Bureau 13 : Judgment Night

They gathered around and made the expected remarks on how tasty and juicy I looked. I invented a few curses, which they took in stride. Then the Count waved the women on and they came at me with hands raised, their fingernails glistened like steel. Probably razorblades glued underneath.

This was no time for finesse, so as they got close, I kicked the blonde in the left breast. She didn't bat an eye. That was impossible. There was no way a bra, much less a Kevlar vest, could be hidden under her T-shirt. Kicking a woman in the breast is like kicking a guy in the balls. Blondie should have dropped big time.

Smiling, Red grabbed my hair and twisted my head about as if I was a child. Then she opened her mouth wide, exposing every inch on those long white fangs. They actually looked like her own teeth. That's when I realized the freaks were really going to drink my blood. I had faced death lots of times in Nam as kid. In the back alleys of Chicago, too. But there was a big difference between a bullet in the chest, or a knife in the stomach, and having a trio of drugged out wackos suck me dry like a free cherry soda. That was no way for a nice PI to die.

My brain was whirling with escape plans, none of them worth a damn, when the door over the corner slammed open and in strode a SWAT team.

Or at least that's what they resembled. There were three of them, two men and a woman. All were dressed in camouflage outfits, with backpacks, satchels and dozens of weapons hanging off them. One guy was tall and skinny, like he hadn't had a good meal since his last birthday. The woman was kinda short, slim and muscular-looking in a nice way. The other guy was downright fat. But he had a genuine shit-eating grin on his face as he worked the bolt on the huge M60 machine gun in his hands. I could tell this was a man who enjoyed his work.

My three freaks spun about at the sound, and hissed louder than steam radiators. Geez, they were really putting in overtime on the old vampire act.

As two of the SWAT guys separated, Skinny pulled out of his shoulder bag a melon-sized crystal ball and smashed it on the floor. Instantly every door and window was covered with stonework sealing us in. In spite of the situation, I dropped my jaw. Impossible. Yet I had just seen it happen. Maybe the ball was actually some sort of electrical device, an EMP bomb maybe, whose command signal pulse triggered the control mechanism for hidden sliding panels. It sounded lame, but what the hell could have happened? Magic? At this point, I began to wonder if they were really a rescue squad, or merely more loonies in on the fun.

The vampires advanced slavering and growling. Red came at Fat Boy, and he let her have a full burst at point blank range. The heavy-duty combat rounds blew holes in her the size of Montana. She burst into flames and dropped to the ground, still screaming and trying to get at the lard bucket.

One tough bitch. Incendiary bullets? I wondered.

That was when I realized that the sphere must have contained BZ, military hallucinogenic gas, because everything started to get real funky.

The other two vampire types flapped their arms and turned into freaking bats! No smoke, no special effects. And not dinky little zoo bats, but great big mothers who soared into the air and began circling around the room as if this was Wild Kingdom and I was Marlin Perkins.