Dead Reckoning

others, and fortunately for us it had paid off.
    One down. We wanted to take out as many as possible before the fighting even started.
    Palomino, whose whitish hair and lovely golden skin made her a standout, worked her way close to Antonio by casual increments. She caught Antonio’s eye and she smiled, but she was careful not to overdo it.
    My purse was on the floor in the tiny space between my chair and Eric’s. I dipped my hand down into its open mouth and withdrew a very sharp stake. I pressed it into Eric’s waiting hand. After a second of leaning on his shoulder to cover the move, I eased upright to give him room.
    Maxwell Lee, who’d been standing by the door back to the offices, took off his suit coat and folded it carefully. I appreciated his clothes care, but it was like a signal he was about to take action. He seemed to realize it, because he settled on the edge of a booth after that.
    While Bubba stuck to ballad-type songs he was entrancing, but for his next number he’d picked “Jailhouse Rock,” and somehow a tinge of sadness seemed to wash over the performance. Though the transition to vampirism had eased all of his infirmities, he’d still died in poor physical condition, and he still bore the marks of age. Now that he was singing a dancing number, the effect was slightly pathetic. I saw the little audience begin to lose their engrossment in the performance.
    Switching the tone was a mistake, but one we couldn’t have foreseen.
    I could feel Eric’s arm tense beside me, and then with the speed of a striking snake he leaned forward to clear Mindy Simpson to his left, his right arm rose up, and he swung in to stake Victor in the chest. As a sneak attack it was perfect. Eric would have hit the mark exactly if Akiro, with equally terrifying speed, hadn’t whipped out his sword and brought it down as Eric moved.
    Mindy Simpson was doomed to be in the wrong place at the wrong second. Akiro’s sword struck her shoulder during its passage to Eric’s arm and simply hewed through it, her bones and flesh slowing the lethal blade almost long enough for Eric to escape.
    All hell broke loose.
    Mindy screamed and died within seconds, and the amount of blood was simply incredible. While she died, a lot of things happened almost simultaneously. As Mark was still gaping, Victor was trying to shove aside Mindy’s slumping and bleeding body, Akiro was trying to disentangle his sword, and Eric was ducking and moving forward to evade another slice of the sword. Eric’s arm was bleeding, but thanks to Mindy’s unintentional block, it was still operative. I stood and lunged backward to get out of the way, knocking my chair aside, and rammed right into Luis, who was launching himself forward to protect his master. I spoiled Luis’s trajectory, and we ended up in a heap on the floor. Fortunately for me, he was too intent on the vampire part of the fight to consider me at all dangerous, and he simply used me as a springboard to push off.
    Not that that felt exactly good, but it wasn’t fatal.
    I scrambled up to a crouch and tried to figure out what to do next. In the dimmed lights, it wasn’t easy to decide what was happening. A fighting pair close to the club doors proved to be Palomino and Antonio, and a small figure flying through the air must have been Thalia. She meant to land on Akiro’s back, but he turned at the last second—so incredibly fast—and instead she hit his chest, and he staggered. His sword was not a weapon for close fighting, not with Thalia doing her best to rip his throat out with her teeth.
    Mark Simpson was staggering away from the body of his wife and the fighting vampires, and he was saying, “Oh my God, oh my God,” over and over. But he did manage to take cover behind the bar, where he grabbed a bottle and began trying to find someone to hit. I felt I could handle Mark Simpson, and I pushed to my feet.
    Colton took care of it before I could get there. He grabbed his own bottle and swung it at the back of Mark Simpson’s head, and Mark staggered and went down.
    While Thalia was keeping Akiro occupied, Eric and Pam went for Victor. There’s no such thing as a fair bar brawl. They double-teamed him.
    Maxwell Lee very precisely staked Antonio from the back while he was struggling with Palomino.
    I could hear Bubba yelling in an agitated way. I got myself over to the stage and took Bubba’s arm.
    “Hey, it’s okay,” I said. So many people were yelling and screaming that I