Go me.
At least, that was what I was saying until I entered my own apartment. Then it was more like, “Fuck me.”
And not in the good way.
Here's Jorge!
“’Sup, slut,” was the greeting I received from my murderous ex. If I wasn’t scared shitless, I’d berate him for ruining the congratulatory pat on the back I’d just given myself for not doing a slut walk. “Look at her, Leo. She’s not even wearing pants.”
Dammit. Why did I keep finding myself in compromising situations with men without putting pants on?
Jorge sat in the little armchair in the corner of my living room with the reading light shined on himself to appear more ominous than he needed to. He was a scary fucker. ‘Nuff said. Leo, one of his top lieutenants, was sitting on the couch when I entered, but got up to stand beside his capo with his legs spread wide and his hands clasped behind his back. Another position meant for intimidation.
“H-how did you find me?” I knew. I was simply stalling.
“Funny thing. Your bitch-ass handler, Peter Whitehead, told me the neighborhood he put you in, but wouldn’t give an exact address unless I paid him one million.” That fucker. “That fucker.” Exactly.
Jorge went on, “He didn’t realize that I have men that can find what I’m looking for with very little information. I finally had him taken care of, especially after he claimed he was getting proof that would put me behind bars. But tell me, Mariposa, what have you been doing with all my men? They keep finding themselves offed instead of offing you.”
“What? Me? I have nothing to do with it. That guy from the park today, he’s the one killing your guys. He probably wants the bounty for himself.”
He clucked his tongue several times. “First off, bitch, ain’t no bounty on you. I sent men to kill you because I want you dead. The lined up to kill you because they want you dead just as bad.”
I shouldn’t have been, but I was shocked. I wanted to fall into the couch and sit, but I didn’t want to get any closer to him. “Why?”
“You killed our brother, poor Marco. Then you went to the DEA on me, Kiera. What kind of conniving bitch does shit like that? Why wouldn’t they want you dead?”
What was this called? Gaslighting? Crazymaking? If I wasn’t so scared that Leo would pull his pistol out of the back of his jeans at any moment, I be going off. “You know exactly why I put that knife through Marco’s gut. You all had tortured him beyond recognition. He wouldn’t have survived. You said so yourself.”
“I never tortured him, Kiera.”
“No, you didn’t. You never touch anyone or anything yourself. No one except me, that is.”
He stood, and I shrank back toward the wall behind me as if it could swallow me into safety. “You’re right. I didn’t torture Marco. I told people to. I didn’t kill him. You did. I didn’t kill your goody-goody handler in Phoenix. I sent men to make that car wreck. Just like I had Enrique kill your new, not-so-good handler when he became trouble. Luckily, he, Leo, and I got into town last night. But now Enrique is missing. I don’t do bad things, but I can make them happen. Right now, you’re the only one causing trouble.”
“Lies,” I whispered, cowering then, my gusto lost. Suddenly, I was the girl who lay silently with a fist around her throat waiting for her lover to come.
“No lies, Kiera. Three of my men are dead and one is missing. Is that supposed to be a coincidence? Naw, girl. You’ve got someone protecting you. Maybe the fucker upstairs that screams your name. If he’s mafioso, that pussy of yours just may be enough to get a man to kill for you. They love pussy.”
“Leave him alone.”
“Who is he, Mariposa? Tell me. Whose bitch are you now?”
Those That Sleep Like the Dead...
I walked, step by step, back up to Freddie’s apartment still in my underwear. This time, Jorge had his blade in my side and his hand around my mouth. Leo climbed the stairs ahead of us with his pistol raised, trained on the door to the apartment. I cursed the fact that I’d left the door unlocked to return, but, really, how was I to know that two psycho assholes were waiting downstairs for me. It’s not like two totally different assholes warned me this might happen just hours beforehand. Fuck! I never listen to anyone.
Leo silently twisted the knob and pushed the door open, then scanned the kitchen/living room combo area quickly. The sun was beginning to rise so there was just enough light for him to see that my lover wasn’t there waiting for them. Nope. He was still sleeping like a rock, I was sure. There was about to be another death I could add to the list of those I was responsible for.
Jorge jabbed the knife further into my side. If he kept doing that, it would break skin. “Where is he?” I pointed to the bedroom, not even attempting to tell a pointless lie.
The three of us moved toward the back in a line. When we got to the bedroom door, Leo pushed it open with the barrel of his gun. It was pitch black in there, but as the door opened wider to let us all in, a hint of light from the other room seeped in. I could barely make out Freddie’s sleeping form on the bed, still posed as if he was spooning me. His arm draped across the bed where I was lying less than an hour before. I wanted to be back in that place. Not worried about food or very human monsters. Just wrapped up in the arms of a man that cared. A normal, everyday, working guy who’d never ran drugs or killed anyone in his life. I assumed.
Leo moved to Freddie’s side of the bed. He was whisper quiet, holding the gun to Freddie’s head. Me, unable to shout and warn him due to the meaty hand over my mouth. I felt a single tear run down my cheek. It dropped onto Jorge’s wrist.
Simultaneously, Jorge growled at me, digging the knife into my side so hard that I felt the sear of it piercing into me, and Leo stepped on a floorboard that creaked. Freddie’s brow furrowed in his sleep, and his nose looked as if it was scenting the air. That was the last thing I saw clearly that made any sense.
Somehow, suddenly, Freddie was up, wide awake, naked, and tearing at Leo’s arm with his fingernails. No...claws. The gun fired twice. I’m sure the shots hit him, but he didn’t flinch. Then it—the gun—was on the floor, and Freddie had taken Leo’s head and turned it at an odd angle. He appeared to be biting Leo’s throat, like what you’d expect from every vampire movie you saw.
Jorge was stupefied to the point he appeared to have had a petrificus totalus spell on him, so I took that opportunity to grab the gun off of the floor and turn it on him. His eyes, wide with amazement and fear, slid slowly to me. I knew I wasn’t prepared to shoot. Instead, I said, “Get out. Now,” and cocked my head toward the door. That seemed to shake his frozen body into action. He ran. Fast.
I turned the gun on Freddie, dripping with blood, standing over Leo’s limp body that appeared to have been tossed to the floor like an ugly rag doll. Could I shoot Freddie? Did he just save me or is he the monster I’m really supposed to fear?
He wiped his mouth quickly with the back of his hand. “Why did you tell him to go? I can make room in my freezer for both of them.”
“What?”
“I already drained this one of blood. He’s ready to be processed into cuts for you. The other one would need to drain out in the closet into the bucket. That would take a few hours. Plenty of time to get this one out of the way before I went to work on the other.” He paused looking oddly calm and clear-headed. “By the way, I assume one was your ex?”
“Y-yeah. The one that ran.”
Freddie shook his head. “Damn.”
“W-what did you do, Freddie? What are you?” I finally got out the question I needed to ask. Actually, I needed to run, but for some reason I wasn’t scared. Just confused as all hell.
He stepped over Leo and came to me, reaching out to stroke my arm and getting blood all along the length of it. “Darling, this wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. I was getting close to telling you, but this—” he swept his arm at Leo’s corpse, “—this is too much at once, isn’t it?”
I stupidly nodded my
head, and he wrapped his arms around me. The blood that dripped from him transferred onto me. We stood there for a moment both covered in the slippery red substance. I reached out and put my arms around him as well. I wasn’t grossed out or afraid. I was enticed. It was the smell that calmed me. That sweet, richness that I recalled from dinner. My tongue slowly licked Freddie’s skin, and the taste hit me.
Yes. This is what I craved.
And I think Leo had carnitas for dinner.
...Are Actually Dead.
“Explain this to me one more time,” I demanded as I washed the blood from Freddie’s back under the spray of his shower. The backside of him was almost as nice as the front. Almost.
“What part don’t you get, love?” He seemed genuinely confused.
“All of it.” Twenty minutes ago he’d given me all the details as he shaved Leo’s body, cut it into parts, wrapped them with saran wrap, and discarded most of the organs, along with once-pristine white towels, into a garbage bag. I still didn’t understand.
“I’m a vampire.”
“That part I get. It makes sense. I should have guessed when I literally never heard you or saw you go out during the day. Your grandfather was the same way.”
“Actually, I am my grandfather.”
Now that didn’t make sense. “What does that mean?”
He faced me and started to scrub my breasts. They’d already been cleaned. He was fooling no one. “I started abstaining from blood sixty years ago. I don’t starve, I just age. When I drank your blood that night, I spontaneously returned to the age I was when I was first turned. But I needed an excuse to give you, so... sick grandfather.”
“So, eighty-year-old you attacked me on my way home from work, hypnotized me to forget everything, and twenty-year-old you started seducing me.”
“Pretty much,” he said as he pulled on a nipple. I tilted my head back and sucked in a breath, so he decided to play with the other, too. Distractions weren’t going to work.
“So, you killed Gray Eyes and the other two.”
“Yep.”
“And you kept hypnotizing me every time I got too suspicious?”
“Well, eh...” He used his thumbs to draw circles around my very erect nipples.
“‘Eh,’ what?” Two could play at that game. I reached for Hammerdick’s hammer, which was smooth and fully, uh, forged. A little squeeze, and he got a bit more talkative.
“I did. I didn’t think you were ready for the truth—which, by the way, I always intended to tell you...eventually.”
“So, Jorge was right. The guy I was fucking was the killer all along.”
“Better them than you, darling.”
“True.” I stopped squeezing and stroked instead for good behavior. “And what am I again?”
“A familiar.”
“That sounds like a pet.” He smiled and one of his hands found its way to something it actually could pet.
“It’s more of a symbiotic relationship. I drink the blood. You eat the body. Vampires created familiars long ago to keep villagers from being suspicious of bodies turning up everywhere. Bones are easier to bury. Or you can grind them up into a meal that gives the meat a nice texture when sprinkled on top.”
I wrinkled my nose, despite my eyes crossing from his ministrations between my legs. It sounded gross to my ears even though my stomach perked up at the talk of its new favorite food. “So, am I dead? Because I sound like a zombie.”
“No, you’re, well, mostly dead.”
“This isn’t The Princess Bride. Give me a straight answer, asshole.” That earned me a not-so-nice pinch of the clit. Fuck! I slapped him, and he laughed. If we were a couple, and I wasn’t sure about that yet, we were definitely odd. I refused to be his ‘familiar.’ That sounded like one step up from his bitch, and I wasn’t lowering myself to a man again.
“If you don’t eat, your body decomposes. So, yeah, I guess you’re dead. But when you eat flesh regularly, you’re perfectly fine.”
“So I’m a goddamned zombie.”
“No.”
“What would you call it, other than a familiar, because I don’t like that term.”
“I don’t know. A ghoul?”
I pushed him hard. “That’s worse. I’m not a ghost.”
He grabbed me, pulling me under the spray and smashed into me with a searing kiss. The water sluiced down our faces as he silenced me with his tongue. Against my lips, he mumbled, “A ghoul isn’t a ghost. It is an undead being that eats flesh.”
Oh. I pulled back. “It still sounds worse. I’ll just stick with zombie.”
“Whatever,” he said and turned off the shower. He stepped out and grabbed another fluffy white towel to dry off, then handed it to me to do the same. “It doesn’t matter what you call yourself, you have to eat to stay healthy. Speaking of that, are you hungry? We still have to use up what I have left over from last night.” He walked naked through the darkened apartment, grabbing Leo’s tattooed torso on the way, and went toward the kitchen. I wrapped myself in the towel and followed.
“I don’t think I want to eat people all the time to stay healthy. Isn’t there another option?”
He turned dials on the padlock to unlock the big freezer and swapped out a leg with a large chunk missing for the torso. “Not an easy one,” he said as he unwrapped the leg and grabbed my knife out of the drawer.
“Hey! I said I wanted that back!”
Freddie lifted his hand, and it morphed in front of my eyes into a deadly weapon with claws four inches long. “Well, I can use these, but I figured that’d freak you out.”
“It does, weirdo. Use the knife then.” His hand returned to normal, and he grabbed the knife again. Leaning over, he blew his breath over the leg, and it immediately thawed. “That’s a neat trick. Do you have temperature control?”
He smirked then. “Why? Would you like me to test it out on a certain region?”
“Yes, please. But feed me first, Hammerdick.”
Freddie expertly carved the meat from the bone like a trained butcher. Butcher? Oh shit. Remembering their tense banter from the night before and how Freddie left with Miguel, I asked, “Uh, dear, who’s leg is that?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Worried about someone?”
“Can you read my mind?”
“I can read your feelings through our bond. It’s because I made you. We’ll always be connected.” He was very matter-of-fact.
“So...”
He stopped cutting and threw down the knife. It clanged sharply on the counter. “If you don’t want to eat it, don’t. If you don’t want to trust me, don’t. Go check on you butcher. I should be sleeping now anyway.”
I watched him go back and forth through the apartment carrying the rest of Leo and putting him in the deep freezer. Then he went to bed, still naked. As much as part of me wanted to join him, the other part wondered why he wouldn’t answer my question. Did I trust him?
I decided that even though I had an entire meal in front of me, I needed to head to the grocery store. I left Freddie’s apartment to go get dressed in mine, hoping the whole time that Jorge was scared enough to run far, far away.
What About Miguel?!?
I walked the few blocks from my apartment to the supermercado, searching around every corner for a possibly lurking Jorge. He wasn’t there, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t finally free of him. I entered and approached the meat counter to see, as always, a smiling Miguel, and I practically passed out from the relief.
“You’re okay,” I screeched, earning me looks from the mid-morning shoppers.
“Yeah, mami. Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” He seemed his chipper self, but behind his eyes, there was something Miguel was hiding from me.
I went back and forth in my head on how much to tell him. “Well, I was just worried that something happened between you and Freddie.”
At the mention of his name, a spark lit in Miguel’s expression. “Happened? No...no. Nothing
happened. Why? Did something happen between you and Freddie?”
“Oh, god! I am not telling you that.” Any of it.
“Um...okay...” He really looked like he had a lot to tell me, and I knew I had plenty to tell him. Were we going to get anywhere not telling each other anything? Not likely. Be honest. Trust somebody.
“Jorge was in my apartment this morning.” Miguel was the person who knew the most of my secrets. He might as well know them all.
“Shit, Kayla.” He threw off his coat, revealing a plain white tee and dark wash jeans, and came around the counter to envelop me in a huge bear hug. “Forget me. Are you okay?”
“Yeah well... Maybe we should talk somewhere else.”
Miguel led me around to the working side of the counter, despite looks from the other butchers. Holding my hand, he dragged me through the back-processing area and a door that led to the outside behind the market. Two lawn chairs, a newspaper, and a bucket full of cigarette butts sat off to the side.
“Okay, talk.”
I sat. “Jorge and his highest lieutenant were in my apartment waiting for me when I got back this morning.” I’d just all but admitted I’d fucked Freddie but, at this point, who cares. “He threatened me and then assumed that Freddie was doing all the killings around here.”
“Go on.” He was calm. Too calm.
“He had Leo try to kill Freddie but, uh, Freddie got to Leo first.”
Miguel sat next to me and raised his hand to his chin. “Did he kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Did he do so in a normal way or a weird way?”
“What’s a weird way?” There was no reasonable way that that Miguel could know what happened. Unless...“He told you!”
“That he’s a vampire? Yes.” He didn’t even seem the least bit bothered by it.
“And what about the fact that—”
“He made you into his familiar? Yes. Yes to him killing everyone too.”
Kiss Me, I'm Undead Page 17