I hit the bottom of the empty pool flat on my back,
hard enough to knock the wind out of me, if I'd had any. Dropping
twelve feet onto concrete wouldn't have slowed me much, normally, but
the three holes in my chest would and did. Even for someone with my
'condition', large caliber slugs weren't the kind of thing that you
could just brush off. I might be a gorilla, and a vampire to boot,
but pain is pain.
The
world went fuzzy for a bit. When it slid back into focus, first thing
I saw was one of the bonobos who'd ambushed me swinging down the
ladder hooked to the side of the pool. I could hear him hooting to
himself as he rolled over to where I was splayed out, bitching about
being sent down to put another round into a guy just took three in
the chest.
I'd
have felt bad for him, if he and his pals hadn't just tried to punch
my ticket. Low ape in the pack always gets the crap jobs flung at
him. Also meant he was going to be the first of them to die.
He
looked surprised when his eyes met mine, and even more when my hand
shot out, faster than he could track, and grabbed him by the wrist. I
twisted, hard, his elbow dropping and his shoulder pulled towards me.
I got the hand holding the gun pointed back towards it's owner, just
as the order to fire reached his trigger finger. What was left of his
face looked most surprised of all.
The
round that killed him had severed an artery, and I clamped my mouth
over the pumping spray. I don't like to feed on my own kind, but I'd
need the juice to survive the next few minutes.
I'd
gotten a good bit of the blood down when the first shape appeared at
the edge of the pool. It took a second for the scene to register with
this fella, but when it did, he let out half a swear and reached for
his cannon. While he'd been goggling, though, I'd pulled his dead
friend onto me, and used my legs to shove the body up over the lip of
the pool, and it was still rising and moving fast when it hit him in
the chest. Both the living and the dead vanished from sight.
I
used the momentum to roll forward onto my feet, crouched, and leaped
upward. No normal gorilla could have passed the edge of the pool and
still been rising, but a vampire with a load of fresh blood in him
can do all kinds of amazing things. The other four bonobos seemed to
be moving in slow motion. As I passed the closest one, I made a long
arm and wrapped my fingers around his head. My momentum pulled him
off his feet, and his weight brought be around in a circle, until I
landed on my feet. It felt like something cracked when my hand, still
holding his head, came down hard on the tile floor. I was already
moving, even as I registered that, leaping forward and throwing a
balled fist into the chest of another bonobo. Ribs and sternum gave
way, and the force of my hit took him over the edge and into the
pool, a line of blood coming out of his mouth.
I
turned toward the last two would-be assassins. They were standing,
one behind the other from my perspective, all three of us in a line.
I closed the distance to the nearest one, using one hand to grab the
wrist of his gun hand, forcing it out of line with my body. The other
hand I wrapped around his neck, lifting him slightly off the ground.
His eyes, wide with fear, locked onto mine, and I felt the tendons of
his wrist tighten and loosen as he fired round after round into the
ceiling of the abandoned pool-house.
The
last bonobo had time to get a good bead on me, and unload three quick
rounds in what felt like a tight group. Pity his partner was between
the two of us, or he might have done me some serious harm. As
understanding spread across his face, I reached out one last time and
gave his head a sharp twist. And that was that.
They'd
come prepared for a gorilla, and for a PI with a hard rep, but they'd
never expected a... Vampire
Gorilla, PI.
