The Vampire's Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

later.”
    “Make it sooner, or I’m going to go all Alfred Hitchcock on your sorry, bloodsucking hide. I guess I’m just going to have to look for her myself.” With that, she flew off into the night.
    “She sure is sore,” Huey said. He was so deep into the hole he was digging that his voice sounded far away. I peered over the rim to discover that he had finally freed up the Chevy Corsica we buried him in back before he’d returned as a zombie. All that was left was for Rennie to haul it out for him with the wrecker hoist.
    “Don’t worry about it, Huey. Now that you’ve reached the Chevy, you can find another hobby.” I find that having a pet zombie is kind of like having a pet border collie. You have to have work for them to do or they’re just not happy. Feeding them red meat helps, too.
    “I think I’ll just keep on digging. I think something else is down here.”
    “Whatever, dude.”
    I still felt bad about bringing Huey back. He was having a grand old time in his own personal version of heaven before I accidentally raised him from the dead after a drunken rant. I have certain powers when it comes to fellow dead people, and to tell you the truth, sometimes I don’t know my own strength. A few ill-chosen words in a prayer to a voodoo god and old Huey was clawing his way up out of the ground and making himself right at home again. Melaphia’s anti-rotting spell kept his flesh more or less intact—enough so that the customers couldn’t quite put their finger on just what was different about him. If they knew he was a zombie they’d all run screaming into the marsh, but the policy around the garage had always been don’t ask, don’t tell, no matter what manner of creature you were.
    Speaking of creatures, Rennie and the irregulars were at their usual places at the poker table when I walked inside. Despite the way it sounds, “Rennie and the irregulars” are not a garage band. They’re a motley group of hangers-on and hangers-out made up of one human, one werewolf, one other shape shifter of indeterminate species, and one faerie.
    The faerie, Otis, and the mystery shifter, Rufus, were best friends. At least they had been until Otis had revealed himself to be a faerie. Not the homosexual kind—the leprechaun kind. Or something close to that, anyway. Otis was a fey creature in the Irish tradition. He could lay on the glamour even better than me. Good enough to masquerade as a coverall-wearing, grease-under-the-fingernails, good-old-boy blue-collar redneck. In reality—if you could call it that—his hair was blue and as shiny as Christmas tree lights and his skin glowed with perpetual youth and otherworldly beauty.
    And that wasn’t the half of it.
    He’d been sent to watch us vampires for a group of high-falutin’ Sidhe royalty who were afraid our activities had some connection to an end-time scenario.
    I had enough on my plate without worrying about the end of the whole freakin’ world, so I told Otis to do what he had to. Hell, he or his supervisors might prove useful one of these days. All he’d ever been good for so far was playing cards and drinking my coffee.
    “Evening, boys,” I greeted them on the way to the open coffee area.
    They grunted their hellos. “Say, Rennie, can I talk to you a minute?” I asked.
    My business partner sauntered over and looked at me from behind his thick glasses. He was walking a little stifflike and rubbing his abdomen.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “Ulcers,” he said. “I’m taking medicine. It’ll be okay. What can I do for you, hoss?”
    “Sorry you’re sick, man,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. I reckon being partners with an evil creature of the night would be a mite stressful on a regular guy. It made me feel a little guilty. “Uh, the last time I went by the hospital I noticed that the city work crews had finished repairing the street and were working on putting the foundation of the hospital to rights.”
    “Yeah, I noticed that,