Page 4

CHAPTER 4

The road twisted and turned, but the night was warm and the stars were bright, so it wasn’t all bad. Huge leaning trees muscled out the palms now, and a whole chorus of things chirped and chittered in the dark.

“Is he awake yet?” I asked, peering over at Victor draped in Zee’s arms.

Zee jiggled him. “Does he look awake? No, he’s not awake, and he ain’t gettin’ any lighter. Skinny as a pole does not mean he’s as light as one.”

“Shall I take him?”

“No, I got him.” He shifted Victor’s position. “What? Why you smirkin’ like that?”

“Nothing.” I smirked.

“Spit it out, Kitten.”

“It’s cute, that’s all. You carrying him, like you always do. You know, after we first met him you claimed to hate him, but it was so obvious you were secretly in love with Victor the whole time.”

“Ugh, I was not. If you remember correctly, you were in love with his power-daddy vibes, an’ I caught them feels off you... like an STD.”

“I don’t think love works like an STD.”

“It fuckin’ does,” he snorted, not believing it for a second. “Else why would I love such a stuffy, boring, neck-sucking, furniture-making fossil?”

“Sure.” I chuckled back. “You caught love off me.”

We ambled onward. The road had to go somewhere, right? Maybe somewhere with a phone so I could call Leomaris and explain all this.

“Shouldn’t Sleepy McFang Face be awake by now?” Zee asked.

I tucked my thumbs into my pants pockets. “I think he got a power-up like you did, and that’s why he was able to freeze the mafia trolls with only a word. And it seems like maybe the boost at the same time as the shotgun blast to the back knocked him out. Like you uh... you know...”

“Like I passed out when your tongue did the dirty on my dick back at the Stephanie Hotel an’ I got god powers?”

“Uhm, yeah. Like that.”

“So you think he’s alright? We don’t need to take him to a vampire vet or something?”

He didn’t look bad, but with only the light shining from the stars it was real hard to tell. “Maybe we should see if he’s healed that gunshot wound? It did look bad.”

Zee stopped. “Okay, imma pass him to you.” He dropped Victor’s feet, propping up his limp body on the asphalt. “You grab him, an’ I’ll take a look at his back.”

“Okay.” I widened my stance, and held out my arms—like a trust exercise, but the person who was supposed to trust us was unconscious.

“You got him?” Zee asked, holding Victor under the arms, readying to hand him over.

“Yup. Pass him to me.”

Zee shoved, and Victor dropped like a stone. “Wait!” I lunged, sort of caught his wrist, and jerked Victor up into my arms with his arm flung over my shoulder. His center of gravity shifted, threatening to flop him out of my arms again. I twisted, scooping him around the waist.

“How am I gonna see the hole in his back if you’re dancin’ with him? Hold still.”

“I just... need...”

Bright high beams blasted out of the gloom, illuminating the three of us in a flood of blinding light. Zee screamed. His wings popped out, and for some bizarre reason he covered his crotch, despite the fact he was wearing clothes.

Light burned to the back of my night-adjusted eyes. I tried to shield them from the glare, and caught sight of a figure behind an open car door. A figure with a gun.

A shot barked.

Zee yelped again, then grabbed my arm and dragged me—with Victor heaved over my shoulder—off the road, down a bank, and into a ditch. Water sloshed around my ankles, slurping at my shoes. Victor slipped from my grip and flopped against the bank. I grabbed him and slung him over my other shoulder. Not easy, considering he’s real tall and I’m not.

“C’mon, run, Kitten!”

“Wait—” I stepped after Zee and dropped, up to my knees in slurpy water. What was this place?

Shouts sailed behind us, chasing us down. Maybe it was Toby’s family come to avenge him or the cops chasing us down or a pitchfork-carrying mob. I really did not want to hang around to find out why they’d shot first instead of asking questions. If we could get some space between us, we could stop and regroup, then once Victor was safe and awake, I’d go back and eat them all. Or not. Depending on whether they were good or bad people.

We waded deeper. Water climbed up my thighs, sloshing from Zee’s splashing ahead.

Finally Zee stopped our retreat, and leaned against some kind of enormous tree with knotted roots that looked like frozen worms reaching down beneath the water’s black surface.

“We’re far enough away, right?” Zee pressed a hand to his chest, panting.

“Uhm, I guess?” Everything around us was black—black water, black trees, black sky. No stars. Nothing.

“A sign back on the road said no swimming alligators, so we’re good,” Zee said, mostly to himself.

“There was a sign about alligators?” I hadn’t seen any sign.

“Yeah, they can’t swim ’cause of their fur.”

“Oh yeah, sure, probably.” Zee had asked me what an alligator was a few days ago, when Toby mentioned Florida had them. The hotel’s reference books had been very clear, and had a whole section about alligators being small furry creatures that ate grains, like mice.

“Furry things can’t swim,” Zee said with confidence, so he must have been right.

“Oh. Okay.” I wasn’t sure why there needed to be a sign telling everyone alligators couldn’t swim. Maybe it was a Florida thing.

We fell quiet... and everything else had fallen quiet too. Earlier, it had seemed like there were a million critters chittering out here, but not anymore. The silence was... weird. Wasn’t it? Maybe we’d disturbed them. Hopefully they were all very small, cute, and harmless. Like alligators.

“You think we’re safe?” Zee whispered.

I couldn’t hear the people anymore, or see any headlights. “Maybe.”

“Okay, imma turn my lights on.” Gradually, a soft purple hue illuminated the waist-deep water around us, radiating off Zee’s wings in gentle purple waves.

“Wow...”

“I know, I’m fuckin’ amazing. But also, Fancy Fangs’s head is underwater, so you might wanna?—”

“Oh!” I hitched Victor up, creating a waterfall from all his messy hair. Zee reached out, offering to hold him, so I scooped our limp, very wet vampire into his arms.

Victor’s head flopped face first into Zee’s shoulder, but I could see all of his back now.

“Okay, so his shirt is all torn,” I said. “But his skin’s all healed up, which is probably good because there’s weeds and green slime all over him, and me, and your wings, Zee. But he’s definitely not dead.”

“Not dead is good.” Zee grinned, and I grinned back, only now realizing how worried I’d been.

Our bags were back on the road. We were in the middle of some kind of swamp, in an area we didn’t know, with nothing but the wet clothes on our backs... but we had each other. If we had each other, we could accomplish anything. We were going to be just fine.

Zee’s grin froze on his face, then crack by crack, fell away. “So, maybe don’t look,” he mumbled through firm lips. “But there’s fuckin’ glowing eyes... everywhere.”

“What?” Of course I looked.

The purple glow from Zee’s wings lit up what appeared to be a thousand eyes shining from the gloom. Small eyes, biggish eyes, oddly blinking eyes. I swallowed hard. That was a whole lot of critters. And we were in their back yard.

“Whadda we do?” Zee whispered.

If these little guys were anything like gremlins, then we’d need a Little Jimmy to talk to them. But being all out of pixies, out best option was to get out of their territory. “You know... I think it’s best if we keep moving.”

“Yup, uh-huh, okay.” Zee flopped Victor over his shoulder and we inched backward, around the big tree and away from the army of eyes. Zee dimmed his glow, hiding us from the thousand eyes, but without his glow, we also had no idea where those creatures the eyes belonged to had gone. Which was worse.

A chirping sound tittered somewhere off to our left. Then another, a little ways behind. Then a throaty croak from our right.

A chill skittered down my spine, despite the warmth. “We need to get out of the water.”

“Trees are too thick. Can’t...”

I could have shifted, but it would have been like setting of a dragon bomb, and not the best way to make new friends. We could really have used Victor’s expertise on this. He would have known whether anything watching us was dangerous or friendly.

“Wait, I think I see a light...” Zee whispered, changing course through the gloom.

The water had risen above my waist and tugged on my shirt. Something bumped my leg. Probably a rotten log. Nothing to be concerned about.

Zee stopped. “Summink touched my leg,” he hissed.

“Mine too. Just keep moving.”

“That’s easy for you to say. I’m the bait out front.”

“You want me to go in front?” I was a big scary dragon, after all.

“Yup, you die first. I’m carrying the vampire.”

I shuffled around Zee and waded through the soupy water toward the blinking light in the distance.

“You think he’s faking bein’ asleep and fuckin’ laughing inside right now?”

It was possible. Victor’s humor did skirt toward the darker side. He’d probably have been finding all of this hilarious had he been awake to enjoy it. Although... he did not like getting messy or having his hair tangled, so he wasn’t going to be too happy about that when he did eventually wake?—

“Do not move,” Victor said, still slung over Zee’s shoulder.

I stopped.

Zee bumped into my back. “ Oof .”

“Demon, there is an alligator approaching?—”

Zee chuckled. “The fuck—I thought you were gonna say something is gonna eat us. Alligator? Pfft. You have no idea what we’ve had to deal with, and your ancient ass is worried about a cute, fluffy?—”

Zee and Victor vanished in a thrash and splash of water.

Gone.

Both of them.

Suddenly alone, I stared at the rippling black water that had just eaten my demon and vampire.

“Guys?!”