by Mary Hughes
Slowly turning in place, I shined the flashlight over the room. Good-sized. He was right about that. The floor had thick carpeting over what felt like a plenum. More art hung on the walls…was that a Goya? Bookshelves were stocked full. An armoire and two chests of drawers for clothes.
And a huge four-poster bed. Ooh. That had possibilities.
“What about this?”
I twitched the flashlight from the bed to Julian holding a black V-neck sweater to his chest. “Cashmere?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, no.” I pointed the flashlight at the bed again. Four black walnut spires. Lapping the shore of the bedrails was the Pacific Ocean of mattresses, a mile wide and two miles thick. Looked really soft.
And really bouncy. Ideas flew through my brain involving me, Julian, and that trampoline of a bed.
“This?”
I flashed back and nearly choked when I saw what he held. “Three-piece suits for rock and roll went out in the fifties.”
He gave a disgusted snort. “You look, then.”
Curious as to what a bloodsucking supernatural vampire might wear, I did.
Turned out supernatural bloodsuckers wore pretty much what regular bloodsuckers did. Suits, ties, shirts. Italian shoes.
Then, in the bottom drawer, I came across leathers. “Biker leathers?”
“I bought them with the bike.”
“Sweet.” I pulled out the buttery-soft black pants, considered them. They were big in my hands, but they’d be tight on Julian. “You have boots to go with these?”
“Of course.”
I dug until I found a wide, studded belt. “And a jacket?”
“Yes, but…oh, I see where you’re going. But I don’t have any pop music tees. The closest I have are white undershirts.”
I smiled, pulled loose his old school tie. “Oh, I think you have something perfect for popular music.” I removed his shirt and slipped my hands under his tee. “Your naked chest will be very popular.” I pulled off the undershirt, and rubbed my palms over his silky-smooth skin.
“Nixie. We don’t have a lot of time.” He grimaced. “And the bed’s been made…”
“We have three minutes.” I pressed a kiss to his lovely abs. “And let me show you what I can do standing up.”
We left well before sunset to check out the venues. I wanted to make double-sure everything was set for the festival opening at four thirty. We took the limo. Before I got in I whispered a slight change in route to Daniel Butler.
As we rolled away from the curb I checked Julian’s costume. He looked every bit as yummy in his tight leather pants as I thought he would. And his muscular torso was as gorgeous as a da Vinci oil in the sleek frame of his open leather jacket. I adjusted the jacket collar, couldn’t resist touching the smooth, round pectoral beneath…encountered something long and hard.
Pulling the jacket open I stared at a handle sticking out of an inner pocket. “What’s this?”
“My weapon.” Julian pulled out a rod about a foot long and a couple inches around. He touched somewhere on the rod. A long blade snicked out, so fast it was only a silver blur. “It’s a swing-guard stiletto.”
“A stiletto, huh?” I ran a finger along the handle. It was covered in black leather lacing, with a brown Celtic-looking knot woven in. It looked like the hilt of a sword. In fact, the size of the thing made me think less “knife” and more “sword”. “Do you all carry these?”
“At times. Depending on where we are and what we’re doing. This is my patrol blade. I have a smaller one for general public wear and a larger one for ceremonial purposes.”
I traced my finger onto the metal. A groove down the blade made it look more like a sword, too. Oddly enough, a bead of silver-colored metal ran just behind the edge. And there was a strange little etching near the hilt. “What’s this?” I pointed at the etching.
“The symbol of my allegiance. A sickle-sword.”
“Vampires have countries?”
Julian smiled. “No. We have factions, though. There’s been infighting since the beginning. So we have alliances. And at certain points in our lives we go through changes. It helps to have an older vampire guide us through them.”
“So you have allegiances. Huh. And the line of stuff that looks like silver?”
“Is silver. It helps make vampire flesh more vulnerable to the blade.”
“Wow. Then the whole silver allergy thing is real?”
That made Julian laugh. “Not as you’re thinking. Pure silver burns a little. Like a cut stings from alcohol.” He flicked the blade closed.
The limo slowed. Julian sat forward as he stowed his weapon. Frowned as we pulled up in front of Dolly Barton’s Curl Up and Dye. “What are we doing here?”
“Just a last-minute addition to your costume.” I jumped out and ran to the door, held it open. Smiled encouragement.
Shaking his head, Julian jumped out after me. He didn’t flow, because there were a dozen people staring at him from the shop windows. But he ran fast.
I worried he’d be smoking by the time he made it inside, but it wasn’t noon, and he only looked unusually flushed. Hot. But that was okay, because with his leather pants tight over his taut ass and the leather jacket framing his bare muscular chest, he looked hot.
In fact, half the women were panting. The other half were drooling. And I won’t say what the men were doing because there were only two, and one was Doyle “Doily” Hartung, the only openly gay man in Meiers Corners. The other was Bruno. Though Bruno cross-dresses, he’s not gay. But I got a fleeting impression that for Julian, he’d reconsider.
“Hey, sugar!” A small, buxom blonde swept over, scissors in hand and an intent look in her eye. Dolly Barton is the world’s leading gossip. She knows everything that goes on in Meiers Corners, sometimes before it happens. Even God gets his gossip from Dolly. “Is this that hunk of yours I keep hearing about?” She eyed Julian like a tall T-bone steak. “Mmm-mmm.”
“Uh, yeah.” Not my hunk, but still. Mine for tonight. “Julian is playing with the band. He needs a bit of jewelry to complete his costume.”
“Jewelry?” Julian gave me a sharp look.
“Jewelry.” Dolly considered him with hand on chin and nodded. “An earring, of course.”
“Of course,” I echoed.
“An earring?!” Julian looked at me like I’d gone mad. He motioned me to him and bent. “What are you thinking?” he hissed in my ear. “My skin heals too fast to poke a hole for an earring!”
“Does your DVD flash twelve?” I asked in wonder. How did this antique male ever function in the Quark Age? “They use a gun, now. Kerchunk, in.” I made a shooting motion.
Julian frowned, but when Dolly brought over a selection of starter studs, he let me pick out a very hawt one-carat diamond.
Then I saw the price tag. “Um…can I pay for it in installments? Maybe, uh, ten bucks a month?” For the next twenty years.
“I’ll pay.” Sighing, Julian whipped out his credit card.
I craned my neck to see what an über-successful attorney used for plastic these days. He tossed it to Dolly too fast for me to see clearly, but it might have been platinum—or maybe white gold, studded with pearls and emeralds and featuring a very nice five-carat radiant-cut diamond. Okay, I was exaggerating with the diamond.
Julian wasn’t very happy, but he would try it. For me. He was trying it, for my sake. Because I wanted it. I felt…I don’t really know what I felt, but it was warm, and a little fuzzy, and a lot tingly.
Dolly ran the card, whistled. “A quarter million limit?”
“Dolly!” I said. “How did you find that out?”
Dolly shrugged. “I have the extended credit service. Here’s your card, Mr. Emerson. Have a seat.”
Almost gingerly, Julian sat. When Dolly approached him with the gun, he winced. His eyes found mine and he glared. As if saying, “If this goes wrong, it’s on your head.” Dolly put the gun to his ear, moved it up and a bit forward. The
n—kerchunk! It was done. Julian didn’t even flinch.
“Do you like it?” Dolly held up a mirror for Julian to see. Now all the women were both panting and drooling. Doily Hartung adjusted his pants, and Bruno started looking at the remaining studs like maybe he’d get one too.
But Julian ignored the mirror and looked straight at me. “Do you like it?”
Did I like it? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. It looked just like I knew it would. I couldn’t wait to taste his earlobe with that sparkly nonpareil in it. “Oh, yeah,” I breathed. “It looks utterly hawt.”
Julian nodded and stood. “Thank you, Ms. Barton.” It looked like he was going to stride straight out, but at the last moment he turned and faced the drooling women. “I hope you all will patronize the festival tonight.” He stood extremely straight, his chest jutting out, and I think one nipple winked.
“Oh, we will!” the women cooed, practically in unison. When Julian turned and we left, one actually fainted. I heard the thud even though I didn’t see it.
Or maybe that was Doily Hartung.
Our first stop was the Roller-Blayd factory, where the bands were playing. We had to drop off our instruments before checking the other venues. Wouldn’t do to meet any fangy-gangy guys with our hands full.
Since Julian would already be onsite, performing with Guns and Polkas, he was going to be the band guard. While he wouldn’t quite blend, he wouldn’t stick out in a fangy sort of way, either.
I almost didn’t recognized the factory without boards. The inside was still the same, though—concrete slab floor, metal walls, and air. And live. Sound bouncing everywhere, booming and echoing like a cathedral, or like putting your head in a tin can. Hopefully it would be different with a crowd. Otherwise there would be a lot more people with handicapped parking stickers and I’d be buying stock in hearing aids.
As we walked in, activity churned around us. The high school football team, hired by Josiah Moss, were setting up chairs and stages. Guys from Woofers ’R Us were installing four six-foot-tall speakers. Lob was there to test all the equipment. The bands would sound good tonight.
Toward the back someone had cleared off a couple wooden pallets for stacking instrument cases and coats. Boxes of old roller blades and the rest of the pallets were pushed into the unlit area behind the stages. Julian and I headed back.
“Mr. Emerson. Mr. Emerson, wait up!” a voice like a cheap trumpet brayed. With a burgeoning sense of dread, Julian and I stopped.
Up swept a cheesy bow tie. Yellow and red tonight, but the ripsaw grin was the same. Lew Kaufman, $uper$alesman. “How ya doin’, Mr. Emerson? And Nixie Emerson! Glad to see you, glad to see you!”
I stopped at the name. Names have power, and I waited for the kick in the gut from this one. Nixie Suit. Nixie One-Step-To-Death. Nixie…Emerson.
No kick came. It sounded, well, kind of nice.
Lew stuck out his hand for a shake. Julian, who was brave in the face of ravening vampires and earstud guns, turned and would have run if I hadn’t put hands to his chest. His hard, muscular chest, yum. But now wasn’t the time.
I grabbed Lew’s mitt, put it in Julian’s. Lew pumped his, then mine. “Glad to see especially you, Nixie, ’cause I have some news.”
“News?”
“Yeah, I got on the horn to my suppliers. But, well, this is kind of embarrassing.”
I wondered what he was talking about. Then I remembered siccing Brunhilde Butt on him when someone had torched the cheese balls. At the time I stamped it “problem solved” and hadn’t given it another thought.
“I tried, Nixie. But I couldn’t get enough.”
“Enough what?” I really didn’t know. Lew could sell Buddhism to the Pope. It really hadn’t occurred to me that he meant what he did.
“It would have been fine if the ones with the nuts had melted. My suppliers had plenty of those. But the plain cheese balls…well, they won’t have any in until tomorrow.”
“What?!” Like the Royal Canadian Mounties, it was unheard-of for Lew not to get his man…er, balls…er, well.
“So I did what I had to do, Nixie. It’s not like most people will notice.”
“Most people won’t notice what?” I got a cold, foreboding feeling. “What have you done, Lew?”
“I, um, called your mother.”
“My mother!” I already owed her for the little math geeks. And now I owed her for cheese b—oh, no. Please, no. Not even Ruthven was as deadly as the peril facing me now. “Couldn’t you have tried your backups? Why did you ask my mother?”
“I had to, Nixie,” Lew said, almost pleading. “It was the only way I could supply for tonight. I tried my alternate vendors. I even tried my alternate-alternate vendors. Nobody had any balls, except with nuts. Which we already have.”
Or a nut with balls, I thought, giving Lew the evil eye. Unfortunately he did not burst into flames and melt too.
“Tomorrow we’ll have plenty, of all kinds. I’ve got a rush shipment coming from Munroe. But tonight…well, it had to be the Lutheran Ladies Auxiliary Mothers Association.”
“But Lew! The LLAMA ladies make the worst cheese balls in the state! The world!”
“They’re not that bad,” he said, but his wince told another story.
“They are that bad, and you know it! Who the hell else makes cheese balls out of head cheese and blood sausage?”
Head “cheese”, for the blissfully unaware, was not cheese at all. It was boiled-down head of baby cow. Barfarific. You could also make head cheese out of pig head. But that wasn’t really any better.
And blood sausage? Yep. Boiled-down blood. Yum-yum. You were never supposed to watch the making of sausage or politics, but it waren’t nuthin’ on the Lutheran Ladies Auxiliary cheese balls.
“I really don’t think anyone will notice, Nixie,” Lew repeated, giving me a pat. “Well, I only needed to tell you the sad news. Got to run. Nice seeing you, Mr. Emerson. Knock ’em dead.” He stopped, gave Julian a frown. “Is that a new shirt?”
Julian shrugged, pulled me with him toward the far end of the warehouse. Lew let us escape, but it didn’t matter. I felt like falling to my knees and whacking my head on the concrete. “We’re ruined, I tell you. Ruined!”
“Because of cheese balls?” Julian dropped off his Les Paul. He pulled Oscar from me and set him down next to the Gibson’s case. Oscar sort of leaned into the Gibson, like he was snuggling up. It would have been cute if I hadn’t been Doomed.
“Cheese balls. Hah. Like they’re made out of cheese. That’s as optimistic as school lunch mock-chicken legs.” I shook my head. “I watched my mother’s church group make cheese balls one time. They use pus and mayonnaise, Julian. And that’s just the base. Then they mix in the most disgusting things they can find—goat entrails and bull semen and heaven knows what else. Meiers Corners regulars avoid the LLAMA’s cheese balls—even when they’re drunk! Oh, those poor unsuspecting tourists!” Remembering the schedule, I slapped my forehead. “And the cheese ball tasting is already open. I have to do something!” I ran back toward the entrance, intent on getting to the Deli Delight before too much damage had been done.
Only to snap back as Julian caught my arm and tugged. “We can’t worry about that now, Nixie.” He nodded toward the door.
Five huge guys had just entered, wearing ripped jeans and sporting enough jewelry to count as the national treasury of a small South American country. They were carrying instrument cases.
“They’re a band.” Although I didn’t recall which one.
Julian’s nostrils flared. “They’re vampires.”
“OMG.” The last band at auditions, when I was so desperate to get laid I would have signed up the Martian Kazoo Band. “How come you couldn’t tell Monday?”
“They were downwind. And my senses were concentrated on a—different smell.” Julian’s growl had gone to his chest, like some feral cold.
“Shit. Are they Lestats?”
“Maybe. I know all of Nosferatu’s lieutena
nts, and those aren’t his. They might be Ruthven’s specials.”
“I thought Nosferatu and Ruthven were part of the same hinky group of suits. The Dove-ery.”
“The Coterie, and they are. But that doesn’t mean they work together. Damn it, Ruthven himself was bad enough. We don’t need his lieutenants on top of it.”
I was still trying to work it out. “So Nosy sends his gang to rough us up. But Ruthie sends a separate gang—why?”
Julian shrugged, but his stance was all aggression, and his eyes never left the five vampires. “Ruthven thinks Nosferatu is too soft on humans. Ruthven hasn’t actually challenged Nosferatu for leadership, but it’s just a matter of time. Oh, why the hell Ruthven, and why now?”
Ruthie was a vampire. Ruthie wanted to run the Coterie. The Coterie wanted Meiers Corners’s blood. I stared at Julian while the pieces fell into place in my mind.
I turned the completed puzzle over in my head. It explained why Ruthven was here. It explained why his goons were here. It explained why now. It also predicted exactly when the attack on the Blood Center would be. But could it really be so simple? “You couldn’t have told me this any earlier? Like, in time to stop thousands of tourists from coming tonight?”
“Even Ruthven’s not insane enough to give us away to a large group of humans. The tourists are safe.” Julian watched the approaching vampires with the attention of a hunting tiger.
The five vampires, trooping menacingly toward the humans setting up the stage, caught sight of Julian and stopped. Dropping their cases (the cracks as the instruments hit concrete made me wince) they huddled to confer.
“That big one next to the guy with the mullet is Billy the Kid,” Julian said. “Definitely Ruthven’s.”
I felt my eyes widen. “The Billy the Kid?”
“His father. Although he doesn’t acknowledge it.” Julian’s jaw clenched. “Damn. I wish I knew why Ruthven was taking such a personal interest in this.”
“The Billy the Kid’s father?”
“He’s one of Ruthven’s best. Why is he here? Hell, why is Ruthven here?”
“You mean…you really don’t know?” That surprised me enough to forget the Billster. Usually Julian was as quick, or quicker, than me. “Julian, think. There’s only one answer.”
