Lightweight, durable as hell, the military issue bulletproof vest could withstand numerous rounds before failing. Adrian had felt at least three rounds hit his previous vest and it was the equivalent of getting hit with a hammer, a few deep bruises, but the vest held up. He’d traded it in for a new one just before his discharge.
He strapped the vest on over his t-shirt and filled the front and side pouches with extra clips of ammo. Quickly checking his pistol to see that he had the hollow point loads, he slipped up to the front door.
She had stood there, silent, watching him with growing alarm on her face. The damn vampire could get up and walk after being shot seven times, what the hell was she worried about?
Adrian pushed her aside and eyed the peep-hole. Four gang-bangers, tattooed, one heading straight for his door, and another standing in front of Crenshaw’s door. The other two were headed over to the other duplex to the right. Canvassing the place.
Fuck, now the mess was spilling over to Crenshaw’s apartment. Dammit. He already had her highness to deal with. There was little room to defend anyone else. Fuck.
He stepped lightly back into the bedroom, and opened the slider to the patio. She watched him, and finally followed when he waved her over silently. Whispering right up against her ear, he held her close to reassure. “They’re at the door to Crenshaw’s place too. I need to get both of you out of here.”
He pulled up his night vision scope from his backpack, which wasn’t even attached to a rifle – as of yet. As he scanned the pool and surrounding apartments for signs of anyone, she put a hand on his shoulder and whispered against his ear. “I can see fine, and there’s no one out there. Its eleven-o-clock on a Thursday night, they’re all in bed.”
He put the scope down and looked at her, seeing her for the first time as she truly was. This woman, this vampire, had worked her way into his apartment, into his bed, and taken over his entire life. Her Highness had hearing like a fucking cat and night vision to match.
Knock, knock, knock. The natives were getting restless.
He picked her up and set her butt on the steel railing of his balcony. “Climb down right here and wait for me. Don’t go anywhere. I need to tell Crenshaw. This is my mess, and I should at least warn him, or get him out of here.”
The door knocking overlapped, both at his and Crenshaw’s front doors. Shit. He had to get to Crenshaw before he answered the fucking thing
“Do what I tell you and wait!”
He slipped the backpack over his shoulders and palmed the divider between their two porches as he hopped over to Crenshaw’s side. He went straight for the sliding glass door and it opened, unlocked. As he stepped into the reek of stale cigarette smoke in Crenshaw’s bedroom, a dark figure loomed from the shadows with a pistol in his face.
Adrian moved, fast. Slap, punch, elbow to the ribs, and he found himself with a second pistol in his left hand, and his own pistol pressed against the man’s neck.
“Dude, you gotta lay off the coffee. You’re fucking wired, man.” Crenshaw’s voice rasped at the pressure of Adrian’s pistol at his throat.
Adrian shushed him with a finger held to his lips and stepped back. He dropped the gun and shook off the adrenaline rush. This was what he missed most, these intense moments. He loved the exhilaration of combat, working for the U.S. government with permission to do what was necessary, to kill if necessary, however he wanted to kill, be it pistol, rifle, knife, or frying pan.
Adrian holstered his pistol and looked more closely at the gun he had taken from his neighbor. “You’re a felon. You’re not supposed to have this.”
“And you’re committing a felony right now, dude. Pot calling the kettle black?”
Knock, knock, knock. The natives wouldn’t go away so easily.
Cren looked like he wanted to answer the door.
Adrian shook his head and whispered. “Don’t. I’m pretty sure they’re connected to the guy we found in the alley.”
“La Eme? Man, what a fucking mess.” Crenshaw had dropped his voice to a hiss as he glanced at the door nervously.
Adrian checked to see Crenshaw’s pistol was loaded. “Yeah I know. We gotta go.”
“Dude, you’re better off holing up in here with me. We can take ‘em. I got your back.”
Adrian looked back to the patio as he heard a slight thud. Hopefully that was Her Highness landing on the grass below the balcony. “I don’t have time for this.” He nodded towards the patio. “I gotta deal with the lady. You can either come with me, or hide in here and take your chances.”
Crenshaw shook his head. “Give me back my piece, I’ll be fine right here. I might even be able to talk to ‘em for a minute, slow ‘em down for you. They won’t mess with me when they see my tats.” Crenshaw pulled off his t-shirt and flexed, showing off his prison muscles. He pointed at the tattoo on his left pectoral, the distinctive swastika with the letters A B above and the word TEXAS below.
Adrian handed him his pistol. “Don’t put your neck out for me. Just stay in here, and be quiet. I’ll be moving fast.”
Crenshaw looked at him funny. “Alright bro, stay strong. Don’t let ‘em catch you slippin’.” Crenshaw held his fist out for the knuckle bump and nodded.
Adrian tapped his knuckles, and hoped this wasn’t the last time he’d see Crenshaw alive. “Later.”
Adrian went for the balcony and slinked down into the grass, landing right next to San Antonio’s most wanted, who probably could see a hell of a lot better than he could at the moment.
She was holding herself and shivering in nothing but her oversized shirt, her hair still wet. “Where’s your friend?”
“He thinks he’s invincible, or he’s just too stupid to know when it’s time to get out.”
Her head spun at something she heard, and she grabbed Adrian’s arm hard. The woman had a serious grip. She pointed, and Adrian could just barely make out two figures loping through the darkness across the other side of the pool, about fifty yards away.
Adrian pulled her along slow and quiet, keeping to the deeper shadows beneath the balcony. He moved up behind a tree, and stopped. They were coming around the other side of the pool and playground, and he had a pretty good idea where the other two clowns were at. These bastards were circling around from both sides at the same time, to prevent exactly what he was trying to do.
She watched them then glanced at him. He could see the fear in her eyes, but something else too, something feral. Maybe this girl wasn’t the one who needed protecting. Maybe he had this all backwards.
No time for guessing games. “Stay here. Whatever happens, don’t move, unless you see me go down and stay down. Then, and only then, you run, as fast as you can.”
He put a key and a wad of cash in her hand. “This is my spare pickup key. If I go down, take the truck and go.”
She shook her head, and he had the irresistible urge to kiss her. How fucked up would it be to leave the world without even catching a kiss goodbye? For the first time, he actually had someone to kiss goodbye.
She yielded with her cool wet lips, and he wished that they had more time to enjoy this … whatever they had together. It was something unique, and interesting, and he didn’t want it to be over. He pulled away reluctantly, and glanced at the advancing thugs. “Stay. I’ll be right back.”
He didn’t give her a chance to protest, like he knew she would. Unless you’ve been in this kind of shit, no one understands what it means to walk out and meet the enemy in the dark corners of the night. The rush, the fear, adrenaline flowing so hard he could barely keep from hyperventilating. There was no feeling like it in the world. No drug could compare to the sensation of a life or death moment.
Nowhere but in the battlefield would he ever be allowed to kill without consequence. But that distinction was over now. Adrian had created his own rules of engagement when he killed the man in the alley, and those new rules were in effect right now.
He walked right up to both men, gun hand obscured beh
ind him. Just an average guy strolling in the dark, wearing eight pounds of Kevlar and a backpack full of ammo and clothes. Nothing doing here.
He acknowledged them both with a nod. “What’s up? Looking for somebody?”
One man went left, the other kept coming straight for him. He knew they were armed, but they wanted him, or her, or information. They weren’t functioning on Adrian’s rules of engagement. Adrian stepped in fast and shoved his pistol against the man’s chest and unloaded three shots.
Silencers are one of those things you always see assassins carrying in kickass spy films, but, the human body can muffle a gunshot pretty damn well, when you shove the tip of the gun right up against the flesh. It’s the exit of the bullet into open air that causes all the noise.
The guy dropped where he stood, gun still in his hand, but his heart was probably taking a shit right then, so he wasn’t focused on shooting anyone. Adrian turned immediately to face the man on the left, who already had a pistol in hand coming up at him.
“Carajo!” The man cursed and shot off a round that missed.
Hollywood had people thinking it’s easy to hit a moving target. That’s bullshit. Adrian became the moving target when he dropped and dived into a tackle. He wasn’t looking for the MMA choke out, wasn’t planning to force submission with Judo moves or any of that nonsense, he just needed to get the tip of his pistol up into the man’s belly at the right angle so he could hit his heart when he unloaded several quiet but messy rounds into his gut.
The guy never got up, nor did he say another word. Adrian stood, and wiped the man’s blood off on his jeans, impatient to get to the truck for his Clorox wet wipes. Though exhilarating, the downside of wetwork was that it was so damn wet. Body fluids were disgusting. He shivered off the puky post-adrenaline feeling and fought the urge to gag from his bare hands slick with blood.
He returned to the tree, hoping to catch her and head out the way of the two dead guys, but stopped short. “I knew they’d do that.” He cursed under his breath and watched two figures coming down his side of the apartments, from the opposite direction, about ten feet from San Antonio’s most wanted.
She stepped right out of the shadows to meet them, that stupid bitch. He had a mind to punch her. Not only did she step into their path, she kept on rolling straight for them. What the …?
Though good sense would have him slinking off into the shadows to take them out from the side, he couldn’t help but move in closer to see what the hell she was up to. Adrian strained to see where her pistol was – not in hand, not that he could see. He caught a glint of the black gunmetal on the ground by the tree. The fool woman walked right up to them, unarmed.
As he stepped up to the other side of the tree, one of them spoke to her. Adrian couldn’t hear his words, but whatever he said to her had flipped some kind of psycho switch. She moved in the blink of an eye and raked one guy across the face, then latched onto the other guy’s neck. There was an actual crunch noise when she connected with him, and Adrian knew without a doubt she was chomping through bones and cartilage. Girl had a set of teeth.
The other guy whined in pain, his face marred by dark, bloody lines that glistened in the rippling half-light from the pool. Cursing, the man gathered enough wits to focus his gun on her back. Adrian took aim, and was about to let fly when she hit the man in a blur of speed, knocking him clean off his feet. He landed on his back, and she was on him. Her face went into his neck, and came back up a second later to spit out a juicy chunk of something really disgusting … meaty.
The wet flesh landed near Adrian’s feet, and he almost lost his stomach right there. She made these wet gulping sounds as she sucked from his torn neck. The guy couldn’t do anything but gurgle, his pistol lost in the attack.
This woman was definitely not human and she didn’t need Adrian, not for protection. The vampire could handle herself just fine.
A light came on across the way. The scuffle and gunshots had made enough noise to wake someone. Adrian’s good sense overwhelmed his revulsion, and he snatched the back of the blue shirt he’d loaned her, now splattered with blood. “Come on. We’re going, now. Someone’s probably called the cops.”
She was up and in his face, her chin smeared with blood, eyes ablaze with some kind of fury. She actually growled like an animal.
Adrian backed away, his gun hand doing its own thing, aiming right at her. “What the fuck?” She reminded him of the times he’d messed with his friend’s pit bull as the animal was eating from its bowl. It had snapped at him like he was the next meal if he got in the way.
Her eyes flicked, and the nutjob woman who’d been in his apartment for two days returned. She wiped the blood off her mouth with the sleeve of her shirt – his shirt. She watched him warily. “Sorry … I got a little carried away.”
His gun hand lowered slowly, but he wasn’t completely comfortable turning his back to her. The girl was dangerous. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm and steered her around the dead men and out the side of the apartments to his truck. The adrenaline dropped off, and his hands jittered with the post-combat shakes, just like Iraq.
Stop it. He shook it off and managed to slip the key in the passenger side door of his truck. Her hand on his stilled him.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I won’t let them hurt you.”
Instant rage flooded him. The fucking audacity. “You! You can’t … that’s just … they’re here for you! Some asshole gave them a tip that I know something. They’re not here to kill me. They don’t give a shit about me!”
“Adrian, calm down, you’re hurting me.” He’d grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the truck. This stupid … woman, thing, whatever the hell she was. She knew how to say the wrong fucking thing at the wrong time. He did need to calm down though.
Watching her munch on two men, damn near eating them, he had finally hit the wall. This was more than he could deal with. Killing men, that was intense, but she was something else. “You killed them with your teeth. Do you even know how wrong that is? With your teeth!”
He grabbed her jaw, and saw the pain register as he squeezed hard. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he did. “I wanna kick your ass so bad. How could you do this? How could you drag me into this sickness? Drugs, mafia, murder, and vampires. I saved your life, and this is the thanks I get?”
Gritting her teeth, she didn’t say a word. There was nothing to say. He preferred her silence, because if she spoke he’d probably just smack her anyway.
Hands off, Adrian, you’re better than this. You’re a better man. You’re not a sociopath, you’re a paramedic. You are more than the sum of your actions.
He let her go and walked around to the driver’s side of his truck, desperate to get hold of some wet wipes and clean the blood off his hands.
* * * *
Chapter 15
He drove out to the highway, moving northeast, letting the radio hum some innocuous crap. He couldn’t focus on where to go, what to do. As long as he had her to deal with, his life was a complete shit-job. He should get rid of her now. Call 911, make up some bullshit, ditch the murder weapon, and wash his hands of this whole deal.
Coronado might not believe him, but it wouldn’t matter. They didn’t have any evidence on Adrian. She was the unfixable problem. Get rid of her, and everything else fell into place.
How could he do it?
She sat there on the seat in her blood-soaked shirt, no socks, no shoes, nothing but his ruined shirt and a past that just wouldn’t quit. A murdering drug queen with a set of teeth that could cut a man down. No matter how many times he tried to envision getting rid of her, his mind kept circling back around to the same thing. I need her.
He needed this woman. Him, the guy who never needed anyone.
He’d moved out of his parents’ house at seventeen and did two tours in the military. He had been his own man, doing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, with no one to answer to since his discharge from the military three ye
ars ago. Women were always a problem, rarely worth the trouble to get in their pants, definitely not worth the live-in headaches.
And this vampire … oh man. He picked the wrong girl to help.
He hated what she had done, because it forced him to kill again. He now faced the unpleasant truth, he had missed the thrill of combat, the rush of killing the enemy. She had shoved him back into a mode of thinking that he had tried so hard to change.
On his discharge, he’d debated for weeks whether or not to take a mercenary contract. Paid $70,000 starting wage with raises and per diem for on-site expenses. That was a lot of money to go right back where he had been, in the Middle East desert, doing the same thing he’d been doing for the U.S., killing people. Mercs didn’t have the greatest equipment, but they sure knew how to have a good time, and none of them had any illusions about their job. Those boys cut through anyone who got in the way, and the rules of engagement were damn near non-existent. The company recruiter made it clear. “If it’s a potential problem, kill it.”
He could have had that life. He still had the contract in his dresser drawer, buried beneath his paramedic uniforms. But, he had wanted so bad to do something different, to be someone different. Somehow, this life found him anyway.
To go with Her Highness and follow this path was to become the thing he had hoped to avoid. But he couldn’t deny the rush, the feeling was … incomparable. The fact that he enjoyed this shit so damn much really scared him.
As though she’d been reading his mind, she chimed in. “If there was any other way, if you could just drop me off at the bus stop, I would tell you to take me there now. I think you know that won’t work. We have to run, Adrian. There’s no other choice. And we have to do it together.”
She spoke out the cracked pickup window, not even looking at him.
Shaking his head, hating the fact that he was boxed into this corner, he snapped. “And when we are running to wherever, what happens when the money runs out? I only have a couple thousand in my account, about two hundred bucks on me.”