Oz Bites

by Mary Hughes

Tonight the wind he produced ruffled my hair. I liked vampire mode almost as much as I liked riding on his Harley. Natch he’d put the kibosh on that too. I was sooo looking forward to popping this kid.

  Damn. Whiny Nixie again. What was wrong with me? I was about to say something when we got to Rocky’s. The flamingos had disappeared from her yard too.

  “WTF?” I said when she opened the door. “Where are your Fulvous Flamingos?”

  “They’re gone?” Rocky stuck her head out, looked around. Her glasses glinted in the streetlight. “I don’t know. I didn’t pay to have them removed.”

  “That’s strange.” Julian’s eyes shifted, scanning the street. “Taken just as we came looking. I don’t like the timing.”

  I agreed. It meant we were almost certainly dealing with villainous vampires. “Where will we find a flamingo now?” I had blocked flamingos from sight so I didn’t remember who else had them.

  “I don’t know.” Julian’s head swiveled. “I don’t see any the entire length of the street.”

  This sucked moldy old sax reeds. “Hey, Rocky. I don’t suppose you know anybody who might have gotten Flamingoed?”

  Rocky shook her head. “Even if I did, people usually pay right away to get them removed. They change yards almost daily. Well, except for us musicians who don’t have the money.”

  Good and bad news. Good because I wasn’t a complete idiot for blocking out the birds. Bad because, without knowing where the rest were planted, we’d have to try each musician we knew and hope to get lucky. I wondered how much time we had. If the flamingos had been plucked before today we might as well go home. “When did you last see your flamingos?”

  “They were still here when my student left,” Rocky said. “Maybe three minutes before you showed up.”

  “Awesome. Julian, can you…?”

  He was already doing his shtick, his eyes violet tinged and far away, like he was listening preternaturally hard and his nostrils flared as if scenting prey. I knew the look. He was accessing his vampire nature without going full v-mode (which would scare the plebs, in this case Rocky).

  “Do you…?” Four months of marriage to an incredibly aware male finished it for me. Do you sense any bad guys nearby?

  His eyes snapped back into focus, directly on me. “Not now. Whoever took the flamingos went south. But I have an idea. Stay here.” He whipped off.

  “Like that ever works,” I muttered.

  Then I realized he’d headed, not south, but east.

  Weird. If Julian wanted to catch the perps, he’d have run south. So maybe he had an idea where to find a spy flamingo. But even then east made no sense because it put in him on the northeast side of town. I’d grown up in that neighborhood. It was a grid of neat, older, solidly working class housing. I knew there were no flamingo infestations there. ’Cause, well, free. Rather than pay to have them removed my old neighbors would have plunked birds in neat rows and called them “mine”. Although they’d probably paint them pink first.

  But east was the direction Julian had gone. I kicked into a run.

  Within two blocks I was wheezing like a punctured accordion. Yeah, me catching up with a vampire was like a Vespa overtaking a Harley. A four-month-pregnant Vespa. I clopped to a halt, clutching the pain around my right ovary. I needed to use my head, not my less-than-marathon body (although our martial arts instructor Mr. Miyagi had started a baby bumps kickboxing class). So I yodeled, “Julian!”

  I was counting on his supervamp hearing but also his blood-awareness (long story, basically my blood was a GPS locator to him) (BTW, my guy drank blood but for his veins, not his stomach. Vampires are like regular people who can’t make their own blood, except they take transfusions by mouth) (which doesn’t stop them from being dangerous scary or drop-dead sexy).

  Sure enough a few seconds later Julian whirled up, skidding to a stop inches from me. “Why aren’t you at Rocky’s? Don’t you ever listen?”

  The tips of his fangs glinted as he spoke, a sure sign he was sore, so I talked fast. “I know I don’t have my bazooka but you said the bad guys went south. So even if they’re rogue v-guys, I’m okay following you east, right? Did you think of a place to find a flamingo?”

  “Yes.” His fangs did not disappear. He dug a hand through his ebony hair, winced and stared at his claws. “Damn it, Nixie—what if the rogues think of the same place? Can’t you ever just listen for once? Stay safe?”

  My jaw kicked up. “What about you? Do you play it safe?”

  “I’m not pregnant with our child!”

  I glowered but said, “Point.” I hated when he was right but wasn’t ass enough to deny it. “But it might not be the Lestats. It might be human minions.”

  “That doesn’t make it better!” He swallowed a roar of frustration. “But thank you for at least considering it.” He was also trying to make this marriage thing work. We’d probably rub the prickles off each other about the time I turned fifty. “But if it was rogues… if the monsters chanced on you alone, a tiny human, an Alliance mate… Yet what do you do? You go off like a brainless teen in a slasher pic!”

  And of course he wound himself up again. I tried to cut off the harangue by grabbing his package but he swept my hand out of the air before I barely had the thought. Usually he indulged me in a little playfulness but there were times he didn’t even try to hide his inhuman side. That’s how I knew he was serious.

  “Hey! Julian, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He stuttered to a halt. “I…damn me. I was afraid.” He grabbed me in a bear hug, crushing me to his lean strength. Well, except for the belly. “I only just found you, sweetheart. After a thousand years of waiting, I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Nice.” My voice was muffled by his chest. “You won’t lose me—if you keep me with you.”

  “Ouch. All right.” He sighed, then took my hand and started off. “I hope we have a boy. I can’t imagine having to look after two of you.”

  “Those things skip generations. She won’t be like me. She’ll be like my mom.”

  “That might almost be easier.”

  “You say that now. Wait until she reminds you to put on sunscreen. And your hat. Just to take out the garbage. So where are we headed, the flamingo graveyard?”

  “Better.” He leaned closer, spoke in my ear. “I thought of someplace the bad guys might have overlooked.”

  Chapter Four

  An overlooked flamingo, tonight’s Grail. “Really? Where?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “You know, if I could, I’d take you home.”

  “We don’t have time and you know it. Where?”

  “Fine,” he said, the code word for “I don’t like it but I’m dealing”. Directly in my ear he murmured, “Triple E.”

  At first I didn’t get it. Triple E was the trailer park on East Eleventh and Eisenhower, EE & E, thus the name.

  Then I did.

  Fifty flamingos were the maximum fundraiser dingage. Rocky had counted fifty-five on her front lawn. We figured the extra five were bugged.

  But Julian had counted fifty-four. Which meant either Rocky had miscounted…

  Or before the flamingos had been collected, one had wandered off—with a little help.

  Very few people could have traipsed unchallenged into Rocky’s yard and taken her Fulvous Flamingo. In fact, only one person would have even wanted to appropriate her plastic lawn poop. A person who just happened to live at the trailer park, whose lawn was already covered in garden gnomes and life-sized plywood silhouettes and concrete animals.

  Rocky’s mom.

  Odds were against the wandering flamingo being one of the bugged ones. But right now we had no other options. Time to head for Triple E, and fast.

  I lifted my arms. Julian swept me up and we dashed off. I murmured in his ear, “If the flamingo is bugged, won’t the bad vamps know where it is? Can’t they locate it by its transmitter or something?”

  “Not necessarily.” To keep the
wind from sweeping away his words he angled his face down to me. I worried a little that he wasn’t looking where he was going, but he must have had other senses to keep him from slamming Nixie-first into things. He said, “A cheap transmitter broadcasts in all directions. They’ll have to triangulate to find it, which takes time. Hopefully they won’t even realize it’s missing until they retrieve the rest of the flamingos and count them. If it’s bugged.”

  “So we have a window of time,” I said. “How long?”

  “I don’t know. Ordinary Lestat, I’d say a week. These seem to be a bit smarter than the ordinary. We’re here.”

  Triple E was home to neat rows of doublewides spaced a few yards apart. Mrs. Hrbek had a corner lot which meant she had an extra two feet of green. Theoretically. The whole yard was crammed with decorations. Julian waded into a hodgepodge of gnomes, birdbaths, trellises and concrete animals including the pride of Mrs. Hrbek’s collection, a life-sized moose.

  I blew out a sigh of frustration. Where’s Waldoing through this garden jumble for one brown bird was going to take some time. If the Fulvous Flamingo was here it wasn’t flapping “hi”.

  As Julian set me down, something flickered beyond his shoulder. I peeked.

  Four red-eyed, fanged vampires swooped in. Damn, they must have triangulated pretty quick. While, yay, their showing up meant there was indeed a bugged flamingo here, boo for our just snagging it and running like hell.

  Julian caught sight of my expression, probably eek with a side of Aooga. He growled and whipped around.

  The rogues stopped, creepy fluid and fast.

  Yeah, seeing Julian had given four rogues pause. My hubby was some scary stuff, vampire-wise. At over a thousand years old, he had plenty of slick fighting techniques, including mist and shape-changing.

  But straight up, four to one wasn’t the best odds. On the plus side, all four were smaller than Julian, and two had the emaciated look of newbies. That was good because size is a function of age in vampires, and age is power.

  But two were decently muscled and fairly big, the leader in scarred but supple-looking leather that yelled serious bad-asserie, his second plumed out like a beach-bum complete with blond dreads. Definitely older, maybe enough to tip the balance away from Our Side, in spite of Julian’s abilities. We might not win. We might die. Or worse.

  With vampires, there are more horrific things than just dying.

  The leader waved the pair of newbies forward. They charged Julian while their elders hung back, waiting to see how Julian handled himself. Maybe even hoping he’d tire himself smacking fledgling ass.

  I did not like that. It meant the leader wasn’t just older and stronger, but smarter.

  Time to get busy. I sucked in a breath for courage, reached over my shoulder to grab my bazooka, prepared to kick some serious butt…my fingers clutched air.

  Spank me with a Strat. Without weapons, with my body changing every day, I’d play the bumbling sidekick instead of the kickass one. Okay, Julian could wipe baby vamp snot by himself. I’d do my part by looking for weapons, the flamingo, or any advantage I could find.

  So I looked. As I mentioned the double-wide didn’t have a whole lot of unpaved ground but Mrs. Hrbek had managed to stuff garden ornaments everywhere. Black plywood silhouettes were nailed to every fence panel and gnomes capped every fencepost. Ceramic elves swarmed a decorative ladder. The concrete moose bawled over the heads of the Three Blind Mice in terra cotta. Hopping around a tiny vegetable garden were bunnies from a few ounces of polyresin to a hip-high concrete Harvey. Or I guess Harvey’s a pooka, not a bunny, but his ears were just as long.

  It was weirdly beautiful. You know what I mean. There’s good taste, there’s bad taste and some things are so beyond, taste doesn’t even apply.

  A shrill cry snapped my head to the fight. Julian had grown claws like daggers and was slashing a newbie vampire in the face. As the rogue stumbled past, Julian hammered a fist between vampire shoulder blades.

  The rogue fell sprawling, face-first into a concrete gnome. There was the crack of bone. Score one for the garden statuary. Hands clutching his nose, the vampire rolled onto his back. Blood trickled down his cheeks, and if his moans were any clue he wasn’t interested in fighting for now.

  Julian whirled to the other newbie, punched talons into his belly, and dug up toward the heart. It’s a standard vampire-fighting technique. Remove the heart, no blood pumps, and the vamp can’t move. Chopping off the head is better but without a knife, with just talons, the heart is easier to target.

  Julian carried a blade even if he was only out buying me chocolate ice cream but of course we’d been distracted with the feel-better sex and then in a rush to get a flamingo. No blade tonight. Hmm. It also explained why he’d been so anxious for me to stay safe at Rocky’s.

  But razor-sharp claws worked well enough against newbies. As the impaled rogue squirmed, blood began to well around Julian’s forearm. Julian had almost reached the heart. The rogue shrieked.

  My eyes cut to the two older rogues. If they tried to rescue their pup…but no. They were watching, waiting, assessing. In some ways that was worse.

  At the cry, the gnome-grounded newbie shook his head. His nose was already straightening. Vampires healed too damned fast. One more shake and the rogue rolled to his feet. The leader whistled and tossed him a long knife. The newbie caught it, a vicious grin cutting his face.

  Limbs akimbo like a flying squirrel, the rogue leaped for Julian.

  Julian faked back, slashing out with his free hand as the flying rogue whipped by. Talons struck the rogue across the chest, spun him down.

  The rogue landed badly, stutter-stepping. He almost fell but caught his balance, barely. With a wrench he twisted back and up. His arms whirled out for stability. The blade, still in one hand, flashed.

  At the last minute the rogue slashed up in an underhand stabbing arc, directly at Julian’s belly, using the full momentum of his twist. Julian was so much shish-kebob.

  Julian had to move quick, taking a two-step to the side, barely avoiding the flashing blade.

  But his retreat let the impaled rogue slithered off his claws. Blood gushed from the rogue’s belly, slowing almost immediately as the gash closed.

  Julian growled, lashed out with deadly talons to resnare the vampire but the knife-wielding youngster seized his homie’s shoulder and yanked him out of Julian’s reach.

  The two backed away, hurt but recovering.

  I clenched my fists. Still four of them. Only two of us. I was righteously angry and readied myself to get in there and fight, bazooka or not.

  Julian flashed red eyes toward me.

  What I saw froze me with disbelief. Not irritation. Not worry.

  But bone-deep fear, for me.

  Reality, propelled by that horrified glance, hit me. Oh God. It wasn’t four against two. It was four against one—plus a pipsqueak.

  Even a pipsqueak could mete out some damage, but at what cost? Was Julian right? Should I sit this one out?

  Julian’s eyes added, You and the baby get inside while I distract the rogues.

  Implicit in Julian’s look was, if I loved him, I’d keep the baby safe. My fist opened to slide over my belly.

  I did love Julian. He was right. My desire to fight was natural but wrong, given the baby.

  I gritted my teeth but dutifully cheated toward Mrs. Hrbek’s front door.

  The moment I moved my husband whirled toward the burly beach bum. With a grin, Julian tickled the air, a come-and-get-me. Provoking. To distract the rogue from me as I slunk toward safety, but rash nonetheless.

  Rash. Something Julian Emerson never was. And me playing it safe. Love had made strangers of us both.

  The blond released a feral roar and shot forward with that freaky liquid speed of a mature vamp. He on top of Julian almost instantly.

  Julian grabbed the rogue’s leading hemp-braceleted wrist, pivoted—and tossed that hibiscus-wearing sucker over one hip. The rogue flew i
nto the life-sized concrete moose, hit headfirst with a crack of skull and slid down, temporarily out of the fight.

  Garden decorations two, rogues nothing. I pumped mental air.

  But before Julian recovered his balance the two younglings swarmed him. They grabbed my husband’s arms and knifed him. Julian twisted, managed to keep his jugular from getting cut but took a vicious gash to the chest and a deep stab to the kidney. Internal bleeding, bad enough to debilitate him. Even healing fast it would hurt like a bitch and distract him, leaving him open for more destruction and pain.

  Dammit. Julian was in trouble. I vibrated with the urge to help.

  But I was pregnant and human.

  If I had a ranged weapon…

  But I didn’t and in close a vampire could disarm me before I could blink, much less stab. Then I’d be in serious trouble, deadly trouble, worse. With vampires there were worse things than death.

  Julian wanted me safe. How could I possibly help him?

  I couldn’t.

  “Now we end it.” The oldest rogue smiled, fangs dripping.

  And swirled into mist, an almost instantaneous mode of travel.

  All my seesawing was moot. Julian was in immediate deadly danger. I spun, to run back, to help.

  The vampire mist arrowed—straight at me.

  Fuck me with a crispy side of damn. I had no weapons. Even a sidekick in my changing body was iffy. How could I help Julian, right. How could I even help myself?

  Julian roared. He shook off the newbies like flicks of water, throwing them with such force that they dug furrows in the ground. As soon as he was free I knew he’d blow into mist and shoot after the rogue, come to rescue me.

  But the rogue already swirled in my face, solidifying, inches from my pregnant belly.

  I screamed. Not because I was scared but because I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t fight but I couldn’t not fight. I couldn’t be safe for Julian but still help him. I couldn’t be wife and daughter and punk musician and mother. Hell, I couldn’t even organize a damned pit.

  Red eyes coalesced first. The rogue was slow forming, piecing together bit by bit. Maybe it was a scare tactic, like a snake mesmerizing the rodent for its bite, freezing it by striking terror into its little thumping heart.