Read Online The Awesome by Eva Darrows - Free Book Online Page A

first vampire used her claws to shred at him, tearing his shirt apart and digging bloody furrows into his forearms, but he took it all in stride, lifting her off of the ground like she weighed nothing at all.
    “Stop, Lizzie.”
    “I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking hunt you down and kill you!” She spit at me. “I’ll drain you!”
    Mom kept one arm up, holding the crossbow, while the other put the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life. Mom handed me the weapon. As soon as I had a grip, she peeled off the curb and tore down the street, her hands locked at the ten and two position, knuckles white where they throttled the wheel.
    “How bad are you hurt?”
    “I’m bleeding,” I said, not sure what else to say.
    “Claws or glass or what?”
    “Glass, I think. I couldn’t see it, but it hurts.”
    “Fuck.”
    I wasn’t sure if she was bemoaning my injury, or the fact that we weren’t all that far away from the vampire and the street light in front of us turned red. A steady stream of two-lane traffic forced us to stop at the intersection. Mom’s eyes flicked to the rear view, watching like she expected the vampire to gnaw our back bumper. She wasn’t all that far off the mark. Screams erupted from the street behind us. It was a terrible sound—a baying, shrill thing that made me wince, my hold tightening on the crossbow. It got closer and closer as the fang barreled our way. My eyes swung to my mirror, waiting for the blur of motion that would herald the vampire’s arrival.
    Yes, vampires appear in mirrors. Books and movies screw up a lot of the finer details.
    “Hold tight,” Mom said. I had enough time to brace a leg against the dash before Mom jerked the van into reverse and put the pedal to the floor. We careened backwards, propelled as if launched from a cannon. I let out a startled shriek, unsure of what the hell was going on. Then there was a thud and another scream as we hit something solid. Mom stopped, put the car into drive, went forward a few feet, and then went into reverse again, hitting that same lump over.
    And over. And over.
    “Bitch wants to threaten my kid? Let her eat grit.” Mom snagged the crossbow from me and got out of the car, loading another arrow as she moved. Despite my terror, I followed, my legs quivering like Jell-O. My mother’d run over someone to keep me safe. It seemed stupid to let her finish it without me despite every instinct I had telling me to run and hide and get away now.
    The smears along the pavement stretched for twenty or thirty feet. Viscera covered the road, puddles of blood and gore soiling the asphalt. Nothing should have survived a trauma like that, yet the vampire gurgled like her guts weren’t strewn all over. That her middle was flattened and divided in half hadn’t caught up to her brain.
    “Sometimes the best thing to do is to cut your losses,” Mom announced in her ‘I’m giving you a lesson so pay attention’ voice. She raised the crossbow. “When they’re too far gone to back down, when all they see is meat, we end them. Period. No second chances.”
    “Wait!”
    A man’s voice, the handler’s voice, tore our attention away from the shuddering meat pile. He stood there with his torn shirt and shredded arms, fists balled at his side. At first I thought he was angry, like he held himself back from attacking us for hurting her, but then I noticed how his shoulders trembled, the way his tongue slicked over his lips. He wasn’t mad, he was scared . “Her sire will pay. He’ll pay well. She’s young and inexperienced. Let her go. Please.”
    “Why’d you let her go, dipshit?”
    “She said she was fine. She said she needed a drink. I thought...”
    “You thought wrong.” Mom fired an arrow into the fledgling’s head. Whatever you may have heard about vampires needing to be staked and beheaded and ‘that’s the only way to kill them’ is crap. Silver works wonders on them, too, a noxious poison that collapses their veins