WG2E All-For-Indies Anthologies: Viva La Valentine Edition (23 page)

“I heard about it.” Hugo shook his head. “So
essentially she was able to bond out for pies.”

“The Hogwraths and those explosives are a lot
more important than her. You’ve given me enough to get a search
warrant and call out the terrorism task force to serve it
tonight.”

“Victoria and I still have an eyeball on the
Hogwraths. Matter of fact, I see them walking toward their Jeep
now. Call you later.” He disconnected and rubbed his chin. “I still
don’t get it, cupcake. QT knows the Hogwraths from Social Surgery
but why would she call them right after she gets out of jail?”

Hugo backed through the intersection and hid
the car beside a plumbing supply shop that was closed for the
night. The Jeep passed us then returned to Southern Boulevard and
headed west. Hugo let a few cars get go by before pulling onto
Southern.

“We’ll keep it loose. They might be going
back to Headquarters.” He patted the MAC-10 hidden under his suit
coat. “If they come out with the explosives before Smokey and the
task force gets there, I might have to stop them.”

My heart pounded. I couldn’t let that happen.
Hugo was no match for Vampigs. He could shoot them all day long
with no effect. I was no match for Vampigs either but at least I
had a chance. I knew about their usual vampire vulnerability of a
wooden stake through the heart. But I didn’t have any of my
wooden-stake weapons with me. What to do? What to do?

About halfway there, they stopped for gas and
I had an idea. “Let’s keep going. Drop me off at the body shop next
door to Headquarters and you go back to the vacant lot on the other
side. We’ll eyeball them from both sides.”

“Good idea, sweetheart. Then if the fireworks
start, you’ll be safely out of the way.”

That was my Hugo, always looking out for me.
I stayed in front of the body shop until he was out of sight. I
took note of a bush between the buildings that would make a good
hiding place. I ran to the rear of the building. The ground by the
backdoor was littered with yucky cigarette butts, like inhaling
paint and solvents won’t kill you fast enough. No sign of cameras
or alarms and only a simple knob lock. Invitation to a
burglary.

I twisted the knob and pulled hard. The door
popped open. I was going to miss my extra strength when I no longer
had my LGP. And my night vision too. The interior was as clear as
if the lights were on. I stepped inside and sensed movement to my
left.

A huge Rottweiler ran at me silently, about
to leap for my throat. I bared my fangs, narrowed my eyes, and
hissed. He stopped dead and crawled to my feet, whimpering. I
patted his head. He stopped whimpering and rolled over. I didn’t
have time for belly rubs.

Clean dark grey coveralls hung on the wall
and plastic booties for use in the paint booth were in a box on the
floor. I stripped off my yellow dress and high heels. The smallest
coveralls were too big but fit well enough with the sleeves and
cuffs rolled up. I selected the largest of three compressors and a
wand-like thingy for pressure cleaning or sandblasting or who knew
what.

I fumbled with the wand until I got it
attached to a hose and the hose to the compressor. I pressed the
switch on the wand and instantly got a loud noise and a powerful
blast of air that dented my wastebasket target and blew it across
the room. I shut it off and held my breath hoping Hugo wouldn’t
call wondering what the noise was. I found a dozen reasonably sharp
pencils in a desk drawer in the office. It wasn’t great but it was
a chance.

The compressor was ridiculously heavy and
awkward. I dragged it out the backdoor to the bush. The hose was
about twenty-feet long, just enough to reach the barred window on
the end of the Headquarters building facing me. The driveway to the
rear parking lot ran between the bush and the window. I hid beneath
the bush. Vampig vision was probably better than mine. Thirty
seconds later the Jeep turned into the driveway. Way too close for
comfort.

The Hogwrath brothers went in the backdoor
and closed it. I was going to miss my enhanced hearing also. Time
to rock and roll. I flipped on the compressor, hoping the traffic
noise on Southern would mask the sound. With the wand in my hand
and uncoiling the hose, I ran across the driveway, rammed the wand
between the bars, and smashed the window.

The room was empty and the door was closed. I
jammed three pencils into the end of the wand. The door blew open.
The Vampigs came through, one behind the other. I blasted the front
one with my volley of three. One of the pencils hit near the heart,
the other two weren’t close. He staggered. The second Vampig pushed
him out of the way and charged as I was jamming three more pencils
into the wand. I knew he was strong enough to come straight through
the bars and tear my head off. I leveled the wand and fired when he
was coming through the window, one pencil went into his heart
dead-center.

He fell backwards. Then I remembered
something from my last encounter with Vampigs. They implode
violently. If the implosion triggered the two cases of explosives
inside, Hugo and I and probably several vehicles on Southern would
be history. I ducked below the window. A double implosion rocked
the building and blew out the windows and part of the roof but
didn’t set off the explosives.

With shaky legs, I ran to the bush and
dragged all the equipment into the body shop. My phone rang.
“Sweetheart, are you okay?”

“What was that explosion?” I asked, shedding
the coveralls and booties.

“Must have been an accident. Smokey and the
task force will be here in a minute. Stay put until they arrive and
everything is safe.”

I got dressed, checked to see everything was
in its proper place, and gave the Rotty a quick belly rub. The body
shop owner now had a hundred-and-thirty-pound lapdog instead of a
guard dog. I thought about leaving a note suggesting an alarm
system but decided the owner would figure it out. I worked on the
doorknob, finally getting it to latch and lock again and breaking a
darn fingernail while I did it.

A busted-up pallet sat next to their
dumpster. I pulled on a foot-long piece of slat that was broken at
an angle until it came free. I put the makeshift wooden stake in my
purse then walked around to the front.

Tons of cops dressed in black, wearing
helmets and body armor and carrying machine guns crowded the
Headquarters property. A bomb squad van, a SWAT van, some kind of
tank-looking vehicle, and a caravan of black SUVs were parked along
the edge of the road. I felt a twinge of guilt that I’d spoiled
their action with a half-dozen pencils.

Hugo called again. “I’m stuck here for the
time being, angelface. Smokey wants to interview QT about the
Hogwraths’ visit tonight. I told him you might be able to help
because you established a rapport with her at the jail. He’ll pick
you up in a few.”

I didn’t know what rapport Hugo meant but I
was happy to help. QT was my ticket to having the Curse of the
Curse lifted. I wanted to make sure nothing happened to her. There
was a third Hogwrath brother out there.

An unmarked black Crown Vic broke out of the
clot of vehicles next door and pulled up next to me. Detective
Smokey Jambon was behind the wheel. I hopped in and we roared east
on Southern. He screeched to a stop in the pie factory parking lot.
One of the delivery vans was gone. Smokey’s phone rang. He said
uh-huh
a few times then, “Be right there,” and drove out of
the lot.

“That was my cousin Ham Smithfield. You met
him this morning. He just patrolled Murray Road and saw QT’s
delivery van parked on the street in front of Kenny Bunkport’s
house. She and Hogwrath were in the van and appeared to be
arguing.”

Kenny’s house wasn’t far and Smokey didn’t
spare the horses, but when we arrived, Hogwrath was in the van
alone. I jumped out of the car before it came to a full stop. I
didn’t want Smokey to see the confrontation. I held my purse in
front of me with one hand, the other in my purse gripping the
stake.

Hogwrath’s fangs extended as he jumped out of
the van. “You think you’re fast enough and strong enough to use
whatever’s in your purse before I kill you and your cop friend?
You’re as stupid as that bimbo pie-maker who tried to hire us
tonight to blow up all the bakeries in town except hers. And you’re
going to die first for killing my brothers. Don’t look so
surprised. We were Vampig triplets. We knew each other’s
thoughts.”

That was a tidbit for Granny to enter into
the BOT website if I ever got the chance to tell her. And if I did
survive, Smokey would know what happened, which meant Hugo would
find out about my LGP. I was in a pickle.

My fangs popped out. I yanked the stake from
my purse but before I could lunge, Hogwrath was on me and ripped it
from my hand. He stood in the street laughing. Smokey, gun drawn,
came up beside me. Hogwrath laughed harder. “Bullets don’t faze
me.”

“Take another look, Hogwrath,” Smokey hissed.
I glanced at his hand. He held a weapon similar to a .45 but with a
mini-stake mounted to it. It made a pfft compressed-air sound and
shot the mini-stake into the Vampig’s heart.

Hogwrath staggered backwards into the van and
imploded, a very annoying feature of Vampigs. The force of the
implosion knocked the van’s doors open. Dozens of heart-shaped pies
flew into the street and broke in half in a jagged line from the
point on the bottom to the valley at the top, obviously a
structural weakness.

I hugged Smokey. I should have figured it out
earlier. Hampires have to do good work and the work has to have
something to do with pigs. Law enforcement fits the bill perfectly.
He said, “We might never know what terrible act the Hogwraths were
going to carry out. But we have to find the terrorists and stop
them from trying again.”

A shot rang out. This neighborhood was bad
about that. Smokey and I raced up the walk to Kenny’s house. The
door was open. QT had a Glock in her hand, as usual. Kenny had a
bullet hole in his forehead, not so usual. She turned the gun
toward us. I didn’t know if Hampires were immune to bullets, but I
wasn’t.

She had a crazed look in her eyes. “Yes, I
killed him. Ginger too. She recommended him for lip enhancement,
only because, unknown to me, she was sleeping with him. She didn’t
know anything about his skills. Look at this idiotic permanent
smile. When I tried to get Ginger to settle our financial dispute
this morning, she laughed at me. She said she was more believable
to a jury than someone with a mouth like mine.” The gun wavered in
her hand, raising a flock of butterflies in my stomach.

“Tonight, Hogwrath told me Kenny said he
could fix my mouth whenever he wanted, but he wanted me to do him
with it first because it really turned him on. I told Kenny about
that and he said it was a lie. He’d accidentally used liquid rubber
with the Botox and we had to wait a few years for it to break down.
Then he laughed at me so I shot him and now I’m going to shoot you
and I’ll become queen of the pie world.”

Her plan was flawed. Officer Ham Smithfield
slipped up on her from the rear, grabbed the gun, and stuck his
fangs in the side of her neck. Smokey leaped to her other side and
did the same. Granny said Hampire victims had to be evil-doers.
It’s always nice to see family members sharing.

They drained her in seconds. A minute later
her carcass vaporized, leaving only her clothes and her lips. Ham
stuffed them in a plastic trash bag and went out the backdoor.

Smokey made a zipper-closing hand movement
over his mouth. “Our secret.” We did the interlocking pinkie thing
then walked to his car.

Hugo was at the station when we arrived. I
gave him a sanitized version of what happened, finishing with, “So,
it looks like QT killed Ginger, Hogwrath killed Kenny, and QT and
Hogwrath are in the wind together.”

“There weren’t any signs of the other
Hogwraths at Headquarters. So far no ideas of what blew up, but the
crates of explosives were recovered.”

Fatigue had set in. My Hugo had to help me
walk to his classic Yugo. When we got home, we showered together
which revived us… too much. Hugo said, “It’s almost midnight,
sweetheart. Let’s have a glass of champagne and wait for
Valentine’s Day to get here so we can kick it off the best way. And
I have a surprise.”

We put on our robes and went in the kitchen.
He took a bottle and a box from the refrigerator. He opened the
bottle and poured the champagne. “Open the box, angel. I made a
stop on the way in and dropped it off here before I went to the
station.”

I flipped the lid and stared in the box. A
heart-shaped Key lime pie with a black raspberry and dark chocolate
topping stared back at me.

The clock struck twelve. We dropped our robes
and slow walked to the bed. He put his arms around me. “I’ll give
you your real present in the morning, sugar.”

“This is my real present.” I hugged him
harder and thought about my need to get rid of my LGP. Technically
we’d taken care of QT’s business problems as we’d been hired to do.
I didn’t think that was going to satisfy Gregor. But he didn’t care
about QT, just the pies.

Maybe I could learn to bake.

ABOUT BUCK BUCHANAN