Badlands Witch - Carrie Vaughn

Something’s not right, Amelia murmured in the back of Cormac’s mind. Cormac scanned the depressing parking lot outside his apartment building, half-full of beater cars. Orange streetlights bathed the washed-out concrete walls. The roar of cars on the nearby highway beat at the air. His shoulders ached. They’d spent the afternoon putting up magical protections around a dog park on the other side of the city, which seemed weird to him but he didn’t question anyone willing to write a check. Amelia knew the spells, but Cormac did the work, seeing as how she didn’t have a body. That meant he’d been the one with his arms raised, waving sage and candles while walking around a couple of acres of territory. He was tired.

Amelia could only see what he saw, but she’d honed some magical instinct in him. When she said something wasn’t right, Cormac listened. Which meant he didn’t walk straight into the ambush at the base of the stairs.

Movement flickered, a shadow breaking away from the concrete and launching straight at him. He knew right off what it was. Nothing moved that fast, nothing was so at home in darkness. This was how vampires got the reputation of vanishing like smoke. You’d look and the vampire simply wouldn’t be there anymore. Cormac dived for shelter, hitting the asphalt and rolling under the nearest car, a sedan with busted fenders, while reaching inside his jacket for a stake. To think, some people made fun of him for carrying stakes everywhere.

A thump pounded the top of the car as he rolled out the other side, and the vampire came pouncing down on top of him. Cormac braced the point of the stake upward. The guy kicked it out of his hand, midair, then kneed him in the gut. Move like that shouldn’t have been possible, but then neither should vampires. Ignoring the pain, the air knocked out of his lungs, the shock in his back, Cormac writhed and kicked up, catching the guy in the nuts. That still worked on vampires at least.

The thing about fighting vampires, your defenses had to be solid. Not a crack. That was the only way you’d get a chance to strike back. They moved so fast, their reflexes were so sharp, they’d be on you and breaking your neck or ripping out your throat before you knew they were there. You couldn’t let them get close, bringing their power and experience to bear. Couldn’t let them catch your gaze, stare in your eyes, and immobilize you.

This one must have followed Cormac home. That was his mistake, thinking no vampire would ever be caught dead—undead— in this low-rent neighborhood off the Boulder turnpike. So he came home to the run-down two-story apartment block and relaxed before getting to his own front door.

Cormac recognized the guy. Sharp nose, long face, a flop of hair. The permanently offended snarl of a self-important minion. About ten years ago in Chicago, he took on a gang of vampires running a protection racket on a human neighborhood. He wouldn’t dignify the group with the label Family, though they were sure trying to act like one. They hadn’t been old enough, rich enough, or smart enough to avoid trouble. Cormac took out the leader of the bunch, a guy calling himself Lord Edgar, and half his followers. The rest had scattered, gone to ground.

Turned out, at least one of them had just been biding his time.

Cormac managed to shove himself out from under the guy, looked wildly around for the stake, raced for it—the vampire grabbed his ankle and he fell. Cormac immediately kicked, smashing the guy’s nose. Didn’t kill him. Not much would.

Nothing in Amelia’s magical arsenal could help them unless he could get away, get a little space and time for her to work a spell. But that was just it, vampires never gave you that time. She stayed quiet and let Cormac’s body and fighting instincts try to save them.

He ran. Didn’t think he could get to his front door and the safety of the threshold before the vampire caught up to him. He needed a weapon. The apartment building had exterior stairs leading up to the second floor. Cormac dodged behind the steel frame of the staircase and spotted the door to the janitor’s closet.

“You’ll pay for what you did!” the minion yelled, from the other side of the stairs.

“That was a long time ago,” he shot back, which was a stupid thing to say to a vampire,