by Mary Hughes
I squeezed the hell out of his cock the same moment he bit into my neck.
We both screamed. My legs locked around his hips, grinding us together like granite wheels. His mouth scalded my throat. My hands and pussy pumped him dry.
He collapsed on me. We lay in a sweaty heap on the leather cushions. The compartment smelled of sex. If this was Bo’s limo, Julian was going to have to pay to have it detailed.
A good use of his five hundred an hour.
The intercom buzzed. Hesitantly, Butler said, “I circled the city, sir. Should I…should I continue driving?”
“A moment…longer, Butler.” Julian’s voice had smoothed out some, but was still croaky.
We took that moment to find clothes. It took a little longer to put them back on. Julian helped me out when my bra twisted. I thought that was nice. He gave my strap a pat, then handed me my top. It was kind of domestic.
Nice? Domestic? What was I thinking? I’d just had bloody sex with a vampire. How did I equate that with domestic? Did I think I could tame a vampire? An undead creature of the night?
Did I even want to? After all, I was the adventurous one. Always trying to be bold, risk-taking. Why would I want to domesticate a vampire?
Although it would be nice for my mother.
That woke me out of my sensuous haze, fast.
“Something wrong?” Julian asked, lacing up his wingtips.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I couldn’t want to bring a vampire home to meet the folks, could I? Hello Mom, Dad. No, we won’t have ham or beer or hors d’oeuvres. A glass of blood, maybe. Or blood sausage. After all, this was Meiers Corners.
I backed away from those thoughts, fast. “So what happened the other night? With all the dismembered vamps?”
Julian eyed me strangely but answered readily enough. “We were able to pull together enough blood to satisfy most of them.”
“Most of them?”
“I had to take a few apart again. Bo sent for extra blood from the Ancient One in Iowa, but it didn’t arrive until the next night.”
“You didn’t finish them off? Julian, they tried to destroy you and Bo. They tried to kill Gretchen and Stella.”
“I couldn’t risk it. I don’t want to undermine the negotiations with Nosferatu. Speaking of which, we’re here.” The limo pulled to a halt. Julian ran a hand through his hair, neatening it.
I helped him. “What are you negotiating for, anyway? I thought this was all going to be settled in court.”
Julian gave me a gentle, pitying look. “Few cases actually go to trial, Nixie. And you’d better hope this one doesn’t.” At that moment Daniel Butler opened the limo door. Bright sunlight warmed my back.
I slid a hand onto Julian’s cotton-clad chest. “You’d win in court, Julian. I know you would.”
He smiled slightly. “Thanks for that vote of confidence. I know how much you trust lawyers.”
“But if you could stop the annexation in court, why go through negotiations?”
“There’s more at stake than the annexation.”
“There is? What could be worse than a bunch of money-grubbing politicians getting control of Meiers Corners?”
“A bunch of blood-grubbing vampires getting control of Meiers Corners. If Nosferatu and the Coterie take over here, it would be disastrous. And nothing Bo or I or even the Ancient One could do would help. Nixie, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” Julian slipped fluidly over me and was gone.
“But—” I stared at his receding back. He was traveling so fast his open coat flapped like a flag on a windy day. Oh, yeah. I’d torn off the buttons. Little wisps of smoke followed in his wake.
Apparently what Julian was doing was more important than I thought. I wondered what the Coterie really intended for Meiers Corners, if it would be so disastrous. I guess I hadn’t imagined much beyond higher taxes. Julian made it sound a whole hell of a lot more serious.
What was up, I didn’t know. I couldn’t ask Julian, not while he was head-deep in negotiations.
But then I remembered Elena, and that I was not alone in the land of fangy weirdness.
I had originally meant to accompany Julian into his meeting. But that was only because I’d been so excruciatingly horny. Now I was pleasantly sated. And if Julian was doing his Super Suit lawyer thing, I’d be bored to death. If he was doing some chest-beating vampire thing, death might take another guise.
Besides, Elena owed me mega-explanations. She’d lied to me to keep me in the dark. No blood on the sidewalk, hah. She knew all along about the dentally endowed. About Julian, the Coterie, and the Lestats. Heck, that SMAW wasn’t to take out chipmunks.
So, physical stimulation completed for now, I decided to pursue the intellectual stimulation of cross-examining a cop.
Chapter Fifteen
When I got to the Strongwell apartment building a little after noon, chaos greeted me.
The front door was wide open. Various pieces of furniture and household goods were arrayed on the lawn. As I approached, Elena tromped out with a floor lamp.
“Elena!” I ran toward her. “I have some questions for you, girlfriend. And you owe me some answers!”
She scowled at me. Snapped, “You’re going to have to wait.” Brushing by me, she plunked the lamp down next to a rolled-up Persian carpet.
I gaped. Elena, surly? “What’s going on?” Shaking loose of my paralysis, I trotted after her. The sharp, acrid smell of smoke assaulted me. “What the…? What happened here?”
“What do you think happened? We had a fire.”
“Oh, no! Is everyone okay?”
Elena passed a hand through her long curly hair, making it a wild mess. She sighed. “Yeah. Thanks for asking.”
“So what are you doing?” As I spoke, her sister Gretchen and Daniel Butler’s wife Joan stumbled out, laboring under another rolled-up carpet. Elena saw them falter, ran to help.
The three of them, gasping and floundering, lugged the carpet to the growing pile on the lawn. Heaving it into place, Elena stood for a moment, breathing heavily. “We’re clearing the room. For the safety inspector. We’ll sort out what’s burned and what’s not once we get everything out.”
“The fire was limited to one room?”
“Fortunately. The parlor.” Elena raised her brows significantly.
“Someone put too much wood in the fireplace?”
“No. Help me with the next load.” She used her eyes to indicate I should follow her inside.
The parlor was a mess. Charred wallpaper and half-burned furniture had apparently been both hosed and foamed. A space near the window was completely black. “What happened?” I asked again.
“Bo and I were working on the beauty pageant last night. Fun way to spend a Sunday.” Elena gave me a grouchy look and I apologized with a shrug. “We went to bed around six a.m. and left the paperwork on the table.”
The parlor table was where Elena and I had pow-wowed the first night I met Julian. It had been…near the window. Right where the black char was worst. “You mean the paperwork started the fire?”
“I mean the fire started in the paperwork. And not spontaneously.” Elena waited, watched me while I absorbed the implications.
“Someone burned the paperwork for the beauty pageant? But why? A guerilla feminist?”
Elena stared at the blackened wallpaper. Picked off a bit. “Thank goodness we have insurance.” I thought she was ignoring my question until she went on, “Have you managed to get insurance for the festival?”
“Well, no, but…” Connections whirred in my brain. “You mean you think someone is trying to sabotage the festival?”
Elena wore her cop-face, unreadable and hard. “Have you had problems lately? Anything interfering with or delaying you?”
“Aside from vampires attacking all the time and daggy über-vamps phoning me? Gee, let me think.”
“Is that a yes?”
The problem with Elena in cop mode was that she had no sense of humor. “Well, I
almost didn’t get bands auditioned. But that was natural causes.” Cary Grant’s stinginess in the first case and my own horniness in the second. “But why are you asking if I’ve had trouble?”
Elena glanced out the window like she was checking for eavesdroppers. She lowered her voice. “The Coterie was using the Lestat gang to distract us. Now they’ve advanced to committing actual crimes.”
“But…but why?”
“To make it impossible for us to raise the money we need to keep them out of Meiers Corners.”
I had just heard from Julian how important it was to keep the Coterie out (even though he hadn’t told me why). “But even if the festival is stopped…maybe we can talk Julian into accepting a reduced fee—or maybe waiving his fee altogether.”
Elena spun from the window. “It isn’t that, Nixie! Julian’s not getting a dime as it is.”
“What? Then who is the money for?”
“Judges. People with political clout. The Coterie has huge political influence, not just in Chicago, but across the U.S. And they’re not always ethical in how they use it.”
“We’re raising money for bribes?” I put fists on hips and frowned. “Hell, Elena. How low do we go? Selling our souls? Meiers Corners isn’t that important. Not if it means paying bribes and getting people’s houses burnt. Let’s just let Chicago annex us and have done with it.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake—of course it’s that simple! What is it with you? You, and Julian, and—”
“They want the Blood Center.”
My lips kept going but no sound followed. The Blood Center? Why should a bunch of suits want a small-town blood center?
Then I remembered this particular bunch of suits were vampires, but it still didn’t make sense. Surely there was blood and blood aplenty in Chicago. Three million mobile bags of it, to be precise. Why would they want our little operation? “But we’re just part of the Hemoglobin Society’s distribution network. It’s not like we’re Red Cross, or anything major.”
“We still pass over a thousand units through weekly. In fact, a shipment of three thousand units is going out this Saturday.”
“Three thousand? That’s a…a lot of blood.” Several hundred gallons, if I was figuring right. “But controlling the city won’t give the Coterie access to the blood.”
“No, but it will let them write laws. And if the laws don’t loosen the proverbial purse strings, think of the political and economic clout they’ll have. And they’re vampires on top of it. No one will be able to oppose them.”
“No one? What about Bo? What about Julian?”
“You can’t think they’ll let Bo stay here if they take over. And Julian has to go home sometime.”
“Shit,” I said. “So what do we do?”
Elena picked up another lamp. “Everything we can do to see the festival goes off well. The money we raise will curb the Coterie.”
“And the Lestats?” I found a small table, hoisted it, and followed her toward the door.
“Ah, yes. The Coterie’s terrorist gang. We need to keep them from terrorizing us.”
“That’s a plan. Do you think Bruno can get me another bazooka?”
Elena smiled slightly. “Maybe he can lend you my old one.”
That reminded me. “I was going to ask you how to stake vampires anyway. After the attack at the Roller-Blayd factory.”
Elena surprised me by blushing. “Oh. It’s um, a little more complicated than you might think.”
“I didn’t think anything, yet.”
“Well, of course not! Still…I’d better have Bo explain. He’s the expert.”
It was an odd reaction. Maybe Elena thought you killed vampires like on TV? As soon as this thought entered my head, I rejected it. Not Elena. Not Ms. Show-me-the-facts Cop.
Elena pushed a hand through her curls. “And I suppose you have other questions, too. After the assault.”
“Well, yeah. But considering what happened…I suppose they can wait.”
“Knowing you, not long.” Elena led me to the kitchen, where her cook was making a batch of cinnamon rolls. “Wait here. I’ll go get Bo.”
I sat and watched the cook work the dough. The repetitive kneading soothed me. Moments later the back door opened and Elena returned with Bo. She pulled out a chair and leaned it against the wall in one corner.
Bo pulled out another, reversed it, and straddled it like a horse. “I understand you want to know how to stake a vampire,” he said to me.
Beyond him the cook continued her methodical kneading, undisturbed.
Apparently not a weird conversation for this household. “Yeah. Elena says there’s a trick to it.”
He smiled slightly, gave Elena one of those married people looks that’s impossible for outsiders to decipher. “Not so much a trick. You need to drive a stake through the heart.”
I considered it. I was pretty sure ribs and the breastbone were in the way. I was strong, but even my muscles couldn’t poke a stake through bone. “With a mallet?”
He beamed at me, like I was a particularly bright pupil. “That might work, assuming the stake was big enough. And assuming the vampire held still long enough.”
“How big a stake?”
Elena held up her forearm. “About this thick.”
Bo nodded. “Thick enough to punch out the heart. You can also go up through the belly. But then you have to pierce the diaphragm.”
Elena said, “The diaphragm is the sheet of muscle under the lungs. It’s what you use to breathe.”
“I’m a clarinet player, Elena,” I said a little dryly. “I think I’ve heard of a diaphragm.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
I asked Bo, “What did you mean about the vampire holding still long enough?”
“Vampires are much faster than humans. If one sees you coming, he’d retaliate or run long before you could stake him.”
Having seen Julian run, I could attest to that. “Then staking is virtually useless.”
“Not quite. It works if the vampire is asleep. Or if you’re staking a youngling who doesn’t know enough to pull the stake out.”
“Oh, great. They can pull it out?”
“Yes. And if the stake isn’t thick enough, the heart heals around it and goes on pumping. Oh…and you need to remember the stake doesn’t destroy the vampire. It only immobilizes it.”
“Lovely. Anything else?”
Elena said, “Older vampires can mist. The stake just drops out.”
“I thought all vamps could mist.”
“No,” Bo said. “That power doesn’t develop until the vampire’s about a hundred.”
“So basically, I can only stake a young, sleeping vampire.”
“And then run away very fast,” Bo agreed. “Because even an immobilized vampire will go for your throat if you get too close.”
“Okay,” I said. “I think I’ll stick with the bazooka.”
Elena’s apartment fire made me realize I couldn’t put it off any longer. If the Lestats were actively undermining the festival, I needed—gasp—insurance.
Elena’s agent didn’t do commercial policies. She put me in touch with a company in Chicago. CIC Mutual. Stomach churning, I punched in the number.
“CIC Mutual!” a girlish voice chirped. “Safe and Secure for You and Your Family! How may I direct your call?”
I had to shake off the saccharine buzz. “Uh…I want to buy some insurance.”
“You’ve reached the right place, ma’am! CIC Mutual, Insurance for Every Need!”
“Yeah. That’s why I called an insurance company. Look, could you connect me to an agent or something?”
“Our Professional Agents are Available to Serve You Twenty-Four Hours a Day!”
“Good, good!” I gritted my teeth. “Can I speak to one?” One who hopefully didn’t chirp.
“Our Agents are in the Phone Book! Thank you for calling, and have a great day!”
And she hung up o
n me.
“No wait! Fuck.”
Grumbling, I redialed.
“CIC Mutual! Safe and Secure—”
“Give-me-the-name-of-an-agent!” I spoke as loud and fast as I could, hoping to knife through her spiel.
“Our Professional Agents—”
“Just a name!”
“Have a great day!”
And she hung up again.
“Double fuck.” I dialed four-one-one.
“What city ple-uz?” Not so chirpy, but still a bit sing-song.
“Chicago. CIC Mutual Insurance A—”
“Thenk-yew.”
“No, wait! I want the agency—”
A click. Then came Eve, the first woman of voicemail and automated systems everywhere. “The number is area code six. Oh. Six.” And she gave the exact same number as the one I already had.
“Fuck.” It looked like I would have to do this the old fashioned way.
I called my mother.
“You are buying insurance, Dietlinde? I am so proud of you!”
My mother’s obvious delight made me wince. “It’s for the festival, Mom.”
“I heard you are running that!” my mother enthused. “My little Dietlinde, responsible for the organization of the mayor’s festival. As a child, Dietlinde, sometimes you broke my heart. But this all makes up for it! I’m proud of you. Your father is proud of you. All of Meiers Corners is proud of you!”
Ow! KOed in my guilt gland. “Yeah, Mom. About the insurance?”
“Yes, yes. You must call CIC Mutual.”
“I tried that, Mom. All I get is the receptionist from he…heck.”
“No, no. You do not dial the main number. You dial the customer service representative of the direct sales department.”
That just made my head ache. “Could you just give me the number?”
“Don’t you have a phone book? Honestly, you should move back home. Would it hurt for you to keep your father and me some company in our waning years?”
Move home. Oh sure. And never get laid again. Not in this lifetime. “The number, please, Mom?”
“Oh, very well.”
“Thanks.” After taking down the number, I got off the phone as quickly as I could, which in this case was after twenty more minutes of guilting. Then I called the insurance company.
