by Riley, A. M.
“Your computer geek,” said Caballo. “He's got some kind of medical license
so he can buy it wholesale.”
“Drew? Isn't he in jail?”
“He cut a deal. We work together now. Betsy and him and me. We are the
'Righteous Ones.'”
“Sounds like a comic book,” I observed dryly.
“I came to ask you to help us. Those two, they can't fight worth shit, man.”
“I'm really not interested in vigilante justice,” I said. “Thanks for the offer.”
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“It's not vigilante, we offer a service. For a fee. Drew figured it out. He has
a whole sliding scale and everything. We are like bounty hunters, man.”
“Skipping bail shouldn't result in having one's blood sucked,” I said. I
rolled over on my stomach and said to the wall, “I just want to be left alone.”
“Man, Betsy said you'd be a dick. What else you gonna do with eternity,
man? Lay here in the dark feeling sorry for yourself?”
“That was sort of the plan.”
“Well, that plan sucks. Eternity is a long fucking time, and you got an
obligation. You could be dead.”
“I had kind of hoped to be.”
I was surprised by a sudden hard slap on the back of my head. “Selfish
prick,” said Caballo. He rose and walked off, flinging a couple of slim cardboard
cards at me. They fluttered near my feet and I picked one up. It was a business
card. White on black with a cell phone number.
“Call me when you feel like being a man,” said Caballo. It seemed his
ascending footsteps echoed in my little room for a very long time.
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Chapter Twenty-six
Eternity is a very long time to sleep on a mattress that smells like a wino's
urine. I hauled my sorry butt out into the night the next evening to find a new
mattress. Or, at least one that didn't stink or have bugs.
Since resale of used mattresses is illegal, it was an easy acquisition. The
local junk yard wasn't open, but I heaved the thing easily over the fence,
leaving the freaked and insane guard dogs frothing and yowling behind me.
I found a wooden table in there too. And a couple of chairs. Then I slipped
an envelope under the door with a decent amount of cash.
I didn't give my actions much thought. I have found it easiest not to
question myself, and so I didn't. I went to a surplus store and found a small,
gas-powered generator for sale. A couple of khaki-colored wool blankets. A cup
and a plate.
The following night I went to a 7-Eleven and bought a magazine to read by
my tiny lamplight. And an ashtray. You can make a huge pile of ashes in an
eternity of smoking, you know.
The third night I bought a broom.
The fourth night, I bought a prepaid phone and called Caballo. “I've been
thinking…”
* * * * *
“So how'd you get sucked into this?” I asked Caballo.
He and I crouched on the rooftop of a Public Storage warehouse. The night
was almost bright as day. Streetlights reflecting off the marine fog created an
eerie illumination much like a black light.
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235
He'd changed from his ubiquitous white T-shirt into a black one and wore
fingerless gloves. The scabbard of his sword slung over his back. I knew that
somewhere on his person he'd sequestered other arms, as had I. But they were
only backup. Our real weapons were ourselves.
“Betsy,” said Caballo, and grinned. “That girl can't shut up, man. Pretty
soon she's got me feeling every po' little black child in America needs my help.
Crazy bitch.”
Across from us, the door to another warehouse opened. A figure emerged.
Stout and, from our angle, seeming very short. He was soon followed by a slim
figure whose high heels clacked loudly on the concrete as they walked.
“That's them,” said Caballo. Still in his crouch, he crept toward the lip of
the roof.
“How do you know?” I whispered.
He grimaced. “I can smell it.” He ran a few short feet and, silent and swift,
leaped over the side of the roof.
I followed.
It was so easy I was almost embarrassed. Caballo held the man while I
forced his companion back into the warehouse where she seemed almost eager
to show me the tapes and photos and computer equipment they'd been using
to broadcast their garbage to the world.
Flash a little demon visage at a pedophile and it's amazing what they'll tell
you.
Caballo enjoyed sucking the man's blood and spitting it out on the ground
for a while, until the guy started to get dizzy and realize where this would end.
The woman had fainted dead away a couple of times. Something about the way
I smiled at her with all of my fangs seemed to do it.
They were practically begging us to drive them over to the place where
they'd hidden the boy. Caballo made a call then, and Betsy showed up. In a
dark suit and prim little bun, carrying a handbag and looking just like an angel
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of mercy from social services. She took the boy's hand and led him to the
nearest police station.
Caballo turned his bloody smile back to the man. The woman fainted
again.
We chucked them in the back of the truck and I followed Caballo to Parker
Center, where we left them tied up on the steps, a tidy box of evidence nearby.
As we were leaving, I saw a small crowd of people swarming from the station,
exclaiming at the delivery.
A man in a suit with sandy hair looked up and over when I started my
bike. Peter's gaze met mine.
“Let's get out of here,” I said to Caballo.
* * * * *
“You okay, man?”
Caballo sat at my wooden table, watching me pace. We hadn't bothered
with the lights.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“You did a good thing tonight.”
“If you say so.” I lit a cigarette and tossed the match three feet to land
precisely in the center of the ashtray. I'd had time for a lot of practice lately.
“So you wanna fuck?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“You're so hard you're gonna bust.” He indicated the thickness between
my thighs.
“I'm on the wagon,” I said. “My dick gets me in more trouble than it's
worth.”
Caballo gave me a wise look. “Eternity is a long time, man.”
“Eternity is an illusion. I'm taking it one day at a time.”
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“Suit yourself.” He got up and went to the door. “So, about the gig with
Betsy and the geek. You in?”
“Sure,” I said. “What else do I have to not live for?”
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Chapter Twenty-seven
You'd think I'd feel a little better about things after that, but the next
night I woke in my familiar slump. I didn't rise off the mattress, turn on the
lamp, or even light a cigarette. I just lay there in the dark and felt myself drift
like a mote of dust.
Immortality. It's like fog. Sometimes it's thick and sometimes it's thin but
<
br /> it never moves anywhere. It has no agenda, no definite goal. It just is.
I was lying on the mattress, imagining I could hear the gaping maw of the
giant, uncaring universe, when I did hear, very definitely and not my
imagination at all, a man's footsteps on the stairs.
A human man, or at least the smell of adrenalized blood, and the rapidly
thumping heart would indicate that.
By the time he'd reached the last riser and turned toward my room, I'd
recognized Peter. He stopped in the doorway. His familiar silhouette.
“Hello?” he said, scanning the room with his flashlight. The beam didn't
find me as I was crouching in a corner.
He stood there for a minute. Then I heard him sigh. He turned as if to go.
“Wait,” I said. My voice sounded weirdly rough.
“Adam?”
“Hold on,” I said. And I went over and turned on the generator. It hummed
for a minute and then the two lights switched on.
Peter and I stared at each other. Fuck, he looked good.
His expression was impossible for me to read. But then he blinked and
looked around, swiveling on one heel. “You cleaned,” he said. “Sort of.”
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239
I hadn't made that much of an effort. There was that stack of boxes in one
corner that might have been there since ABC studios kept their film vault here.
I'd only shoved them to the side. I saw his gaze go from the boxes to the
mattress to the table I'd found.
“You don't have to live like this,” he said.
“I'm not living,” I said. “I am maintaining my undead existence.”
He gave me a quizzical look.
I didn't want to explain my whole moral conundrum, the flat fog of
immortality, to him because it was embarrassing and too melodramatic.
I should have known that Peter would figure me out without me having to
say a word, though. “Well, if you think you need to be miserable, I'm not going
to argue with you,” he said. “But if you want me to come down here again,
you'd better get a sofa. A radio, maybe. To listen to the game.”
Something warm made itself known inside me. Something small and
glowing and fragile. Like a tiny light. “Okay, well, I guess if you want to come
down here.”
“Figured since you've been kind of out of the loop, you wouldn't have
heard. But we finally got the DNA back from your CI's wounds. And those other
bodies we found.”
“You ran DNA?” That was Peter for you. Thorough.
“Yeah. It wasn't yours, of course. We still haven't got a match on it.”
“You might try the Mexican database, I heard a few things.”
“Thanks. I never thought it was you.”
“I know.”
“But I figured you'd like to know that nobody else has to wonder either. If
you were worried. Oh, and I brought something for you. Hang on.” He sprinted
out the door; I heard him as he climbed all three flights and then, after a few
minute, came running back down. He jogged into the room carrying one of
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those coolers you'd take to a football game under one arm, an office file box
under the other, and set them both down on the floor.
“You'll have to supply your own ice, since you haven't got a refrigerator
yet…”
“Yet?”
He dug around in the cooler and brought out a neat, labeled bag of blood.
“Something good may have come out of all of this. That doctor of Ozone's
really has come up with a viable artificial blood. According to the medical
people I spoke to. They aren't ready to release it into the general population yet,
but a friend on the inside is willing to supply me with a few bags every week if I
want.” He handed it across to me.
I held the cool, soft plastic in my hand and could smell the goodness of it.
He watched me expectantly. “Aren't you going to try it?”
“Peter, I can't… not in front of you.”
“Oh right, suddenly you're concerned about my sensibilities? Adam, I've
seen you sitting on the can.”
“When I'm that sick, I'm past caring.”
“Or that time you blew chunks all over the inside of my car…”
“That wasn't intentional, for Christ's sake.”
“Peed on my leg.”
“I begged you to stop tickling me!”
“Spit beer at my sister…”
“She dared me…”
“But you can't drink a little harmless artificial blood. Fine. Go off and do
your thing. I'll just hang out here and wait.”
So then I had to sit down right there in front of him and puncture the
bottom of the bag with my special teeth.
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241
I don't know what I expected. It had been a while since I'd tapped straight
from a vein. Fact was, Caballo had done most of the work the night before
because I didn't trust myself that near a human. I expected the crappy stale
artificial blood I'd grown used to. And I was going to be grateful for it. I was
going to smile and say “yum-yum” at Peter no matter how hard that was.
But this stuff was fantastic. It curled up around my brain just like
buttercream frosting, and I didn't even notice anything else until the sound of
someone sucking hard on an empty plastic bag brought me back to myself.
Peter sat across from me with an impressed expression on his face.
“You suck like a Hoover,” he said.
I laughed, realizing belatedly that I probably had blood on my mouth.
“Jesus, that was good.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand, feeling
embarrassed.
“Oh, and I brought you something else.” Peter pulled a cell phone out of
his pocket and slid it across the table. It was one of the new ones. With the
games and the e-mails in it.
“I can't take that.”
“I'm sorry, I insist. If you're going to work for me, I need to be able to get
hold of you.”
“Work for you?”
“I need your help.” And he reached into the box he'd brought down with
the cooler of blood, lifted up a file and set it on the table. “Bring your chair
around and let me show you what I have.”
So I dragged my chair around next to him, leaning on the table, our arms
touching.
He opened the file. “We had a rash of these murders in Long Beach. All
outside clubs. Prelim hasn't found anything to relate them, and the victims
don't seem to have anything in common, but I still wonder…”
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Peter's got the instincts of a bat. He can feel the cave walls. I took the files
from him, that tiny warm glow growing just a little. Here I was thinking I was
useless and Peter came along and just made it all go away.
“I'll see what I can find out. I might know a guy who can help.”
Peter chuckled. “You always know 'a guy,' Adam. I've never understood
how you find these people.”
“It's the charm,” I said. “Nobody can resist me.”
“God knows I can't.”
His eyes were dark blue. He had that little smile. He smelled so good.
Fuck.
Without even willing it, I leaned into his neck, smelling him. Then I jerked
>
myself back. I was hard. Throbbing, panting, barely in control. The same
stupid animal that Peter had kicked out of his condo that night.
“Christ, I'm sorry, Peter.”
He looked at me in a kind of surprised wonderment. “Sorry for what?”
“For…” His lips were parted as he watched me struggle for words. “Can I
kiss you?”
“Since when do you have to ask?”
Of course, never. Peter has never, ever denied me what I wanted from him.
“I don't deserve it.”
“You don't deserve it? What about me? What do I deserve?”
Better than what I can give you. Better than a dead man who wasn't that
great even before he was dead. That feeling of confusion, of needing to get away
came over me. I got up and started moving around the room. I felt like mist,
like smoke. Like I'd blow away. “Something better.”
He watched me with that steady dark gaze. “Stop it, Adam.” I stopped
pacing and stared at him. Fifteen years it had been. Peter watching me, waiting
for me to stop. Waiting for me to…
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243
He got up from his chair, took my hand, and led me to the mattress. Sat
down and brought me with him. “Kiss me.”
Nobody's mouth tastes like Peter's. I pushed him back onto the mattress.
Leaned over him and studied his face. The shadow of his beard coming in, the
way that corner of his lip turns up more than the other. The lashes beneath his
eyes are very short and reddish. He has three and a half freckles on his face.
The half looks like a tiny smile. I know Peter's freckles so well I could name
them, like stars.
A little grin appeared on his mouth. “What are you doing?”
I was generally the aggressive one. Dragging Peter into the bedroom. Or
not even bothering with the bedroom, bending him over a bar stool. Dropping
his pants as he tried to do the dishes and giving him a rim job. Laughing when
he broke a plate.
This time, I felt weirdly maudlin.
I stripped him slowly, until he was down to his blue boxers, the little gold
