Cora jogged up to us and immediately covered her mouth. “Oh, dear God. What did you eat?”
Priscilla wiped the vomit from her lips. “Diner food.”
Cora scoffed. “Carnivores.”
Dryly, Priscilla responded, “Shut up, Cora.”
Veronica suddenly jumped up from the ground with the axe still hanging from her back. She grabbed Priscilla by the collar of her coat, opened her mouth so wide I could see down her throat, and began puking blood all over Priscilla’s face. Priscilla screamed as a fountain poured onto her. It was buckets and buckets of blood. No person, alive or dead, should be able to spit this much out.
When the crimson stopped trickling from between Veronica’s lips, I picked up a fallen branch and cracked it against the side of Veronica’s head. It shook Priscilla loose from her gasp, and Priscilla fell to the ground. “Hey!” I yelled. “Fight me!”
“Please tell me you know what you’re doing!” Cora yelped.
“Uh, sure,” I answered. Cora side-eyed me, probably with the same thing on her mind as mine. How did the two biggest geeks end up fighting a vampire alone?
Veronica lunged forward and I knocked her in the face with the branch, sending her flying into the fountain. On the edge of the concrete fountain, she crouched like a chimp, with her arms hanging between her legs, and cackled. Her voice had an eerie echo, as if there were more than one person laughing beside her.
Priscilla gagged and screamed in the corner as she furiously wiped the blood out of her eyes. “I have STDs all over me!”
Veronica jumped onto the walls of the hedge maze, clinging to the branches with her hands, and crawled across them as if gravity were no longer an issue. All the while she laughed like a witch. The axe still hung from her back.
“Should we make a run for it?” Cora calmly asked.
“And leave her up there?” I responded.
Cora shrugged. “It’s what I do with the spiders in my shower.”
“Those spiders aren’t trying to kill you.”
“You never lived in my old apartment.”
Cora did have a gift for making light of a serious moment. I don’t think she even does it on purpose.
Veronica jumped down and landed a couple of feet in front of Cora. I heard Cora yell, “Oh, shit!” and then dance her way toward me to keep safe. We backed away until we were beside Priscilla, and I reached a hand down to help her get to her feet. Priscilla was soaked with blood, still. We stood motionless as Veronica crept toward us, her white fangs hanging far below her bottom lip as she hissed. She looked like a rabid, hungry animal.
“On second thought,” I said to Cora, and she immediately knew what I meant. The three of us made a run for it, going right past Veronica as she swiped her claws in our direction and bounced against the walls as she chased us. I gripped onto Priscilla’s arm, but my fingers slid across her skin from the slimy blood that engulfed her. “Come on!” I shouted to her as she struggled to move at the same speed as me.
We were running fast, but I could sense Veronica close behind us. The leaves rustled and thin layers of snow clouded the air as she scaled the hedge walls around us, bouncing from one side to the next as we ran.
Veronica took a giant leap and landed in front of us, grabbing Priscilla by the throat and tossing her. Priscilla slid across the ice as she screamed. I immediately saw red, and threw a punch right into Veronica’s nose. The bones shattered beneath my knuckles as a flow of red poured from her nostrils. Veronica covered her face with both hands and took several steps back. With a river of blood flowing onto her palms, she cried, “You hit a woman!”
Her nose was practically on the other side of her face. I stared down at my trembling hands and was reminded just how much I underestimate my strength. Even like this. I didn’t have to be a werewolf to save the girl. I could do it as the real me.
Defiant, I stared at Veronica. “You’re not playing mind games with me anymore.”
Veronica’s tongue slipped out of her mouth and trailed across the stream of blood beneath her nose. “I never said hitting me was a bad thing. Maybe I like it.” She rubbed her hands along the outline of her body and then to the front of her legs. “It’s so cold between my thighs. Warm me up, daddy.” She could see the repulsion painted all over my face, and her lips stretched out into a smile. Veronica wanted me as uncomfortable as possible.
It wasn’t gonna work.
“Fuck off,” I told her.
Her smile faded, and she lunged at me. Before she could get close, I gave her one good shove and sent her into the stone wall at the edge of the maze. She immediately gasped, and her entire body froze. Her mouth dropped open, and a clot of blood rolled off her tongue.
Between her breasts, I saw the silver tip of the axe peeking through her flesh. The impact pushed it further inside of her back and it was coming through the front of her body, severing her chest in half.
Veronica coughed, gurgled up blood, and then dropped. Blood oozed everywhere.
I breathed a sigh of relief. That could have ended so many ways, and thankfully, it went the way that kept Priscilla alive.
I found Priscilla lying on her back in the snow, and she was so still I thought she had been severely hurt. I knelt beside her
