by Riley, A. M.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Aybie, the gun waving around in a nerve-wracking
manner. “You fucking niggers are disgusting.”
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A. M. Riley
“No, he's not,” said Betsy. She grinned at me, letting her tongue point out
a little. “We just fed and we're horny.”
“Fed?” I asked.
Aybie laughed. His laugh had a little giggle at the end of it that made me
think of Norman Bates. “Don't you know?” he said.
“Know what?”
“You're a vampire, man. Undead. Just like us.”
Betsy came around the counter toward me, squatted before me on those
platform boots. “He didn't know,” she said, tilting her head and looking up at
me through her mascara-coated eyelashes. And then she did something that
would flash into my mind's eye again and again over the coming days. Her face
morphed, changed. Eyes like a wolf's with yellow irises, cheekbones sharper.
Fangs. It was the face of the corpse I'd fought in the morgue.
I didn't react outwardly. I guess on some level I already knew, didn't I?
Betsy's face morphed back to the Goth chick I recognized. “Isn't it cool?”
“Sure,” I said. “Really cool. So what are a bunch of vampires doing in
Venice Beach? Shouldn't you be in Transylvania or something? Flying over
some old castle?” I tested the handcuffs with a little jerk of my hands.
Sometimes amateurs wouldn't make sure they were completely closed. The
wrist bracelets didn't loosen, but I thought I felt a little give, as if a link were
loose.
“He's funny,” said Betsy. She let her tongue touch her lip. She looked at
Caballo and they both smiled and looked back at me. “And he's hot.”
“You ain't kidding,” said Caballo. “We can do it without releasing the
handcuffs. Bring that mattress in here.”
I gave him a smile like I liked what he was thinking. “Who did this to me?”
Caballo stood. “Does it matter? Now you'll never die.”
“What do you mean?”
“You're immortal, man. An Evil Dead. You will live forever.”
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63
“'Less Ozone says I can dust him,” said Aybie from where he stood.
“Evil Dead? Dust?” I said. My eyes were level with Caballo's crotch and
that promising bulge just right of the zipper. I let my eyes travel up the expanse
of his shirt until I was looking into wicked dark eyes.
“You are a very stupid cop, aren't you?” said Caballo. He said it like he
liked that about me. With a big white smile on those pretty lips. Okay, I'm
handcuffed with a gun to my head and I'm seriously lusting after one of the
guys holding me captive. What the fuck is wrong with me? I steeled myself to
focus on the immediate problem.
“Who is this Ozone again?” I asked Betsy. “I think I should talk to him.”
The handcuffs gripped my wrists painfully but I jerked again and felt,
surprisingly, something snap back there. My arms almost flew out to my sides
as the cuffs separated. I was able to keep my arms in the same position,
smiling up at Caballo, who seemed as distracted by me as I was by him.
A digital tune played and Aybie flipped open a cell phone. “Yeah?” I saw
his gaze slide toward me and then away. “Sure. I can talk.” He strolled across
the room and into another room.
“Watch him,” he said to Caballo and Betsy, and disappeared into the other
room, speaking rapidly in a thickly accented Spanish.
I strained to hear his words, but Caballo rocked his chair nosily on the
floor and said, “He don't like you, man.”
“He doesn't like you either,” I told him. “What are you guys doing working
together?”
“It's the New World Order,” said Betsy. She had a tiny tube in one hand
and a tiny spoon in the other. She was either feeding soup to mice or snorting
coke.
Caballo rolled his eyes. “Sure, baby. It's all rainbows and butterflies.
You”—he pointed one long, well-manicured index finger at me—“would be a
shame to dust.”
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A. M. Riley
“You too, I think.” I licked my lips. It wasn't a ploy; I was thinking about
sucking on that finger. “So what are you doing in SoCal, man? You're not from
here.”
“I was in Chicago,” said Caballo, rolling his shoulders in an elegant shrug.
He stood, stretching long arms and cocking his head to one side with a funny
smile. “The winters suck there, man. And the Bloods, they killed my bro. I
decided to split.”
“And then he met Ozone,” said Betsy. She stuck the spoon in her nose
again and snorted hard. I was surprised to not feel a little tug of longing at the
sight.
“La Eme make the Bloods look like pussies,” I said.
Aybie came back into the room then, pocketing his cell phone. “That was
Ozone,” he said. “I told him what went down.”
Caballo read something in Aybie's expression. And then he and Betsy
exchanged looks. “Wait until later, Aybie.”
“He said do it now,” said Aybie.
The mood in the room changed, drifted from hot and horny to something
cool and steely. Caballo's smile disappeared and Betsy stood. “He didn't even
ask me.”
“He's the boss.” Aybie shrugged, coming around the counter. He stood
next to Caballo and regarded me with a little leer.
“Was that Ozone?” I asked, stalling for time. I braced my feet on either
side of the chair and leaned forward a little. I kept my hands pressed together
behind me so that one of them would have to look closely to see that the
handcuffs were broken.
With a feral expression, Aybie lifted the .45. I didn't have time to think it
through. The plastic chair hit the wall when I jumped, swung my metal-
encased wrist, and hit the .45 from Aybie's hand with one swing, then put my
fist into his face with the other.
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65
Aybie went down like one of those inflatable punching dolls. Betsy
screamed. And like one of those inflatable punching dolls, Aybie bounced back
up. About the time I felt Caballo's weight full on my back.
I spun, grabbing that thick hair with both hands and jerking my knee up
into his face. He sprawled while I turned to deal with Aybie, whose face,
beneath the blood I'd cause to spurt from his nose, was the fanged, yellow-eyed
monster Betsy had shown me earlier.
It must have been the blood, because I felt as if someone suddenly
cranked my engine into a higher gear.
I saw the flash of something metal in Aybie's hand. And then he moved in
a blur. I felt a bright white fire in my arm and looked down to see that Aybie
had shoved that knife in my arm up to the hilt so fast I hadn't even seen him
coming. The night lit up with pain and a desperate, primal anger that seemed
to give me the same intense clarity and drive of a chemical bump.
I kicked Aybie in the chest so hard I heard bones crack. Then, I spun in
time to plant a similar kick in Caballo's chest. The .45 had skittered into a near
corner; I went for it, and Betsy, who weighed maybe eighty pounds, suddenly
turned into s
ome kind of wolverine, jumping on me as I bent down to pick up
the gun, and biting down on my arm.
Somebody kicked the gun out of my hands. I looked up and saw it was
Aybie, but he was obviously unsure what to do, as at this point Betsy was
draped over me, clawing my face. I jumped the indecisive Aybie, and we
wrestled on the floor for the gun. I won.
Betsy's claws were all over my face, so I grabbed her with one hand and
thwapped her against the cement wall. Hey, a dog bites you, you react on
instinct, right? She flopped to the ground, probably knocked out stone-cold.
Simultaneously, Caballo jumped me, knocking me back. He sat astride
me, poising a pointed stick just over my heart, but I heaved upward and
managed to tip him off. Just barely.
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A. M. Riley
Aybie seemed actually knocked out for the moment, but Betsy was up
again and on my back. She couldn't fight worth beans but what she could do
was claw and yank at my hair. And she could do it like some kind of hellbitch. I
grabbed her face and shoved her away while grabbing Caballo by the neck and
throwing him through the air with such force he appeared to actually leave the
ground for several feet before he slammed into the wall and slid, unconscious,
to the floor, followed by the painting his body had knocked loose.
I heard footsteps and turned to see Aybie coming at me with that wooden
stick raised like he was going to stab me with it. I raised a booted foot and
kicked him hard just before he made it to me. He staggered backward into one
of the columns, the stick hanging from his hand.
On the next attack, I used Caballo's momentum and speed to throw him
past me and straight at Aybie, who took that wooden stick full in the leg.
Then Aybie was busy screaming and writhing on the floor, blood pumping.
The floor was covered with blood. It occurred to me that most of it was
probably mine, but my full attention was on Caballo, grinning like some kind of
lunatic, and circling.
I held the .45 out in front of me with both hands. “Hold it right there,” I
said.
He stopped. Looked at the gun. Laughed. And jumped right at me.
I fired.
The bullet hit him square in the chest and knocked him down, but it
seemed to do no more than that. It was like I'd thrown a pebble at the man. He
regained his feet with a neat acrobatic kip-up and his expression changed from
amusement to anger and then his face turned into the saber-toothed maw that
I'd seen on Betsy and Aybie.
I was a little more ready this time, so I met him midleap. We grabbed each
other, did a double axel in midair, and then landed together on the concrete. I
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67
was lucky I landed on top. I didn't stay there. He tossed me off and I rolled as
he leaped at me again. I stepped back and turned and he crashed into the wall.
When he spun around, still trying to recover, I landed a drop kick into his
chin then scissor kicked and put my heel into his chest. This usually will
knock an opponent out by knocking the wind out of him. I felt his sternum
compress. Even heard the snap of a rib. He didn't seem to feel anything, but
grabbed my ankle and twisted it.
It was either go with being twisted like a giant screw or let him break my
leg, so I went with it. Used his hands as my base and somersaulted into his
head, grabbing it and taking him with me, skull first, to the floor.
Aybie was back, wooden stick in hand. I turned, backhanded him, then
landed a double kick. It spun his body and when he fell, he seemed to take the
stake in his hand to the floor first. His body jerked as the stick went into him.
And then he exploded into dirt.
I heard a scream come from my own mouth. Up until this moment I had
been acting and reacting instinctively. My Marine training kicking in, I was all
visceral reaction. In the zone like I'd never been before. All of that stopped as I
processed what had just happened. Played it back mentally up to the moment
when my adversary became a heap of something you expect to find in a
crematorium urn.
While I hesitated, Betsy leaped on my back again, yanked out chunks of
hair. I swear I could hear it ripping from my scalp. Caballo staggered to his
feet, staring at the heap of dust on the floor.
“Let's get out of here, Betsy,” he said.
I made a leap and grabbed at him but he tore out of my hands. Literally,
his pants pocket tore away and a cell phone and an MP3 player clattered out
onto the ground.
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A. M. Riley
I dived at him again, but he ducked, spinning, and grabbed Betsy's hand.
Then the two of them turned, ran a few steps toward the wall, then ran straight
up the wall and through an open window.
I stared upward at the place they had disappeared, willing my brain to
process what had just transpired. No, said my brain, this is too much. No more
processing tonight. The kitchen is closed.
I was left standing in a warehouse with bad art on the wall, blood
everywhere, and a pile of dust drifting across the floor.
I picked up the dropped cell phone. And got the hell out of there.
The Caddy was exactly where I'd left it. I didn't even exercise due caution
and wait to make sure it, too, wasn't being staked out. I jumped in and started
the engine. And that's when I saw one slow loop of bright light in my rearview
mirror.
The lights and grille of Peter's Mustang grinned back at me. The temp
police light he kept on his dash, circling.
I rolled down the window and he walked up in that cautious way a cop
approaches a stopped vehicle holding a passenger he knows nothing about.
“Well, well, well,” he said.
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69
Chapter Eight
Peter trusted me as far as he could spit, I guess.
I didn't even ask him how he knew I'd go hunting despite what he'd said.
He leaned on the car and looked up and down the street, then back at me.
He didn't ask, he just looked at me.
Damn, I hated that.
“Freeway's dead,” I heard myself blurt.
The barest flinch in his eyes registered that he'd heard me. “Did you kill
him?” he asked.
“No!” I managed to look outraged. “I came out here to talk to his girlfriend
and then I trailed her to that gallery down the street.”
Peter stepped away from the car and looked back down the alleyway from
which I'd come. Then he looked back at me. The sleeve I'd taken the knife in
was drenched in blood. Blood all over my pants and shirt. “I take it that didn't
go well.”
“Could have gone better.”
“What will the unis find when they go in there?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing really. Blood but no bodies. There's a pile of
ash back there that used to be some punk calls himself Aybie. Betsy, the
girlfriend, and another dude have split. They seemed to have some kind of
superhuman powers; I saw them run straight up a brick wall.”
I heard myself and closed my lips together. Peter's expression had
changed from one
of caution to tired disappointment. “What are you on,
Adam?”
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A. M. Riley
Peter had on what I call his “intervention” face. There's been a few times
that I swear he's sitting on my shoulder like a cartoon angel. It's like he's my
Jiminy Cricket or something.
“Adam, you are an addict.”
“No, man. I had to use or they would've known I was a cop.”
“That's a lame excuse and you know it.”
“Fuck, man, my knee was killing me and I thought what can it hurt? I can
stop right now, if you want.”
A brochure on the table. “Call them.”
I got my NA one-year pin six months ago. Peter had treated me to a steak
dinner to celebrate. And, you know, the after-party back at his place. There
hadn't been a day, though, when I hadn't craved it. Until now. And if anything
in the past wacky evening had made me seriously consider that I might still
really truly be dead it was the lack of the craving. Because it never leaves you.
“I'm clean,” I said. “But there's some things I have to tell you.”
Peter's cell phone rang at that moment and he answered it, listening
patiently for a while, answering with monosyllabic words and grunts. Then he
flipped it closed and stepped back. “Get out of the car, Adam,” he said.
I climbed out slowly. I was feeling pretty damned hollow and tired, I'm
telling you. “Was that call about Freeway?”
“A.k.a Leonard Chavez of Boyle Heights?” Peter stood with one hand on
his hip, jacket pushed back so that the gun in his shoulder holster was visible.
I wondered if he was thinking of pulling it on me.
“I take it they've found him.”
“They found evidence that someone broke into the equipment shed in
Hollenbeck Park. Prior to killing Mr. Chavez. Signs of a struggle.”
“He was my CI. The one who set me up with Armante. I had to talk to
him.”
“Coincidentally, a car registered to me might have been seen in the area.”
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71
“I…borrowed your car while you were sleeping. He was dead when I found