Read Online Paranormal Bromance by Carrie Vaughn - Free Book Online Page B

where we expected the swarms to come through. We were screwed.
    “I gave you a chance. I was more than happy to give you a chance. You could have helped us. We need people like you. Vampires, young and hungry. Well, young anyway.”
    A pounding struck the front door. This wasn’t knocking—this was someone hitting it with something large and heavy. A battering ram. A few seconds later the bang came again, and the door bounced in its frame. The third one, the plywood around the deadbolt splintered. The next one, the door would fly open.
    “Everybody stand back,” I murmured. I glanced up at the ceiling, where Jack and Aaron had hastily installed a spiky rake chair thing and rigged it with rope around a couple of makeshift pulleys. We hadn’t had time to test it and I had no idea if it would work. We’d find out now.
    “If you guys would just sign the sublet—” I muttered. Make this place Ginny’s, the vampires couldn’t come in—
    “Too late for that,” Jack said.
    More breaking glass from the back bedroom, and the thud of someone jumping down from the window. I couldn’t worry about Ginny and Aaron because the lock in the front door finally splintered.
    The door swung open, yanking on the rope trigger, and the contraption on the ceiling fell.
    At first, I thought it didn’t work—it just fell, dropped straight down as if whatever was holding it up had failed. But then, at the last minute, it swung—and three different splintered shards of wood caught the guy coming through the door square in the chest.
    The guy, a vampire, fell under the tangle of wood and rope, made a kind of choking noise—and dried out. Turned desiccated, his skin going leathery, eyes sinking back in his skull. In the space of seconds, he turned into a dried-up corpse. No longer undead, just plain dead. He’d been holding a wooden spear in one hand and a hand-held crossbow, wooden bolt loaded, in the other. Yeah, they wanted to kill us. Good to know.
    “Ew,” Jack said, lip curling.
    “Yes, and if we don’t want that happening to us, we have to stop them. ”
    A second guy came through the doorway. The trap and its victim had the added bonus of gumming up the threshold. The guy had to pick his way over debris and his fallen comrade. The glare that he gave us was full of fury. He bared his teeth and fired his hand crossbow.
    The bolt glanced off the lunchbox strapped to Jack’s chest.
    “Holy shit, it worked!” he said, his voice filled with awe. He charged forward, his makeshift spear outstretched and impaled the intruder, who just stood there and let him do it, apparently in shock that his bolt had missed. The spear made a wet, cracking sound as it went in, and like the other guy he collapsed, arms splayed out, a look of pain and disbelief on his pale features. His corpse dried out, caved in, like a body left in the grave.
    How old had he been? He looked about mid-twenties, but so did I. I had no way to tell. They’d felt… older. More powerful. Our only advantage here was surprise.
    Jack yanked his spear out, stepped back, and stared wide-eyed at his victim.
    “Why don’t vampires wear armor? Like, stab-proof vests or something? That technology’s been around for a pretty long time,” Jack said, knocking a couple of times on his lunch box.
    Ginny and Aaron both let out shouts. The bedroom door had crashed open, another goon-looking guy was coming through. They both let fly with Nerf darts. Aaron had found a couple of big-ass repeater-loading bandolier-equipped Nerf guns in his stash. They didn’t have to reload. Droplets of water flew off the darts as they gently lofted and bounced against the vampire.
    “What the hell—” The bad guy gave a short laugh, brushing away the darts like he’d swat at gnats. Some of them had hit his bare face and exposed hands. Then, his expression warped into a grimace. “Shit! What is that?”
    Ginny and Aaron kept firing, damp projectiles bouncing harmlessly off the vampire’s face