Chapter Five
You'd think I'd have learned by now that sarcasm doesn't make people very happy, but I still felt the urge to ask, "Does this mean we're not friends anymore?" as Vera ordered the others to kill me. I kept my mouth shut, however, as a tall, bald black woman flew at me. Literally lifted her feet off the ground and flew. I fired three UV bullets into her before she fell to the ground. A bluish glow appeared under her skin, getting brighter and brighter as she screamed in agony. Eventually she ashed from the inside out.
The two remaining ones, twin brunettes, came at me at once. I brought my leg up and kicked one in the face, feeling her jaw disconnect under my boot. The other grabbed me from behind, pinning my guns to my sides. She laughed as she breathed against my neck, preparing to bite me. Stupid bitch. I brought my foot down so hard that the heel of my boot impaled her foot. She loosened her grip long enough for me to back her up against the alley wall. I pulled a stake out of my pocket and whirled around, stabbing it through her shoulder. She reached out and scratched my face, leaving a stinging trail from the corner of my eye to my jawline. I pulled the stake out of her shoulder and relocated it to her heart. She ashed, leaving soot all over my leather jacket. Damn her.
Her twin grabbed a handful of my long red hair and yanked backwards. I hit the ground hard, knocking all the wind from my lungs. "Finish her!" I heard Vera yell. The vamp gave me a look that said she would be more than happy to finish me. Where the hell were my guns when I needed them? I must have dropped them in the struggle with the other twin. She stood above me so that, were I to look, I would have an unpleasant view up her skirt. I brought my foot up so that the steel toe of my boot made painful contact with the small of her back. She lurched forward in pain enough so that I could grab her arms and flip her over me. We both scrambled to our feet. I grabbed for one of my guns, laying not too far away, but Vera kicked it just out of my reach. That bitch. She laughed as she watched, because she thought that I was about to die. Did she think she would get to feast on my blood?
Then I had an idea. An idea that was so old, so cliche that it just might work. I pulled my handy dandy little cross out of my pocket. By rule, a cross didn't work unless you had faith. Well, five years ago I had had some sort of religious epiphany, and after that I started carrying crosses. So anyway, the still-alive twin rushed at me, mouth hanging open, baring her fangs. And I shoved the cross into her mouth. I told you it was a cliche move, but it worked every time. Did vampires not watch movies?
Her mouth started steaming, and she grabbed at my hands--which were holding her mouth closed--but my strength was fueled by my desire for her to die, and finally she ashed. It was a very slow ashing, and once she was dead the ashes fell to the ground gracefully. I had never seen a vamp gracefully ash before. Whoa. When I finally faced Vera, she was staring at me, open-mouthed. Like she couldn't believe what she had just seen.
"You should have been killed a long time ago, Kayla," Vera hissed, inching towards me.
"I could say the same about you, Vera," I told her. "Killing Eva was nice, but I'd like to have the complete set."
I admit now that it was probably the wrong thing to say. Vera's eyes flashed in anger, and she charged. She pulled a short sword out of fucking nowhere and set about to slicing and dicing. I ran backwards, trying to keep out of the way of the blade that she was moving at inhuman speeds. She must have hated my fucking guts--not only had I killed her sister, but I had killed all her little friends, too, as well as kept her from having her nightly meal. Fuck, I'd hate me too. Someone had told me once that the reason I was such a good vampire slayer was because I understood vampires. I felt compassion for them. Well, things had certainly changed over the course of five years. I may have still understood vampires, but I didn't feel an ounce of compassion for them now.
As far as battles go I was basically fucked now. I had lost both my guns and my cross. I was down to one lonely little stake. Vera had a sword, inhuman strength, and near-invincibility. All I could do was keep dodging that sword, hoping she kept playing with me so that I could have a chance to kill her. For that's all she was doing--playing with me. She could have killed me ten times by now, but she hadn't. For some reason vampires liked to play with their food before making the kill. I don't know why. I made a mental note to ask a vampire the next time I hung out with one. Yeah, right.
She lunged forward and the sword sliced open my side. The blood came out like a waterfall, flowing down to the ground and staining my jeans red. I cried out and stumbled backwards. I was beginning to think I'd never find out where Mikhail was--she'd kill me before I ever got the chance to know. I shouldn't have come after her alone. Or I shouldn't have sent the lycanthrope home earlier. He could have been really useful.
To my surprise, said lycanthrope then appeared out of nowhere, almost like I had conjured him with my thoughts. He knocked the sword from Vera's hand. It clattered across the alley to rest against the wall of the building next to the night club. As I watched, I realized something: the lycanthrope could fight. He was kicking the shit out of Vera before my very eyes. See, I knew he was good for something. I shakily started to walk to where the sword lay, holding my side in a vain attempt to staunch the blood flow. Once I had Vera's sword in my hand, I walked over to where he had her pinned against the chain-link fence at the end of the alley. I shoved the sword through her stomach, pinning her to the fence. Not a bad enough wound to kill her, but it at least let her know that I meant business.
"I'm tired of playing games, Vera," I snapped, looking into her eyes. "Where is he?"
She shook her head, and then licked her lips as blood began to flow from the corner of her mouth. I pushed the sword in a little deeper, causing her to hiss in pain. "Where is he?" I repeated.
"You're wasting your time," she rasped, causing more blood to flow from her mouth. "He's not in Los Angeles. Even if he was, I wouldn't know where. I haven't seen him or heard from him in five years."
"You're lying!" I cried. No, it couldn't be. She had to be lying! I couldn't have come so far for nothing. She had to know where he was.
She laughed, a cruel, bubbling sound. "He left me," she said simply. "After he tasted your blood at the warehouse, I wasn't good enough for him anymore."
Did this mean Mikhail had the hots for me? Gross. Out of pure anger I twisted the blade sharply, causing Vera to vomit blood. It got all over me, but I didn't care. I was being weighed down by exhaustion, fatigue, and blood loss. The only thing that fueled me now was my disappointment and my anger at having failed to find Mikhail. I had no more use for Vera. I believed that she didn't know where Mikhail was. I took my last stake off my belt and plunged it into her heart, ending the misery that I had caused, on more than one account.
I felt a little piece of myself die with Vera as she ashed. There was that damn compassion again. Suddenly my knees gave out, and if the lycanthrope hadn't been there to catch me, I probably would have concussed myself on the pavement of the alley floor. "Thanks," I muttered, my voice weaker than I would have liked it to be.
"No problem," he said. He readjusted his grip on me so that he could drape my arm around his neck; he held me up by keeping an arm wrapped around my waist. "So you're her," he said as he started to walk me out of the alley.
I looked up at him in confusion. "Her who?"
"The slayer, the one they all talk about," he explained. "Kayla Atrelic." He said my name like he was tasting it. It sent chills down my spine, and not in the way I would have liked. He may have been hot, but when a lycanthrope says your name like that, you can pretty much bet they're thinking about you as if you were their evening meal. Although, some lycanthropes did it without even knowing. It was ingrained into their minds like that.
By "they," he meant the entire monster population. After the warehouse incident, I had become kind of famous. The vampires who had survived had spread the word, and pretty soon all sorts of creepy-crawlies were having to assure their children that there was no Kayla Atrelic under their bed. Monsters would look over their shoulder and see a shadow out of the corner of their eye, and wonder if it was me coming to kill them. I wasn't particularly proud of it, but it did help sometimes to have so many different creatures scared of you.
"So, you obviously know who I am," I told him as we limped along, "but you have yet to tell me who you are." I know, I know--I probably shouldn't have trusted him like this, but if he was going to kill me, he already would have done it, and besides, he had saved me from being Vera's dinner. Why shouldn't I have trusted him? The fact that it was against my training (a vampire slayer is never supposed to trust anyone outside their own unit) didn't seem to matter at all.
We stopped walking, and he left me to support myself against the brick wall. As I watched, bones and muscles started to rearrange themselves. You could see everything moving underneath his skin. Fur and claws retracted, eyes returned to normal. In no time at all he was standing before me looking completely human. His clothes were even in tact. I didn't know much about lycanthropes, but I was pretty sure that the older, more powerful ones could do magic, like glamours and things. Since his clothes hadn't survived the transformation from human to wolf--even if it was only halfway--I knew that the clothes were a glamour. Were I to touch him, I would feel nothing except his skin. After he was normal he bent down and gathered my guns. The stakes were useless now, but it didn't matter. I could always get more stakes. Guns, on the other hand, were expensive. "I'm Chase Kraemer," he said as he approached me. Instead of handing the guns to me, to my surprise he actually put the guns in my hip holsters for me. There was nothing significant about that--just a guy putting guns in holsters that happened to be on someone else's body. In fact, I think he was more intimate with my gun than he was with me. "And, in case you failed to notice, I'm a werewolf."
"Yeah," I said, not even bothering to protest as he draped my arm around him again and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me close so that he could help me walk. "I noticed." I also noticed that I had been right about the glamour--anyone else looking would have thought that he was dressed, but I felt nothing against me except very warm skin.
We limped along in silence until we got to the parking lot. He started to take me to his vehicle, but I protested. "We need to take you to the hospital," Chase said. I shook my head. No way was I going to the hospital. Ever since my last hospital visit I had avoided those places like the plague.
"I'm fine," I told him. "It's just a scratch."
"Damn big scratch," he muttered. I rolled my eyes. I did not need him to go all cavalier on me now. When guys go cavalier, it usually means trouble for me.
"I get hurt all the time," I said. "It's no big deal. Besides, what would we tell them if you did take me to the hospital? That I attacked vampires and this was my reward? No, I don't think so."
He took me to my car, and I could tell he wasn't happy about it at all. Probably thought I'd bleed to death or something, poor guy. I dug my car keys out of my pocket and unlocked the door. I had opened the door and was just about to get into the vehicle when I heard a loud sound, like someone lighting a firecracker. A moment later, my windshield shattered. As I got down and reached for my gun, only one rational thought ran through my mind. That whoever was shooting at me must have had very good aim, because they were only three inches away from putting that bullet right between my eyes.
