Well. You learn something new every day. Even about the guy you're sleeping with.
The shooting range was in a low concrete building north of town, in the suburbs. It might have been any business, and I'd have probably overlooked the unobtrusive sign, black print on white, announcing guns, ammo, range. SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.
Inside, the place smelled like Cormac. Rather, Cormac smelled like a gun shop, if I had ever known what a gun shop smelled like. Gun oil, metal, burned powder. That said something about Cormac.
Ben picked up a couple boxes of bullets, headsets for ear protection, and safety glasses from the guy at the counter. Boy, there were a lot of guns locked up behind the glass case under that counter. They all looked dark and angry.
At the back of the shop, past the double metal doors, came the sound of gunfire. Two guns, I thought, firing slightly out of synch. One was faster than the other.
His hand on my back, Ben steered me toward that door.
The back room was straight out of a police drama— various booths opened into a long hallway. Targets hung on lines in the back. The people in the two occupied booths ignored us.
Ben was all business and got straight to work.
'First off, here's the reason so many accidental shootings happen with semiautomatics.' He clicked a latch, and the clip dropped out of the gun's grip. Then he slid back a release, revealing the bullet still in the chamber. 'Losing the clip doesn't mean the thing's empty.'
He tipped the gun, knocking the bullet into his hand. Closed the release. 'Now it's safe.' He pointed to the target, pulled the trigger a couple of times, and nothing happened.
'Rule number one, never point a gun—empty, loaded, whatever—unless you plan on firing it. If you point it at a person, it means you want to kill them.' He slipped the spare bullet back in the clip, put the clip back in the gun, pulled back the slide, chambered the round. Live and loaded. Rock and roll. Shit.
'Rule number two, if you need to kill someone, make sure the thing's loaded.' He grinned.
'You've been hanging out with Cormac too long,' I said.
'Yeah, well,' he said, and left it at that.
'Who taught you all this? Rule number one, rule number two.' He handled the weapon like he'd been doing this his whole life. Maybe he had. He'd grown up on a ranch on the northern Front Range.
'My father.'
'Your freaky militia father who's in jail?' Yes, my boyfriend had quite the history. Two of his three closest relatives were doing time.
'Yep.' He smiled. He handed me safety equipment. 'Put these on.'
How the hell did I ever get mixed up with him? I was a nice girl from the suburbs. I put on the glasses and earphones, which mostly muffled my hearing, but I could still hear him as he instructed.
Hold it like this, sight along these two points on the barrel, don't jerk at the trigger—squeeze slowly as you exhale. He fired, then fired again. The gun exploded with noise.
I flinched. Nothing good ever happened when I heard that sound. I was glad of the ear protection in this enclosed concrete space. We looked across to the target—he'd made two little holes off center, within the black circle.
'Now, you try.' He handed the thing to me.
I took it like it was alive and had teeth. Sighing, Ben stood behind me, cupped his hands around mine, and guided them into place, showing me how to hold the thing: right hand on the grip, left hand underneath, steadying it. Our bodies pressed close together.
Okay, this part was kind of sexy.
'Don't brace your arms,' he said by my ear. 'Relax. Now, breathe out, tighten the trigger—'
Supersensitive, it felt like it only moved a millimeter before it clicked and the gun jumped in my hand. Boom, loud as an explosion, I felt it in my bones. My whole arm tingled. My heart was beating fast for no good reason.
'Hey, I think you actually hit the target.' He pointed to a white tear on the edge of the paper, far outside the circle of black.
'I don't think I was even aiming.' I furrowed my brow at the weapon.
'I couldn't tell,' he said sarcastically. 'Try again.'
He reminded me to aim along the sights, but he didn't guide me this time. I was on my own. I fired. It still made my arms tingle, but I was ready for it this time. Again, I hit the target, but not the black circle.
'Again.' So I did, again and again and again. Went through four clips, fifteen rounds each, so that I was standing in a mess of brass casings. I got used to the noise, got used to the way the shots rattled my arms. And that was the point.
By the last clip I hit the black circle every single shot. I regarded my handiwork with grudging admiration. I didn't want to feel proud about this.
Ben crossed his arms and nodded, seemingly satisfied. 'Now pop the clip. Check the chamber, make sure it's empty.'
I did, dutifully, like I was some kind of army trainee.
'Now, don't you feel better?' he said.
'No. Can we go now?'
Back in the car, I asked, 'You're not going to make me carry a gun around with me all the time, are you?'
'Not yet. Have to get you a permit first.'
I just couldn't win.
I spent that week at work handling the fallout from Friday's show and introducing America's first celebrity vampire. Bitterly, now that I was dealing with a manipulative player rather than a genial actress. Although a couple of calls from the agents of people who wanted to be the
I didn't have the license or the gun when I got shanghaied in the parking lot outside work.
If you want to make yourself hard to find, you're supposed to vary your route between work and home. Leave at unpredictable times. Make your schedule unpredictable. Get a P.O. box, hide your home address. Get an unlisted phone number.
But everyone could find me at KNOB. They were waiting for me after dark.
'Hi, honey. Love your show.'
I heard her and smelled her at the same time, my nostrils widening as soon as I stepped outside and took in the night air. She was cold, she had no heartbeat—undead. Vampire. She leaned on the wall right outside the door, arms crossed. Her thick brown hair was tied in a wild ponytail, her skin was porcelain pale and smooth. She wore a black lace camisole, leather pants, and high-heeled black boots. And sunglasses. Her red lips smiled.
She wasn't one of the locals. The vampires in Arturo's clan had more style and less punk-ass stereotype.
'Who the hell are you?' I said, quiet and wary.
'She's with me.' The guy just appeared, behind me, leaning on the other side of the door. He had the same pale skin, spiky black hair, and sunglasses. Leather jacket, T-shirt, jeans. That same wicked, predatorial smile.
Fuck.
I walked forward, like I could pretend they weren't there. A second later, they stood beside me again, and each one had a grip on my arms.
I sighed. 'What do you want?'
They both grinned, having too much fun with their game.
'We want to talk,' the guy said.
'I'm listening.'
'Not here,' he said.
Of course not. Side by side, holding me tight, they steered me to a black SUV parked around the corner. Strangely, rather than panic I felt an odd sort of fatalism settle over me, like I finally had too much to deal with. I didn't have any anxiety left to muster. Maybe they weren't planning on killing me. Maybe they'd started a fan club and just wanted me to give a little talk to the gang. Maybe they were going to lock me in a shipping crate and sell me into slavery.
See, whatever it was, I just couldn't think of how bad it could possibly get. My imagination failed me.
I made a token effort to escape. I braced my arms and dropped my weight back—and was shocked when I actually broke out of their grips. Blinking, I looked at them looking back at me. Then the Wolf took over and ran. I turned and launched myself in the same step, dashing down the sidewalk.
Seemingly without moving, without effort, they grabbed hold of me again. I didn't even sense them moving. In one breath I was running, and in the next I jerked back, flailing like a fish on a line. They hauled me back toward the SUV. I managed to get my feet under me, so I wasn't completely dragged.
'Cute,' the woman said. 'Real cute. Though I can't blame you for trying.'
'Thanks,' I muttered.
She went around to the passenger side, the guy shoved me in through the driver's side, and they pinned me between them as they climbed in.
'Don't worry,' she said. 'This'll be fun.'
Yeah, right. They both looked to be in their twenties. They seemed young, as vampires went. They were having too much fun with it.
They didn't blindfold me. They didn't care if I knew where we were going, which boded both well and ill. Maybe they really did just want to talk. But if they were planning on killing me, it wouldn't matter if I knew where we were going.
I put on an air of bravado. 'You guys are from the Eighties, aren't you?'
She giggled and put her arm across my shoulders, pressing far too close to me for comfort. Goose bumps broke out over my arms. She said, 'That's exactly what he said you'd say.'
'Who? Who said I'd say that?'
Nothing. The guy grinned, and she kept stifling giggles.
I slumped back against the seat and eyed him in the rearview mirror. Except he wasn't there. Leaning forward suddenly, I checked the side mirror—I should have seen him there, but I only saw the back of the seat, bathed in shadow. But the mirror thing was bunk. I'd seen it.
'What are you doing?' the woman asked, watching me crane my neck, trying to look at a different angle.
