Page 72 of The Vampire Always Rises
“But we don’t have any weapons,” said one of the dancers (the one whose testicles were still visibly noticeable through his booty shorts).
I averted my eyes from his nether bits, and gave them all an encouraging look. “Pick up whatever you can find outside the house, and use it to your advantage. Be creative! Be resourceful! But above all, take down those auction dudes.”
“Yar!” one of the men shouted, and although we had to immediately hush any further such noises, I promised them all they could yell as loudly as they liked when the actual attack took place.
“I know some karate,” Ellis offered. “I used to do it after school so that I could keep from being beat up by all the homophobes. I must have watchedKarate Kidat least a hundred times back then. Do you remember, Tempest?”
“I remember you swanning around in a white outfit whenever you got a new belt, but that’s about it,” I admitted.
He tried to look modest. “I went all the way up to a brown belt before my mother took me out of the class.”
“Good. You and Armande can attack from the side opposite our dancing pirates.”
We synchronized our watches, and scattered.
“Hello,” I said a minute later when the front door of the villa was opened. It wasn’t a huge house, smaller than Merrick’s, but I could see the turquoise glint of a swimming pool behind it, and a stepped yard that dropped down to reveal a view of Rome in the distance. Huge, deep fuchsia bougainvillea lined a crazy tile walkway up to the door, filling the air with its heavy honeysuckle scent, while the villa itself rose with cream stone magnificence three stories above my head.
The man who answered the door was short, stocky, and had the sort of cauliflower ears that made me think he spent a lot of time in a boxing ring. “Who are you?” he asked, suspicion fairly dripping from every pore.
“I’m Tempest, and this is Kelso. I’m here to ask if you’ve seen my boyfriend. Well, fiancé, really, although he hasn’t asked me, but I’m not going to shack up with him without being married, because I think marriage shows a certain level of commitment, don’t you? Besides, getting married is number twelve on my bucket list, and if there’s anything I’m serious about, it’s crossing things off my bucket list.”
Cauliflower Ears stared at me like I was a two-headed blue whale, then started to close the door. Praying that the other two prongs were doing their things, I pushed my way past the man before he could shut me out.
“Did I mention that Carlo is my cousin? No? Well, he is. COUSIN CARLO!” I bellowed the last few words while taking a few steps into a foyer that had beautiful mosaic tile on the floor. “I thought you’d be worried about me, so here I am!”
To the left, double doors were flung open and Giovanni appeared, his dead, flat eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?” he asked, shifting to block me when I tried to peer around him. Kelso growled, distracting Giovanni for a moment.
“Oh, I think we both know what I’m doing here, so you can just tell me where Merrick and his friends are, and we’ll be on our way.”Merrick? You here? I know you must be, because I can feel something warm in my brain, and that can only be you, so you might as well answer me.
Giovanni glowered.
Merrick?
Several things happened at that moment. First of all, I was mentally forming a scathing sentence to let Merrick know that if he was conscious and able to answer me, but chose not to, he had a few things he was about to hear, and none of them were any too nice. Second, Giovanni, evidently deciding that capture was the better part of valor, grabbed my arm and jerked me forward into the room. And third, Kelso’s low growl became a savage snarl when he leaped forward and flung himself at Giovanni.
All hell broke loose then. There was a crashing of glass and several bloodcurdling whoops as the vampire dance squad flung themselves into the room, brandishing various garden implements. Behind me, from the opposite side of the house, I heard Ellis give his bestKarate Kidyell, and the loud urging of Armande for Ellis to beat the tar out of the man at the door.
I had a brief glimpse of my cousin Carlo and another man at the back of a long narrow room filled with two rows of chairs, from which a half-dozen men in dark suits were in various stages of rising. Beyond them, a big black table lurked, and upon that table was the trussed-up form of a man. For a moment, my heart leaped, but the man’s hair was blond, not as black as a crow’s wing.
Carlo took one look at me and escaped out a door on the far end, his buddy looking startled for a moment, but following. The man on the table didn’t move.
It was a glint of metal in Giovanni’s hand that pushed me over the line. I had started past him to rescue whoever it was who was tied up, but from the corner of my eye I saw Giovanni twist away from Kelso and pull out a switchblade.
“No one hurts my dog!” I roared in a voice that surprised even me. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d kicked Giovanni’s knee, flinching at the horrible crunching sound that followed. He collapsed and started howling, but I stomped on his hand twice until he released the knife, at which point I snatched it up and ordered Kelso to follow me.
The vampire dancers moved in, shouting and waving garden tools at the men who were still gathered around the chairs. I paused long enough to leap to a chair and yell, “Let them go if they’ll leave peacefully. If not, take ’em down, boys, take ’em down!”
The vampires whooped and moved forward en masse. The men, who I gathered were there to purchase vampires for nefarious purposes, glanced at one another, and all lifted their hands in surrender.
I hopped down to check the man on the table. It was Ciaran, and I sagged a little in relief when I realized he was breathing, although he appeared to be unconscious. I used the knife to cut through the zip ties binding his hands and feet and, with a mumbled apology for leaving him, ran to the door through which Carlo had escaped, Kelso on my heels. We emerged in some sort of a back hall, with a staircase on my left, and a closed door on my right. I took a quick glance through the door, but it led to an empty kitchen.
“Up we go,” I told Kelso, and we leaped up the stairs, the switchblade in my hand, and my heart in my throat.
Please tell me you’re all right, Merrick. Please don’t be dead. Not now, when I realize that I’m falling in love with you, and that I need you, and more importantly, that you need me so you won’t be a sad, lonely old vampire who lives by himself with no company but fifteen cats and a stray otter named Aloysius.
I would never name my otter Aloysius.
Joy flooded me at the soft voice in my head.You’re alive!
