Page 120 of Throwing Shade
I did, clenching my hands into fists so I wouldn’t fan the air in front of my face and insult the man who was going to help me save Jude.
“The first thing you need to know about dealing with the enthralled,” he said, “is—"
A car alarm blared outside.
Max snapped the footstool down and went to the window. “Damnation.” Muttering angrily, he stormed out of the room.
I followed, gulping down fresh air. Lavender and ass were not a winning combo.
He marched down the stairs of his back porch and across his yard to his carport, where he beeped a fob at his car to shut off the alarm. “Stupid thing is so sensitive,” he said. “Goes off if you look at it the wrong—”
Someone picked Max up and pitched him to one side like garbage.
Kirk sneered at me. “Payback is a bitch.”
So much for dead. However, I didn’t have time to have some villainous showdown because the clock was ticking to save Jude.
I widened my eyes. “Are you Kirk Holdencott, the wrestling star? No way.”
He blinked, taken aback, then grinned and puffed out his chest. “Yeah, actually. You a fan?”
There were no lights in the carport, and thus no way to animate Delilah or grab the vamp’s shadow, since it didn’t have a hard outline.
“Oh,” I said, calling up my invisibility cloaking, “you have no idea.” I ran over to Max, who massaged his shoulder, and shielded him as well.
“We don’t hide from vampires.” Max shoved me off him.
I cloaked him again. “We do when they’re bent on vengeance and we have a magic lesson to finish.”
“You ruined my life.” Kirk’s razor-sharp fangs descended. “Get out here.”
“Hang on, the grown-ups are talking,” I said. So much for hoping Yoshi would be Zev’s well-oiled death machine hench-vamp. What happened to being on top of the situation? “Listen up, Max, I don’t have time for either of us to get injured or worse. My friend’s life is on the line.”
Max cracked his knuckles. “I can take him with one hand tied behind my back.”
“I threw you into a wall,” Kirk said.
“Big deal,” Max said. “You tiddled me with a bit of foreplay, but can you hammer it home?”
Kirk looked scandalized. “Gross, you pedo.”
I grimaced. “There will be no hammering of any sort.”
Kirk chucked a metal trash can at Max’s car, shattering the driver’s side window and bashing in the door. “Let’s finish this!”
Max roared and barrelled toward the vampire, head butting him in the stomach. “I just paid that off!”
The two of them hit the ground in a tangle. Kirk went to bite Max, but his face swelled up, his eyes all but disappearing and his fangs swallowed by his fat lips.
I dropped my cloaking. “Is that all out of your system now? Can we get back to the lesson?”
“He. Wrecked. My. Car,” Max said. Each word was accompanied by another body part of Kirk’s swelling up, until the vampire looked like a Thanksgiving Day parade float.
The vampire lurched to his feet, and Max snickered. It was hard to take the bloodsucker seriously when his hands looked like tiny T–Rex hands in comparison to his bloated limbs and body. I didn’t feel like laughing, but I was glad Max had diffused the threat.
Kirk snarled something at us that was totally unintelligible.
“Yes, you’re very scary,” I said. “Payback will have to wait, however, because I’m busy tonight.” Diane had been told Kirk was dead, so Zev wouldn’t draw this out. What had gone wrong? Or had this been the plan all along, to tell everyone that Kirk was dead and then quietly shuffle him off overseas?
