“Got it,” he said. “Me too, though. I could totally go for a bite.”
We ignored the lame pun and spread out inside the apartment; I took the bedroom. The door opened into a disorienting pool of red. A heavy scarlet duvet patterned with sharp fleurs-de-lis weighed down dark crimson sheets; the walls were slathered in red, too, three in flat and the other, a glossy shimmer behind the bed. This degree of monochrome may seem strange and would be for anyone but a succubus13. Not that there’s a connection between her breed and the color choice. A matte black shadow box created a focal point against the shine of the wall, over the bed. Inside the box, a clean spot provided the image of a shape, defined by a thin layer of dust. The shape was of an amulet of some sort. An antique dresser was canvas for a still life in silver and gold. An embossed hand mirror angled across a black lacquer tray, a powder puff rested in a round bowl of glass in silver filigree. The look was way too Grandma’s house. No amulet.
“Hey, guys!” I yelled. “C’mere.”
Wendy and Gil scuttled into the bedroom and flanked me.
“Do you remember what was in this shadow box?”
“Nope. But it looks like it could be a sand dollar, maybe,” Gil said.
“Or a monocle?” Wendy approached the bed, leaned across it to examine the box. “Could have been a monocle. Aren’t they about that size and shape?”
“A monocle? Who do you think she is, the guy from Monopoly?” Gil was pleased with his jab, and giggled to himself from the doorframe.
“Whatever.”
“Did anyone ever see her wear a necklace with a pendant that looked about this size?” I asked. “It’s familiar to me.”
“I don’t think so,” Gil said.
“No, Liesl’s taste was too clean to disrupt a line with jewelry that overpowering.”
“Oh well. Did you two find anything…at all?” I wondered if they’d even looked. Their painfully bored expressions gave away no hints. But, I suspected they’d been flipping through fashion magazines in the bathroom. Wendy drummed her fingers against the carved rosewood headboard. Hungry.
They shook their heads like a couple of vacant teenage girls. Gil lit another cigarette. I tsked.
He shrugged. “Listen, there’s nothing more we can do tonight. Let’s go. You two feed; I’ll go suck on Mario and we’ll talk tomorrow. Whaddya think?”
“Your booty call slash blood bank is such a whore, Gil. It’s kind of gross. Aren’t you worried about catching a fungus?”
“Sh, Wendy.” He pressed a finger to her lips, smearing the line of her lipstick in the process. “Don’t make me bring up your nasty habits.”
“Shut up.”
Sounded like a plan. We had little to go on anyway: the phone number and the absence of an object that none of us recalled seeing. Not exactly promising leads. It was probably best to quell the hunger before making a serious effort toward investigating, a prospect none of us had ever attempted.
Back in the car, the windshield was dotted with sap. On cue, Gil started bitching. I ignored him as best I could and stared at the empty apartment windows, aglow from within. I thought about turning the lights off. The stitch in my stomach tugged.
Where the hell was Liesl?
Help, the text read. I understood the feeling. Damn right. But it would have to wait. Someone needed to help me get some food.
Chapter 3
On Bingeing: Fun Food Facts
Seattle’s in-crowd relishes a smorgasbord of gastronomical delights. The town caters to supernaturals with the broadest spectrum of tastes; those in the mood for casual fare might consider the plethora of choices found in the misty waterfront hunting grounds; more scrupulous palates venture into the lush and diverse tent cities; they are vast, woefully insecure, simply a must for visitors…
—The Abovegrounder ’97
“It is not normal to have this much difficulty finding food, Amanda,” Wendy said.
“Sh, please, I’m concentrating.”
“Whatever. We’re both starving. It’s been like a week since we’ve eaten14.”
“Jesus Wendy, would you quit whining and let me drive?”
As it was, I had enough difficulty focusing on driving when I was hungry, let alone while listening to the pretty blonde zombie moan on and on incessantly from the passenger seat. Emaciated, irritated, and stuck in traffic, I was absolutely wooly. Wendy had a right to gripe; it was true, neither of us had eaten since Saturday, the night Liesl dropped off the face of the earth. Which if it had been Sunday evening would have been bad enough, but it was Tuesday and my hunger was festering like a gangrenous wound, bubbling over. Even children were looking tasty, and normally they were on my off-limits list15.
I was frazzled for another reason, of course; Liesl had still not turned up, and the phone number I’d found in her cell was out of service. Question: what kind of person doesn’t use their contacts list? There wasn’t a single stored number. It might as well have been a rotary. Liesl was a complete techtard.
I started to do some Internet research on succubi but hit a dead end after the basics, which appeared to be sex, sex, and sex. Humans are notoriously unreliable historians, so the information was suspect. It was interesting to think that Liesl may have had a male counterpart, or incubus, that she was aligned with. This seemed to be a universally known fact about the succubus—to everyone but, of course, me. Liesl never mentioned it. In fact, as far as I knew, she could have been a human; we only talked about other people, never much of her own issues or history.
“I’m taking the next exit.”
Not only did driving Interstate 5 leave us few food options, I had driven too far south, outside of my comfort zone. This would make safe hunting impossible without a flip map (I can see it now on the bookcase in my office); as a rule, I must know my exits. One wrong move and you’ve driven down a rural road, pulled over, and munched out on some tweaker, behind a shed covered in blue tarp, reeking of kitty pee. Quick note: meth-heads are horrible for the skin, and the aftertaste is icky. Why not just munch on a camera battery?
As I scuttled into the far right lane, a hideous lump of blue metal on wheels tore past and cut me off. My vision was clouded by a plume of noxious exhaust.
“I swear to God, Wendy,” I said, pointing at the sky blue and primer grey Datsun B210 slowing in front of us now. “Can you believe this shit?”
“I know; I totally hate that.”
“Fucker!” My voice shook, and I noticed my jaw tensed to match the pressure of my alternately clenched and grinding teeth.
I wasn’t disturbed so much by the near-collision—I’d learned to tolerate that kind of rudeness16. No, I was referring to the dingy-socked foot resting on the driver’s side dash. That early ’80s piece of shit was the driver’s couch; the dash was his ottoman. There was no way possible for that car to be comfortable enough to warrant kicking back. It was a rolling wreck. The driver was likely enjoying a loose spring up his ass.
The sock fabric was grayed and spotted with clumps of hair, dust bunnies and food stains, like a used Swiffer pad. The collected filth told the whole unsanitary story at the end of a single wiggling foot. It conjured images of rusty trailer courts, dusty dollar store knickknacks, and fleas nesting in green shag carpet.
“It just has to be dingy, too. Like he’s never picked up a bottle of bleach in his life.”
“Are we supposed to be impressed at his dexterity?” Wendy grated her nails with an emery board, fashioning them into points. Functional, as well as elegant. She looked past her lethal extensions, eyeing the other car. It was unusual to see the driver of a car perpetrating this particular social offense. Usually, it was the narcoleptic passenger, fresh from a feeding at the Old Country Buffet troughs.
“I’m sure we’re to notice the general size of it and make an association to his penis.”
“We’re gonna eat this asshole, right?” Wendy was locked on target, and assholes were totally on the list. In fact, let this be a warning: there are
those among you who view exposed vehicular feet as an invitation to dine. Don’t let a need to be lax while driving be your death sentence. Actually, that goes for passenger feet, too.
“Well, you can have the asshole, but, yeah—” I stopped in mid-thought, remembering the dirty feet, then quickly added, “Heads.”
“Fuck you! You got heads last time. Besides I know what you’re thinking and those feet were nasty.”
“Okay, okay, split down the middle then and I’ll get our next one on my own.” She sighed at this and seemed to relax into the seat. Wendy appreciated nothing more than an easy kill, particularly if I was the one doing all the work.
“Fine.”
Without another word passed between us, I accelerated to match our boy’s pace and pulled around on his left to line him up parallel to Wendy. He was twenty-two or twenty-three at the oldest, scruffy around the collar but tan (or was that dirt?). In tandem, we began the stare17 and he sensed it immediately and sold us on the most adorable of expressions, boyish fear piggybacking on horny excitement, a deadly combo for him. The boy looked over and, obviously interested18, agreed to pull off in response to Wendy motioning to the exit.
I nudged the car in behind his, and we proceeded onto a street with a large three-digit number, 320th or 270th; anyway, something with a zero on the end. All the good streets are in the double digits, so I knew we were firmly in the slob-burbs. At the first parking lot, we made our introductions.
“I’m Amanda. Amanda Feral,” I said. “Not Amanda Amanda Feral, just Amanda Feral. I use the doubling up sometimes, for memory reasons. In advertising, which I am, we find that the more times a product name is used, the more it connects in consumer consciousness.” Mid-speech, I was surprised to find that I was nervous and blathering on and on, needlessly. I had to turn it over to my partner. “This is Wendy.” I gestured to Wendy, who was playing the slut for an Academy Award. “She’s a pole dancer.”
The boy’s eyes popped. He was mortified and shaking. So was I, with hunger and something else. It must have been the nasty traffic. Or…
Help. I could almost see the text, floating in the air. It was Liesl. She was ruining my meal.
“She’s a lying whore.” Wendy brushed the backs of her fingers across his cheek. I worried that those nails would slice him right there in the parking lot. “What’s your name, pretty?”
He paused, eyes moving too rapidly; here it comes…
“Joel,” he said. A lie, of course. The predictable is unacceptable.
“Joel, do you have any friends that might want to party?” I asked. My mind was hunting for stomach memories. I was going to need a lot of food.
“Uh.” His thin lips hung wide open. I could have slid three fingers in, and toyed with the idea of doing just that.
“The only reason I ask is that Wendy here…” I pointed to Wendy, who was brandishing a crystal and silver Hello Kitty flask, took a mouthful and winked. “Wendy would just love to pull a train tonight.” Wendy blasted a spray of Grey Goose vodka onto the concrete.
Joel grabbed his cell phone and thumbed in a number with the feverishness of adolescent masturbation. Two calls and very little effort on his part assured a cornucopia of food.
That’s all it took—really—in less than fifteen minutes the three of us were holed up in the Pine Lodge Motor-on-Inn—swear to God; how could I make that up? The motel sign touted its numerous luxury amenities. They were slightly exaggerated. A pair of double beds with threadbare coverlets offered “Exotic” massage action, a Magnavox TV with rabbit ear antennas that magically accessed a “wide array of adult movies,” a carpet stickier than peep show booths, yet not as tastefully patterned, low, low hourly rates, and best of all, two totally sexy undead glamour killers.
We were on Joel before the door even closed. Wendy ripped into his throat, and I tore off his cheek, exposing a quivering jawbone. He would have screamed if my girl hadn’t clamped down on his vocal cords with her first bite. He was tasty enough, but starving as we were, we made quick work of him and waited for his friends, “Steve” and “Lou,” to show up for the “gang bang” we promised.
“Gang bang? I can’t believe you said that.” Wendy wiped tears from her eyes, still giggling.
I tossed a wicked smile and blew a kiss to my friend, who was sitting on the now-activated bed, jiggling and licking the blood from a tibia, or was it a femur—no—it was a tibia19. From the corner of the room I retrieved a Nordstrom shopping bag, removed its contents, and lined them up across the cheap dresser top: a box of wet naps, cans of Formula 409, Pledge wipes, and a bottle of Mountain Spring Clorox. I gathered the few remaining bones and fabric scraps and put them in the bottom of the bag—for midnight snacks—as I wiped the corners of my mouth with the dainty delicacy of a true deadutante.
Laugh as she may, I had hardly exaggerated Wendy’s sexual appetite. Her taste for male victims is well known in our circle and she often incorporates elaborate sexual fantasies into her kills. Sometimes we call her black widow, but, only to her face, because we’re good people.
“You know what would go perfect with this meal?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Salsa.”
“Oh yeah, chunky.”
“Or that kind with mangos in it.”
“Nah, too sweet.”
“I guess you’re right.” She picked a finger from the nightstand, popped it in her mouth, and wiped down the surface with a fresh Pledge wipe.
Wendy and I became so proficient in our dining that we rarely left a drop of blood behind. So the evidence was not piling up. The bodies were simply gone. Mostly, we only took those who wouldn’t be missed. Usually. Though it’s not our style, any youth, between sixteen and twenty-two, is a fairly good target. They tend to be flighty and could take off for Hollywood at any second. Unless their parents enjoy pornography, they are rarely seen again. The leftovers are an easy fix, thanks to the cleaning aisle at Target.
The knock on the door was light, almost inaudible.
“Who is it?” I said, countering their hesitance with a conspiratorial whisper.
“Is this where we go for the—um—gang bang?”
Wendy nearly shook apart with laughter. “Shut up.” I threw open the door and took in the view of the most pathetic creatures to cross my path in months. “Steve” and “Lou” looked far more suited to the type of role-playing that was done over a game board with their wizard friends than the handcuffs and butt plugs shit they’d been promised, a real couple of blue-ballers. These boys had definitely reached the crescendo of their lives. It was never going to get any better than the idea of this moment, and isn’t it comforting to know that?
“Absolutely, this is the gang bang,” I whispered into one’s ear, an unfamiliar thickness of breath crawling out past my lips. “Oops.” If I crossed my eyes, I could see the change in temperature floating briefly between us; a pale white wisp of smoke curled and hung for a moment. My mind drifted to another time, a small, enclosed space.
I was not alone.
The boy’s eyes ballooned. He gasped, slurping my solid breath from the air like a hit of linguine.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” I said.
“Huh?” The boy’s teeth filled up half his face in an overly eager grin. His eyes bounced from my face to my chest, to Wendy’s chest, to the sad bulge in his jeans. “No, no. It’s okay. You can blow in my ear.”
“What’s up?” asked Wendy, disregarding the boys’ presence. The fun had left. Her face was slack with concern.
“The breath,” I told her.
Wendy puzzled a look from me to “Lou” or “Steve” or whoever he was, back to me, and then to him she said, “You’re fucked.” To me her eyes bulged, they beseeched, and seemed to say “eat quick, bitch!”
He turned to his friend, a question dangling. In the time it took to move his head, Wendy pulled the other one into the room, slammed the door, and unhinged her jaw like a living Pez dispenser. Her mouth opened with a sle
w of ratcheting clicks. She shook and twitched with each transformative widening. The boy’s face registered terror, for only the second before that shark mouth clamped down. Wendy caught a stray spurt of blood ejecting from a large hole at the base of his neck, and moaned. My boy’s head jerked back to look at me, and I took off half of his face, while pinching his windpipe closed. He struggled for a moment and then went still. I binged, for the second time that evening20.
In the denouement, my thoughts returned to the breath. The breath was wrong, all wrong. I had never made it before, neither had Wendy, nor do we know how. The dead do not breathe, except to reproduce, and not every zombie could do it. It’s a rare gift. I guessed I was the lucky recipient. Somehow, I didn’t feel like I’d won the lottery. The breath, of course, brought up the memory…
Chapter 4
Of Donuts, Hair Plugs and Rude Wingtips
It only takes a breath to start that undead wheel a rollin’…
—“The Ballad of the Zombie’s Apprentice” by Chuck W. Hickock, Jr. (from Supernatural Country Hits: Volume 1)
Five months earlier…
On my way in to Pendleton, Avery and Feral, a familiar stitch crept into my stomach. I noticed a quickening of breath. Goddamn stress. The campaign pitch was in two hours, and I intended to kill. Coming down Pine, I noticed the monolithic zinc and glass frontage of Elite donuts looming over an empty parking space. I followed my first instinct; an empty parking space at that time of morning was a sign from the Goddess Bulimia. My Volvo SUV gas sucker filled the space like hand to glove; the tires screeched a bit against the curb—I’m no expert at parallel, but I was on a mission. I was in front of the counter before I realized I’d left the car running and unlocked on a city street. I ordered as quick as I could and ran back to the car with the square pink box tied in chocolate brown grosgrain ribbon, an early morning take on Tiffany’s signature.
By the time I folded into the front seat, I was bouncing like a little girl at a surprise party. I positioned my precious cargo gently on the grey leather of the passenger seat and flipped on the seat warmer. All I could think of was the box and its dreamy contents. My mind wandered, daydreaming ads21.
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