This is the third and final part of a three part story. Links: part one, part two.

“Ethanol,” I said, nodding at the screw-topped jars. “They’d douse me with it when I was chained up again after feeding.”

Before my capture I’d only heard rumours: vampire-pheromone-laced perfumes coming onto the market for the ultra-rich. We didn’t even know if it was true – the clientele was that exclusive and the quantities that small. But hung in chains in that damned room for days on end I had had plenty of time to think it through. They must have been sluicing off the pheromones we exude as we become aroused to feed, washing them off whilst still fresh, dissolved in the neat alcohol. There was a grating in the floor near why I had hung and no doubt the drain led to a lab where the pheromone solution would be distilled and purified over and over until a useable pheromone perfume resulted.

“We have to find the lab and destroy it.”

Jason nodded, so I knew he understood too, had realised the importance of putting this place out of commission.

But where was the lab? We could search the place, but I had heard a groan from behind me and knew that at least one of the three guards was still alive and conscious. I dashed back into the cell and saw it was the man with the electric prod through his belly, clutching at it and moaning.

I knelt beside him. “Tell me where the lab is and I’ll kill you quick. Otherwise I’ll rip your guts out and leave you to die slowly, in agony.”

He was silent for a moment, presumably considering his options, weighing the chance of us being overwhelmed and him reaching hospital alive. A dulling in his eyes told me he’d decided his chances weren’t good.

“Out the door,” he whispered, his words punctuated by the gurgling of blood in his throat and lungs. “Left. Two doors. Down the stairs. Right and it’s straight ahead.”

“Thank you,” I replied, and took his head between my hands, ready to twist and snap his neck. But then I changed my mind, tore open his white coat and shirt and ripped him from belly to neck with one quick slice of a talon. Yanking open his horribly wounded torso, I grabbed handfuls of entrails and lifted them out, still attached, laying them across the floor in his full sight. He looked up at me in horror.

“I lied,” I told him baldly. “You don’t deserve a quick death.”

*   *   *   *   *

There’s not much else to tell. We went through that place like avenging demons. Two more guards and half a dozen scientists fell before Jason’s claws and fangs. Jason took a bullet in the thigh, but it barely slowed him down. I wrecked the lab, sloshed the ethanol around and set fire to the place before we fled.

We emerged into the city night in a shoddy industrial zone. We were three blocks away before we heard the first wail of a fire engine, and within five more minutes I had a change of clothes (thanks to Jason, who lured a prostitute of about my build into an alley). I still had to clean off the blood and soot, but otherwise I thought we were safe enough.

I steeled myself for what would be the hardest thing of the whole night. I took Jason’s hand and looked up at him. “Thank you, Jason,” I said, and for once I actually meant it (normally I don’t do humble). I paused, and he looked at me, waiting for me to continue. “I’m in your debt,” I added.

“Yes, you are,” he replied, as serious as any other vampire when it comes to keeping track of favours owed and owing. But then his face broke into a grin. He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out the rusty manacles from my cell.

“I have an idea how you can make it up to me.”

THE END