Something jerked the vampire backwards. His hand curled in my jacket, and didn't let go. His desperate grip nearly pulled me off my feet, but I got the gun out before I worried about staying on my feet.
A large, very Aztec-looking vamp had the skeletal vamp, holding him pinned against his body, only that one arm with its clutching hand not pressed to the larger man's body.
Edward had his gun out pointed at the vampires. He'd gotten to his gun first, but then he hadn't been shoved up against a wall and manhandled. Or would that be vampire-handled?
The big vamp jerked the thin one hard enough that he nearly pulled me off my feet, but that one clutching hand stayed curled in my jacket, catching on the shirt underneath. I had the Browning pointed at the vamp's chest, though I wasn't sure if the Hornady ammo was safe to shoot at arm's distance into one target pressed directly in front of another person. I wasn't sure if the ammo would go through the first vamp and into the second. The second vamp had saved me. It really wouldn't be nice to blow a hole in him.
The other vampires were leaving the room in a hurrying line to get past us and up the stairs, out of harm's way. Cowards. But it was thinning out the ranks, which would be great. Eventually, I'd care that there weren't so damn many vamps in the room, but right now the world was narrowed down to the vamp that had hold of me. First things first.
The big vamp kept backing up, trying to get the skeletal one to let go of me. We kept moving further into the room. Edward paced us, gun held two-handed pointed at the vampire's head. I finally put the barrel of my gun underneath the vamp's chin. I could blow his brains up without hitting the second vampire.
Obsidian Butterfly's voice slashed through the room like a whip. The sound made me wince, shoulders tightening as if it had been a blow. "These are my guests. How dare you attack them!"
The skeletal vampire started to cry, and his tears were clear, human. Vampire's tears are tinged red. They cry bloody tears. "Please, please let me feed, please!"
"You feed as we all feed, as befits a god."
"Please, please, mistress, please."
"You disgrace me before our visitors." Then she spoke low and rapidly in a language that was sort of Spanish sounding, but it wasn't Spanish. I don't speak Spanish, but I've heard it spoken often enough to know it when I hear it, and this wasn't it. Whatever she was saying, upset both vampires.
The big one pulled so hard that he finally jerked me off my feet because the other vamp was still holding on. I ended up on my knees, my jacket and shirt dangling from the vamp's hand, one arm pulled up at an awkward angle. My gun was pressed into his stomach now, and again I wondered if at point blank range the new ammo would kill both vamps? It was a miracle that I hadn't accidentally shot his head off. Edward was still there, gun pointed at the vamp's head. The first hint I had that something else had gone wrong was a faint glow. The glow grew into something pure and white. My cross had spilled out of my shirt.
The vampire kept his grip on me, but started to scream in a high pitiful voice. The cross flared bright and brighter until I had to turn my head and shield my eyes. It was like having magnesium burning around your neck. So bright, it only got this bright when something very bad was near. I didn't think the something bad was the thing still hanging onto me. I was betting the cross was glowing for her benefit, maybe others' but mostly hers. A lot of things in the room could kill me, but nothing else in the room was worth this much of a light show.
"Let him go to his destiny," she said.
I felt the arm that was still pulling so desperately, go limp. I felt him kneeling, felt it through the barrel of the gun still pressed against him.
Edward said, "Anita?" It was a question, but I didn't have an answer yet.
I blinked past the light, trying to see. The vampire put a hand on either side of my shoulders. His eyes were squeezed shut against the light. His face stretched wide with pain. The white light glistened on fangs as he moved in to feed.
"Stop, or die," I said.
I'm not sure he even heard me. His hand caressed the edge of my cheek, and it was like being touched by fleshy sticks. His hands didn't even feel real. I yelled, "I'll kill him."
"Do so. It's his choice." Her voice was so matter of fact, so uncaring, that it made me not want to do it.
His hand grabbed my hair, tried to twist my face to one side. His head was drawn back for a strike, but he couldn't push past the glare of the cross. But he might work up to it. As weak as he was, he should have run screaming from this much holy light.
"Anita," Edward's voice and it wasn't a question now, more a preview.
The vampire let out a scream that made me gasp. His head threw back, then down, and his face moved in a white blur towards me. The gun went off before I realized I'd squeezed the trigger, just a reflex. A second gun echoed so close on my shot that it sounded like a single gunshot. The vamp jerked, and his head exploded. Blood and thicker things sprayed half my face.
I knelt in a sudden deafening silence. There was no sound, nothing but a line, distant ringing in my ears, like tinny bells. I turned in a sort of slow motion to see the vamp's body sprawled on its side, I got to my feet and still couldn't hear anything. Sometimes that's shock. Sometimes it's just gunshots going off next to your ears.
I scraped at the blood and thicker pieces on the left side of my face. Edward handed me a white handkerchief, probably something Ted would carry, but I took it. I started trying to scrape the stuff off of me.
The cross was still glowing like a captive star. I was already deaf. If I didn't stop having to squint around the light, I was going to be blind as well. I looked around the room. Most of the vamps had fled up the stairs away from the cross's glow, but what was left huddled around their goddess, shielding her, I think, from us. I blinked through the glare, and I think I saw fear on one or two faces. You don't see that often on several hundred years worth of vampire. It might have been the cross, but I didn't think that was it. I slipped the cross back into my shirt. The cross was still cool silver. It never burned unless vampire flesh touched it. Then it would flare into actual flame and burn the vamp and any human flesh that happened to be touching it at the same time. Usually, the vamp would jerk away before you got past second degree burns so I'd never gotten a scar from one of my own crosses.
The vampires stayed in front of their mistress, and the fear was still there on at least one face. The cross could keep them at bay, but that wasn't what they feared. I looked down at the body. The entrance hole was just a small red thing, with black scorch marks around it, but the exit hole was nearly a foot in diameter. There was no head on the body, only the lower jaw and a thin rim of back brain left. The rest had been blown in a wide spray across the floor and across me.
Edward's mouth was moving, and sound came back in a kind of Doppler shift, so that I heard only the end of it. " … ammo are you using now?"
I told him.
He knelt by the body and inspected the chest wound. "I thought the Hornady XTP wasn't supposed to make this much of a mess going out."
His voice still sounded like it was distant, tinny, but I could hear again It meant that my hearing would go back to normal eventually. "I don't think they did any firing tests at point blank range."