The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,146
before she could use the knife.
Every footstep was soft, soundless. Mrs. Greene jumped when a plummy man’s voice started announcing the next selection from WSCI’s Classical Twilight down below them in the living room. Every step took an hour, and any second they expected to hear James Harris’s voice from the top of the dark stairs.
They regrouped in the darkness of the upstairs hall. All around them were closed doors. A CRACK echoed through every room in the house and Maryellen almost screamed before realizing it was the wind shifting the window frames.
The master bedroom doorway stood dark in front of them and from it they heard a soft, wet suckling sound. They crept toward it, until they stood full in the doorway and the bright moonlight showed what lay on the bed.
Patricia lay back, arms flung over her head, a carnal half-smile on her lips, naked, her legs spread, and between them, blocking their view, crouched a shirtless James Harris, back muscles pulsing. His shoulder blades spread and retracted like wings as he fed on Patricia, his head by the join of her thighs, one large hand on her left thigh, gently pushing it open, the other on her stomach, fingers squirming on her pale flesh.
The sheer ravenous hunger of the sight paralyzed them. They could smell it, thick and carnal, filling the cramped room.
Kitty recovered before either of the other two women. She adjusted her grip, took three steps forward, ending with her left foot almost on James Harris’s right ankle, and brought the bat straight off her shoulder, swinging hard in a powerful line drive.
The bat caught him in the side of the head with a metallic TONK, like a sledgehammer hitting stone, and Kitty let go with her lead hand and let the bat come around in a full arc, almost popping Mrs. Greene in the chin. A gout of regurgitated blood pulsed once out of James Harris’s mouth and splattered across Patricia’s pubic hair and belly, but otherwise he kept sucking, uninterrupted.
Patricia moaned once in sexual ecstasy, in heat, in pain, and Kitty brought the bat around again, even though her left shoulder ached. This time she swung for the fences.
The second blow got his attention, too much of it, in fact, and he whirled in a crouch, eyes feral, blood pouring down his face and dripping off something that hung from his chin. Blood poured from the wound in Patricia’s thigh. Kitty saw the muscles in James Harris’s stomach and shoulders tense and the planes of his face moved impossibly, and the thing hanging there disappeared, and Kitty thought, He’s going to, and even though she wasn’t a left-handed hitter she didn’t have a choice—that was the side the bat was on and he wasn’t going to give her time to get her stance back or even finish her thought. She brought the bat back at him as hard as she could but she knew it wasn’t hard enough.
James Harris caught the bat on his ribs with a meaty THWACK. He brought his arm down and clamped it against his body, then spun and sent it clattering into the corner. Patricia moaned in pleasure, mindlessly grinding her thighs together, and James Harris was up, both hands grabbing Kitty’s shoulders so hard she felt bone grind against bone. He drove her backward into the open bedroom door, brushing past Mrs. Greene and Maryellen, sending them spinning aside, slamming Kitty into the door so hard the knob embedded itself in the wall. Then he hurled her across the bedroom, sending her staggering toward the corner by the window, sprawling over an armchair on her way, tipping it over backward, as Mrs. Greene brought the hammer down on his head.
It glanced off his skull, and he plucked it easily out of her hand. She screamed and stepped backward, panicking, getting out of the room, wanting to get away from him as fast as possible, shoulder-checking Maryellen, getting turned around and winding up standing in the open doorway to the master bath instead.
Maryellen stood between James Harris and Mrs. Greene. She met his eyes and wet her pants. Her numb hands seemed to belong to someone else, someone far away, and her urine and the sheathed hunting knife hit the floorboards at