Van Zant lunged and swiped with his claw-like nails. Only my years of training saved me with a reflexive twitch of my sword that blocked him. He pulled back, again looking warily at Mort.
“Aw, is that all you got?” I waved my sword, which helped to mask the shaking of my arms. “Try again, leech.”
Van Zant answered my taunt by springing up from the ground with blurring speed. I twisted, struggling to keep up with his movement. He rebounded off the building we were next to. My mind barely had time to process his trajectory. He was going to land on my shoulders and take me down backward.
I couldn’t raise my arms in time, so I threw my weight forward and allowed gravity to assist my fall. I dropped hard onto my knees, spun to face him with one knee up, and slashed wildly. Even in this position, I could barely hold myself up, but it was enough and he scored only a glancing blow to my head from one of his boots as he tried to jump clear of my blade.
He shrieked, the sound echoing down the empty street. When he curled up on the ground, writhing, I saw it: the vamp’s severed hand.
I crawled forward and snatched the dripping chunk of vampire flesh, and then used Mort as a crutch to push me up to my feet.
“Regenerate that, you bastard,” I said. With a new surge of strength, I kicked him in the back of the head.
I reached for the bounty card and managed to pull it out. But when I crouched to try to flash it in his face so the certificate could identify the mark, Van Zant sent up a sharp kick that caught me on the wrist. I dropped the card. He snatched it up with his remaining hand and let out a screech of fury. He tore at the card with his teeth as if it were a chunk of jerky. It sparked and then disintegrated to dust, the charm that was supposed to ID and cuff the mark destroyed.
Shit!
Without a functioning card, I had no way to apprehend him. And I was running on fumes. I wouldn’t be able to apprehend him without the card, and I didn’t have the strength left to kill him. If I stuck around, he’d end me.
Cursing as I went, I hightailed it away from the vamp as fast as my shaky legs could shamble. I had to get away before he managed to attack me again. At least since he knew he was a Guild target, he would go into hiding and stop passing VAMP3 blood around to avoid attention. Temporarily, anyway.
A severed hand certainly wouldn’t kill Van Zant, but I honestly wasn’t sure whether a vamp could grow back a limb. I didn’t really give a shit. I was just happy I’d managed to inflict enough damage to get away alive.
By some miracle, I remembered that there was a little town square nearby and, in the center of it, an ancient oak that served as a doorway.
When I arrived in the MonsterFit vestibule, I’d never been so happy to smell the stale-sweat aroma of the gym. It was dark out in Las Vegas, but the enclosure was still about a gazillion degrees after being bombarded with the western sun. I passed through the doorway and stood outside, Mort in one hand and bloody vampire fingers clutched in the other. It was almost like I was holding hands with Van Zant.
Ewww.
I dropped the hand, and it landed with a faint, fleshy plop, and I went to pull the towel off Vincenzo’s seat. I wiped the vamp ick off Mort, sheathed the sword, and then used the towel to pick up Van Zant’s hand. I wrapped the worn terrycloth around the severed appendage and stuffed it in one of Vincenzo’s side cases.
Then I wheeled my scooter into the vestibule and used the doorway to travel home to Boise.
At the foot of the stairs leading up to my floor, a stray I’d named Emerald sat primly. All I could do was groan and drag myself past her. She let out a plaintive meow at my back, obviously affronted that I hadn’t offered her a treat.
“Next time, Emmy,” I grumbled. Cats were so demanding.
When I opened my apartment door, it was only eight at night local time, but I felt like I’d been awake for about three days straight.
Lochlyn looked up from where she was curled into one corner of the sofa with her tablet in one slim hand and a cup of coffee in the other. She quickly set the mug down on the side table.
“You look like hell,” she said, rising.
“Uhh.” I couldn’t do more than groan in response. I dropped my keys on the floor, took a couple more steps, and dropped the towel-wrapped hand.
She squinted at me. “You’re hurt.”
I shook my head, pulled off my scabbard, and let it fall to the ground, too. I knew I was leaving a trail of junk across the floor, but I couldn’t work up the energy to care.
“Well, something got you,” she said. “Bath?”
I collapsed on the sofa and stuffed my face against a pillow.
“That would be fantastic,” I said, my words all but unintelligible.
Lochlyn understood, though, because a moment later I heard water pouring into the tub. I wasn’t the bubble-bath type, not by a long shot, but one of the only things that helped New Gargoyle magical exhaustion was a soak in a mineral salt bath. My roommate and I had specifically chosen this apartment because it was one of the few in our price range that had a proper bathtub.
“I poured the rest of your bag of salts in,” came Lochlyn’s voice. “You’re gonna need to buy more.”
I turned my head so I could peer at her with one eye. “Sure. I’ll do that with all the extra cash I have lying around.”
The salts I needed weren’t your run-of-the-mill Epsom salts that only cost a couple of dollars a pound at the drugstore. Oh, no, of course not. The optimum soak was a mix of salts from ancient sea beds all over the world that had been enhanced with a bit of magic from witches specializing in healing. Each dose was about a hundred bucks. I only used it when I was really hurting.
Lochlyn went back to her corner of the sofa and pulled her feet up. She sank into the pillows and curled up in a decidedly feline posture.
“Didn’t catch your mark, I take it?” she asked, blinking wide, almond-shaped eyes that appeared to be the color and texture of marbled jasper.
“No, I didn’t,” I grumbled. “But I daresay he’ll think twice before attacking me again.”
I gestured at the bundle I’d dropped on the floor.
Lochlyn looked at it, her elbow-length, straight pink-streaked platinum-blond hair swinging around her face, and then back at me. “Do I even want to know what it is?”
“It’s a vampire hand.”