Page 141 of Envious Of Fire
“Not another step!” shouts out the chief from the window, rifle aimed, finger on the trigger.
“Lazarus, stop!” cries Kyle. “Salazo doesn’t need a fucking pet! Just go back to your cave and—”
Gunfire cracks through the air.
Lazarus flinches backwards, startled for half a second.
Then the vampire’s screams fill the night sky like a banshee cry, rippling out.
Even Drake appears shocked, eyes wide as he rushes over to his brother, who writhes in agony on the ground as smoke swirls out of the gunshot wound in his stomach, hissing under Lazarus’s anguished cries. “What the fuck!” cries out Drake, at a total loss, as he tries to bring any comfort to his brother. He looks over at the police chief in the window, confused, a pinch of betrayal in his eyes, then to Kyle. “What in the fuck??”
Kyle stands over Lazarus, aghast. “Silver,” he chokes out, realizing it. “S-Silver bullet.”
The next instant, every distant shadow seems to move. By the buildings across the street. Through the leafless trees in the park. More vampires. Over a dozen of them, emerging, coming into existence, so many more than Kyle had feared, the whole family. Maybe twenty. Or thirty. Had their numbers increased since Kyle left the Devil’s Mouth? Were there other families? Other caves? Have they united?
The chief is already aiming again. “Not one of you comes any closer!” he calls out. “I’ve got a lot more where that came from! Stay back, all of you fuckers!”
Kyle spins around, cold hard dread settling in his stomach. They’re surrounded. Vampires slowly closing in. Salazo and his beady, paranoid eyes. Elias’s heart races as he tightens his grip on his silver club, trembling. Drake crouched on the ground with his moaning, tormented brother, the bullet lodged in his stomach torturing him worse by the second.
This is when everything ends. That’s Kyle’s first and only thought. Everyone is about to die.
“Now, now, now, no need to get all dramatic n’ shit,” cuts in another voice from the shadows, a deep Southern twang, full of arrogance and authority. “Calm down, Jesus, y’all can’t have just a civil fuckin’ conversation?”
Lazarus grits his teeth as he fights against the burning in his abdomen, appearing unsure whether to lie back or curl up. Hekeeps trying to cover the bleeding wound with his hands, but each time his hands draw near, he retracts them with a hiss, as if his wound is a thousand-degree oven.
“Who the hell’s this?” asks Elias, then glances back at Kyle. “Someone else from their demented family?”
“I don’t know,” breathes Kyle, still in shock.
The approaching man is in a weathered cowboy hat and old trench coat, but underneath he’s dressed up in a fancy shirt, tie, vest, cummerbund, and slacks. When Kyle’s Reach touches the man, he finds an emotional texture he’s never encountered before. It is slippery like oil one second, then wispy like smoke the next, too tricky to grasp for any length of time, making it impossible for Kyle to read. Just when he thinks he understands the emotion, it changes shape, makes him question what it is.
“Let’s settle this easy-like,” announces the man as he draws closer, then comes to a stop, thumbs hooked into his pockets. “I just need one fella outta this shithole of a town, then all of these half-naked dead weirdos and I are gone.”
“We’re not handing him over,” states Kyle.
“Kyle Amos is the fella I need.”
Kyle freezes.
A smile twists its way onto the man’s face. “And lookin’ at that funny-ass expression of yours, seems you’re just the man I’m lookin’ for.” He struts forward a few paces, smirking. “My name’s Mance. You’ll never need to use it after tonight. Can we get the whiny one to quiet down?” he asks Drake at once, zero sympathy in his voice. “A little silver bullet in the gut ain’t the end of the world. Shit. Acting like he’s passin’ a kidney stone.”
Still clutching his quivering, moaning brother, Drake looks up. “Sorry, but who the actual fuck are you?”
“Who the actual fuck am I?” returns the man called Mance with a playful note of indignation. “I just actually fuckin’ said who the actual fuck I am. Ain’t you got ears?” He twists a fingerin the air. “Andupsy-daisy…”
The next instant, Lazarus pushes himself to his feet, but his movements seem forced, as if by invisible hands. He shouts out in pain and tries to double over, but something in him is held rigidly, like his spine has become a metal pole. His eyes are wild with rage and anguish.
“Good boy,” sings Mance, then squints at the church. “By the way, whatever kinda amateur-hour hocus pocus you’ve got goin’ on in there, it sure ain’t gonna do a lick of anything. I mean …” Suddenly he’s laughing. “I can smell the old-ass pages of a grimoire from here, the candles, the sage. Who the fuck do they think they are in there?” He can’t stop laughing. “And in a church? A fuckin’ church?? As if my pals out here are gonna … what? … burst intoflamesthe second they step inside? Ha! Shit, man, you’re a bunch of comedians. Are you guys armed with crucifixes, too? Holy water? Where’s your—ha!—Where’s your garlic necklaces?Goddamn!I ain’t laughed this hard since—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Kyle cuts him off.
Mance wipes tears of laughter out of his eyes and shakes his head. “Yeah, I ain’t gonna force you. I’m just gonna talk you into it. See, apparently, you’re the key to the very thing I want. And as it turns out,I’vegot a key to somethingyouwant.”
Kyle squints at him, confused. “What key …?”
“Peace. Security. You see how these dead weirdos don’t do anything unless I let them? That’s all me. I’m like the big bad undead puppeteer.” He grins, showing teeth, as cocky as they come, then spreads his hands. “So how about it? Let’s borrow each other’s key and make everyone happy before we go n’ start a silver-bullet bloodbath.”
Elias turns to Kyle. “Babe, don’t.”
