Free Fangs In Vain by Scott Nicholson

removed his shirt and was checking his abdomen for
bruises.
    Great, next she will be giving
him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation .
    “How did you know he was a
vampire?”
    “The same way he knew what I was.
We’ve been dancing a long time.”
    “Lucky you. I can’t even get him
to do the cha-cha.” She gripped the rope, feigning weakness and letting her
body go limp.
    “Look at him down there,” Roy
said. “How much longer before he rips into your friend’s neck? Disgusting.”
    “If you knew he was a vampire, why
did you come out here with us?”
    “You really are an innocent,
aren’t you?” Roy glanced at her, smirking.
    “I have my moments,” she said
defiantly.
    “I can smell him on you, his
depraved and lustful scent fouling your self-righteous body.” Roy’s voice had
changed, the boozy frat-boy tone now deep and growly. “I can’t believe God
would grant wings to the likes of you. But that just shows that God is weak, and
the time of the Gog is at hand.”
    “Dude, you’re talking like a
killer clown in a bad horror movie,” Sabrina said, although she couldn’t help
noticing again the ominous similarity between “God” and “Gog.”
    “This is no business of His, or of
yours.”
    “Okay. Put down the pointy thingy
and we’ll all be friends.” Sabrina didn’t like the way Roy shifted the spear
gun to the ledge, aiming it down at Luke and Cherry.
    “Too late for that, Sabrina
Vickers,” Roy said.
    “Oh, so we’re getting all formal
now, huh? Is that in the bad-guy handbook or something?”
    Roy raised the spear gun to his
cheek and sighted down its length. Below, Luke was now in a sitting position,
Cherry comforting him by smoothing his hair and whispering into his ear, or
maybe kissing it.
    “One to the heart should do it,”
Roy said.
    “Except for one thing,” Sabrina
said.
    “What?” Roy said without turning.
    “His heart belongs to me.”
    She yanked back on the rope,
causing the old brass bell to clang. The reverberation shook the belfry and staggered
Roy for a moment as he cupped one hand to the side of his head.
    Sabrina leaned back, tugged the
slack from the rope, and then flexed her wings behind her as she swung toward
Roy like Tarzan on a jungle vine.

 
     
    CHAPTER
TEN
     
     
     
    Sabrina tried to scream “Geronimo”
but she didn’t have much of a swing. However, it was enough to get Roy to turn
toward her. Her feet caught him flush in the ribs and knocked the spear gun
from his hand. It tumbled over the ledge to the ground.
    The bell rang again as Sabrina
released the rope. Roy bellowed in anger and rushed at her, nearly tripping
over the sack of signal flares. Sabrina retreated, planning to leap from the
belfry and soar away, but the rope tangled in one of her wings.
    She tried to fly free of it but instead
only succeeded in looping it around one arm and her other wing as she spun. She
hung there trussed like a chicken ready for butchering. The more she struggled,
the tighter the rope bound her.
    Under other circumstances, this
could be kinky. Under circumstances where I’m not stuck with a sinister minion
of the dark side .
    Roy saw her vulnerability and
grinned wickedly. “Ah, I will deal with him soon enough. He’s already weak. But
you—you are full of surprises. Angels throughout the recent ages have all been
weak, fops, fools, and fairies.”
    “Hey, the flaming sword and all
that tended to scare people off,” Sabrina said, baiting him with talk while her
mind raced for an escape. “So we’ve gone for a softer, gentler approach.”
    “Talk therapy,” Roy said. “Prayer
circles. Lip service. Words instead of action.”
    Okay, God, this would be a
great time for You to show how omnipotent You are. How about a little lightning
bolt out of the blue, or a bevy of bats, or a case of spontaneous combustion?
I’ll even take a swarm of locusts or a rain of frogs.
    God, apparently, was out of the
“deus ex machine” business. Or maybe this was another