His eyes widened. He breathed in a deep breath of cold air and let it out slowly before he spoke again.
“Everyone knows about you.”
“Everyone?”
“The Slayer of Slayers.” He said it under his breath and took a step backward.
“The what of the what?”
“Last month . . . the massacre at the vampire lair. You killed so many hunters . . . so many . . . ” His voice trailed off and he brought a hand to his mouth.
What in the hell was he talking about?
He took another step backward and hit the thick trunk of a tall oak tree next to a park bench. “I . . . I . .
. should never have . . . ” His eyes shifted back and forth and I noticed the hand that held the stake was now shaking. “Please, spare me. That whole thing earlier, me acting all tough . . . that was just an act.
The other hunters . . . they’re so mean, and they all think I’m weak. I was just out for a hot dog and a
Coke, that’s all. Please, don’t hurt me. I was kidding about the fang necklace! Really!”
Last month, there had been a hunter/vampire showdown at the Midnight Eclipse, my boyfriend (sounds like a silly thing to call a six-hundred-year-plus-old vampire, but that’s what he was) Thierry’s secret vampire bar.
It was true that the night in question was a major deal, that a lot of people got hurt, both hunter and vampire, and that I may have . . . possibly . . .sort of . . . had to kill a hunter named Peter, jerk that he was. But that had been pure self-defense—and something I was still feeling great gobs of greasy guilt from, even though he’d majorly deserved it. And it had been with a gun, not with my bare teeth asChad seemed to indicate with the fearing-for-his-life expression on his now-sweaty face.
Now everyone knows my name?
The theme song fromCheers suddenly began to play in my head.
I took a step toward him and he fell to his knees, the stake falling to the ground. He put his hands together and began to pray in barely coherent whispers. With a trembling hand he reached inside his shirt to pull out a heavy silver cross, which he then held up to ward himself against me.