“No,” he groaned, but his body wouldn’t listen as he rammed himself upward into her, making her hands clench the muscles in his chest so painfully that they had to have torn into his flesh. “Amanda. Please!”
She pushed her hair back as she rode him, a gleeful look in her eyes. “Amanda? Who’s Amanda? That bitch is dead.” Fangs flashed, the smile gone in an instant as her mouth opened widely, then dashed towards his neck. Just as her fangs entered his flesh he felt his orgasm hit.
II
“No!” he screamed as he sat up in bed, hands going to his neck to protect against her bite.
She wasn’t there; it had been a dream.
A fucked-up dream.
His crotch was wet.
Damn it all to hell.
Groaning, he fell backward onto the bed and tried to slow his breathing. He was alive, that’s what mattered. The girls were okay, as far as he knew, and his wife was no longer amongst the undead. His mind had thrown random events together and constructed some fucked up narrative, but none of it had actually happened.
Other than the mess between his thighs.
That hadn’t happened since he was a teenager, he always woke before any kind of wet dream came to fruition. Why had it done so now? Was he that exhausted that his body just said fuck it? Then why allow him to wake at all?
Moving slowly, he reached for the new phone he’d been given and hit the power switch; it was after five. He’d been asleep for nine hours and no one had woken him. Had he been left behind while they went out to tackle the monster that was haunting his dreams?
No messages. No calls. No voicemails.
Either all was quiet, or they had forgotten about him.
Curious, he opened the contacts list and noticed that new numbers had been put in, all by their nicknames; probably in case someone got ahold of it. Clicking on Hoops, he tapped the message button and asked if everything was okay.
There was no immediate answer, so he brought his legs around and got to his feet, then immediately sat right back down.
Damn, I’m sore.
Maybe it was the ringer he’d been put through, the lack of sleep during, or the extra gear he’d been toting around, but his back and thighs were pissed. Not to mention the crick in his neck. There was a muscle on the right side of his neck that was swollen and bunched up; it would not let up no matter how much he tried to rub it out. He probably hadn’t moved much in his sleep, leading it to swell up even more.
He glanced at his phone; nothing.
Sighing, he got up and went to the bathroom. Turning the knob on the shower, he let the water begin to heat as he relieved himself, his kidneys aching as if he hadn’t gone in days. Flushing, he let his shorts drop to the floor, then used his hand to lift and put them on the counter. Yanking off his shirt, he felt a twinge in his back and grunted.
“Fuck. Didn’t realize I was this out of shape.”
Stepping into the shower, he let the warm water run over his back and couldn’t help just standing that way for a few minutes; it felt good.
His phone rang.
“Son of a bitch!”
Pushing back the shower curtain, he fumbled at his phone and managed to hit accept. “Yeah?”
“Welcome back to the land of the mostly living,” Renny greeted. “I hear the shower. That’s good. Don’t take this wrong, but you needed it. We’ve got lunch if you want some grub.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said, water dripping on the floor as the call ended. He reached for the soap and lathered himself up, making sure that he got his crotch as well. The last thing he needed was Ezio’s keen senses picking up any untoward scents.
A mental image of Ezio on all fours sniffing crotches flashed through his head and he broke into laughter. The sudden humor felt almost as good as the warm water flowing over his body and it died prematurely as he opened his mouth to tell Amanda what he’d been laughing about. It had been an unconscious act, but it stung deeply, his heart aching at the memories of her loss. There probably wasn’t much he could think on that wouldn’t remind him of her. This is my life now. As much as I hate it, I’m just going to have to get used to it.
Turning off the shower, he grabbed a towel and started drying himself off. He was not at home, his wife was not with him anymore, and there were people dying for no other reason than they knew him. The last vestiges of humor slipped away as he exited the bathroom, grabbed the new set of clothes someone had kindly left out for him, and began to get dressed.
Left my suitcase at the plantation house. At least someone is looking out.
Three minutes later, he opened the door and glancing into the darkened empty hallway he suddenly remembered where he was; underground. He had vague recollections of arriving at a motel, entering one of the rooms, and being led to a fake wall and a set of stairs. There was a Super 8 or something above them and whether it or this secret bunker of theirs had been built first didn’t matter; it existed.
He didn’t want to think about what might be going on in the rooms above, and instead concentrated on moving forward and dealing with the issues that had sprung to existence around him. It was fucked-up, that’s all there was to it. His life had gone to shit simply because his wife met a superficial description given by an asshat vamp, one that so many others might have matched had they not had the bad luck of eating at a restaurant where a valet could put the target on her. You may order a bass grilled with mushroom sauce, but no one singled out the fish by name; it just happened to be the first thing your fingers landed on when you reached into the freezer. He didn’t like thinking of his wife as a fish dangling from a fisherman’s pole, so he drove it from his mind the best he could.
He stepped into a large chamber and the conversation being carried on within.
Kayumi had been around when he arrived, he remembered that much, but neither she nor Ayana were present. Whether they were absent from the bunker altogether or just in a different room he had no clue. Benji wasn’t there either, but that didn’t appear to be any different than usual. The man seemed to come and go as he pleased.
Ezio was busy messing around with the microwave while Renny sat at a nearby table chewing on a chicken leg and waving the bone at his teammate. “Don’t you like it raw? I figured fried would be offensive to your delicate appetite,” the latter teased as Ezio pulled a rotisserie chicken from the microwave’s innards.
“And you’ve been with me long enough to know better,” the other man shot back as he turned, sparing him a quick glance.
Renny followed his gaze, “hey, about time you were up and about. Want some chicken?”
“Depends, is it KFC or Popeyes? I’m not a fan of that Cajun stuff,” he returned, looking for a bag with a logo on it. “Not much into spicy foods.”
From behind Renny’s back appeared a bucket with a Colonel on the side, the telltale red and white making him grin with pleasure. “Don’t be knocking Cajun food, especially in this part of the world. Likely to get your ass beat. I turned my nose at that chicken and waffles crap and nearly got jumped by a twenty-year-old girl with pigtails. They take that shit personal.”
“That they do. At least you didn’t go after the grits, then you’d really be in the shit,” he laughed, going to the nearby counter and grabbing a plate.
“They look like someone’s already had the shits,” Ezio snorted, sitting down at the table.
He heard Naomi’s voice and saw her in the corner of the room leaning over a computer chair, where he assumed Speedy was busy doing his hacker thing. “Are you sure they aren’t tracking it? We’ve already been burnt once, don’t need that shit happening again. I swear to God, I’ll kick your ass, será mejor que lo creas.”
“I see they are still hard at it,” he remarked, pulling out a chair and taking a seat. It was one of those white folding tables and someone had thrown an ugly ass red and white patterned table cloth on it, held down with brown strips of packing tape. “I would prefer to not get arrested again anytime soon.”
&nb
sp; Naomi either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to respond.
“Oi pulled de SIM card on dat before we lef de gaff. I’m in their network, de fone isn’t even on,” Speedy’s higher voice responded, what he was working on completely hidden from view.
“And they haven’t discovered you yet? We don’t want this place burnt either. If you can’t do this safely, then we need to turn it over to the London office, let them take a crack at it, at least get a list of where these fuckers are before they catch on and rabbit,” Naomi replied back, the occasional curse word uttered under her breath and barely recognizable.
“Naw, I’m deep within their codin’. Either they’re not trig ter waaat I’m doing, or they don’t care,” the younger man said.
Renny briefly looked in their direction. “Hope it’s not that last one, otherwise something’s up and we’re probably fucked.”
“Always quick to jump to the bad,” Ezio teased, tearing off a large chunk of chicken and chewing it loudly. “My grandmother always said, se giochi con un coltello, gli angeli ti scappano via e se giochi con il fuoco farai pipì nel tuo letto.”
“And that means what?” he ventured, not speaking a lick of Italian.
“Who knows? She was a crazy old bat,” Ezio muttered with a grin.
Renny shrugged and waved his chicken leg again, “can you blame me though? It’s not like today has given me reason for anything else. If you figure out how many ways this all can go to shit, I guarantee we hit just about every one of them.”
“I can’t believe they wouldn’t care,” he said, ignoring them and looking at Naomi’s back. “If I understand right, you have the location of every bloodsucker that uses that app. Kind of paints bullseyes where it hurts the worst, their wallet. If you start taking them out, they’ll lose business, and they’re bound to give a shit then.”
“Trying to distance yourself and talk around it doesn’t help,” Naomi returned, giving him a saddened look. “I know, I’ve tried. Sad thing is, shutting the app down does nothing either. They’ll just make a new one, one that we won’t have access to, and business will go on. Even attacking them at the source isn’t all that helpful. It’s a virtual world and where one server goes down, five more will spring up to take its place. It’s like trying to caulk a crack in a dam and praying the water won’t break through.”
“Hail Hydra!” he snarked, getting a chuckle from Renny, but it was the perplexed look from Ezio that added the real humor to the remark.
Renny waved the unspoken question away and said, “sounds like we need to find a way to drain the lake.”
“We don’t have enough people,” Naomi said, straightening up and turning. “We may get three or four before the rest catch on, then it’s back to the status quo; hacking coroner’s reports and listening to news reports for clues.”
“There has to be a better way, keep them from catching on for a bit longer,” he mused as Naomi went to the fridge and pulled a beer free.
She popped the cap and started laughing, “rookies. Only one day in and they think they can conquer the world. The vamps talk to one another. Once they figure out why their comrades have dropped off the grid, they’ll put two and two together and es todo, no más. We have three teams in North America, nowhere near enough manpower to take out the eighty or ninety of the fuckers he’s found so far. Besides, we haven’t even been able to take care of the puto we’re here for. Let’s focus on him before we take on the rest.”
“Where are we on that?” he asked, suddenly remembering where she and Ezio had gone after dropping him off earlier.
Naomi downed the last of her beer and wiped an arm across her mouth. “Hoops can fill you in. I’m hitting the showers. I stink worse than Trump’s hand after a sweaty day of pussy grabbing.”
Before he could say anything in response she was gone.
Renny laughed at his open jaw. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Or you’ll shoot yourself in the foot to get away from her,” Ezio snorted.
“Oi ‘heard dat,” Speedy added in from his shadowy corner.
Taking an offered Coke from Ezio, he popped the cap and took a drink. Damn, the caffeine felt good going down. “If she’s that bad, why follow her?”
Ezio’s eyes drifted in the direction of the hallway and his ears twitched. “She may be rough around the edges, but her heart is in the right place. She’ll rip you apart when you fuck up, talk some mad shit, but she’ll be there to put you back together when anyone else has already beat it. We may be a bunch of fuckups and assholes, but we’re her fuckups and assholes. Get me?”
“You really do got a crush, don’t you?” he smiled, seeing the light in the other man’s eyes.
“Fuck you,” Ezio snarled.
Renny cracked up even harder than before, nearly spitting his beer out in the process. “He may just fit in after all.”
Ezio rolled his eyes and shoved pizza in his mouth to keep from saying anything further.
“As to their outing, those dipshit valets couldn’t give us more than Dobby did. Was a waste of time,” Renny offered with a smirk. “We did learn that the Governor has a fundraising shindig tonight. Raising money for his Presidential campaign. I think Naomi’s planning on crashing it.”
“How the hell are we going to pull that off? I know, I’m just a rookie, but that sure as shit sounds like a suicide mission to me,” he stated, flabbergasted. “We’re supposed to be hiding from the Feds, not walking straight into their arms. We’re on the radar for killing his security detail, I’m pretty sure they’ll be watching for us.”
“Our old friend the Sheriff erased any evidence of our identities. They might get physical descriptions from others not in the know, but nothing overly detailed. It was pretty early when we got brought in. And the Governor? After tonight, he hits the road and it’ll just get harder and harder to get at him. The longer we wait the better prepared he’ll be for us. We have the Feds on the prowl, our base of operations is burnt; he’ll believe we’ve gone to ground, trying to wait it out. He’ll never see us coming,” Renny replied. “Besides, if it gets too rough, we can always have Ezio here do his impression of American Werewolf in Houston.”
“Yeah, no,” Ezio snapped, making Renny laugh once more.
Atleast someone is in a good mood.
“You want to corner a vampire in a crowd of innocents with nothing but cutlery and wine glasses for weapons? I mean, unless you have some other way to sneak our weapons into a gala protected by State Police and the Secret Service and who knows who all the hell else?” he asked, drawing a smirk from the hungry werewolf.
Renny’s smile dropped as he leaned forward. “The Governor will be on equal footing. He won’t want to expose himself anymore than we will. If he vamps out on National Television, not only is any career he covets over, but vampires are exposed on the nightly news. We may not be able to bring any weapons in, but he can’t use his either. Now, do you want to be a patron or a waiter?”
Chapter 14
I
He felt out of place hovering near the wall, eyes on the assembled crowd, the monkey suit he was wearing feeling stiff and slightly tighter than it should. They didn’t have time to run to a tailor, so he got whatever they had on the rack. He suddenly wished that he had lost the ten pounds he’d sworn off the previous New Year’s Eve.
Fighting the urge to touch his earpiece, he cast his eyes about the room and noted the men in suits at every exit; they were not taking any chances. Maybe someone else had trigged to what the Governor was about, because the amount of security checks he’d gone through since they’d got there rivaled any other he’d experienced. This was the world of Booth and Oswald, and somehow, he’d stepped through to the other side and might have his own middle name known by morning.
“This is insane,” he muttered under his breath.
One percenters, that’s who surrounded him. Those that looked down upon the rest of society as something lesser; he did not belong here. Their ages ranged from young
adult to the elderly. They were attired in splendid dresses and tuxedos, all with their noses slightly higher than they should be, their own eyes casting about as if spying neither friend nor enemy, but their next meal. He had already avoided unwanted conversations with several curious folk, each chalking him up to some newbie lurking on the outskirts of the mighty and powerful of Texas.
Sam Houston would shoot himself if he saw this shit.
There was a stage to his right and the men in suits were starting to multiply; it was drawing close to showtime.
He spied a hunched individual refilling water glasses at a table to his left, the pained look on Ezio’s face making him smirk; like it had even been a question which part he would prefer to play. He hadn’t wasted time giving Renny an answer, and the look he’d gotten from Ezio when he realized what it meant had gotten him laughing at last. Well, having to wade through the shark infested waters of high society proved to be more uncomfortable than the unseen waiter drifting from table to table; Ezio had the better pull of the straw even if he didn’t know it.
“Derek, you need to calm down. You look like you want to break that glass you’re holding over someone’s head,” Renny’s voice whispered into his ear. He was nowhere to be seen, his ability to blend in far superior to his own.
“More like jam it into their superior necks.”
“Yeah, don’t need that either bro.”
“Speedy, you get into their system yet?” Naomi’s voice asked, cutting his retort off.
The hacker had stayed back at the hotel, the internet superhighway the only source of assistance he’d be able to offer anyhow. Not like they’d had time to plan or get things into place beforehand; this was not a Danny Ocean movie.
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