Took pressed his gun to the covered head and pulled the trigger. The recoil punched back against the heel of his hand, all the way to his shoulder, and what was left of the man’s brains splattered out over the floor.
In the US they called it a mongrel and they put it down.
He glanced at the ichor-stained bottles and swallowed the sour tang of acid on the back of his throat. Before he had to decide what to do with the fat, squirming maggots, he heard a stifled shriek from somewhere in the house.
Allan.
Took swore under his breath and loped to the door. He shouldered it open and stepped out into the hallway. It still stank.
“Deputy,” he yelled, his voice calm and steady. “Are you okay?”
“Agent—” the shrill, panicked voice blurted in answer to him. It cut through the musty silence of the house and then cut off abruptly with a yelp.
The single word had been enough to give Took something to work with. He turned slightly and headed toward the back of the house. His feet scuffed over the battered tiles as he lifted his gun and nudged the door open.
Did it smell worse back here, he wondered, or was that just his imagination?
“Willie,” he said. “You want to let the deputy go.”
A laugh creaked out of the dark. “What?” Willie asked, his voice rasp-rough and arrogant. “They’ll go easy on me if I’ve only killed one deputy? You’ll put a good word in for me? Fuck off, Special Agent Man. I don’t need help from the likes of you. He’s promised he’ll see me right.”
Took paused to let his eyes adjust to the dim light in the hall. Photos were hung in a regimented row at eye height against the damp-bulged wallpaper. Women with eyes that looked like bruised fruit and men who hadn’t unclenched their jaw in years smiled out tightly with rows of identical white veneers. Or they used to be identical. Someone had gone along with a sharpie and assiduously defaced them with blackened gaps and carefully straight braces.
The small show of bleak humor unexpectedly amused Took. He let the feeling wash away as he pushed two doors open and peered into the small, cell-like rooms that hid behind them. Both looked as though they’d been in use recently, with stained sheets tangled on the bed and the smell of old sex thick in the air.
Every time some delusional fangbanger with bite tats and fear-pheromone perfume tried to play vampires off as romantic monsters, Took wanted to take them on a tour of a trap house. It had as much class as a frat house after a homicide.
He let the doors creak shut and walked toward the last door. It had a Staff Only sign fastened to it at eye level. Kitchen or infirmary, Took supposed. Over his head he heard something scrape over the floor. He paused midstep to look up, his eyes on the lumpy plaster as he tried to imagine the layout upstairs.
“What are you waiting for?” Willie interrupted him. “An invitation?”
He laughed at his own joke. Took took his eyes off the ceiling and pushed the last door open. He’d been right, it was a kitchen. Pots hung from racks on the ceiling and a clock shaped like a coffee cup was stopped exactly at 10:00 a.m. forever.
Willie stood on the other side of the stove with his arm crooked around Allan’s throat. The point of the knife dug into the tender skin behind her ear, deeply enough that more blood dribbled onto her no-longer-stiff collar.
“Help’s on the way, Deputy,” Took said as he met her gaze. “Stay calm.”
She rolled her deep brown eyes toward the corner of the room. “We aren’t alone.”
Willie jabbed the knife deeper and twisted it. “Shut up,” he hissed. “Stupid cow.”
“I see him,” Took said.
The pale, naked—he’d never met a vampire that slept in pajamas—figure dangled in the periphery of his vision. Someone had hung him from a meat hook for the day, the point of it jammed into his back and threaded up under his shoulder blade. Lines of black ichor stained the white skin and dripped down into pans laid out under his feet. His eyes were open, but it was a reptile sort of alertness, slow and cold. He’d gorged—his stomach was distended with too much blood, and he needed to digest before what passed for a person could come back.
He wouldn’t react unless someone got too close to him.
“Let Allan go,” Took repeated calmly as he lifted the gun. “All I want is to get her out of here. Then you and your master can try and get away before they burn this place.”
Willie’s laugh showed rotted teeth and a white coating of pus on his tongue. Pride glittered in his eyes, which were still unexpectedly pretty despite the drugs and the ichor. He pulled himself up straight.
“Him?” He spat in the direction of the hung vampire. “I don’t work for him. Not anymore. He works for me now.”
Allan dug her fingers into his arm. “You’re going straight to hell for this, Daly,” she spat out. “The sheriff will track you down and gut you if you touch me, and for what?”
“I damned myself years ago,” Willie said flatly. He licked the blood off Allan’s neck, and she grimaced in disgust, but the knife at her throat kept her still. Willie lifted his head, spit and blood smeared around his mouth, and smiled widely. “Might as well enjoy the ride. And once I prove myself, I’ll get to enjoy it for a long, fucking time, maybe even longer than the sheriff is around. He’s an old man. Things happen to old men, and young ones take over.”
Behind Took, on the other side of the door, the stairs creaked.
