Blood Red

She could move!

But when she managed a step, he was suddenly directly in front of her, even though she hadn’t seen him move. It was as if he had floated there.

She stared into his eyes. They were gold. No, they were dark. No, there was some kind of fire that seemed to glow from within them.

That was it. She really had lost her mind.

“This time,” he said softly, “I have the advantage. I will not lose you again.”

She opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to protest that he couldn’t lose what he didn’t have.

But the fire in his eyes was so bright….

The cross, she thought. The silver cross. If she could just produce it…

No, that would mean that she believed in vampires, and that was ridiculous.

Besides, she couldn’t move her arms again. She was held by the fire in his eyes. She willed her hand to move, pleaded with her body to function….

She found the cross with her fingers and drew it out from under her shirt.

A flash of fury seemed to tear through his eyes.

He opened his mouth.

His teeth weren’t yellowed; they weren’t horrid, rank or dripping with gore.

They weren’t teeth at all.

They were fangs.

She willed herself to back away. Because now he was coming right at her, furious at the sight of the cross. He started to reach out for her, as if he were in pain but planning to endure that pain. He was going to seize her cross and rip it from her neck.

And that was when Mark appeared.

She didn’t know where he had come from; he was just suddenly there.

She felt his arms on her shoulders, felt him shove her out of the way. He was carrying, of all things, a squirt gun.

A child’s squirt gun.

Then he lifted it and shot her attacker.

There was steam, a hiss, accompanied by a roar of fury.

The man with the burning eyes seemed to disappear in darkness and shadow, even as the sound of his voice remained.

And suddenly, there on the street, so near to Bourbon and yet so far, there were suddenly scores of shadows, like moving pools of darkness.

They took on form.

And life.

Mark tossed her something.

Another squirt gun.

She stared at him, still in shock, but somehow, she reflexively caught the toy.

“Don’t let anyone get the cross. Start shooting,” Mark ordered.

Shooting?

With a squirt gun?

They were crowding around her now. So many of them. They were people. They had been shadows, but now they were people.

A girl in a short skirt with a Betty Page haircut and cute freckles. A twenty-something guy in a Grateful Dead T-shirt. A man who looked like a James Bond wanna-be. A woman who was a dead ringer for the mom on Family Ties.

Someone almost pounced on Mark. He struck out with a kick that would have done Jackie Chan proud. Hi attacker went flying back and struck a wall—hard—then just picked himself up and started coming again.

Mark had whirled, and for a moment she thought he was shooting at her with the squirt gun, but he wasn’t. She heard a cry of fury, followed by that awful hissing right behind her. She turned. A black form was turning to a pool of burning dust behind her.

A girl hopped on Mark’s back. He caught her with both hands, throwing her over his shoulder to the sidewalk.

She looked like Pollyanna.

He took dead aim between her eyes with his water pistol. Shot.

She screamed.

The hissing came first.