Renea Mayhew rarely allowed herself to engage in nervous habits. Sitting in the back seat of a taxi that moved through traffic at a snail’s pace, and knowing Peter was in trouble, she allowed herself to clean her already impeccably clean fingernails. She’d tried calling Peter a dozen times already, but his phone went immediately to voicemail - underground tunnels. Underground tunnels she did not know how to find.
Even knowing it would only ring to his voicemail again, Renea plucked her phone from her lap to dial Peter. An incoming call stopped her, the name displayed on her screen read Myles Bittibs. She let it go to voicemail.
Myles was her direct assistant. A young man, perhaps only 22 or 23, with a level of competency rivaling even Renea’s own. Whatever the crisis that had surely been brought to him, and was subsequently elevated to the phone call she’d just ignored would be handled adequately. She was sure of it. The incoming call vanished after a moment, and she dialed Peter.
“You’ve reached the voicemail box of Peter Mayhew,” came the recording of her sweet husband’s voice after a single ring. “Please feel free to leave me a voicemail and I will call you back as soon as I want to. Unless this is Karen. Again. Go to hell, Karen.”
The sudden overwhelming feeling she experienced at the end of her operations call had dulled slightly, but Renea felt… something. Something new. It was like this living being of anger and promised retribution was inside of her. It started in the pit of her stomach, the same place her ‘gut feelings’ always seemed to come from. As she continually ran scenarios through her mind of finding Peter injured or worse, the anger swelled. It grew warm, and then hot, burning up from the pit of her stomach to fill her entire torso.
By the time her taxi pulled into the El Tajin ruins several of Renea’s nail beds were bleeding. She paid the man driving the rickety yellow sedan, pulled her briefcase from the trunk, and walked toward the ruins. She didn’t know how she would find these underground tunnels, but Peter had said they ventured into the jungle outside of the ruins. There was jungle nearly everywhere she looked. Luckily, she had a single clue as to where to start.
A few years before, Peter had gotten himself lost on a visit to Seattle. The GPS function of his phone stopped working and he ended up walking the streets of the unfamiliar city for almost an hour, all the while describing his surroundings to Renea over the phone who tried desperately to find him. When she finally did, he was several miles from his intended destination. How he managed that when she had given him simple and precise directions, she would never know. After that little event, they both enabled location tracking on their phones so that, if and when Peter got lost again in the future, she could simply tell her phone to give her directions straight to him. And vice versa, although she doubted that scenario would ever occur.
The last place Peter’s phone pinged its signal was in the jungle almost due west from the parking lot where Renea now stood. Trusting her intuition, the red hot fury within pushing her forward, Renea Mayhew entered the Veracruz jungle intent on saving Peter.
***
Peter Mayhew’s heart reached a new high score in terms of beats per minute as he scrambled backward and away from the group of vampires that burst through the portal and into Kuzco’s domain. There were three of them in total, and they had forced the lid of the sarcophagus wide open. Whether or not more would come pouring through the gateway wasn’t even on Peter’s radar, however. Avoiding being killed and/or eaten by three bloodthirsty vampires was more than enough to take up all of his attention.
Greg, counter to Peter’s mental state, appeared to be having the time of his life. Despite taking several wounds in the first exchange of attacks and losing his massive hunting knife through the portal, the monster hunter looked absolutely giddy.
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He had one vampire, a slender, sickly looking male with long greasy hair, by the throat. The vampire’s bulging eyes looked like they were about to pop as he stared down at his feet, which were off the ground by a solid six inches. Greg’s other hand held a knife, apparently a spare of the exact same model that had fallen through the portal, which he used with unbelievable speed and efficiency to fend off the other two vampires.
For the opening moments of the clash between Greg and the trio of vampires, Peter could not move. Inside of his mind, Peter was screaming at himself to move, run, hide, do something. Anything. Never in his entire life had he experienced anything so horrendously debilitating. Paralyzed from the fear that overwhelmed him, all Peter could do was watch in horror as the violence played out before him.
One of the vampires jumped onto Greg’s back and wrapped his arms around Greg’s neck, which turned out to be a mistake. The powerful monster slayer turned his back to a wall, bent his knees slightly, and then catapulted himself backward. The vampire’s skull cracked against the wall, causing him to release his grip and slide to the floor in a heap. That blow wouldn’t kill him, Peter was sure, but he’d be out of the fight for a little while at least.
Greg caught Peter’s eye. His delighted smile turned to an uncomprehending glare.
“Peter,” he yelled, arms held out as if asking what the hell he thought he was doing there. “Get back.”
Whether Greg had used some form of magic to shake Peter from his paralysis or perhaps just hearing his name woke him from his stupor, it did not matter. He scurried back and away from the melee, never taking his eyes from the scene.
With his back against the carved stone wall of the sarcophagus chamber, Peter reached for the one thing that he always had on his person and that, he hoped, could make a difference. The finger-sized bottle of bleach was in his hand, finger on the trigger like he was god damned John Wick, just as one of the vampires finally noticed him.
A savage, bone cracking backhand from Greg had sent her rolling across the floor. Across the floor and only a few feet away from a very frightened Peter Mayhew. Peter froze when her eyes locked upon him. Stupidly, he held his bottle of bleach out in front of him. The lady vampire was not dissuaded.
She approached slowly, hips moving side to side like a cat moving toward a cornered mouse. The hungry way she looked at Peter made him feel like the people in movies probably did. The ones sat in a shower with their clothes on after a traumatizing event. Her eyes moved slowly up and down his shaking form. She licked her lips, and then winked at him before pouncing.
Peter reacted. The skss skss skss of his little spray bottle was barely audible among the myriad of other sounds in the room. From years of practice, thousands of hours taking on monsters of his own - namely mold, grease, and other icky things that dared attack Peter’s home - Peter’s aim was perfect. The streams of bleach hit the lady vampire directly in the eyes one after the other following their respective skss’s. The effect it had on her was not what Peter had been expecting.
For a moment she just stood there blinking rapidly as if to clear a bit of rainwater from her eyes. Then she wiped a bit of bleach from her face and smelled it. Bleach, apparently, was not what she had been expecting. A smile began to curl her blood red lips, then her eyes widened. She shrieked in pain and panic, wiping at her eyes with the sleeves of her very stylish black overcoat.
If he managed to live through this, he was going to take that coat home with him. It would look so cute on Renea. He didn’t have time to think too much about that, though. The coat’s current occupant locked her eyes once again on Peter Mayhew. Now they were a bright red that made Peter wince in empathy. Bleach in the eyes is no joke, even for vampires, it seemed. He pointed the bleach threateningly at her, but she was beyond intimidation and into the realm of violent rage. With a bestial roar, she charged.
Peter squeezed his eyes shut, wincing in anticipation for the pain he knew would soon come. But it did not. Hesitantly, Peter opened his eyes. Greg had the lady vampire by her hair, her outstretched, razor-sharp fingernails mere inches from Peter’s throat. Greg grunted with effort as he swung her around like he was preparing to hurl a discus. And then he let go. The crack that her skull made when it contacted the rock wall made Peter’s skin crawl.
The sarcophagus room, so full of sounds only moments before, was now silent.
The carnage filling the room was awesome. Blood coated the walls in splatters and smears. There was a leg on the ground in front of Peter, toes still twitching even as it began to flake away like ash on the wind. Two mangled bodies lie motionless on the ground. Peter resisted the urge to pull a dish towel from his backpack and start cleaning up.
Greg hurried to straddle and then finish off the lady vampire. Peter was not interested in watching. He looked away, eyes landing on the two flaking bodies of the dead vampires. Unlike when he’d seen Kinsey Fox do something similar, the vampires were wearing clothes when they died. The clothes did not turn to ash and disappear. Peter stroked his chin thoughtfully, deliberately ignoring the nearby squelching sounds. He couldn’t help but wonder what kinds of neat trinkets a vampire might keep in their pockets.