Page 25 of Slayer Mom
I just gaped at him for daring to say something that humiliating until I darted in and stabbed his kidney. I missed because he moved effortlessly to the side, twisting my blade flat with his claws. He was beyond barbaric, beyond chauvinistic, beyond anything.
“Better, but not aimed quite far enough over. Don’t bother giving vampires stomach wounds. It just irritates them, and then they eat you to rebuild the material you disrupted.”
“Eat or drink?”
He glanced at my throat. “I could give you a demonstration, for purely scientific purposes. Yourhusband wouldn’t mind.” He wiggled his brows at me.
I hissed and stabbed, that time aiming it right. When he blocked his kidneys, I was already pulling back and on the second strike aimed at his heart, quick enough to nick his black silk shirt.
He withdrew a step and then fingered the material. “I am satisfied that you will not bring shame upon the title of the Grand Master’s Zombie Exterminator. Shall we?” He bowed with a flourish at the horde of zombies that stretched out into the darkness as far as I could see. “You will be particularly useful because of your marking, as long as you don’t die. That would be embarrassing.”
“I’d hate to embarrass you. I finally have something to live for.” I swallowed hard and edged towards the zombies, while the Grand Master fell in behind me. “Maybe you should have been drilling me on how to kill these guys.”
“They’re already dead. How hard can it be?”
He was mocking me. This was going to be so embarrassing. I took a stance, and held my knife, waiting for them to come to me, while the Grand Master stood at my back, breathing down my neck. Was he smelling me? This was not the time. Not that it was ever the time, but I was trying to focus on the zombies. Worrying if he was going to bite me, or do the other thing, the blissed out thing was very distracting.
“Could you not do that?”
“What?” he breathed, sending goosebumps down my spine.
“That. Give me a little fighting room.”
“If you’re fighting zombies, you’re doing it all wrong. You need to exterminate.”
“Fine. Give me extermination room!” I leapt forward and stabbed the first zombie in the face and jerked up, exactly the way that the vampire exterminatorhad done. It was surprisingly easy to do all the things I’d seen her do, much easier than before I took the antidote. What had been in it? Were there side-effects I didn’t know about? Addiction? That’s what the Grand Master had mentioned, that it had been inevitable for me to come back for another dose. No time to worry about that now, because I was in the fray and moving fast.
“Good, but put more of your weight behind it. You need to make quick work of them. There are so many zombies, far too many. If they were determined to overrun the city, it would take me serious effort to stop them.”
“Heaven forbid you exert any effort,” I snarled while I reversed my knife and ripped through another monster’s brain.
He reached past me and grabbed a skull that would have bitten me and squeezed. I flinched back from the spray of brains and felt his iron chest against me, his arms encircling me as he just squeezed brain after brain like ripe fruit. It was so disgusting. This entire situation was just miserable and disgusting, but here I was, so I might as well learn from this experience.
I ducked under his arm and kicked a zombie back then lobotomized another one, and another. And another. On and on and on. It got quite exhausting. My arm was a limp noodle when the horde finally stopped coming, mostly from the Grand Master’s blurring exhibition of speedy grossness.
It was around three a.m. when he finally smashed the last brain with his shiny black boot and turned to give me a pleasant smile. “You are now well-versed in the extermination of zombie. It helps that you’re marked for turning, not eating. It makes them more hesitant to rip you apart. And the marking is incrediblyuseful to draw them in. How do you keep from luring them to your home?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I’ll need to call a cab, and then take a salt soak, and then come back here and get my car.”
“You salt soak at your lover’s house?”
“No, motels. And he’s not my lover.”
“Right. Your husband is the only one you desire.” His black eyes mocked me.
“If we’re done here, then I’ll get home.”
He picked me up in his arms, tossed me a few times until I clung to his neck out of nerves, and then he ran. It was all a blur, literally, because everything flashed by way too fast to see anything until he set me down, reeling in front of a very nice hotel. I’d never been there before.
“I own it. There’s a room on the bottom floor, access through the side door. In it, you will find everything you need to change into, and then a driver will take you back to your car. You’re welcome. Don’t worry, I’ll take it out of your Zombie Exterminator stipend.”
“Wait, I get paid?” I asked, straightening up from my crouch where I’d been contemplating throwing up.
He looked at me as if I was an idiot. “The prime motivating factor for humans is greed, or sex, but since you’re clearly not interested in exploring adventurous encounters with the night element, we’ll stick with money. Fill out the paperwork in the room, unless you’d like to invite me in with you.” His slick smile gave me shivers.
I rubbed my arms. “I’m good.”
“You have no idea what good even means, not until you’ve tasted my darkness, but I’ll allow you your sad self-deceptions.”
