It took only a few seconds for my eyesight to adjust. The campfire had been doused and the supplies put away. No one was prowling around. All the other tents were dark, so it was difficult to tell if they were occupied. I glanced up into the obsidian sky, my gaze skittering across the moon and the thousands of stars, and wondered why I felt so uneasy.
It was ungodly quiet.
The hair rose on the nape of my neck. What had startled Dove out of a sound sleep? Maybe she had a bad dream, too, and had woken up so suddenly that it felt real. We were both tormented by nightmares, although Dove would never talk about hers. And neither did I. Those lingering wisps of terror were my burden to bear.
“Dove, what exactly did you—” I turned around as I spoke, and what I saw made my words tumble to a halt.
A tall, lean man held Dove by the neck in one of his hands, and the rifle in his other. How the hell had he gotten into the tent? He could’ve easily passed for one of my grad students, except he was dressed like fucking Indiana Jones, right down to the fedora and faded leather duster. Seriously? We were getting jacked by a Harrison Ford wannabe?
He was too lithe to have the strength to hold my terrified assistant a foot off the ground, but he was doing it. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat. What the—? I nearly pissed myself. He wasn’t even breathing. He was unnaturally pale, his eyes as dark as midnight. When he smiled, he revealed a set of sharp, ugly fangs.
“Vampire,” said Dove, her voice choked and her eyes wide. Fear emanated from her in waves. Or maybe that was me, because I was more terrified than I’d ever been in my life. See: confinement to nuthouse. Although scarier still was the time I’d thrown down with a Kardashian for a Bottega Veneta leather handbag (in butterscotch cream, if you were wondering), and won.
From my crouched position, I kept the Beretta pointed at his face. Sweat slicked my palms, but my aim didn’t waver and the gun didn’t move a millimeter. “Put her down.”
“Or what?” he asked, his voice thick with an accent I couldn’t place. “She’s merely the appetizer. You, my fine Amazon, are the meal.”
“Wow. Really?” I said, my voice filled with disgust. “That’s the worse pickup line I’ve ever heard.”
He grinned, and then he opened his mouth, showing off those terrible, sharp fangs, and jerked Dove downward, aiming for her neck. She tried to struggle, but it was like watching a ribbon wrestle with the wind.
My focus sharpened, and I felt myself go utterly cold and still. I lowered the gun and shot out his knees. The sharp crack of the pistol firing echoed in the tent as the bullets thudded into his patellas. I was not being altruistic, mind you. It wasn’t about saving his life. I wanted him to suffer.
And suffer he did. He screamed in pain and outrage as he buckled, dropping Dove and the rifle. She grabbed Tikka and hauled ass toward me.
“You have to remove his head,” she cried. “Sever it! Sever it!”
“These are bullets, not hacksaws,” I said as she scrambled behind me. Tikka smacked me in the shoulder as Dove maneuvered around, finally taking up position next to me. I looked at her, at the fear etched on her sharp features. “He’s down, all right?”
“Not for long. He’s the undead!” She brought Tikka upright, clutching the barrel. “I couldn’t get the bullets before that stupid asshole grabbed me.”
“I will rend your muscles from your bones,” said the stupid asshole, his gaze vitriolic. He bared his fangs. “You will die slowly as I feast upon you.”
“And you thought me quoting The Mummy was bad?” murmured Dove.
I wished we could call Ax, but cell phone service was nonexistent out here, and the walkie-talkies were over by Fang Boy. Shit. “Get Ax,” I told Dove.
“The hell,” she said. “We have to find something that will cut through an undead neck.”
“I’m not saying he’s not a vampire,” I said. Sweat dripped down my temple, but the gun, which I had re-trained on No Knees, didn’t waver. He was down, yes, but definitely not out. In fact, he was looking a little too perky for someone with shredded patellas. “Is decapitation really the way to go here?”
“The only way to kill a vampire is to take his head off or expose him to intense light. It says so in Vampires Are Real!”
“Oh, my God. That Theodora Monroe book? Really? That’s like taking advice from the Winchester brothers.”
“And you know exactly what about supernatural creatures?”
“Silence!” bellowed the vampire as he wobbled to his feet. His pants were torn and bloody, but his knees were nearly knitted back together. He eyed us with the kind of malevolence I usually witnessed only when it came time for me to approve departmental budgets. “You are both imbeciles. And you talk too much.”