Must Love Hellhounds

padded through the foyer on silent feet, cleared the doorway, and emerged into the hallway.
    Slow and steady, room by room. An undead waited at the end of this race, and I had a feeling it would find us before we found it.
    Two small, musty rooms later, we stepped into the family room. The old furniture had been haphazardly piled at the walls. In the center of the room, on the filthy old rug, lay the corpse of Alex Doulos. A huge chain caught the body’s ankle, binding it to a rod driven into the floor.
    Two red-hot eyes sparked in the heap of furniture at the opposite wall.
    I fired. The first two bullets punched the bloodsucker’s head.
    The vampire leapt.
    My guns spat thunder and bullets in a lethal rhythm, trailing the bloodsucker as it hurtled through the air.
    Raphael lunged from the left, and I raised the guns’ barrels up a fraction of a second before he fell onto the vamp from behind. The bloodsucker went limp in his hands. My bullets had chewed its skull to mush. Raphael grasped the vamp’s chin, exposing the neck; his knife flashed, and the head went flying across the room.
    I reloaded. The bloodsucker had been unpiloted. Its eyes had been too crazed and it attacked me straight on, without any consideration for the fact that there were two of us. Spider Lynn was gone. She had left the vampire to us as a present.
    It took us ten minutes to search the rest of the house. Empty as expected. I didn’t think she would sacrifice another vampire. We did find the generator and I shut it off, cutting the power to the fence.
    We returned to the body. Alex lay on his side, thrown on the floor like a dirty rag. Death had robbed him of warmth, but his features still kept hints of his personality: a network of laugh lines around the eyes; strong chin; wide, tall forehead. His hair was pure white and worn long enough to reach his shoulders. A small green object lay by him. I picked it up. A little toy car. How odd. I tucked the car into my pocket.
    We had to take him out of this terrible place. Raphael touched the chain securing Alex’s ankle and jerked his hand away. A silver-steel alloy.
    The chain clasped Alex’s ankle too tightly. Neither one of us could get it off without burning all the meat off our fingers. I ripped fabric off the nearest couch, wrapped it around the rod the body was chained to, and strained. It didn’t even shiver.
    “Let me.”
    Raphael grasped the rod. Veins on his face bulged and he ripped it free. He slung the body over his shoulder and let the chain trail behind him. It would have to do.
     
     
     
    It took us three hours to cross the city. We drove through the dilapidated remnants of the industrial district and left Atlanta behind. Woods replaced ruins. The road grew bumpy. Neither of us said anything. The corpse wrapped in a blanket and resting in the backseat kept me from talking, and Raphael seemed immersed in thought.
    Cold wind fanned us. The night was vast and filled with a flurry of scents. A sprinkling of stars shone high above, indifferent to us and our little problems.
    Thirty minutes later we pulled onto the side road, dipping into the dense forest. The dirt road veered, we turned, and a large ranch-style house came into view. The bouda house. Usually it was full of life: sentries prowled the woods, and insane laughter floated on the wind currents, mixing with moaning and snarls of sexual release. But now it lay quiet. Raphael had said that everyone had left, letting Aunt B grieve in private, but it didn’t hit home until I actually saw it.
    A woman waited for us on the porch, her hands crossed under her breasts. Middle-aged and plump, she wore her hair atop her head in a bun. Careworn shadows distorted her usually happy face. She looked like a very young grandmother who had just realized her grandson’s school bus was ten minutes late.
    We parked. Raphael hopped out and gently picked up Alex’s body. Alex’s white hair spilled over Raphael’s shaggy arm. Aunt B looked on without a word as the monster who was her son and my mate carried her lover’s body to her and held it out. A single word escaped his monstrous mouth. “Mother . . .”
    Aunt B’s lips trembled. She slumped against the porch post. Her shoulders shook and she covered her mouth with her hand. Tears swelled in her eyes. No sobs escaped her lips. She simply stood there and cried, grief plain and raw on her face.
    What do I do? She was the bouda alpha. Alphas didn’t . . . they didn’t show