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Three vampires surround my savior, whaling on him with fists, kicks, and, yes, one of them has a cattle prod. A fourth vampire—at least I hope it was a vampire, there’s not much left of it—lies dead on the ground, its body ripped into pieces and strewn across the yard. He got at least one of them, but now the tide seems to have turned. I would have thought a fight between supes would be a lot more dynamic, have cinema-worthy scenes, jumps, tumbles, roars, but this fight is stationary. And it’s not much of a fight. The assailants are big, rangy athletes, built like soldiers, dressed all in black. I’m not sure why it takes four vampires in their prime to bring down one half-naked, dirty creature, but the way they act lets me think they expected more resistance, more of a fight.

Whatever they expected, they were mistaken. As I watch, I realize I didn’t imagine the sizzling and smoke around my savior’s neck before. It has increased since I lost sight of him, and now there is no way to misinterpret the tiny plumes wafting out of what’s left of his shirt. Or the way his upper body reddens and swells, skin breaking when they hit him, as if he were one giant bruise. The stink of sizzling flesh hangs in the air. He can’t even stand, stumbling and falling as he tries to retaliate or block their attacks. Not a fight. A beating, more vicious than anything I’ve ever seen.

My mind blanks. White spots dance through my vision as I whip out my gun, point, and pull the trigger twice. I don’t think this through, but I don’t have to. This is wrong on a level I don’t care to comprehend. The silver bullets hit the vampire with the cattle prod in the head, going right through his skull, splattering his brains everywhere, and ricocheting on the concrete. The second vampire doesn’t stay conveniently still, but I still hit his neck and send him to the ground, gurgling and spitting blood as he tries to breathe with a shredded throat. He doesn’t need air, but instincts are strong, so he tries and tries as he thrashes around. He will heal, presumably faster than I’d like, but for now he’s out of the picture.

Which leaves me with vampire number three. He charges at me, his fingers grinding as they shift into pale claws. I struggle to keep up with him as he jumps and climbs the wall beneath me, roaring with rage. My heart pumps blood into my head so fast that I get dizzy, but my training holds. The thunder of my last shot echoes through the abandoned apartment complex and I stare wide-eyed as my attacker twitches and falls off the wall. He crashes into the ground and stays down, eyes still wide open, a gaping hole in his forehead.

I relearn to breathe when my heartbeat slows down, gasping for air I didn’t notice I missed. I’m alive. And the vampires are down. Not dead, I think, but down. Normal vampires that don’t take twenty bullets to be impressed, thank god. This day couldn’t have gotten any weirder if they’d just shrugged off my shots as well.

A groan draws my eyes to my savior. He blinks at me, kneeling in a pool of both blood and shreds of clothing, then falls over. I wait for him to move, crouching on the wall and hoping very much I don’t have to hop down into the courtyard. If I can stay up here, it’s a hop and skip back out of the veil, even if I break something. If I go down into the courtyard with him, I’m trapped. Please get up, please get up— He doesn’t.

The sense of urgency in my chest hasn’t eased. He’s a mess, on the verge of death, and I know somewhere deep down in my mind that I’ll regret it forever if I don’t help him. I can’t imagine why, but I can’t ignore it. Couldn’t, ever since this whole disaster started. I shuffle along the wall until I find a slight dip in the brick structure and jump down. As I hurry towards my savior, the throat-less vampire vaults up and my hand raises the gun to blast him again before I can think about what I’m doing. The bullet rips through his face and he falls back over, thankfully lifeless. And before I know it I kneel beside the sizzling mess that is the vampire-in-a-box, shuffling through his clothes as he tries to slap me off with bleeding arms he can barely raise.

A shiny amulet rests in a dip of blackened flesh on his chest, burrowing deeper and deeper as his body reacts as if he is both burning and having an allergic reaction. I’ve never seen anything like it, never heard of any magical item doing something like this, but it doesn’t matter. If this is the amulet’s doing, it’s an easy fix.

I grab the chain and yank hard. It breaks with a tinkling sound and the sizzling, the swelling, the dying stops. The amulet feels light in my hand, light and hot but cooling fast. I frown down at it, then at the motionless vampire in front of me. Rescue mission: check. Vampire still alive: check.

What now?

CHAPTER FIVE

THE VAMPIRE IS heavy in my arms, slippery with blood and rain-softened grime, his limbs dangling as I drag him up rickety stairs. The building next to the courtyard seemed like the safest bet to hide out in, but I didn’t feel safe on the first floor. My monkey instincts told me to go up, so I’m going up. With a little over two-hundred pounds of passed out immortal in my grip. Fantastic.

By now I’m almost as dirty as he is, covered in smears of whatever grime clings to his skin, blood, and small mementos of rotting vampire. My once white shirt is now gray-red-brown and clinging uncomfortably to my skin. My wounded arm twinges sharply with every step, but at least it doesn’t seem like I injured a muscle. To top it off, my already wet clothes are sweat soaked from the exertion, the nerves, and the adrenaline tapering off, my knees shaking as I pull the vampire up the last few stairs. I tried carrying him, but that was a bust. Couldn’t even lift him to waist height. Dragging him up the stairs like a sack of coals was my only option, even if I risk making everything worse. Not that I could tell if I’ve done more harm; he looks like raw meat with all the wounds and the glistening coating of blood.

Dropping him in the hallway as carefully as I can, I turn in a tight circle. The floor I’m on has three doors, one of which is a fire safety door, which means steel and weight. Safety. Burglars shredded the other two doors at some point, but since the building has been condemned for years, this has likely been the case for a while. Water damage has warped the floors and done its part in weakening the stairwell, but the hallway looks stable enough and structurally intact. Thank you, Hunter’s Handbook, safety section four.

I’ll have to keep the vampire in check until I can find out what the heck is going on, and my options don’t look all too inviting. The broken doors won’t help, but the steel door might at least slow my vampire down if he makes a run for it. At least if I ignore the significant possibility of him simply jumping out the window. He writhes a little, groaning as I hoist him up, but he does nothing to help me get him into the room. I drop him in the middle of the dusty, moldy room and turn to close the door. There, all safe.

When I turn back, he’s up. Very up, and very close. Not even a stagger, no sway, just a murderous glare as he squares off with me, panting.

From this close, he is imposing. Sun-tanned skin peeks through the smeared dirt, offering glimpses of even more scars riddling his chest. They are too regular to be accidental, wandering over his bulging pectorals in groups of five, as if someone was counting the days with a knife to his chest. A crater of a burn wound sits right at the center of his sternum, looking like a meteor strike down to the bone. And I am the sole focus of all that glorious destruction, looming just an arm’s reach away. Way, way too close.

I can’t help myself; I flinch away. Not that there is a lot of space behind me, just the sturdy metal door I insisted on closing. Who needs escape routes anyway? Hah. I bump my back against the door and raise my hands, hoping against hope he won’t see my fingers shake. “Hey there, remember me? I’m the guy you saved back in the hospital. I’m just repaying the favor. Let’s stay cool here; no need for rash actions.”

Something flashes through his eyes, and he growls a warning. I swallow dryly and stay exactly how and where I am. I have no idea if he understands or remembers what happened, but I’m pretty sure it would be a bad idea to move. “So, those vampires, huh? Pretty harsh if you ask me. Any idea why they went after you? I mean, they could have killed you like that, but they didn’t,” I say, keeping my voice low and friendly. Even if he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, he has to see that I’m not threatening him.

He cocks his head, a puzzled expression appearing on his face, then widens his eyes and grabs at his chest. The last tatters of his shirt front rip when he tugs it open. He bears them no mind. His hands fly over his chest wound, his neck, searching for something that isn’t there anymore. Right, his bling.

I pull the amulet out of my pocket and hold it up, wincing. Now he’ll think I’m a thief on top of everything else. “Here. I’m sorry I took it, but it was hurting you and—”

He’s on me in a flash, drowning me in the smell of blood and pain and fear. I yelp and flinch again, hitting my head against the steel door. The impact rattles through my already concussed brain like hot spikes.

The amulet’s weight lifts from my hand, and the vampire turns, roaring as he throws the metal disk against the wall. It cuts into the plaster and gets stuck there with a sharp, dry shnick sound. That doesn’t seem to be enough for him, though. He stalks over and smashes his fist into it, twisting and breaking it into pieces and punching through the drywall in the process. Then he turns again, chest heaving, and glowers at me. Another guttural growl fills the room as he sizes me up, his eyes lingering on my neck.

Hooo boy. I can’t run, it will only make him want to chase me. And I can’t lock him in this room, it has too many windows. I can’t talk to him because he doesn’t understand, and it would be a waste of a perfectly fine rescue mission to shoot him now. I’m officially out of options. I need help from someone who speaks vampire, and Asha is god knows where, doing god knows what. Probably throwing my stuff into the Bracket River to wipe all traces that I’ve ever been here. Fucking Hunter code.

Then it hits me. Stanley. Loreley gave me his number for situations exactly like this, didn’t she? Adding to that, he’s a vampire, and he owes me. What better way to repay my leniency than to come save me from being eaten again?

Now I only have to get out my phone without setting the wild beast in front of me off. I move slowly, carefully, let him watch my wandering hand intently while I keep the other one up and far away from my gun. “I’m just taking out my phone to call a friend,” I explain. “We need help with this mess, and he’s just the person for that. You’ll like him; he has fangs too.” At least I hope they’ll like each other, or we’re both fucked. Stanley and I, that is, the wild vampire will be just fine.

He lets me pull out the phone. He even lets me dial, although the beep-boop accompanying the dialing makes him cock his head like a dog. I take a deep breath of relief when he just watches on as I press the phone to my ear, very aware of the fact that he will hear every word of the conversation.

Stanley picks up at the fourth ring, sounding both hesitant and breathless. “Hello?”

Thank you baby Jesus. “Stanley, it’s Gideon. The Hunter Gideon, I mean. Remember how you said you’d do almost anything to make the whole biting thing up to me? Well, almost anything is just what I need right now.”

I give him the rough address and even mention a fight between vampires, but leave out the specifics. He’s surprised to find out I’m inside the veil, but doesn’t comment on it after a single snort of disbelief, just listens to my clumsy explanations. I can’t be sure he isn’t part of this, can’t know if he’s giving Loreley a blow-by-blow of what we’ve been doing or are about to do. I’ll have to surprise him and just hope he’ll be able to do something about this mess.