The Birch House

Chapter Seventeen

Cleanup took pretty much all day, what with the broken furniture, the shattered windows, the front and back doors, and hauling my damaged mattress out to the curb. We were just sitting down to dinner when the sun went behind the horizon, and I heard the sound of a body hitting the floor, followed by dry retching.

"Alex's home," Alyssa said, as if he'd just come back from school. "You guys dig in."

It took a while before she came back with Alex. Holding hands. Chase got up, smiling, and held up his hand. Alex high-fived it.

"Not bad, brother," Alex said. "The girls gave you enough time for the switch."

"Even though they didn't know. Yeah. Worked out," Chase said, pleased. "See? My plans don't all suck. Just most of them."

"So long as we keep on being able to tell the difference." Alex pulled up a chair. "What's for - oh, you're kidding me. Chili?"

"Nobody wanted to go to the store."

"Yeah, I guess." Alex closed his eyes. "I'm saying a prayer. Maybe you ought to, too. It's going to take us a miracle to get through this."

Whether he was serious or not, I sent the prayer up toward heaven, and I thought the others did, too. So it seemed kind of miraculous when the doorbell rang.

"At least they're getting more polite when they try to kill us," Chase said. Alex got up and went to the door. After a second's hesitation, we all got up and followed.

Alex swung the new door open. Outside, in the glow of the porch light, stood a middle-aged man with a scraggly beard and a huge scar down one side of his face, dressed in black motorcycle leather. Behind him were two more guys, not quite as old and a whole lot bigger and meaner-looking.

Bikers. I nearly choked on my bite of chili.

The man nodded.

"Son," he said, looking past Alex right at Chase. "Got your message. Cavalry's here." He walked right in, past the threshold, and ignored Alex like he wasn't even there. "About time you got your ass in gear. Been waiting for you to call for six damn months. What kept you? Took you this long to find the head bloodsucker?"

We followed him into the living room. Alex turned to look at Chase, who was turning red. Not meeting anybody's eyes, really. "Things have changed, Dad," he mumbled.

"Nothing's changed," Chase's dad said, and turned to face us, hands on hips. "We came to kick us some ass and kill us some vampires, just like we planned all along. Time to get some payback for Ashleigh and your mother. Nothing's going to change that."

"Dad, things are different now, we can't - "

Chase's father grabbed him by the hair, quick as a snake. There were tattoos on his hand, ugly dark blue smudges, and he forced Chase's head back. "Can't? Can't? We're going to burn this town down, boy, just like we agreed. And you're not changing your mind."

"Hey!" Alex said sharply, and reached out for Chase's dad. When he touched him, something happened, something like an electric shock that flared blue white in the room and raised the hair on my arms. Alex flew back and hit the wall, too stunned to do anything.

"No!" Chase yelled, and tried to pull free. He couldn't. "Dad, no!"

Chase's dad nodded to one of his biker buddies. "Yep. He's one of them," he said. "Take care of it."

The biker guy nodded back, pulled a knife from his belt, and advanced on Alex.

"No!" Chase screamed it this time. I took a hesitant step forward, and stopped when Alex's wide blue eyes locked on mine. Alyssa was screaming, and so was Chase.

Isabelle saw this, I thought. Alex was  standing on the rug Isabelle had pointed to when she'd said, And he died...right...there. It hadn't been his first death.

It was his second.

"Guys, stay out of it!" Alex said sharply when Alyssa tried to lunge toward him and get between him and the biker. He was still backing away, and this time, he looked afraid. He hadn't been afraid of the vampires and all their minions, but this time...

The biker moved faster than anybody I had ever seen, except vampires; I didn't even see what happened, just heard the heavy thud as Alex hit the floor. The biker went down with him, holding him flat with one huge hand while the other one raised the knife.

"No, Dad, God, I'll do whatever you want!"

"Shut up," Chase's dad said, and threw Chase toward the sofa. He sprawled there, and I ran over to him and put my arms around him. "You bet you will. You three are going to tell me which vamps to strike first. Because it's us against them now, and don't you forget it."

"Three?" Alyssa said faintly. Her huge eyes were locked on Alex, and the biker, and the knife.

"Three," said Chace's dad, and nodded to the biker.

We all screamed as the knife came down.