uncompromised, and undetected by the bloodsuckers. Some days Gus used the pigeons to set a delivery from Creem: weapons, ammo, a little porn. Creem could get almost anything for the right price.
Today was one such day. The pigeon—Harry, “the New Jersey Express,” as Gus called him—had landed in a little perch by the window and was pecking at the bell, knowing that Creem would give him some food.
Creem unfastened the elastic band from its leg and removed the small plastic capsule and took out the thin roll of paper. Harry cooed softly.
“Cool it, you little shit,” said Creem as he unsealed a small Tupperware container of precious corn feed and spilled some into a cup for the pigeon’s reward, popping some into his own mouth before recapping it.
Creem read Gus’s request. “A detonator?” He snickered. “You gotta be fucking shitting me…”
Malvo made a
The wolf-hounds sprang up, but Creem waved at them to keep quiet. He undid their leashes from the table leg, pulling back sharply on the chain chokers to keep them silent and at his heels. “Signal the others.”
Royal led the way to the attached garage. Creem was still a huge presence, despite having lost sixty pounds. His short, powerful arms were still too broad to cross over his nearly square midsection. While at home, he sported all his silver, his knuckle bling and his tooth-capping grille. Creem was into silver back when it was just shiny shit, before it became the mark of a warrior and an outlaw.
Creem watched the others slide into the Tahoe with their weapons. The transports usually traveled in a three-vehicle military convoy, bloodsuckers in the lead and the rear, with the bread truck driven by humans in the middle. Creem wanted to see some grains this time: cereal, rolls, butter loaves. Carbohydrates filled them up and lasted for days, sometimes weeks. Protein was a rare gift, and meat even rarer, but difficult to keep fresh. Peanut butter was the organic kind with oil on top—because no foods were processed anymore, ever—which Creem couldn’t stand, but both Royal and the wolf-hounds loved it.
The vamps showed no fear of the wolf-hounds, but the human drivers sure did. They saw the silver glint in their lupine-canine eyes and routinely shit themselves. Creem had trained the animals only as well as he cared to train them, meaning that they always heeded him, the one who fed them. But they were not creatures meant to be domesticated or tamed, which was why Creem identified with them and kept them close at his side.
Ambassador strained at his choker; Skill’s paw nails scratched at the garage floor. They knew what was coming. They were about to earn their meal. In that, they were even more motivated than the rest of the Sapphires, because for a wolf-hound, the economy had never changed. Food, food, food.
The garage door went up. Creem heard the trucks rumbling around the corner, nice and loud because there was no other traffic noise to compete with. This would be a typical jam-up. They had, idling between two houses across the street, a tow truck ready to smash the lead vehicle. Backup cars would cut off the bloodsuckers in the rear, bottlenecking the convoy in this residential street.
Keeping their cars running was another of Creem’s priorities. He had guys good at that. Gasoline was at a premium, as were car batteries. The Sapphires used two garages in Jersey for chopping up food trucks for parts and fuel.
The lead truck rounded the corner fast. Creem picked up on an extra vehicle in the convoy, a fourth, but this didn’t trouble him too much. Right on time, the tow truck came screeching out from across the street, tearing across the muddy front yard and bumping off the curb—ramming the rear quarter of the lead truck, putting it into a backspin hard enough that it was facing the wrong way when it came to rest. Support cars closed in fast, bumper- locking the rear truck. The middle vehicles in the convoy braked hard, veering off to the curb. Two soft-sided transports—maybe a double haul.
Royal drove the Tahoe straight at the food truck, stopping just inches from its grille. Creem released Ambassador and Skill, who went racing over the muddy yard toward the scene. Royal and Malvo jumped out, each bearing a long silver sword and a silver knife. They went right at the bloodsuckers emptying out of the lead vehicle. Royal was especially vicious. He had bolted silver spikes to the toes of his boots. The hijacking looked to be over in less than one minute.
The first thing Creem noticed that was wrong was the food truck. The human operators remained inside the cab, rather than jumping out and running. Ambassador leaped up at the driver’s-side door, his choppers snapping at the closed window, the man inside looking down into the wolf-hound’s angry mouth and bared teeth.
Then the soft canvas sides of the twin army trucks were pulled up like curtains. Instead of food, some twenty or thirty bloodsucker vampires came tearing out, their fury, speed, and intensity matching the wolf-hounds’. Malvo slashed off three of them hard before one got up in his face, knocking him back. Malvo twisted and fell—and they were on him.
Royal backed off, retreating like a kid with a sand pail in his hand facing an incoming tidal wave. He bumped up against his own vehicle, delaying his escape.
Creem could not see what was happening in the rear… but he heard the screams. And if there was one thing he had learned, it was that…
Vampires don’t scream.
Creem ran—as much as a man of his size can run—toward his boy Royal, who was backed up against the front of the Tahoe by a gang of six bloodsuckers. Royal was all but done for, but Creem could not let him go out like that. Creem carried a .44 Magnum on his hip, and the rounds weren’t made of silver, but he liked the weapon anyway. He drew it and capped off two vampires’ heads,
Creem saw, beyond Royal, Skill with its fangs clamped on the elbow of one of the marauding bloodsuckers. The sucker, oblivious to pain, slashed at Skill’s furry throat with the hardened nail of its talonlike middle finger, opening up the wolf-hound’s neck in a mess of silver-gray fur and rich, red blood.
Creem blasted the bloodsucker, opening up two holes in its throat. The sucker went down right next to the whimpering Skill in a mess of carnage.
Another pair of bloodsuckers had fallen upon Ambassador, their vampire strength overpowering the fierce animal. Creem fired away, taking chunks of head and shoulder and arm, but the silverless bullets failed to stop the suckers from ripping apart the wolf-hound.
What the gunfire did achieve was that it attracted attention to Creem. Royal was gone already, two suckers with their stingers in his neck, feeding on him right there in the middle of the street. The humans remained locked inside the cab of the decoy truck, watching, their eyes wide, with not horror but excitement. Creem got off two rounds in their direction and heard glass breaking but could not slow to see if he had hit them.
He squeezed himself through the open driver’s door of the Tahoe, his bulk pushed up against the steering wheel. He threw the vehicle in reverse, the engine still running, and chewed up some yard mud as he backed away. He slammed on the brakes, tearing up more yard, then twisted the wheel to the left. Two bloodsuckers leaped into his way, and Creem hit the gas hard, the Tahoe bursting forward and running them down, its tires grinding them into the sidewalk. Creem fishtailed into the road, gunning the engine but forgetting that it had been a while since he’d operated an automobile.
He skidded sideways, grinding up against the opposite curb, blowing one of the tires off its rim. He swung the other way, overcorrecting. Creem stomped the pedal flat to the floor, got a burst of speed out of the Tahoe— and then the engine sputtered and quit.
Creem checked the dashboard panel. The gas gauge glowed “E.” His crew had poured in just enough fuel for the job. The getaway van, the one with the half-full tank, was in the rear.
Creem threw open his door. He grabbed the frame and pulled himself from the vehicle, seeing the bloodsuckers running toward him. Dirty-pale, barefoot, naked, bloodthirsty. Creem reloaded his .44 from the only other clip on his belt, blasting holes in the bastards, who, as in nightmares, kept coming. When the gun clicked empty, Creem threw it aside and went at the suckers with his silver-covered fists, his bling punches packing extra force and pain. He yanked off one of his chains and started strangling a bloodsucker with it, swinging the creature’s body around to block the other ghouls’ clutching, battering hands.
But he was weak from malnutrition, and, big as he was, he tired easily. They overtook him, but rather than go right at his throat, they locked his big arms in their own and with preternatural strength dragged the sweat- drenched gang leader off the street. They hauled him up two steps into a looted convenience store, bracing him there in a seated position on the floor. Gassed, Creem unleashed a string of curses until heavy breathing dizzied him, and he started to black out. As the store spun in his vision, he wondered what the hell they were waiting for.
