Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood by Andrew Dudek Read Free Book Online

leather scabbard, my sword was impressive. It was modeled on something called an arming sword, and it looked like something that would have been used by the Christians during the Crusades. It had a classic cruciform hilt and a big sapphire gem in the pommel and two more in the cross-guard. The blade was better than three feet long, so I couldn’t draw it in the confines of the van, but just touching the wire-bound hilt was enough. Energy crackled from the weapon, flowing from the hilt into my body. Abruptly, all of my nervousness was gone. My sword was back in my hand. Everything was okay.
    It was like someone had reattached my arm after nine months as an amputee. For the first time since that clearing in Guyana, I was complete. 
    Krissy lurched forward in her seat. Avalon bounced off of the bench and hit his head on the ceiling (which gave me more pleasure than it really should have), and my back slammed into the wall.
    “Pothole,” Krissy said unnecessarily.
    The screech of metal on rock was audible as the tires’ rims scraped against the street. The van slowed down, peeled out of the road and came to a stop. It rocked on its shocks as May put it in park. A moment later the door slid open.
    Her thin-bladed sword was in her hand and she nodded in approval when she saw mine. The smile faded, though, and was replaced by a cool, steely-eyed expression. I knew that look. It was her battle face.
    “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “Tires are flat,” she said. “And we were followed. Dave, we got vampires out here.”

Chapter 6
    My former building still loomed in the shadows behind us, less than three blocks away. A few lights were lit in nearby windows, but for the most part the neighborhood was still. A few blocks behind us lurked a van with the same designer as ours, its headlights glaring with a predatory leer. Its sliding door stood open, but it was too dark to make out who or what was inside. Slowly, though, four humanoid figures loped out, unfurling themselves with an eerily feline grace. We were still too far away to make out the expressions on their face, but it was clear from the leonine way they watched: They were hunting us.
    They stood unnaturally still. Their eyes never left us, even for a moment. May was right: these things were vampires.
    I hadn’t seen a vamp since the Battle of Guyana, when May and a hundred other knights had pulled Bill Foster and me out of the hole in the ground, killing the things left and right. Mostly, though, I remembered the three months that had come before that, when I’d been tortured. The scars on my neck and wrists prickled.
    The back, passenger-side tire of our van was flat.
    “They’ve been tailing us since we left the safe house,” May said. “Pulled over right before we hit the pothole. It’s like they knew it was there.”
    A vampire hit squad, if that’s what this was, would have scouted out the routes we’d take to get from the safe house to the headquarters. Probably, the vamps did know that the pothole was there, and that was why they’d chosen this spot to make their attack. We could get away on three tires, but it would slow us down.
    “Think we could hoof it?” I asked.
    “They’d catch us.”
    “I guess that just leaves the one option.”
    “Mmm.” May lifted her sword.
    I drew mine and spun around to face the vampires. The steel slid out of the leather as easily and silently as if it had been polished every day for the last year. The power of the sword really flowed through my body now that the blade was free. It energized every muscle, every fiber, every atom in my body turning the knobs all the way to eleven. Any residual fear was...not gone, exactly, but shrunken. Like a shadow at high noon, the fear was tiny and inconsequential. There was nothing to be afraid of. I had my sword.
    I looked into the van. “Care to join us, Commander?”
    Avalon smirked his same smarter-than-thou smirk. “I expect the two of you captains have matters well in