“What? When did he tell you all of this?” I just figured out the true meaning of flabbergasted because I was it.
“Last night. When you went to clean up. He also said that human meat works better for you, and he was getting you some from the guy that was hiding around the corner waiting for the moment you were alone.”
“And you just accepted that?”
“I told you that you were a zombivamp. Now, I know who the vamp is that turned you into a zombie. He said he felt bad and was protecting you to make up for it. You think I give a fuck if he offs a bunch of drug-peddling cartel motherfuckers that are trying to kill my girl? No way. Let the vamp have at it.”
Well, color me floored. “So, you’re okay with this? What about me being a familiar or whatever. That’s the part I really don’t like. Did you know that he can read my emotions and hypnotize me? It’s like a violation.”
Miguel scooted his chair closer and put his long, lanky arm around me. “Tell him that, mija. Just because you’re a vampire’s familiar doesn’t mean he has to treat you like one.”
And just like that, a nineteen-year-old imparted more wisdom on me than I had in myself. He was right. Freddie may have made me what I am now, but I didn’t have to let him own me. I also may not have to stay this way. He never did answer my question when I asked him about it.
But one thing was nagging me. “Who was waiting to catch me alone? It couldn’t have been Jorge or Leo because neither of them were missing a leg.”
Miguel reached over and grabbed the newspaper, handing it to me. The front page held the headline: “CARTEL VIGILANTE FOUND DEAD.”
“They’re blaming the other murders on him now that they identified them all as Xolotl, thanks to our officer friend. They also have videotape footage from the Federal Building that ties him to the murder of a federal marshal. Your handler. Evidence was found linking the marshal to deals with an out of state druglord. Jorge, I assume.”
I scanned the news article. “The killer was found with his leg removed in the South Shore area,” I read. “Officials presume that he was executed by a member of the cartel he’d been hunting.”
“Yeah. They’ve got it all wrong.”
“No kidding.” Still, a part of me was glad that neither I nor Freddie was implicated in any of this. As annoyed with him as I was, I didn’t want him to go to jail. Or worse, for him to dismember any cops trying to take him in. “So, I guess I’m a people-eater with a vampire boyfriend.”
“Is that who he is to you?” Miguel put his hands over his heart as if he was wounded.
“No, maybe not. We’re...something though.”
“Just remember who loves you, despite the fact that you eat people, messily might I add, and are constantly friend-zoning him.”
I laughed. “The friend zone is made up by lonely guys that can’t get dates. You simply need to have a birthday and get the ‘teen’ out of your age before I can comfortably date you.”
“Says the chick who’s ‘something’ with a guy who’s probably a hundred.”
He was right. I was a hypocrite.
C’est la vie.
Find Me A Guru To Fix My Life.
I arrived back at my apartment to find Freddie waiting on the steps leading to his landing, just barely far enough away to be out of the line of light that was coming in through the glass pane of the security door. He looked tired and sheepish.
“Everything okay,” I asked as I unlocked my apartment door, wanting to go to him but not wanting to be the one that gave in first.
“You saw that your friend is okay?”
“Yes,” I leaned on the doorjamb, “and he told me everything. Thank you for getting rid of yet another murderous fucking creep for me B-T-W.”
“What?” he questioned regarding my acronym.
“Never mind, old man. Just thank you. Did you know he’d killed Peter?”
“I could smell someone’s blood on him, but no, I didn’t know whose it was.”
“He tasted good.” As the words left my mouth, I realized how wrong they sounded to my ears. Yet it was true. All of it. I was a zombie, and I liked the taste of human flesh better than any animals. I needed ground rules. “I don’t want to kill for food. Isn’t there another choice? A way to turn me back?”
“Kayla,” he sighed a long sigh but never answered.
I pushed. “You said you stopped for decades. Why?”
He dropped his head into his hands, but I could still hear the muffled, “Because I was tired of killing.”
“So you know exactly how I feel.”
“Yes, but, Kayla, there’s no way back from this. I went crazy with bloodlust. It was fine when the block went to shit in the eighties. The crack houses got raided and boarded up. The businesses couldn’t afford to stay and no one came down here. Not until you.
“That man, Peter, rang the bell at eight at night and asked if the apartment was vacant. Asked if I would give it to you for four hundred a month. I wanted desperately to say no, but I could smell you in the car, and you had the sweetest smell I’d palated in a long time. In a moment of weakness, I said yes, knowing it was the biggest mistake I would ever make.
“For a time, I handled it. But it was the shoes, Kayla. They were my beating heart under the floorboards, driving me insane.”
“I knew you bought me those!” At least I was proven right on one account.
“Yes. I felt horrible about breaking them. They had to have been your favorite as much as you wore them. Plus, they cost a fortune.”
“Well,” I needed to be honest, “the ones you bought cost a fortune. The ones I owned were knockoffs I bought in Chinatown for twenty bucks.”
His mouth was an “O”. I supposed a vampire didn’t have a lot of disposable income since he couldn’t hold down a job on account of killing all his coworkers. “Sorry, but thank you.”
He smiled. “They made you happy after you realized there was nothing nefarious in the box. I could hear you walking in them for hours down here. They were worth the price. Besides, I have money saved that I rarely use. It’s an honor to buy you gifts with it.”
I gave in and went to him. I opened my arms, and he wrapped his around my hips, turned his head to the side and placed it on my belly. “You are a beautiful, perfect woman.”
“But I’m not.” He started and looked up at me questioningly. “I’m a zombie, and I don’t want to be one. Please tell me there’s a way to change.”
He massaged my lower back, almost as if he was pre-comforting me for some shitty-ass news. Scratch that. He was. “To change back to human...It’s not possible.”
I pushed away from him. “I have to stay like this forever? No goddamned way.”
“There’s another choice, but you’ll dislike it as much.”
“Tell me.”
“You can become a vampire.”
“You’re right. I hate that idea.” I put my hands on my hips into what I hoped mimicked Jill’s no nonsense style. “I still have to kill people and drink their blood, right? I’m assuming from your patterns that I can’t just take a sip here and a sip there.”
“No, if you bite without killing, they become what you are now. I stopped myself because I couldn’t bear the thought of you being murdered at my hands, but that is not the typical instinct. Can you imagine a city full of familiars running around?”
There was no way I was doing that to anyone else, let alone multiple anyones. “I can’t. I just can’t keep killing.”
“You don’t have to, darling. As a vampire, you can refrain from blood with no problems. No sickness. No pain. You’ll simply age. You can drink every decade if you want.”
Okay. That was a better option. “So make me a vampire.”
His mouth opened and closed several times as his brow furrowed. Finally, he said, “It’s not that easy.”
“What—” I began, but my phone rang. I fished it out of my bag and looked at the screen. Only five people had this number, and one of them was dead. T
his number didn’t belong to any of them, yet I recognized it all the same. I hit the answer button. “Mom...?”
“Mommy’s a little tied up right now, Mariposa.”
A Vampire and a Zombie Take Down a Druglord... No Punchline.
Freddie told me that the freshest kill would make me the strongest, so here I was, sitting at Freddie’s kitchen table, eating Leo like my life depended on it and waiting for dark so he could finish his vampire nap or whatever. It was odd, but when I ate, I didn’t care who or what it was anymore. The hunger consumed me. Just as did the knowledge that there was about to be a fight.
I don’t know how Jorge got to my mother and stepfather so fast. Hell, maybe he kidnapped them from Charleston before even arriving in Chicago. It easily could have been his backup plan. He knew that even if I had someone protecting me, I would come for them. It didn’t matter how they treated me growing up. I would never let any harm come to them if I could stop it.
He had them in a warehouse on the near north side that was being turned into luxury lofts. That was fitting. The two of them strived for luxury long after they could no longer afford it. It was why they starved and neglected me. Now, they were sitting in the closest thing they would ever get to it while waiting on me to come and save them.
Jorge would have an army there, knowing that I would bring Freddie, even though he warned me not to. Yeah fucking right. Like I would walk into a trap like that alone. He knew me better. Whether they were Xolotl or some other Chicago gang he’d affiliated himself with, I was not going alone. In fact, I knew he was counting on one thing: that Freddie the Monster was the only person that had my back.
He was wrong.
I took my last bite of Leo and picked up my phone to make a few calls.
FRANK AND JACK ARRIVED to pick us up soon after the sun had gone down. When we slid into the backseat of the dark Buick Regal, I introduced them to my “friend” Freddie. They gave each other knowing glances, but otherwise said nothing. That wasn’t the hard part.
“I’m telling you guys now, you’re going to see some weird shit. Don’t freak out on us,” I warned.
Jack laughed. “We know you’re a vampizom.”
“You talked to Miguel!” How dare he tell my secret. They were probably going to find out anyway, but it wasn’t his secret to tell.
“Yeah,” said Frank. “We called him to have his cousin’s boys from the Fifty-Ninth Street Gang meet us there. Some enforcers from my mafia family are coming, too.” Damn. It sounded like I had an army of my own.
“So, do you believe Miguel?” Freddie sat next to me silent and deadly looking as Jack drove us along Lake Shore Drive toward the North Side.
“Sounds made up to me,” teased Jack. Frank nodded. “But whatever roleplay you guys need to fight this Jorge dude and his cartel works for us.”
“It’s not made up.” Freddie changed his hands into claws and flashed them in the lights of the vehicle behind us. Jack swerved, almost hitting a car in the lane to the right. Frank turned around fully in his seat to look, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. I gave him an “I’m sorry” look and shrugged when he glanced at me. “Just don’t get in my way when we get there. I told Kayla this was a bad idea. None of you are really needed. Of course, it’d be nice to have others to keep the bullets off of me. I hate getting shot. It stings like bee bites.”
“Okay then.” Jack’s shaky voice pierced the few moments of uncomfortable silence that had followed Freddie’s show. “We’ll stay out of your way and focus on keeping Kayla safe.”
“That’s good. Though I’ll warn you, she’s hyped up currently on the flesh of a muscular cartel lieutenant. I think she’ll surprise both of you and herself with what she can do.” Freddie sounded so sure, but I wasn’t. I doubted I’d be much help to any of them with the exception that I couldn’t be killed easily. According to Freddie, I’d live through multiple gunshots and could heal myself by simply taking a few good bites out of someone.
“We’re almost there,” Frank spoke up. Then told Jack, “Park in the lot on the right side here. We’re meeting everyone there so they don’t see a caravan coming their way.”
I WALKED INTO THE DARKENED building alone. Somewhere finding a way to the roof was Freddie. The Fifty-Ninth Street boys were manning the street, and I knew that Frank and the mafia enforcers were close behind me. Jack and two cops he trusted were stationed nearby for back up and also to arrest anyone they could. They wanted to make a name for themselves in the department, and I didn’t blame them. This was going to be big. They’d make up some story about being out and about and seeing suspicious activity, then they’d bust as many cartel members as we left alive, blaming the dead ones on their friends.
Gotta love corrupt police work.
Jorge told me that he would be on the fourth floor. The elevator didn’t work, so I found my way to the stairs. Shadows moved about through the bare bones of the reconstruction. I knew some were Jorge’s men and others were mine. Luckily, neither had drawn fire yet and started an all-out war. I still had time to get upstairs and get my family out of there before all hell broke loose.
I took the stairs two by two, moving speedily and not even close to out of breath. I knew that Jorge would have instructed everyone to let me pass unobstructed. He’d want me all two himself.
I’d just entered the hallway of the fourth floor when the first gunshot rang out downstairs. Damn. I took off in a run, going room to room, leaping over unfinished walls. Finally, I saw dim light in an area at the far end. It was flickering. When I entered, my parents sat, tied to two wooden chairs, mouths covered by dirty rags, in the middle of a room surrounded by candlelight. Jorge truly had a flair for the fucking dramatic.
He himself emerged from a behind a sheet of plastic like it was a fucking stage curtain. “Mariposa, I told your parents you’d come for them, and here you are, just like I said. Too bad you didn’t come alone like I said.” He sounded like himself, menacing, but I wasn’t afraid anymore. I’d seen him run away like a pussy.
“Of course, I came with others. I knew you would too.”
He started. “Others? You mean there’s more down there than that...thing?”
“Yes,” I said with satisfaction. “You didn’t think I had friends?”
“You never did.”
I gave him a menacing look of my own. “Things change asshole. I’ve changed. A lot.”
He yelled, “Oye, entra aqui!” and three big men, one I recognized and two I did not, came in from behind the same plastic sheet. “Bitch, I’m ready for you. But first, a present.”
He moved to where my parents sat, and they squirmed as their muffled screams reached my ears. That’s when he pulled out his ivory-hilted knife. “Whatever you’re going to do,” I warned, “don’t.”
Jorge chuckled in that evil way of his. “I just want to do what you’ve wanted for so very long, Mariposa. For how many years have you wished you could punish this man for the things he did to you?”
“I haven’t,” I whimpered both afraid and oddly excited.
“Don’t lie, Kiera. He fucked you when you were just a child.”
“So did you, you asshole. How can you punish him for a crime you committed?”
“I wasn’t your father, bitch.”
“Neither is he.”
Anger spread across Jorge’s face. I didn’t give him the reaction he wanted. Insolently, he gave me my present anyway. I watched as the blade slipped almost gingerly across my stepfather’s neck. Blood seeped out slowly at first. I wanted to care, I really did. But then the blood became a macabre fountain, spilling with it all the pain and fears of my lost childhood down his white shirt and gray suit jacket. That’s when, amongst the sound of gunshots still ringing from the fight below us, the real shit went down.
Freddie crashed through the ceiling. He went for the first man, slashing through his arm, then yanking to take it clear off the lieutenant’s body. He then went for the man’s throat. Bullets rained on him as he drank, bu
t they seemed to be pushed right back out as fast as they went in, clinking on the concrete flooring.
Jorge pulled out a gun and turned it on Freddie first, then thought better of it and aimed at me. “What is that?”
“My boyfriend, asshole.” I lunged, not at him, but at my stepfather then, the bloodlust overtaking me. I straddled him and lapped at the stream of blood still pouring from the gash in his neck as if I could take back the little girl I once was by consuming it. My mother screamed beside me.
“What in the holy fuck?” Jorge was afraid. I could smell it as his blood pumped wildly through his veins. Good. He’d never moved, and I reached up, grabbing him by the arms and pulling him down. Then I yanked myself up onto his back, riding him like a prized pig as he bucked and squealed. I felt a strength I’d never felt before. It surged within me and demanded that I execute my prey. I wrapped my hands around his head, ready to twist and break his neck, but I hesitated. It was just long enough for him to reach around, grab my shirt, and slam me to the ground.
Jorge stood over me, huffing from exertion, anger, terror, or all three. Then I saw that look in his eyes. The one I knew all too well. The one that said something in him had to dominate me. He bent and put his hand around my throat. A younger version of me cowered inside. She lay flat and still as he squeezed harder and harder. But the hazy vision and sound of rushing water never came. Shit. He couldn’t choke me to death because I didn’t need to breathe.
Confused, his grip faltered, and I raised myself up to meet him eye to eye. “I’m not your bitch anymore. I’m no one’s bitch. You are. You’re the bitch.” I leaned in so close our lips almost touched. His eyes couldn’t make sense of what I was about to do. I closed the gap and took a bite out of his vicious mouth, his bloodcurdling screams filling mine. I pulled his lips from his face and chewed the fatty morsels as he thrashed around, unable to move because I held him down. My strength now outweighed his ten-fold. I moved to his cheek then, enjoying the tenderest of flesh. Cheeks were now my favorite delicacy. By the time I moved to the second part of his face, his heart had stopped. Death from shock of your ex eating you alive. It was a sweet victory.
Kiss Me, I'm Undead Page 18