armor gleaming.
The ninja rats paused, their little beady eyes reflecting fear.
Lightning arced across the sky.
The girls attacked.
The possum still stood on the roof of my van. “The fat one!” it called out. “Seize the fat one! She has—”
Wan leaped atop my van, all six feet of enraged mouse, facing the one-foot-tall possum. “Now, you pay,” he growled. “Pay for your threats to my Kate, pay for—”
“No monologues!” I shouted, but it was too late. Ninja rats swarmed up the sides and threw themselves at Wan. One picked up the possum so it was riding his shoulder. The possum’s mouth stretched into a smile of jagged teeth as they lashed out at Wan.
“Wan!” I screamed, looking around for something, anything—
There were no more carts. How could there be no more carts? Maybe a cart corral? That—
A scream. Wan was down, a sword to his throat. I didn’t have—
A crash of thunder. Lightning. I’d summon lightning.
How hard could it be?
In desperation, still clutching my purse, I raised the hand with the plastic shopping bags still around my wrist. I should’ve cried out something dramatic, but honestly I just gave a choked cry of fear, and lashed out at the ninja rat on top of Wan.
Electricity filled the night, and the hair on my skin rose in response. There was a sharp smell of ozone, a flash of heat, a loud crackle—
The smell of fried rat hung heavy in the air.
The possum, the ninja rats, Wan—all stared at me like a woman who’d lost her mind.
Oh dear. Metal armor. Swords. I hadn’t thought—
The power was building within me, crackling on my skin as my hair rose around my head. I sucked in a breath, knowing somehow that if I didn’t discharge it, it would turn on me and burn me to a—
I focused my rage on the possum, and screamed.
The crackles in the air was enough warning. The possum leaped away, landing on another ninja’s shoulder. Everyone else on top of the van flung themselves off as the lightning bolt plunged down out of the sky, blinding in its intensity. The image burned into my eyes, leaving me blind.
I swayed, suddenly drained and weak-kneed, as if I’d tried to take a couple flights of stairs.
Okay, maybe just one.
The possum laughed harshly.
My eyes cleared to see my poor mini-van a smoldering wreck, its tires melted and smoking. The girls, each still encased in their shopping-cart armor, were lined up in a defensive crouch before me. Wan was also there, his sword at the ready.
“She does not know!” the possum shrieked as he danced on the ninja rat’s shoulder. “Untrained, unknowing, and weakened. Get her!”
The ninja rats attacked again, fierce in their determination to cut through the line. Wan cast a desperate glance at me before he met their charge. It was only a matter of time before they did an end-run or flanked the line and got to me. I took a shaky step back, turning for the warm, welcome lights of the store.
A limo pulled up behind me, its back door swinging wide. McDougall was inside, secure within its golden light, his hand extended to me. “Kate,” he said, his eyes warm and bright. “Come to me.”
The sight was a relief, a vision of safety and shelter. I stumbled forward with my purse and bags, tears forming in my eyes.
“Kate, Kate!” Wan screamed as I reached the limo. “THAT’S NOT MCDOUGALL!”
The bony, skeletal hand grabbed my wrist and yanked me inside.
I couldn’t breathe; terror closed my throat. The Chinese vampire tumbled me to the floor and straddled me, its mummified face frozen in an eternal grin revealing teeth blackened with age. One hand closed on my throat; the other gestured to the limo door.
He sure as hell wasn’t sparkling.
I caught a glimpse of Wan charging toward us as the limo door whipped shut.
Wan slammed into the side. I heard his muffled cries and saw his sword skittering across the glass as he tried desperately to shatter the window.
The vampire leaned in to me, pressing down on my chest with his weight. My vision went gray as his foul breath wafted over me.
“I have so looked forward to this,” he whispered as his eyes started to glow.
I closed my eyes and struggled, but my one hand was caught in the shopping bags and it was pointless. The damn monster was bigger, stronger, and more powerful. As I fought to breathe, fought desperately to get free, it occurred to me that in all the stories,