Paranormal Bromance (Kitty Norville 12.50)

I held a Dukes of Hazzard box against his chest, over his heart. “Hold that.” He held it, baffled. I stretched loose a long length of tape with that comforting ripping sound, and slapped it across the box, his chest, under his arms, around his back. I wrapped it around four or five times, with a couple of loops over his shoulders to stabilize the box so it didn’t fall. A regular duct-tape-and-lunch-box cuirass. I didn’t even have to worry about him being able to breathe.

“Now do me,” I said, handing him the tape and holding a Dragon’s Lair lunchbox to my chest. A minute later, I had my own armor.

“This won’t work,” he said, bemused, arms outstretched, staring at the box awkwardly taped to his chest.

“Or maybe it will?”

We looked dumb. We looked like total dorks. But you know what? Wasn’t nobody going to be stabbing any of us through the heart.

“You want one?” I said to Ginny.

“No, that’s okay,” she said. “I figure they won’t kill me, I’m food.”

Sobering thought, there.

Aaron was still looking at himself like he’d been drenched in slime. “I’m never gonna get that sticky tape stuff off these things. I’ll have to list them at ‘fair,’ tops.”

“Two words, my friend: Goo Gone. It’ll be fine.” I turned to Jack. “So, do you want to be taped up with Care Bears or The A-Team?”

He looked at me like I was crazy, then said, “The A-Team. Duh.”

BEFORE I COULD try one more time to get Jack and Aaron to sign the sublet towel before handing it to Ginny there was a scratching noise at one of the windows in the living room, behind the TV. Normally, I would have said it was an animal, a rat or raccoon maybe, clawing at the edges, looking for a way in, but the silhouette, shadowed by the streetlights outside, was of a human figure. After tapping at the window a few more times, the figure left, slipping away like smoke. I went to my bedroom, looked at the window on the back wall—again, the tapping came, a concerted scratching, testing access. We’d secured the windows. We’d be okay.

A knock came at the front door, and a voice called. “Jack? Sam? I just want to talk. Can’t we just talk? You don’t even have to open the door.” It was Carter.

“I think we’re just fine where we are, how are you?” Jack answered.

“There’s been some kind of misunderstanding—”

“Oh, like you hiding away your own vampire squad? Did I misunderstand that?”

Silence. Then glass broke. The sound came from Aaron’s room.

“Shit,” Jack muttered and grabbed one of the spear-like table legs.

We all started for the room, but I said, “No, Jack, stay by the door, we can’t let anyone get in.”

So much for the place being defensible. We suddenly had four fronts to cover, and we didn’t know anything about the bad guys except that they were vampires. I could sense them, cold eddies in the atmosphere. Ginny shut the bedroom door and I assumed locked it, but it locked from the inside, it would only slow an invader down a couple of seconds.

Aaron, protected by rubber gloves, and Ginny grabbed Nerf guns and moved in to aim them at the bedroom door, where we expected the swarms to come through. We were screwed.

“I gave you a chance. I was more than happy to give you a chance. You could have helped us. We need people like you. Vampires, young and hungry. Well, young anyway.”

A pounding struck the front door. This wasn’t knocking—this was someone hitting it with something large and heavy. A battering ram. A few seconds later the bang came again, and the door bounced in its frame. The third one, the plywood around the deadbolt splintered. The next one, the door would fly open.

“Everybody stand back,” I murmured. I glanced up at the ceiling, where Jack and Aaron had hastily installed a spiky rake chair thing and rigged it with rope around a couple of makeshift pulleys. We hadn’t had time to test it and I had no idea if it would work. We’d find out now.

“If you guys would just sign the sublet—” I muttered. Make this place Ginny’s, the vampires couldn’t come in—

“Too late for that,” Jack said.

More breaking glass from the back bedroom, and the thud of someone jumping down from the window. I couldn’t worry about Ginny and Aaron because the lock in the front door finally splintered.

The door swung open, yanking on the rope trigger, and the contraption on the ceiling fell.

At first, I thought it didn’t work—it just fell, dropped straight down as if whatever was holding it up had failed. But then, at the last minute, it swung—and three different splintered shards of wood caught the guy coming through the door square in the chest.

&n