2 CHAPTERS FROM FATAL RETRIBUTION

I'm not skilled at keeping a steady blog.  I can't even manage a food diary more than a week or a personal diary more than a couple days.  But, I know how important it is to share yourself with the world, especially when you're an artist; painter, photographer, writer, ect. 
I have just a couple updates: 
Work on the third Raina Kirkland novel, Grave Omen, is slow going due to so many side projects.  I'm worried that I may actually have to push back the release date, but I will do everything within my power to not do that.  
The pre-booktour giveaway went really well, until I actually sent the books.  The package arrive empty and mangled and that sucked out loud.  Even though I wrote in the small print that I wouldn't be responsible for it once I sent it I'm holding myself responsible and I'm re-sending the package.  It really was my fault.  There is this super cute locally owned mailing business by my house called Mail Boxes and More and I wanted to support my local business so I dropped off my books and gift card with them.  However, the woman behind the counter was loud, louse and did not make me feel comfortable leaving my package in her hands...but I was trying to wrangle up my rambunctious toddler so I did the really dumb thing and trusted the women behind the counter and left.  I had a bad feeling all day and I was so not surprised to hear that the package didn't make it...I will fix this, though.  
Another update, unrelated to writing, My husband's doctor found a tumor behind his knee.  It looks like it may not be cancer, but they are running some more test next week.  James belongs to a union so we are in a better position than most who meet troubling times such as these, but we're still hoping we don't loose our house over this; doctor bills and out of work and all that sad, sad jazz.   
Anyway, I thought I'd share with you'al a couple of my favor chapters from FATAL RETRIBUTION.  Um, a SPOILER ALERT is in order for those who have not read the book in question.  Enjoy! 

TWENTY-EIGHT

MARK’S HOUSE WAS across from Calvary Catholic Cemetery, not far from University Village.  It was a large house with red siding and freshly laid sod in an attractive suburban neighborhood.

I left home early but I didn’t anticipate the severity of the traffic on interstate five.  It was almost ten at night when I parked behind a pretty metallic white Honda Civic with a UW sticker in the back window.  I was at the end of a long line of cars parked along the curb.

For once in my life I didn’t bring a purse with me.  My boots were tight enough to carry all I needed: ID, papers, cell phone, and my bank card.  I cut the engine and pulled my cell phone out of my boot. 

“Damn it Mato.”  I had hoped he’d be here by now.  I cursed loudly and took a deep breath.  I couldn’t just sit in my car.  Mato and Ranger would be here soon anyway, so I might as well go inside.

“You’re just another college student come to have some fun,” I told myself as I walked up the slick grass lawn with heavy rain pouring down. 

There were two girls making out under the covered front porch.  They stopped and watched me as I walked toward them.  One was a sexy pirate.  She had a patch over one eye and her long purple-red hair was teased half to death.  She was wearing a store-bought pirate costume and her hand was a hook that was tracing ever so close to the other girl’s—um, southern regions.  The other girl was a mummy, of sorts.  Though, the white wrapping left lots of skin exposed and little to the imagination. 

“Hello,” I said politely as I stepped onto the low porch and out of the rain.  I looked at their outfits and almost laughed.  I had spent the whole drive here thinking that it was going to be a fancy masquerade and I would be way underdressed. 

“Come here,” said the mummy.  She dashed over and grabbed me by my arm.  “Come on,” she giggled.

She pushed my back against the wall.  “I really need to go inside,” I said as politely as I could.  They ignored me and pressed their bodies against mine.  Four eager hands were exploring my body.  Their breath smelled like beer and cigarettes.  The pirate used her hook to lift my dress, rubbing the cold plastic against my inner thigh.  “Stop it,” I breathed.  “Hey, I said no, damn it!”  I shoved them away from me. 

“Bitch!” shrieked the pirate.  Mummy just backed away.  Guess she could tell pissed when she saw it.  Smart girl.  I was so glad Mommy and Daddy’s money wasn’t going to waste.  Good for them.

“No means no,” I said grabbing the door handle. 

“Bitch,” the pirate repeated.  Wow, someone’s using her expensive education to further her vocab.  I looked back at her.  She looked like she wanted to fight.  I didn’t. 

“We all have to be good at something,” I said.  The mummy laughed at her friend and thus a cat fight began.  The girls were making more noise than they needed to.  Screaming high pitched and yelling “Bitch!” and, “Fuck you!”  When I turned to open the door I didn’t need to.  A horde of college boys dressed as random monsters and heroes had come to the door to watch the fight.  I pressed myself into the door frame to let them by.  They made a semicircle around the two girls, who were now wearing less clothing, if that were at all possible.  Slapping, clawing and tearing at each other’s clothes.  Oh, the brutality.

The front door led straight into the deserted living room.  The cat fight outside had apparently emptied the room.  There was a brown leather sofa and love seat with a bulky wood coffee table and two matching end tables.  A large seventy-two inch television sat directly in front of the leather sofa with a PlayStation Three to its right.  Posters of women in bathing suits and shelves full of trophies and alcohol bottles occupied every inch of the walls. 

Rock music was blaring from enormous speakers that sat where a dining table should have been.  Even with the heart vibrating bass of the music I could feel my cell phone vibrating against my thigh.  I couldn’t take the call here.  I could hardly hear the thoughts in my head.  I couldn’t take it out in the front either, what with the fighting and shouting out there.  I looked around the place for somewhere quiet to answer the phone. I made my way through the mammoth sized kitchen, full of beautiful oak cabinets and slack jawed idiots, with the hope that I’d find a door to a back porch.  Eventually I stopped saying “excuse me, pardon me.”  No one cared. 

I finally found the back door and opened it to find no porch.  There were just steps leading out into the rain. 

Someone yelled, “Shit, that’s fucking freezing!”  It was a skinny guy in his birthday suit.  “Close the door!” several different people yelled, so I did.

My next best option was to find a quiet room down the hall left of the living room.  The hall was full of more intoxicated college students.  Bickering, making out, and gossiping.

“Is there a quiet room where I can take a call?” I asked a random guy.  He was completely spaced out.  He looked at me, eyes glazed.  A dumb smile spread across his face.  His teeth were perfect.  His parents took good care of him physically.  Maybe they didn’t think to nurture his mind, because he didn’t seem to understand its importance, hence the killing of many brain cells.  “Hey,” I shouted over the music and his drunken and/or drugged stupor. 

“Lets hook-up,” he demanded, wrapping his heavy arms around me. 

“No, I need a quiet room?”  My thigh stopped vibrating, I had missed the call.  The boy frowned but pointed at a half opened door.  “Thanks,” I said, squirming out of his arms.  I had to fight to make my way toward the door.  I felt like a fish swimming upstream.

The boy had completely misunderstood my meaning and pointed me to the bath room, where they had turned the bath tub into some kind of large alcoholic beverage bowl.  A few kids were dipping cups in the tub, but it was a little quieter in here actually.

“Can I use the bathroom to make a call?” I asked.

More slacked and overly happy faces stared back at me.  I was really getting annoyed with these self obsessed spoiled rich kids and their no consequences attitude. 

“Shit in the yard,” one slurred, angrily.  He had beady eyes and spiky black hair.  I remembered him from the picture of the team that was working on the vampire project.  Yes!  He was the boy standing right beside Mark.  I think his name was Crag or something.

I wiggled my phone in the air for a visual aid and said really slowly, “I need to make a call in the bathroom.  It’s raining outside.”  That was a bit too condescending, but it got my point across.  Two boys left, Beady Eyes stayed.  Arms crossed, sandaled feet planted.  It seemed that he wanted to make a point too.  Fine by me.  I shut the door.  He sipped on his tub juice.

The music was cut off enough that I could hear myself think again.  This was a nicely built house.  I plopped on the toilet and stared at the phone like a life line, and maybe that was what it really was.  So far the party wasn’t scary, but I hadn’t seen Mark yet.  Maybe I had but hadn’t noticed.  It was a costume party after all, not a masquerade.  Masquerades are elegant, nice.  This was neither elegant nor nice.  I wanted Mato here, I wanted my backup. 

I squirmed nervously on the toilet while Beady Eyes made slurping noises.  He was perched on the side of the tub in cargo shorts and a toga, staring at me as I pushed a button to listen to Mato’s voice mail.

“You have-one-new message,” announced the machine lady.  “First message, ’Raina, this is Mato.  I am sorry, but we cannot crash Mark’s party!’”

“What?” I nearly screamed at the phone. 

Beady eyes scooted closer to me, staring like he could almost produce a coherent thought.  I turned away from him and held the phone tighter to my ear.  “The EI went a different route and talked to Mark’s father.  He is a very powerful man with powerful friends, including a couple judges.  All our evidence has been ruled circumstantial.  We have nothing Raina, I am sorry.’  End of messages.” 

I sat on the toilet, my cell phone clutched in my hand, elbows on my knees.  “Holy shit-balls,” I said in defeat. 

“Bad news?” asked Beady Eyes.

“Yeah.”

He grabbed a plastic cup from the tower of cups on the sink and filled it with the tub juice.  “Here,” he said, handing me the dripping cup. 

I took it, “Thanks.”  It was full of orange-ish red stuff that smelled terrible but I took a sip to make him happy.  It tasted like it smelled. 

“Do you want to…,” he began but Beady Eyes didn’t get to finish that question because the door slammed open. 

Obnoxious heavy metal music flooded the small room and another toga-man came running to the tub screaming, “Ambrosia, Ambrosia, the drink of the Gods!”  The food of the gods, you idiot.

He was wearing a gold mask and a gold laurel leaf crown.  The mask covered his face with a mocking smile.

“Greg, you missed it.  There was a cat fight on the front porch and they got practically naked!”

He sat next to Greg, and dipped his empty cup into the tub juice.  Greg laughed with his masked friend and I got up to leave. 

“Hey, don’t go,” said Greg. 

I looked back at them.  Greg’s friend had taken off his mask to drink, and I froze.  I recognized that tanned face, those big white teeth, that nose, those eyes!  I stood there like a deer in head lights.

“What’s wrong?” Greg asked. 

I said nothing and Mark looked at me after he emptied his cup in one quick swig.  He stared at me with soul piercing eyes.  At first those eyes were indifferent but they changed.  Soon they were disdainful, knowing eyes that let you know someone was indeed home and he wasn’t a man you wanted to get to know.

“Raina Kirkland, is it?” he asked loud enough to be heard over the music.  His drunken slur turned to grad student snobbery in just as many seconds.  Charming, mocking smile painted so thick the fumes made me queasy.

“Mark,” I said, bowing dramatically, my eyes never left his.  A weird smile crawled its way up my pale lips.  I felt a strange sort of pleasure take me. 

“What luck, you’re just the witch I’ve been dying to meet.” 

“Maybe I should go and let you get back to dying.” 

I moved to leave but he set his cup down ever so gently on the counter and stood to tower over me. 

He smoothed down his toga. “I have something you should see.”  And, he didn’t wait for my response, which would have been something along the lines of, “All I want to see is you rotting in a jail cell with the occasional midnight mystery date.”  Instead, he grabbed my arm and turned me as he ran past me.

“Black hair and blue eyes suit you better,” he said as he tore our path down the hall.  “You look almost human.”

He slammed open a door and we entered a room with an oversize chemistry set lying out on three different tables.  Clear plastic sheets covered the brown carpet and furniture.  The far wall was covered in what looked like profiles of every vampire incident that took place and some I hadn’t known about.  It looked better than the one I saw at EI, more detailed information.  My own face smiled back at me from the far wall.  It was a photo from my facebook profile and a red circle had been drawn around it. 

“What the shit!” I yelled. 

He smirked, “Such language, tsk, tsk.”

“You’re keeping track of all the people you’ve killed or worse!  Why?  Do you like being reminded of how fucked up you are?”

“Mark?” said a soft feminine voice.  The voice belonged to a small woman with bouncy bleach blond curls and heavy makeup.  She was sitting on a plastic covered couch, dressed as a nurse.  Hell—o nurse!

“I’m leaving,” I said. 

“Why so grouchy?” Mark joked.  His smile was a playful one. 

“You are a fucking sociopath and I’m allowed to be grouchy when the man that fucked up my family and caused the death of so many innocents is prancing about his laboratory in a toga, scot free because of dear old daddy.” 

“Raina, you don’t understand how important my work is.  If you had even the simplest idea of the progress we’ve made since we’ve distributed our cures, shit Raina!”  He pulled his hair and began to pace the room, drunken and frantic.  “I want you to understand, Raina!”

“Why do you give a shit what I think?  You just got off scot free.  You’re a murderer!  You caused vampirism to spread like wild fire!  It’s not even on the fucking news for Goddess sake!  How the hell is this not on the news?” I yelled, looking at all the pictures on the walls.  That was a huge question of mine.  How the hell was this not on every news program?  It was kind of a big deal. 

“I know people,” he said quietly.  He shook his head to push that subject away.  “Not one of those people really wanted to be vampires.  They simply wanted to live and I offered them the cure with a possibility that they would not even become vampires.”

Mark began to dig through a backpack that sat on the couch next to the nurse.  Her face was pleasantly blank.  Her perfectly painted face made her beautiful, but the look of complete ignorance made her hideous.

“They turned Mark, they did get the disease you promised them they wouldn’t and they went into a blood rage and infected and killed other people, innocent people!  Kids, Mark, little fucking kids!”

“Yeah, aint it cool?”

His gold mask was back on, its smile so matched his own.  He wiggled his cigar holder between two fingers teasingly.  It was gold with silver lettering on it that read, “Carpe Diem.”

“My brother tried to kill himself last night, so no, I don’t think it’s all that cool.”

He flipped his mask so that it was resting on his head like a second face, “Spoil-sport.  Don’t you see that you are the key to all my life’s work?”

“All your life—you’re what, twenty-something?”

He just smiled at me and then looked over my shoulder and his smile broadened. 

“We’ve finally engineered the virus to strengthen the healing affects and make the vampiric side effects dormant, and you’re proof of that,” he said more to the man standing behind me than me. 

The man that just entered the room was a tall black man with a cane, bald head and dressed in a nice suit.  “Meet Darrell, he’s been given a three month death sentence.  Cancer, it’s a bitch, but it’s good for business,” Mark said, smiling all the while.  Darrell walked past me and handed Mark an envelope. 

“Don’t do it,” I warned the older man.  “He’s caused so much suffering already.”

Darrel turned on me with pain filled eyes.  “Don’t talk to me about suffering.  I know suffering!  I’ve been through chemo.  I’ve seen the look on all the specialists faces as they told me I’m going to die.  I’m not going to die because of this bull shit, I’m not!  Death is not an option I’m going to entertain!”  His eyes were haunted, determined.  There was no talking Darrell out of it.  I could feel his fear. 

“Mark please, stop this!  You’ve amplified the healing effect too much.  Your last victims turned in seconds, Mark.  If you give him that blood he’ll turn so fast your head will spin and then you, me, her and all your friends are vampire food!  You can’t do this!”

Mark was shaking his head while he filled a syringe from the tube of blood he had taken out of his cigar holder.  “This is the same I gave Paul, the same that’s inside you—but refined.  It will work the same way but better.”

“No Mark, Paul, and two of my brothers turned.  I’m not human.  I don’t know what I am.  It won’t be the same, Mark.  Goddess!”

“Mark, sweetie, maybe you should do this later, just in case she’s right,” the girl pleaded.  She was holding Marks arm, giving him puppy dog eyes.  He looked at her like she was a buzzing fly. 

“Go sit on the couch and get the camera ready, now!” he yelled.  She shrunk in on herself and sulked off to the couch where she fiddled with a camera the size of a cell phone.

“Mark!” I warned as he prepped the needle.

“Raina, you’re about to witness medical history,” he stated, very serious.  Darrell held out his arm.  Mark tied it off to get a vein.

“No Mark!” I shouted, and I slapped the syringe out of his hand.  It smashed against a table and landed on the floor.  A small amount of blood pooled around the broken syringe. 

“No!” shouted Darrell. 

Mark’s fist found my face and my face found the floor.  Pain washed over me, leaving me breathless for a moment. 

“I can prepare another injection,” Mark assured Darrell, but Darrell was on his knees, dabbing his fingers in the spilled blood and licking them clean. 

“Don’t touch that!” I shouted and the effort hurt like hell.  I grabbed at the plastic covered floor as I tried to move past the pain in my head.  “Shit,” I spat, trying to lift myself up.  My head was spinning.  The fucker could punch.

“Stop him!” I shouted at Mark, but Mark was busy patting his grieving client on the back as Darrell dug his fingers into the blood, desperation for survival eating at him like acid.  His fear was loud in my mind—and then nothing.  I felt nothing from him.

I couldn’t stand up just yet but I could crawl.  I crawled to Darrell.  His face was bloodied.  I ran my hand down his cheek gently, he was burning up.  He was dying!

“Shit!” I yelled over and over again as I crawled backward, getting as far away from him as possible.  “Shit, shit, shit!”

“What?” the girl asked with her eyes wide. 

I had to steady my aching head with my hands, “He’s fucking turning, now!”

Darrell’s body started convulsing under Mark’s hands and Mark stared down with wide eyes. 

“Give me my gun, Jennifer!” he yelled at the girl. 

He turned back to the table and lifted his toga to pocket the envelope. 

Jennifer didn’t react to his words.  She was staring at Darrell, her eyes and the camera fixed of him as he screamed and convulsed on the floor.  She had a better vantage point for watching Darrell’s turn, or would that be a worst vantage point. 

“My gun?” Mark demanded, but Darrell began to puke blood. 

We watched in shock as the blood poured from Darrel’s mouth.  I tore my eyes away from the horror and tried to get Mark’s attention by standing between him and Darrel.

“Where’s your gun, Mark?”

“It’s,” he began, but then Jennifer started screaming and I turned to see that Darrell had stopped shaking, stopped puking blood.  The tall man stood, head bowed, face slack.  He stared at Jennifer from a heavy relaxed brow, but she didn’t move.  She cried and screamed for Mark with the camera still pointed at the new vampire.  I looked back at him to find him at the door and I could see the moral dilemma playing in his head.  Should he save himself or save her?  Not the actions of a sociopath.

Darrell made a movement in my peripheral vision that brought my attention back to him.  It looked like he was relearning how to use his body.  He took a step toward Jennifer.  She let out a helpless yelp but didn’t budge from her seat.  She was paralyzed with fear, like Katie had been.

Fuck my head still hurt like hell, “Stop!” I screamed at him.  “Darrell, no!”

But, he didn’t even pause for consideration, he wasn’t Darrell anymore.  He was the walking undead, a hungry monster and he lunged at Jennifer. 

“Help me!” she screamed standing on the couch, finally trying to run.  But she didn’t get far.  He grabbed a hold of her leg and she went down.  Her hands grabbed at the plastic on the couch, but it was no use.  He crawled up her screaming, fighting body with the ease of the strong undead. 

“Fuck!” I shouted. 

I ran to the couch.  From behind Darrel I grabbed his head, trying to keep him from biting down.  His teeth were still human but human teeth can do damage too.  I pulled back on his forehead with all the strength I had. 

“Help!” I shouted at Mark. 

I held Darrell’s head back but he still had hands and they dug at Jennifer, making a bloody mess.  I pulled harder, lifting Darrell’s head higher but that didn’t stop his hungry hands from ripping a hole in her stomach.  She was still screaming for Mark when I saw bone peeking out from her chest.  Jennifer’s blood was everywhere, leaving my face painted thick with it.  The feel of her hot blood running into my eyes and mouth, the only parts of my face not covered by my mask, made something inside me snap and I couldn’t stop screaming. 

“Jen!” Mark screamed, but he was too late to save her.  She was dead, silent, nothing but meat.  I let go of Darrel and he dove into her meat, making a bloody pig of himself. 

“Come on,” I grabbed Mark’s arm.

“No, Jen!  She’s pregnant with my boy!” he was staring at her or what was left of her.  That explained his uncharacteristic care for her.  She was carrying an extension of himself inside her.  I spared a thought for the young life that would never be, but I had to get everyone out of here before Darrell got bored of chewing on her.  He wouldn’t get full.  He would bleed us all before the night was done.

“She’s dead.  We have to get out of here!  We have to get everyone out of here now!” I shouted at him as I reached for the door handle.

“No!” he screamed and jerked his arm out of my hand. 

He pushed Darrell off of Jennifer and grabbed at her, trying to lift her broken body off the blood soaked plastic, slipping and grunting with the effort.  That wasn’t a smart idea.  He made himself a target.  Darrell lifted himself from the floor.  His face and hands were covered in blood and dangling bits of other stuff.  He grabbed Mark’s right leg, toppling him to the plastic covered floor.  Jennifer’s body broke his fall.  Darrell ravaged his legs with something close to vampire speed.  Mark’s tight jeans gave him little protection.  Darrell ripped at Mark’s jeans with his teeth to get at the meat filling, and when he did Mark broke into wild screams that hurt my ears.  How could no one hear this?

He kicked at the vampire with his other leg but it was no use.  I ran after him, but I didn’t know what I could do.  Mark reached for his blood soaked backpack and pulled out a metallic blue gun, and I stopped in my tracks.  I didn’t know how experienced Mark was with a gun and I had no wish to be shot.  It was small, couldn’t have had but five or six shots.  He pointed it at Darrell’s head and fired, again and again, every shot point blank. 

Darrell’s head was blown back.  He wasn’t moving anymore.  Thick blood and brain matter oozed out lumpy over Marks leg, over Marks wounds.  Shit!

“God damn it!” Mark shouted at the dead vampire as he tried to pull his leg out from under so much dead weight.  “Fuck,” he breathed, “Raina, help me, please.”

I shook my head, “No.”

“Come on…look, I’m sorry I hurt you, I’m sorry I hurt so many people!  Please Raina!” he screamed, tears pouring down his face. 

I took my mask off and threw it on the floor so I could wipe Jennifer’s blood from my eyes, and slowly backed myself closer to the door.  “You’re infected.”

“NO!  RAINA!  NO!” he screamed as I opened the door and slammed it behind me.

“Run!” I yelled at the people in the hall.  “Run, get out of here!” But they just laughed at me.  “Vampire!” I screamed and heavier laughter erupted. 

But Greg stepped up, “Who?” he asked, scared, knowing the danger, “Darrell Dolton?”

“Yes, he’s dead though, but he infected Mark!” I shouted over the music, loud and scary now that it matched the occasion better, Rob Zombie’s Living Dead Girl, perfect.

Greg looked good and scared.  “Shit, don’t yell vampire or run.  These shit heads won’t understand that!”

“Hey,” one of the shit heads yelled in happy protest.

Greg waded into the thick of the party and yelled, “Cops!”  And, everyone was yelling, screaming, running for escape.

“Cops! Cops!” I yelled frantically as I ran through the house.

TWENTY-NINE

THERE WERE ONLY a few kids in the house when Mark tore the door off its hinges.  Everyone else was out in the front yard.  Some were stumbling to their cars.  I was on the phone with Mato, who had someone on the phone with Detective Travis.  Greg was on the phone with the police, like many others I would guess.  Those in the house, after all our warning and nearly dragging to the door, were screaming now.  No more laughter, nothing but screams.

After I frantically told Mato what had happened he spent a good while telling me what I should have done.  I should not have gone in without him.  I should have left the moment I got the message.  I should have called the police when it was clear what Mark was planning.

“Mato, I’m sorry,” I said close to the phone so he could hear me over the screams and music coming from inside the house. 

“The police are on their way!” Greg yelled.  He was holding onto a hysterical girl dressed as Cleopatra.  Mascara was running down her face with her tears.  She was bent over her cell phone, crying to someone on the other end, screaming about what had happened, like a lot of people.  Most of the kids ran away on foot or piled into a car and speed down the road drunk and scared.

Greg and I both jumped a little when we heard someone pounding on the front door from inside the house.  My first thought was that someone was trying to get out, get away.  Guilt hit me.  But something stronger than human was shaking that door right down to its frame.

“Shit!” I cursed for what seemed like the hundredth time tonight.  I really needed to pick a new favorite curse word.  Greg looked a question at me.  I gestured hysterically toward the door.  “Mark’s trying to get out!” the phone was still in my hand, Mato was still on the line, listening.

I could hear him telling me to run!  I was running, but not in the direction he wanted me to.  I was heading toward the house.  I needed to stop Mark from busting down that door before the police got here.  I needed to buy these kids some time.  The house was built well, but that door wasn’t going to hold him off forever.  It wasn’t locked, but Mark was in a blood rage, like Paul had been.  He’s slower, dumber.  I was hoping to use that to my advantage. 

I leaped onto the low porch.  The door shook violently with Mark’s efforts.  It would be easier for him if he remembered how to use a door handle, but if he remembered that he wouldn’t be eating his friends.  I walked carefully toward a window that overlooked the porch.  It was low and it was open, big enough for a man to fit through.  See, newly dead plus blood rage a dull witted vampire makes. 

With a shaking hand I pealed the curtains aside.  Greg was shouting at me to come back, no one else cared.  Some made comments about my intelligence.  Fuck um, I was saving their lives. 

The television was still on.  I could see a lot of blood, people crying, more people turning probably, but I had to stop him, at least until the professionals got here.  Mark was about five feet to my right, clawing at the door like an animal, beating it with his fists, throwing himself against it.  Carefully, quietly, I stepped one foot into the house, onto a chair that was set just in front of the window.

“Help me!” screamed a woman.  I hadn’t seen her, just on the other side of the chair.  Her legs and chest were shreds of meat but she was still alive, poor thing.  “Fuck, help me!” she screamed past me, to anyone else who might be more helpful. “Help me!  Help me!” She shouted over and over again.

“Please be quiet,” I whispered at her, but it was no use.  She was hysterical and I couldn’t really blame her for it.  “Oh, fuck,” I said, because she finally got someone else’s attention, Mark’s.

With my one foot solid on the chair I launched myself into the house, away from the woman and her screams and into the large kitchen.  Mark was moving slow for a vampire, but he was still fucking fast for a human!  Bloody floors and high heeled boots are so not a good combo.  I felt like Bambi trying to stand up for the first time.

Mark’s face was red with blood and skin and bits hung from his mouth as he dived for me.  Cesar was back for revenge as the undead!  He grabbed me by my arm and I screamed as he bit into it. 

“Get the fuck off me!”  I screamed as his tongue explored the wound, lapping up my blood and meat into his mouth faster than he could swallow it.  With his free hand he grabbed my hair and pulled me closer to him.  He wrapped his body around mine and rode me to the floor.  Fingers digging into me, mouth exploring every newly opened wound like my body was one large sampler tray.  Surprisingly, I could hear police sirens over my screams and the screams of Mark’s other victims.  The red and blue lights flashed rhythmically through the house like a great colorful strobe light. 

I heard the door being kicked in, and then gun fire lit up the house.  Mark ran away from me but I stayed on the floor, where guns hopefully weren’t being pointed.  The gun fire followed Mark around the room, and sprayed in the direction of any other people who stood up too fast to take a chance with. 

Bullets were flying like a blizzard of lead.  It was a war zone.  Automatics, shot guns and pistols all.  No one was left out.  I think they would have used flame throwers and grenades if they were allowed. 

The EI officers were in full riot gear as they made their slow way into the house through the door, window and the walls.  Damn. 

Four officers with EI in yellow lettering on the back of the riot jackets drove Mark down the hall, guns aimed at his head.  I lay back on my good elbow and held my shredded arm to my chest and watched as the second line of defense came in and stared chopping off the heads of those who were dead so they wouldn’t get up again.  Normally it’s illegal to just kill any old vampire, but in cases like this the public and courts give the police a rather long leash and they gladly take advantage.  One of the head choppers looked at me.  Shit.

“I’m Raina!” I shouted over the music that was still blaring.  So appropriately, it was now God Smack’s, Dead and Broken. 

The head chopper walked toward me.  She had what looked like over sized hedge trimmers.  “No, wait!” I yelled. “Stop!” I put all my demand into that word.  Fuck, why had mind control not occurred to me before?! “Stop!”

The officer stopped, “Yes, ma’am.”

I was in shock and hyperventilating, but I managed to say, “Take me out of here unharmed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said again, and she helped me up and out of the house safely.  Shit.  The police were almost scarier than the vampires.