A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [76]
Leaping clear of the flailing, she raced down the street and hauled Gavin back up onto his feet. He’d torn his jeans and his palm was bleeding and desperate times . . .
She dragged her tongue across the torn flesh and shoved him toward Ren adding what should have been a redundant, “RUN!”
Pain did not seem to make the creatures of this world cautious. If forced to guess, Vicki’d say the snake thing was pissed.
Diving under its charge to the far side of the road, she got a grip on its other arm, braced herself against a piece of broken pavement, and hauled it sideways. There was a wet crack at the point where the arm met the body.
And more flailing.
Ren had shoved Star through the portal and was working on Gavin by the time the snake got moving forward again.
Another time, Vicki might have admired that kind of single-minded determination. But not right now. She grabbed the polished leg bone of the creature she’d killed when they arrived, made it between the snake and the portal just in time, and slammed it as hard as she could on the nose.
“Vicki, come on!”
A glance over her shoulder. The kids were through.
And the portal was about twice as big around as the snake.
The snake didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word quit.
She hit it again.
“Vicki! It’s closing!”
Mike.
The portal was still bigger than the snake.
And the sun was rising.
She threw the bone. It skittered off the scales. When the snake lunged, she stood her ground and emptied the Glock into its open mouth. Changed magazines, kept firing. Ignored the pain as a fang sliced into her upper arm.
Stumbling back, she could smell burning blood.
A hand grabbed her shirt, then she was on her back, on the floor of the mausoleum, still firing into the snake’s open mouth.
The portal closed.
The snake head dropped onto her legs.
“Vicki!”
She felt Mike pull the weapon from her hand. Grabbed his hand in turn, and sank her teeth into his wrist. Mike swore, she hadn’t been particularly careful, but he didn’t pull away. One swallow, two, and she had strength enough to tie up a couple of loose ends. “Star, Gavin, forget this night ever happened!”
“I don’t . . .” Ren began.
Vicki cut her off. “Your choice.”
“I want to remember. Well, I don’t really want to remember but . . .”
A raised hand cut her off and Vicki managed to growl, “Sunrise.”
“Got it covered.”
She was heavier than she had been but Mike lifted her and dropped her into the open crypt. The open, occupied crypt.
And then the day claimed her.
“Okay, I’m impressed with your quick thinking . . .” Vicki shimmied into the clean jeans Mike had brought her, “but waking up next to a decomposed body was quite possibly the grossest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“At least the body didn’t wake up,” Mike pointed out, handing her a shirt. “Given our lives of late, that’s not something you can rule out.”
“True.” She shrugged into the shirt and moved into his arms, head dropping to rest on his shoulder.
“You need to feed.”
The wound in her arm had healed over but was still an ugly red.
“Later.” She needed more than he could give and right now, she needed him. “The kids?”
“They’re all home. The two you told to forget are . . .” She felt him shrug. “I don’t know . . . teenagers. The other girl, Ren, she’s something. You’re going to have to talk to her.”
“I know. Cameron?”
The arms around her tightened. “Teenagers run away all the time.”
She could tell he hated saying it. “I was too late to save him.”
“Yeah, Ren told me.” He sighed, breath parting her hair, warm against her scalp. “There isn’t enough crap in this world; they had to go looking for another.”
Vicki shifted just far enough to press the palm of her right hand over his heart. “There isn’t enough love in this world; they had to go looking for another.”
SIGNED IN BLOOD
P.R. Frost
A lovely onyx fountain pen landed with a small thud on my desk, bouncing