Page 47 of Missing Moon
Sure enough, Dad’s rain-collection barrels are still there. Though… they haven’t been cleaned in probably twenty years. I wouldnotwant to drink this water. Still… it’s water. I stuff my hand through the top layer of vegetative muck and pump magical energy into the barrel. Tepid water rapidly chills to freezing. The handle of my ice sword hardens in my grip just as the vampire chasing me crashes into me from behind. Water sloshes out of the barrel as he mashes me against it.
He wraps both arms around me and opens his mouth, clearly aiming for my neck. I ram the back of my head into his face. Ugh, it doesn’t do a damn thing about his grip. Ugh.These guys don’t seem to care at all about pain. At least it stopped him momentarily from biting me.
I spin away from the barrel, reaching up over my back with my left hand and grab him by the hair. The instant I have a hold of something, I swing his body around. A moment later, I’m holding his severed head in my hand as his body lands in a heavy heap.
His headless body convulses a few times. He’s ashes before the head can hit the ground.
Next, I haul ass around to the front of the house. Tammy-Bear is playing with her new chew toys, having already mauled the ever loving hell out of them, though none have stopped moving yet. I swoop in and start slicing.
Tammy drags one to the ground, then steps on him with all her weight—which, from the sound of it—has crushed his entire ribcage. He gurgles out a displeased, wheezing roar right before his entire head disappears into her mouth.
“Don’t swallow that!” I yell.
My daughter chomps down, biting the guy’s head off. She swings her head to the side, spitting the decapitated remains out an instant before it explodes into dust.
Two more vamps jump straight over Tammy, launching themselves at me.
I fling myself down, flat to the ground, and let them go right over me, too. As soon as they’re clear, I shove myself upward so hard I end up three feet in the air and almost go over backward. The two vamps land with the grace of a drunken buffalo on roller skates. Left guy eats dirt while the right guy stays more or less on his feet, but is stuck stumbling forward unable to stop himself.
Tammy makes unhappy bear noises while charging at the guy lying on his face. I run after the other one, taking care to step on the prone vampire’s back as I go past him. While Icatch up to and decapitate the stumbling fiend, Tammy mauls the other one until he explodes.
I spin around, ready for more… and notice quiet.
We’re alone out here. Tammy looks like a massive raccoon that got into the flour. The fur on her face is covered in pale powder. It’s almost adorable.
Her ears pivot around.
I don’t hear anything other than what is likely Anthony walking around the house to come check on us. My sense of imminent dread is completely gone.
Tammy-bear sits, turns back into her human form and, in a whirl of leaves, dons her leaf dress. She points at me. “Ma, your shirt.”
I look down.
From the waist up, the only things I’m wearing are blood and claw marks. The shirt has been shredded off me. “Oops.”
My jeans have more than a few claw rips and bloodstains on them, too… but they’re a lot tougher than the T-shirt. I can’t even think of what point in the scrap that I lost my shirt. That was… pure chaos. Oh wait. Rain barrel guy.
This might not have ended well for me if I’d been alone. My kids are the best.
I can’t walk back into the house shirtless and covered in blood. I hold up a finger. “One sec.” I summon the single flame and appear in my bedroom back in Fullerton. After a super-fast shower, I don another shirt similar in color to the one I lost, plus another pair of jeans, and teleport back to my parents’ front yard.
By the time I return (which honestly was only about six minutes) Anthony is crouched beside Tammy, studying the mess on the ground… which isn’t all that much of a mess. It’s just dust. An hour or two from now, it’ll be gone with the wind and rain.
“Something is bothering me about this,” Tammy is saying.
“Oh? Just one thing?” I put an arm around her.
She leans into me affectionately. “Those guys didn’t even try to run away. Zero sense of self-preservation. That’s really weird for vampires, isn’t it?”
“Well, who wants to die?”
Anthony shakes his head and says solemnly, “For vamps it’s the Big Sleep.”
I find this hilarious and chuckle. “Okay, Raymond Chandler.”
Tammy’s right, though. Every vampire I’ve ever met takes great pains to protect themselves. It’s an almost universal truism that one’s continued existence is the thing that vampires treasure the most. Which, makes sense. I mean, people who pursue immortality aren’t in a hurry to die. Stands to reason they’d do everything possible to cling to life.
“Yeah. That is definitely strange.”