Critical Failures III (Caverns and Creatures Book 3), page 15
Stacy necked the rest of her drink. No point in being coy. “So says the guy chatting me up at an Olive Garden bar.”
Brad took her glass and held it up, nodding at the bartender for another drink. It might have been nice to run it by her first, but hey… free drinks.
“I was just here on business,” he said. “You want to keep a client’s business, you keep them happy. If that means suffering through some Chef Boyardee ravioli, then so be it.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
“One bar’s as good as another.”
After a few more Manhattans, Stacy began to warm to Brad’s forced wit and bravado. He wasn’t a guy she could ever date seriously, but he was good for a few laughs. She was four more drinks – and at least as many “amazing” Brad stories – in, when his well-practiced smile faltered. He was looking at the front door.
“Holy Mary, mother of God. What is that?”
The identity of the man standing in the Olive Garden doorway was no enigma to Stacy. He fit Tim’s description right down to the purple cape. He really wore it. To his credit, he looked like he otherwise tried to make an effort. His hair was washed, and the polo shirt under his cape was stuffed under his gut into a pair of jeans that looked like he hadn’t worn since two sizes ago. The poor guy looked as out of place as a kitten in a snake pit.
He clutched an old, black backpack by the straps. The patrons nearest him looked at the bag as if hoping it didn’t contain a bomb. It was time for Stacy to step up to the plate.
“Mordred!” she called out, breaking the silence in the room. She gave him a wave and a cheery smile. The booze had been a good idea.
Mordred let out a relieved sigh and waved back.
The other patrons, satisfied that this weirdo was the expected dining companion of a seemingly normal person, and therefore less likely to be taking out his frustrations on a cruel and uncaring world, continued their conversations.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” said Brad. “You… and him?”
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” said Stacy, trying to sound convincing. By Brad’s smirk, she could tell he wasn’t buying it.
“Well you two lovebirds enjoy your meal,” said Brad, setting a business card down on the bar. “Gimme a buzz if the date doesn’t go as well as you hoped. Good luck.” He winked at her, took what remained of his drink, and moved down to the end of the bar.
Chapter 18
“He’s gone,” said Katherine. “You can take your hood down.”
Cooper lowered his hood. “Thank fuck,” he said. “It smells like ass in there.”
As there was a big enough gap in the oncoming traffic from either direction, the two of them ran across the highway. Once they were safely hidden in the forested north side, Katherine morphed into her wolf form.
She almost immediately picked up Ginfizzle’s scent, which was weird because she hadn’t even realized she knew what he smelled like. But the scent was strong and unmistakable. The trail was fresh. She sniffed at the ground as she trotted along, with Cooper crashing through the trees and underbrush behind her.
The scent weakened as Katherine followed it. The scenario played out in her mind. Getting hit by a car had hurt Ginfizzle pretty badly. He’d spilled a lot of blood as he ran away. Then his wounds started to heal, and he dripped less and less blood, until he was completely healed. The blood had made him easy to track, but it wasn’t necessary. Faint as it was, she could still keep up with his erratic zig-zagging through the forest… until, suddenly, she couldn’t.
The trail ended abruptly. Katherine raised her snout and opened her canine nostrils wide, but all she could smell was Cooper. He’d just farted up a cloud of Arby’s and Funyuns. She turned her head toward him and growled as he came into view.
“What?” said Cooper.
Katherine didn’t want to waste any time, but she couldn’t communicate with Cooper in wolf form. She morphed back into a half elf.
“I lost the trail.”
“Oh,” said Cooper. “Well, shit.”
“Your fart overpowered it.”
Cooper looked down. “I guess I can’t blame this one on the dog.”
“I know it’s not your fault,” said Katherine. “But I need you to take a walk so I can try to pick him up again.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll howl when I’ve got him again.”
Cooper nodded, and trudged off back in the direction he had come from.
He was sensitive for such a big brute. Katherine guessed there was only so much a guy could take of people telling him over and over again how revolting he is before it started to wear at him. She pushed it out of her mind. Feelings were for the living. Once the fart smell had dissipated enough, she changed back into a wolf and took a long, deep breath.
It wasn’t just Cooper’s fart that had made the trail go cold. Even now, in his absence, the trail was dead. Ginfizzle must have turned into a bat and taken flight from here. But why? What did he have to flee? Maybe he wasn’t fleeing at all. More likely, he was on the hunt.
Katherine bounded forward another fifty yards in the direction the trail had most recently been pointing toward. It was all she could do. She stopped and sniffed the air again. There it was. His scent was weak, and mingled with that of another creature’s blood, but there was no mistaking it. She had him again. She howled into the muggy night air, and then bolted off after her prey.
The scene wasn’t hard to spot once she got in visual range. A few trees splattered with blood. An emaciated husk of a deer. It was a big buck, with blood on its antlers. Katherine gave them a sniff. Ginfizzle’s blood. The animal had put up a fight, but in the end it was no match for a vampire. Every last drop of its own blood had been sucked right out of it.
Katherine let out two sharp barks to let Cooper know where she was. He was still some distance behind her, but from the sound of crashing foliage, at least he was headed in the right direction. Ginfizzle’s scent was strong in the air. He was nearby. She’d find him, but first there was the matter of this deer. It wouldn’t do them any good to catch Ginfizzle if they left a vampiric deer on the loose. She tried to crush its skull with her mouth, but it was too big to get a proper grip on. She’d have to bash it against a tree. She changed back into her half-elf form.
“Why do you follow me?” asked a raspy voice from above.
Katherine looked up, and there he was. A scrawny, naked humanoid figure perched high on the branch of a pine tree.
“Ginfizzle!” said Katherine, trying to sound warm and comforting. It felt forced, but it was her only card to play. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Why did you run off?”
“You threw me through a window.”
“Oh, right,” said Katherine. “Sorry about that. I was just protecting Butterbean. I couldn’t let you eat him.”
Ginfizzle snarled. “That wolf cares no more for you than it does for me. We are the damned, cursed to wander in death. We are despised by the living.”
“Then it makes sense for us to stick together, doesn’t it?” said Katherine. “We’re all we’ve got.” If she could get him down from that tree, she could wrestle him down until Cooper arrived with the Bag of Holding.
“I’m doing just fine on my own,” said Ginfizzle. He pointed down at the dead deer. “There, see for yourself.”
“I know you’re strong,” said Katherine. “But what’s going to happen once morning comes? The sunlight will destroy you if you don’t have a place to hide. I know a place where we can go.” The thought only now occurred to her that the situation might have resolved itself if she had just left him alone.
“Where is this place?”
“Back at the restaurant, the place we slept today. My brother will keep us safe. He already bought some rabbits for us to eat.”
“I’d as soon dine on your brother’s flesh as I would his filthy, stinking rabbits. He’ll kill us the first chance he gets.”
“No he won’t,” said Katherine. “Tim may be a whiny little shit sometimes, but he looks out for me. So much so that I often take advantage of him.” She gestured for him to come down. “Come on, Ginny. You’ve got nowhere else to go. Let me take care of you, just through the day. We can help you find a place of your own tomorrow evening.”
Ginfizzle stood up on his branch and clawed nervously at the trunk. “Why do you care what happens to me?”
Katherine hugged herself, feigning a shiver. Her breasts squeezed together. From Ginfizzle’s vantage point, he’d have a nice view of her cleavage. “Eternity is a long time to spend alone.”
Ginfizzle licked his lips as his eyes widened. He didn’t even pretend to not be looking at her rack. He climbed to a lower branch. It was working.
“Everyone I’ve ever known and loved,” Katherine continued. “My brother, my friends, my family.” She bent over to pick a wildflower, giving Ginfizzle a healthy view of her dress stretched tight over her ass. She let him stare a couple of seconds before standing up again. Her back was turned to him, a demonstration of trust and vulnerability on her part. She heard him hop down to another lower branch. “All of them will pass, like so many petals of a –”
“Katherine!” shouted Cooper, charging onto the scene, brandishing his newly acquired giant steel revolver. “He’s behind you!”
“Cooper, no!” cried Katherine. She turned to Ginfizzle.
Ginfizzle looked back at her, his eyes betraying a mixture of confusion, fear, and hatred. “Wha—”
As the tranquility of the forest exploded in a single, echoing gunshot blast, so too did Ginfizzle explode into a cloud of billions of tiny red particles, suspended in the humid night air… and all over Katherine’s face.
“Eat my ass, cocksucker!” said Cooper, lowering the weapon.
“You stupid asshole!” Katherine shouted at him. “I had this under control!”
“What?” said Cooper.
Katherine stomped past him, toward the dead deer. “You were supposed to put him in the bag.”
“What difference does it make?” said Cooper.
Katherine picked up the deer by the head and bashed it repeatedly into the trunk of a nearby tree.
“Look,” said Cooper. “I can see you’re upset, but… um… What the fuck are you doing?“
“Damage control,” said Katherine. Satisfied that the deer head was a pulpy mess of brain and crushed bone, she dropped the dead animal on the ground, and gave Cooper a narrow-eyed stare when he bent down to pick it up.
“Meat,” he said, shoving it into the Bag of Holding. He wasn’t a complicated man.
The blood-mist coalesced into larger droplets as they ran down Katherine’s face. It gave her a creepy sensation. Two globs of blood ran down either side of her collarbone, combining into one larger glob at the bottom of her throat. The liquid mass continued down until it came to rest between her breasts. If gravity had been guiding it this far, there was no reason it should have stopped, and yet it did.
“I don’t think he’s dead, Cooper.”
“Huh?” said Cooper, his gaze snapping up from her blood-filled cleavage.
Katherine pinched the blood blob, and found that she was able to pull it off of her skin as one large mass. It had a consistency slightly thicker than the fake slime Tim and Cooper used to chase her around with as kids.
“Ginfizzle,” she said. “He’s alive.” She scanned the upper branches of the surrounding trees. Not spotting any vampires, she raised her voice. “And he’s a fucking creep!” She flung the blob against a nearby pine tree.
The coalescence of blood, instead of running down the trunk, flowed in the opposite direction, running up the tree like gravity in reverse. Katherine watched it climb higher and higher until she spotted Ginfizzle, way up in the top branches of this particularly tall tree.
Ginfizzle stared down at Katherine. “Thank you for your offer to spend eternity with me,” he said. “But I think I’ll hold out for somebody a bit younger.”
That evil little shit.
“Your mother!” Katherine shouted. She jumped onto the tree trunk and started climbing. She was surprised to find that she could scale a tree nearly as fast as she could run on the ground.
Ginfizzle leapt from his branch, turned into a bat, and flapped away. Katherine got a foothold on a solid branch, sprang into the air, morphed into her bat from, and flapped off after him.
“Ah fuck,” said Cooper, jogging after them.
Chapter 19
Tim woke up with a start. His head had smacked against the car window. Through the windshield he could see the entrance to an Olive Garden. Stacy! How long had he been out? It couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds… could it? He scanned the parking lot. There was no sign of Mordred’s car or Mordred. He opened the door as discreetly as he could and slipped out of Stacy’s car.
Staying close to parked cars for cover, Tim ran down each row of the parking lot, searching for the little hatchback with the busted rear windshield. Precisely zero cars in the lot matched that description. The place was pretty packed. It was possible Mordred might have parked over at the neighboring mall. Or maybe he was driving his parents’ car or something. He wouldn’t want to take his own piece of shit out on a blind date. Or maybe, just maybe, he’d finished whacking off and come to his senses, realizing just how sketchy this whole situation was.
Tim needed to check on Stacy. He scanned the parking lot one more time. Still no Mordred, but who was to say that fat bastard wasn’t staking the place out himself? Better to lean toward paranoia. Tim spotted a family of four approaching the restaurant that could just as easily be a family of five. He weaved his way between cars, stepping out into the open in stride with the family, close enough so that an observer would assume they were together, but just far enough away for the family to assume they were all walking to the same place coincidentally at the same time. Urban stealth. Nice.
Once inside, Tim ditched his cover family and headed for the bar. A drink would have gone down nicely right about then, but he’d have to wait. The bar was crowded with lonely, balding men with polo shirts tucked into their Dockers. Stacy should have been easy to spot. She wasn’t there.
“Hey, sugar. Are you lost?”
Tim jumped and turned around. A chubby, ample-breasted Asian hostess was bent over him.
“Fuck off, lady. I’m looking for someone.”
The hostess stood up. Her face suggested that she would no longer be calling Tim ‘sugar’. Stacy was right. He was kind of an asshole.
“No one under twenty-one is allowed in the bar area.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tim, shuffling uncomfortably into the dining area under the hostess’s burning glare. Where the hell was Stacy? Had he slept that long? Had Mordred already come and taken her away? He felt his heartbeat start to quicken.
Doing his best to stay out of sight, Tim ducked around corners and behind decorative wine barrels as he searched the restaurant, section by section. It was slow going, and he picked up more than a couple of stares from customers who thankfully weren’t Mordred. He needed a better vantage point.
Leaning back against a waiter station, Tim found exactly what he needed. A recently abandoned booth next to a partition. The tablecloth would offer him cover as he searched one section, and then he’d be able to hop onto the seat and peek over the partition to search an even bigger section. He grabbed a menu and held it up as if he was reading it.
Tim took a deep breath. Now or never. Staying hidden behind the menu, he made a break for his strategically located table, right into the path of an approaching waiter.
“Jesus, kid!” said the waiter, stumbling over Tim and only barely managing to hold on to his tray. “Watch where you’re going.”
“Sorry!” Tim squeaked without looking away from the menu. His stealth was failing him. He was making a spectacle of himself. He hurried under the table and peeked out from behind the table cloth. The opposite row of booths were all occupied, but none of them with Mordred or Stacy. Even better, nobody was looking back at him.
Tim’s stomach grumbled. Arby’s had been some time ago, and the food in here actually smelled pretty good. He reached up and pawed around until his hand found something soft and moist. He brought it under the table. A half-eaten breadstick. Not being too proud a man, he shoved it into his mouth. Fucking delicious. If memory served, there were still two more untouched breadsticks in a basket. He felt around with his hand. He splattered a bit of marinara and knocked over a wine glass before he finally found the basket.
He’d gobbled down one breadstick and half of another when the tablecloth was pulled back.
“Can I help you?” It was the waiter Tim had nearly tripped. His tone suggested that he didn’t intend to be very helpful at all.
“I dropped a contact lens,” said Tim through a mouthful of bread.
“Wait right here,” said the waiter. He walked off toward the front of the restaurant. “Maggie, there’s some kid stealing food from off the tables in section five. He looks homeless.”
“I know exactly who you’re talking about!” said a voice that Tim recognized. “Do you know what that little prick said to me?”
Fuck.
Tim dashed out from under the table to the far end of the double-row of booths. He got quite a few more stares than he was comfortable with, but at least none of them were –
Mordred!
He and Stacy were at a little table next to a window. Tim reflected that it might have been a better idea to peek in the windows before actually entering the restaurant. Thankfully, Mordred’s back was to him, but Stacy looked right at him. Her eyes went wide and she choked on her drink.
Mordred started to turn, presumably wondering what had just spooked Stacy so badly. Tim dove behind a wine barrel.
“Are you okay?” asked Mordred.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Stacy, catching her breath. “I just choked on my drink. You said something really funny… about AIDS?”
What the fuck?
“IEDs,” said Mordred. “Improvised explosive devices.”
