Immortality Is the Suck

by Riley, A. M.

  Used-looking bills of small denominations. I wondered where he was getting it.

  “Well, cool then. Let's roll.”

  * * * * *

  “It stinks down here.” Albert toed the mattress in the corner.

  “It's completely dark and nobody comes down here,” I said. I'd stopped at

  the Seven-Eleven and picked up some supplies. We'd popped open Albert's

  supply of blood and guzzled it down as soon as we'd entered the room. The first

  rush had passed, and now I lit the thick votive candles and set them in a row

  against the far wall. St. Jude, St. Joseph, and the Virgin of Guadalupe leaped

  in shadows and light across the dirty floor.

  I threw the cheap sheets across the mattress and lay down fully clothed,

  folding my hands across my chest. My hard-on was raging, but I felt

  disinclined to do anything about it at the moment. Actually, just the thought of

  it made me think of Peter and that thought made me feel more sad than sexy.

  “You sleep much?” asked Albert, pulling one of the broken chairs over and

  sitting.

  “No. But I never did.”

  “I can't sleep at all, 'mano. I have crazy dreams.” Albert reached into his

  shirt pocket and drew forth a fat spliff.

  I eyed the thing as he lit it. “You still get high?”

  His scarred eyebrow rose in surprise. “Sí, why would I not?”

  “Just doesn't do it for me anymore,” I said, stretching my arms over my

  head. When I looked back at him he was eyeing my crotch.

  “You got it bad, 'mano.”

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  “Don't you?”

  He shook his head, inhaling so deeply the joint burned almost to his

  fingertips. “Don't get me wrong. I'd never say no to a wet pussy, but I never

  craved it like you did.”

  “You calling me a whore, Albert?”

  He flicked the end of his joint on the floor and ground it with the toe of his

  tight black boots. “You, who will fuck anything? Sí, puta, and you love it.”

  I wondered if Peter thought this too. I'd never made much of a secret of my

  twenty-minute suck and fucks around town. I didn't regale him with tales of

  my exploits, of course, but I didn't exactly lie. Did I?

  “Tell me about your plan, Albert.” I shelved the Peter thoughts. Useless

  and painful as they were.

  “While I was in there, I met a doctor's assistant. He knows their

  computers. When the mutiny went down, I helped get him out of there. He

  owes me.” Albert rose from his chair and came over to the mattress, sitting

  down next to me.

  “So?”

  “So it takes a lot of money for Ozone to run something like that, 'mano. A

  lot of money. My friend, he says all of the money is in accounts that he can find

  with a computer. He can, how do they say it, ax in.”

  “He can hack into the accounts?”

  “Sí, and transfer funds to us. Then destroy the trail. We take some back

  pay, let's say. Go north. Canada, Northwest Territories, Alaska. You know, they

  have thirty days of night there, 'mano?”

  “Thirty days of sun too,” I reminded him.

  Albert unbuttoned his shirt and let it drop behind him. His shoulders were

  round and hard and gold in the candlelight.

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  My erection was throbbing painfully and I let my hand drop, thumb

  caressing the hard ridge where it pressed against my zipper. “I could use that

  information too,” I told him. “Maybe it's all they need to bust Ozone.”

  “I hear maybe Ozone is dust.”

  I wish I'd been the one swinging that sword, I thought to myself. “Who's in

  charge then?”

  “You still playing cop?” asked Albert. He'd focused on the movements of

  my hand and his fingers were a play of shadows as he unbuttoned his jeans

  and drew out his cock. I couldn't see it clearly but the smell went straight to

  my head.

  I could barely unzip my jeans, but the moment my cock popped out and I

  wrapped my fingers around it, I felt that uncomfortable sorrow well up in me

  again.

  Breathing faster, supporting his weight with one arm, eyes closed, Albert

  jerked himself off. I watched him, painfully horny but unable to bear touching

  myself. When he'd finished, hips jerking and sexy little grunts as his cum

  dirtied my already filthy mattress, Albert's gaze took in my untouched penis

  and then traveled up to my face.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Nothing.” I tried cramming my cock in my pants. I squeezed it hard

  enough to deflate it a bit, zipped up, and rolled on my side to face the wall.

  “Just don't feel like it.”

  Albert made a surprised noise, but in a minute he was elbowing me

  sideways so that he could stretch out on the mattress next to me. “So, you

  want to run to Alaska with us, Adam? Pick up your sweetheart and ride with

  me again, man.”

  It was a tempting thought. Ride with my brothers again? Open road,

  nothing but me and the bike and the camaraderie? Fuck the LAPD. Fuck Peter.

  “I can't,” I said.

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  “What the hell is wrong with you, Adam? You in love or something?”

  “Go the fuck to sleep,” I said. “I'll consider it, okay?”

  “Women,” snorted Albert. “It's that undercover cop you were fucking, isn't

  it?”

  I didn't need to be reminded of my guilt about Alli, on top of everything

  else.

  “Shut up.”

  “Not that I blame you, 'mano. She was hot. I would have gone for her

  myself but…”

  I rolled, grabbed him around the neck, and let my face slide into that

  other personality. The one that slithered and writhed seemingly just below the

  surface all the time these days. “Shut. The fuck. Up,” I growled.

  Albert was sufficiently intimidated. “Sorry,” he croaked. His diamond tooth

  flashed in the candlelight. “'Mano, you just need to get off. Let me help you.”

  “You touch me, I'll break your hand, 'mano,” I said, and rolled over, facing

  the wall again.

  A long silence. The undead can be very, very quiet. It still bothered me a

  bit. “Sorry, Albert.” I spoke to the darkened wall. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I

  just need to get the fuck out of Los Angeles.”

  “That's all I'm saying, 'mano,” said Albert.

  We were quiet then and eventually I slept. When I woke, Albert was not in

  the room. The halogen lights in the stairwell were on, their pale blue light

  illuminating the doorway and, after a minute, I heard steel-toed boots

  pounding down the staircase.

  “It's a beautiful night,” sang Albert, coming into the room with his jacket

  flung over his shoulder like some undead lothario. He was flushed and his

  black eyes glittered.

  I staggered to my feet, searching for the pack of cigarettes I kept by the

  mattress. “You killed somebody, didn't you Albert?” I lit my cigarette.

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  Albert averted his gaze and said, “We should hurry; the nights are short

  this time of year.”

  * * * * *

  I'm a creature of expediency. In the Marines I'd done a few things I di
dn't

  enjoy thinking back on, and in Vice I'd bent the rules so far they'd resembled

  pretzels. With the Mongols, the line between undercover officer and full-out

  criminal had become progressively vague, but I'd never committed murder.

  Sure, I'd harbored murderers, broken bread with them. Colluded,

  supported, and protected them. But it was my line. Or, rather, it was Peter's

  line.

  I didn't want to become Albert.

  I followed him, now, into the downtown loft area. Twenty-three years

  earlier, artists had rented the old factories and bakery buildings for thirty cents

  a square foot. Now, those spaces had been partitioned into one thousand-

  square-foot boxes and sold for half a million to well-heeled urban professionals

  with pretensions of artistry.

  A series of fresh red brick buildings came up on our left. We turned our

  bikes into an immaculate narrow parking area with a VISITORS ONLY sign that

  had been enthusiastically tagged and an old man with a shopping cart sitting

  on the curb in one space. Albert parked near a deck and stairs, designed to

  look like a loading dock.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  Shopping cart guy shambled over. “You got a cigarette?”

  I shook one out of my package for him. His fingers were red and yellow

  and chapped at the ends. He took a hardcover cigarette pack out of his many

  layers of coats and slid my ciggie into it, then sequestered it back among the

  folds.

  I had a thought. “You see anybody biting people or drinking blood around

  here?”

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  “You kidding me? All the time,” he said.

  He was crazy, right? Suddenly I understood the expressions on the faces

  of the LAPD and ATF agents I'd spoken to in the past couple of days.

  Albert reappeared, followed by a svelte young Asian boy with gorgeous,

  salon-cut dark hair, a London Fog duster kicking out from his creased trousers

  as he walked. A slim black leather case hung over one shoulder. From the way

  he hefted it, I assumed it held some sort of equipment.

  Albert placed a hand on the back of the man's neck, which he immediately

  shook off. “Drew? This is Snake,” said Albert, grinning.

  Drew looked at my hand when I held it out, but instead of taking it he

  withdrew the unlit cigarette from his mouth and said, “Whose rod am I riding?”

  He wasn't a vampire, yet. I could smell him from three feet away. I glanced

  at Albert and surprised a ravenous expression on his face. “Hop on,” I said,

  scooting forward on my seat.

  Drew clung to me as we roared off. His body was lithe and fitted up tight

  against me and gave off the odor of mint. In my ear, he yelled, “I told Albert we

  only need to be within twenty yards of the main computer and I can do the

  rest.”

  * * * * *

  Drew appeared to be something of a vampire groupie. “So, have you

  noticed a change during full moons? New moons? I have a theory that the

  vampiric entity is more affected by the changes in the planetary motion than—”

  “Would you please shut up,” said Albert, pacing.

  Drew's mouth turned down at the corners. I shot Albert a glare. We

  needed this guy, right?

  “I haven't been this way for long,” I told Drew. “So I don't know.”

  “Interesting,” said Drew. He had wire clippers and cable and seemed to be

  making some kind of art across the open beams of the room we sat in.

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  We'd parked our bikes at the bottom of the steep roads leading up to

  Ozone's building, threw tarps and then brush over them. I had an alarm on my

  bike that would wake the dead, or undead as the case may be, but we were

  more concerned about discovery than theft at the moment. We'd scaled the wall

  of a house behind Ozone's compound and lifted Drew through the window. We

  sat now in an unventilated attic. Drew kept complaining about the lack of air,

  but Albert and I were fine.

  “You don't need to breathe. I do,” said Drew.

  “I breathe,” I protested.

  “Wow, you really are a newbie. You don't need to breathe. You only do it

  out of habit. I bet when you sleep, you stop.”

  I figured I'd never sleep again after hearing that.

  “Who the fuck cares,” said Albert. “How much longer is this going to

  take?”

  “I need a tall antenna to use the WiFi at the compound,” said Drew

  patiently. He stapled another bit of wire to a beam. “You know, the whole

  subject of vampirism is fascinating. I've interviewed quite a few subjects and

  I've been thinking of writing a book. I've noticed that the demon, as I call it,

  enhances the host's, as I call the undead, former human, natural tendencies.

  Violent people become more violent. Angry people become angrier. Gluttonous

  people overindulge.”

  Albert laughed and leered at me, gaze going to my perpetual bulge.

  I ignored him. “So how dangerous is what you're doing here?”

  “Those bozos are nothing but tweaked-out users,” said Drew disdainfully.

  The keyboard on his laptop sounded like a machine gun as he typed. “I told

  them their firewall was inadequate and they had me plug the leaks, but I'll bet

  they never changed the password.” A few more clicks as his fingers moved in a

  blur and he said, “See? Idiots.” He turned the laptop so that Albert and I could

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  see the page displayed on the monitor. It looked like a bank account statement.

  The bottom line was seven figures long.

  Albert swore.

  “I have to move quickly or they'll spot me,” said Drew, snapping his fingers

  at Albert. “Give me the bank account information you have.”

  Albert handed across a deposit slip and Drew's fingers flew across the

  keyboard again. “There,” he said. “They have several accounts like this, but I

  have to dive in, snatch, and run or they'll notice the breach.”

  “Wait,” I said before he could exit from whatever he was doing. “Can you

  print out a record of deposits or withdrawals?”

  “Um, duhh, no printer,” Drew replied in a weary voice. “I can forward a

  PDF to any e-mail address you want, though.”

  I gave him Alli's e-mail address. Then, as an afterthought, Peter and

  Stan's at the Parker Center. “Put in the subject line 're: Adam,'” I said. Drew

  typed like a fiend and then hit a few keys with finality and shut the laptop.

  “We should get out of here now,” he said.

  “Why? I mean, I thought you could hit all the accounts,” said Albert.

  “Listen, I set up the security on this place. We only have a few minutes

  and then the computer begins to report a breach. If there is anybody in there

  with any knowledge whatsoever, they can trace the breach back to our

  location.”

  “Fuck, you little shit, you didn't tell me that.”

  “Well, the odds of anyone there actually knowing how to do that is pretty

  slim. I'm telling you, Ozone hired meth heads who needed the extra cash, not

  technically experienced professionals.”

  Albert froze and held up a hand. “What was that?”

  “Don't be paranoid,” sneere
d Drew. “There's noth—”

  “Shut up,” I said. Sure enough, in the bowels of the house in which we

  were hidden, a door slammed and voices rose in alarm.

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  “Damn,” said Albert, sprinting toward the dormer window and the only

  means of escape. But it was too late. Like something from a spy thriller, black-

  clothed men swarmed through the opening. Grabbed the three of us and

  Drew's laptop just before more of the same popped up through the attic door.

  The residents of the house, a man and woman and at least two kids that I

  could see, had been herded onto the living room couch where they huddled,

  terrified, staring up at the demonic faces. I felt a twinge of regret when the boy

  watched me being shepherded by.

  Worse, when we were herded through the back yard, I saw another human

  on the ground. Too familiar, even on his belly and wearing a dark jacket, for me

  not to know on sight.

  Fucking hell. I should have known Peter would be following me. His face

  pressed into the turf, his eyes rolled up and his gaze caught mine as I was

  muscled out of the yard and through the gate.

  “Who the hell was that?” I asked one of the lackeys who shoved me up the

  stairs to the compound.

  “Whoever they are, they'll be food soon enough.”

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  Chapter Twenty-two

  “'mano, sit down,” said Albert. We had been placed in the same ceramic-

  tiled room with the high-powered vampire-torching beams of light imprisoning

  us. I had an urge to throw myself at the beams, equal parts desperation and

  self-loathing I guess, which I was quelling by pacing up and down the ten-foot

  space.

  Albert crouched on the floor, head on his arms, bemoaning his fate. “We

  will be pinned,” he moaned again.

  “We fucking deserve it,” I said. “Why are they taking so long?”

  “Probably interrogating the other prisoners,” said Albert. “Or eating them.”

  This was exactly what I feared and I almost exploded with impatience,

  hitting the wall, hard with both fists. “Fuck!” I yelled.