Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

“I’m tired.”

“I’ll drive.”

“If a cop sees you behind the wheel like that…” I waved at his torn and bloody shirt, his even bloodier chest.

“You’ll magic them, and we’ll keep right on going.”

“It’s easier to stop here, take a shower and a nap, start fresh in the morning.” Besides, I’d magicked so many people today, my hands hurt.

I figured he’d argue, so when he laid his head against the seat and closed his eyes, I palmed the keys and got us a room. There was no way I was letting Jimmy out of my sight until he was back under Ruthie’s thumb. I wouldn’t put it past him to sneak away in the middle of the night and try to kill Sawyer again.

Unfortunately, Jimmy didn’t wait for the middle of the night. By the time I got back to the car, he was gone.

“Fuck!” I kicked the tire. I should have put a leash on him.

I looked up and down the road, but in the middle of nowhere, even with fairy eyesight, the highway disappeared into a black maw of nothing after a few hundred feet.

I honestly had no idea which way to go, or even if I should go. Jimmy was a big boy. He wasn’t my responsibility.

No matter how much I might want him to be.

I turned toward the motel and got a shimmy of déjà vu so hard I staggered. I’d dreamed this.

The Impala right there, the hotel in front of me. Jimmy was gone. I was worried. Everything was the same, right down to the ache in my fingers, except …

The sign had been off—black and still—not flickering like it was now.

In the next instant, the neon died with a sizzling phzaat. Darkness settled over me like a cool spring mist. I held my breath and waited for reality to catch up with the dream.

The animal-like shriek rent the night, and I lifted into the air without benefit of wings.

I flew toward the scream, already knowing what I would find.

A cottage miles away from the nearest neighbor, at the end of what would have passed for a decent road in the year 2, the night so dark the figures that surrounded it were mere wisps darting in and out of the light that shone from the windows.

One man battled a multitude of hunched and decrepit crone-things, with tails like dinosaurs and bony, bald heads. Despite their ancient appearance, they moved fast, and they had very sharp teeth. It wasn’t until one of them bleated like a goat that I remembered what they were.

Chupacabras.

Mexi

can vampires. The stench of rancid garlic was so strong, my eyes watered. Jimmy had probably smelled them from the car.

He seemed to be doing just fine on his own. Ashes flitted through the dim light. He whirled and jabbed, plunging a wooden stake into chest after naked, scaly chest.

However, I’d been here before, and I knew what happened. The king chupacabra—a much bigger, badder vampire, with spikes down his spine and gigantic bat wings—would swoop from the sky and drive first his right talon, then his left, through Jimmy’s throat.

I snatched up a likely sliver of wood from the pile next to the cottage and began to watch the sky.

Something bleated, and I lashed out, my stake sinking into the chest of the creature that had rushed me. Instead of bursting into ashes, the thing bleated again, a long, hiccoughing expulsion that sounded like laughter, then sank its fangs into my wrist.

I cursed and cuffed the chupacabra upside its bony, bald head. Instead of releasing me, it began to suck.

And from the east, the slow thunk of wings.

Panic threatened. How would I kill the beast coming for Jimmy if I couldn’t even end one of its minions?

Think, Summer! What kills a goatsucker?