Time was up. Took swung the gun away from Willie and fired two shots straight into the vampire’s bloated stomach. It burst in a welter of clotted blood and a tangle of wet intestine that squirmed and dripped bile into the blood bowls. The vampire screamed itself out of his torpor and thrashed blindly on the hooks as they tore through muscle and meat. As it ripped itself free, Took tossed his gun into the sink.
Allan yelped and tried to bolt, but Willie dragged her back. He tightened his grip on her arm as he backed away from the vampire.
“It was him,” Willie yelled, his voice pitched to cut through the eerie, off-timbre screech that vibrated out of the vampire’s throat. He pulled the knife away from Allan’s throat and jabbed the bloodied point toward Took. “He did it. He shot you, Matthew!”
The vampire dropped to the ground with a thud. Its bare feet slapped against the tiles as it lunged at Willie—the only one in the room with a weapon. It slapped Allan out of the way with an almost dismissive backhand that sent her flying.
“You hurt meee,” Matthew mangled out through two sets of fully extended fangs as it grabbed Willie’s wrist. The bone snapped with a matchstick-brittle sound as Matthew tightened his fingers and lifted him off the ground. “Little liar.”
“No!” Willie writhed like a fish on the hook. He dropped the knife from bruise-purpled fingers and caught it in his other hand. “Not me. You know me! Goddammit, not me! It was him!”
Matthew didn’t listen. It latched onto Willie’s neck with dagger-sharp teeth and tore it out. The gush of blood splashed over Matthew’s face and throat, and it gulped it out of the air like water from a fountain. Pain wrung a cry out of Willie, but the one advantage of being a Goat was resilience. He punched his knife up through Matthew’s chin with a quick, brutal stroke and twisted the blade.
With a shriek of garbled offense, tongue pinned to the roof of his mouth, Matthew flung Willie away from him.
“Come on,” Took hissed as he grabbed Allan’s collar and pulled her up. “We need to go.”
She scrambled unsteadily to her feet. Her eyes were unfocused and her lips split.
“I… I…. This wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” Allan shook her head and blinked hard. Her gaze shifted over Took’s shoulder and widened in dismay. “Look out!”
Took ducked and a pretty blonde girl missed his throat by half a foot. Matted hair flapped in filthy elflocks as she flew past. She tried to twist in midair, enough to give Took a glimpse of her pale, half-made-up face, but didn’t quite pull it off. She hit the ground and tumbled head over heels into the wall.
“Go,” Took snapped at Allan as he shoved her toward the door. “Think later.”
He dragged her with him down the vandalized hall of past clients. Three photos down and Allan pulled herself together, the stumble gone from her steps as she pulled even with Took.
“There’s others,” she said. “They’re in the garage. Willie told them to wait until he got Ma… the vampire. We have to stop them.”
Took laughed at her. “I dropped my gun. You’ve lost yours,” he said. “What are we going to do, order pizza and breathe garlic at them? Just move.”
She looked reluctant but did as she was told. They burst through the doorway into the hall, and the pale gray man in the pale gray suit swung a crowbar in a short, brutal arc at Took’s head. There was no time or space to duck.
Took caught the crowbar. The metal hook jarred against his palm and stopped. Slow, dull surprise crossed the gray man’s face. Took bared his fangs and growled as he wrenched the crowbar out of the Goat’s suddenly slack grip. He jabbed it into the man’s stomach, buried the shaft inches deep in soft flesh, and doubled him over in a spray of vomit.
“You’re one of them,” Allan spluttered. Her voice was threaded with desperate, raw panic as she tried to pull away from him. “What is this, a game? A trick?”
Took reeled her in and shoved her at the door. “Yes,” he said—still, two years in, sorta lisped—as he stepped over the groaning gray man. “We’re pranking you. Just get outside. I called the sheriff. He should be here soon.”
It didn’t work to calm Allan down. It had been one shock too many, and she was caught up in her fear. She stumbled forward at his prod, but the muttered round of accusation and plea continued under her breath.
“I don’t want to be a vampire. Mary, Mother of God, be with me now. Kill me. Kill me, don’t damn me. It should have been… not Gatlin. It was meant to be—”
Took fumbled the door open and both of them fell out into the evening sunlight. He lost his grip on Allan and she lurched away from him, her feet tangling as she staggered down the stairs. He swore and went after her.
It felt like a punch at his back. Took didn’t realize what had happened at first. It was only when he crashed into Allan, both of them blown off their feet and his back hot and itchy from fire and splinters, that he registered the crackle of fire behind him.
Allan sprawled under him on the ground, unmoving but still breathing. After a shaken second, Took rolled onto his raw back. Chunks of bricks and glass slid off him as he moved, and he stared at the old house as it went up in flames. Curtains flared with the eagerness of polyester blends, and the closed-off windows darkened and cracked.
Someone screamed. It would be Matthew, Took knew. Vampires were hard to kill, but he couldn’t work up the energy past his ringing ears to care. He stared at the fire for a few moments longer and then let the blow to his head drag him down into oblivion.
Chapter Two
APPLETON WOREthe tragedy of the last twenty-four hours with the self-satisfied anger of someone who’d wanted an excuse for a while. Handwritten signs were tacked up in shop windows to announce “living only” and “no heartbeat, no service.” The schools were closed, and pickup trucks, packed like clown cars with sullen, armed men, drove in slow circuits around the streets.
“Small-town hospitality,” Madoc drawled as he watched through the heavily tinted window of the Jeep as one of the pickups drove past. It would be so easy to just reach out and grab one of them and drag them in through the window so he could open their throat. He felt the dull itch in the back of his fangs, but he resisted the urge. It wouldn’t make his job any easier, and the car would smell like takeout for the rest of the trip. “That’s one thing that never changes.”
On the seat next to him, Lawrence looked up from her tablet, over the smudged lenses of her glasses, and sneered at the tail end of the pickup. “Idiots. What good do they think that will do againstus?”
