Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  “No,” Lore says, shaking her head. “I’ve seen him before. I know his face. Those eyes.”

  “That’s how being famous works, last time I checked,” I mutter.

  Lore opens her mouth to speak, but another voice cuts her off.

  “Don’t tell me you’re still trying to chase down that brass tart, mate,” drawls a familiar bastardized cockney accent. “There’s no woman on earth worth that kind of effort. You should have learned that by now.”

  Of course.

  Before he even comes into view, I know exactly what I’ll see. Sure as shit, there’s Trick St. John, dressed to the nines, with a matched set of harlots hanging off his elbows. He’s mastered the fine art of serial fucking like no other person currently walking the planet. It truly boggles the mind, because with zero verbal filter, a penchant for gutter talk, and mommy issues for days, it’s not like he treats a single one of his girls to anything more than a body shot and a slap to the ass.

  “Yeah, because you’re the end-all be-all of relationship advice.” In no mood to take his shit, I start to brush past the lot of them. “Fuck off.”

  “Don’t be a dick, X. It’s my birthday.” Trick’s gaze roving over Lore like she’s the cherry on his sundae. “Who’s my new friend?”

  “Miss None-Of-Your-Goddamn-Business, that’s who,” I snap out. “And it’s not your fucking birthday.”

  “Never really is, izzit?” He grins before turning to Lore. “I’m Patrick St. John by the way. Most people call me Trick.”

  “I’d like to call you ‘gone,’” I tell him. “Preferably before I’m tempted to knock a few of your teeth out.”

  Lore shoots me a look that would do any mother proud before offering a hand to him. Before he can touch her, I intercept, clamping my fingers down on her wrist and drawing her closer to my side.

  “I’m Lourdes.” She’s giving me an even stranger look now, one asking me if I’ve gone off my damn rocker. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Right.” Trick nods, his eyes scouring every mostly-bare inch of her body. Instantly I regret the tiny skirt and bra combo. “The little piece onstage earlier. Gotta nice set of… pipes.”

  “Shut your mouth,” I interject before he can say anything worse. “Bloodlines might not matter as much as they used to, but she’s still way out of your league.”

  Trick guffaws. “Chill, mate, you don’t have to get all territorial. It’s not like I’m gonna steal her or somethin’.” He winks and adds, “Yet.”

  I can’t help the full-fang snarl I give him, some part of me flexing in a way that it hasn’t in a very long time. Without Reille here to jam the frequency, instincts are kicking in and telling me to lay claim to the ten miles of Lore’s legs, right along with the rest of her.

  Giving a disbelieving snort, Trick shakes his head at me in a way that makes me want to kick him in the ballsack. Apparently all that intent was written across my face, clear as day, obvious enough that even the town fool copped to it.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” he barks out. “You just got rid of one demirep and you’re already wound up with the next one. Bloody fucking ’ell, Xaine, you’re such a twat.”

  “Lore’s not a ‘demirep,’” I snap back, then endeavor to shut my yap. He’s baiting me on purpose, like he does, and I just fed him a tasty little morsel. By dropping a few choice phrases, a few choice words, he successfully ferreted out all he’d ever want to know about me and Lore. “Eat a fat one, St. John.”

  “Fat ones, skinny ones, I’ll eat ’em all. I am an equal opportunity opportunist, as long as they don’t get too clingy.” He hits me with that boyish grin that he’s famous for, then turns his head toward the woman on his left. She squeals when he reaches down to pinch her ass, and both girls start laughing in a way that makes me want to knock their heads together until the noise stops. “Tell Mister Rock Star what Rule Number One is.”

  “Don’t get attached,” they chorus before falling into another round of giggles. For his own general amusement, Trick encourages them to start kissing each other, and pretty soon red lipstick smears against baby-pink, with the master puppeteer smirking at me over their tousled heads. Lore watches with something akin to fascination, head tilted, one eyebrow arched in unspoken question.

  “Come on.” I tug on her hand then, jerking her away from the tableau. We step past Trick and his tittering ladybirds, heading down the hall as the blaring voice stops, the doors unlock, and the barriers slide open.

  “So, yeah,” Trick yells at my back, “party at my place. You should swing by, X, when you get tired of having crazy bitches trample your nuts. I mean, it’s gotta be rough, right? All those pointy heels.”

  I swing Lore around, pausing for a second so I can get another shot in. “Trick St. John, everyone. Two hundred years, and he still hasn’t achieved even a modicum of class. Be careful ladies, you never know what’ll happen in his bed. Drugs, booze, date rape…”

  “Bite your tongue! Not one fucking thing happens in that bed, arsehole.” He feigns offense, holding up two fingers. “Rule Number Two: Don’t fuck where you sleep. That’s what the guest rooms are for.”

  “Nice, Trick.” I have more important things to do than stand here bandying words with Hugh Hefner’s heir apparent. Reille’s gone, which means I need to ring up her brother, and that’s the sort of phone call nobody wants to make, especially not once you’ve faced down the business end of his UV pistols.

  Sunlight in a bullet, and me without a parasol, go figure.

  “Don’t be like that,” Trick yells at my back. Taking a deep breath, he adds, “I love you, Xaine!”

  “Well, there’s a first.” We both know there’s no love lost in any part of this equation, and his laughter still rings in my ears as I round the corner. “Looks like you already forgot rule number one.”

  Don’t get attached.

  It’s funny. I told Sebastian he could take his best shot, that I didn’t have anyone he could hurt. No friends he was willing to kill. No lovers he could use against me. No family left to speak of, except the Scipio clan and Lumen, all of whom are under Roman’s capable protection. Getting attached to things, to people, has suddenly reached a whole new level of dangerous, which means that Trick’s stupid rule really is the best advice known to man.

  Too bad nobody listens to the village idiot.

  As an afterthought, I turn back long enough to say, “By the way, I sent some business in your direction.”

  “What?” Trick pauses, frowning until two deep lines appear between his eyebrows. “Not that dickshit, Winters?”

  “Yeah, him,” I confirm. “You can thank me later.”

  “Fuck off, mate,” he snaps back, sliding one hand behind his neck to run his fingers through the shorn-short spikes at the base of his skull. A moment later he raises his voice to shout at my back, “Hey, do me a favor, X… and don’t do me anymore favors, awright?”

  “Rule number three, jackass,” I toss out over my shoulder, glancing back long enough to see him nod.

  Grudgingly, because he knows I’ve got him there, he repeats, “Yeah, rule number three,” then waves me off with a military salute that turns into a middle finger.

  I tighten down on Lore’s hand and turn us both back toward the commons.

  “Well, he’s super classy.” Lore’s voice is full of humor, and when I glance down at her face, she’s smiling that lopsided smile. “I like him.”

  “He’s a douchebag.”

  “You’re a douchebag,” she says, laughing a little.

  “Must run in the family.” I brace myself for another question, but thankfully a uniformed officer turns up; it’s to be expected, given the lockdown.

  One of my security guys is with him, and he stutters out, “Hey, Xaine, we have a little problem.”

  “Define ‘little.’”

  “Another dead body,” the cop says. “I need both of you to come with me.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lore

  They take Xa
ine away the moment we set foot inside the precinct, splitting the two of us up to see if our stories corroborate. Hours later, I’m sitting in the world’s most uncomfortable chair, my head tilted to the side so a police medic can take snapshots of the fang marks on my neck.

  “This is bullshit,” I tell the one with the camera, pinning him with a vaguely annoyed stare. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “Xaine’s in our system.” He wields a little tube with a cotton swab in it, the vampire equivalent of a rape kit. “We’ve got him on file from a previous incident. If everything checks out, then we’ll be able to match dental records and DNA.”

  “Then he’ll be free, right?”

  “Unless he’s not.” There’s another guy here, like the ones you see on TV programs. He’s well into middle-age, fat, balding, angry at life, and looking at me like I’m the full-page spread in Playboy: pretty, but dumb as a box of rocks. “If the DNA is a match to the dead girls, then he goes down on two counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder.”

  “Attempted murder?” I sit upright, working the kink out of my neck with one hand. “Someone survived?”

  “Yeah,” the fat one says with a snort. “You.”

  “Xaine didn’t try to kill me,” I shoot back, turning suspicious eyes toward the medic as he swabs the bite marks and bottles the sample.

  He pulls out one of those clickable razors, the kind they use to prick your finger to test your iron before giving blood. “Hold still.”

  “Ow!” My whole body jumps when he sticks me. Such a tiny pain, but it still managed to catch me by surprise. I glare at the medic as he leans in, squeezes the microscopic wound he made over one of the bites, and sops up the blood on some sort of test strip. “Why the hell do you even need that?”

  “Vamps have venom,” he explains. “Even feeder bites leave trace amounts. Did you shower after he bit you?”

  “No,” I tell him, disgruntled. “I showered before.”

  “That’s good. We should be able to pull a match here.” The medic drops labeled tubes into a plastic baggie, zipping everything up before he takes off for some forensics lab. That leaves me and Mr. Middle Age to stare one another down. There’s silence while he gives me that famous stink eye, the one that tries to guilt me into a confession. I give it right back, arms folded over my chest, shoulders digging into the plastic chair back.

  He waits me out for all of a minute before heaving a sweaty sigh. “Fact of the matter is, Ms. Chase, your boyfriend has a violent history.”

  “Xaine’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Your companion?”

  “I’m not a hooker.”

  “Whatever.” He waves me off with a flippant gesture. “A month ago, he was brought in for brutally savaging a woman named Mireille Reece. A few days ago, he was the last person seen with the first murder vic. Tonight? A body turns up in his swimming pool.” Fatty rocks forward in his chair, elbows on knees, palms spread like he’s trying to reason with me. “Seems a little suspicious to me.”

  “Suspect him all you want, but I’ve been with him for the last twenty-four hours,” I say. “I haven’t left his side for longer than it took for hair and makeup to slap us into some new threads and toss us onstage together. I know for a fact that there are at least three people who can vouch for his whereabouts when I wasn’t with him.”

  “You’re safe from him here, Ms. Chase,” the cop says. “You don’t have to lie. He can’t hurt you.”

  My eyes narrow as I lean forward in my chair, elbows on my own knees, imitating his pose. “I want to talk to your supervisor, or at least someone smarter than you. I mean, there has to be a trained monkey in this place somewhere right? Maybe a dolphin?”

  A soft laugh catches my attention, and my head snaps around. The newcomer leans in the doorway, flexing in the way that men with muscles can’t seem to help doing. The gray T-shirt he’s wearing does nothing to camouflage all that bulge, and to be honest, neither do the ass-hugging blue jeans. His face is a bit harsh, kind of angular, but not unappealing when paired with screw-it o’clock shadow and the short bristle of dark hair on his head. He looks…

  Capable.

  “Are you the monkey?” The words are out of my mouth before I have the chance to stop them.

  He pushes away from the door jamb, stepping toward me with one hand outstretched. “No, I’m the dolphin. The name’s Asher.”

  I reach out and his big, calloused fingers close around mine. It’s a strong handshake, but not a suave one, at least not in the Tinseltown sense. The rough sandpaper of his palms leaves a little friction burn in its wake, and my eyes wander down his torso to the gun holstered at his waist. All in all, I feel like I’ve taken a pretty good measure of Asher before he finally lets me go.

  “You’re late,” Fatty grumbles. “Did Timmy fall down a well again?”

  “Bulb burnt out in the Bat Signal, took a while to fix,” Asher says, then adds, “Can I get a minute with the girl?”

  Fatty hesitates, wheezing a moment as if loath to leave, but eventually he heads toward the coffee machine in the other room, toting a white mug and a frown. Asher plunks himself down in the vacated chair, leaning back and propping his elbows on the arm rests. He sits like a dude, legs spread and feet sprawled out in front, total power pose. I read an article on those once; apparently, the lazier you look, the more confidence you have. Confident enough to not give a shit about what people think of the way you sit, anyway. His expression is authoritative and a little hard, but when he smiles at me, it tears a decade off his age.

  “So what’s your deal?” I ask wryly. “Here to play good cop?”

  “Nah,” he says, waving a hand at that. “I’m not a cop.”

  “You just play one on TV?” I give him a very ballsy once-over. “I gotta say, you wouldn’t even have to act. Hell, you could paint walls shirtless for two hours, and I’d buy a ticket.”

  He flushes at that, clearing his throat and glancing away. “I’m here to talk about the murders. I assume they’ve run you through the usual questions?”

  “Yeah, and the meat grinder too.” I gesture to the dot of blood on my neck. “I just want to go home.”

  “Well, I don’t know how likely that’s going to be,” Asher tells me. “Do you have any family you can stay with? Back east, maybe?”

  I go a little cold at that, because whoever this guy is, he’s done his homework. “Nope,” I say, suddenly wary. “There’s nobody. Just me and my roommate.”

  But you knew that.

  “Truth is, Ms. Chase,” he says, lifting one hand to scrape at the thick shadow on his chin, “whether Xaine did this or not, there’s a serial killer on the loose, and as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news—”

  “I know,” I cut him off. “I look like them. The murdered girls.”

  Eerily, creepily like them. The woman they found at Scion could have been my sister, and the girl they found in Xaine’s pool could have been my twin. Their California Driver’s License pictures hang not five feet away from me, clipped to a white board next to crime scene snapshots of their naked, lifeless bodies. Hell, I might suspect Xaine, too, if I hadn’t spent the last twenty-four hours practically in his pocket.

  “You certainly bear more than a passing resemblance to the deceased,” Asher agrees, leaning forward. “Which is why it would be safer for you to leave town, at least for a while.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I say, definite and sure. “And if you’re not a cop, then who are you and why the hell are you here?”

  “I’m a consultant,” he tells me. “An expert on the paranormal.” My eyebrows climb my forehead as he goes on to say, “I don’t have a badge, but I help keep the city safe.”

  “From vampires?”

  “From supernaturals.”

  That throws me, because it implies something different. Something more. “As in, other than vampires?”

  “As in,” Asher says, “including, but not limited to, vampires.”<
br />
  “So there are different things out there?” To that, he gives a slow nod and my curiosity gets the better of me. “Like what?”

  “Like your friend Benicio,” he says, leading me back to the matter at hand. “Does he have a last name?”

  “If he does, I don’t know it.”

  Asher leans sideways, pulling a small notepad from his back pocket. Obviously a pen didn’t go with the outfit because he reaches over and plucks a writing utensil from the cup on Fatty’s desk. When he returns his attention to me, his dark eyes scour my scanty outfit from head to foot. There’s no lust in it; in fact, he flushes and turns his eyes downward to scribble something on the first piece of paper.

  So Batman is shy. Interesting.

  “Where did you meet Benicio?” he asks.

  “I have a Thirsty Thursday gig at O’Reilly’s. I met him there.”

  “You hadn’t seen him before that?”

  “No?” The question that is not a question reappears, and I feel its presence acutely. I seem to do that a lot these days, looking to other people to fill in the blanks for all the questions that I can’t seem to answer myself. Like Asher might know how I ended up in the Valley on a Thursday night. “I may have seen him before, but I can’t say for sure. All I have are very hazy memories of blond hair, blue eyes, very broad shoulders. He’s tall, really tall, and…”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.” I shrug, because I can’t do anything else. “You could ask Xaine for a better physical description. He might be able to tell you more. He seemed to… recover more quickly?”

  “Recover from what?”

  I try to get the wording exactly right, because I have so little else to give this guy. “It was like I was drugged. My head felt swimmy. And, I kept having…”

  When I pause, I glance at his face. Asher’s sitting there as impassive as any statue, a veritable David, all hard lines and chiseled-stone angles. He waits for an entire minute, but I bite the inside of my lip and shut my trap. I almost said too much.

  But he’s not about to let me get away with silence, not when I might have case-relevant information to impart. “Kept having?” he prompts.