Maggie Get Your Gun by Kate Danley

“How did the sun not bake
them?”
    “The vampires must have been hiding underground in the old
mines since last nightfall.  Are you armed?”
    “Does a cow have teeth?  Of course I’m armed.”
    I pulled out my silver stake and my wood stake.  I was
armed.  Just not heavily armed.
    “One stake for each of us…” Killian said.
    I watched the vampires disappear into the hillside.  A
thought popped into my brain, “I wonder whose side they are on…”
    “I believe ‘not ours’,” said Killian.
    “The vampire I killed in the mine had a grudge against
Vaclav.  Makes me wonder if they are locals or intruders…”
    “Hopefully, these are intruders and the other vampires living
in the tunnels will keep them occupied.”
    We needed to get to the car.  Or find a threshold where we
could hide out until morning.  We couldn’t risk going door-to-door along the main
street.  There was nothing but museums and shops, which the park rangers would
have locked for the night.  I looked up.
    When the miners came to Calico, they actually built
apartments into the hills.  They were little more than some rocks and boards
beneath some outcroppings.  Crude, sure, but serviceable.  They had doors and
iron barred windows and did I mention doors?
    “Killian!  Think we can reach that one?” I asked, pointing
to one of the sturdier looking dwellings.  It was sort of on the way to the car
and looked like it could give us some cover until things settled down.
    He gave me a nod and we made a dash through the sagebrush. 
Killian stepped lightly, his fairy feet barely touching the ground as we picked
our way up the narrow, dirt path.  But my big, fat, noisy human feet slid on
the gravel and knocked a couple stones down the hill.
    A vampire jumped out right in front of us.
    He licked his fangs.
    “Are you a good vampire or a bad vampire?” I asked.
    “Master Vaclav sends his greetings, Tracker Maggie.”
    “Bad vampire.  Got it.”
    The vampire hissed, “Give me the comb.”
    “I’m sorry, I am fresh out of combs,” I replied. 
    “You lie, Ms. MacKay.”
    “Really, we just want to go home,” I replied.  “It’s late. 
Tell your master I have no interest in combs.  As soon as I find it, I’ll make
sure to know how he can find my listing on eBay.”
    “You shall not leave here with a Comb of the Empress on
your person!”
    “Come on, dude.  I’m tired and cranky.  Don’t make me kill
you.”
    The vampire laughed, “My master will be most pleased when I
tell him I have recovered the comb AND destroyed you.”
    “I hate setting someone up for a world of disappointments,
but I'm afraid I'm going to have to break your heart.  Try recovering this,
jackwad!"
    Now, I have this thing I do.  My dad dubbed it "The
Maggie Move" the first time he saw me pull it off.  If I hadn't gone into
tracking, I seriously would have pursued a career in professional baseball.  I
take my stake and I can throw it right through the heart of a vampire.  Dad and
I even went down to the batting cages once and clocked my pitch at 90mph.   It
is killer.  It hits those vampires right in the strike zone and they go down.  Done
and done.
    But I was standing on a gravelly, rocky outcropping in the
middle of the night with a great big heavy backpack on my back.  I was a little
off balance and just as I was about to let that vampire have it, I stepped on
one of those rocks wrong.  My ankle turned and I felt something pop.
    The vampire was on me in a second.  I flung him to the side
and he rolled down the hill.  Killian caught me under the arm and we ran. 
Okay, I limped and Killian hauled me along as he ran.
    The vampire launched himself into the air and landed in
front of us.  Killian blasted him with some energy thing from his hand.  It
flung the vampire one hundred feet to the side.
    “Hey!  I thought you couldn’t do magic without someone
owing you?”
    “That was for me.”
    “Glad I could glom on.”
    “We could