Keen's Turn: The Vampire's Appeal

Chapter 4: Red Ruse (first half)

The little star around his neck had escaped from his shirt in his fall, and the pressure on his throat readjusted, finding a grip unencumbered by silver. As it shifted Jared began to draw his hands up in defense—and stopped.

In the seconds remaining between now and death, he relaxed his body, his fingers reaching through the folds in the tarp enveloping him. The tips brushed on a curl of paper. He closed his eyes.

The pressure at his throat lifted away, and there was a thump and a cry of surprise.

His mind suddenly calm, Jared sat up and began pulling the panel off himself. As the material slid off his head, everything seemed brighter, his eyes fully adjusted to the dark. Not far away, the vampire was climbing to his feet, a baleful expression on his face.

"So," he hissed, "it's not a matter of visibility."

Jared looked down at the scroll in his hand. There was a lightness in his chest, an openness he'd never felt before. He picked up the flashlight and got to his feet.

"Then you need to be wielding it, as it were?" the vampire continued. "Which I'm guessing you can't do...if you're unconscious."

Without ceremony he drove his heel into a bottle among the refuse at his feet and dropped to his haunches to seize a shard of glass, hurling it at Jared, who dodged just in time, the missile whizzing past his ear. The vampire already had another in hand and launched it, this time at his torso. The shard caught his side as he lunged sideways, shearing his shirt. He dropped to all fours, stuffing the flashlight into his satchel to grab a rusted sheet of corrugated roofing off the concrete and heft it one-handed in front of him, where it deflected another incoming shard, and another. The vampire aimed for his head again, and he lifted the metal, more debris ricocheting off it. Shooting frantic glances over his shoulder, he stumbled back with the steel shield raised, crouching, ducking, and weaving, making for the stairs.

There was a splintering sound, and a plank of wood plowed toward him, knocking the edge of his shield, the force of its propulsion sending vibrations juddering through his arm. He made the entrance to the stairwell, stopping short and lurching around the doorframe as a volley of projectiles tore through the space where he'd just been standing, clattering and smashing against the stairs. He pressed back against the wall, chest heaving, body tensing to make a dash for the steps down. The peace in his head had gone, replaced with a vicious throbbing.

"Try for those stairs, and you'll get shredded, Red."

He craned around the doorframe. In the watery moonlight spilling from the shattered ceiling, he could see the vampire kneeling before one of the pallets strewn across the floor. He had torn it apart and clutched the timber in his hands in a bouquet of splinters and bent nails.

"Quit lumbering about and come out here, wood you?" he purred, readying a jagged board like a javelin. "Let me cleanse my pallet."

Jared couldn't help himself. "No planks. I don't wanna get board."

"Oh come now. You have to admit, there's a certain poetic beauty to a vampire's staking a slayer."

"I'm a verse to poetry."

"Well there are pros to prose but—"

Jared made a dash for the steps, hefting the shield over his head, and as he reached the first stair, timber began raining down upon him. Footfalls pounded behind him and the blow of another spear on the shield knocked it askew, leaving his head and neck exposed—he leaped sideways onto the landing of the second floor as another plank hurtled by his head. Retreating down the hall, he turned a corner, scoping it out in the dim light. Inky doorways to a few rooms, and a row of windows. He ran to them.