Excerpt from Dead Man’s Trigger
When Max Maguire joins a group of vampires who hunt vampires, his first mission gets complicated very quickly and Max has to draw on his Special Forces training – and get creative.
Without a word, the team quickly exited the van. They barely made a sound, with only the muffled noise of doors opening and closing to betray their arrival.
Max crawled up into the passenger’s seat and waited. Terry had a revolver out and ready on his lap. Chase and the team stood near the trees sizing up the situation.
“Five hostiles inside with two humans, two hostiles out back,” Chase said in a low voice through his headset. Max watched as Chase pointed to Sumi and Tank and then to the rear of the house. He knew from experience, no one would talk at this stage unless they had to. Sound was always risky.
Sumi and Tank took off in a blur. Max did as Tank suggested and reached out with his senses to follow the action. The rest of the team crouched by the tree line for a moment and then Chase motioned for them to go.
Chase, Shades and Father Frank were beginning their approach from the front. Everything in the backyard was happening so fast, Max was having trouble keeping track of what was going on. One of the vamps went down immediately and vanished from Max’s internal radar. The other had avoided a round to the heart and took off. Sumi was in pursuit, but Max lost her. He tried to find her again, but she was out of his range.
He looked at Terry, a worried expression on his face.
“She’s okay, Max. She can take care of herself,” he said.
Max nodded and got back to the action. The attack from the front had started and Max could sense the chaos in the house as the vampires dove for cover or tried to reach their weapons. Two were killed immediately, but the other three were putting up a fight. Then one of them dove through a side window, right through the wood covering it, and Max saw he was out of the house and headed for them. Max didn’t have a weapon, but he wasn’t about to be a sitting duck. Terry nodded at Max and they both opened their doors to get out of the van.
The vamp looked like a biker, defined by leather, tattoos and long hair. And he was really pissed. When the angry vampire saw them, he raised his revolver and started shooting at them on the run. One of the rounds whizzed by Max’s ear and he dove to the ground in a roll, coming up on his hands and knees. Terry started firing back, but the vampire was moving fast. They were trading shots, so Max pushed himself up and flew at the vampire, tackling him, the two rolling one over the other until they crashed into a tree.
Max was stunned for a moment, but so was his opponent. He saw the flash of the revolver and he went for it, the two struggling over the weapon. The vampire smashed Max in the chest with his fist and sent him flying backwards. Ending up flat on his back, he rolled onto his knees just as the vampire got a shot off. Suddenly his lower back was on fire and Max knew he’d been shot. Now he was pissed.
Terry was rounding the van. He took a shot, but missed the vampire. The bad guy was distracted for just a moment, and that’s all Max needed. He scrambled onto his hands and knees. Ignoring the pain, Max launched himself at the vampire again, breaking a branch of a tree off along the way and knocking his opponent to the ground. Max drove the large end of the branch into the vampire’s chest as the bad guy was raising the weapon to take another shot. The vampire stopped, a look of total surprise on his face. The branch with its leaves still intact stuck out of him as if the tree was growing right through him. And then he turned to dust.
Max’s back hurt like hell and he fell to the ground on his side. Then Terry and Chase were standing over him.
“Death by maple. That’s a first,” said Terry.
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