by Riley, A. M.
I grunted, pumping.
“Why can't I stop this?” he said, almost to himself.
I slowed. His hand came up and grabbed mine, wrapped my fingers
around his stiff erection. “Touch me.”
I did, and my momentum picked up again, trying to be gentle, his half-
conscious question ringing in my ears.
Peter rocked his hips as I worked him, head down. He got some leverage
and started to really slam back against me. All I could do was hold on, our
thighs slapping together, the burn of friction on my knees and somebody
groaning, probably me. Then, Peter froze, shuddered and issued a kind of
despairing moan as his cum coated my fingers.
I'd been having sex regularly with Caballo, but when I came it felt like I'd
been celibate for weeks.
Then we breathed and eventually separated. Seated side by side on the
rug with our pants around our ankles. I said, “So. Jonathan's cute.”
“Don't start, Adam.”
“I'm not. I'm just observing. He must be like a breath of fresh air.”
“He is,” said Peter, lifting his pants so he could stand up, wander down
the hallway to the bathroom. I could hear the water splashing in the sink as he
cleaned up. By the time he joined me in the living room, he was thoughtful
again.
“You know, I'm surprised Stan didn't say anything to me about a special
assignment.”
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“He probably couldn't,” I reasoned. “If another person or persons are
involved, he might not be at liberty. Remember Alli?”
Okay, reminding Peter of the one person he had been jealous of in our
decade-and-a-half-long friendship was partially intentional. I admit it.
Alli had been the undercover ATF agent who had posed as my old lady
while we were infiltrating the Mongols. We lived together, rode together. Went
to parties together. And there had been a couple of times when circumstances
had demanded that we have sex together. I'd bet that she hated it more than I
did, but I had had to keep her identity a secret from everyone. Even Peter, who
got to find out by seeing us one night when he and Stan had been called to an
Angels/Mongols homicide scene.
“Her vest said 'Property of Snake,'” he said. I'd managed to meet him in a
hole in the wall cop bar where we were unlikely to be seen by OMG.
“It's part of the cover. After awhile they'd get suspicious if they didn't see
me bringing a girl around. And if Alli and I didn't pretend we're married, they'd
still expect me to go for the wings.” Different color wings on the Mongol vest
denoted different sexual accomplishments. None of them pretty. “The wives wear
the 'property of' patches so they won't get hit on by other bikers.”
“You pretend you're married?” Peter's face was flushed. He was breathing
through his nose. I didn't know what to think of his reaction.
“Well, yes? We live together.”
“You have sex?”
I can't lie to Peter. Oh, believe me, if I could, I would. But there's no use in
trying. “Yes.”
I've never seen Peter so still. I don't think he's breathing. And then,
suddenly, he's up and out of the booth, throwing money on the table and
marching, with long strides, out of the bar.
In the parking lot, I had to hammer on his closed car window for a while
before he'd roll it down.
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“Peter, it's work.”
“Nice work, if you can get it,” he said. “Banging a young brunette with big
bazooms.”
“Jesus Christ, she's a professional, Peter, Not just some broad with big tits.”
“So, it's more than sex. You like her.”
“No! I mean, it's not like I want to.”
He's got his eyes shut and seems to be suffering from shooting pains in his
head. “I can't handle this,” he said, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight
his knuckles are white.
“What do you mean by that?”
He shook his head. I had a very bad feeling I knew exactly what he meant
and I started to panic. “How can I fix this?”
He nodded. Licked his lips. “Don't do it again.”
“The…the… you mean, don't have…”
“Ever. Never again,” said Peter. “I can't handle it.”
“Okay.”
He looked up at me then, a little sheepish but a lot relieved. “Promise?”
How does he still trust me? But the fact that he does is more compelling
than any threats of punishment could be. “I promise,” I said.
“Funny thing,” said Peter, looking angry. “Stan has never lied or kept
secrets from me. Why is that, do you suppose?”
“At least I wasn't using Alli to get back at someone.”
“I'm not using Jonathan,” snapped Peter. “He's uncomplicated and
forthright. He has no secrets. As you so aptly observed, he's a welcome relief.”
“How can he have secrets? He's fucking twelve or thereabouts!”
Peter's lower lip thrust out just like a pugnacious bulldog's. “If I was
supposed to know about Stan's assignment, he would have told me. You may
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have compromised him by coming here. Why didn't you leave town when I told
you to?”
“I don't run away. And…and I was worried about you, Peter.”
“I've been fine, obviously,” said Peter. “Don't put your selfish decisions off
on me, Adam.”
I stood, pissed off and hurting all over. “You're right. What was I thinking?
Oh, right, that the whole city of Los Angeles might be in danger?”
“And you're just an innocent bystander. Oh, wait, where have I heard that
before?”
“I haven't done anything, Peter. Why can't you believe me?”
“Do you still eat blood?” And, at my expression, “Great. Terrific. Where are
you getting it?”
“Volunteers,” I said.
“What do you mean, volunteers?”
“Some people like being bitten. It's like kinky sex.”
His eyes narrowed. “Good for you. I was afraid you were using people.”
“Well, I've warned you. It's on your head now if the whole city winds up
some kind of flesh-eating zombies, or vampires or whatever. I'll get out of your
hair now. Sorry I interrupted your 'date.'”
“We're seeing each other tomorrow, as it happens,” said Peter, and he had
an unfamiliar, waspish tone to his voice. “So you don't need to worry about it.”
I ran my hands through my hair, feeling old and fat and grubby. And a
touch homicidal. “Fine.”
Peter stood too. “Fine,” he said.
“I know my way out,” I said.
He crossed his arms. “Good.”
“So I'll just be going.”
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“You do that.” He didn't seem about to cave. Why should he when the
choice was yours truly or hot monkey sex with a kid half my age and with twice
my IQ? Why could he possibly want me to stay?
So I split.
I was halfway up Wilshire Boulevard before it really started to burn. I
should have been on the way to Parker Center, to warn the LAPD. I should
have been ringing up Alli, and Bert, and the r
est of my old ATF crew, to warn
them. I should have been keeping my ass covered and my profile low, but all I
could think about was Peter fucking some college boy and the way he'd looked
at me when I'd walked out.
Like he didn't give a damn.
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Chapter Nineteen
I got an idea and turned on Eleventh heading to Saint Monica's.
The chapel was almost always open for one reason or another. I could
hear the choir practicing in there and I just stepped through the big carved
double-wide doors. I fully expected to be thrown back.
Nothing happened, not even a ripple. There was a holy water font in the
wall. I touched it. Nothing.
I went and sat down in a pew and listened to the choir practicing for a
while. A priest went by. I assumed he was a priest, at least, because he had
one of those priestly collars on.
“Evening, Father,” I said. It came out a little snarly, I think.
He hesitated. He probably had a duty roster for the week that'd choke a
horse, but it was his job to minister to lost souls, right? And I can just imagine
the expression I was wearing; I was so pissed off about so many things, I
probably looked like the poster child for lost souls.
“Just listening to the music,” I told him.
“You should come on Sunday and hear them,” he said.
I wanted to tell him that his holy water was broken, or fake, or something.
I wanted to tell him that I suspected his church was no longer on holy ground.
I wanted somebody else to feel disillusioned, like the only thing they counted
on was gone.
God damn it. Only, apparently, God wasn't interested.
All of a sudden I was mad as hell and I had to get out of there before I
broke something. Back on my bike, I cruised around the block, in low gear.
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Facing the church property was the park where the old men lawn bowl and the
homeless and runaways sit at picnic tables until the LAPD come and make
them move on. So the citizens will think the city is doing something about the
“problem.”
They think a few homeless guys are a problem? Wait until they see
Ozone's army.
And that's when I noticed one of the men who lay around the trees. Most
of the homeless will spread a coat or a blanket of some sort out on the ground,
their clothes stuffed with newspapers and their belongings under their heads.
This guy lay on the ground next to another man. He wore a lightweight T-
shirt, his weathered, bony arms sticking out, sandals on his feet. He seemed to
be having an animated, cheerful conversation with the man who lay opposite
him, and then he seemed to be making out with the man.
You know, in all my years on the streets of Los Angeles, I've never seen
two homeless guys making out in a park.
I parked my bike and jogged across the grass. “Hey.” I grabbed the guy's
shoulder and wasn't very surprised when he reared back and showed me a
demon's face with wolf eyes and a fanged mouth covered with his buddy's
blood.
He hissed and howled as I dragged him to the men's room, into a stall,
and shoved him up against the wall.
“Who did this to you?”
The transformation doesn't seem to really change people much, but my
injured knee had healed. It stood to reason that a man whose mind had been
damaged might be healed as well.
Yellowed eyeballs, lower lids pinkish. Olive brown pupils rolled as he
sought a means of escape from where I held him. He tried an ugly smile. “I
dunno what you mean.”
Maybe he was just stupid.
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“You can't eat people,” I told him, giving him a shake that knocked his
head against the metal stall walls and made them rattle. “I can't let you go out
there again and eat people, man.”
He started to whimper and claw at my hand. He was pretty strong for a
skeletal man, but I attributed that to the vampirism. It did seem that one
brought one's relative strength to the transformation, though. So I would have
been able to handle this piece of garbage before and was able to now.
“I'm hungry,” he said. And he licked at the blood still left on his mouth.
If I let him go he'd just continue munching on his fellows. Maybe even a
few of those cute kids piling out of Saint Monica's after choir practice. I
couldn't bring him with me. I put my hands on either side of his head and
willed myself to break his neck.
He looked at me with those cockeyed, reddened, liverish ugly eyes and I
just couldn't do it.
Instead I shoved him hard, one more time, against the wall, and said.
“Don't, okay? Find another source. There's a blood bank down on Fourth
Street, maybe they'll give you some HIV blood for free.”
“Yeah?”
Jesus. Even demonic possession couldn't cure stupidity. “Yeah, man. It's
like a soup kitchen.”
God knew if he believed me, understood, or even remembered a word of
our conversation after I released him and he went stumbling out into the night.
However, that little encounter brought me out of my post-Peter funk and set
me back on the beam. How long until we had an entire population of vampire
homeless people in our midst? It'd be like a bad old horror movie.
I hopped on my bike and headed toward the local police station. I had to
park it a couple blocks away because there were so many PD vehicles passing
in and out, it figured a chromed, custom Harley would attract at least one
check. And the bike was tagged as stolen currently.
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Every needle on the security guard's equipment redlined when I walked
through the scan. There was the Smith & Wesson stuffed in the waistband of
my jeans. The derringer in the ankle holster just above my boot. The big
hunting knife on a chain that every Mongol soldier wore.
He just stared at me.
“Oops. Back in a second,” I said.
I had to go out to my bike and sequester my arms away in the tiny little
saddlebag then come back in.
The security guard raised an eyebrow, but merely waved the wand around
me and let me through. I had to stand in line for thirty minutes to get up to the
window fronted with bulletproof glass and tell the primly uniformed plump
woman sitting on the stool there that I had come to report a crime.
She passed me a form.
I tried to fill it out, but there were really no check boxes or spaces for
“vampires,” “bloodsuckers,” or “take over the world.” I settled for “kidnapping
and firearms.” And turned it back in.
She looked at it. Pursed her lips. “Just a moment,” she said, and slid her
plump butt off the stool.
I left. As quickly as I could without attracting too much attention.
As I passed the windowed wall of the station, heading east on Wilshire, I
saw the old security guard pointing out at me, his arm following me as I drove
by. Two uniformed officers' heads swiveled to follow my progress. I gunned the
engine and switched lanes quickly, hoping they hadn
't spotted my plates yet.
Within minutes, I was back on the 405, up and under and roaring east on the
10. I didn't pull off again until I'd made the 5 interchange at the East Los
Angeles triangle. There I pulled into a small fueling station and, while I pumped
gas into my bike, I went off for a smoke and rang Alli.
Truth be told, I hadn't given the woman a second thought after we'd said
our piece in court during the Mongol trials. I'd seen her in her dress blues at
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the ceremony with the mayor. At the time she'd been on somebody's arm. I
hadn't bothered to ask who he was.
“You good?” I asked, after the hug.
“A little wobbly,” she said, removing her hat and fluffing her bangs out.
“You know, it sounds odd, but I almost miss it.”
“Really?” Yeah, you miss those bastards. They care more about you than
anyone ever has, don't they? But damned if I'd admit it.
She looked suddenly wary. “Well, I suppose it's just that after three years,
you get used to anything.”
“Christ, I hope not,” I said. Then I saw Peter coming toward me. “Listen, I
have to go. You take care.”
“Sure. Stay in touch,” she said.
“Absolutely.”
We hadn't spoken since. I imagined she didn't want to be reminded of
things any more than I did.
“Yes?” She answered the “unknown caller ID” briskly.
“Alli, it's Adam,” I said.
A silence. Oh, fucking hell, she still thought I was dead.
“They didn't tell you?” I said quickly. “It was all a ruse to take the heat
off.”
Another silence, and then, chilly. “Nobody said anything to me.”
“Yeah. Well, that's why I'm calling,” I ad-libbed quickly. “So that you'd
know and also, to warn you.”
She was quiet long enough I thought the call might have dropped. “You
haven't heard about Bert, have you?”
My heart literally sank into my belly. I knew before I even asked her.
“What happened?”
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“He was in San Antonio. You remember, he'd decided to move back in with
