Page 24 of Slayer Mom
“He’s your great and wise martial arts master that you love with a pure affection?”
“I’m not talking about him.”
“But it is a male.”
I rolled my eyes and gripped my knife how he showed me. “So, how do I kill you?”
“You don’t. I’m the Grand Master. I’d have to work very hard to help you to kill me for it to stick. I’ve been burned. I’ve been staked out in the sun. I’ve been eviscerated. I’ve even had my head chopped off. I’m telling you how to kill other vampires.”
“Wouldn’t you prefer the vampires stay alive instead of me?”
“Are vampires alive? I thought that we were disgusting corpses. Don’t say that to vampires. It’s rude, and they will kill you for it.”
“They’ll try.”
“Don’t be cocky. You’ve accidentally blundered into this slaying business, but don’t act like you’re all that.”
I straightened up and lowered my knife. “What are you doing? You definitely have no business helping me in any way, but particularly not to slay your own kind.”
“You won’t be slaying any vampires any time soon. There aren’t as many of us as zombies, but we are much harder to kill. Still, you’re clearly determined to involve yourself in my world, so we’ll make the most of it. You killed my favorite zombieexterminator, so you’re going to replace her. You can’t do that if you’re an embarrassment. That means you have to have some defense against vampires. Comprende? That’s French for, do you understand?”
I crouched down and raised my knife. “What kind of Grand Master uses nice housewives for their zombie exterminators? Still, I guess that explains why you aren’t eating me or just killing me right off the bat. I’ll try to appreciate it, although you will probably get me killed slaying zombies.”
“But you’ll be useful to me in the meantime, which is important for someone who stole something so valuable to me.”
“So, how do I kill a vampire?”
“You’ll focus on disabling them and then running away. You’re faster now, right?”
I blinked at him. He knew about the potion. “Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to club the werewolf to death or stab the other one.”
“You aim for the usual delicate organs, heart, kidneys, brains, and then, after you’ve stabbed two of those places, you run. Probably come find me and I’ll introduce you properly to the vampire in question. Or kill him.”
“How will you kill them?”
He smiled the most creepy, terrifying, Grinchlike grin, such a large smile it swallowed the entire world. “There are so many ways. I wouldn’t want to give you nightmares. Developing new methods of torture and death are some of my favorite things.”
I shivered and looked down at my knife. I was not asking him any more questions. I did drills with him, there at the docks, for hours, until the sun faded from the sky and a beautiful sunset spread over the river. I had no idea a knife could be held so many ways. When it was almost dark, the zombies started coming.
I gasped when I saw movement in the shadows behind him and edged back towards my van.
“Where are you going?” He hadn’t given me anything other than orders for hours.
“I think there are undead behind you,” I whispered.
“They’ve been waiting for hours. You only sensed them just now?” He tutted like I was seriously deranged or pathetic. “Come back here and keep working on your defense.”
“But the zombies will…”
“They will gather. The more that gather, the easier it will be to kill them all. Distance between two points adds so much effort to slaying. You will be an efficient slayer because you work for me now.”
“Wait. I never agreed to that.”
“Do you want your husband to die?”
I gasped and glared at him. “How dare you threaten him? What did he ever do to you?”
“He didn’t keep his wife home and satisfied, so she wasn’t out running around and getting involved in things which, as you know, are none of your business. Every husband’s first duty is to keep his wife too worn out from intermarriage affairs to do anything else.”
