First Kill: A Dave Carver Novella (8 page)

One of the vamps held a long, narrow
stick in one hand. He lifted it, so it was pointing at us, and Nate
shouted something, grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me to the
floor.

The roar of the shotgun rattled the
shelves. At this range it seemed even louder than before, but that
may have been because it was aimed at me. For an instant, in the
light of the flash, I could make out the shape on the floor, the
one the vampires had been feeding on: a pile of cloth, skin, and
bone.

Hector’s chest cavity was gone, blown
away by the shotgun. His neck looked like a used corncob—all dents
and teethmarks. The cuts along the delicate veins in his wrists
were more precise, almost dainty, but they were clearly severed.
Blood poured from all of those wounds, slowly coating the floor
with a macabre film.

Nate’s switchblade appeared in one
hand, silver knife open. He flung it like a pitcher. The vampire
howled in pain and dropped the shotgun before falling to the floor,
clutching at the bleeding wound in his neck.

Like a panther, Nate was already
moving. He took off the head of the second vampire with one slice
of his machete, then bent and recovered his switchblade. A third
vamp rolled forward, a strangely long tongue lolling stupidly over
his animal teeth. Nate jabbed with the knife—a feint! When the
vampire danced to avoid the blow, he went right through the path of
the machete.

Meanwhile, I finished off the vampire
on the ground, with a blow to the crown on his skull.

The last vampire pounced on Nate’s
shoulders and began ripping into the back of his neck with fangs
like a mouthful of daggers.

I grabbed him by the hair and ripped
him away from Nate, wincing as I saw bits of dark skin trailing
from the fangs. I held him at arm’s length. He slashed at me with
his claws, but it was no good: My arms were longer. I threw him to
the ground, and, before he could recover, I brought the ax down
like an executioner. The blade bounced against the floor, sending a
small shower of shrapnel into the air. The vampire’s head rolled
away.

The whole thing had taken less than a
minute. Four vampires lay dead, rapidly decomposing, and Nate wiped
blood from his switchblade and put it away.

It didn’t take a medical degree to
determine that Hector was dead. His skin was cool and his eyes were
blank and expressionless. I was betting that the shotgun had killed
him. Small mercy, that: at least he never felt the ripping of the
fangs.

Nate and I each grabbed a
shoulder and began to drag him. We’d gotten maybe ten feet when
Nate stopped and let his end go. I froze. It took a moment, but
then I realized what had happened: The air was filling with
a
hissing
sound,
as if someone had opened a basket of cobras. A dozen pairs of eyes,
all around us, began to glow in the dark.

“Run,” Nate
said.

“What about
Hector?”

“No time.”

We ran, leaving Hector’s body
behind.

As he ran, Nate smashed into bottles
with his machete. It took me a moment to catch on, but when I
realized what he was doing, I began to mimic him on the other side
of the alley. It made it awkward to run, but I managed to keep
up.

The vampires were still after us,
hounds on rabbits. They were staying back, toying with us, slipping
on the blood-and-vodka slick floor. That kept them out of striking
distance. That range was the only thing that allowed us to get out
of the warehouse in one piece. We burst into the sunlit parking
lot, panting and sweaty.

Maria stood in the middle of a circle
formed by the rest of the Family. Nate jogged over and consulted
with Luisa.

“Everyone out?”

“Everyone who’s coming
out,” she said, her voice dark.

“Give me the
lighter.”

“Where’s Hector?” Maria
said. When Nate didn’t answer, just moved towards the warehouse
door, she asked, louder, “Nate, where is he?”

I shook my head, tears stinging my
eyes.

She saw the grimness in my face, threw
back her head, and howled in sorrow.

Nate clicked the lighter to life. He
stared for a moment at the pool of darkness that was the inside of
the warehouse. I couldn’t see the shapes of the vampires within,
but I knew they were in there. They were trapped, unable to leave
without frying themselves in the sun. The warehouse that was now
soaked with high-proof alcohol.

Nate threw the lighter.

Before long, the fire had consumed the
warehouse. Smoke rose into the air. Flames licked the clouds.
Distant sirens filled the air, alerting the world the fire
department was on their screaming way.

Nate, his arm still around a sobbing
Maria said, “Come on. Let’s go home.”

Chapter 10: Aftermath

Counting Hector, the vodka raid cost
us four members. Three were left behind as the warehouse burned,
killing the vampires and frying the corpses of our brothers. It was
wrong, but there was nothing for it. At least this way, Hector,
Sean, and Tony didn’t suffer the indignity of being
eaten.

The fourth fatality was Corey. He was
beaten to death with the stock of his shotgun. His body was a
bloody, jumbled mess, but Luisa had gotten him out before the
warehouse burned.

We had an impromptu funeral, in the
station. We stood in a circle around a fire. Maria sat on the
floor, inconsolable, her face buried in her hands. Luisa appeared
fascinated by a spot of grime on one wall. Nate stared straight
into the fire. No one said anything. There wasn’t much to be
said.

I didn’t know where to put
my hands, or where to look. Mostly I stood near the back of the
group, feeling like someone had scooped out part of my insides. My
body hurt, my head hurt, my
soul
hurt. I didn’t cry when my mother died, not right
away, and I didn’t cry now, but I wished I could. In a strange way,
I envied Maria: She was sobbing on the ground like a piece of her
was burning away to nothingness in that bonfire, but at least she
was releasing it. The emotion, the sadness, the pain was welling up
in me like a kinked hose, and I expected the pressure would make me
burst.

After an eternity that was really a
moment of silence, Nate nodded. “They won’t have died in
vain.”

That was all the eulogy that Sean,
Tony, Corey, and Hector needed. The funeral was over. The fire was
extinguished and everyone set their various tasks for the day:
sharpening weapons, washing clothes, cleaning off blood, and
preparing for the next raid.

Nate pulled me and Luisa into his
makeshift office.

“We need to bury Corey,”
he said.

The former soldier’s body rested under
a moth-ridden bedsheet we’d found somewhere.

“We can’t just dump him in
the tunnels. Someone could find him and that would lead the cops
right to us.” Nate looked at us. Part of me wanted to say that
might not be so bad, but I held my tongue. He fished some change
from his pocket. “Luisa, call Squirrel and see if he’ll get us some
wheels.”

The bitter-faced girl was quiet as she
took the coins and shoved them into her own pocket. She was equally
silent as she ascended the stairs in search of the nearest
pay-phone.

“She thinks it’s my
fault,” Nate said.

I shrugged. My stomach was churning
like there was an ocean in there. Except for vampires, this was the
first time since my mom that I’d seen a dead body.

“Anyway, we’re gonna need
to have a conversation with Squirrel. There were supposed to be six
or seven vampires in that warehouse, Dave. Not thirty or forty.
Squirrel’s information was wrong. We need to know what happened,
and if it could happen again.”

I frowned. My internal sea got
choppier. “You think he set us up?”

A pause. “I don’t know. I don’t think
so, but I can’t be sure. It could have been a mistake. It could be
someone gave him bad information. It could be that he set us up. We
need to know.”

“What do you need me to
do?”

“You’re the biggest one
here. Just stand behind me and look mean.” He paused. “Maybe hold
the ax.”

“So I’m the
muscle.”

Nate smiled, a distant, bitter
expression. “Exactly. You cool with that?”

“Totally cool.”

It was well after midnight by the time
Squirrel arrived. That wasn’t unusual—he had a business to run. He
made his way down the stairs, watching the dirty, angry, wounded
faces that greeted him. When he reached the bottom, he nearly ran
into Luisa, who was methodically running a whetstone along her
cleaver.

“What do you
need?”

Nate fiddled with his watch and he
seemed to materialize from the darkness. “Why don’t you come back
here, Squirrel. We have something to discuss. Dave?”

The three of us went
behind the curtain. Nate sat in one chair and gestured for Squirrel
to take the other. I stood behind the big man and tapped the
ax-handled against the floor. The hollow
thumps
echoed in the station, an
ominous heartbeat.

“We hit the vodka
warehouse this morning,” Nate said.

“I heard,” Squirrel said.
“It burned down. They talked about it on the news.”

“There weren’t six
vampires there. There were
dozens
.”

Squirrel’s head wobbled. I could see a
tattoo on the back of his neck: a pair of skeletal hands, clasped
as if in prayer. “That don’t make sense.”

“That’s what we thought.”
Nate’s voice was deathly quiet, and it was possibly the most
frightening sound I’d heard that day. “But they were there. I lost
four soldiers, Squirrel!” He hissed the last sentence, leaning
forward like a striking snake.

“We got Corey’s body out,”
he continued, more calmly. “But we had to burn the others with the
enemy.”

“Mary, mother of God,”
Squirrel whispered.

“Yeah, I don’t think she
had much to do with it.” Nate was cold. “What I want to know
is:
Why
were
there so many? You said six. And there were
thirty
.”

Squirrel looked at me, his mouth hung
open like a panting dog. His mustache bristled, and I could see the
tattoo of playing cards on his tongue. The effect was comical. He
stood up, his hands waving wildly. “You think I did this on
purpose? Come on, Nate, I’ve known you since you were in
diapers—you think I would—“

I put a hand on his shoulder and
forced him back to his chair. “Sit down,” I said.

Squirrel looked from me back to Nate,
his face quivering with fear. “Dave, Nate. Come on, you know how
this works. I’m not in that life anymore, not really. I’m a tattoo
artist, not a vampire hunter. I get the information and pass it on
to you. I’ve never claimed to be one hundred percent
accurate.”

“You’ve never been
this
wrong before,” Nate
said. “Which suggests this was a setup. Now—“

“Look, Nate—“

I grabbed a handful of coarse gray
hair and yanked Squirrel’s head back. “Shut. Up.” I let him go. He
coughed and fell silent.

“I
don’t
think you set us up,” Nate
continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “But I don’t think it
was a mistake, either. I need to know who told you about this
warehouse.”

Squirrel sounded only marginally
relieved. “The guy’s name was Everett, I think. He said he worked
at the sanitation plant and he saw strange guys coming in and out
of the warehouse. It sounded like vamps to me, so I passed it on to
you. That’s all. Weird guy, though.”

“Weird how?”

“He didn’t say much.
Seemed out of the whole time. Like he was baked or at least halfway
out the door. Didn’t so much as flinch when I put the needle to
him.”

Nate shook his head, but his eyes
flashed. “Okay. Thanks, Squirrel. I’m sorry for all of this. You
mind giving Dave and Luisa a ride? We need to bury
Corey.”

Squirrel looked troubled, but his
confusion gave way to relief. “Sure thing, Nate. I’ll be upstairs
in the truck.”

When he was gone, Nate put his head in
his hands and sighed. I’d never seen him look so defeated. He
answered my questions before I had the chance to ask. “This Everett
guy was enthralled. It’s like being possessed by a
vampire.”

“They can do that?” I
shuddered. As if vampires aren’t scary and disgusting
enough.

“Some of them can. The
more powerful ones. But if they sent a thrall into Squirrel’s shop
to give hum bad intel…”

I frowned. “It means they know who he
is.”

“And his connection to us.
We need to get someone in that shop who can vet the informants.”
Nate shook his head. “Never mind that for now, though. We’re
burning moonlight. Take Luisa and go, okay. Give him the best
burial you can, kid. Corey deserves that.”