Then she swung.
She took the thing’s head off in one slice. I couldn’t get my hands up in time so I shut my eyes as unnaturally cool blood splattered against my face.
I heard a thunk and opened my eyes to see the headless body drop onto its side.
The head rolled to a stop at my feet, its eyes reflecting the moonlight.
I looked up at Gail. She was wiping her blade on a towel that dangled from her belt. She had the beginnings of a smile on her lips, then her eyes widened and she reached for her gun.
I started to turn, but before I could, I was knocked off my feet by a weight crashing into my shoulders. I hit the ground face first and felt claws ripping at my back. I rolled and managed to dislodge my attacker. There was growling near my face and then the sound of Gail’s handgun. It blasted twice and then feet hit the grass to either side of my face as the thing staggered off me. I reversed my roll, stopped, and raised my Beretta. There was another ghoul scrambling toward Gail. This one was female and its clothes were as tattered as the male’s.
Gail fired twice more, her heavy pistol making sharp reports in the night, and the ghoul fell back. I used the break to climb to my feet. Gail stepped beside the thing that was still trying to rise and fired three more times into its face. It started twitching. She holstered her gun again and drew her massive knife. This time I turned away in time to keep the creature’s blood from adding to the gore that already coated my face.
While Gail wiped her knife clean again, I removed a handkerchief from a back pocket and wiped off my face. “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch. Fucking ghouls.”
“You shouldn’t talk about your Mother like that,” Gail said. “Are you all right?”
I turned my back to her. “You tell me.”
I felt her hands on my shoulders and then against the bare skin of my back.
“Looks like you were lucky. Your shirt is ripped up, but I don’t feel blood.”
I faced her and found her standing close, very close. My breath came fast and my pulse raced but not from the combat. I was so conscious of her body, her lips, her eyes. I wanted her more than I could say.
“What are you grinning about?” Gail asked.
“Well, six years with no word from you and then you get me out here in the middle of the night to kill ghouls. And here I didn’t get you anything.”
Gail chuckled and patted my cheek. Her palm rubbed against the five day growth of beard I maintained.
“Why the beard?” she asked. “It feels scratchy.”
I shrugged. “My attempt at relaxing after the Army. I only have to trim it once a week.”
Her hand slipped along my jaw line in a light caress. “I don’t know. Seems like it would be rough on a woman’s tender skin.”
“I haven’t had any complaints,” I said as I reached for her.
Gail chuckled again and stepped back out of my reach. “Grab their feet.”
She picked up each of the heads by the hair and walked toward the woods at the back of the cemetery. I put my Beretta in my back pocket and took an ankle of each of the corpses. I followed Gail, dragging the ghouls behind me. When we passed the last of the old graves, Gail stopped before an open one. She tossed the pair of heads into the hole and motioned for me to do the same with the corpses.
“Well hell, looks like you thought of everything,” I said.
“Pretty much.”
“Ghouls, eh? So that’s why you needed my help?”
Gail turned suddenly to face the church. The breeze was freshening and it pushed a few stray hairs back from her face. The full moon was just past the zenith and its light seemed to caress her form, outlining the way her clothes clung to her curves. Her blouse billowed away from her torso exposing more pale skin to the night. Even with the surprises of the night, I found her incredibly desirable.
There was a long howl from the distant woods and my blood chilled. Something about the howl stirred racial memories deep in my soul.
I turned to face the way Gail was staring. “That was no coyote.”
Gail nodded without taking her eyes from the church. “Give the man a cigar. No, not a coyote. That’s another thing I need your help with. You’re okay with ghouls, how are you with werewolves?”
Chapter 2 – Once Bitten
“You’re kidding.” My voice was deadpan, surprisingly calm, and unbelieving as hell.
Gail gave me a sideways glance. “Was I kidding about the ghouls? Come on; let’s get back to my van. What rounds are you using?”
She broke into a trot and I hurried to catch up and then paced her among the tombstones. “Forty cal.”
“Damn, sorry, but I don’t have any forty. Why don’t you have something heavier, like a forty-five?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a couple more mags in the glove box,” I said.
“Oh? How many of them are silver?”
“What?”
“D’uh, werewolf. Silver bullets.” She sounded put out. “Geez, keep up, Jesse, I remember you being faster on the uptake.”
“Hell and damnation, how can you expect me to keep up when you keep throwing fairy tales at me? Cut me a little slack.” I didn’t like how my voice came out. It sounded whiny and if there was one thing I remembered about Gail, it was that she did not tolerate whiney.
She was quiet for a half dozen strides, and then she said, “Okay, I’ll give you that one, but I heard you’d been a soldier. Didn’t you ever come across anything unexpected in combat?”
“Damn straight,” I said.
“Same thing here. Sure, supernatural critters are unexpected, but unless you want your ass handed to you, you’ve got to get on the ball and be ready for whatever comes.”
We reached the cemetery gate and
