“What would, Felix?”

“Forgiveness.” I was surprised I let myself admit it.

“That simple?” Bob looked at me, his fangs peeking from under a dismissive grin. “Sounds like you need religion.”

“Sounds like you need to shut up.”

Bob’s grin went flat. He stared straight ahead and floored the accelerator. The highway curved to the right. Bob cut across the lanes to the next exit and zoomed between two cars. The exit took us into the Five Points area north of downtown. He turned on Brighton Boulevard, a long strip of industrial businesses and warehouses deserted at this time of the evening, then slowed for a red traffic light.

My fingers tingled. “We’re not safe.”

Bob’s aura simmered. He adjusted his rearview mirrors. “I sense it, too. Where are they?”

The light turned green. Bob tapped the gas pedal. We rolled through the intersection.

An older-model Dodge cargo van zoomed at us from the left. The intense glow of red human auras filled the windshield. Familiar auras. Vampire hunters.

“Vânätori,” I warned. “Look out!”

Bob accelerated and veered to the right. The van turned sharply, came parallel to us, and rammed our front fender.

Our Buick hit the curb and ricocheted back against the Dodge. We careened up the street, fender bashing against fender. The side cargo door on the van sprung open. A bearded man in a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat pointed the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun at Bob’s window.

The window exploded into a shower of glass. Blood sprayed inside the Buick. Bob clutched his neck and gagged.

The vampire hunter lifted the shotgun and aimed for me. I snatched the top of the steering wheel and pushed. The Buick surged to the left. The door pillar knocked against the shotgun just as it went off. The muzzle blast deafened me. A swarm of pellets gashed through the ceiling upholstery.

The Buick bounced over the curb. We flattened a stop sign and smashed into a telephone pole. The airbag deployed and slapped my face.

The Buick perched at an angle, the front end balanced on the stump of the telephone pole. I sat silent, stunned by the collision. My ears rang. The Buick groaned and hissed like a dying animal. Pushing the deflated airbag from my face, I groped for Bob.

He rested against the steering wheel, swaddled by the fabric of his airbag. His aura pulsed and grew dim. Overcome with desperation, I cradled his head and lifted gently. Blood gushed from a wound in his shoulder at the base of his neck. Moaning, he stroked my arm with a bloody hand.

The Dodge van screeched to a halt and backed up, its transmission grinding. Three vampire hunters jostled in the open cargo door, two hulking bearded goons flanked the older man, all of them pointing guns. They opened fire. Their shots cracked against the Buick’s windshield and peppered me with glass.

Energized with panic, I opened my door and dragged Bob by the arm.

The van jumped the curb, scraped alongside the Buick, and stopped with the cargo door aligned with Bob’s window. At this distance they couldn’t miss me.

If I held on to Bob, there would be two dead vampires. I hesitated for a microsecond and weighed self-preservation versus loyalty. Dead, I’d be of no help to him. So I let go and tumbled out through my door. Bullets tore the upholstery inches from my head. I landed on the sidewalk and put the Buick between the vampire hunters and myself.

The closest refuge was behind a stack of rusted metal drums at the corner of the sidewalk and an alley. I scrambled over the concrete like a bug and dove over the drums just as another volley of bullets came searching for me.

I couldn’t abandon Bob. Turning around, I peeked between the drums.

The older vampire hunter aimed a crucifix at Bob and shouted in Latin. His burly companions reached through the Buick’s window and clutched Bob by the collar. They dragged his limp body through the window and into the van.

The vampire hunter with the crucifix waved his shotgun in my direction and fired. I ducked. Pellets rapped against the drums. The van tore back into the street and picked up speed.

Why did they take Bob? Why didn’t they blast him to pieces with their guns?

I dashed from around the barrels and into the street. The van’s taillights receded up Brighton Boulevard. I ran after the van, faster and faster, spurred by rage and the need for revenge. The van kept pulling away. My lungs sucked the cold air. Running at vampire speed, I should’ve been able to catch the van. But I wasn’t able to keep up. My legs tired. In one final effort, I lunged forward and then slowed to a trot. From the pit of my belly came that burning craving for human blood. A craving that turned into guilt. If I had overcome my aversion for human blood, then perhaps I would have been able to rejuvenate my failing vampire powers and rescue Bob. Perhaps.

The rear doors of the van opened. Out dropped a body. A round object followed and bounced lazily like a lopsided ball.

My guts tightened when I realized what I was seeing. Massaging a runner’s stitch between my ribs, I jogged forward and approached the body lying on the street. The round object rolled to a stop over a sewer grate at the curb.

I stepped close to Bob’s decapitated corpse. A wooden stake jutted from a bloody stain in his breast. His head faced me, lying sideways atop the sewer grate, his mouth frozen open in an silent scream. His upper lip was torn apart and revealed two gashes where they had pried out his fangs.

A great sadness crushed me. My knees buckled. I sat on my heels, my arms drooping to my sides. Breath wheezed through my dry throat. Far ahead, the taillights of the van merged into one and then disappeared.

At this moment, I wished that vampires could cry.

CHAPTER 24

I STOOD WITH TWENTY other vampires under the night sky, on the shoulder of an asphalt road beside a dusty field near Last Chance, eighty miles east of Denver. Against the dark contours of the terrain, our orange auras looked like gems floating on black velvet.

A cold, dusty breeze stirred the morning air. As dawn approached, the twilight sky faded from inky black to purple and then to blue.

Bob’s naked corpse hung from a sheet of salvaged plywood propped to face the sun. His head rested on a crude shelf above his shoulders. A ragged hole the size of a fist showed where the vampire hunters had pounded a stake through his sternum. Frayed polypropylene boating rope looped under his armpits and across his chest, holding him flat against the plywood.

To us vampires, the first rays of the morning were the most savage to our flesh. For protection, five of the vampires used the satin robes they usually donned for choir with the Temple Baptist Church. Carmen, as usual, was ensconced in tight black leather, looking like a petite dominatrix making a rural house call. My jacket and trousers rustled in the wind. Everybody wore balaclavas, gloves, and welders goggles.

A corona of yellow light spread over the eastern horizon. A tremor of awe surged through me. Since prehistoric times when the first vampires stalked human prey, this moment of dawn has meant the dreaded finish to us, the undead. Now we watched, standing with impunity in the open, protected by thick tinted glass and layers of polyester, leather, and wrinkle-free cotton.

The sun rose over the edge of the earth. A terrible, incandescent wave bore upon us like the flash of an atom bomb.

Bob’s head and corpse sizzled. His skin turned black and wrinkled. Flesh peeled away from bones and turned into smoke. The tangled mass of his organs spilled from underneath his rib cage. His bones broke apart like brittle twigs. Everything that had been Bob Carcano disintegrated into flakes of ash as centuries of arrested death came back to reclaim their due. The ash swirled and scattered in the eddy of wind twisting before the plywood. After a few minutes, nothing remained of Bob except for a discoloration in the dirt and a last smudge of smoke dissolving into the air.