by Riley, A. M.
“Right. You're still on probation.” Caballo stared into the empty mirror as
he combed his hair with care. I'd noticed that I did the same thing. Even
though I couldn't see myself, I'd face the mirror to shave, to primp. It seemed to
be easier that way. It was as if I was seeing the memory of myself there.
“That book I've been reading says we're demons,” I said.
Caballo laughed. “Weren't we always, El Demonio?” He pocketed his comb.
“What did you call me?”
His syrupy brown eyes slid sideways. “Sorry, man, I'm just a dumb nigger
from Chicago. How do they say it then? Diablo? Marcena del inferno? Except
you don't eat babies, do you? You suck cock. Right?”
“Shut the fuck up. And your accent stinks. Stick to American.” I turned off
the shower and wrapped a towel around my hips. “That book said we can walk
in the sun, but that's obviously bullshit. I just wondered if there is anything
else I don't know.”
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“Too much curiosity will kill the cat,” said Caballo, touching his finger to
his nose.
“And I saw a vampire on some kid's show drinking cow's blood.”
Caballo and I grimaced simultaneously. “That's disgusting,” he said.
I found my jeans and pulled them on quickly. Caballo held the door open
for me and slapped my ass as I passed. “I've got to go. Ozone's called another
dumbass meeting. You read your book or whatever.”
That night I started on a book by an Anne Rice. But her vampires were
boring. Too given to self-examination and bemoaning their soulless existence.
“Do you think we have souls?” I asked Caballo when he'd come back from
his “meeting.” He'd been withdrawn and thoughtful since he'd gotten back.
Bringing out a pipe and loading and smoking it. In his own little world.
“What the fuck? How should I know?” he said irritably. “Listen, man, we
have to talk.”
“You breaking up with me, Caballo?” I asked. But he didn't even crack a
smile.
“Seriously, man, there's something big going down here. A lot of men—
well, La Eme, they talk the 'brotherhood' and all that shit, but they don't like
Ozone being in charge. They say it's only luck he was turned and he should
have stayed dead. They hated the ese, you know?”
“I heard they were the ones who did him.”
“Nah, it was 'the One,' we call him. The one that started it all down here in
SoCal. But Ozone had a death squad from La Eme looking for him and they
was pissed off, man, that he got turned first. And they don't look happy at
those meetings when he's strutting around with his fat cows and pointing those
guns at dudes' balls and shit.” He inhaled from his pipe deeply and held the
smoke for an impossibly long time before letting it drift slowly from his nostrils.
“Shit, I'm just talking bull, man. Don't pay attention.”
“What if something does go down? What do we do?”
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“We stay alive, man.” Caballo got up and went to the chest of drawers,
which seemed to hold only endless supplies of white T-shirts and plaid boxer
shorts. Under a pile of the latter, a long, worn leather case. I expected a rifle,
and so I was surprised when he drew a gleaming sword from its sheath. It
made a secretive whispering sound as he sliced it once through the air.
“Dude,” I said, awed.
“Yeah, it's a beautiful little fucker, ain't it?” Caballo twisted his wrist, bent
his elbow just so and, with seeming expertise, sliced another lethal arc through
the air. “Only way to dust a demon fast, you know.”
“Your friend died when a stake went through his heart.”
“Aybie wasn't nobody's friend,” said Caballo. “But a stake will do it. It's
just too hard to hit it right, too risky. You slice off the head to kill the demon.”
One more hissing arc through the air, and he sheathed it again.
“Remember,” he said, and stuffed the sword back under his boxers in the
drawer. “Now.” He stretched and his thick cock was straining his boxers out in
front of him. “You ready for bed?”
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Chapter Seventeen
They say it's only paranoia if it's invalid. And, as it turned out, Caballo's
fears weren't crazy at all.
It happened quickly and all at once. I was in the bathroom, just dressed
from a shower, when I heard a rumbling noise, like an earthquake. Jogging out
into the hallway, I could distinguish heavy boots running and the sound of
gunfire and motorcycles.
The main room looked like Vegas 2002 all over again. Men in colors
stabbing and shooting at each other. Women crawling across the floor. Blood
splatter on the pristine white lounge chairs and tile floors. Silvery arcs of
swords in the air.
A head with a long black and gray braid thumped a few feet from me,
rolled, and then the head and the torso to which it had just been attached
burst into dust. I spun around and ran back down the hallway, but had to
fight the crowd of bikers, blood cows, and various hangers-on who were headed
toward the fight, most of them fully armed.
Caballo wasn't in his room, but I found his sword in the chest of drawers.
There was only one way out of this compound that I knew of, so I headed
back to the brawl in the front room.
I had to hack my way through. I could hear guns going off, but nobody
seemed to care. A burning hot fire shot through my leg and I looked down to
see blood almost spurting from me. Since I was still on the short-term blood
diet, I figured this would bode ill for my eventual survival, so I made my way
toward the kitchen where an even thicker and more intense battle was waging.
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A refrigerator had been tipped onto the floor, effectively blocking the doorway.
On the other side I could hear the imprisoned people screaming and I could see
their hands clawing at the stainless steel sides, trying to move the heavy thing
that blocked their way.
I cut off the thick head of the man I remembered with the cemetery
tattooed on his belly and slid in blood and ash down the galley. The refrigerator
was too heavy to lift and then the weight shifted and eased up and I looked
across to see Alberto helping me.
“El Demonio,” he cried out. “Did you start this trouble?”
“No sé. Did you?” We heaved the refrigerator past the halfway point;
gravity took over and it slammed into the wall, wobbled, and remained
standing. A mob of people in blue cotton tieback pajamas, all looking pale and
gravely ill, pushed through the narrow doorway.
And, horribly, were immediately picked off by the room of blood-hungry
demons.
I managed to rescue a man and saw Albert lift a plump woman onto his
shoulder. Keeping them all behind me, brandishing the sword, which was now
starting to really weigh heavily in my wrist and shoulder, we worked our way
toward the front door.
The greatest obstacle at this point seemed to be the ash and blood that
made the area almost too slick to traverse. But the
door was unguarded and
hanging open. The yard we ran to, a sea of roaring Harleys, mounted by
bloody-faced demons with guns.
To the horrified residents of the surrounding homes it must have looked
like a vision from Hell. Actually, it looked like that to me, as well. I turned to
share my plan with Albert just in time to duck as he tried to take my head off
with a sword.
“What the fuck, Albert?”
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I raised my sword and parried sloppily. He attempted another blow, which
I swiped away with the pommel, almost getting my hand cut off. He stumbled
and the tip of his sword stuck into the ground. An Errol Flynn movie, we were
not.
But he seemed unable to control his violence; his eyes were red and he
was in full demon visage. I felt a little of the bloodlust myself. A desire for
mayhem just burbling under the surface. I backed away from him, looking
around, trying to come up with an exit plan. Across the road, an elderly couple
stood on their front porch in pastel flannel robes, watching slack-mouthed. I
dragged the man I'd rescued across and almost hurled him down their
sidewalk. “Call the police,” I yelled.
Then I dived back into the melee because there was one thing I was not
going to do. I was not leaving this place without my Beast.
She was in a back shed. Miraculously, beautifully untouched, unsullied.
Her dual carbs bellowed joyfully as I skated down the body- and ash-strewn
driveway and took off downhill, full tilt. I could hear a few bikers in pursuit for
a little while. But for all I knew, they were beating a retreat as well. The real
battle was for supremacy of the compound and nobody really cared if a few
prospects flew the coop.
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Chapter Eighteen
I didn't slow down until I'd made it to the Coldwater exit off the 10.
I pulled over to a remote corner of a service station and tried first to call
Stan. The call went straight to voice mail. “Something's gone down,” I merely
said. “Call me.”
Starting at Twenty-sixth Street, I wove up and down the blocks, keeping
an eye and an ear out for any bikers. When I was certain I hadn't been
followed, I turned on to Peter's street. There's a narrow walkway beside his
attached garage. Just wide enough for me to back in my bike and throw the
tarp over it that Peter had always kept rolled up and sitting outside for that
purpose.
I pressed the buzzer and waited.
“Yes?” Even distorted by the speaker box, I could tell the male voice that
answered the call wasn't Peter's.
“Where's Peter?”
There was a hesitation and then I heard, “Babe, there's someone at the
door.”
Babe?
The next voice was Peter's. “Who is this?”
“Adam.”
The buzzer immediately buzzed and unlatched the lock. Peter met me
halfway down the stairs. He was in his jeans and barefoot, buttoning a shirt as
he jogged toward me. “Christ, I thought you'd left town,” he said.
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I eyed the man who appeared just behind him. Youngish, slim. A good
dress shirt that he wasn't even bothering to button. “Obviously,” I said.
Peter gave me that “don't start” look. “Jonathan, this is Adam.”
Jonathan? Jonathan? What kind of name was that for a grown man?
He had his hand stuck out at me, so I had to take it.
“Why are you still in town, Adam?” asked Peter. He looked me up and
down. “What the hell has happened to you?”
I must have looked like I'd just crawled out of a slasher movie. Blood on
my shirt, my jeans. Blood on my muddy, shredded boots.
“Didn't you get the note I gave Stan?”
“Note? Stan's on leave for a week. Some kind of family emergency.”
I couldn't believe the motard had neglected forwarding the note to Peter.
“Jesus Christ, I've been held captive in a vampire enclave in Pasadena,
Peter!”
Jonathan cracked a big smile, which died when he saw Peter's face.
Peter glanced around the courtyard in which we stood. Windows opened
into it from every unit. “You may as well come in and tell me about it,” he said.
* * * * *
“So what do you do, Jonathan?” It came out like an accusation, but I
didn't much care.
I'd showered and Peter had produced one of the boxes of my clothes from
the garage to change into, so I should have felt better. I didn't.
“I'm a graduate student at UCLA,” said Jonathan.
I shot Peter a look. Robbing the cradle? I tried to say with my eyes. He
seemed deaf to my eyeballs' insinuations, however, and sat down again in the
side chair, setting three bottles of beer down on the coffee table.
“Do you have a glass, babe?” asked Jonathan.
“In the kitchen,” said Peter.
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I watched Jonathan's tight flat butt sashay into Peter's kitchen. “Nice
trophy wife. Babe.”
“Fuck off,” he replied mildly. “When you said 'vampire enclave' was that
one of your dramatic exaggerations?”
“There were at least a hundred soldiers that I could count. Ozone is a
risen Paolo Spence, and there are a few other OMG members who we all
thought were dead and gone. My former CI Freeway? Was in Mexico, recruiting
more soldiers for Ozone, before he was killed.”
“Wait. Wait. Wait. The dead CI?”
“Undead,” I said. “Try to keep up, Peter. Only now, he really is dead.
Dusted. During the riot somebody cut off his head.”
Peter guzzled beer until the bottle was empty and set it down hard. “Say
that again? No, don't.” He held up his hand. “Just cut to the chase.”
“They're declaring war on the Mongols, the HA, and La Eme,” I said.
“Recruits are flooding in from every pissant wannabe gang in town. Per my CI,
they're starting the war with the Angels. They recruit as they go. Peter, imagine
every OMG in Southern California, and every gang, joining forces with the
Mexican Mafia. And the whole lot of them super strong, super fast, bloodthirsty
vampires. It'll take the US Army to stop them.”
It has always seemed to me that the more serious the situation, the more
calm and methodical Peter becomes. Now, he looked very, very calm. Jonathan
came back into the room with a glass and paper napkins for us to put under
our beer bottles. Peter accepted his with thanks.
“You said you talked with Stan.”
“Stan infiltrated Ozone's crew, Peter. We ran into each other there. Lemme
tell you, it was a bit of a shock for both of us.”
Peter nodded thoughtfully, then turned toward Jonathan. “I'm sorry to do
this, but if you wouldn't mind…?”
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“Hey, no problem,” Jonathan said affably. “I've got to get back and get
some work done tonight, anyway.” He stood and went into the hallway. I could
hear him in Peter's bedroom. When he came out he was carrying a pullover
sweater and a pair of shoes. The blood rushed into my head and for a second I
> literally saw red, but I managed not to demand he tell me what his clothes were
doing in Peter's bedroom.
When the red haze cleared, I saw Peter and Jonathan, who had apparently
not noticed my murderous spell, or were choosing to ignore it, standing at the
door saying their good nights. I almost burst controlling myself. If Jonathan
had even given Peter a peck on the cheek, I don't know what I would have
done, but instead he glanced over at me, smiled warmly at Peter, and merely
said, “G'night, babe. I'll call.”
I had Peter up against a wall and my tongue down his throat before the
college kid's feet had hit the bottom step of the condominium complex.
“Stop,” said Peter, once. But I knew he didn't mean it. Mostly because he
was groping my nuts and trying to get his tongue down my throat too.
We grappled and struggled, more like a wrestling match than lovemaking,
until I had him on his knees on the front doormat, spit and my fingers working
his hole.
“Condom,” gasped Peter.
“Fuck that,” I said. I wanted to come all over him. Come inside him. Bite
my name into the skin of his back and, if necessary, drag him off to my cave
and beat him over the head if he tried to escape.
“Adam!” His voice cut through the insanity happening in my brain, and I
realized I had him almost immobile, arm around his throat, other arm holding
his hips, up to my balls in his hole and my fangs poised over his neck.
It was like seeing yourself in a mirror. A particularly dark and disturbing
mirror. I drew out, released him, sat back on my heels. I didn't know what to
do.
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“There's a box of them by the bed,” said Peter.
Right. Okay. I scrambled to my feet, found the box, ignored the state of
the sheets and pillows on Peter's bed for the time being, ran back into the
hallway where he still knelt, head on his arms, eyes closed and breathing
through his mouth.
He moaned when I reentered him, then whimpered a little. “God. God.”
