Bloodliner

Chapter 3

Chapter 3It was as if someone had heard Jonah's silent cry. Seconds after he tried in vain to scream his head off, the sound of gunfire crackled in the alley.

Multiple impacts shook the blood-drinking girl and pitched her from her knees to the dusty floor of the alley. As she dropped, so did the veil and filaments of blood. So did the floating skull and crossbones. All of it lost shape immediately and plunged down in one big splatter on the pavement.

In the same instant, Jonah regained some of the movement in his extremities. His arms and legs still felt heavy and stiff, but at least he could finally change position.

Now, if he could just avoid getting shot.

As Jonah stepped away from the wall, a figure moved out of the shadows. The first thing Jonah saw coming toward him was the smoking barrel of a gun.

A machine gun. Pointed right at him.

Then, he heard a familiar voice. "This is what it's all about." A female voice. "Protection."

Jonah was kind of shell-shocked, but he realized who was doing the talking just before she stepped fully into view.

"Stanza." Jonah didn't rush to her side right away. For one thing, he hardly knew her. For another, as relieved as he was to see a fellow non-vampire...

How do I know she isn't a vampire, too?

"What's going on here?" said Jonah as he buckled his belt.

"Did you know I get a bonus every time I save your life?" Stanza grabbed him by the arm and yanked him around to stand behind her. "And if you die, I get nothing."

"Nothing?" said Jonah.

"Not one red cent. So stay here." With that, Stanza moved forward, keeping the machine gun pointed at the blood-spattered blonde on the alley pavement.

The blonde lifted her head and glared. "Bitch." She hissed the word through clenched teeth. "You just became my main course."

Stanza fired more rounds into the vampire's chest, flinging her back and bouncing her off the pavement. "I've got three words for you," she said, waving the machine gun. "Black ironwood points."

The vampire howled in pain and clutched at the seeping red blossom over her heart. She suddenly lunged forward, clawing with one taloned hand at Stanza...but another burst from the machine gun threw her back again.

Stanza looked at Jonah and brushed a lock of black hair behind her ear. "Ammo tipped with hardwood," she said. "Very effective. It's like stabbing them in the heart with dozens of little stakes moving thousands of feet per second."

Jonah gaped at the writhing, bloody blonde on the alley floor. "That'd kill anybody."

"But not everything that kills anybody is enough to kill someone like her." Stanza turned and fired more rounds.

The blonde lay still for a moment, then began to jerk and twitch spontaneously. Stanza placed a hand on Jonah's chest and eased him back a step.

"Don't get too close," she said. "Here's where it gets ugly."

You mean it hasn't already?

As Jonah watched, the blonde spasmed repeatedly, then stopped. For a long moment, nothing moved or made a sound in the alley except the air conditioning unit in the back window of Halcyon.

Then, suddenly, the hacked-up flesh of the vampire's chest began to squirm. Shreds of skin and bone flexed up from the place where her heart should have been. Something was pushing its way through from underneath.

At first, as the thing emerged, Jonah thought it looked like a baby's head, bloody and covered with dark, downy hair.

Then, it unfurled.

The gruesome mass bloomed like a flower, poking through the chest wound and popping open. Its true form lay revealed, pulsing and glistening on the blonde's upper body.

Twelve tentacles swayed and twined around a central bulb the size of a fist. The bulb's slimy pink flesh rippled with eyes and jagged-toothed mouths that snapped and gnashed and oozed.

The tentacles were lined with suckers and fluttering cilia strung with slime. Oily black fur streaked the outer skin, barely concealing clusters of blisters and running sores.

"They say you never forget your first look at a feratu," said Stanza.

Jonah was transfixed. The creature Stanza had called a feratu was like something out of a horror movie.

"Now you know." Stanza replaced the ammo clip in her machine gun. "That's why it takes a stake through the heart to kill a vampire. Because that's where the feratu sits."

As Jonah watched, the feratu flipped itself over and crawled across the blonde on its hairy tentacles. It left a trail of bloody slime in its wake.

Stanza followed it with the barrel of her machine gun. "A vampire doesn't have a heart," she said. "The feratu eats it and takes its place. Pumps the blood, everything. Perfect setup for a creature that thrives on drinking blood."

The feratu hopped off the blonde's head and scuttled toward Jonah. He backed away and glanced behind him, sizing up his escape route.

"Two ways it can make you a vampire," said Stanza. "One, it infects your bloodstream with its babies through the bite of a host. Two..."

Suddenly, the feratu scrambled forward with a burst of speed. Adrenaline surged through Jonah's body, and he started to run.

That was when Stanza fired the machine gun. The feratu danced in a hail of ironwood-tipped bullets, exploding in a flash of flesh and fangs and fur and blood.

When the thing had been blown to sufficiently tiny bits, Stanza released the trigger. "Two, it jumps on you, burrows in through your urinary tract, and eats its way to your heart."

"Geez." Jonah was shaking. He tried to stop looking at the gruesome mess on the alley floor. "Ever hear the expression 'too much information?'"

"More on the way, Jonah." Stanza gazed up at the rooftops on either side of the alley. "They're hunting you. In force. They need you."

Jonah stared at her. "That's what the vampire said. 'We need you.'"

"Sure you're not up for some travel?" said Stanza.

"What makes you think I'll be any safer traveling than staying put?" said Jonah.

"They know where to find you now." Stanza kicked at the shredded remains of the feratu. "Wouldn't a moving target be harder to hit?"

Jonah frowned. "You're leaving when?"

"Right now," said Stanza. "Trust me, they're already closing in on you."

Jonah shook his head. "Mom and Dad's funeral is tomorrow."

"Would they rather have you alive or undead? What do you think?" Stanza marched over and lifted the dead vampire's head by her bloody blonde hair. The head tore away, and the rest of the corpse slumped to the pavement. "This isn't a joke, Jonah. Want to end up like her?"

Jonah shifted his weight from one foot to the other. What he really wanted to do was run, all right...run away from Stanza and the blonde and the feratu and the funeral and everything. Just start over without all the noise.

"I need to think about it," said Jonah.

"There's no time." Stanza tossed the head aside and stomped over to stare him in the eye. "We've got to leave now."

"And go where?" said Jonah. "What's the first stop?"

"Church, of course." Stanza smiled. "Where did you think?"