Chapter Nine

Taking a Ride

I sat on the floor with my legs in a W-shape feeling tousled and looking at my blood-sprayed shirt while Dudley went to get the maid.

Pierce took off his coat and wrapped it around Schroder’s head. “Don’t be so disturbed. After the surgery, he’ll be a completely different person. Right now, he’s brain-damaged. After the operation, I’ll make sure he can’t harm you anymore,” he said with a friendly gleam in his eye. “And we’ll get your sister back.”

“How can you be so sure? We don’t know anything about Garth. Dudley said they might not even be planning to come back here.”

“Tate Dudley? In the flesh? Is that who your friend is? If it’s him then it’ll be okay. I’ve heard tales about him. He’s the resourceful type. He should be able to find her.”

I put my hand to my forehead in fatigue. I couldn’t look on the bright side at a moment like this.

Dudley came back with the maid. She wasn’t remotely surprised or disturbed by the sight before her, but looked to Pierce for an explanation, which he seemed happy to supply. “We had a little accident. Do you mind if I take him to my place for a while just to get him sorted?”

“Are you taking him to see The Scissor Man?” she asked, placing an impatient hand on her hip.

“Yes.”

“My salary has been prepaid for the next six months, so if he doesn’t come back—I’ll be coming to see you.”

Pierce returned her gaze calmly and said, “You don’t need to threaten me, Jan. I know how these things work and you know where to find me.”

“Then I’ll get something to clean the blood,” she said before slipping out of the room.

“Don’t spend all your money bribing her,” Dudley said, going to Schroder’s feet and helping Pierce lift him off the floor. “I have some news,” he said, looking at me. “While you were coming in here without my permission, I ran into a couple of humans prowling around the back. They were discussing how they were going to keep something a secret from Schroder/Roan… whatever this guy’s name is.”

“What?” I said, pulling myself together and getting up.

Dudley and Pierce grasped Schroder’s body and carried him to the door and down the hall while Dudley talked. “I think it’s good news. Apparently, Garth ran off with London when he took her out of the shed last night.”

“Why did he do that?” I asked, hurrying after them.

“Why?” Dudley clicked his tongue on the roof of this mouth. “Probably because he fell in love with her and he was just pretending to be comfortable with it when they were draining her last night.”

“But won’t he just kill her himself after he transforms into a vampire?”

At that, Dudley frowned. “I thought you’d be relieved, but I guess you wanted a happy ending for this story. It’s just that,” Dudley said as they eased Schroder through the front door and down the steps to the car, “it’s a miracle she’s survived this long.” He paused as Pierce opened the back door to his sedan and together they crammed Schroder’s unconscious frame into the backseat. Dudley slammed the door and leaned against it with ease. “This means she can take the natural course all vampires must take with Garth instead of being tortured to death.”

“Are you saying you’re going to give up on her?” I accused.

“No. Not at all. I only mean the desperation of the situation has eased considerably. I got a couple more license plate numbers, so we’ll be able to round up the rest of the humans who were in league with Schroder and question them about Garth. From there, we might be able to find a clue as to where Garth has taken her.”

I shook my head. “And that means?”

He put his arm around my shoulder. “It means I’ll take you to my place tonight and then tomorrow you can go back to work like everything is fine. Tomorrow night, you and I will question the owners of the vehicles and find out what we can—like Garth’s address. But seriously, Sweeper, if it turns out that she’s lost forever, that’s the path London chose and there’s nothing to regret. This is the path all vampires eventually take. It’s just a matter of whether or not she has the strength to kill Garth in the end.”

I knew she didn’t have the strength, but who was I to criticize? I didn’t have the strength to argue with Dudley now. I was angry with him, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was rest and get my head on straight.

Pierce gave me a grim smile and gently smacked Dudley on the shoulder to stop him from leaning against his shiny car.

“I’m going to go back inside and talk to Jan about how to handle any ‘visitors’ that happen to pop by tonight. Collecting their license plate numbers is all well and good, but unlike Dudley, I have the authority to take care of those humans tonight, so I’ll stay until dawn and round everyone up. But first, I want you to show me where they were draining London.”

“All right,” Dudley said, looking slightly perturbed. He clearly didn’t like being outmaneuvered like that. However, he quickly teamed up with the vampire policeman and started walking toward the back of the house.

I stopped them. “Are you guys just going to leave Schroder in the car?”

“What?”

“Well, if any of those humans come through the front door instead of the back and they see Schroder all mangled in the backseat of your car, won’t they get spooked and take off?”

“He’s got a jacket wrapped around his head,” Dudley pointed out.

“Maybe so, but I think she’s got a point,” Pierce said, ruefully stroking his chin. “Besides, he needs to be taken to a secure location. I really jammed myself in a tight place tonight. I want to stay and round up those humans, but I also need to take Schroder away before he wakes up. Hey, Sweeper, why don’t you drive him to my place? It’s better to take him there rather than the police station. One of my servants will know what to do with him and when you’re done dropping him off, you can drive back here.”

I glanced at Schroder in the back of the car and wasn’t sure I felt all that comfortable, but when I thought of the chance we could be missing to catch those humans who had been planning to drain London—I gave way.

“Sure, I can do it,” I said easily.

Pierce pulled out his car keys and got into the front seat. From there, he punched up a map on his GPS and showed me the way to his house.

“You can follow this, right?”

“I’m not a moron,” I replied.

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He smiled and got out of the driver’s seat.

Just then, I heard the click of the back door opening. Dudley was standing over Schroder with his gun to his head.

Pierce jumped on his gun hand before he could pull the trigger. “What are you doing?”

“I just want to make sure he doesn’t wake up while Sweeper is driving him,” Dudley protested.

“Don’t shoot off a firearm in the middle of the street! I don’t care if it’s one in the morning, it’ll draw unwanted attention. As if we aren’t gathering enough of that just standing here. We can best help Sweeper by sending her off as quickly as possible. He won’t wake up. Trust me. We just need to get her moving.”

Dudley’s expression was doubtful, but I was resolute. “You guys are the ones who need to get moving,” I fumed. “If you let even one of those bastards go because of this pathetic quarrel, I’ll see you both in hell.”

“At my house, ask for Kilmeny. He’ll know what to do,” Pierce advised.

With that, I got in the car and slammed the door shut. Getting to Pierce’s house would be easy. Except that the expression on Dudley’s face in the side-view mirror as I pulled away looked distinctly uneasy. Whatever. I could do this.

I started driving. Pierce’s house was nowhere near Schroder’s. It was in a suburb on the other side of the city. I took a highway route. It was faster because there were no lights and no pedestrians.

I had been driving for about twenty-five minutes when I started to hear moaning from the backseat. My heart almost stopped as I craned my ear to listen. There were no words, just odd mumbling. I looked over my shoulder at his head, but I couldn’t see anything in the dark. I got control of myself and put my foot on the accelerator. I would be there in ten minutes. Less if I sped.

I jumped when Schroder bumped against the back of my seat as he rolled onto the floor.

I put my fist in my mouth to stop myself from screeching. I was scared, but my yowling about it wasn’t going to help anything. It might even wake the monster up. I clutched the steering wheel and got into the fast lane. I was flying down the road at a dangerous speed, but I doubted I’d get pulled over. After all, I was driving the Police Chief’s car. I blew a piece of hair out of my eyes and pressed harder on the gas.

To my utter terror, Schroder’s moaning turned into words. “It hurts,” came his garbled voice.

I told myself not to lose my spunk. I said I could do this and I could. I took in a deep breath and talked to him rather than ignoring him. After all, he might not remember what happened. “What hurts?” I asked in my I’m-a-receptionist voice. “Your head?”

“No. My heart,” he muttered.

“Can you breathe?” I asked, thinking of the cloth wrapped around his head.

“Who, the hell, needs to breathe? Who needs to exist if I can’t help her?”

My tone turned icy as I replied. “Maybe she doesn’t need any help.”

“I don’t care if she needs me or not. I need her. I need the dream of her.”

He sounded so pathetic from the backseat it was hard for me to remember what a monster he was, but I remembered in time and kept my tone cold and my conversation strict. I wanted to know what he had been up to. “What do you want to do to help her?”

“Money. There was so much money.” His voice trailed off.

Were we even talking about the same thing?

“How did you earn it?” I asked. “Selling vampires to humans?”

“Why would I do that? I’m not like other vampires. I’m talented. If she had any idea how talented I am, her heart would melt.”

“Why not try to earn her heart that way?”

He suddenly bolted upright in the backseat and pulled Pierce’s jacket off his head. In the rearview mirror, I saw his bloody face and bald head. “You’re right!” he exclaimed. At that moment, our eyes met in the mirror and he recognized me. “Where are we going?”

I didn’t know how to answer. A part of me wanted to tell him the truth and a part of me wanted to hold off just in case he didn’t trust me or Pierce. On the other hand, he probably knew Pierce’s home. He wouldn’t like my answer.

So I lied. “It’ll be a while before we get there. You should lie down and sleep.”

I changed lanes. When I looked in the mirror next, he was lying down.

“You’re listening to me?” I muttered incredulously to myself, but apparently, he heard me, because he responded.

“It’s a small thing to give you.”

After that, he didn’t say anything else and it wasn’t long before I pulled up in front of Pierce’s house. From my humble experience, Schroder’s home was a mansion, but Pierce’s was a castle. Vampires were such materialistic bastards.

I stopped the car and cut the ignition.

“Are we there already?” came the weak voice from the back.

I feigned ignorance. “I’m not sure. There’s someone inside I need to talk to. Wait here. I’ll be back.”

There was no sound from Schroder, so I just assumed his assent and got out of the car. The bottoms of my shoes made weird sounds on the stone steps. I should have felt comfortable, but I didn’t. Feeling the atmosphere around me, I wasn’t sure if the air felt so charged because of the people watching me from inside the house or the vampire inspecting me from the car. I swallowed the creepy lump in my throat and pretended it wasn’t as distasteful as swallowing a spider.

I rang the bell.

The door swung open. Someone really had been watching me. Two men stood in the doorway. One was dressed much the same as Schroder’s maid. The other was dressed more like a butcher with a long white apron horribly stained in blood.

“Are you The Scissor Man?” I asked, inspecting the many tiny cuts on the man’s face and his razor-sharp haircut. It was so short it looked like it had been cut earlier that day.

He didn’t smile, but instead gravely introduced himself and the man next to him. “I am Kelly and this is Kilmeny. I’m not normally called The Scissor Man to my face and I’d prefer it if you didn’t start the trend. Pierce phoned us. He said you have a vampire for me to see.”

I resisted the urge to squirm. He didn’t sound like a doctor. I wanted to ask him if he had just come from surgery and if he’d lost the patient. That was the only explanation I could summon to account for his grim expression. Then the idea occurred to me. What if his grim expression had everything to do with me?

I took a step backward. “He’s in the backseat.”

The two men stepped out of the house and down the stairs very deliberately, rather like they were approaching a snake. Kilmeny took hold of the car door handle and opened it carefully and quickly.

Schroder was lying inside with his head on the seat. His face was smeared with blood, his lips were colorless, and his eyes were closed. He looked dead.

Kelly had a roll of duct tape around his wrist and he tore off a piece.

“What are you going to do with that?” I whispered.

He put one scarred finger to his mouth to silence me. “All vampires have fangs.”

Kelly leaned over Schroder. His fingers trembled as he stretched the silver tape over the vampire’s mouth. His hands shook so much, he was having difficulty making it straight before he put it on.

I bit my tongue to hide my anxiety. Something seemed wrong and I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Was it these strange people or was it Schroder?

Something was scratching my leg. Ouch! I slapped it and looked at my hand to clear away the bug guts. A mosquito had gotten me. Blood stuck on my fingers.

Schroder’s eyes snapped open. Kelly hadn’t got the tape on him yet. Suddenly, he struck Kelly across the side of his face and within an instant had adjusted his position so he could kick Kelly in the chest. Kelly fell on his back and Schroder pushed his way out of the car.

Kilmeny slid a gun out of his sleeve and shot at him, but Schroder moved out of the way in time. The butler tried to shoot a second time, but something inside the gun jammed.

Schroder was on all fours licking his own blood that pooled in the dimple between his nose and his mouth. Then he pounced on Kilmeny like a wolf, grabbed his head between his two hands, and slammed it repeatedly against the cement. He was going to kill him.

“Stop!” I screamed.

Schroder didn’t even look at me. He was finished with Kilmeny by now and was on the lookout for Kelly. The Scissor Man had pulled two pairs of long silver scissors from out of nowhere and was approaching Schroder with purpose.

Schroder snarled and reached for one of The Scissor Man’s hands. He wasn’t fast enough and The Scissor Man scored a hit in the fat part of his palm.

I stood back—so appalled I couldn’t even move.

Schroder made a second attempt to grab one of the pairs of scissors but was again rewarded with a collection of cuts across his fingertips. I couldn’t believe Kelly was able to keep the vampire at bay. He moved lightning fast. I’d thought he was a shaky old man.

Schroder stuck his bleeding fingers in his mouth and sucked hard. Then he made a jump toward the gun Kilmeny had. It hadn’t even occurred to me to get it. I rushed to get it at the same time, but Schroder was faster. I half-crouched in front of him with one of my hands on the pavement and our eyes clashed.

He whacked me across the side of the head with the gun. I fell sideways and hit the ground like a black plastic garbage bin.

I would be dead before morning. I really was an amateur at this.