by Mary Hughes
“As the matter of fact…” The two fingers stroked deeper. Sliding forward, back, forward…and in. Even with my hangover I arched. “Bad,” I gasped. “Very bad!”
“Because I have some news.” Dirklet was as perceptive as my cell phone. “You’re not going to believe this. Maria Martinez and Josephine Schrimpf are lovers! And they alibi each other for the night of the murder.”
“You told me that.”
“I did? Oh.”
But did that stop the Dirk-o-matic? Noooo. “Did you know the medical report says there’s spit on the victim’s testicular sac?”
“Dirk. I’m not…” Bo’s two fingers split, one on each side of my clitoral hood. Long, strong fingers grabbed me and milked me. I was throbbing at both ends. “Not on the case anymore. So if there’s nothing else…”
“Well, what about Captain Titus making me a detective?” The Dirk-man wouldn’t know a social cue if it smacked him in his own dangly little eight-balls.
“Yes, Dirk.” Bo added another finger. I was getting close to critical mass. “I’m going to blow…I mean I have to go! Go, not…er.”
“Then what about the blood?”
“Yes, yes! No blood at the scene or anywhere around.” Bo cupped me. His palm ground into my mound while his fingers stabbed. My hips rocked in time to his thrusts. My butt thwacked into his thick erection with every stroke. His fangs touched my skin.
“I mean the black-market blood.”
“Ohhhh!” As Bo penetrated me, teeth and fingers, I arched back. He ground me between cock and hand. I came in a blaze of heat and light. Somehow the pain in my head only augmented the sweet pain of my climax.
“Yes, oh!” Dirkenstein said. “That’s what I thought. Oh! The killer drained the body to sell the blood on the black market.”
“That,” I panted, “is an awful lot of trouble for a few pints of blood.” I panted some more, trying to slow my heart. It was difficult because Bo was still stroking into me, though gently now. “Why wouldn’t the killer just get a couple donors?”
“At a thousand dollars a pint?”
I stopped panting. In fact, I stopped breathing. “Who’s paying that much for blood? And why?”
“Dunno,” Dirk said. “That’s why I called you. Where are you, by the way?”
“Uh…” I straightened away from Bo. “Fifth and Grant. You know, the Roller-Blayd warehouse.” Where I’d first met Flakeula.
“Oh, goody! I’m on Fifth and Jefferson. Just a couple blocks away. Oh, there you are, Detective Ma’am! I see you. Yoo-hoo!”
Something crawled up my spine. Slowly I turned my head.
Waving like a maniac was a rumpled, potbellied beanpole wearing a yellow hat. From here Dirklet looked like an overused yellow Q-Tip.
Speaking of Q… “This is your cue to exit,” I said to Bo. “Unless you want to find out what’s worse than a bloodsucker.”
Interest lit his face. Either he was a glutton for punishment or he’d lived so long even a cruel novelty was welcome. “What’s worse than a bloodsucker?”
“A person that vacuums all the life, energy and soul from you.”
“Oh. A psychic vampire.” He looked disappointed. “Met a few during the Victorian era. Will I see you later?”
The Victorian era? As in Queen Victoria? Sweet Madonna on a trampoline. “I’ll try. If I can drag myself to your place after my soul is sucked dry.”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “I’ll suck something else wet, Detective.”
Hellooo, nurse! My Bo-holster clenched. Bo-holster? I couldn’t believe I just thought that. I really needed to lose the horny. Or stop drinking. Or even just get out of the cop shop more. If I started calling my pussy a furry donut I’d shoot myself. “Yeah. Okay. It’s a date.”
“Indeed it is.” With a smile, Bo disappeared.
Literally. Poof. Cloud of dust. Gone.
For once, it was useful to be an orphan. How do you bring a dissolving boyfriend home to meet your parents?
“Detective O’Rourke. How nice to see you again, bleh.”
I spun. Held my head. Well, looky here. Just the fake vampire I wanted to see, the mysterious Vlad.
Fakeula solidified from the Roller-Blayd building’s shadows. He kept casting anxious glances in the direction Bo had disappeared. Apparently satisfied the coast was clear, he approached, walking with some of Bo’s eerie grace. I frowned. Could he really be…?
Then his cheap plastic cape crackled like cereal. Nah.
“Elena O’Rourke.” Fakeula’s eyes darkened. “You are under my spell.”
His burning eyes must have hit the hangover in my brain. The toxic fumes released left me confused and a bit dazed. I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
Vlad flowed closer, his fangs gleaming. They didn’t look so fake any more. “You are in my power.”
For a frightening second, I thought he might be right.
“Uh, actually Detective O’Rourke is in Meiers Corners.”
I jerked at the muddy rasp. For the first time, I was actually glad for Ruffle’s social cluelessness, breaking in—and breaking the trance.
Dirk trotted up. “Did I do good, Detective Ma’am? Figuring out where the blood went?”
Fakeula floated around, apparently trying to get the measure of this new creature.
“Well, not where the blood went, because I didn’t. Figure that part out, I mean.”
“Bleh.” Chocula curled back his upper lip to show thumbnail-long fangs. “You there. You are under my spell.”
Dirk ignored him. “But why it went. I mean why they took it.”
Freakula planted himself in front of Dirk and aimed a menacing eye stare straight at him. “You are in my power—”
Dirk rattled on. “The blood, that is. Why they took the blood. Whoever they are—”
Creepula jumped up and down, his cape flapping like plastic bat wings. “Stop that bleating. Bleh!”
Both Dirk and I stared. Dorkula’s eyes ping-ponged between us. He must have realized he looked like a toy bouncy bat because he stuttered to a stop.
With a swirl of cape he struck a sinister pose. Classic Bela Lugosi, arm masking his lower face. Only his burning red eyes showed. The red wasn’t the gleam of reflected light.
Vlad, I realized, was a real vampire.
Then the fangs were real too. I tapped Ruffles on the shoulder. “Um, Dirk? Maybe we’d better go.”
The clueless wonder ignored me. Dirk stared intently into Freakula’s glowing red eyes. “Uh-oh.” He cocked his head and, insanely, shuffled closer. “Somebody has pinkeye. Tsk-tsk. You can get drops for that, you know. My mother got drops when I had pinkeye. It’s been years since I had it but I bet you can still get them. The drops, that is, not my pinkeye. Which you don’t need because you have your own pinkeye. We can ask my mother where to buy drops, if you’d like. I’ll just call.”
“Bleh!” Fangula fell back a step. “I don’t have pinkeye! My eyes glow red. Like bloood.” He swept his cape out with both arms. “For I am—Vampyre!”
“Vam-pier?” Dirk’s face blanked. Not blank like impassive, or even wooden. Blank like a sheet of paper and an essay deadline. “Vamp-pier. Is that like a place you dock a vamp-boat? Or is that one of those things in England?”
“England, yes yes! Vampyre.”
“Oh. Vamp-peer.” Dirk lit up. “Like a vamp-earl, or a vamp-duke?”
“No, no. You are an imbecile. I was going to drink the blood of the lovely young woman. But not now. Now I open your imbecilic throat and drink your blood! For I am Vampyre.” Fangula’s r’s rolled like thunder. “Undead Creature of the Night.”
“Really? That’s so cool.” Dirk clapped his hands together in delight. “Creature of the Night. Fight, fight, fight!”
I slapped myself discreetly on the forehead. Ouch. I was going to have to have a talk with that boy. If he lived.
“No. You do not understand.” Fangula tapped his toe impatiently. “I am a killer. I drink mortal bl
ood.” He resumed his eerie ghost walk toward Dirk, fingers extended and alarmingly pointy. “I will drink your blood, bleh.”
Dirk looked offended. “My blood is not bleh! I know for a fact my blood is very sweet. Mosquitoes love my blood. Just ask my mother, if you don’t believe me.”
Fakeula faltered.
“Or ask my uncle. He was my summer camp counselor. There wasn’t a single trip he didn’t have to drive hordes of mosquitoes out of my tent. Called me a bloodsucker’s paradise. So there. I have sweet blood, not bleh blood!”
Flakeula came to a stop. His cape drooped and his arms hung limply at his sides. His fangs were gone. His eyes had cooled to a light brown. “Bleh,” he said, kind of weak. “Bleh?”
“And if mosquitoes don’t know blood, I don’t know who does. So insult my intelligence all you want. But don’t insult my blood!”
Flakeula’s eyes glazed over. “Bleh,” he said. “Bleh. Bleh. Bleh.”
I suppressed a smile. A horrible vampire had tried to hypnotized Dirk and me. To paralyze us so he could drink our blood. But Dirk with his endless, pointless chatter had numbed the vampire senseless instead.
The sun’s rays peeked over the horizon. Fangula’s head jerked up in horror. “I must…retire…” He fled. Not dissolving like Bo, but supernaturally fast all the same.
He left a streak of smoke behind. I thought of the charred remnants of the mugger vampires, and my smile broke free.
“Detective Ma’am!” Dirk pointed at the trail of haze. “Look!”
My amusement turned to wariness. How would I explain this?
Dirk hit his yellow fedora to tilt it at a rakish angle. He struck a pose, finger pointed up, feet spread. He smiled broadly. In a sassy voice, he said, “Sah-mokin’!”
I grabbed Dirk by the wrist. “Come on, Jim Carrey. We have work to do.”
“Where’re we going, Detective Ma’am?”
“To track down your black-market blood, Detective Dirk.”
“Um, okay. Uh, did you know your pants are unzipped? And what does ‘Cop a feel’ mean?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
After zipping away my Level Fives, I dragged Dirk to the local funeral home. Bo said they sold blood to vampires. Maybe they sold it to other customers as well.
Like black-market customers.
With the promise of a new lead (and after dry-swallowing a couple aspirin), my hangover receded enough that I could ignore it.
A nondescript man, mid-thirties, greeted Dirk and me at the door. He wore a neat suit, an indeterminate shade of blue-brown-black-green. Subdued gray tie. Pewter shirt buttoned down at the collar. Maybe not nondescript so much as gray as an overcast day.
The man’s face was as somber as his clothes. Not his expression, his face. His skin was taupe, his eyes almost the same color. His hair was medium brown. If he were a designer collection, he would have been Deeply Sombre Neutrals.
He gestured solemnly for us to enter. In a sonorous voice he intoned, “Welcome to Stark and Moss Mortuary. I’m Josiah Moss. This way, please.” Moss led us down a set of carpeted stairs. The sepulchral hush of the place was overpowering. I felt like weeping for no apparent reason.
Downstairs was more thick carpet. We shushed into a large room. In one corner was a desk with chairs where grieving survivors could order their urns and headstones and thank-you cards. To the left were caskets, set in rows. From plain metal to polished wood, each sat on its own casket-sized luggage rack. They were side by side in rows four deep, like seven-foot dominoes.
At the back was a set of double doors marked “Do Not Enter”. Huh. Must be where they prepared the bodies for…ew.
Moss turned to us. His expression was Sober Sympathy Number Eight. He stood with his hands clasped neatly in front of him, cupped right over his groin. Maybe he was posing for The National Embalmer or Cosmortician. Or maybe Mr. Stiffy Jr. was too much of a party boy to be even hinted at in such a solemn place.
Moss’s taupe eyes moved from Dirk to me. “I’m sorry for your loss. Was the loved one your parent?”
That snapped me out of my musings. He thought Dirk was my brother? Dirk shared more DNA with a chimp. Okay, that wasn’t nice. But I was beginning to think of Ruffles as Dirkus-Interruptus. And too much Interruptus made Elena a crabby girl.
I drew myself up to my full five-nine. Flashed my badge. “Detective Elena O’Rourke. This is Detective Ruffles. We’re not here because of a dead body.”
Dirk nudged me. “Uh, Detective Ma’am? Technically, we are here because of a dead body. Schrimpf—”
“Yes, yes, all right.” I faced Moss. “I have a few questions. You drain corpses of blood before you embalm them, right?”
Moss nodded. He even did that somberly. “It’s actually more of a displacement. A disinfectant/preservative is injected into the arterial system. The blood comes out through a vein.”
Okay. There’s too much information and then there’s Too Much Info. This lopped over into Don’t Even Go There. “Once it’s out—however it gets that way—what do you do with the blood?”
“Government guidelines regulate the disposal of human fluids, Detective O’Rourke. We follow them most stringently.”
“And what are those guidelines, exactly?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“Uh-huh.” I grabbed Moss’s arm, pulled him toward the desk and chairs. Keeping my voice low, I said, “Look. A friend of mine says you sell it to Nieman’s Bar for…special customers.”
Moss blanched, then reddened. Ruddy cheeks clashed with his muted suit and tie. “Who told you that?”
“I’m sorry, its confidential. But this person’s authority is unassailable, if you know what I mean.” I smiled, showing my eye teeth.
Moss glanced at Dirk, who was admiring the caskets. “Yes, all right, it’s true.” He kept his voice down too. “Although strictly speaking, I don’t sell the blood. Mr. Stark does.”
“Let me speak to Stark, then.”
“Mr. Stark is unavailable during the day.”
“I don’t care if he’s sleeping.”
Another glance at Dirk. “Mr. Stark is a very sound sleeper…if you know what I mean.” He showed his eye teeth.
I got the message. Stark was a vampire.
Still, he might be my only connection to the black market, if there was one. I didn’t want to leave without answers. Maybe Stark could be wakened. After all, Bo was active during the day. Very, very active. “I happen to know that’s not completely true, either.”
Moss looked disgusted. “The unassailable friend, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Well, not everyone is as powerful as Strongwell. Mr. Stark must sleep while the sun is up.” He glanced again toward the coffins. “Hey. You!” Moss’s somber manner cracked with a bang. “Get out of there!” He ran toward the showroom.
At the far end of the coffin dominos was a row of one wood and three metal caskets. Ruffles was apparently taking a metal one for a test drive.
His butt and one skinny leg were inside the casket. The other foot was on the handle, like some morbid running board. One hand clasped the open lid, the other braced against the edge.
Seeing Moss charging like a Bears offensive tackle, Dirk gave a whoop. He tried to scramble out, overbalanced. Caught himself on the hinged lid.
The lid snapped shut with a crack—with Dirk’s foot still inside. Dirk howled. He wrenched the lid open and pushed the casket away so hard it tottered on its stand.
Moss sprang forward. “No!”
Too late. Dirk’s good foot landed on the floor. He launched himself away.
Isaac Newton and his apple would have had a field day. Dirkenstein rocketed one way. The casket tipped the other. Toppled ever-so-slowly from its stand.
I would have stepped in but it didn’t seem like such a disaster. A single metal coffin, a few thousand dollars. Moss could still have sold it at a scratch-and-dent sale.
But the coffins were stacked too close. Dirk’
s coffin crashed into the one next to it. The second coffin tottered.
Moss dashed past Dirk. Poor Dirk was rolling on the floor, moaning and hugging his injured leg. Moss ignored him, darting around, hands shooting out to steady the second coffin.
An instant too late. The second coffin bashed into the third.
Moss reversed, almost wheelie-ing in his haste. He skipped toward the teetering third coffin. It looked like he was going to make it. He actually got a hand on the thing. Pushed with all his strength.
But the coffin kept coming. Moss spun his back into it. He braced like he was holding back a train. Like a gray-suited Spider-Man without the really cool special effects.
And without Spidey’s super-strength. The casket rolled onto Moss, crushingly heavy and inexorable, like April fifteenth. Both man and box took a nose-dive toward coffin number four.
With one last, desperate shove Moss managed to skew the coffin. Instead of rolling into coffin number four, it pitched into it, end-first.
Metal hit wood with a loud crack. Moss barely caught himself, jumped back, his mouth an O of horror.
The wood coffin burst. Splinters and pieces flew everywhere. Little flying needles and puffs of liner stuffing. Fragments of panel and stand.
When the dust settled, three bashed caskets lay amid the splintered remains of the fourth. Thousands of dollars of expensive mahogany were now just kindling.
Moss stood in the middle of the carnage, stiff as a…well, stiff. His hands were folded over his groin. His color scheme hadn’t changed all that much. His somber shirt was dusty gray. So was his somber tie. Even his suit was now a somber, dusty gray.
Slowly, Moss dropped his hands. Huh. Not everything was dusty. A clean spot covered his fly, the shape of clasped hands.
But the hands themselves…the backs bristled with splinters. They looked like two porcupines.
And now that I looked, his face wasn’t totally gray either. No, under the dust his face was livid red. And his eyes just might have been burning with the open fires of hell.
Oops.
I smiled, extracted Dirk from the rubble. “Well. We’ll just come back later.” I pulled Ruffles toward the stairs. “When Mr. Stark is available.”
