13 Bullets

"Jesus, Dee, Jesus, what did he do to you?" Caxton sobbed. She wiped at Deanna's face with a wet washcloth and found a three-inch-long wound along the edge of her chin. It was going to need stitches but that assumed she could get Deanna to a hospital before she bled to death. Caxton picked the larger shivers of glass out of the cut but that just made it bleed more. She pulled open the drawer where they kept their scissors and their twine and found a roll of thick masking tape. Lacking any better ideas she stretched a length of it across the cut and pressed down. Deanna howled with pain. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut and her knees were up against her chest where she lay on the kitchen floor. Her hands were wrapped up in an old t-shirt that was already soaking through with blood. She had wounds all over the front of her body as well, tiny cuts and big lacerations. Caxton had called 911 and they were sending an ambulance but the blood kept flowing and flowing.



"What did he do to you?" Caxton asked again, smearing blood on her own face as she tried to wipe away her tears. If the ambulance didn't come soon she would lose Deanna, just like she'd lost her mother. It was more than she could bear, especially with everything else that was happening. "What did he do?"



"Who?" Deanna wailed. She had been hypnotized, or perhaps just in shock, when Caxton found her but now she was recovering herself and the pain came too. Caxton shushed her and stroked her red hair but the bleeding just wouldn't stop. She didn't know what to do, how to save Deanna. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to scream herself. "Who?" Deanna asked again.



"The half-dead, the thing in the window," Caxton gasped.



"There was nobody-" Deanna paused to scream for a while. "Nobody here. Nobody but me and I-I couldn't seem to wake up, I was having a dream and I couldn't, I couldn't-" She screamed again and Caxton picked her up and held her close. She was crying so hard she couldn't see where the blood was and what was clean. "I dreamt you were being crushed under this, this, this heavy stone and your insides were squirting out, all of your blood. I woke up but only half way, I kept seeing your body torn apart, in pieces, I kept seeing it when I closed my eyes."



"Shhh," Caxton said, and held Deanna closer. Then she worried that if she put pressure on Deanna's wounds they might re-open. She loosened her grip.



"I came in here," Deanna whined, "into the kitchen because I heard something cracking, some glass, some glass was cracking. I went to the window and there was a crack running from the top to the side and there was a drop of blood rolling down from the crack. I couldn't stand to see that so I tried to mop up the blood with my hand, but then more blood came and when I pressed, when I pressed on the crack it just split open and there was glass everywhere." She buried her face in Caxton's shirt. "There was blood everywhere. It was beautiful, Laura, it was so pretty."



In the bedroom something crashed to the floor. Caxton looked up, alert again with a suddenness that surprised her. A soft voice swore in Spanish, a voice that wasn't human.



There was another half-dead, inside the house.



"Dee, I have to let go for a second," she whispered. "I have to do something but you'll be okay."



"No," Deanna begged.



"You'll be okay. The ambulance will be here any minute. Just do whatever the paramedics say and I'll be right back."



"No, please, please don't leave me," Deanna mewled. But there was nothing for it. Caxton gently lowered her back onto the kitchen floor. She checked the tape on Deanna's cheek and saw that it was starting to peel away. She pushed it back down and it stayed, mostly. She drew her weapon again and glided down the hallway, toward the bedroom.



"Pumpkin, come back!" Deanna shrieked. "It really hurts!"



Caxton knew what had to be done, though. She stepped into the bedroom. A half-dead wearing a baseball cap and a football jersey stood next to the closet door. He had knocked over her nightstand and her clock radio lay in pieces on the hardwood floor.



"Hostia puta," he squeaked. He looked from side to side, his flayed arms spread against the wall. It was pretty clear what he planned to do next. He was all the way across the room from the open window. If he could run faster than she could, he could easily get away.



Before he'd taken three steps Caxton knocked his legs out from under him, smashing his upper body down to the floor. He called out but she sat down hard on his pelvis and lower spine and he could do no more than move his arms and legs along the floor as if he were trying to swim away.



"What did you do to her?" she asked, as cold as she could manage. If she lost control now she would just crack his skull and that would be the end of it. Not that she would mind but she needed information more than she desired revenge. "Tell me and I'll let you go."



"La concha de tu hermana," the half-dead shouted, wriggling underneath her, trying to break free. She was stronger and it must have known that. It wasn't going to get away without tearing itself to pieces.



"You came here looking for me, didn't you? You wanted me but you tried to kill Deanna. Why? Why?" She bounced up and down on top of the half-dead until it screamed.



"I don't know who you are, lady," it cried out in English. "I got no idea!"



"You came here for me. Tell me why."



The half-dead shook violently. "If I say something he'll rip me up."



"He who? The vampire, Reyes?" she demanded.



"I ain't talking about President Bush, lady!" The half-dead underneath her grunted and groaned and rose a fraction of an inch off the floor, lifting her weight at the same time in a supernal act of will. With a gasp of frustration he collapsed again. "Me cago en Jesus y la Virgen, you might as well kill me now and get it over with, huh?"



Caxton thought about Arkeley and what the Fed would do to get the information. She knew he would torture the half-dead. He would do exactly what the half-dead feared to receive at the hands of the vampire. The half-dead was less afraid of oblivion than of pain. She had said at the time that she would not be able to stand by while Arkeley did that. She couldn't countenance torture, she'd told him. Of course at that point no one had tried to kill Deanna.



She reached down and grabbed the index finger of the half-dead's left hand. It felt wrong in her grip, not at all like a human finger. There was no skin on it and very little flesh-it was more like holding an uncooked spare-rib. She twisted it with all her strength and it came right off the half-dead's hand.



"Cono!" the half-dead screamed, a pure, horrible noise, a sound of perfect pain. The disembodied finger wriggled in her hand like a centipede. She threw it away from her. Then she reached down and grabbed the middle finger of the same hand. She gave the half-dead a second to think about what was going to happen, and then, without a word, she tore the middle finger off, too.



His left hand had nothing but a thumb when he finally spoke. "He told us to come here and pick up whoever I found, that's all, lady, please, stop now!"



"Who told you? Efrain Reyes?"



"Yeah, that's who! He said to come get you, your tortillera girlfriend, your dogs, anybody who was here. He even told us how, with the hechizo." She grabbed the thumb and asked what a hechizo was. "It's a spell, a magic spell, kind of! Hey, lady, I'm telling you what you want to know, be nice, okay?"



"You hypnotized her? You hypnotized Deanna, is that it?"



The half-dead struggled again but he was growing weaker by the minute. He had no blood to spill but the pain seemed to take the fight out of him. "Yeah, but it only works when she's asleep and dreaming."



"Why us? Why were you sent to this house?"



"He doesn't tell us that. He doesn't fill us in on his big plans, he just says, vamos, and I go. Please, lady, please, I told you all I know."



A siren wailed through the walls of the house. Caxton heard doors slamming and people running up to the door. "Alright," she said. Then she grabbed her pistol and smashed in the back of the half-dead's skull. He stopped wriggling instantly. Slowly, stiffly, her clothes sticking together where the blood had dried in the folds, she rose from the floor and holstered her weapon. Then she walked into the kitchen and opened the door for the paramedics. On the floor Deanna was curled up in a tight ball, weeping piteously. Her blood was everywhere.