Page 54 of Midlife Vampire Unexpected

They were hungry scavengers feeding on the devastation of life.

I felt woozy, something I didn’t really feel typically, but this was something I’d never seen. When one of them looked up, even at this distance I could see the skeletal face and the fangs and the pointy teeth as it flicked its eyes over me and back to its prey.

“What the fuck are we going to do with that?” I asked. “And what are other people going to say about this?”

“It’ll look a fog bank or something,” Hilda said. “They won’t be able to see the wraiths and they’ll only see the zombies when they step out of the fog.”

“We can’t let that happen,” I said.

“I think I can solve part of the problem,” Bianca said. “How close can we get to the cemetery?”

“As close as you want as long as the wards hold. The minute we start trying to do anything to get rid of them, they’re going to start fighting us and trying to do things to get out of where they’re trapped. Right now, they’re distracted.”

“Then we should act swiftly,” I said. “I have an idea. We have the crypt inside there, right.”

The others nodded.

“It’s got demon symbols on it, right? Can we take those demon symbols and create an entry to the demon world? Through the crypt?” I asked. “Is that what you did before, Jane?”

“I don’t think the demons are going to like that too much.” Mae frowned.

“Thrain owes us,” I said.

Hilda laughed. “I’d love to see you say that to his face.”

I looked over at her. “No problem. We need help and unless we get help and get these out of here, we’re going to have the apocalypse in demigod country. I don’t think that’s really going to help the demons either. Any corpses are going to have to be taken into Undirheim. It makes more work for them. It’ll make more sense if they help us. And who knows, maybe they’ll enjoy it.”

I grabbed the phone. “Any objections?”

“No,” Mae said. “We need help.”

I called Toth and asked him if he could get Thrain again and bring him to The Estate. We had a problem and we needed Undirheim, or as I was used to calling it, Hell.

“Yeah, looks you have a problem,” Toth said. “We’ll see you soon.”

Thrain arrived with Toth and two hulking demon guards, but without the whole demon portal from Hell thing. Antonio stayed close to my side, which I appreciated. He didn’t hold my hand, but by his presence I could feel he had my back.

I wasn’t afraid of the demon king. Kings were known for telling people what to do, but they were also known for granting favors and we needed a big fucking favor.

“You’ve got a mess on your hands,” Thrain stated the obvious.

“I most certainly do,” I said. “But it’s not me, it’s you.”

“How do you figure?” He stood with the coven and Toth, looking at the wraiths that fed on the zombies in the cemetery.

“Well, we all have a problem, because if the demigods know this is going on, we’re all going to get locked up.” I explained.

“So, get the demigods in here and fix it.” Thrain shrugged.

“Not in my plan for today,” I said.

“Not my problem,” Thrain retorted.

“I think you owe me a bit of a favor since your demon tried to kill people and break open this portal himself,” I spoke as respectfully as I could while still trying to be taken seriously. “We know it’s not your fault, we know who’s behind it or we think we know who’s behind it, but we’ve got to get rid of all of their attackers first.”

“What’s your idea?” Thrain looked curious.

“We want to turn the crypt into a portal and send the wraiths through to Undirheim.” I sucked in my cheeks hoping this was going to fly.

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