by Mary Hughes
“Shit. How many this time?”
“Two, maybe three.”
A loud shriek came from the direction of the store. We ran, only to stop outside, dumbfounded.
Two large men lay comatose on the stoop of the Pie Delight. As Julian and I stared, the door opened and another gave a dazed sigh before tumbling down the stairs to the pavement.
I looked up. In the doorway lounged Drusilla, the most sensuous woman since Mata Hari—or Jessica Alba, if you were young enough to use the word “sweet” instead of “neat-o”.
Dru smiled down at us. Julian glanced at the fallen vampires, raised an eyebrow at her.
In answer, Dru licked one finger and touched it to her butt—tsah.
In case I haven’t mentioned it, Drusilla of the natural DDs is Meiers Corners’s top prostitute—but she could have cleaned up in any market, including Chicago, Paris, or even New York.
Today she had apparently cleaned up right here. And taken out the trash to boot.
“Well,” I said. “I guess things are under control here, too.”
Dru simply turned and sashayed back inside.
If I thought things were looking up, I should have remembered two non-disasters in a row was an omen like two sunny days in Chicago was a spring. Didn’t mean jack shit, brother. Lake Michigan way, April showers brought May snowstorms. I’d’a had a better chance to win the Powerball.
But hope sprang eternal. Our next stop was City Hall. Actually, our last stop was City Hall. The whole shindig was starting there at four p.m. with a speech by the mayor. Since Stark had shifted to guard the Blood Center, we needed to stay for the opening ceremony.
In the limo on the way, Julian and I had a pretty good discussion about how Ruthven planned to get the blood out of the Blood Center. Julian argued for the possibility of transporting blood through a hose running out a window. I argued for a blow job. I won. Mmm.
A huge line of people snaked outside City Hall. Since only VIPs were invited, a couple guards worked the door (turning people away with a free beer token. The mayor’s no dummy). As we negotiated our way to the front, I asked Julian, “Do you think those toothy guys at the Pie Delight and the church were Ruthie’s or Nosy’s?”
“Only the band at the Roller-Blayd factory was Ruthven’s. All the others were Nosferatu’s.”
“I wonder what that means. Ruthie’s gang is trying to horn in on the bands, and Nosy’s is disrupting the rest of the festival events. But neither of them are attacking the Blood Center directly.”
“That we know of.”
“Bo would have heard from Stark and called us. Oh, look. We’re finally at the front of the line.”
Just as we were about to get in, Murphy’s déjà vu struck. A puckered powder blue suit whisked in front of me.
It was Vice-Principal Schleck.
Apparently he didn’t recognize Julian in his punk attire. “Excuse me, sir.” Julian tapped gently on the vice-principal’s shoulder. “I believe you have, er, taxed our place.”
I nearly snorted to hear the phrase in Julian’s highly cultured tones. Like carving lewd statues out of crystal. It was just weird.
“Not now, punk.” The veep threw Julian a sharp frown. “Dirty punk.”
The door in front of us opened. Schleck moved.
Julian’s jaw worked like his fangs were jumping to get out and play. And his eyes fired up, more red than violet.
I was going to enjoy this.
Vampire-fast, Julian grabbed seersucker coat. “I believe you’re out of line, sir.”
Schleck scrabbled like a bicyclist in neutral. “Let me go, shit-for-brains!” The veep got exactly nowhere.
Julian lifted the veep off the ground, twisted his coat until Schleck swung gently face to face. “Actually, you were never in line in the first place.”
Slowly, Julian grinned. Schleck was treated to the sight of two very long, very pointy teeth. Julian clicked his teeth together in a couple deliberate chomps.
Schleck screamed. The powder blue turned indigo across the front of Schleck’s pants. His legs started pistoning well before Julian set him down. When his tread hit pavement, he shot off like Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell.
“Bullies.” I shook my head. “Always the first to pee and run.” Julian held out his hand, and we entered City Hall.
The opening speech was going to be delivered in the council chambers, where I’d held band auditions. All the tables and chairs had been cleared from the room. The raised dais at the far end had a podium, but no mic. Apparently the mayor had joined the zeros and would use a wireless.
The first person I saw inside was Bart Bleistift, and he was not happy. His boyish face was dark with anger, his generous mouth tight. I thought maybe Mom had told him he had lost pole position in the Mother Race. That idea was reinforced when I saw him staring at Julian like he tasted month-old turkey loaf with mayo. Working himself up to confront us, I guessed—confirmed a moment later when he motored in our direction.
Bart grabbed Julian by the sleeve, walked him two paces forward. “What the hell are you doing here, old fuck?”
Hearing that, seeing them side by side, I reevaluated my two contenders in the Nixie Race. Bart admittedly had solid shoulders, but Julian’s were broad and muscular. Bart’s butt was trim, but Julian had a really tight ass. Bart ignored what he didn’t understand, but Julian had learned my language for me. I wondered what I’d ever seen in the good Saint. Maybe my mother’s approval, but even that had veered in Julian’s favor.
His voice icy with disdain, Julian answered, “I might ask you the same thing, child.”
Men. More “my rocket’s bigger than yours”.
Bart clenched his teeth. “Negotiations are over, Boston legal. Why don’t you pack up and go home and lie in your grave like a good little bloodsucking lawyer?”
“The battle’s over, but the war is far from won.” And, to my utter shock, Julian flashed Bart a lavish length of fang.
“Julian!” I slapped a cautionary hand on his wrist.
Julian’s unblinking violet eyes did not waver an inch from Bart. “Bleistift knows all about us, Nixie. He’s Nosferatu’s human minion.”
“Nosferatu’s what?”
Staring right back at Julian, Bart hissed, “I told you not to get mixed up in this, Nixie.”
“You didn’t tell me anything of the sort! You told me I shouldn’t be at the Kalten’s Roller Rink, remember? Just before it…before it…oh my lord. Just before it exploded. You knew!”
Revelation on top of revelation. Good thing I was quick on my feet. First, Bart was a vampire’s human minion. I didn’t know everything that meant, but I knew it wasn’t good.
And second, the explosion at Kalten’s. I already suspected the Lestat gang was involved somehow. But apparently Nosferatu had ordered the destruction. And Saint Farty Booger was in it up to his trim pimply ass.
“I told you to stay out of it!” Bart snapped, spinning on me. He didn’t have fangs but his anger was scary enough.
And I had thought he was nice. “How can you be working for Nosferatu? Don’t you know what he’s trying to do to people here? What about Denny Crane?”
“Denny Crane?” Julian asked, distracting me.
“Bart’s boss,” I snapped. “Not the Boston Legal character.”
“Boston Legal character?”
I sighed and turned to Julian. “You know. Played by William Shatner?”
“Star Trek’s William Shatner?”
I was surprised. “Shatner was in a TV show before Boston Legal?”
“For shit’s sake!” Bart sneered, snagging my attention back. “Stick to the point.”
Oh, yeah. My rant. “What about Denny Crane? What about Meiers Corners?” I glared at Bart. “What about my mother!” What about me, I wanted to add, but didn’t. I had some pride.
Bart stared at me, his upper lip curled in disdain. “I don’t know what I ever saw in you.”
Any residual sympathy or affection die
d. “I was just thinking the same thing,” I muttered. Louder, I asked, “Did you do it, Bart? Did you blow up the Rink?”
He snorted. “You really think I’m going to tell you?”
I did. With him doing “my fang’s longer than your fang” with Julian, I thought he’d boast to high heaven if he’d been playing with explosives.
But he wasn’t boasting. Either he had amazing self-restraint, or he hadn’t done it. I knew which I favored. “Nosy doesn’t let you play with matches, hmm?”
Bart flushed. “I was the one who told them about your using Kalten’s. I planned it.”
“But you didn’t do it. I guess it was too important for a human minion,” I taunted. “Some fangy guy did it, then. Cutter?”
Bart’s red face told me I’d hit it. “Yeah, well, as a disruption it was second rate.” He speared me with a nasty look. “You screwing up the negotiations by screwing Emerson far surpassed my feeble attempts.”
Now it was my turn to flush. “How can you side with Nosy? Don’t you know what he wants?”
“Nosferatu wants blood. No different from any of the suckers. No different from him.” He sniffed at Julian. “Or will you try to tell me beastie-boy here hasn’t sucked your blood?” He made “suck” sound like a dirty word.
“He has, yes. But that’s different.”
“Because he’s too pretty to be a monster? Because he asked?” Bart scoffed. “Oh, please, purty please, Miss Nixie. Let me sippy your sweet neck. Sure, that makes it all okay.”
I was starting to get angry. Didn’t Saint Barty get it? Could he possibly be that dense, or was he willfully ignorant? “It’s okay because it’s not Blood Center blood. Not the blood slotted to save human lives. Julian is protecting that. Which is more than I can say for you, human.” With my own sneer I added, “Between you and Julian, I know which is the monster.”
Bart, whose job was arguing, was speechless.
Julian poked Bart in the chest. “Which returns me to my first question. What exactly are you doing here, Blei?”
Julian, I realized, was right to worry. If Bart was on the Nosferatu team, he wasn’t here to cheer the mayor on.
Bart was here to throw a monkey wrench into the works.
I grabbed Bart by the wrist, yanked him close. “What are you going to do? Tell me!”
Blei-shit had the balls to laugh. “Oh, look at me, I’m the evil villain, gloating over the hero and spilling my guts.”
“At least you know which character you are.” I released him with a small shove. “Julian…can you see or smell any fangy monsters here?”
“Any other fangy monsters, you mean,” Bart corrected.
St. Bart was starting to get on my nerves. Starting? Make that three repeats and into the coda. “Julian?”
“No.” Julian’s eyes were narrowed. “But you don’t have to worry, Nixie. Nosferatu won’t stoop to frightening tourists.”
“Not with supernatural weirdness, no. But if Team Nosy means to disrupt the opening ceremonies, they could use gangland weirdness.” I scanned the crowd. “But if no fangy-gangy guys are around, then what?”
“Blei’s here to do something,” Julian said. “Obviously.”
Yeah, obvious. But what? Bomb, or something Mr. Pencil-pusher had up his sleeve?
“Goot EFFNINK, mine goot LADIES”—a high squeal—“entlemen.” Mayor Meier stood behind the podium, fiddling with his lapel. Wireless mic, yes. But that still didn’t mean he’d joined the Higgs Boson age.
As he fiddled, Heidi marched onto the dais. Heidi was Twyla Tafel’s cohort in the mayor’s office. She looked like the title character from the book Heidi, all blonde braids and airhead blue eyes. Except she tended toward leather, spike-heeled hip boots, and lots of studs. She was almost as sharp as Twyla, and a hell of a lot more tyrannical. Even I was a little scared of Heidi.
Heidi slapped Mayor Meier’s hands away from the mic. It sounded like the crack of a whip. “Stop fussing, Mayor!” we heard at eight hundred decibels. He stopped. Finally she got it fixed.
The mayor cleared his throat. “Welcome, welcome everyone to the First Annual Meiers Corners International Fun Fair, Sheepshead Tournament, and Polka Festival!” He smiled, all jolly Wiener schnitzel. The crowd on the floor quieted instantly, and several people started smiling in response. Mayor Meier was really good at this, I thought. If anyone could get a bunch of tourists happy-happy enough to spend several hundred thousand dollars, he could.
I was distracted only for an instant. In that instant, Bart vanished.
So did Julian. He snapped, “Stay here,” so it wasn’t like he dipped out without a word. But he puffed into smoke so fast I couldn’t say boo, much less follow.
But did Julian really think I’d stay put?
Chapter Twenty-seven
I had two guesses where Bart might have gone. If a bomb was set to go off, St. Barty had run away. Out of the room, out of the building, out of the city if I was lucky.
But I had begun to suspect there was no bomb. Sure, Nosy’s Lestat gang had exploded Kalten’s Roller Rink. But there weren’t any people involved in that. I didn’t think he would blow up an occupied building.
Not that I thought Nosy was weighed down by scruples. No. I bet Nosferatu would dynamite a room full of self-warming blood like I could throw away a package of cookies.
Not going to happen.
So how was St. Barty going to frighten off our happy, money-spending tourists? Only one way I could think of. There was no gang inside, ergo the gang had yet to get in.
Bo had said older vampires could mist into buildings, those a century or more dead, like Nosferatu. If Cutter and his gang were less than that, someone would have to open a door.
Bart hadn’t run out. He had run to let the Lestats in.
But where?
City Hall has four outside doors. The main entrance was too exposed. The one Julian and I had used this evening was guarded.
That left the door I’d exited by the night I met Julian, and a corresponding door on the other side of the building. I thought Julian would cover the one he knew about, so I ran for the other.
Which really didn’t make sense, when you think about it. Assuming Julian was following Bart, it didn’t matter whether he knew about the second door or not.
Except Bart Bleistift, Nosferatu’s human minion, knew vampires. Somehow he lost Julian. Somehow he got to the door Julian didn’t know about, alone.
I ran up, breathless, just as Cutter floated in.
“Quick.” Bart gestured frantically. “Emerson’s onto us. I just barely evaded him.”
“Yeah?” Cutter said. “Then what’s she doing here?”
Oops. Busted.
Bart’s shocked face would have been funny, except three more toughs in leather swirled in around him. I guess even Opie looked wicked in a dark forest.
So there we were. On one side of the hall was the Nosy Gang: Cutter, he of blond body-building physique; three big, tough vampires in long leather coats; and nice-guy Bart, who at the moment looked anything but nice. Four strong vampires and a strong human man.
All against a pint-sized punk with great makeup.
Time for Attitude. “She,” I said, popping out some gum and swaggering into their midst, “is sick of being priggy old Emerson’s chew toy. She is here to play. Right Barty?” I winked at Bart. Not to try to get him to cooperate. I saw Dracula. Human minions were fly-eating insane. The best I could hope was to confuse him.
“Uh…yeah,” Bart said weakly. Confused.
Well, nail the B in BINGO.
It gave me time to think up a cunning plan. A plan so cunning you could slap a wig on it and call it my mother.
All I had to do was delay the bad guys until the mayor finished. When the speech was done, the people would leave for the other delights of the festival. The Lestats could terrorize an empty room all they wanted—as far as I knew, floorboards didn’t scare easily.
If I could delay them until the VIP tourists
dispersed, Nosy’s Gang was screwed.
I took a quick look at the clock hanging on the wall behind Cutter. Four-oh-eight. The festival started at four thirty. Whoo-boy. I had my work cut out for me.
“So. You boys here to brawl?” I cocked a hip, checked out my nails, and slewed a catty glance at the lead leathercoat.
Mr. Lead Leather wore his hair spiked and his leather studded. Yum—if I hadn’t already developed a taste for Julienned vampires. At my come-hither smile Lead Leather gave a start of surprise, then smiled back—with a hint of fang. Not as long or sleek as Julian’s. I wondered if size of fang and size of thang were related. Probably. If so, I had gotten extremely lucky in the fang lottery.
I nearly slapped myself. Julian, I reminded myself, was going home as soon as this was over. It wouldn’t matter how long his fangs were. They wouldn’t reach from Boston.
Mr. Lead Leather’s smile faltered. Oops. Too much thinking, not enough seducing. I deliberately tipped my head back, just enough to expose some throat, and winked. Well, I figured if a flash of panty can do it for a regular guy, a flash of jugular must be a vampire voyeur’s dream.
Leathercoat’s fangs grew and his eyes turned red. Nail me an I. He took one step forward before Cutter held up an arm. “Bludgeon! Hold up.”
Cutter? Bludgeon? Could they get any daggier?
Cutter turned to me. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“Don’t you guys have a truth ray, or something?” I widened my eyes in waves, like I was some sort of Rasputin. “Laser vision?”
Cutter’s gaze went ruby hard, and not the kind of red that Bludgeon-Leathercoat had. Angry red, not lusty red. “If you’re not Emerson’s minion, prove it.”
Okay, now I was out of my depth. How did you prove you were not a vampire’s human minion? “Glad to, Ichabod. If you’ll just tell me what the difference is between minion and sex slave.” At five simultaneous gasps and four sets of suddenly stiff—er, fangs—I added, “Hey, he’s an old guy, but he is pretty well-endowed. A girl would be baka not to indulge. And being a sex slave’s kind of fun.” I hooked my thumbs through the belt loops of my superlow skinny jeans and did a grind, ending in a bump of my nearly naked hips.
