Since it was impossible for me to run lopsided, I sent the other shoe sailing in the same direction like a small, expensive, Italian-leather missile. That one missed the target, so I hurled a few choice expletives behind it.
“Come on!” Gordon called after me. “Sarah, baby, we can work this out!”
I ran through the entrance of the cemetery and straight into something firm and unyielding. I looked up. It was something tall, muscular, and blue-eyed. A street-lamp shone above him like a beacon from heaven itself.
“Whoa there, miss,” the unyielding stranger said. “Slow down.”
I was gasping for breath after my sprint. “Oh, thank God! You have to help me.”
The man’s gaze slid from my neck wound over to my date from hell, who had almost reached us.
“Don’t worry about a thing, darlin‘,” he said and smiled. His teeth were shiny white in the moonlight.
Two more men emerged from the shadows, one as thin as a rail with stringy blond hair, the other big and burly with so many tattoos that they peeked out at the edge of his neck past his dark shirt and jacket. I hadn’t noticed anyone else around until they’d moved. Hey, the more the merrier.
The man with the shiny teeth gently pushed me aside. “You wait right there, darlin‘. We’ll deal with you in a moment.”
I nodded and exhaled deeply. Wow, it was just my luck that these fine gentlemen were out for a walk in the cemetery. After midnight. I frowned. What the hell were they doing here, anyhow? Seemed like quite the lucky coincidence, if you asked me. But since it was working out in my favor, I kept my questions to myself. Gordon skidded to a halt in front of us, blinking rapidly and rubbing his eyes from the shot of pepper spray. There was a small red mark on his forehead—probably from the shoe. I had my arms wrapped around myself to keep from shivering. I was dressed for a date, not a jog through a cemetery in late November. If I’d known that was in the cards, I would have at least worn a nice scarf. I felt ill, too: from the fear, from the loss of blood… and possibly from the fajita I’d had earlier for dinner.
“Why were you running?” Gordon looked confused. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“Bite me,” I told him. He was so going to get charged with assault. I might even have to put a restraining order on his sorry ass. “Oh, wait a minute, you already did bite me, didn’t you… you psycho!”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re really going to have to get over that if this relationship is going to have half a chance.”
Gordon finally noticed that we weren’t alone. “Oh” was all he said as the men approached him. “Look, guys, this isn’t what it looks like.”
I glared at him and then tried to smile at “White-teeth.” He sure was cute. Maybe my night was turning out better than I’d thought. “Look, if you guys just want to help me find a cab, I’d really like to go home. Make sure he doesn’t come near me again, and I’ll owe you one.”
White-teeth smiled broadly. “Look what we have here, boys. Girlfriend and boyfriend vampire in a bit of a squabble.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I assured him.
“I’m not a vampire,” Gordon said quietly.
“That’s funny. He told me he was a vampire just a minute ago. That’s why he bit me.” I rubbed my neck tenderly. “He’s definitely crazy.”
“Yeah. Crazy,” White-teeth said before turning to his friends. “How many is this tonight?”
The stringy-haired guy piped up, “It’s been a great night. Maybe five? No, six.”
“Listen, guys”—Gordon looked scared to death— “we can work something out. I have money—”
White-teeth punched Gordon in the stomach. He clutched at his belly and fell to his knees, coughing and sputtering.
“Hey,” I said, frowning hard. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Look, all I want is for you guys to help me get home. That’s all.”
“Shut up,” White-teeth snapped at me. Gordon struggled to his feet, only to get punched again, this time in the jaw. That’s no way to treat a crazy person. They need supervision, not violence. I marched over to White-teeth and grabbed his arm. “That’s enough. There’s no reason to be such a big bully…”
He looked at me for a moment, then smiled. “Darlin‘, you need to learn your place.” He pushed me hard enough to make me fall backward, and I yelped in pain as my ankle twisted.
Something glinted in the hands of my so-called rescuers, catching the moonlight. Some kind of metal. Knives. “Stringy-hair” held a switchblade, and “Burly” had a small ax. I also noticed they had sharp wooden spikes tucked into loops on their belts. Then Gordon screamed. White-teeth was so close to him now that they seemed to be slow dancing, shuffling around in a partial circle. White-teeth moved back and I saw the handle of a knife sticking out of Gordon’s stomach.
“But I told you I had money,” he gasped.
White-teeth extended his hand like a doctor might, waiting for his next tool. A wooden spike was slapped down into it. I opened my mouth to say something, to stop this before it went too far, but the only sound that came out was a tiny squeak.
“But, vampire, this is so much more fun than money,” White-teeth said and arched his arm upward, slicing into Gordon’s torso.
I brought a hand to my mouth in stunned horror and scrambled backward on the ground. A bolt of pain went through my ankle as I tried and failed to get to my feet. My heart beat wildly. All three men joined in then, taking turns hacking and stabbing and slicing my date. They were so busy with Gordon that they appeared to have forgotten I was even there. I was beginning to think that was a good thing. Finally I was able to stand up unsteadily. But I felt frozen in place as I watched the straight-out-of-a-horror-movie scene before me. I’d changed my mind. Didn’t want their help anymore. Nope. And what had he said before? They’d deal with me in a moment? Gordon was no longer screaming or begging for his life. He’d stopped moaning. Stopped moving. In fact, he appeared to be disintegrating. The more they stabbed at his prone body, the less there seemed to be of him, until finally there was nothing but his empty clothes lying in the middle of a nasty dark stain on the road.
Then White-teeth turned to me. I shuffled backward a painful step at a time. My brain was screaming for me to run, and I finally decided that was the best idea I’d had all night. I turned around, but Stringy-hair had quietly moved to stand behind me. He grinned as he put his now-bloody wooden spike back in his belt, then grabbed my wrists to pull me closer to him. I tried to twist away.
“Where do you think you’re going, vampire?” His breath smelled like rotten eggs.
I wanted to argue, to tell him I wasn’t a vampire because vampires didn’t exist. I also wanted to tell him to invest in a good mouthwash. But I still couldn’t find my voice. A hot tear slipped down my cheek as I looked at the other two men and took in a shuddery gulp of air. I had a funny feeling these guys wanted to add more stains to my ruined dress than the grass and the dirt that were already on it. I wished I had another shoe to throw.
“Look at her; she’s petrified,” White-teeth said with amusement.
“She’s new,” Burly answered. “It’s almost cruel to exterminate her so soon. She looks like she might be fun. Check out those legs. Can’t it wait till the morning?”
White-teeth’s smile widened. “Yeah. Maybe we can wait a bit. What do you say, darlin‘? Want to buy yourself a little time?”
“In your dreams,” I managed to hiss at him.
He laughed. “There is only one answer, darlin‘, and that is whatever I say it is. Now come here, or else.”
I decided I’d rather have the “or else.” The man who’d seemed so attractive when I’d first bumped into him, my potential hero, now was grotesquely ugly to me. His face was splattered with Gordon’s blood.
I tried to pull away from Stringy-hair, but he held tight to my wrists, leering at me.
“Nice try,” he said, grinning.
I shrugged at him, then kneed him hard in the groin. He let go of my wrists immediately. I glanced over my shoulder at White-teeth, then, ignoring the searing pain in my ankle, darted away from them.
While Stringy-hair moaned in agony, Burly made an annoyed noise and said, “It’s never easy, is it?” Then boots slapped against the pavement as they started to chase after me.
Everything looked different late at night, and there was barely any light to help me figure out where the hell I was. I knew the Bloor Viaduct, a tall bridge that went over the Don River, wasn’t too far away. If I could get to the other side of the bridge, I could find a phone, find somebody who could help me. How much longer I could keep running was the question. My lungs burned, and with my twisted ankle I was doing more of a fast limp than an all-out run. Also, my feet, without the protection of any shoes, were screaming for me to stop. But I knew if I stopped, that would be it. They’d kill me like they’d killed Gordon. Or worse. I shuddered when I thought of how that stringy-haired freak had leered at me. I had to keep running. There was no other choice. I was actually surprised the men hadn’t caught up to me. In fact, I didn’t even hear them behind me anymore. My pace slowed, but only for a moment. I braved a quick glance over my shoulder. I was now in the middle of a park. I could hear traffic, so that meant I wasn’t far from Bloor Street, but I couldn’t see anything but trees surrounding me. I was all alone. I skidded to a halt and was breathing so fast and shallow I was certain that I’d begin to hyperventilate. They must have given up. Maybe I’d been too fast for them. I had been going to the gym a little more than normal lately, to get into bikini shape for my big, expensive trip to Puerto Vallarta. Amy and I had been planning it for nearly a year, and now it was just a month away. That had to be it. I was in amazing shape. Just as fit and dangerous as that chick from the Terminator movies. Then I heard the rev of an engine and the squealing of tires. A Jeep lurched onto the road in the distance, spraying gravel under its wheels. Outrun that, Terminator , I thought as the panic rose again in my chest.
Dammit.
I could hear them, the men I’d stupidly thought I’d escaped. They were hooting and hollering as they bore down on me. This must have been their idea of a good time. I finally made it to the bridge. In the distance I could see the Toronto skyline. I kept running, ignoring the pain. The concrete sidewalk that ran along one side of the bridge felt cool through my torn nylons and cut-up feet. I looked around, hoping that somebody might stop to help me, but car after car whizzed by without even slowing down for a second glance. When I stepped out into the bridge’s traffic to try to flag someone down, a driver blasted his horn and swerved, narrowly missing me. I scrambled back onto the sidewalk. It looked like it was just going to be me, White-teeth, and the boys. And the dark shadow of a figure balanced on one of the bridge’s metal suspension beams.
He stood on the other side of what was called the “veil”—thin, evenly spaced metal rods put up to prevent anyone from climbing over the barrier and leaping to their death. But I saw that a section of the veil was now warped, stretched wide enough to allow someone to get through. This was where I quickly scrambled up and squeezed through so I stood near the stranger, my back against the barrier. Behind me, I heard the Jeep skid to a halt and the doors slam as the men got out to chase after me on foot.
“Hey!” I called out to the figure. He wore a long coat that whipped about in the cold wind. He looked like an ornament on the front of a pirate ship. Or maybe even Kate Winslet flying at the front of the Titanic—only not as perky. And certainly not as female.