Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(118)
“Later,” the boss man said. “Right now, we’ve got a bigger problem, because Jeremy here has had some friends drop by, haven’t you, Jeremy?”
Jeremy stood there staring at him for a long, silent few seconds, and then he smiled, and swear to God, I felt ice forming along my spine in sharp little stabby crystals. That was not a vampire’s smile, as awful as those could be—it was something else completely, something I didn’t get at all.
And then Jeremy said, “She’s under the bleachers,” and I couldn’t hold back a gasp. I backed away, but that wasn’t going to help . . . not like there were any secret exits back here, and Skinhead was grinning and heading my direction. God, why had he done that? Did that idiot not understand that we’d come to help him?
No, of course he did, I realized . . . but he just didn’t give a damn. He was on fire, and he liked to see everything else burn.
I texted Michael again with a lightning-quick 911!!!!!, which might not matter since he hadn’t responded yet to my first text for help anyway. Something was wrong, and not just with Jeremy—this whole thing felt utterly bad. Drastically wrong.
I had the gun, and it felt heavy in my hand. Shane hadn’t just given the thing to me; he’d forced me to go to the range with him many times, practice target shooting, practice loading and unloading it in the dark. He’d even tested me (with an empty gun) in a deserted house where he’d popped out of a closet at me to see what I’d do.
I’d screamed and shot him six times, theoretically, in the face. He’d approved.
All well and good, but now I was facing firing that gun into actual flesh and bone. Into Mr. Skinhead, who looked like he could chew small-caliber bullets and spit armor-piercing ones back; this was not his first pistol rodeo, for sure. One good thing: he wasn’t going to fit through that narrow opening I’d wedged myself into. . . . But he was more than capable of pulling the entire bleachers out, which he began doing, with harsh metallic shrieks of protesting, creaking metal. He paused and shone a flashlight into the gaps, playing it around until it spilled over my pale face.
He grinned, or at least I thought he did, behind the glare of the light in my eyes. “Hello, girl,” he said. “Let me help you get out of there. Lots of scary things under there, you know. Black widows and brown recluse spiders, snakes, scorpions . . .”
I hadn’t even thought about it, but now it sounded sickeningly likely. . . . The very poisonous spiders he was talking about liked the shadows, the scorpions were badass and went anywhere they wanted, and the snakes would crawl in here to cool off. Damn. Now I didn’t even want to back up. Vampires, I can deal with. Creepy-crawlies in the dark, not so much. “Back off, gorgeous,” I said, and tried to make myself sound tough and mean. “I’m armed and dangerous.”
He giggled, high as a little girl. “Do your best with that toy,” he said. “I’ve been shot before—it don’t scare me.” For proof, he yanked aside the neck of his wifebeater tee, and I saw star-shaped scars in his skin right below the collarbone. Wow. He wasn’t kidding. I had the weapon in my hand, but my hand was shaking, and I knew I’d miss if I fired. Better to wait and make it count. . . .
He pulled the bleachers out at an angle with a final yank, leaving a narrow space against the wall that he could squeeze through—but didn’t. He bent and looked through it at me. No smile now, nothing but serious menace. “You put that popgun away and come on out of there,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you unless you do something stupid, like pull the trigger. Got me?”
Shane had told me before, a gun is not a magic shield, it’s not a bulletproof vest, and it’s not a defense. It’s an offensive weapon, but I’d never really appreciated how true that was before. If you’re going on offense with someone like Mr. Skinhead, you’d better put him down hard, and I was shaking too badly. He was careful not to give me too good a target, either.
Hell.
I took a deep breath, holstered the gun in my pants, and held up my hands. Probably useless effort, but I tried to look harmless now as I walked toward him. He grunted in satisfaction and squeezed himself under the bleachers a little more, ready to grab me as I got close. In the process, he pretty much immobilized himself.
And that was what I’d been hoping he’d do. As he wedged himself in solidly, I pulled the silver-edged knife from the sheath on my wrist, under my shirt, and leaped forward to slam him against the hollow wall of the metal room. He hit with a resonating thud, and I got my forearm against his Adam’s apple with my knife resting just off to the side, over his fast-beating veins. “Hey,” I said. “I put the gun away, just like you said.”
He laughed, a thin and kind of crazy sound. Up close, he smelled sour and damp, as if he’d worn the same clothes for weeks without so much as going out in the rain. Ugh. “I’ll break your arm, little girl. For starters. I’ll bet I can get real creative with you. . . .”
I let the knife slip a little and gave him another scar. “Whoops,” I said. “Sorry about that.” I kept the knife steady on his throat as he froze, and pulled out the gun with my left hand. “I’m not a great shot with this hand,” I said, “but you know what? Good enough to hit the broadside of a piece of barn like you.” I shoved the muzzle against his chest. “Back up.”