Lisa suddenly noticed that Macario wasn’t beside her anymore. He’d stopped walking. She turned around. He was about ten paces behind her, just standing. She walked back to him.
“What is it?” she asked. “Are we there yet?”
He nodded. Lisa looked across the road. There was a gravel driveway and a tumbledown shack about two hundred feet off the road. She heard him sigh and looked up at him.
Macario gazed down at her. “Don’t go in there.”
“You know I have to,” she replied. “Perhaps they’ll listen to reason.”
She tried to sound hopeful.
“I’ll go with you,” he said gallantly.
He knew that, if he went in there, the chances were good that he would be carried out.
“You don’t have to,” Lisa said, trying to spare him.
“Yes he does,” a loud voice said from behind them.
Mac whirled around. “Carlos! Um. Yes. Carlos. Good to see you.”
He felt terrified. Not especially for himself, but now, there was no backing out. Up until the time Carlos Verdugo appeared behind them, he was hoping to talk Lisa out of her suicidal venture.
“Hi! I’m Lisa!” Lisa said, perkily. “I killed your brother, Juan, and his lover, that ‘Stomper’ fellow. I’ll kill you too if you don’t leave Macario’s people alone.”
She smiled up at him. Macario felt faint. The girl had just signed their death certificates with her idiotic words.
“I also chased away your shark,” she added, just for good measure.
Carlos snarled at her. He reached out, grabbed Lisa around her throat, and lifted her off the ground. He grinned as he began to squeeze her throat shut.
‘I suggest you put me down before you lose an arm,’ both men heard in their heads.
Carlos squeezed harder. Macario could hear cartilage being crushed in Lisa’s throat.
‘I’m losing patience. Put me down!’
She sounded more determined, now.
Suddenly Carlos cried out, and backed away from them. Macario didn’t believe what he was looking at.
Carlos’ arm was simply gone from the elbow down. He wasn’t even bleeding. The intense heat of his arm being vaporized had cauterized the wound. Strange, whimpering, animal sounds were coming out of Carlos’ throat. Then Carlos fainted dead away from shock.
Lisa lowered herself gently, her hands held out parallel to the ground with her fingers gracefully extended, as though she was controlling her downward levitation with her hands. Mac thought she looked like Peter Pan with long dark hair and luscious breasts that were scarcely hidden behind that thin cut off T-shirt.
“Where’s the other one?” she asked cheerfully as her feet touched the ground.
Mac mutely gazed toward the old shack. Lisa began walking up the driveway. Mac hesitated for a moment, then hurried to catch up with her.
“That’s far enough!” someone inside said, stopping them both.
Then Lisa took a few more steps. The ground erupted in front of her. A gunshot rang in both their ears.
“I said…”
“I heard you,” Lisa called out. “I’m coming in anyway, so you may as well invite me in…”
She began walking again, then turned her head back toward her beautiful Macario.
“Stay there,” she told him.
“Like hell!” he exclaimed.
He ran up beside her. He heard another shot ring out, but didn’t see where it hit. The air in front of him was all sparkly and full of smoke. He heard Lisa sigh, and realized that she had somehow prevented him from being shot.
Lisa stepped forward again. Mac hesitated only a second, then strode to catch up with her. Lisa staggered back a step as another shot was fired from the old shack. Mac realized that she hadn’t even bothered to protect herself like she’d protected him. He looked at her. There was a hole in her chest, right where her heart was. It didn’t seem to be bleeding much.
“Fucker,” he heard Lisa say.
She stepped forward again. The stranger in the shack shot her again, this time in the stomach as he realized that she must be wearing armor under her innocent-looking T-shirt, but he see her bare belly and he put a good-sized hole where her belly button had been with his shotgun.
Lisa staggered backward, her hand not quite covering the shredded, bleeding hole in her stomach.
“Fuck! That hurts!” she exclaimed. “Stop shooting me and let me in, you asshole!”
She walked forward again. The next shot got her in the hip. Evidently, Mac realized, the remaining brother had decided that, since he couldn’t kill her, perhaps he could cripple her so she wouldn’t come any closer.
“That does it!” Lisa cried out. “Fuck this!”
She glared up at the shack. The walls suddenly ignited. There was a single terrified scream from inside, then the entire shack collapsed inward, burnt to a crisp.
They were both knocked flat on the ground as a half case of dynamite that was stored inside went off blasting the remains of the shack high into the air. Boards, splinters and other bits of shrapnel fell everywhere. Some of it seemed to burst into powder as it came down over their heads. Macario decided that the girl really did have one of those Star Trek shields.
As he and Lisa picked themselves up off the ground, he thought he heard her murmur, “Oh, that’s what those little rods are for…”
Mac staggered over to her to check out her wounds. The one in her chest was already healed and her stomach was barely bleeding now. The ten-gauge hollow point shell that struck her hipbone, however, had done a lot of structural damage. She couldn’t walk.
Mac realized that Lisa could actually handle soft tissue damage better than bone crunching damage. She seemed to have limits, after all. The thought that she could actually be hurt struck a tender chord deep in his soul. He felt himself wanting to protect her, which was ridiculous, on the face of it. It was she that had protected him and kept him from being shot.
Macario bent over to help her get her jeans off so she could tend to her shattered hipbone. Suddenly Lisa grabbed him and pulled him to one side, rolling over on top of him. He heard her grunt as she jerked violently several times. Carlos was on top of them both, stabbing her in the back, over and over.
“Die, you witch! Die! Die! Die!” Carlos kept shouting, over and over with each downward stroke.
Mac couldn’t stand the heart-rending grunts and gurgles that were coming from Lisa’s throat as her body jerked with each violent stab into her back. He was finally able to leverage Lisa’s shuddering body over.
He rolled over on top of her to protect her from any more stabbing wounds and kicked at Carlo’s legs. Luck must have been with him. He actually connected and Carlos toppled over. But he got up quickly and attacked Mac, now.
Mac tried to roll Carlos on the ground, but the mean bastard was a savvy brawler. Even though Carlos lacked a forearm, Mac was completely at his mercy, and Carlos didn’t have much of that to begin with. He stabbed Macario twice in his upper chest, just to show Mac that he could, then raised his blade over his head preparing to cut his head off.
The knife evaporated, going from a solid to a gaseous state in less than a second. The white fire continued on up Carlos’ hand, burning it to powder – even the bone. Carlos was screaming, now. The flame reached his elbow. Macario, watching in awe, expected it to stop there. It didn’t. It continued on up to Carlos’ shoulder. His clothes were on fire now from the fierce, bone-dissolving heat. Carlos fell to the ground, shrieking and flaying his legs and his remaining stump of an arm around.
Lisa finished him quickly, dissolving his entire body into white powder in the next second or two, finally feeling some mercy, or maybe she had simply waited until Carlos was safely away from Macario, or perhaps she just got tired of listening to Carlos’ screams.
“Why do they always insist on being killed?” she asked no one in particular.
She coughed. Blood appeared in her mouth and she spit it out. Man and woman, they crawled toward each other, seeking comfort and to check out each other’s wounds.
“God!” Macario gasped, coughing blood himself. “Are you… Let me see… Your back…”
He swallowed a mouthful of blood, realizing that one of his lungs had probably collapsed.
“Why the hell did you do that?” Lisa demanded, her eyes tearing up. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
She was looking at his chest wounds, probing them with her fingers, trying to get inside with her mind. But close cellular work was a talent of her mother’s. Lisa’s mind contained too much power for close work.
“I couldn’t let him hurt you any more,” Macario said, sounding much weaker, now. “I realized that I’d fallen in love with you. I’d rather die than have him strike you one more time.”
“Macario,” Lisa sobbed.
He was going into shock. She could feel him growing weaker by the minute.
“I love you, Elizabeth Pestova,” he said, gasping. “Remember me, will you?”
Lisa couldn’t see him for the tears in her eyes. She realized that, in the short time they’d known each other, he had demonstrated the noblest qualities that humankind had ever strived for. She suddenly discovered that she loved him.
“Macario,” she said quietly.
Mac opened his eyes and gazed wearily into hers.
“Macario, I’m a vampire. Do you know what that means?”
Mac nodded, then coughed. “If you were the most evil demon from hell, I would still love you.”
He coughed again. This time more blood came up.
“You’re not just saying that because you know I can save you?” she asked, candidly.
She already knew the answer. She could see it in his mind. He smiled at her, then coughed more blood.
Lisa sighed and looked around for something to cut herself with. Her wounds had healed in the short time since the shack blew up and she needed to make another hole in her body to bleed from. The ground was littered with rusted nails from the roof of the shack. She picked one up and casually slashed the vein in her wrist with it.
“Here,” she said, trying to sound bored. “Have some lunch.”
She held out her arm. He began sucking. After a few minutes, the wound on her wrist healed, and his lips began moving up her arm. He was radiating sexual desire. She expected it. Rejuvenation always made people horny.
“Whoa, big boy,” Lisa exclaimed. “Let’s check you out, first!”
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