I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) (36 page)

He touched his stomach wall and found it had
closed. His intestines were no longer threatening to spill out of
his midsection.

What
the
…?

“You look, all things considered, remarkably
hearty and hale.” The vampire Lord’s voice echoed from the murk.
“You are, indeed, as tough as it has been claimed.”

The shadows in the hall crept up on Boone.
There were creatures like the ones in the room across the hall
prowling within those shadows, creatures immaterial, unformed,
waiting to pounce and destroy him once and for all.

He craned his neck and looked back in the
directions of the stairs. The hallway gave to a darkened maw. At
its other end, the hall ended at a brick wall. There was only one
way out of this corridor.

“I want him Lord.” The voice dripped with
pure malice.

His arm that wasn’t pressed to his midsection
lay outstretched, resting on the stake. He drew the limb back to
his body, under the flannel, abandoning the stake on the floor of
the hall.

“Remember me you fuck?” It called to him from
the dark. Boone thought he knew exactly which one it was.

He sat up, his back to the wall under the
window.

“I’ll burn again just to start this early!”
The disfigured vampire, Shane, stepped from the darkened room into
the hallway. Its skin immediately started to sizzle in the
remaining light of day. “It’s dinner time, Boone. And guess what’s
on the fucking menu?”

Boone straight armed the Smith & Wesson,
the flannel falling from his seated form, firing one round, the
discharge reverberating down the passageway. The .44 magnum round
blasted through the creature’s shoulder and its arm dropped to the
ground.

He had aimed for its head.

Shane stared transfixed on its rent limb.
While the things in the hallway and the room watched in shocked
disbelief, Boone leaped to his feet faster than he should have been
able to. He grabbed the wounded, smoldering beast by its shirtfront
and pitched himself and Shane out the window.

Shane screamed all the way down.

There was a crash from outside as they hit
the ground.

“Now that…” The dark Lord Rainford looked
upon Shane’s severed arm, which was smoking in the light of the
corridor. “I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years…”

Kreshnik roared and stalked off down the
hallway for the stairs.

Boone’s major worry on the fall was that his
guts might burst out of his stomach on impact. He managed to get
the arm with the revolver around his belly before they smacked into
the sidewalk below.

The injured vampire hit the ground first,
somewhat cushioning Boone’s landing. Boone bounced off Shane and
rolled away, shaken, but his stomach was holding up.

Shane immediately began to shriek and sizzle,
lying there on its back, palms upraised and elbows drawn into its
sides, caught in what sunlight remained from the late
afternoon.

“Burn fucker.” Boone managed to stand. There
were things watching them from the shadows in the window three
stories above. He extended his arm and fired the Smith &
Wesson, the bullet going wild, his arm jerking up a foot. On a good
day the recoil from the .529 was hard to manage.

The screeching thing on the ground was
smoldering and dollops of itself were dripping off to puddle and
smoke on the sidewalk.

Boone ignored its immolation and cries and
faltered towards the street. His head swam and his midsection
throbbed. He couldn’t explain how his stomach had healed like
that…how he had survived the drop from the window…how he had made
it this far…He stumbled and nearly went down, but righted himself
and lurched into the street.

There was a crash behind him as the door to
the warehouse was thrown open. Boone was already turning to face
whatever came out of it when a bullet punched through his back and
spun him around, his blood showering into the street.

A slave had burst from the doorway and fired
on him with an Uzi.

Boone fired the Smith & Wesson from his
hip, the round missing its mark and blowing a hole in the side of
the warehouse, but forcing the man down.

Boone’s thigh erupted in a gout of blood and
he pitched onto his back in the street. He saw muzzle flashes from
the third floor windows. Bullets pocked the street around him as he
fired the remaining rounds from the Smith & Wesson into the
dark above.

He popped the cylinder and dumped the empty
shells. Boone found a speed loader on his belt and struggled to fit
it to the cylinder.

The mostly liquefied remains of Shane were
giving off black smoke and a strangled, anguished cry.

They were no longer firing on him. When he
looked to the warehouse entrance he saw why.

Kreshnik had emerged from the dark. It looked
down on the puddle that had been Shane and then over to Boone. The
evening was upon them but the last light of day raised fumes from
its head and shoulders.

“Oh great.”

The Albanian strode across the sidewalk
towards Boone. It marched purposefully, seemingly unconcerned that
it was smoking.

Boone returned his attention to the revolver
in his hands. He was having difficulty aligning the shells with the
cylinder.

As it crossed the sidewalk and into the
street, Kreshnik tugged with one hand at the gloved fingers of its
other, removing the leather glove, extending and contracting its
clawed hand.

“Yeah.” Boone triumphed as the shells slipped
home. He twisted the speed loader and let it drop, snapping the
cylinder closed with a flick of his wrist, extending his arm, the
tall vampire looming over him, leering, its bared hand drawing
back—

The BMW crashed into the Kreshnik, knocking
it thirty feet down the street where it lay unmoving.

“Boone!”

Hamilton popped out of the driver’s door and
turned towards the warehouse. Half a dozen muzzle flashes winked as
the unseen opened up on him. As bullets pinged off the hood and
roof of the sedan, the Mac-10 in Hamilton’s hands let rip with what
sounded like a sustained cough, a jet of flame bursting from the
end of the suppressor.

There was a scream from the third floor
windows and in a couple of seconds the Mac-10 had burned through a
thirty round box magazine.

Kreshnik drew its knees up to its body and
raised its head.

Boone crawled towards the car on his elbows,
aware that he was bleeding all over the street from the wound in
his thigh, wondering what the hole in his back looked like.

Hamilton had reloaded and fired the contents
of a second mag through the windows. He swapped magazines and
hustled over to Boone.

Kreshnik sat up.

“Boone, come on!”

Hamilton scooped Boone up under the shoulders
and heaved—
Christ
the
guy
was
heavy
. Boone swung an arm around Hamilton’s shoulders and
hopped on his good leg to the car.

Kreshnik’s clawed hand reached out and took
its boonie hat from the asphalt.

The slave on the street fired on them and
Hamilton and Boone fired back together. Boone’s .44 rounds went
wide, but a sustained burst from the Ingram zippered the guy from
balls to breastbone, the barrel of the Mac-10 rising slightly as
Hamilton fired it in one hand.

“In the car.” Hamilton pushed Boone into the
backseat. No sooner had Boone rolled over onto his back, than the
car lurched forward and darted up the street. As Hamilton took the
corner, Boone looked back to see Kreshnik, smoking, rise to its
full height.

“What the fuck happened back there, Boone?”
Hamilton demanded.

“Give me your belt…” Boone managed
weakly.

“Where’s Madison?”

“He’s gone.”

“Shit.” Hamilton was shocked. “What happened
to Gossitch and Bowie?”

“They’re gone.” Boone looped the belt around
his thigh, above the bullet wound, cinching it as tight as he
could.

“Gone…” the word trailed off Hamilton’s lips.
He looked into the rear view mirror. It would be completely dark
soon. The vampires would be out, hunting them. Boone was in the
backseat of his car, bleeding like a stuck pig.

Boone popped the cylinder of the .529 and
thumbed a single shell into the empty chamber.

“Something’s going on, Ham…”

“Yeah, you’re goddamn right, Boone. We were
set up man. All of us!”

“Yeah,
no
, that’s not what I mean…”
Boone was feeble. He was having difficulty finding the words. “They
disemboweled me man. I saw my own guts…I was holding myself
together…”

Hamilton raised his eyes to look at Boone in
the back seat. The man had lost a lot of blood. Had to be in shock.
He was probably going to die if they didn’t get him some help
fast.

“Ham…”

“What is it, Boone?”

“The other night, did you and Madison take
those women home?”

“What? Yeah.”

“They really nuns?”

“They’re freaks, Boone. That’s what they
are.”

Boone moaned.

“Listen to me, Boone.” Hamilton took his eyes
off the road long enough to turn and face the wounded man in the
rear. “It’s Jay—that bitch he’s been spending all his time
with—”

Hamilton turned his attention back to the
road—“Oh shit!”—but it was too late. He hadn’t been paying
attention and shot through a red light at an intersection just as
another car rolled through.

The BMW slammed into the Toyota Corolla at
nearly forty miles an hour. Hamilton’s body snapped forward but the
seat belt he wore slammed him back. Pitched from the rear, Boone
hurtled over the front seats, through the windshield and past the
hood of the Toyota.

When Boone regained consciousness he was on
his back. His head felt like it had cracked open. He reached up and
found it had.

People were gathered on the corner and
stared, pointing at the accident. Steam poured out from under the
hood of the Toyota they’d rammed. The front of the BMW was
accordianed, the windshield blown out.

Boone sat up and there was a tinkling as
glass from the windshield dropped from his body to the asphalt.

“Look at that guy!” Someone on the corner
called out but no one made a move to come near the vehicles.

It was dark out. Night time.

Like a drunk man, Boone staggered to the BMW.
Hamilton was slumped in the front seat against the air bag. His
face was a mask of blood. Boone opened the rear door and searched
the floorboards until he found the Smith & Wesson. He holstered
the .44 and reeled back onto the street.

The night. Cops would be coming. Blood
suckers too.

Something stirred in the car they’d hit.
Boone eyed it warily until he spied the Mac-10 caught in the folds
of their BMW’s hood. He retrieved the Ingram and pulled back the
bolt. A single round ejected from the submachine gun and clinked on
the street.

“…dude’s got a machine gun! Shit—look
out!”

Boone gripped the Mac-10 by its suppressor
and fired on the other car. A zig zag of bullets punched through
the door panels as shell casings streamed out the side of the
weapon. When the bolt locked open on an empty chamber Boone
extended the Ingram and aimed it at the car. No one was moving
inside the Corolla. His arm wavered and he lowered it to his side,
turning and wobbling down the street.

The people on the corner were all gone.

Boone let the Mac-10 go, the weapon
clattering on the ground. He couldn’t put his weight on his shot
leg without it feeling like the limb would go out on him. He had to
get out of the street before
they
came. Boone tottered half
a block before collapsing in the street.

He felt around for the Smith & Wesson but
couldn’t find it. Funny, he knew he was wearing it on his body.
Boone looked up into the black night and then the black was a part
of him and he knew nothing but it.

He dreamed of angels, seraphim consumed in
flame, creatures at once terrible and wondrous. Their ministrations
were ameliorative, their touch the very caress of beneficence. He
dreamed of a beach littered with bleached bone, of a sun dripping
crimson in the sky. He dreamed of a monstrous creature full of
tooth and claw, feathers and mayhem. He dreamed of Gossitch.

“From what I understand…”

Boone’s eyes fluttered and opened.

“You are a very lucky man to still be
here.”

Dickie Nicolie sat next to the bed, one leg
crossed over the other. He wore his pristine white sneakers and a
red track suit. His crucifix on its chain. He had a wooden box of
some kind on his lap.

“A very lucky man indeed.”

Boone felt incredibly weak, as if his body
had been through a wringer. The room they were in was cool and
clean, bare save for the bed, the chair the mobster sat in, and a
medical gurney next to the bed.

“You understand me?” Dickie leaned forward in
his chair and peered into Boone’s eyes. “You can understand what
I’m saying to you? Good.” He sat back where he was. “Listen
carefully, and do your best to remember what I say.

“That car you crashed into and then shot up?
The man driving it was an innocent. He was on his way home from
work, on his way home to his family. That’s on you.” Dickie stabbed
his finger at Boone. “That’s
always
gonna be on you.”

Boone remembered getting up off the street,
blasting the shit out of the Corolla.

“Fortunately for you, the car you drove was
clean. The police can’t trace it to you.”

Boone mustered his strength to ask. “I can’t
drive…what about Hamilton?”

“Who?”

“Hamilton…he was driving.”

Dickie looked like he was concerned that
Boone really understood anything they were talking about. “They
found you two blocks from the accident. There was one body at the
scene. His name was Kenny Kessel. He was going home to his family.
You should know his name. And you shouldn’t forget it.”