Blood... and then pain.
It seemed that whatever Donna did, there was blood and pain involved somewhere. Sometimes she was lucky and the blood and pain involved were not her own but, often as not, these days she usually found that she was on the receiving end of whatever dirty deeds were being done. Like today.
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Donna limped out of the alleyway, feeling even more cranky than before.
Why did it always have to be like this? Surely she could get a good break for once in a while?
Checking that her snub-nosed pistol had a shell chambered so she could snap off a hasty shot when needed, she re-holstered it, clicking the safety on and snapping the pop stud back over the butt to prevent it shaking loose.
OK. Time to retreat and lick her wounds.
Scanning the street, she looked up and down; searching for a ride home. No. Nothing doing. “I guess I'll just have to help myself to a car.” Searching for an older car likely not to have a sophisticated anti-theft system, Donna selected a battered unloved Oldsmobile Cutlass, sitting under a broken street-light. Quickly looking around, she stepped across to the passenger side, laid her shoulder-bag against the glass and elbowed the window in so that she could snake her hand inside and pop the door lock open. Then, pulling the door-catch open with her gloved hands, she leaned across and opened the driver's door from inside.
“Okay. I'm good to go.” Donna slid behind the wheel, reaching under the dash and pulling a double handful of wires out. Carefully selecting a pair of these, she produced a well-used pair of wire cutters and an old screwdriver from her bag. Moments later, after cutting, stripping and rejoining the wires, she knocked the screwdriver into the ignition key barrel and drove away from the kerb. “Twenty five seconds at the very most,” she grinned, not bothering to scoop the glass from the seat beside her into the foot-well.
Five minutes later, she ditched the car a block from what she laughingly called her home. Checking around for anyone who might be watching her, she slid aside the hardboard sheet covering over the blocked-in window and dipped back into the current local bolt-hole she was using. “Be it ever so humble, there's no place like... this,” she sang, sotto voce, cautiously checking for any disturbances of the strategically placed bottles and assorted junk she'd placed near each of the entrances and exit routes from this temporary safe haven she'd found barely three months ago.
Okay. Time to crash and to examine the damage done tonight.
Peeling away the beige coverall away from her stomach, Donna eyed the skin that was already starting to discolour from the pistol flash that she'd caught from gut-shooting the vampire, while being held at a distance only slightly more than what you'd expect from a first hesitant kiss. That's gonna be SO sore. Gotta get some balm on that, fast.
Obviously, the vamp hadn't been stopped by the gut-shot, but the blast had knocked it away enough for Donna to follow her first shot with a coup de grace shot right through the head with an .357 calibre silver-loaded fragmenting round. Okay, the silver-loaded round wasn't the optimum load for a vampire but, if you managed to decapitate it with a big enough blast, not many vamps ever got up again to trouble you again afterwards. And, besides, it meant you could use the same load for were-creatures too, if you were ever unlucky enough to meet up with one during a full moon.
Digging deep into her cavernous shoulder-bag, she found a well-squashed tube of cream and rubbed a half-inch of it into her tightly muscled abs and thinly fleshed lower chest. Then, tossing the tube back, she sat back on the naked mattress atop of the rusted decrepit bedstead and began her routine checks. Unloading and breaking down the recently fired gun, she kept her fully-loaded 'second' gun within reach at all times; brush-cleaning the barrel and chamber and then lubricating the firing and loading mechanisms with a long-practiced ease. Then, reassembling it, she carefully tested the functioning of the mechanisms several times before, now satisfied, finally reloading it with a new set of pre-checked .357 Magnum rounds.
Now, time for the second gun. And then her blades. And then the two cans of Mace she kept in the two side pouches in her bag.
Fully tooled up again, Donna felt slightly reassured. Looking around her, she began to relax a little.
Tonight had been a better night than most. She'd managed to survive two attempts to separate her from her long-lost virtue and lifeblood; only suffering minor burns, scrapes and grazes, although the other persons had both come off far worse than she had. Now she was ready to enjoy the minor pickings she'd found that night; three half pizzas, a half-eaten kebab and an unopened bottle of mineral water.
