Texas Hold 'Em (25 page)

I nodded, took hold of her leg, and then, with one swift motion, set the bone.

If the vampires hadn’t heard our cars pull up, they couldn’t have missed Megan’s scream. To give her credit, she cut it off almost as soon as it was out, but the sound that had already escaped echoed off the brick storefronts lining the street.

Her eyes had shut; I didn’t know if she was resting or had passed out. I wasn’t even sure if vampires could pass out. I gave her hand a quick squeeze, and when she didn’t acknowledge it, I placed her hand across her chest. I gave my peacefully sleeping mom a peck on the cheek and exited the van.

Despite our less than silent arrival, I tried to be as quiet as I could as I made my way down the sidewalk towards the shop. I was careful to hug the buildings and avoid the dim glow emanating from the lone streetlight.

Bryan and Lacey hurried along beside me. As expected, we had lost Marie. She’d disappeared sometime between when we left the van and when we arrived at the shop. I assumed she had gone ahead to warn the vampires, in case they had somehow missed all the noise.

I had no idea where Jacob’s secret passage came out, so we couldn’t get to Jacob from that end. I tried the front door first. It was still intact with the security gate drawn shut. I jiggled it but it didn’t budge. I still couldn’t feel the presence of any vampires, but they could be hiding anywhere in the darkness in or around the shop.

We circled around to the back. The gate to the chain-link fence that surrounded the parking lot was open. The lock lay on the ground, twisted and broken. The Ford Explorer I had seen at Fred’s house was parked inside the gate, but there were no signs of vampires.

The back door hung sideways from one twisted hinge. The door itself was a metal security one. It had held up despite several impressive dents. The frame was a different story. Splintered wood littered the ground around a warped strike plate.

The only way I knew of to reach the second floor was via the freight elevator. We couldn’t take it without getting jumped, but I couldn’t think of an alternative. I let out a silent sigh, thumbed the safety off the AK, and stepped forward.

I felt the first signs of vampires as soon as I crossed the threshold. Several were nearby, somewhere inside the dark building, and another stronger one was above me. Somehow one had gotten access to Jacob’s loft.

I was about to push forward when a tap on my shoulder stopped me. I turned to see Lacey motioning upwards. I backed out of the doorway and saw the source of the second-story vampire. Marie was ten feet up, on the metal fire escape that was affixed to the brick building. She dropped down the ladder for the rest of us. It made a loud rumble, ending in a louder clang as it extended to the ground.

“It’s no good. Jacob had bars installed on all of the windows!” I shouted up at her, all pretense of silence abandoned.

“Bars? Really?” Marie said in a tone that indicated they wouldn’t be much of a problem.

“Jacob is paranoid. They’re probably sunk a foot into the brick,” I said. I backed all the way out of the doorway and alternated scanning the rooftops and the dark interior of the shop. There were vampires around, and they certainly knew where we were. I didn’t understand what they were waiting for.

“Let’s say we let Dingbat try the bars, because I’m not getting a good feeling about going in to try for that elevator.” Lacey planted a foot on the ladder and began to climb.

“Why don’t you ever wear skirts?” asked Bryan as he followed Lacey up the ladder. Lacey didn’t even bother to reply.

I remained below while they climbed up, waiting for the imminent attack.

“Where are they?” I asked no one in particular.

“Probably waiting for us to bring Jacob out. I doubt they care if we go in. It’s not like we’re doing anything but trapping ourselves,” said Lacey.

She had a point. Once they were up, I climbed after them. We crowded together on the metal platform while Marie worked on the grate.

The bars had indeed been set with bolts that extended several inches into the brick, but they were no match for Marie. She torqued the grate from side to side half a dozen times, bits of plaster and brick falling out as she did. With a final tug, she pulled the whole wrought-iron grille from the wall and set it gingerly to the side. Next, she grabbed the window and lifted. It held for a couple of heartbeats before the wood gave out. The lock tore free, and the window went crashing up to the top with a loud bang. We watched the glass spiderweb into thousands of pieces, temporarily held in place by the chicken wire. A second later the whole sheet fell down. We jumped to the side as the pane fell between us.

Marie shrugged. “Oops.”

“Jacob!” I called into the building.

“Chance? Is that you?” Jacob’s reply was distant, from somewhere in the depths of the maze.

“Yeah, it’s me. Where are you?”

“In the office.”

“Get over here—we’ll escort you out.”

“I need some help carrying this stuff.”

The thought of being trapped in the building didn’t excite me, but Jacob hadn’t offered to come to the window. That should have been my first clue, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly. I bent down and climbed in anyway.

Marie peered in after us. “Why are all of the lights off? Is Jacob an environmentalist? I’m impressed. You know, I support conservation as well. I think lights are truly overused.”

“That’s because you can see in the dark,” said Lacey.

“Hmmm…you may have a point,” answered Marie. Her shadow lingered on the fire-escape landing. She was looking in, seemingly interested in the rows of files. I was about to ask her what she was waiting for, until I remembered she couldn’t enter.

She gave a little wave and then moved out of sight. I turned back around and the three of us stumbled forward in the dark toward where I remembered the office being. By the time we reached the glow of its monitors, I could no longer feel Marie’s presence behind us.

Gone were Jacob’s personal machine and the servers, but the computer that monitored the video cameras remained. The first screen showed a pair of vampires loitering downstairs by the elevator door. Something wasn’t right about the picture, but I couldn’t place what.

“About time you got here.” A disheveled Jacob was listing in his battered chair. It looked like he had been roughed up a bit.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine. I can’t believe they got the drop on me. I thought I had some time before they tracked me down. I was downstairs in the back of the shop when they surprised me. I was barely able to make it up here in one piece.”

“We need to go. Now. Where is this stuff you need help with?”

“I think it might be best if we wait it out. Sunrise isn’t far off; I bet they give up and go before too long.”

“Somehow I doubt that. Come on, Jacob.” I grabbed his arm to help him out of the chair.

“No, really, I think it would be best if we stayed.”

I pulled and he recoiled. The chair tipped, the top half finally separating from the wheels that had supported it for the better part of half a century. Jacob went with it to the ground. The sudden weight I ended up supporting almost brought me down as well, but I managed to remain standing, bent over, still clutching Jacob’s arm.

“Christ, boy! Look what you’ve done to my chair! That was my father’ s!”

“I’m sorry about the chair, Jacob, but we need to leave. Kevin is waiting for us with my mom and Megan in the van down the street.”

“Kevin? What is he doing here? Why did you involve him?” Though still visibly upset, Jacob stopped struggling. I released his arm and he crumpled into a sitting heap in the middle of the floor.

“He involved himself. He was waiting for us at the hotel. Don’t worry about him, he’s fine. We’ve kept him at a safe distance from everything.” I felt a cool presence coming, and wondered if a vampire was either above us on the roof, or directly below us in the store.

“You tell me he’s fine? Left alone in a van with your mother and a vampire?” Jacob’s features were twisted by a mixture of anger and despair.

“I told him to hightail it if anything goes down. And the vampire is incapacitated, so you don’t need to worry about her.” Not that he needed to worry about Megan anyway, but I thought it might help ease his mind.

“Now get up. We have to hurry before they get bored with waiting and decide to set the place on fire and burn us out of here.” Jacob sat unmoving. I was about to bend down and try hoisting him up again when I felt the cold presence grow impossibly near.

At first I thought Marie had somehow managed to get into the loft, but as the aura was upon us, I could tell it was stronger even than hers.

“Oh, I don’t think fire will be necessary,” Christian said, walking out of the labyrinth. Somewhere in the background, I heard the elevator begin to run.

“How did you get in here?” I asked. At this point it didn’t matter, but I hoped the question might buy me some time so I could think of a plan. This was bad. The loft was too dark and held too many places for a vampire to lurk.

“Who the hell are you?” asked Bryan in his usual tactful way.

“This must be Christian,” said Lacey, taking in the well-built, long- haired vampire. “Somehow I thought you’d be taller.” She glanced at Chance. “Looks like Jacob sold us out.”

Christian stopped and smiled. “Oh, no, Jacob was much too righteous to do that. My associates simply caught him in his store and suggested he invite us up here and give you a call. He was kind enough to keep you here until I showed up. I had some business to attend to.”

“You didn’t have to hurry on our account,” I said, trying to will a plan for saving us into materializing.

Christian spread his hands. “Oh, I didn’t. As it turns out, I found my schedule clear. The person I was supposed to meet with stood me up. I guess I can’t claim to be surprised. After all, they were the subject of the hostile takeover I wanted to discuss.”

“You might want to work on all that hostility of yours. I hear it can lead to all sorts of health problems. High blood pressure, stress, fatigue,” suggested Lacey.

“Now I remember you: you torched my house. I’m going to kick your ass,” said Bryan, taking a step toward the vampire.

I reached out to grab hold of my brother, trying desperately to prolong his life. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Oh, by all means—go right ahead,” Christian said, appearing curious about my question and completely unconcerned with the burly kid who was struggling to attack him.

“Why wait twenty years for your revenge?” I asked.

Lacey grabbed Bryan by the neck and squeezed. “Ow! Hey, what the hell? Let go of me. That hurts!”

“Do you genuinely not know, or are you that callous? I lost my family. The wife and son I had shared my life with for a thousand years were torn from me. You can’t begin to comprehend what a loss like that is like. To love someone for a millennium and suddenly—gone. That day, I lost everything.

“Loss like that impacts one’s priorities. My ambition and even my hatred gave way to grief, at least for a time. That utter hole in myself was all I could think about. It consumed me. I couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t function.” He looked at me unblinkingly. “That is what I have been doing these past twenty years. Grieving. Trying to get over the loss. But that’s not possible, is it?

“I might never have come back, at least not in your meager lifetimes, but then one evening I saw their picture. I had been making my way down the Eastern seaboard when the two of them smiled at me from the back of a bus-stop bench. The anger replaced the grief quicker than I thought was possible. I didn’t recognize her, of course, but him I would never forget.”

“Wait, who?” I asked. Lacey, still using the Vulcan death grip on my brother, was listening intently. Bryan had stopped struggling, but I knew as soon as he got the opportunity he was going to do something stupid.

“David and his wife. David was one of the men who murdered my family. I didn’t even kill him. Did you know that? I just asked him why—why they had done it. Why they came that day to kill my family.

“Once I had him, the next one was easy. Then I had to work a bit to find Robert. David and his wife didn’t know where he was, but they helped me find his family. Killing his niece was enough to lure him out of hiding. Fred took a little longer. Locating Jacob here was the hardest, of course. Not even David knew how to find him.”

Mentally tallying the body count, I asked, “So what’s the deal with me? I had nothing to do with what happened to your family. Why go after mine?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re a murderer like the rest of them. I can’t have you running around killing people because of what happened to your girlfriend. You would never stop. You would keep killing anyone you thought to be a monster, regardless of who they were, or what they had done. I can’t allow anyone else to suffer my fate.”

“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I tell you that I’ve changed?”

Christian laughed. “No, I don’t suppose I would. You can take solace in knowing that I don’t plan on harming your mother. In fact, I am seriously considering keeping her. I was saddened to hear that you visited the hotel and took her away from me. She and I had been getting along so well.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“But you haven’t. Why, one minute ago you told me right where I could find her again. Speaking of which, I know I’ve just arrived, but if you’ll excuse me, I am going to get reacquainted with your dear mother and say hello to Jacob’s nephew while you all die.”

Christian moved the same instant my finger depressed the trigger. He was ungodly fast, and my assault rifle spat lead into an empty corridor. Loose pages jerked and flew off distant shelves as bullets struck them, causing a snow-like effect as the disturbed sheets drifted down.

Bryan was a touch slower, mostly because he had to jerk away from Lacey and draw his gun. By the time he did, Christian was gone.

“Shit.”

“Time to move!” I bolted for the side corridor that led to the fire escape. I had to make sure my mom was safe. Bryan, Lacey, and I made it a few steps before I realized Jacob wasn’t with us. I whirled around. “Jesus Christ, Jacob. Let’s
move
.”