things at the zoo?”
“Fine, fine.” It took him a minute to look my way instead of at the stage. “Dr. Critter was named director last week and he replaced the lion and the zebra without cutting anybody’s hours.”
“Not the gorilla?”
“Nahhhhh. We got enough of them and they breed like monkeys.”
Critter had been hospitalized with “severe spontaneous neck trauma,” but had made a full recovery. Mr. Beauregard wasn’t so lucky. He had died. The Nosferatu had apparently shared blood with him because, by the time I had gotten back from killing the Nosferatu and her demonspawn, his body had already started to mutate. I’d had to stake his heart and cut off his head to keep him from turning into a vampire.
Kat had done some research and discovered that a Nosferatu female finds a child and turns it. Nosferatu blood then mutates the child, changing it into a mini Nosferatu. The vampire will raise the hellspawn child as it continues to grow and become a full-fledged Nosferatu itself. Most vampires lock into their age when they are turned; Nosferatu are apparently different. Vampire biology is a whacked out, unnatural thing.
Detective Longyard discovered that a family of tourists, from Transylvania of all places, had gone missing on Tuesday. It was the day they were scheduled to visit the zoo and the day there was not an animal carcass taken. The mother and the father were found in the sewers. They had been skinned and were not far from the nest. The body of their son, age two, was never recovered. It had washed away in the sewer.
Jimmy took another pull from his longneck then sat it on the table between us. “I want to say thanks.”
“You already did.”
“Still …”
I waved him off. “It’s cool. It’s what I do. No big deal.” I tossed back my drink, draining the short glass to just the ice cubes. “Let me get you another beer and I’ll get Cinnamon over to keep you company. She’s a nice girl and needs a good guy in her life. I think you two might get along.”
His hands moved to smooth down his shirt, then feathered back along his hair. “That would be real cool, man.”
Smiling, I slid out of the booth and made my way to the bar.
He lives to kill monsters. He keeps his city safe. And his silver hollow-points and back-from-the-dead abilities help him take out any kind of supernatural threat. But now an immortal evil has this bad-ass bounty hunter dead in its sights …
Ever since a monster murdered his family Deacon Chalk hunts any creature that preys on the innocent. So when a pretty vampire girl “hires” him to eliminate a fellow slayer, Deacon goes to warn him—and barely escapes a vampire ambush.
Now he’s got a way-inexperienced newbie hunter to protect and everything from bloodsuckers to cursed immortals on his trail. There’s also a malevolent force controlling the living and the undead, hellbent on turning Deacon’s greatest loss into the one weapon that could destroy him …
Don’t miss James Tuck’s
BLOOD AND BULLETS
coming in February 2012!
1
Some nights are destined to go to hell. Not literally, at least not usually. From the start of them, you know they are going to turn on you like a rabid dog. I was having one of those nights.
Which is why I found myself with a semiautomatic pistol aimed at a vampire who wore my daughter’s face. My eyes were fixed on the laser dot that screamed red against her forehead, but my mind was racing back through memories of my little girl. The pain was a surgical strike. It was inside before I could close my guard. So quick and clean that I didn’t feel it until scalpel hit bone.
Memories of her, along with my wife and son, are acid-etched in my mind. It has been five years since they were killed, stolen from my life by a monster. Their deaths had started me on the road I am on now: hunting monsters for money until the day I run up on one that is nasty enough to take me out so I can go be with them. Their
“Fine, fine.” It took him a minute to look my way instead of at the stage. “Dr. Critter was named director last week and he replaced the lion and the zebra without cutting anybody’s hours.”
“Not the gorilla?”
“Nahhhhh. We got enough of them and they breed like monkeys.”
Critter had been hospitalized with “severe spontaneous neck trauma,” but had made a full recovery. Mr. Beauregard wasn’t so lucky. He had died. The Nosferatu had apparently shared blood with him because, by the time I had gotten back from killing the Nosferatu and her demonspawn, his body had already started to mutate. I’d had to stake his heart and cut off his head to keep him from turning into a vampire.
Kat had done some research and discovered that a Nosferatu female finds a child and turns it. Nosferatu blood then mutates the child, changing it into a mini Nosferatu. The vampire will raise the hellspawn child as it continues to grow and become a full-fledged Nosferatu itself. Most vampires lock into their age when they are turned; Nosferatu are apparently different. Vampire biology is a whacked out, unnatural thing.
Detective Longyard discovered that a family of tourists, from Transylvania of all places, had gone missing on Tuesday. It was the day they were scheduled to visit the zoo and the day there was not an animal carcass taken. The mother and the father were found in the sewers. They had been skinned and were not far from the nest. The body of their son, age two, was never recovered. It had washed away in the sewer.
Jimmy took another pull from his longneck then sat it on the table between us. “I want to say thanks.”
“You already did.”
“Still …”
I waved him off. “It’s cool. It’s what I do. No big deal.” I tossed back my drink, draining the short glass to just the ice cubes. “Let me get you another beer and I’ll get Cinnamon over to keep you company. She’s a nice girl and needs a good guy in her life. I think you two might get along.”
His hands moved to smooth down his shirt, then feathered back along his hair. “That would be real cool, man.”
Smiling, I slid out of the booth and made my way to the bar.
He lives to kill monsters. He keeps his city safe. And his silver hollow-points and back-from-the-dead abilities help him take out any kind of supernatural threat. But now an immortal evil has this bad-ass bounty hunter dead in its sights …
Ever since a monster murdered his family Deacon Chalk hunts any creature that preys on the innocent. So when a pretty vampire girl “hires” him to eliminate a fellow slayer, Deacon goes to warn him—and barely escapes a vampire ambush.
Now he’s got a way-inexperienced newbie hunter to protect and everything from bloodsuckers to cursed immortals on his trail. There’s also a malevolent force controlling the living and the undead, hellbent on turning Deacon’s greatest loss into the one weapon that could destroy him …
Don’t miss James Tuck’s
BLOOD AND BULLETS
coming in February 2012!
1
Some nights are destined to go to hell. Not literally, at least not usually. From the start of them, you know they are going to turn on you like a rabid dog. I was having one of those nights.
Which is why I found myself with a semiautomatic pistol aimed at a vampire who wore my daughter’s face. My eyes were fixed on the laser dot that screamed red against her forehead, but my mind was racing back through memories of my little girl. The pain was a surgical strike. It was inside before I could close my guard. So quick and clean that I didn’t feel it until scalpel hit bone.
Memories of her, along with my wife and son, are acid-etched in my mind. It has been five years since they were killed, stolen from my life by a monster. Their deaths had started me on the road I am on now: hunting monsters for money until the day I run up on one that is nasty enough to take me out so I can go be with them. Their
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