What happened next was a blur of motion.
I acted on pure instinct, doing what every urban girl has been trained to do in the event of an attack. I grabbed my purse, closed my eyes, and flung it at the bad guy, screaming as loudly as I could.
I heard the gun go off, the smell of burnt powder filling the room.
Then I heard Dana scream, “No!”, and I opened my eyes to see her lunging at Blaise. He pointed the gun her way, but Dana had the element of surprise, tackling him from the side, wrapping both arms and legs around his middle in a wild piggyback motion.
Marco sprang into action, jumping up from the ground. “Demon from hell!” he shouted, reaching into his bag and throwing a vial of Evian at Blaise’s face.
While it clearly didn’t melt him with its holiness, it did stun him long enough for me to lunge forward on the floor, grabbing Blaise around the ankles and dropping him to the ground as Dana continued to wrestle him for the gun.
Another shot went off, pinging against the cement ceiling before it bounced down the corridor, causing us all to duck.
“Die, vampire scum!” Marco shouted, dipping into his bag and rushing at Blaise for another attack, this time stabbing him with a wooden skewer.
Though with Dana wrestling him on the ground, it was a little hard to aim directly at the heart.
“Ow, damn it,” Blaise shouted, taking an over-sized toothpick to the arm.
I grabbed Marco’s bag, digging for anything useful, and coming out with the spray can of tanner. I stood up, trying to take aim at Blaise as he struggled with Dana to maintain control of the gun. Dana’s hours at the gym had given her muscles that were the envy of every other woman on the red carpet. But Blaise had her by a good hundred pounds, and it was clear she was losing.
“Die, you undead freak,” Marco yelled, throwing another skewer, spear-style.
“Hey, watch it!” Dana shouted, taking a kabob spike to the thigh.
“Sorry,” he said.
But it was just enough distraction to give Blaise the upper hand, wriggling from Dana’s grasp and jumping to his feet.
“Don’t move!” he shouted, panting as he straight-armed the gun at Dana.
She froze, doing a hands-up thing.
Then he swung it Marco’s way. “And quit it with the poking!” he shouted at Marco.
Marco dropped the remaining skewers in his hand to the floor with a clatter.
“And, you…” Blaise said, spinning toward me.
But I was ready for him.
The second his eyes swung my way, I hit the button on the self-tanner, sending a stream of golden bronze colored chemicals right into his eyes.
Blaise screamed, both hands going to his face.
Dana lunged forward, doing her best kick-boxing move right to his groin.
Which cut his scream unceremoniously short, ending it in a crumpled sort of moan as Blaise doubled over, dropping the gun at his feet.
I quickly scooped it up and leveled it at him, my breath coming in hard pants.
“Don’t you move,” I yelled. “I am pregnant, I am pissed, and I have to pee. I
Chapter Twenty-One
Ten minutes later, the foyer of Sebastian’s house was crawling with police officers. And, oddly enough, my family members.
Apparently, Ramirez had gone home early that night, baring a plate of empanadas courtesy or his mother for yours truly. Only instead of me he’d found Mom and Mrs. R hard at work baby proofing again, having forgotten to install the wall straps on all of our furniture over three feet tall. While they strapped, Ramirez had wandered into the bathroom and seen the Fixodent and smoky-eyes make-up out. Being the brilliant detective he was, he’d put two and two together and quickly surmised that I was once again at Sebastian’s house.
He, along with Mrs. R and Mom, who had insisted on coming along to make sure her practice grandbaby was okay, had arrived at the party just about the same time Blaise’s gun had gone off. While no one might have heard the sound of us yelling, my husband knew the sound of a gunshot only too well. He’d called for backup, then run to the scene. Or at least as close to the scene as he could get.
As it turned out, our corridor was actually a secret passage built behind the library in Sebastian’s house, one that Blaise later admitted to finding on a previous party visit. Ramirez had spent several minutes trying to figure out just where the sounds in the wall were coming from before employing Sebastian’s help to unlock the secret door. (Which, by the way, was done by pulling out a Bram Stoker book from the bookshelf. I totally should have looked there first.)
By the time Ramirez had finally made it to our private party, I had Blaise pinned to the ground with his own gun, Dana was nursing a sprained foot from the force of kicking Blaise’s groin, and Marco was emptying the rest of the can of spray tan on a noticeably warmer colored Blaise.
Ramirez took one look at me and shook his head. “Oh, Lucy,” he said, wrapping me in a tight embrace as his backup officers took Blaise into custody.
I returned it, only too glad to have the cavalry come to our aid.
“Oh, Maddie!” I heard behind him as my mom and Mrs. R pushed past the officers. She pounced, grabbing me in a hug so tight I feared she’d pop the baby right out of me.
“Oh, my darling, are you okay?” she said, pulling back to give me a once over.
I moved to nod, then, remembering my headache, thought better of it. “I’m fine,” I reassured her instead.
“What happened?” Ramirez asked.
So I told him. Everything from our suspicions about Sebastian all the way to Blaise’s confession and his threats at gunpoint.
“And you threw your purse at him? As the gun went off?” Ramirez asked, his voice going high.
I nodded slowly.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Maddie, you could have been killed.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say Ramirez’s skin paled a shade.
“It was pure instinct,” I protested. “It’s a big bag. I thought maybe I could duck behind it.”
The three of us looked down at my Santana bag on the ground. There was a neat, round, bullet hole in the center of it. I watched as a uniformed officer wearing a pair of latex gloves held it up. He peeked inside. Then he pulled out Baby-So-lifelike by its chubby vinyl hand. Right in the center of the doll’s duckie-covered onesie was a neat, round hole.
Mom gasped and put a hand to her heart. “Oh, Maddie!”
I bit my lip. “Sorry, Mom. I swear I’ll do better with a real one-” I started.
But she cut me off, going in for another boa-constrictor hug that nearly knocked the wind out of me. “I don’t give a damn about that stupid doll. I’m just glad you’re safe,” she murmured into my hair.
I let out a deep sigh of relief.
The sun was just starting to come up as we left Sebastian’s, Dana in an ambulance (though she protested that she was fine and ready to kick more butt if needed), Marco with a uniformed officer who promised to return all of his vampire hunting items as soon as they were logged out of evidence, and me with my husband. Who, once we got home, made me the biggest breakfast omelet in the world, brought me my fuzzy slippers, and tucked me into bed without even hinting at a yell over the fact that I’d nearly gotten our baby killed.
Again.
