Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter (Twinkle)

  Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter

  Twinkle

  Dan McGirt

  Contents

  Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter (Twinkle)

  Beginner’s Luck

  Hero Wanted

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Rainy Daze

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Sarah Palin: Vampire Hunter

  Twinkle

  Twinkle, Oregon

  Twilight’s last gleaming fell softly through the mist between the trees. Sinuous fingers of fog caressed the upright shafts and trailed teasingly through the underbrush. The sun plunged into the wet darkness of the roiling sea. Above, parting clouds exposed a full, round, ripe, pale moon heaving upward into the night sky. Its tender light groped downward to find a young couple in a forest clearing, clutched in a tight embrace, their lips melded together in a deep and passionate kiss.

  They broke apart.

  “Oh, Edmund!” said Stella, gasping. “Sometimes I think I’ll suffocate from kissing you! It’s like you never need air.”

  “Sorry,” said Edmund. He smiled apologetically. “Sometimes you make me forget to breathe.”

  Stella grinned. “When you put it like that, I don’t mind at all. Oh, Edmund, I love you so much!”

  “And I love—”

  “I mean, I really, really, deeply, completely love you with every single part of me from my head to my toes.”

  “I feel the—”

  “I mean every single molecule of me loves you! Every atom! Every one of those sub-atomic thingies Mr. Flagg talks about in science class but I don’t really know what they are because I spend the whole class staring at you or passing notes to Callie about how much I love you or writing your name on my notebook.”

  “I know,” said Edmund. He ran his fingers through her stringy brown hair. “Stella, you have to—”

  “When I’m with you, I don’t care about anything else! Not school or shopping or television or even Justin Bieber. Who cares about him anyway?”

  “Good to know.”

  “And when I’m not with you, all I think about is you. How you look. How you move. How you sound. How you smell.” She inhaled deeply. “I’m so drawn to your scent. Does that seem weird?”

  “I use that Axe body spray, so no.”

  “I dream about you when I sleep, except I don’t sleep. I just lie awake thinking about you. Or texting my friends about you. Sometimes, late at night, I update my Facebook profile to say how much I miss you and that I’m thinking about you. And then I write poems about you in my LiveJournal.”

  “Yes, I’ve read some of those,” said Edmund. “You don’t pay attention in English class either, do you?”

  “I can’t! Maybe I should set my LJ to private, but I don’t care. I don’t care, Edmund! I don’t care who knows how I feel because I want everyone to know how I feel about you because it’s how I feel about you and everyone should care.”

  “About?”

  “How I feel about you!”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, Edmund, you’re so sparkly and gorgeous and moody. I want to be with you forever!”

  His tourmaline eyes flickered red. “Do you really mean that?”

  “Yes. I want to spend every second with you until the end of time! I have this aching, longing, yearning, indescribable need to be with you that I can’t even describe.”

  “I think you just did.”

  “It fills me, Edmund! My need to be with you constantly, always, forever. It fills me up. It makes me ache and tingle and ties my stomach in a knot and I love you so much that sometimes I just throw up on myself!”

  “Lovely,” said Edmund. “But, listen, Stella—”

  She knit her brow in confusion. “Listen? What does that mean?”

  Edmund sighed. “It means you stop talking and I say something.” He cupped her face in his hands and stared deeply into her chocolate chip eyes. “It mean you use these cute ears of yours for once.”

  “I record myself reading the poems I write about you and then I upload the recordings to my iPod and I listen to them while I curl up in a ball under the dining room table because I miss you so much.”

  “Stella, this is important. Do you really want to be with me forever? Do you even know what that means?”

  “I do, Edmund,” she said breathlessly. “I do know!”

  “And is it what you want? What you really, really want?”

  “I want to be with you no matter what it takes, Edmund.”

  “You’ll have to give up everything you are, Stella, abandon your identity and forsake any semblance of a normal life. Are you willing to do all that to become...like me?”

  “Yes! It is what I want more than anything, Edmund! To be like you. To be with you forever and ever until—”

  “Hush.” Edmund pressed his index finger to Stella’s lips.

  “What is it, Edmund? What’s wrong? Do you not love me enough? Are you worried about what people will think? Because I don’t—”

  Now Edmund clamped his entire hand across Stella’s mouth, silencing her.

  “Just hush,” he said. “Please. Not another word. You are so beautiful, Stella. So perfect. I love the way the moonlight shines on your luminous white skin. The way your dark hair catches the shadows. The heat of your body. So, so perfect.”

  “Mmfph!” said Stella.

  “And the beating of your heart.” Edmund pressed his ear against Stella’s chest. His head rode the rise and fall of her breath. “The perpetual pulsing rhythm, pushing your delicious—I mean, precious—blood through every part of your body. Through your fingers, through your toes...through the veins of your throat. I love that sound. But I can’t hear it, even with my exceptional hearing, over the unyielding cacophony of your incessant yammering. So, please, don’t spoil our last moment together, Stella. Just hush.”

  He removed his hand. Stella took a breath. She opened her mouth to speak. Edmund regarded her sternly. She hesitated, but could not contain herself.

  “Last moment?” she asked, half in hope, half in fear of what he meant.

  “The last moment before everything changes for us,” he said.

  “Do you really mean this, Edmund? Is it time? Are you finally going to do it to me?”

  “Yes, Stella.”

  “Oh, Edmund! I’m so happy! You have no idea what this means to me! I can’t wait to finally be—”

  Edmund clamped his hand over her mouth again and bent the girl’s head back, exposing the soft white flesh of her throat. The scent of her excitement, the rush of her quickening heartbeat, sent a thrill through his cold form. She shuddered in his grasp.

  “This may sting at first,” said Edmund. His incisors protruded. “But it will all be over soon.”

  Edmund pulled Stella more tightly against him. He leaned in, brushing her skin with his lips. He opened his mouth. She closed her eyes. Stella’s whole body vibrated with anticipation of what was to come next.

  Then Edmund’s head exploded.

  His skull flew apart from the inside out, evaporating in an expanding cloud of sticky brain bits, liquefied bone, and blackish goo. The mixture covered Stella’s face and hair. It flew up her nostrils and landed in her open mouth. The taste was sour, like stewed prunes seeped in rank vinegar.

  A loud report shook the air. The booming sound and the wet spray across her face were not what Stella was expecting. She opened her eyes to the horrifying sight of Edmund’s headless body holding her.

  But
even more horrifying was what happened next—Edmund stood up!

  Stella screamed.

  A person dressed all in black stepped into the clearing.

  Stella screamed again.

  Edmund turned to face the intruder.

  Except he had no face, on account of having no head.

  Even so, he lurched with outstretched arms toward the figure in black.

  The intruder aimed a Glock semi-automatic pistol and put three rounds in Edmund’s chest.

  He staggered backward, tumbled to the ground at Stella’s feet—and crumbled into ashes.

  “It’s always so funny when they do that,” said the newcomer. She holstered her sidearm.“You see, with these critters the energy pattern of the brain sometimes persists for—well, it doesn’t really matter. Are you all right there, sweetie?”

  Stella couldn’t stop screaming.

  The woman wore lace-up combat boots and a tight-fighting black bodysuit. She moved with a cat-like economy of motion as she crossed the clearing toward Stella. Various pouches and compartments hung from her belt and shoulder rig, including two Glocks strapped to her shapely thighs. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun. A high-tech wraparound visor protected her hazel eyes.

  “Sorry about the mess. There was just no time to getcha clear. I had to take the shot.” The woman winked while making a pistol gesture with her thumb and forefinger.

  Stella scrambled backward across the ground until she backed into a tree trunk. “Stay away from me!” she shouted. “You killed Edmund!”

  The woman in black stopped short. “Just take a deep breath, honey. Slow deep breath. You’re in a bit of shock there. Just calm down. Everything is okay now.”

  “Everything is not okay! You killed my boyfriend!”

  The woman shook her head. “Your ‘boyfriend’ there died a hundred years ago, sweetie. I just made him stop moving.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “Well, a lot of people think so, that’s for sure.” The woman opened a belt pouch and produced a square of orange cloth. “You’ve got ick all over your little face there. Ya might just wanna clean that up.”

  She held out the cloth. Reluctantly, Stella took it and dabbed at her face.

  “The technical term is ichor,” said the woman. “Though I have to say mythologically speaking that isn’t quite accurate. But what can ya do? I just call it ick and let me tell you from long experience, nothing soaks the ick up like that little ShamWow. Holds twelve times its weight in liquid, by golly!”

  “You’re insane!” said Stella.

  “You already said.”

  “Wait a minute. Your face. Your voice. I know you!”

  “Do you now?”

  “I’ve seen you on television. You’re Sarah Palin!”

  Palin winked. “Guilty as charged.”

  “You killed my boyfriend!”

  “I told you he was already dead. You see, sweetie, crazy as this is going to sound—and I admit, it does sound a little out there—your boyfriend there was a vampire.”

  “I know he was a vampire!” wailed Stella.

  Palin started. “Well, good golly girl! If ya knew that, what the heck darn were ya doing way out here alone in the woods with him?”

  “We were in love! He was going to make me a vampire too so we could be together forever!”

  Palin rolled her eyes. “Listen, honey, the only thing lover boy was going to turn you into was dinner.”

  “You’re wrong! He loved me!”

  “Honey, just because a boy says he loves you and wants to take you off into the woods and ‘turn you into a vampire’ doesn’t mean it’s true. By the way, ya might want to cover those up. You’ll catch a chill out here.”

  Numbly, Stella buttoned her blouse.

  Palin produced an iPhone. “Just by the by, what was your boyfriend’s name?”

  “Edmund! Edmund Mullins! And you killed him!”

  Palin tapped at the screen. “Let’s see, McIntyre...Monroe...Mullins! There we are! And I’ll just scratch ya right off the list you little booger!”

  “You have a list?” said Stella accusingly.

  “Unfortunately it’s not enough to kick butt. I have to take names too,” said Palin. “I do love this touchscreen. That Steve Jobs may be a dopey spacey hippie but he sure designs some neat stuff, don’t cha think? Though I’m amazed I can get a signal out here.”

  “You killed Edmund and you don’t even care! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you, Sarah Palin!”

  Palin shook her head sadly. “Like I haven’t heard that before. Now let’s get you home before—”

  Crack!

  A twig broke nearby. In one fluid motion Palin turned, dropped into a crouch, and drew her sidearm. She peered intently into the now gloomy forest.

  “Stay behind me, sweetie!” she said.

  But Stella was already on her feet and running away.

  “You may as well come on out,” said Palin. “Because I know you’re there.”

  “You killed our brother,” said a deep voice from somewhere in the foliage across the clearing. “You will die for that,” added the unseen speaker, now sounding from behind her.

  “We’ll see,” muttered Palin. She didn’t bother to turn around.

  “I’m behind you now,” said the voice.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I got over here really, really fast.”

  “I realize that.”

  Now the voice came from her left. “Are you scared?”

  “Not really,” said Palin.

  “You should be.” He was on the right of the clearing now, up in the branches of the trees.

  The gap in the clouds closed, blocking the moon and plunging Palin into near total darkness.

  The unseen vampire laughed. “I can see in the dark, little human.”

  “Well, aren’t you just the lucky star!”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh what?”

  “I’m a lucky star? What does that even mean?”

  “I dunno,” said Palin, scanning the tree line. “I just think it in my little brain and out my mouth it comes.”

  “You will die painfully,” said the vampire. Behind her again.

  “Probably so,” said Palin. “But not tonight.”

  A blur of motion like a sudden gust of wind swept past Palin. She felt a cold sensation on her gun hand. Then her gun was gone.

  “Sneaky little devil,” she said.

  “Scared yet?” said the vampire.

  Palin scrunched up her face in a mockery of deep pondering. “Let me think that one over—ah, no.”

  “I took your gun.”

  “Yeah, I noticed on account of my hand being empty. Good thing I didn’t have my finger on the trigger or ya mighta broke that little booger straight off, huh?”

  “I’ll take your life next.”

  “Yeah? Are ya planning to talk me to death?” Palin glanced at her watch. “I’ve got places to be, sweetie.”

  Another rush of wind. Palin’s feet were swept from under her. She slapped the ground to break her fall as she tumbled to the turf.

  “I plan to enjoy this, killing you.”

  “Gonna be like that, huh?” said Palin. She snapped her hips and bounced to her feet without using her hands.

  “Do you want to run?” said the vampire.

  “I want to get this over with,” said Palin.

  Something fell from the trees on the opposite side of the clearing.

  “Your gun,” said the vampire. “If you want to grope around in the dark for it, go ahead.”

  “No, thanks!” said Palin, drawing her other Glock. “I carry a spare.”

  “I can take that one away from—”

  BLAM!

  Palin squeezed off a shot. The vampire tumbled from the trees with unearthly grace and landed in an elegant heap on the ground. He was big and muscular, with curly dark hair.

  “You shot me!” He clutched his gut. The wound oozed black ick.

>   “That’s what guns are for, silly boy.”

  “How can you even see me?”

  Palin tapped her visor. “These aren’t for fashion. I can see in the dark too.”

  “Not fair!”

  “Yeah, well. Life’s a bitch. Deal with it.”

  She squeezed of three more rounds. The vampire evaded the shots, disappearing into the trees.

  A long silence followed. Palin stood still, waiting.

  “Why is this wound not healing?” whined the vampire.

  “That would be the silver nanoparticles,” Palin said. “Unless you caught one of the nanoscale UV laser rounds. I like to mix ‘em up. Keeps things interesting.”

  “It burns!”

  “Definitely the UV.”

  “You won’t shoot me again,” he said.

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Palin.

  She holstered the pistol. She had been lucky to tag the vampire. More accurately, he had been careless and cocky, as vampires often were when confronting a lone human. They always assumed they had the upper hand. But now he would be wary. It was darn difficult to get a bead on these critters when they were on guard.

  “I will tear you limb from limb!” raged the vampire.

  “Yeah, how’s that working out for ya so far?”

  As she spoke, Palin reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized drink can. She popped the lid and gulped its contents, a special beverage called Liquid Amplified Combat Enhancer—LACE. Palin called it 5-Minute Energy. LACE was a highly concentrated chemical cocktail of epinephrine, taurine, ginseng, B-vitamins, caffeine, high fructose corn syrup, artificial cherry flavoring, desert scorpion venom, and weapons-grade amphetamine. A two ounce shot of LACE provided a baseline human being a burst of speed, strength, and stamina comparable to that of a vampire—for about five minutes.

  “Yeah, that’s the stuff!” Palin said, as the burn raced through her veins. It felt like being stung by a swarm of bees—over and over and over again. LACE wasn’t pleasant. There was a high risk of cardiac arrest. But it gave her a fighting chance, and that was all Palin could ask for.

  That and for vampires to be as stupid as vampires usually were.

  The dark-haired vampire stepped into the clearing. He still clutched his oozing belly with one hand. “This hurts!” he said. “But I swear it is nothing compared to the pain you are about to experience!”