bsp; The guy, a vampire, fell under the tangle of wood and rope, made a kind of choking noise—and dried out. Turned desiccated, his skin going leathery, eyes sinking back in his skull. In the space of seconds, he turned into a dried-up corpse. No longer undead, just plain dead. He’d been holding a wooden spear in one hand and a hand-held crossbow, wooden bolt loaded, in the other. Yeah, they wanted to kill us. Good to know.
“Ew,” Jack said, lip curling.
“Yes, and if we don’t want that happening to us, we have to stop them.”
A second guy came through the doorway. The trap and its victim had the added bonus of gumming up the threshold. The guy had to pick his way over debris and his fallen comrade. The glare that he gave us was full of fury. He bared his teeth and fired his hand crossbow.
The bolt glanced off the lunchbox strapped to Jack’s chest.
“Holy shit, it worked!” he said, his voice filled with awe. He charged forward, his makeshift spear outstretched and impaled the intruder, who just stood there and let him do it, apparently in shock that his bolt had missed. The spear made a wet, cracking sound as it went in, and like the other guy he collapsed, arms splayed out, a look of pain and disbelief on his pale features. His corpse dried out, caved in, like a body left in the grave.
How old had he been? He looked about mid-twenties, but so did I. I had no way to tell. They’d felt… older. More powerful. Our only advantage here was surprise.
Jack yanked his spear out, stepped back, and stared wide-eyed at his victim.
“Why don’t vampires wear armor? Like, stab-proof vests or something? That technology’s been around for a pretty long time,” Jack said, knocking a couple of times on his lunch box.
Ginny and Aaron both let out shouts. The bedroom door had crashed open, another goon-looking guy was coming through. They both let fly with Nerf darts. Aaron had found a couple of big-ass repeater-loading bandolier-equipped Nerf guns in his stash. They didn’t have to reload. Droplets of water flew off the darts as they gently lofted and bounced against the vampire.
“What the hell—” The bad guy gave a short laugh, brushing away the darts like he’d swat at gnats. Some of them had hit his bare face and exposed hands. Then, his expression warped into a grimace. “Shit! What is that?”
Ginny and Aaron kept firing, damp projectiles bouncing harmlessly off the vampire’s face and clothes, but leaving angry red welts behind. He stumbled back into the bedroom, unslinging a spear from his shoulder.
“Ginny!” I shouted and tossed one of the loaded hand crossbows left by the dead vampires to her. She studied it for a second, gave a determined nod, aimed, fired.
A shout came from inside the room. I couldn’t see what happened, but given that Ginny quickly went to reload, the shot hadn’t stopped him.
“Sam!” Jack called.
Two more heavies came in through the front door, unceremoniously crawling over their fallen comrades. This time when Jack went to stab one, the guy in front grabbed the spear and yanked it out of his grip, just like that.
I threw Jack mine and went for another, one of the broken broom handles I’d set in a pile by the sofa. The heavy wasn’t expecting an immediate comeback, and Jack got him, leaning in to really wrench the spear home. The second guy came for me.
The doorway was defensible. It was pretty straightforward to stand there and knock the guys over as they came through. But once he got inside, I didn’t have anywhere to go, no place to hide. I held my spear out, aimed straight for his chest—pointy end in the other guy, that was how it went, right? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I wasn’t trained for this.
The guy pointed at me. “What… is that a lunch box taped to your chest?”
“Yes.”
“You look ridiculous.”
“But hey—I’m not the one getting staked through the heart.” I prepared to charge.
He just stopped me. Unlike the others, he was ready, he was expecting it, so he gracefully stepped clean out of my way, grabbed my arm, spun me and slammed me into a wall.
Something surged in me, some kind of power or survival instinct. When he went to hit me, I ducked, and the world blurred, or slowed down, or something. I was moving faster than I ever had, I felt stronger than I ever had. It wasn’t enough, because the next time I ducked, he was moving even faster than I was. He grabbed my hair, pinned me to the wall. I couldn’t shout for help because I couldn’t breathe in. Besides, I heard fighting—the others were busy.
He tipped my head back, caught my gaze. I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help it.
He was older than me. Stronger than me. He could put enough force into his stare, enough strength into his grip, I’d just stand there while he took my head off. This was the real thing, the real power of vampires.
Screw that. Maybe he was stronger, but I didn’t have to sit here and take it, and I was a smart monkey. I didn’t need brute force.
I dropped, shoved, and it was just enough to throw him off balance and let me escape. He was right behind me, his hands grasping at the untucked tails of my shirt. But I had a target, and I didn’t look back and didn’t slow down. I crossed the room in a flash, reached the kitchen, and the bowl of holy water Ginny and Aaron had been using to soak Nerf darts. Grabbed it, flashed on the awareness that this was probably going to hurt like hell, but I didn’t exactly have time to stop for gloves.
I emptied the bowl right into the guy’s face. He screamed, bent fingers scrabbling at his face, trying to wipe the stuff off.
Some of the holy water splashed onto my hands, and the burning was like putting my hand on a stove, and no matter how fast you pulled your hand away, the burn would still be there. It didn’t seem fair. I wasn’t even religious, not before I was turned and certainly not now. But it burned. I wiped my hands on my shirt.