Suckers - Jack Kilborn [58]
“We have a script,” Vlad said. I half expected him to pull a sheaf of papers out of his ass and show me. “It’s called Fatal Autonomy, The Rise of the Vlad Pires.”
Everyone thinks they’re a writer.
“In the script, do you have a bigger Johnson?”
“Get your jokes in now, Mr. McGlade. When your body is found, the media frenzy will ignite a resurgence of interest in your series. The public will demand to know what really happened to Harry McGlade. And next season, they’ll find out—in the first half of a two-parter.”
“You’re crazy. Television doesn’t work like that.”
Actually, it kinda did. But I didn’t want to encourage the fruit loop.
“Children of the night…ATTACK!”
Even though they’d sexed me up, I’d had enough of Vlad and the Snuggle Bunch. Two Pires with lunging fangs got a Moe-style head-crunch, which sounded more like a dull thud than two coconuts hitting. I planted a heel onto the nose of a some nude skinny guy, drilled an elbow into the cheek of a chick who moments ago was making me sing soprano, and then sprinted right at Vlad, stepping on legs and spines and necks, and giving him a swift kick in the peanuts.
Vlad cradled his delicates like a child holding two raisins and a bran flake, and I pushed past and ran into Crazy Chainsaw Goon, just as he was yanking the cord.
I couldn’t hear my screams above the roar of the saw, but I could guess they oozed machismo and self-confidence. I took a quick left through a doorway, another left down a hall, yanked open another door, and flew into a room filled with Vlad and a dozen angry, naked vampires.
I hugged my knees and Crazy Chainsaw Goon toppled over me, falling face first onto his appliance. He must have pinned down his trigger finger, because the saw revved and came up through his shoulder blades like a shark fin, misting me with blood.
I pushed backwards, bare feet sliding in the gore, and scrambled back down the hall with a flock of Pires on my heels.
Which is where I met up with Crazy Knife Goon and his Swiss Army Buffalo Skinner.
He slashed. I ducked. But I didn’t duck far enough, and the blade dinged off my scalp. The pain was painful. I fell onto my butt, and he raised the blade for the coup de grace.
“Hold on!” I said, showing him my palm.
He paused, holding the striking position. I pressed my free hand to my head.
“Look what you did. You really hurt me, you idiot.”
Knife Goon shifted from one foot to the other. “I…uh…”
“Don’t just stand there. Get me a bandage or something. Jesus, I’m gonna need stitches.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, lowering the knife and turning around.
I planted both my hands on his lower back (okay, it was his ass, but this was special circumstances—I’m 100% all man, baby) and pushed as hard as I could.
He teetered forward, and I scuttled past and made it to my feet, through a door, down a hall, and into the room where Vlad and all the naked vampires were.
Two of them grabbed my legs, sinking their pointy dentures into my knees. Knees are harder than tooth enamel, and I won that encounter, though one incisor wedged itself deep enough into my kneecap to bring macho, manly tears to my eyes.
Another Pire, of the naked male variety, straddled me and put me in a choke hold, which I didn’t appreciate because a) I hate being choked and 2) his naked maleness was flapping in my face.
I buried inhibition and played cherry picker, not actually pulling the fruit from the tree but squeezing hard enough to feel pits. I tugged him aside, and then a blast shook the room and two Pires flopped on top of me, victims of Vlad’s shotgun.
“Enough of this!” he thundered. “It ends now!”
I pulled the nearest corpse over my head as the shotgun boomed again, her back taking the worst of it, but—son of a bitch—I still caught a few pellets. It sucked.
Pires were screaming now, running this way and that way, and I crawled through the chaos and snuck past Vlad right into Crazy Knife Goon.
Which proved my theory that God did, indeed, want me dead.
The blade