Jekyll & Hyde Inc.

In the end Daniel and Tina killed every single victim, because nothing less would stop them. Even after they’d been struck down, they often crawled forward across the blood-slicked platform, to do what they could. Gripping at the Hydes’ ankles with clawed hands and trying to trip them, to bring them down to their level. Until the Hydes stamped on their heads or broke their necks, in what little mercy they could show.

Finally Daniel and Tina stood together at the end of the platform, not even breathing hard, with blood dripping thickly from their aching fists and dead bodies scattered around them. For all the insane viciousness of the people he’d just killed, Daniel still had it in him to wish there could have been some other way. This wasn’t what he’d come here for. He glared down the platform at the vampires, and they glared back at him, eyes burning like evil stars in their dead faces. The slaughter of their victims hadn’t affected them in the least. Because they could always get more livestock, and because it had been a long time since death had meant anything to them. The last of the garlic gas finally dissipated, and the vampires showed their jagged teeth in slow vicious smiles as they realized nothing stood between them and the Hydes. Long-fingered hands flexed slowly, showing off fingernails grown long and sharp in the grave, and hunger radiated from the undead like a heat haze, hanging heavily on the air.

“Nasty-looking things,” Tina said flatly.

“Parasites usually are,” said Daniel.

Tina took a deep breath, and raised her bruised and bloodied fists. “Let’s finish this, and get the hell out of here.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Daniel. He made an obscene gesture at the watching vampires, and addressed them in a voice thick with contempt. “Come on, then, you bloodsucking little turds, what are you waiting for?”

The vampires surged forward in a solid wave. Their feet made no sound at all, like ghosts in a cemetery. Their mouths were all stretched in the same rictus of rage and malice; not because of what had been done to their victims, but simply because they had been defied. Daniel and Tina waited until the very last moment, and then threw holy water ampules into the nearest vampires’ faces. The creatures screamed horribly and fell writhing to the platform as their features melted and ran away. They put both hands to their faces, as though they could hold them together, but holy water and melting flesh oozed between the fingers. The rest of the vampires just kicked them out of the way, concentrating on their tormentors.

The Hydes had already reached inside their backpacks and brought out the ash-wood stakes they’d been given. They held the stakes out before them, and the vampires slowed their advance, but didn’t stop. Up close, they didn’t look elegant or glamorous anymore. They looked like what they were: animated corpses with burning eyes and mouths packed full of animal teeth. Dead things that stank of the grave and other people’s blood.

The gathering fell on Daniel and Tina like a swarm of rabid bats. There was nothing of grace or style in them, only teeth and claws, inhuman vitality, and the hunger for blood that would never end. Daniel thrust his stake into the first vampire to reach him, slamming it in under the breastbone with all his strength. The moment the wood pierced the vampire’s withered heart, its unnatural body just disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a few ashes floating on the air. Tina staked her first vampire with an elegant upward thrust, and then yanked the stake out again as the vampire collapsed into dust, so she could move on to her next victim. She laughed in the vampires’ faces, and went to her work with a vengeance.

The vampires swarmed all over the Hydes, hitting them from every direction at once, and Daniel and Tina had to draw on all their resources to match the vampires’ strength and speed. Daniel lashed out with his free arm, trying to open up more space to use his stake, but it was like slamming into a stone wall. The vampires took no damage and felt no pain, for they had left all such things behind them, in their graves. There was nothing left of them that could be hurt, except in supernatural ways. Daniel lashed out at the vampires again and again, grunting out loud with the effort he put into driving every blow home, until his hands ached and bled. It didn’t stop the vampires, and the fresh blood just maddened them even more. They forced their way closer, past everything Daniel and Tina could do to defend themselves. Death on two legs, up close and personal.