Page 63 of Bishop's Flight
The man’s head moved in an incremental nod.
“Good. My blood will help stop the bleeding.”
Another small nod.
Carwyn calculated the spread of the shot, the velocity it must have had to blast through the door and hit the man.
A second shot in the heat of panic and fear.
Miguel was dying in front of his eyes, and Clarence Johnson lay still on the ground, blood from his nose seeping into the dry earth.
Miguel was at the hospital,and Clarence Johnson was in a hole in the ground.
Carwyn sat cross-legged next to the hole and the bleary-eyed man who had shot Carwyn’s new friend. Clarence’s head and shoulders were sticking out of the earth, but everything below that was immersed in rock; the earth vampire had complete and utter control.
He kept his voice low, hoping to hear a buzzing sound from his phone in the distance or the call from Lee that Miguel had emerged from the surgery with his heart still beating.
“The man you shot,” Carwyn said quietly. “He’s a good man. Has two children. He coaches baseball even though he doesn’t like it. He’s searching for a lost boy.”
Clarence Johnson coughed, and Carwyn could see the man was confused. “What’s going on?”
“You’re going to explain why you shot him in the chest when all we did was knock on your door, Clarence.”
The man struggled against the ground, but the earth didn’t give way.
This ground knew Carwyn now. It would keep his captive.
The human was slowly waking from his stupor. “H-how did I get in this hole?”
“I opened the ground and set you in it.” He dug one hand in the ground and closed his fist around the earth, which responded by compressing Clarence’s chest until the man gasped.
“What are you doing?” The words burst from his mouth as if the ground had squeezed them from the man’s throat. “What’s happening?”
“Do you think Miguel felt pressure like this?” He clenched his hand again, then released it. “When you shot through the door. Do you think his chest felt pressure, or did it just feel likefire?” He pulled from his amnis and sent heat from his body into the earth, enough to make the human feel a scalding burn cover his body.
Clarence Johnson screamed into the night. “Oh God, what is happening?”
They were at Preston’s ranch, an empty stretch of land with no one within yelling distance. Clarence’s head swiveled around, searching the darkness, but the only figures other than Carwyn were two vampires from Agnes and Rose’s guard, watching in the distance and waiting to see what information Carwyn could glean from the human who had shot Miguel.
The man was sweating and coughing. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“Those would have been very appropriate questions to ask us when we knocked on your door.” Carwyn bent down to Clarence’s face and let his fangs fall, slick and shining in the moonlight. “Instead, you shot blindly and now my friend might die.”
“Oh fuck!” The man started to twist, but he couldn’t move. “You’re one of them. You’re one of them!”
“So ya already know about vampires, do you? That should save us some time.” Carwyn squeezed his hand again, and the twisting stopped. “You know what I can do, so you know you’re going to answer all my questions, Clarence.”
The man was crying and shaking his head. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I thought you were him.”
“Thought I was who?”
“The Dutchman.”
Dutchman. Interesting. “Is the Dutchman a vampire?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know. At first I didn’t know any of this stuff. I don’t want to know anything about it!”
“Why would this Dutchman come to your house?”
