This Side of the Grave

  A drive-in? “You mean theater, right?” I asked, just to be sure it wasn’t slang for something else.

  Ed snorted. “Of course. I looked it up before I called you. It’s on Summer Avenue near I–40.”

  Ed might not be able to text, but luckily, MapQuest wasn’t beyond him. “Good. You head on over there, but not for at least ten minutes in case you’re being watched. I’ll start out now.”

  “See ya there,” he grunted, and hung up.

  “We’re in the wrong place,” I announced to Mencheres and Vlad as I signaled the bartender. “Let’s settle up and get out of here.”

  Vlad’s brows rose. “Do elaborate,” he drawled.

  I lowered my voice. Texting might be quieter, but it was also senseless with both of them right there. “Ed’s heard of some strange activity at the Falcon drive-in, as though the words activity and drive-in in the same sentence weren’t strange enough.”

  Mencheres gave me a quizzical look. “Why?”

  I was about to say, Because they’re obsolete, but then I reminded myself that for someone as old as Mencheres, drive-ins would still seem like a new form of entertainment.

  “Because progress is a merciless bitch” was what I settled on, followed by “The bad news is, if the place is still open, not abandoned, we’ll have human bystanders to worry about if Ed’s right and anything does go down.”

  “Drive-ins,” Vlad said, his lip curling in a way that said he hadn’t been a fan of them even when they were popular. “I suppose that’s better than a regular theater. Less people at drive-ins, and if they’re anything like I remember, most of the humans there won’t be concentrating on anything but fornicating anyway.”

  His disdainful tone almost made me laugh. Who knew the reputed scourge of the underworld looked down his nose at drive-in nookie?

  “Not everyone had their own castle to go back to when they were young and horny,” I said, my lips twitching.

  The look he threw me was more than cynical. “My youth was spent in constant war, not the pursuit of tender seductions.”

  Privately I thought tender was the last word I’d associate with Vlad, but we had places to be, ghouls to track down, and all that. I glanced at my watch. Ten forty-five. That helped, but it was a Friday night, so the drive-in would be as populated as it was going to get.

  “Well, boys,” I said, placing some bills on the table. “Let’s go to the movies.”

  Chapter Twenty-­three

  The drive-in wasn’t abandoned, as the cars lined up in front of the four large outdoor screens attested to. I heaved a sigh even as I crept around the back of the first projector. Of course we wouldn’t be lucky enough for this place to be closed down. Hell, from the number of people here, either I’d underestimated the drive-in’s appeal, or they were giving away free popcorn and condoms with each show.

  I crouched low as I crept along the bushes, making my way toward the less populated screening of some horror movie, it looked like. With all the headlights, I’d stand out like a sore thumb if I straightened and just walked there, but we weren’t about to all cruise in through the main entrance. Even with our power levels cloaked, if this was some sort of secret ghoul meeting place, three vampires showing up would be enough to stir trouble, no matter if they thought we were here just to watch some flicks.

  Hence the sneaking around while we sought to find out if we were the only pulseless people here. We’d split up to cover more ground. I couldn’t see or sense Vlad or Mencheres, so they were doing a good job at being stealthy. I hoped I was being equally furtive.

  Then I stopped. That was odd. A van was too far off to the side of the viewing area of the closest screen to even see the movie. It didn’t rock in a telltale way, either, leaving the possibility of being out of viewing range of the movie for a romantic reason doubtful. It still might be nothing insidious, true, but there was only one way to find out.

  I crept closer, still keeping low and doing my damnedest not to crunch the fallen leaves I stepped on. When my cell phone vibrated with a noise that seemed like a screech to my tense nerves, I hit ignore even though I saw with a pang that it was Bones calling. I didn’t have time to chat with him now, and aside from the noise that someone with undead ears might pick up on, I needed to keep my cell clear in case Vlad or Mencheres texted with anything important. Like “need help” or “run for it, we’re outnumbered!”

  Fifty yards away from the van, I heard voices that weren’t from the movie or inside my head, thanks to being back on Bones’s blood. I stopped, trying to feel the air with my senses to catch any supernatural vibes on it, plus taking in a deep breath to see if I caught the earthy scent of ghouls. Nothing.

  I’d just have to get closer to find out for sure.

  The van was parked near where a clump of bushes turned into a tree-lined hill. In the dark, with the slope and the lights from the movies glaring in the opposite direction, the area behind there would be practically invisible to anyone looking. Hell, I could see in the dark, but with the slant, glare, and bushes, it was still hard for me to tell if any people were in that area, or if all I was seeing were trees.

  I was almost crawling now to avoid being seen and straining my ears for any sounds that weren’t the movies, the people watching them, their thoughts, or the nearby highway. There. A male voice, definitely, followed by another one, both back in the wooded area where no regular moviegoers would have any reason to be. Could be a couple of vagrants just having a little chat, but I drew out two of my bigger knives anyway. Damned if I’d let myself get captured if it wasn’t just an innocuous gathering of humans. I might be the only chick in the group, but that didn’t make me the damsel in distress.

  After another few minutes of quiet crawling, I could pick up the twinges of power in the air, too low to make me turn around, too high to be Vlad or Mencheres with how they were cloaking their auras. I got a tighter grip on my knives and continued forward, glad I didn’t have a regular heartbeat anymore, or it would be racing. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  “ . . . take more down. Show our brothers we mean business,” someone muttered.

  A particularly loud crescendo of music cut off the first part of whatever the other person replied, but I caught “ . . . till every last bloodsucker’s dead,” and really didn’t need to hear anything else.

  I was close now, barely thirty feet away. Enough to see that there were four ghouls standing in a loose circle, one of them casually prodding the dirt with the toe of his boot. Two of them looked pretty normal, wearing denim pants and short-sleeved T-shirts in the warm summer evening. The other two were dressed like a bad imitation of Hell’s Angels with their leather jackets, fingerless gloves, black jeans, and thick chain accessories.

  Overcompensating for something, are you? was my contemptuous thought.

  “Did you feel that?” one of them asked, glancing around.

  The others didn’t even have a chance to reply before power slammed through the air, feeling like a whip on my skin before it skipped over me to land on them. I stood up, still holding my knives even though none of the ghouls was able to put up a fight anymore. From their horrified expressions, they couldn’t even move enough to scream.

  “You do know how to make an entrance, Mencheres,” I remarked.

  The Egyptian vampire appeared from the opposite side of the ghouls while measured, crunching noises coming from behind me told me where Vlad was.

  “There’s a white van nearby, did any of you check it out?” I asked.

  “Stinks of these ghouls, but it’s empty,” Vlad replied as he drew abreast.

  I stared at the four ghouls, thinking if their eyes bugged any wider, they might pop out of their sockets. Bet they never expected party crashers like Mencheres to show up. Vlad and I could kill them easy enough, but only Mencheres could freeze them into complete immobility without even laying a finger on them.

  “This group is too small to warrant meeting out here like this. More must be coming,” I sa
id, lowering my voice.

  From the flash of emotion across two of the ghouls’ faces, I’d guessed correctly.

  “I’ve still got them,” Mencheres said, backing away. “Let’s hide.”

  I’d seen his power in action before, so I had no hesitation about turning my back on the ghouls and creeping deeper into the woods. Odds were, their buddies would approach from the other direction, and if they smelled vampire, hopefully they’d think it was from a recent kill the group had made.

  Mencheres and Vlad melted away into the woods as well. Once I reached a good vantage point, crouched behind a rocky formation about forty yards away, I stared back at where we left the ghouls. Lots of trees were in my way, so I couldn’t see them exactly, but it looked like the four ghouls still stood where we’d left them, not even talking, and sure as hell not running. I shook my head. Damn handy power Mencheres had—if you were strong enough to control it, which I hadn’t been.

  We didn’t have too long to wait. Less than twenty minutes later, we heard another vehicle pull up very close to where the van was, from the sounds of it. Then the casual, genial chatter of its occupants as they congratulated each other on killing two young vampires that morning.

  Son of a bitch. No need to wonder if these were the rest of the group!

  I crept closer, because they made enough noise to cover the soft sounds I made. Clearly they sensed no danger. Dark satisfaction filled me as I heard one of them jokingly ask what the others were looking at.

  “What’s the matter, Brent?” a voice laughed. “Cat got your tongue?”

  That was too priceless an opening for me to leave hanging.

  “Not yet, but I can make an exception,” I said, straightening to my full height as I strode toward them.

  Mencheres’s power beat me, whooshing past and cementing them in their places before they could even gasp at the vampires popping up from the woods. Even though I recognized the practicality, a part of me was disappointed. Fighting them would be a great way to release some of the stress that had been building, but it wouldn’t be a real brawl unless they could hit back.

  When I drew within touching distance of the group that had now grown by seven, something white caught my eye, distracting me from lamenting that Mencheres’s power took all the sport out of capturing them.

  “You’re wearing fangs around your neck?” I blurted, snatching at the necklace that hung from one of the Hell’s Angels wannabes. Sure enough, eight fangs were strung on a silver chain, and the sight of them pissed me off into temporary speechlessness.

  Vlad didn’t seem as perturbed. He appeared to the left of the group, wagging his fingers at them almost playfully. “Here I’d always found drive-ins boring, but you’re going to make this one fun for me, aren’t you? Mencheres, give them the ability to speak, though if any of you screams, it’ll be the last sound you make.”

  No one needed to tell me that this was about to get messy, and there were too many of them for us to take back to our rented town house.

  “We need to get all these people out of here,” I said, adding, “something that won’t make the eleven o’clock news,” as an important afterthought. Sure, Mencheres could clear this entire outdoor theater complex in a matter of seconds. But people might pause to wonder why their car was suddenly flying through the air, or why every huge movie screen crumbled into a ball, and we didn’t need that sort of publicity.

  Mencheres gave me a pointed glance. “I know how to be discreet,” he said, before vanishing in a blur of speed.

  I contained my snort with the utmost difficultly. It wasn’t that long ago that Mencheres demolished a section of Disneyland in front of stunned witnesses, or changed Kira into a vampire on a video that was later blasted all over the Internet. Yeah, essence of discretion, those things were.

  “So, boys . . .”

  I turned around to see Vlad striding along the jagged circle of ghouls, still held in place by Mencheres’s power even though the other vampire was out of sight. He touched each of them, the reason not lost to me. Whatever Vlad touched, he could burn.

  “Whoever tells me all about your little gang gets to live,” he went on. “Whoever doesn’t talk . . . well, you can figure out what’ll happen, I’m sure.”

  Flames sprouted around his hands for emphasis. A few of the ghouls grimaced, figuring out who Vlad was. Only one male vampire was infamous for wielding fire, and Vlad’s reputation would have been anything but soothing to them.

  “There’s still too many people nearby,” I reminded him. Bonfiring some of the ghouls was bound to draw attention, even through the bushes and trees.

  “Then Mencheres had better hurry,” Vlad replied, his tone hardening. “These fellows still aren’t talking, and having my commands ignored is what you might call a pet peeve of mine.”

  One of them made weird grunting noises, flapping his lips in the oddest way, but the others stayed silent. Vlad sighed.

  “No one believes you’re serious until bodies start to fall.”

  Then he moved so fast that I wasn’t even sure what he was doing . . . until I saw the four new crimson necklaces some of the group was sporting. Their expressions went abruptly blank, eyes rolling back, but their bodies stayed upright and their heads stayed on, even though nothing but Mencheres’s power kept them glued to their necks anymore.

  I blinked at Vlad’s efficient brutality, but it wasn’t a shock. Bones would have done the same thing. I might dislike killing enemy combatants if they couldn’t fight back, but these ghouls were involved in trying to stir up a clash between two species that would leave thousands dead at least if they were successful. That meant my personal preferences had to be set aside.

  “Those guys got off lucky. The rest of you won’t,” I said quietly. “In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s Vlad Tepesh you’re looking at, and as for me? I’m the Red Reaper, and I’ll bet you’ve heard of me.”

  Two of them spat curses, the nastiest from the ghoul wearing the fang trophies. I didn’t give Vlad a chance to act, but swiped my blade through the ghoul’s throat before he could say anything else. Now he had two necklaces; one made of fangs, the other made of the last blood he’d ever shed.

  The other ghoul who’d cursed me burst into flames that burned so fiercely, his screams were cut off in seconds. I glanced toward the cinema, hoping none of the moviegoers would decide to check out the sudden blaze of fire, if they saw it. But before I could drop my mental shields to better pick up on any “what’s that light over there?” thoughts, the flames on the ghoul vanished, leaving only smoke curling up over his remains.

  That’s right, no worry of a forest fire with Vlad around. My own control over fire had been far less during the brief time I’d borrowed the ability from him.

  My hip vibrated. I jumped, tense from the circumstances, before realizing that it was just my cell phone. I pulled it out, seeing Bones’s number, and grimaced as I hit ignore again. Much as I wanted to talk to him, chatting or texting during a fiery interrogation was just not appropriate.

  “As your numbers dwindle, so does my patience,” Vlad said in a chillingly genial tone. “Still not going to tell me what I want to know? Eeny, meeny, miny . . .”

  At “moe,” the ghoul Vlad pointed at exploded like a firecracker, pelting flaming bits of things I didn’t even want to identify over the two ghouls on either side of him. It took all my willpower not to look away. Gross didn’t even begin to cover what that looked like. Instead of doing something completely girly, like saying, “Ewwww,” I concentrated on what I’d overhead the ghouls talking about, and on how many lives would be destroyed if Apollyon’s plans were allowed to move forth.

  “You’ll kill us anyway, no matter if we tell you what you want to know,” a ghoul with scars on his neck finally said. The other ghoul, who looked to be in his teens, still flapped his mouth in that strange way, like he was miming a fish out of water. What’s the deal with that? I wondered.

  Vlad shrugged. “If your information
proves to be useful, after a period of time, I’ll let you go. Before that, you’ll be my captive, but you’ll be alive, which is more than your friends can say,” he finished with a tip of his head toward the other corpses.

  The ghoul grunted. “Why should I believe you’ll really let me live?”

  Vlad became very still, but his eyes blazed with a dangerous light. “Call me a liar one more time,” he said, each word dripping with challenge.

  Even though I wasn’t the one being threatened, a shiver still passed through me. This was one of the times I was glad I was on Vlad’s good side.

  The younger ghoul flapped his lips again, mouth opening and closing even more frantically. I gave him an irritated look. Nobody liked a drama queen in the middle of an interrogation. But then my eyes narrowed, and I had him by the shirt before Vlad could speak.

  “Open your mouth again,” I said, because he’d shut it in what might have been surprise once I grabbed him.

  “Don’t do it,” the scarred ghoul ordered.

  I snapped out a sideways kick, breaking his knee without once taking my eyes off the ghoul I held. Slowly, with a gaze that I now recognized as pleading, the ghoul opened his mouth. Wide.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I breathed.

  Chapter Twenty-­four

  I kept staring into the ghoul’s mouth. Only a scarred lump of tissue remained where his tongue should have been. This mutilation couldn’t have happened after he was undead. Anything cut off him after that would grow back, same as with vampires. The scar tissue proved his lack of a tongue wasn’t a congenital condition, either. So someone had cut it off, then turned him into a ghoul shortly thereafter, judging from the permanently raw look to the scar. If it had been healed for a while before he’d become undead, the area would have been much smoother.

  And I didn’t know many people who’d willingly consent to such a thing. Especially someone as young as this boy had been when all this happened.