The Cactus Killer (The Inglewood Chronicles) (22 page)

A loud crashing noise came
from behind us. The samurai goon had come flying out of the
building and he had six of Tucker’s creatures with him. They
stopped just short of us and the samurai pulled out one of the
swords. He pointed it at Liz and me. Not knowing what else to do, I
fired a shot off at him. I don’t even know if the bullet hit him,
as he just stood there.

“
You two should have
surrendered earlier.” Tucker was up and walking over to the goon
and monster squad. “The pain in store for you now will be
unimaginable. Fortuna, you may kill them now.”

I’m not one hundred percent
sure, but I think the samurai laughed. 

Fortuna was an odd name for
sure, but I didn’t think now would be the appropriate time to
mention such things. He stepped forward with his sword still
pointing at us and both Liz and I pulled out ours. His eyes moved
to them for a second and again, not sure why but he seemed
happy.

Tucker had stepped back and
was now standing with the rest of his monster squad, getting out of
the way of the impending fight. His face was so smug that it boiled
my blood. But now was not the time to worry about him.

“
Any suggestions, Liz? I’m
more of a shooter, not a sword fighter.”

“
Follow my lead and act as
my back up.”

Fortuna decided that enough
time had been spent here and began his attack. He sliced at Liz and
she was able to block it cleanly. The dude was good, because he
also was able to send a kick in my direction and it took everything
I had to get out of the way. I was pretty fast, but he was on
another level.

Liz parried his blade and
followed through with an attack of her own. With a much longer
reach, he easily swatted it away. Using my limited werewolf skills,
I jumped over him and tried to attack his head as I was in the air,
but to no avail. I landed beside Liz.

“
This guy is
good.”

“
Thank you for the update
Victor, I had not realized.”

He cut off our banter with
another set of attacks. I jumped out of the way and Liz rolled
under and was able to get a punch in. He staggered a bit and I
followed up with a jump kick right into his chest. It pushed him
back, but not off his feet.

“
You two are certainly
entertaining, that is for sure. It may be a sin to enjoy watching
you two struggle and eventually perish, but I think I will be
forgiven.” Tucker’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard and I felt
myself getting even angrier.

“
Calm down Vic, this is
what he wants.”

“
I’ll give him what he
wants.” I felt a surge of power flow through me. I flashed a feral
smile at Tucker and his face went slack.

“
Impossible! What have you
done?”

I didn’t know what he was
talking about and turned my attention back to Fortuna. He also
stopped and was looking at me strangely. Wasting no time, we went
back on the attack.

This time, we had a little
more success. Our strikes caused him to work hard to keep up with
us. Liz and I danced our way through our attacks, almost like we
were in total coordination. Whenever she went high, it was almost
instinct telling me to go low. No words were spoken between us,
just complete understanding on a higher level.

Still, no matter what we
did, we weren’t able to break through the defense Fortuna
maintained. Somehow in the midst of our flurry of blades, he
actually had unsheathed his second sword and was able to attack and
parry both of us at the same time. To add to the scene, heat
lightning was working its way across the night’s sky and dust was
being whipped up into a frenzy.

Liz fell back and I
followed in line. “Our opponent is much more skilled than we are. I
think our best bet at this point is to wait until back-up
arrives.”

Panting, “I agree. I don’t
know how much more I have in me.”

Fortuna had also taken a
moment to recompose himself. “I have an idea Vic. I might be able
to hold him off if I use the bloodletting again.”

“
Isn’t that the last resort
plan? We have no guarantee that they will even get here in
time.”

Without even getting my
consent, she slashed the tanto across my forearm and drew blood. In
the blink of an eye she was on the cut. The time for argument was
over. Fortuna and Tucker were watching with strange looks in their
eyes. Before either could say or do anything, Liz pulled away and
the process began.

Her eyes went yellow, her
hands formed into claws, and her canines became even more
pronounced. She handed me the tanto and faced Fortuna. “Let us see
what you can do now.”

He stared back at her and I
could have sworn his eyes went red for a moment. There was no time
to tell Liz as she went on the attack. They met in the middle, his
swords against her enhanced vampire/wolf form.

The speed of their attacks
had increased tenfold. I thought about jumping in and help, but I
would have been a hindrance. However, I was not without my own
problems.

“
Without your pet vampire,
let’s see how you fare against one of my soldiers.”

I turned around and Tucker
was pointing at me. The closest monster left his side and charged.
I braced myself and jumped over. This one was as smart as the last
one and grabbed me in mid-air. A quick toss later and I was flat on
my back, smarting that one.

“
Come now Victor, is that
truly the best you have to offer? I was hoping to see that inner
daemon come out again.”

The monster was on top of
me again, this time raining punches down. I was using the tantos as
a way to block my face from becoming cottage cheese. Tucker kept
raining taunts down on me the entire time.

“
I guess I was wrong about
you, I figured you would at least be a worthy adversary. I guess
the power provided by Heaven is much stronger than anything you can
do.”

The sheer weight of the
monster was starting to suffocate me. I was in big trouble and if I
had anything else, it was time to show it. I took the swords out of
the protective position I had them in, eating a couple of punches
in the process and stabbed them into the legs on the creature. It
groaned in agony and let up just enough that I was able to slide
out and get back to my feet.

“
Tucker, would you just
shut the hell up! Your creatures are all the proof I need that you
are the real daemon here!”

The monster was trying to
dig the swords out of his legs, but I never gave it a chance to
finish. I pulled out Roscoe and put six silver bullets right into
its head. It fell backwards and I went over and removed them. One
final slice down on the creature, removing its head and it was
over.

Tucker was fuming, and I
think he was about to send the rest of the monsters on me when a
small brunette vampire fell on me. Crashing to the ground, I could
see she was busted up pretty good.

“
Liz, are you
okay?”

“
Yeah, but I cannot defeat
him. He is too strong for us.”

I looked up and saw him
stalking towards us, like a large cat going towards a wounded
animal. I was out of bullets and my right eye was starting to swell
shut. Liz didn’t look any better with a bruised up face and cuts
all over.

“
Justice shall be had this
evening! May the Light of Heaven shine upon them as the
burn!”

For once, I had to agree
with Tucker. It looked bad for the two of us. Fortuna, who was
limping and also seemed a bit worse for wear at least, was moments
away from ending us. I closed my eyes and was about to say my last
words when I heard the noise of a vehicle in the distance. It was
closing in fast, but no one else had heard it yet.

“
Any last words, daemons?
Anything you may want to repent before we send you back to your
infernal depths?”

“
Yeah, actually I do have
something I want to say.”

“
Yes, proclaim your sins to
me!”

I grinned at him, “I don’t
have any sins to confess, but a piece of advice.”

“
Oh, and what would that
be?”

Headlights appeared over
the ridge and from this distance I could see the smug look of one
Reno Tavares driving a plain black van. Tucker’s face went towards
the light and it started to slowly dawn on him.

“
My advice is always have
an ace up the sleeve!”

The van charged through the
gates and plowed right into Fortuna. The door slid open and Phil
and Cristof pulled Liz and me in. Reno slammed the accelerator and
we were out. I looked back and saw that Fortuna was already up and
Tucker was losing his mind.

“
You two look awful. Just
what happened up there?”

“
Cristof, we have a lot of
problems.”

He looked over at Liz,
“What do you mean?”

“
Yeah boss man, didn’t you
see all the big green uglies standing beside that
jackass?”

“
Forget the green monsters
for just a minute Reno, which we were able to destroy most of.
Tucker’s bodyguard is a vampire, a very old one at
that.”

He looked at me, his eyes
full of hope I would dispute it. “She’s right, sir. I saw his eyes
go red when he came on the attack.”

“
And no one should have
been able to match my movements, especially when I embraced in the
bloodletting.”

After that no one said much
of anything on the way back to Full Moon. Realization formed over
everyone that one of their own was behind this. They either had a
traitor in the mix or someone who should have been dead a long time
ago was still very much alive.

Even though it had been a
long night, I wasn’t tired. Between the boost of adrenaline still
running though me and mourning the loss of my beloved Mustang, I
was wide awake.

It was around four in the
morning and I was just hanging out on my back deck. I’d given up
trying to ice my face; it hurt and nothing I was going to do would
help. I was also out of beer, which just added to a rough night on
the clock.

“
Do you not need to get any
sleep, Vic?”

Liz took a seat beside me.
She was looking a lot better now than she was earlier. Most of the
cuts had healed and the bruises were already starting to fade.
“Nah, I’m alright. Sometimes after a tough shift, I would stay up
all night trying to think about what I could’ve done
better.

“
Is that what you are doing
now?”

“
When we first got back,
but after replaying the events of the evening, we did
good.”

She smiled at me, “I would
drink to that, but I noticed your refrigerator has dried
up.”

“
Yeah, that problem will be
alleviated pronto.” The evening had a nice breeze going and I
started to relax. “So do you know any old sword wielding vampires?
Are there any Asian vampires who have it out for us?”

“
Fortuna was not Asian. For
as observant as you can be, sometimes you miss the smallest
details.”

I was offended, I was very
observant. “What did I miss there, boss lady?”

“
Broad shoulders, muscular
neck, tall, all characteristics that would not fit with an Asian
heritage. Yet, our mystery man was skilled in the Samurai arts. I
would not be surprised if he learned them directly centuries
ago.”

“
So you guys really have no
idea who this could be?”

Her look of disappointment
was evident. “No, not even Cristof could give us a lead. He has
made calls in the hopes that maybe someone in our community will
know who this could be. I sent a text to Roderick and Jonathan, but
neither could provide any insight.”

“
Between our samurai’s
identity and what Tucker’s next play is, we have ourselves a good
old fashioned conundrum. Something tells me though we will find out
soon enough what our friendly neighborhood lunatic has in store for
us now.”

“
We definitely shook up the
hornet’s nest now. Thank goodness we were able to take most of
those monsters out. I do not know how we would have handled that
many.”

I still wasn’t all that
optimistic. “Fortuna saved six before I put one down and he has
three agents out in the field. By my count he still has quite few
bodies to throw at us.”

“
I think it is safe to
assume the three agents he had prepared are probably more in terms
of what his son Austin was. Add those to Fortuna and the five
remaining green guys and we will need our own back-up.”

Liz was right; we would
need to assemble our own force to meet his. “We aren’t exactly
helpless though. We have the Alphas here and I am sure Josh
Greenfoot would be more than willing to tangle.”

“
And I guess it is time to
let Cristof back into the world. I can also make a call to Gregory
and see if he can make it in from Seattle to help us.”

“
Five vampires and a bunch
of angry wolves sounds like a good start to me.” I would give dad,
Argent, and Chaz a call in a few hours to see if we could round up
a town meeting. I wasn’t sure if Greenfoot was still in town but
I’d shoot him a text too.