James resumed choking me. I fought against him for all I was worth, but I might as well have been trying to move a mountain. It was pathetic. The world around me quaked and began to fade. I used the only weapon I had left. He released me when I dug my stiletto into the top of his foot, howling with indignation. I was sure it was because I’d marred his designer loafer and not because I’d hurt him.
The shotgun sounded when Cal, lovely man that he was, blew James’s shoulder wide open. Snarling, James charged towards his shooter, the wound on his shoulder already starting to heal. In a kneejerk response, I stuck my foot out and tripped him, knocking the vamp flat on his face.
I took that as an opportunity to run, though I didn’t get far. The vampire seized me by the ankle and yanked. Like Cal and James, I was now on the floor, flat on my stomach.
James pulled me toward him, and I reached out frantically, trying to grab on to something, anything, that would hold. I closed my fingers over the lip of a planter and hung on for dear life. It banged against the lights above, knocking them askew. The plant fell over and spilled out on top of me, dirt landing in my eyes.
Temporarily blinded, I blinked away the grit and saw that a thin bamboo stake had also landed on me. It was about a foot long and two inches wide. Its intended purpose was to reinforce the stem of the plant. I had a different use in mind.
Clutching the bamboo reed, I flipped over on my back and jammed it into James’s eye. Blood spurted from his eye socket like an erupting geyser. I pulled it out and stabbed him again.
“Youfuckingcuntbitch!” His eye wasn’t healing as quickly as the bullet wound had, but it was recovering. He sprang forward and landed on top of me. Then, he straddled me and commenced choking. He whispered in my ear, “I’m going to take my time and enjoy this.”
“No!”
He yanked the stake from his eye and tossed it aside. He choked me to the point of nearly passing out, then released his grip. He choked some more. And released. He repeated the act again and again, prolonging my agony. Choke-release-choke-release.
Cal didn’t come to my rescue this time. He hadn’t made a sound for a while, and I began to suspect he was dead. Probably a blessing considering what James would have done to him once he was finished with me.
In the distance, the atmosphere began to change, from green to electric blue to yellow. Between chokings, I was able to crane my neck out far enough to see why. The lamps above the plants—the rectangular ones with the foil hoses—were turning on as the green lights were going off. They were lighting up in sections, starting at the entrance of the room, by the tarped doorway. About half the lights between us and the door were on, and the ones closest to the door were brightest. The intensity of the bulbs appeared to be increasing as they heated.
James didn’t notice. He went to work strangling me again, grinning as though having the time of his life. My throat was throbbing. He stopped suddenly, sighed, and said, “You know what? All this work has made me hungry.”
“Please don’t,” I begged as he lowered his mouth to my neck. I squeezed my eyes shut as the world around us turned yellow, crying out as his teeth pierced the sensitive flesh near my collarbone. It was absolutely nothing like being nibbled by Robert. James’s bite was neither sweet nor erotic. It was cold, spiteful, and worse than any pain I’d ever experienced.
Thinking of Robert, I started to cry. I missed him so much, and the thought of never seeing him again was devastating.Please don’t let this creep be the last sight I will ever see, I thought.
Behind James’s healed shoulder, the yellow glow deepened.
The vampire, finally noticing the change, pulled his face away from my neck and peered up at the light. His mouth was hanging open and I could see my blood all over his fangs. It was sickening, but the sting in my throat was worse.
Suddenly, he was screaming.
It was his hair that began to smolder first. Smoke billowed off his skull, then travelled down his neck to the rest of his body. His hair crackled, and every inch of his exposed skin began to blister.
It was the light that did it.
Things only got nastier for James when the bulb reached it full brightness. Panicked, he rolled off me. By the time he got to his feet, his back, legs, and shoulders were on fire. His skin sizzled and popped, reeking of cooked meat and charred hair.
James tottered a couple steps forward, then fell to his knees, cursing in an unearthly voice that belonged to the darkest demon in hell. He stopped screaming once his tongue fell out. He clawed at his face as pieces of his flesh crumbled away, turning to ash. Suddenly, he was crumbling all over, his skeleton collapsing in a dusty cloud.
I turned away for the grand finale. I didn’t need to see what happened. Robert had told me more than I’d wanted to know about vampire death. When an immortal dies, it’s never pretty.
When I turned back to James, he was nothing but an iridescent mound of black powder, like volcanic sand on a Hawaiian beach. Though he was dull in life, he was downright sparkling in death, a big pile of shimmering black glitter. Like a pair of crowning gems, two white fangs sat atop his remains.
Behind me, Cal moaned.
“I thought you were dead!” I cried as I ran to his side and helped him sit up. I’d been saying that phrase an awful lot lately.
With dirt sprinkled over his body and green leaves sticking from his braids, he looked like a mythical forest creature. He dusted himself off and spat out a glob of grit. “It stinks like barbeque,” he commented, getting to his feet. “Now, is it me, or did that fellow just turn to ash?”
“Um . . .”
“You know anything about growing weed?” he asked.
“No.”
“Figures,” he snorted,because obviously all respectable twenty-something women should have practical knowledge of pot farming.
