, what’s the battle strategy?”

“It’s pretty straightforward.  This is a residential location. We open up the building to maximum daylight, go in, burn them outright and drag the husks to the daylight, or slice their heads off and drag the bodies into the daylight.  So, do we have a strong vehicle that we can tear open walls with?

“We have a 1991 Toyota minivan”

That gets a disappointed look and a sad sounding, “oh.”  “Do we have explosives?”

“N
o.”

“Well, then this may take
a while. I hope Lucrezia’s people in law enforcement can buy us the time we need.”

We
are joined by Shey and Sil.  Sil, without saying a word steps over to me and holds out her hand. My poor bank account...  But she does need taxi fare.

“Look at you
all dressed up,” exclaims Karen, “You sure all you’re shopping for is a new car?”

Sil’s response is to turn around to her, flip back her raven bed head hair and jut a leg out, ala the infamous red carpet leg-thrust. “Distraction works in my favor.”

“Here’s the card,” I say breaking their little moment. Sil snatches the card from my hands waves “bye.”

Shey plops down on the arm of the
sofa next to me. “When do we go,” she asks.

Karen answers that by standing.  “
Now. Weapon up everyone – Vets, make sure to bring a sword too.”

Vets nods, stands and looks down at the large duffle to
her side. “Ready.”

We collect ourselves and head down to the garage
and to the minivan. Karen appears even less impressed than she was upstairs with it.  “It’ll get us there,” I offer.

We make our way into the ninth Ward and find ourselves passing in front of a non-descript row house with a man sitting on the porch step. Our arrival
gains some attention from the people around and I’m feeling uncomfortable. It would be hard to drive the van home without tires and a battery.

“That’s the day-watcher, take another pass around the block
,” Karen directs.  “We’ll stop in front and I’ll stun him.  Please say you have some rope or something in that bag to tie him up with.”

“Zip ties
,” replies Vets.

I bring us around and Karen gets out of the van and takes a couple steps towards the man.  I “Excuse me good sir, we seem to be lost.”

“Get lost Skinny bitch, this ain’t no place for you, n’less you looking to get raped and killed.”

Wrong answer.  But then, I don’t think it would have mattered what he said. She level
s her wand at him and says “H-zaat.”

He stan
ds up wobbly, staggering with eyes rolling.

“Ms. Vets, assistance please.”

Big girl is out of the van, fast. A clubbing blow knocks him to the ground and within moments she has his hands and feet bound. I get out of the van and run around.  While Vets drags the still dazed man to the van and deposits him in front of the rear tire, I hit the bag and pull out my AA-12 assault shotgun. Another reach into the bag and I throw Vets a cloth to gag the day-watcher with.

I take post using the van and open
the passenger door to block any view of my assault weapon.  The neighbors seem to be taking more interest in us now than their twenty-four ounces.

“Well isn’t this special
,” Karen laments, “Crawlspace – you know there’s got to be at least one resting there.” She looks over at me. “I am NOT crawling around down there. Please tell me you have rope.”

That we do. I nod yes to her, keeping
an eye on the neighborhood.  A group of three shady looking guys about four houses down across the street have started coming our way – that can’t be good. Karen takes note too.

“Vets, would you be kind enough to remove every bit of that paneling around the crawlspace, we need daylight access there.”

I nod to her and she’s off, being her version of the one Vetisghar wrecking crew.

And now
we have company.  The bow appears in Shey’s hand and she takes aim.

They apparently find that humorous. “Little be-atch, what’cha gonna do with that thang?”

If they only knew…

“This ain’t summer camp
,” comes another one of them.

She pulls the arrow back and I have to stop her.

“Shey. No.  I got this.” I say with authority.

My response
apparently was very humorous as well, as they started laughing.  Mr. Summer camp grabs his crotch, “Yea mutha fucka – you got this – bitch. Hey, look white boy’s packin’ – a sword.” They all find the sword scabbard on my back amusing and start making dungeons and dragons jokes.

To this point I’ve been pretty good about keeping the AA-
12 concealed. I hear Karen mutter those words and feel the protective shield go over me and know that one by one we are being protected. 

And
Shey’s about to have one of her psychotic breaks.

Karen,
now finished with the warding, must sense the same thing I am with Shey’s mental state. She walks over to the rear of the van where our new friends are. “Nasty business going on here gentlemen, it would probably be best if you went back home to your mothers.”

That
gets the wrong response.   Things were said.  Mostly to the effect of her being a skinny English bitch and that they were going to introduce her to large American dicks.  Karen is un-phased.  She’s seen a lot nastier and ended their existences. When one of them pulls out a gun, it is time to step in.

The easy thing to do would be
to lay waste to them all. That would be the wrong thing too.  So instead, in a really positive happy voice I say “Hey guys, I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

All
of their attention is on me.  Which is what I want. When I level the AA on them, their attention is really on me. “You guys really want to do this?”

Before they c
an say a word the real hammer is dropped.  With a word from Karen’s mouth they are engulfed by a swarm of stinging, stunning electricity.  All three fall to the ground twitching.  Quickly I grab a handful of zip-ties and secure our new friends.

Shey and I drag them off the street next to Mr. Day-watcher.
  Neighbors take this in, doing nothing.

They are coming to their senses and bitching. I don’t have enough gags.

“Bitch tazed us!”  Then they begin shouting for help. Karen turns around to them with a stern look. “Do we really have to silence you permanently?”

“Skinny bitch, you in the wrong place.  Our crew gonna…”

“That’s skinny witch you stupid boy,” Karen says interrupting him.  With that she conjures a small glowing orb of fire between her fingers. She drops it on his shoe and it catches ablaze.

Nobody’s saying a word
now except for Mr. My foot’s on fire who is freaking out.   With a wave of her hand the flame extinguishes.

“Boys
,” she says to them calmly.  “Inside that house is a vampire nest.  If we do not clean it out, they will most certainly come pay you a visit at night that you will not like.  Think of us as the exterminators making your city safe.”

“I ain’t afraid of no witches or vampires
,” says the one who appears to be their leader.

“Oh good” Karen says back to him. “How’d you like to make some money then? I’ll pay you a hundred dollars for each vampire you drag out from under that house. It’s easy, hook a rope around their foot,
crawl back out and pull, pull, pull.”

“Hun-red fiffy… bee-atch
,” he spits back at her.

“Deal.  But if you call me that again, I will cast a spell on you that puts painful blisters all over your
big American dick and your face.  Remember young man, it’s wee-atch, not bee-atch.”

Based on the look on his face, I think he got it.  When he said  “Yes ma’am” I know he did.

She gives me the look to cut him loose so I do.  He stands up and brushes himself off.

“Them too.”

I just nod a “no” to him.  He doesn't push the issue. “You sure you want to do this?” I ask him “they are vampires.”

“Jus be ready to pay me.”

“You got a name, kid?”

“Kid?
Fuck you junior!”

Damn my nineteen year
old face.

“O
kay fuck you,” Karen interjects. “He is just asking in case we have to notify your next of kin. This is dangerous work. I suppose these guys know your family.  So, Mr. F-You – let’s get to it; daylight is wasting.”

By this time, Vets has returned from her demolition run.  Given the looks from the crew, the
y approve of big girl. The off color comments about her being “thick” confirm it.

“Vets, Mr.
F-You here is going to crawl under the house and drag out the vermin,” Karen says to her.  “Please assist him with the rope and make sure he doesn’t try to run away.”

Mr. F
-U’s eyes grace the holstered guns Vets is carrying and gets the point. Vets grabs the climbing rope and says, “Come.”  Off they go.

“Is this a good idea Karen?” I have to ask. I should have expected the response.

“Better him than us under there.”

I head over to the side of the house where Vets and Mr. FU are preparing, or maybe like him stalling. He looks at me, the AA, then back to me. “We doing this
!”

With that
, he takes the rope that Vets has tied a slipknot into and crawls under the house.

If not anything, that guy wants a hundred fifty dollars.

After a few moments he emerges, wide eyed.  “There’s three of ‘em.  I got the rope around the ankle of one like she said.”

This is kind of funny.  We’ve gone from being victims in his eyes to something else altogether. And to do what he did took a hell of a lot of nerve. But still, this is kind of like his initiation, so I’m cutting no slack. “Stand back and start pulling.”

He does.  The first few pulls were no big deal.  Then someone woke up. Mr. FU is fighting the rope and the rope is winning. Finally I nod to Vets who steps in to assist, grabbing the rope behind him and pulling hard hand over hand.  Eventually the vampire comes out and exposed to the sunlight bursts into flame, squeals and flips around convulsively.

I pull Yayne
from the scabbard and separate the head from the shoulders and all that is left is a burning body and head. 

One down.

Mr. F-You is slack-jawed. “Damn,” he says, “They is real.” He looks at me not like before all full of bluster, but like a man who just realized the world isn’t all what he thought it was. “That’s a hun-red fiffy there.”

“Friend
,” I tell him. “I’ll throw in another fifty, for job well done. Takes some balls do that. So how many others again?”

“I saw two more
.”

“Well, they may be awake now
,” comes Karen’s voice, “though babies sleep pretty soundly. I wouldn’t recommend crawling under there if they were.”

Taking her cue, I look to Sheyliene. “Tiny up and take a buzz-through.  Let us know what we’re dealing with.”

That gets a nod from her and she reaches up to her hair, a cascade of golden powder falls down, and she basically turns into a small glowing orb that dashes under the house.

“Shee-it
,” is Mr. F-You’s response to that. He looks at me seriously.

“Damn, you guys are
real.”

I look over to see others are coming down the street. “You want to deal
with that, so we don’t have to? Shame for someone to get hurt."

“Yea
,” he says nodding and starts heading their way.

Shey t
ells us the other two are still asleep. We have her go in with the rope and snare both their feet.  After a game of tug of war, two less vampires inhabit the world.

We look at the house. At
least eight more are in there - more likely closer to twenty. 

“Attic is a problem
,” says Karen.

“Whole damn house is
,” I say.

“I’ll take care of the boarded wi
ndows,” she offers, holding out her wand.  The boarded window she is standing in front of window explodes inwards.