Page 6 of A Low Down Dirty Shane

A knife.

His eyes flew open in spite of the extraordinary pain as the memory of what had happened came rushing back to him. The street, the troll, the explosion of light, and the girl. The same girl who was sitting at the end of the bed he was in and giving him a look he suspected was usually shared between doctors and terminally ill patients. Sort of half pity and half just die already so I can get rid of you.

Through a haze of sharp, pointy agony that speared him in the eyeballs, he was able to recognize he wasn’t in a familiar place. The room was small and sparsely decorated, the only real personal touch peeling rose-print wallpaper gone yellow with age. The bed he was lying on was a lumpy twin with an old gray comforter, and the only other furniture in the room was the nightstand where the god-awful lamp was perched.

“Can you turn that off?” he asked.

She sighed like he’d asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer in Latin while juggling with one hand, but she complied with the substantial favor he’d requested. The room fell into darkness.

The alien spawn stopped gnawing on his brain. But only a little.

“Where am I?” Shane asked after the silence made the dark of the room feel almost claustrophobic.

“You’re in my bedroom.”

“Did you knock me out so you could have your way with me? Because you could have asked nicely.”

The light came back on, and Shan

e swore. The girl glared at him, then turned it off again. So that’s how this was going to work, was it? No waterboarding or bamboo nail torture. This girl was good. She’d simply threaten him with light until he started to behave.

“What am I doing in your bedroom, then?”

“I saved your life. It seemed kind of silly to do that and then leave you out in the middle of the street.”

“You…saved my life?”

“Yes.”

“You must have done a really good job. I feel fucking awesome.”

The light switched on.

“Fuck. God. Sorry. Thanks, is what I was trying to say.”

Darkness reigned again.

“For someone who claims to hunt vampires, you seem to treat the sanctity of life with a great deal of…frivolity,” she said, her voice going quiet.

“I spend all day worrying about other people’s lives. Doesn’t leave me many leftover fucks to give worrying about my own.” He winced, preparing for the visual assault, but she didn’t touch the light.

“If you don’t respect your own life, why should anyone trust you with theirs?” She sounded mystified by his response.

“No one knows I’m helping them.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm?”

“Yes.”

“And what about you? Going chasing after trolls doesn’t strike me as showing a lot of, what is it you said? Regard for life?”

“I have plenty of regard for life,” she snapped. “All I do with my life is protect people. My life is sacred because of that.”

“So you go out every night and risk your sacred life?”

“I…”

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