by Mark Henry
“Oh fuck!” I yelled out.
And he did. He fucked me so hard and that second dick did a trick that had me coming over and over until the two of us lay coiled on the gritty floor of his beach closet. Stricken. Done.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You win, buddy.”
After a quick extrication, I pulled on my panties and lingered at the door. It occurred to me that I might not want to expose Thad just yet. He certainly came in handy—so to speak. But I’d need to find another patsy.
I dug out my cell and pressed and held the number two, speed-dialing Marithé. She answered on the third ring.
“Allo?”
“Listen,” I said. “Track down the cell phone number of the first runner-up to Miss Sandflea. Not the current runner-up but the one that had to take on the job since Miss Sandflea was massacred in an alley. Get it and text it to me pronto.”
“Got it.”
I hung up and noticed Thad’s eyebrow arch in judgment—more of a brow ridge than anything with hair on it. In fact, there wasn’t a square inch of exposed flesh on the wereshark that had a single hair. I wondered if that trait carried over to his male area. Trimming is one thing. But no one wants to go downtown and come back up with hairy souvenirs—but for Christ sake, leave a little something so that I don’t feel like I’ve just lured a twelve-year old into my car with a six-pack of beer.
“I’m going to need you, again,” I said.
He grinned. “You know where to find me.”
And with that, I made my escape.
Chapter 8
The walk back to the Dunes of Hazard was eerily calm, the breeze off the ocean stilled to a whisper. As far as walks of shame go it could have been a hell of a lot worse, shaky knees aside. I’ll say this just the once, I hardily endorse wereshark sex. If you have the opportunity and your partner’s been fed.
Go for it, I cannot stress this enough.
The thrill piggybacked on the adventure of the hunt. I had no intention of actually finding the killer before, but now I was getting a taste for it.
I walked barefoot on the sandy road, the crushed seashell path on either side was like walking on razor blades and it seemed I’d found a situation where a Louboutin heel was simply not the right shoe—hard to believe, I know—I figured it was a sign that we needed to get the hell out of there.
And fast.
What started as a faint crackling ended up a revving nightmare straight out of a Russ Meyer film. Women in chains. If the women were gay go-go dancers and the chains were uncomfortably tight gold lamé hot pants—I swear to God I saw a nut hanging out of one, not the whole sac, just one.
I dove into the dune grass as they sped by.
Fucking Golden Boys. That’s just what I needed. I decided then and there I’d be keeping that bit of hell a secret from Wendy. She’d go ballistic if she knew there was something else out there plotting to delay our route.
The popping of stray rocks in the sand diminished to a distant crackle, I bounded for the Dunes of Hazard. The windows across the front of the house were dark and the door locked. I glanced at my watch. Two in the morning, time really flew when you were in the midst of an investigation, or, you know, screwing. I’d have thought Gil, at the very least should be raring to go and waiting on the stoop for me to take him out somewhere to reek havoc.
Nothing.
Luckily my room key opened the locked front door, but as I entered the last bastion of Studio 54, I heard the soft wheeze of a sleeping human. The smell wafting from Mrs. Winterford was familiar to most writers…the rich malty scent of bourbon pushing out of the skin like bot fly larvae.
I crept passed the old woman, but something told me I’d have to drop an anvil to rustle her out of drunken slumber. I peeked at the register and noted that Wendy had been booked into a room on the main floor. Number three was halfway down the hall, conveniently located bathroom-adjacent. After listening at the door and hearing a near constant stream of curse words, figured out that Wendy was still dealing with the cloud theft. Her tone was the opposite of receptive to a fun night on the town hunting down killers.
Thank god for spongy floor-coverings, disguising my retreat to the stairs. A pair of mismatched snorts drew my attention back to the sleeping writer. I stood over her, and for the first time in a long while, felt absolutely no urge to chomp into human flesh. The woman’s cheeks were chalky, yet damp as though she’d smeared herself with toothpaste. She murmured a word, just beneath intelligible. Something like garbled and angry.
Finally as she said it again, I understood it clear as a bell.
“Critics!”
The scourge of human writers everywhere. They didn’t have a clue about critical attention until they’d read a review in a supernatural rag. Humans might pride themselves on a modicum of ethics and sensitivity. But the starting point for a vampire or zombie critic—and don’t let me get started on the shapeshifting fuckers—is a flat out character assault that leads to a dissection of any written work as being a thinly veiled memoir, regardless of whether it was a thinly veiled memoir—and by thinly-veiled, I mean totally accurate. Whatever.
“Live with it,” I whispered. “You can’t kill all of them. I’ve tried.”
I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of her. I’d need it when I questioned Miss Sandflea. Kids these days are visual learners—or at least that’s what we tell ourselves to excuse the fact that they operate on a diminished vocabulary—thank you, standardized testing, we don’t need smart kids anyway.
Downstairs, a puddle of light spilled across the rug in front of Gil’s door and before I even stood before it, I could hear hushed voices, sultry slurring and the occasional moan. But there was a mechanical buzz that didn’t read vibrator, but rather computer.
You have to understand that by this point, I’d seen Gil in flagrante delicto on a number of occasions as his feeding sometimes kicks into something a little more sensual/disgusting. So I twisted the knob and peeked in.
The light was glaring. Or lights rather.
Three of them, set up on tripods next to a camera, all pointing at the bed and Gil, sprawled out, blisteringly white from head to toe, except for the sprays of blood that dotted his lower jaw, chest and arms. Masturbating furiously, his penis glowing like a light bulb.
“What the fuck?” I pressed my palm over my mouth stifling a shocked laugh.
Gil gasped and scrambled to cover himself with the blood-spattered sheet. He tumbled over the edge of the bed, struggling to shut off the camera. Shouts arose from the direction of the computer, a litany of men complaining.
“We already paid!”
“Twice as long next time, guys.” Gil promised before clamping down the lid of his laptop. Gil turned and stared, mouth moving soundlessly.
“I’ll just go,” I said, shutting the door.
Walking slowly, I debated going back.
As a pay-for-bloodplay porn star, Gil probably felt like he needed to explain himself. The idea of it made part of me a little sad and the other part extremely happy to have something this horrible to hold over his head. The ribbing would have to be near constant. Daily. How else was he to know that I loved him?
I was on my own again and the night was young. My phone vibrated with Miss Sandflea’s number. I shot Moonglow a quick text that was, as adolescence these days requires, responded to nearly instantly. We set up a three a.m. rendezvous and I slipped the phone back in my Birkin. As I jiggled open my door, Gil bounded into the hallway, surprisingly clean and put together in a pair of jeans and a black dress shirt.
Our eyes met and he merely nodded. I did, too.
There were no words…not yet. There’d be plenty later. Plenty.
His tightened shoulders relaxed, as he rushed to hug me, stopping about a foot away.
“Oh my God.” Gil recoiled, covering his mouth as though he might vomit.
“What?”
“Did you fall into the harbor? You smell like an anchovy factory. It’s disgust
ing.”
I raised my arm and sniffed. “I don’t—”
The stairs creaked and Wendy strode in to the hall, she doubled over and howled. “Jesus!” When she regained composure she’d pinched off her nose. “What have you been up to?”
“This from the zombie who’s been polluting the Las Felicitas sewer system for the last two hours?”
“I think they’re on septic, and it’s probably full now.” Wendy grinned sheepishly.
Disgusting.
“So, while you were shitting yourself and Gil was doing God knows what on his computer. I was conducting a thorough investigation.”
“Bravo.” Wendy made a round of annoyed golf claps.
Gil cocked his head, a giddy smile replacing the disgust. “Did you find our wereshark?”
I nodded. “His name is Thad.”
“Thad?”
“Yeah and he admits to doing it, but he’s just a patsy. Totally the weapon of some sick pageant-hating psychopath. Bitch got chummed.”
“Oh.” Wendy laughed. “Listen to her tone, Gil. So dismissive. If he did it, we turn him over and motor on out of here.”
I winced. “Or how about we don’t.”
“Jesus Christ. You fucked him. Right? You fucked him?” She nodded helpfully, encouraging me to join her in that nod.
“I don’t talk about that kind of stuff.”
“Oh my God. Since when?” Gil’s eyes went wide. He rubbed his hands against his jeans legs nervously. “I didn’t get the memo that we weren’t talking about that anymore. Not that I have anything to talk about. Honest. Swear to God.” This last bit was more for Wendy’s benefit, obviously.
I glanced at Wendy and watched her eyes narrow at Gil. “You have a secret.”
“I absolutely don’t.”
For once, I wasn’t in the mood to jump on a humiliation train. I gave Gil an out. “Oh!” I shouted. “And guess who’s in town?”
“Burt Bacharach?”
“RuPaul?”
“Neither. The Golden Boys. They’ve followed us here. I had to jump into the bushes to avoid their searchlights of doom.”
“Where were they?”
“Here. Right here. Out on Ocean Lane. No clue how they found us either. It’s really eerie.”
Wendy’s playful demeanor disappeared instantly. She approached with her index finger stiff as Gil’s blood-misted dick. “I’m warning you, Amanda. If we’re not on the road tomorrow night, I’m gonna be really pissed.”
“So, this right here,” I gestured to her current countenance. “Is just mildly aggravated?”
She spun without another word and disappeared up the stairs.
I glanced at my watch and then up at Gil, “You wanna go shake down a teenager?”
“Duh.”
A quick spritzing of my Issey Miyake and we were outside. Gil’s hips and legs protruded from the floorboard of Mrs. Winterford’s handicap-accessible van, his Chuck Taylor scuffing against the gravel for leverage. The car cranked up and we jumped in, creeping backward from the driveway and out onto Ocean Lane.
“Where’d you learn to hotwire a car?”
Gil shrugged. “Internet. I do a lot of browsing.”
Having fed less than six hours previously, Gil should have been flush with blood, rosy around the cheeks. Instead in the glow of the dash lights he appeared sallow and jaundiced. It didn’t take an addictions specialist to figure out that Gil had a problem with being overly connected to the electronic world and completely disconnected from his old love...dick.
Or should I say, other people’s dicks.
“Alright,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “Spill it.”
Gil rubbed his lips, as though preparing to reveal some life-altering secret. “Jesus. All right. But keep it to yourself, okay?”
I nodded.
“A while back, totally innocently, I started jerking off with fade cream.”
The cigarette dangled from my lip. I was at a loss for words—a rare occurrence, you must admit, so make a note of it.
Gil raised his hand as though he were being sworn in as a witness for the defense. “I’m telling you, Amanda. My dick never looked younger.”
“You’re a vampire, Gil. You should have a perpetually youthful dick.”
He waved off my suggestion. “Yeah, but it’s really pink now. Like uniformly pink. You can barely see the veins.”
I tried to scrub the image from my brain. “Is this like a mid-life crisis or some shit?”
“No, no. I had just been shooting for that just grown-in adolescent look. It’s perfectly natural.”
“You know, I guess I was wrong. It’s perfectly okay for friends to keep secrets from each other, particularly one’s like that.”
He waved off my comment. “Anyway, I shot off a quick email to the fade cream company, asking if they’d ever heard of this particular effect. The guy I spoke with was very excited.” Gil leaned over and whispered the next bit, salaciously. “Wanted to see it for himself.”
“Of course.”
“He asked if I had Skype, and I’ve never heard of that and really hoped it wasn’t some STD, but it was right there on my computer, a program that lets you talk to someone through the little camera. So…I did it.”
“You jerked off, blood spewing all over yourself in the process? With photography studio lighting?”
“The diffusers help with glare. But no. That’s just where I got the idea. There’s money to be made from the vast network of perverts around the world. I could bankroll an island nation with my shtick.”
Now, I don’t have a problem with self-exploitation. My mother is the strip club queen of Seattle, after all. And I can tell you, from actual conversations with those women (and some men) that they use the money they make shoving their ass in men’s faces for purely philanthropic purposes.
I mean meth, obviously.
But Gil? Gil was brilliant at business—sort of—his last scheme, a luxury vampire-turning business, had netted him at least a few million. I couldn’t help but think his current business opportunity had more to do with attention seeking than financial solvency.
I sighed, turning onto the actual tarmac from the sandy lane. “You need to figure out another way to get over Vance.”
“My online support group says social network friends are just as valid as IRL friends. Especially ones that pay for the privilege.”
I rolled my eyes. “And yet, every time I see you I can’t help noticing how invalid you’ve become. In fact, you’ve lost something.”
“Oh really? And what might that be?”
“Your edge. Your bite. I’ve seen you feeding and even that connection, body to body isn’t doing it for you anymore. Did you even drain that girl tonight?”
Gil laughed. “Of course.”
“Completely?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe?”
“So blasé. It makes me sick. You used to be so passionate about your kills you’d even screw some of them. Remember? It was disgusting but I couldn’t fault your enthusiasm.”
Gil stared out the front window, the occasional streetlight illuminating a sadness I knew was there, but wasn’t sure how to fix. Was it even my place to fix it? For nearly three years, Wendy, Gil and I had been nearly inseparable and it seemed I wasn’t any closer to figuring out what it meant to be a friend.
“You’re jealous of Wendy,” he said, finally.
“Oh Jesus fuck. How do you figure?”
“Wendy used to be your henchman and now she has one of her own. You miss the power dynamic. Now, Wendy’s a drug dealer, maybe you could be a pimp? Look at that girl over there, she could totally be turned out.”
I glanced up ahead. Sure enough, Lizzy Stroheim, aka Moonglow, waited outside the park gate, kicking the rock columns with the back of her heels and glancing optimistically at passing cars. If I didn’t know she was waiting for me, I’d have totally pegged her for a hooker, a character trait that I’m sure wouldn’t fly with the judges of Mi
ss Sandflea. Pageant queens were stripped of titles for far less. I read about one local beauty canned for a photo her boyfriend took of her shoving a gumball up her twat. It wasn’t even that dirty. He was quite a good photographer. Plus afterword his breath was really minty. Win-win.
I pulled the van over a block up from the waiting girl.
“You might consider disconnecting, Gil.” I took a drag off my cigarette, pointing it in his scowling direction.
Gil hit send on whatever text he was typing and slipped the phone into his pocket, sighing. He stared out the window. “Don’t pretend you’re doing the noble thing, Amanda. You’re not Becky Swinton’s avenging angel. Hell, she’d probably have ended up whoring herself out before graduation and shitting six kids out of her cooch straight into a trailer court toilet. Your actions seem more like procrastination.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know, figuring out what you’re going to do with this life? You’ve been floating since the show bombed.”
I shook my head. I was not having this conversation. Absolutely not. “I wrote a goddamn book since then.” (Happy Hour of the Damned, $4.59, while supplies last)
“Whatever, you dictated notes to some poor writer you kept locked in a trunk in your guest room. He wrote the book.”
“Hey, I released him into the wild. He didn’t have any of his own stories.”
Gil pouted. “I’ll alert Amnesty International.”
“I appreciate your deflection. I really do. But it’s not going to work on me, Gil. You should know that. I’ve been deflecting since kindergarten.
“Well…” Gil started to say something, but I found myself distracted by a flyer stapled to the telephone pole next to us. A wanted poster for an oddly feminine looking molester named Buck with the fakest mustache ever. Underneath the copy read: Last seen stalking the rest stops and small parks of the coastal highways.
I pointed it out. “What do you make of that?”
Gil swiveled toward the poster, stabbed his thumb in its direction. “You mean Bucky the Guck?”