Free Moonshine: A Novel by Alaya Johnson Page B

him."
    "That's funny," he said, grunting with the effort of keeping the vampire's hands from his throat. "I thought you didn't kill your fellow rational creatures."
    Behind them, Aileen had struggled up from her knees and was looking around the alley like she had no idea where she was.
    "What, they don't have self-defense in Arabia?"
    Amir might have responded, but the vampire had turned him face-first into the snow and I gathered that arguing with me wasn't his first priority. I ran over to Aileen, whose face was pale with fright.
    "Did I almost . . . was he about to . . . ?"
    I gripped her hands, which were colder than even mine. "Did he bite you?" I said, softly. I dreaded the answer. There wasn't much you could do while you waited to see if a turn would take.
    Aileen pressed her hands into her neck and then shook her head. I sighed in pure relief.
    "Zephyr!"
    The word was strangled, but I recognized a call for help when I heard one. I squeezed Aileen's shoulder. "I'll be right back."
    The vampire had managed to pull Amir's head back like it was the top of a bow, and was using his elbow to slowly squeeze all the air from his lungs. Amir had scored at least one point--deep gouges marked the vampire's right cheek.
    I moved steadily, calmly and swiftly. I'm just human, I can't move even a tenth as fast as an old vampire at top strength, but he never saw me coming. One minute he was strangling Amir, the next my knife had slid into that perfect spot just to the left of his shoulder blades and up, piercing his heart with pure blessed silver.
    They never scream. Or turn to dust. Or turn to bats, or anything like the prosaic images in the movies. Oh, no, when you kill a vampire, they do only one thing: they pop. In one fluid motion I pulled my knife out of his all-too-permeable flesh (like an orange with firm skin but rotting pulp) and kicked him clear of Amir. Not a moment too soon, either: his entire body began to shake as rivulets of blood gushed from every orifice. This wasn't survivable, like when vampires were dumb enough to drink alcohol. This was lifeblood and food blood. This was the essence of their undead existence. When every ounce of blood in his body had soaked the snow around him, a clear sputum followed, and then something gelatinous and fatty. After two minutes, all that was left was a deflated balloon of gray skin.
    Aileen fell on her knees again and vomited. Loudly. Amir recovered himself and moved behind me. We didn't touch, but I felt his warmth like an oven, like a bulwark against the cold.
    "Does that always happen?" Amir asked, quietly.
    "It's worse, the older the vampire." Something Daddy used to say came back to me. "It's . . . really the best way of telling how old they are."
    "And how old was he?"
    I thought of the yellow, rotting lumpy fat that had sunk into the bloody snow. "A little over two centuries."
    I knelt to clean my blade in the snow and snapped it back home. My wrist ached a little from the impact. Unthinking, I hitched up my skirt to replace the knife.
    "Zephyr . . ."
    I was glad to have him so close to me, though I would never tell him so. There were cloves in that scent, too, and tea and something utterly indefinable. This close, I could barely smell the reek emanating from what was left of the vampire's body.
    I rubbed my wrist. "I've only done that twice before. It's a hard thrust."
    His hand hovered over my fingers, but he didn't hold them. "Listen, I'm--"
    He stopped abruptly when I walked away from him and toward the body. The popped sucker's expensively tailored clothes were useless, but that didn't mean that everything should go to waste. With every appearance of calm, I squatted in snow that smelled like rotting meat and ammonia and carefully removed his cuff links. I stood up and stepped over the body to reach Aileen. She had huddled against the side of the building, breathing deep, shaky breaths like she was desperate to control herself. I considered giving her the cuff links,