Instead, I put a hand on her pale shoulder, meeting her velvet eyes. I’d forgotten how soft her skin was. Softer than a woman’s of twenty-something like she played at being. Softer than a baby’s bottom. So soft you wondered how she could handle that much feeling . . . until you remembered she could click off her nerve receptors with a thought. “If you’re that bored, next time just masturbate a little instead of punching me in the face, okay? We ain’t fucking, so there’s no need for our usual foreplay. Got it, Annie?”
She let me push her gently out of the way.
I got in the limo, smiling only when I knew she couldn’t see it.
“That little princess has ruined him!” I heard her screech under her breath.
Nah, Annie.
I’m just figuring out that not pushing your buttons is what works best to really rev your engine up.
[CLICK]
The limo moved the second Annie B slid inside.
Before I realized what was happening, she had her bag open, new clothes on the seat and her old ones on the floor of the limo.
That’s a lot of naked.
“So . . . this is the weirdest revenge I’ve ever experienced.”
She still seemed mad I hadn’t thrown a punch. “As if you haven’t seen every inch of me before.”
“Yeah . . . I mean . . . yeah, but . . . weirdest revenge.”
“If you’d given in to me we’d be fucking right now,” she spat, unusually coarse, “or if you’d at least played the game, I’d be throwing my breasts at your face, or I’d spread my legs just so—to remind you what you’ve gone without experiencing for the last year.”
She demonstrated.
Weirdest revenge ever.
Revenge and vaginas shouldn’t go together.
“But no . . .” more words spat from her usual curving lips in nothing but hard angles, “you aren’t interested in playing, so neither am I. You want business? Here we are. Business. I need to change my clothes to something more presentable than summerwear. You aren’t leaving my sight, since—despite all your words of professionalism otherwise—I don’t trust you, King Henry. This means I change here and you can ogle to your heart’s content about what you’re never having again as long as the scent of that blond goody-goody is all over you.”
“Pretty sudden turn just because I didn’t punch you, ain’t it?”
She unrolled a black dress, a pair of underwear that had a lot in common with dental floss, a plastic baggy of good jewelry, and produced a pair of heels from her traveling bag. No idea how the dress wasn’t wrinkled, but—
There’s a naked woman sitting across from you and you’re thinking about wrinkles. This is your subconscious speaking: Annie B is right, something is very wrong with you.
“You don’t want to play, we don’t play,” she said, sliding on the underwear in such a rough, casual manner that I got negative stiffy from it.
My turn to smirk. “You’re still playing, just like an ex.”
She paused with her dress halfway up her legs, just over her knees. Okay, that one was kind of dirty hot. “How many have you thrown away, King Henry? Used and discarded?”
“Ain’t like that. My relationships are all mutual . . . and short . . . but mutually short.”
“So this will be your first experience at a jilted lover?” She finished pulling up her dress, popping her shoulder out of the socket to zip the back up. Eww . . . negative stiffy again.
“First experiences . . . it’s been awhile.”
Some of Annie B’s anger cooled as she dabbed jewelry on fingers, ears, and wrists, all of it silver and dark, changing positions until she found a motif that worked. “Well, well. Jilted lover . . .
“I can have fun with this.”
[CLICK]
The limo pulled up to a line of limos. Outside, I saw an equally long line of people, all of them in clothes not made for November weather, what fabric wasn’t giving way to skin marked with designer labels. “You’re taking me to a fucking club?”
She smiled my way, managing to convey it as sunlight on a frosted lake. I’m still angry with you, still disappointed with you, but you want to taste my wrath? You want to feel what a target of a spurned lover feels? All for your little blond princess? So be it. Amazing what a face can say. Mine usually just says ‘fuck off’ and leaves it at that. Her voice gave me the full effect, “I’m taking you to what’s underneath the club.”
“What’s with you Vamps and underground lairs? It’s the 21st century, get a fucking skyscraper or something.”
“It saves on taxes.”
“I’m sure you’re just hurting. How long’s your 401k been building up? Since your hubby cut your head off?”
She didn’t say anything.
I took it as a point scored and kept going, “He was a ginger, right? What was that like? I mean, trying to seduce a ginger, wow, that’s a tough one to stomach. How’d you hold back the gag reflex? Or do you dig the firecrotch? Is that it? Or do you have that particular set of genes sitting around in your family too? I mean, your daughter was one too—”
Annie B was across the limo in a flash. Her hands wrapped around my throat, but she didn’t squeeze. “You never belittle her in any way,” she said, velvet eyes threatening judgment day. “Do you understand?”
Guess I found a new button. A sensitive one. “Yeah, I hear you, Annie.”
She blinked, realized that not only were her hands wrapped around my throat, her thighs were wrapped around my hips. Hell of a way to go if you gotta go. “I’ll be at the bar,” she whispered before leaving me there with half a stiffy.
Prince Henry, biggest traitor of them all.
Well . . . big-enough-to-do-what-he-needs-to-do traitor of them all.
I sat there for a bit, limo moving along the line. “Yup, she wasn’t this nervous when she thought she was going to die. Can’t be good, Price, can’t be good.”
Might have felt bad for her if she hadn’t kidnapped me and stole all my shit not a few hours before.
“Million dollars, dumbass, don’t forget,” I reminded myself before exiting the limo and heading for the entrance.
Apparently, they knew I belonged, since not one guy in the whole squad of bouncers attacked me for stepping around the rope-line. Can’t say I’m one for clubs. Bars, sure. College bars, double sure. Not hip though. Not a place with hundred dollar drinks, thousand dollar call girls, and more drugs than a Scarface reenactment.
For one: I wasn’t dressed for it.
Guess I made it to dressed up after all, Val. Too bad you ain’t here for me to see what you would’ve worn. Beat up geomancer’s coat and jeans. My usual. Few hours into the crazy and already got my blood stained across them. It’s a record.
Blood on my clothes and my poor motorcycle not in sight, no way to escape but on foot, being driven around like a good little boy just like always. Just once, man . . . just once with the motorcycle . . . and uzis . . . and a chick in a USA bikini, just once!
Nah, get a limo with a half-naked vamp who’s decided to hate my guts for the fun of it instead.
At least it ain’t Paine.
Annie B . . . I wouldn’t discount her threat level, but I’m pretty sure I could take her. I could handle her with all I’ve been through and all I’ve learned . . . especially when I got my artifacts back.
Step One: Get through this meeting.
Step Two: Get artifacts back.
Step Three: ???
Step Four: Million Fucking Dollars.
Inside, the club was dark. Cuz, why pay all that money on décor if not to hide it in shadows, lasers, and a fog machine? Totally not my fucking scene, I thought again about being out of place. Dancing all over the floor and even on some of the tables. Nothing like walking into a room and seeing a hundred butts shaking in your face.
You ever get into an argument with a hardcore idiot talking about evolution being a sham then just bring ‘em to a club like this. Let them watch all the ladies throwing their asses a
round then play a video of baboons in heat doing the same thing.
Human beings, so fucking special.
Until sex is on the line.
Then it’s Ass Up in the Air time for the ladies and Hump the Imaginary Hole time for the gentlemen.
How the fuck did this species survive long enough to take over the planet?
Oh yeah . . . we taste really good.
Same way pigs did it.
And just like them, we don’t know we’re bacon until it’s too late.
I found the bar.
Hard to miss it, it being so long and crowded with people. Somehow, Annie B had found a seat for herself. Guess some poor sucker made room. Some poor sucker who would’ve got sucked dry on any other night. Lucky she’s got business, pal. Lucky all her ammo is pointed at me. I slid up beside her, grinning over the crowd of suitors hanging just a few steps away, with even more across the room wanting in on the action.
When it comes to Baboon Ass Time . . . Annie B’s a master and she don’t even set it a jiggling.
“Shit, Fanged Lady, how many free drinks so far?”
She downed whatever blue concoction someone had sent to her. “Plenty of them, but not the one I want at the moment.”
“They serve the one you want here?” There’s my curiosity, throwing me down holes no human should venture if they want to escape without a few new holes of their own.
“Downstairs. The Second Floor. I’ll top up after our meeting.” She gave me another I-Hate-You smile. “If you live through it then I’ll let you watch. I know just the gentleman to tap.”
“You drinking?” a pissy bartender asked. Guy was getting mad tips on all the drinks flying Annie B’s way and I’d blocked the flow by showing up.
“Nah, man can’t get good and drunk with swamp donkeys like this one roaming around just waiting for prey. Got to stay sober, protect the helpless, ya know?”
“Now I don’t know—” he started.
“Don’t know shit,” I agreed. I showed him some teeth. “Go back to pouring bottles before I break your stock.”
“Listen—”
“Do what he says,” Annie B snapped at the guy. Way he moved to comply, guy was in on her not-so-human classification.
My presence or not, the drinks kept arriving over the next few minutes. Guess they figured a rough, not-so-pretty, short motherfucker like me ain’t got a chance with Annie B. If only. You and the crazy ones, King Henry, always the fucking crazy ones. Even Val’s crazy. Crazy bright, but still crazy. Seen her turn too many people into piles of ash to think otherwise.
Hell, who am I kidding? The crazy ones are the only ones I know how to handle.
After drink number six or seven—vampire metabolism is just unfair on the wallet—Annie B turned to me. “Ready to die, King Henry?”
“You first, Annie.”
[CLICK]
Down, down, baby.
Down, down the roller coaster.
Next floor was another club just like Annie B said. This one was populated with even hotter chicks, more chiseled pretty boys, and a collection of about a hundred Vamps in various stages of undress. Wasn’t as open as the one above, more private rooms lining the sides, but . . . you could still peek in easy enough and no one inside seemed to mind.
Probably because they were busy.
Busy running silver knives over soft flesh.
Annie B smirked the whole way, enjoying my discomfort.
Not at the sex.
I grew up with JoJo Price. I slept in a room with twenty-nine other teenagers for four years. My sensitivity to nearby sexual relations went away a long time ago. But . . . being around so many vampires immediately set me on edge. A hundred vampires. A hundred blood creatures wanting to stick themselves inside of me for a taste. Even with the Shaky Stick those odds would be chancy. Naked, without any artifacts, I wouldn’t have a chance.
I’d be dinner.
For the whole room.
Japanese tentacle shit at Table One.
Watch out for your bunghole.
“I promise I won’t let them touch you, baby boy,” Annie B teased.
“They look . . . distracted.”
“Yes, the Nine-Headed Spitting Dragon is rather intense.”
I was silent for awhile.
Not cuz I was nervous.
Cuz I was thinking about it.
We exited that club as well, heading down more stairs to a wall of elevators.
“Figure out the nine heads yet?” she asked.
“Shut up, I’m working on it.”
We got inside an elevator. Annie B pressed a button for a floor way, way down there. Bowels of the earth type shit. Least I’m surrounded by weapons. Too bad I don’t have the Shaky Stick. I could rid the world of its biggest blood sucking pest infestation.
“I could demonstrate the positions if it would help. Though a few of them would require your hands on my—”
“You just keep on that side of the elevator and leave me to my befuddlement.”
It got colder by the floor.
I’m unsure at what else the elevator doors might have opened to floor by floor. Offices? Apartments? Armories? All seemed likely.
San Francisco might have the oldest Embassy west of the Mississippi, but Los Angeles has been the vampiric capital and the Los Angeles Embassy their capitol for the last one-hundred years.
Vamps have always been migratory, chasing humans and cool weather, sometimes both. Ur, Babylon, Carthage, Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople, Paris. All have laid claim as the City of Suck, but now it’s all Los Angeles. The Asylum being founded next door and a couple world wars had something to do with the last move, but so far there hadn’t been one since.
As if being a Shit Magnet wasn’t bad enough, right?
“Who are we seeing?” I finally asked.
History of Elementalism hadn’t covered this far into vampire hierarchy. I’ve gone over before what I knew from school: servant, gentle, baron, marquess, count, duke. Knew there was more, heard the whispers and the rumors, but never any confirmation. As that elevator kept going down and the air kept getting colder . . . confirmation bias incoming, do a Matrix move or go splat, King Henry.
“Be on your best behavior,” Annie B warned.
I eyed her for a bit. “You fucking with me?”
“Sadly not. You won’t let me and here I put so much effort into it,” she whispered to herself, shaking her head.
The elevator dinged, the doors opened.
Into a hallway.
Dark hallway, LED lights up top and along the walls.
Annie B motioned to a cabinet at the side of the elevator. “Would you like a coat? Gloves?”
I eyed her some more. “Why you being friendly all of a sudden?”
Rolling her eyes, she went past me, picked out a pair of gloves, and handed them to me. “To confuse you, is it working?”
It was cold as fuck, my balls shriveling on up and my fingers shaking, so I put the gloves on. Reminded me of the temperature at the San Francisco Embassy . . . minus about ten degrees.
Extra cold.
She’s nervous, I’m nervous . . . feel like I’m in the Death Star all of a sudden.
Black and white, the place looked like it.
The hallway was massive for something underground, the walls slanting into a point maybe twenty-five feet over my head. Made it look smaller down at the other end, but it was all perspective. Made it look like it went on forever too.
Some infinity on display.
Or enough infinity to remind a little mancer or a little Were that they weren’t the biggest fish in the ocean.
Guess that’s true, even if I don’t want to admit it. But then, I’ve met even bigger fish than the Vamps now . . . he just don’t live in the same ocean as us.
Shaky Stick would have also been nice so I could escape into the Geo Realm.
Hadn’t been crazy enough to go back there yet. But one day, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to.
&n
bsp; Questions needed answered.
Unless I can get them from another source.
Like some really old, stanky ass, rotting vampires.
Had to be careful though.
Didn’t know what I was stepping into.
“Some kind of elected body of dukes and duchess or something?” I asked Annie B as we started down the hallway.
She snorted, giving another roll of her eyes.
“Don’t want to do the wrong thing, but if you don’t prepare me I could call ‘em all fucktards or—”
Annie B had me against a wall, her hand yet again around my throat before I could object. Took some serious restraint not to blast her with my pool of anima. “Behave like your life and my life and your little blond princess’ life rides on the next half-an-hour, King Henry, because they do.”
I got enough of a grip on her arm, stuck my leg behind her heel, and tripped us to the ground, me on top. She seemed to dig that I was finally getting physical, but instead of dropping punches into her face I just held her down. “What’s Val got to do with finding whatever I need to find for you?”
Of all the shit Annie B could have done, she sniffed my wrist like it was a piece of bacon.
Fuck me, that’s some scary sniffing.
“Your little blond princess has nothing to do with that, but we aren’t only here for that. They want to hear about the Curator too. About your little talk with the fairy we’ve heard so many rumors about,” Annie B whispered into my wrist. “I’ll forgive you if you take me right here and now.”
If she licked me, I’d blast her.
There are limits.
“I don’t want you.”
“A lie . . .”
“Bullshit.”
“You might not play with me because playing would hurt your little blond princess’ feelings,” Annie B said, finally staring up at me with those velvet eyes, “but we both know you still want me.”
“Who are we meeting with?” I growled at her.
“Suddenly he doesn’t protest,” she teased.
“Fine . . .” I pushed off of her to stand up, her head going thunk on the stone flooring. “Guess I’ll just play it my usual way.”
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 9