Poseur Vamp just smiled at me, like he knew something I didn’t. Which he probably did, it being his lair and all. There had already been more vampires here than I knew about, and I wouldn’t put it past him to—OWWWW!
“Goddammit, cat, what the—”
My words died in my throat as I turned to see what had inspired my furry passenger to dig all its claws deep into my shoulder, spring up on top of my head, then leave bloody furrows in my scalp as it launched itself off my head like a high dive board. I was ready to blast that furball into a stole when I saw it latched onto the face of a vamp five feet behind me. It had its teeth clamped onto the vampire’s nose, its forepaws digging into the vampire’s ears, and its back claws ripping and tearing at the monster’s throat like it was digging for gold.
Kinda hard to be mad at the little monster that just saved your life.
This vampire was a big one, obviously strong in life, and the only other male I’d seen except for the boss. He stood several inches taller than me, and carried at least fifty more pounds of muscle, now augmented by its supernatural strength. But none of that mattered when a tiny Tasmanian devil was pulling a Mike Tyson on both ears.
I chuckled, took two steps forward, drew my silver daggers, and drove the blades deep into the creature’s chest, I felt the ribs separate, but the vampire didn’t die. No, I intentionally missed the heart with both strikes, so I could pry the sneaky bastard’s chest open with my blades, plant my right-hand knife in his guts, and reach into his chest. I ripped his heart out with my bare hand and turned to face the “master.”
I tossed the heart to land at his feet with a splat. “He won’t be needing this anymore, so if you’re feeling peckish, we could call it your last meal.”
Master Mimicry let out an ear-splitting screech and flung himself off the dais in my direction. He covered most of the fifteen yards between us in a single bound, giving testimony to his strength and cementing my knowledge that he was definitely old enough to know better. I let the knife fall from my left hand, caught the oncoming vamp by the lapels of his tuxedo jacket (yes, I’m serious, the dumb bastard wore a tuxedo to a fight), and rolled back onto the floor, planting my feet in the vamp’s gut and straightening my legs. He flew back over my head, and I rolled to my feet.
I’ve tried to do the whole thing where you roll back onto your shoulders and pop your hips to spring up, but it doesn’t always go well, and there was a lot of slippery goo on the floor. The last thing I needed was to bust my ass in front of the master vampire. And the cat. Because the cat had a much higher life expectancy than the vampire.
Master Moron slammed into the concrete but was on his feet in a blink. He did the whole nip up thing, because he gave a shit what people thought of him.
I shoved power through the palms of my outstretched hands and yelled, “DELEO!”
This was a new one. I usually focused my energy into fire, or an explosion, or sometimes even a manifested sword. But using the Latin word for “destroy” was one I hadn’t tried before. It was effective. Devastatingly so. The master vampire didn’t explode, per se, but he definitely fell to the ground in a collection of really disgusting component parts. It was kinda like all the things holding him together into a defined form suddenly gave up the ghost, all at the same time. For a couple seconds, it just rained vampire soup. Disgusting, but really effective. I filed that one away for future use.
With the nest cleared out, I pulled out my cell phone and typed a message. “All clear.” Seconds later there was a rush of motors and tires crunching in the warehouse’s gravel parking lot, and within a minute a ladder descended into the basement and my boss and fiancée, Deputy Director Rebecca Gail Flynn, walked carefully across the gore-splattered concrete to stand before me.
“Well, this is a hell of a mess,” she said, looking around. There was still a glowing sphere hovering over my head, so the basement was as bright as noon, showing all the body parts strewn all over the floor, the walls, and a couple of really gross patches of ceiling. “You let one get away.”
“Nah, she took Door Number One,” I replied.
“Door Number One?”
“Go forth and sin no more,” I said. “I gave all of them but the boss a chance to leave, and if they behave themselves, they can live out the rest of their nights without worrying about me hunting them down.”
“Wow,” Becks said. “Mercy from the man they call the Reaper? You getting soft on me, Harker?”
“Not bloody likely,” I replied. I gave her a hug and a quick kiss, then winced as my newest partner climbed up my back, digging his back paws into my injured ribs along the way. “Dammit, kitty, that hurts!”
Becks laughed and stepped back, looking at the furry psycho currently draping itself over the back of my head with one paw on each shoulder, and its front paws hanging down over my forehead. “Harker, did you…rescue a cat while fighting a nest of vampires?”
I glanced up, the tips of ten little claws and some long gray paw hairs the only part of the cat in my field of view, and heaved a resigned sigh. “No, I think actually he kinda rescued me. I mean, he certainly did more damage to me in the fight than any of the vampires, but he also kept me from getting ambushed by the biggest one. So, I guess he’s my cat now.”
Becks smiled, a knowing grin that twitched up one side of her mouth. “No, Harker. I’m pretty sure now you’re his person. Because if you’ve ever had experience with cats, you’ll know that they own people, not the other way around. Good luck, lover. I have a feeling you’re in for an interesting ride with that one.”
I didn’t bother asking what she meant, because just then the damn cat leaned down and licked my right ear, then bit me, then licked me again, and purred in my ear. Yeah, I guess I was his person now.
What the hell was I going to name a cat?
John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love. He is also the award-winning author of the urban fantasy series The Black Knight Chronicles, the Bubba the Monster Hunter comedic horror series, the Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter dark fantasy series, and many other projects. He is also a cast member of the role-playing podcast Authors & Dragons, where a group of comedy, fantasy, and horror writers play Dungeons & Dragons. Very poorly.
In 2016, John teamed up with several other publishing industry professionals to create Falstaff Books, a small press dedicated to publishing the best of genre fiction’s “misfit toys.” Falstaff Books has since published over 150 titles with authors ranging from first-timers to New York Times bestsellers, with no signs of slowing down any time soon. In February 2019, Falstaff Books launched Con-Tagion, which has very quickly morphed into SAGA — THE Professional Development Conference for Genre Fiction Writers, held in Charlotte, NC every year.
In his copious free time John enjoys long walks on the beach, rescuing kittens from trees and playing Magic: the Gathering. John’s pronouns are he/him.
Connect with John at: https://johnhartness.com/
Forever and A Day
By Kelley Armstrong
THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN FINDING a dead body is finding part of a dead body. This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced that delight…or the first time the body part in question was a head… or even the first time that head was in my bed.