Garlic Is For Vampires (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 23: To Kill An Incubus

Dylan's copycat incubus jumped down from the wall and landed on my stomach. Sure, he looked big and muscular but he was actually pretty light. I reminded myself that I was doing this for a reason and decided to put that reason into action. I raised my hands and placed them on his smooth, muscular chest. His dark eyes looked into mine and I felt his hands slide down my waist, to my shorts. I swallowed thickly.

He pushed the edges of my shorts down, revealing the kitchen knife I had strapped to my hip with a sheath. Then I grabbed it and drove the knife into the incubus's chest, leaning forward to whisper in his ear.

"Never get into a lady's pants after the first date," I said, swiftly pulling the knife out of his chest and slicing it through his neck. Black blood spurted onto the bedsheets, and on my tank top. I heard a brief screech of pain in the living room, and then a loud thump. I pushed the incubus to the corner of the bed and got up, limping towards the living room. I was given a better cast that allowed me to walk, but it still hurt and I limped more often even though my doctor told me that I needed to start straightening out my leg, unless I wanted it to be crooked.

Brendon was wrapping up the naked lady in his blankets, wiping the blood on the kitchen knife on the sheet. He glanced up at me before I headed to the kitchen and grabbed the holy water spray and the rope I bought earlier.

After a week of brainstorming ways to clear our lives from the supernatural, we finally came up with a plan to ward off and kill as many incubuses as we could, because I was fed up with them. And because I felt like I was making up to the universe for all I'd done by clearing away the bad guys. But then I thought, did the universe really want me to do this if it put these vampires on the earth with us?

Brendon helped me wrap the incubus in my room in the sheets and then he carried the body out to the living room. "We're leaving in five," he said. He glanced at my tank top. "You want to change first?"

"I'll change in the car." I stuffed a T-shirt into my bag and slipped on my sock and sneaker on one foot. "Let's go."

It wasn't easy carrying bodies, so we took the elevator since I could barely walk. We kicked the bodies behind our feet in case someone happened to jump into the elevator with us, but so far everything was all right. The rental was waiting outside, and I checked the street before popping the trunk open and helping Brendon with the male incubus. Then we grabbed the succubus-actually he carried her, she was light-and we loaded them into the trunk of the car rental. Brendon got the car started and then we were driving.

We weren't sure where to dump the bodies, so we asked Skylark for help. "You can't cremate them, they won't burn. But holy water will do. So use some of what I gave you and you should be fine. Their bodies disintegrate rather quickly," was what he told me over a phone call. I still had half a jar of holy water and some of it in a spray bottle.

As we crossed over the bridge and descended to the east river, my nerves began to sing and hum. I've seen plenty of movies where a murderer buries a body in a river, and they almost never get caught because they do it late at night in a vacant area. But what if Brendon got caught? He worked with the law. What if I got caught? My parents would disown me-I wasn't even theirs to begin with. Would someone get in trouble? How would we explain the two dead naked people with cut marks on them? I wrung my hands and focused on controlling my breathing.

"Are we really doing this?" I asked Brendon. He parked just beside the river and I gulped in nervousness. What was he thinking? Did he think it was a good idea to do this? What if he was going to leave me to do this on my own because it was my fault I dated a vampire? No, he wouldn't bail on me, would he? I was unsure that this would work. What if he was tired of helping me? He did nearly lose his life.

"What if this doesn't work?" I asked him. He put his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. Then he turned to look at me. In this lighting, I watched his pupils dilate and widen until his eyes were almost pitch black.

"Remember when I said I needed you?" he asked me. "I do now-I need you as we do this. I need you to believe that things will be better once we get through this. We'll get answers. We'll find your dad. And even after this I'll still need you because you, Bree, are my best friend. And I need my best friend to be my anchor." He smiled. "So if we're going to get through this we have to be here for each other. No backing out. Does that make sense?"

Yes, it did. This was my choice to find the incubuses and fight them-to destroy them for the sake of mankind, even though humanity didn't owe me anything. But I wanted to make a point that I was a human trying to make the world human. And Brendon wanted to be a part of this. So I needed to work my part if things would get better. I needed to put my trust into him just as he put his trust into me.

We got out of the car and I kept an eye as Brendon unloaded the bodies. Nobody was out here, so it was safe to look away for a second to grab the spray bottle from inside my bag. I helped Brendon drag the bodies towards the water. Then I crouched down with his help and sprayed the bodies with holy water. Steam began to rise and skin sizzled and popped until it was obnoxious, and then it was over.

Brendon rolled the bodies out towards the middle of the water. I noticed the bodies slowly sinking as if a weight was dragging them down. But it was actually only because their bodies were disintegrating. That part, I needed to get used to. I slipped the holy water back into my bag and watched as the last body sunk to the bottom of the river.

Two incubuses down, far too many to go.

A/N: I owe you guys a chapter, I know. So here's the chapter I was supposed to write a few days ago but school got in the way and stuff. Hopefully none of you hate me yet. But I'm really glad to be writing this story, even if this was a short chapter. And can we just marvel Brendon Urie in the video above? It fits the song so well. Drool.

                                            -Redbird