by Susan Stec
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Gator Baitin’
The Grateful Undead, book 2
By
Susan Stec
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What others are saying about The Grateful Undead series:
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The Grateful Undead is a rip-snorting satire on all things vampiric and paranormal~~Carlyle Clark, co-author, The Apocalypse Gene
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It's refreshing to see an author take on what is now a very popular genre and make it her own~~Jeanne Bannon, author, Invisible
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A fresh take on the oft-bitten vampire milieu~~Jeni Decker, co-author, Waiting for Karl Rove
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Acknowledgements, heartfelt thanks, and much appreciation go to:
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The zany women in my family for inspiring me, loving me, and accepting me unconditionally.
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My on-line family at www.thenextbigwriter.com/ for being there through the writing process, adding encouragement, suggestions, and a shitload of editing help. Without them The Grateful Undead would be six feet under.
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My daughter Jeni Decker; author, I Wish I Were Engulfed in Flames, for her tongue biting guidance and tongue in cheek sense of humor.
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Line editors, Millie Gillies and Jeni Decker for cleaning up my messes.
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Bob, my patient hubby, for letting me be me.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and places are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
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Published by Susan Stec, Author
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The Grateful Undead: Gator Baitin’
Copyright © May 2012 by Susan Stec
Cover illustration copyright © Susan Stec
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Chapter 1
Sing a little song
Suck a little blood
We're dead tonight
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I stopped at a red light and adjusted the rear-view mirror to get a better look at Christopher about the time he took off his Florida Gators cap and waved it at a Latino woman bouncing across Ocean Drive in front of us.
"Put your hat on," I snapped, glaring at his reflection. "Don't make me come back there."
Christopher locked his baby-blue eyes with my livid green pools. "Come on! Gimme a break, will ya?" He turned back to the window and lowered his sunglasses to get a better look. "Hey, hootchie mama, bring them double-D's over here." Fanning the damn hat again, he released the strap on his Bob the Builder car-seat and leaned halfway out the window, blond curls fluttering in a soft breeze. "I'm a breast baby and you look like you got plenty to share." Butt in the air, his little legs stuck out from camo knee-length cargo shorts and bounced black Marvel-Heroes tennis shoes.
I reached between the seats of my Jeep Wrangler, grabbed the hem of his Spiderman shirt and dragged his butt back in the window. The Latin woman waved from the curb, leaned over, and shook her shoulders, boobs rattling in their cage.
"Christ, look at them damn things," Christopher groused. "I'm getting a hard on—they're bigger than the ass hanging onto her thong. Pull over will ya?"
The woman headed for the Jeep. I floored it and ran the red light.
"You keep this crap up and Child Services will be knocking at our door. Sit back, buckle yourself in before we get a ticket, and keep your mouth shut." I turned the next corner at breakneck speed; the Jeep's tires squealed and Miami vacationers in festive beachy attire turned to check us out.
"Damnit, I'm a hundred and five years old," Christopher roared, dropping his fangs. "It's time I got laid!"
I hissed at his image in the mirror, showing a bit of fang myself. "Problem is, ya don't look a day over six."
"Aw, come on," Christopher snarled. "I could've yanked her ass in here and got lost in the folds and she wouldn't have remembered a thing."
"Yeah, an' the operative word being, 'lost.'" I grinned, tossing my red curls as I took another corner.
"I hate this body. You try walking around, one big frickin' joke."
"We're looking for the Gay Caballeros' bar," I reminded him. "We need to find my mother, remember? I'm going to have Dorius up my butt if we're late for the meeting, and I'm not in a good mood, so knock it off!"
"It's on the corner over there." Christopher pointed his hat at a purple building with a bull in rainbow-colored neon lights bucking above the door.
"Maybe I can find a petite woman looking for a small man in there," Christopher mumbled as I made a U-turn and pulled in back of the building.
"It's a gay bar, idiot. You'll be waiting in the car." I parked, yanked the door open and got out of my Jeep Wrangler. "You know we aren't supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves, so don't make a scene. If anyone asks, tell them your mother went inside to get your grandmother."
"Screw that. I see an opportunity to get a little and I'm taking it."
"Don't make me slap you." I walked away glaring at him.
The place was packed with men kissing on men and women rubbing against one another in front of a long bar on one side of the room. It was loud, smoky, and smelled like stale beer, sweat, and...fresh blood.
My mother was nowhere in sight. I silently prayed she wasn't sucking on someone's neck in a back room.
I made my way to the rear of the bar and through a set of double doors where all the yelling was coming from.
My mother was riding a mechanical bull, arm flailing, bare thighs tucked around a leather saddle, blonde curls whipping her face. Her attention was on the man running the apparatus.
"Crank this baby up a notch, will ya, Harold? Give her all ya got!" Mom yelled, "I wanna ride 'til I walk like a bow-legged cowgirl on hot pavement."
My mother looked like she was in her twenties with bright sable eyes, perky breasts, and a street trash mentality. Mentally, she was an eighty-three-year-old grandmother trying to seize, with gusto, the moments she'd missed in her sexually deficient life.
I walked up to Harold. "Can you turn that off, please? It's time for my…um…sister to leave now."
Harold reluctantly turned his bleached-blond head in my direction. "Come on, lady, she's attracting a huge crowd—it's good for business."
"Harold! Let her rip!" Mom yelled. "I need a little more action between my legs!" She pulled her tube-top over her head and twirled it in circles. "Woohoo, burn baby, burn!" Breasts bouncing, legs swinging, she threw the tub-top across the room. It hit a thick, buff woman in the face.
The woman, two fingers in her mouth, whistled and waved the bright pink tube-top in the air.
"That's what I'm talkin' about!" shouted a woman dressed in a leather skirt and cowboy boots. She waggled her tongue, showing off a large metal ball piercing.
"Time to go!" I shouted at my mother.
"Can you just give her another fifteen minutes?" Harold asked. "She's selling more drinks than we've sold all week. Christ, look at them. They love her."
I stared into Harold's eyes, pushed a few thoughts around in his mind, suggesting it was time to give the bull a rest. He shook his head, looked confused, reached for the switch, and immediately the crowd booed when the bull c
ame to a halt.
A cute redhead turned an angry set of green eyes at Harold. "Come on! She was just getting started."
"She hasn't even worked up a good sweat," another woman shouted.
Mom jumped off the bull, her short skirt showing a lot of thigh and way too much thong. She waved her arm, bowed to her audience and grimaced at me, butt swaying as she strutted over.
A short woman in tight jeans and a white wife beater laid her hand over Mom's breast, and planted a big sloppy kiss on her cheek.
Mom jumped back, lips curling—no fangs thank God. "Read my perfectly glossed lips. Do that again and I'm gonna bite'cha." She bounced toward me, eyes flashing, brows smashed together. "This better be good, Susan. I almost broke the record."
I yanked Mom's tube top from the buff woman's teeth and slapped it between my mother's breasts. "Dorius sent me. We have another mission."
Buff handed my mother a frosted mug of beer. "I'd love to buy you dinner, sweet cheeks."
Mom chugged half the beer and hand-swiped her mouth. "I'm a cheap date," Mom said, eyeing the woman's neck.
I grabbed her by the arm and pushed her toward the doors. My day was turning out to be a real pain and it had just started.
We walked out of the backroom and I stopped dead. Christopher was at the bar, straddling a blonde chick, his face shoved between her breasts.
"Ride-um-cowboy," the woman giggled as she bounced him up and down in her lap.
"Christopher!" I shrieked, and took off in the direction of the bar.
He turned to me with glazed eyes, hair matted on his forehead, sweat running down his cheeks.
With a big grin, the woman lifted him up and placed him on the floor in front of her. "Will you look at that, the little man has a boner."
Christopher, shorts tenting in front, made no attempt to hide his arousal. "Hi, Mommy, it was hot in the car and I got thirsty." He pointed over his shoulder. "Carol is a very nice lady."
I sucked in some stale air, shooed him out the back door, and nipped the boisterous laughs when it shut behind us.
"Look, you little shit," I said as we headed across the parking lot. "I've got a stake and shovel in the trunk and I'm pretty sure no one would miss you." He put his foot on the running board and I knee-butted him into the back of the Jeep.
Christopher jumped in his car seat and buckled up, an adorable grin on his face. He looked every bit the six-year-old he appeared to be.
Fifteen minutes later we walked into the conference room and by then I was ready to bite the heads off a few nails.
"I'm not hunting a vamp-gator. Do I look like Jeff Corwin?" I searched the faces in the room. "I didn't think so."
"Suck it up, Susan. It's what we do." Mom shoved by me. It was easy for her to be smug. Dorius had put her in charge of the Critter Control Department.
"Do you always have to be so bitchy?" JoAnn rolled her eyes at me.
My sister had unwittingly—JoAnn does everything without wit—turned a raccoon into a vampoon during her first attempt at feeding, single handedly screwing up the whole ecological system. Now immortal animals were popping like corn in a microwave. Critter control was not what I'd fanged up for.
While I eyed the bane of our undead lives, my thirty-nine-year-old daughter, Jeni, the only mortal in the family, cleared her throat and grinned at me from her seat at the conference table. She had on a cute muslin sundress, a pair of leather sandals, purple painted toes, and burgundy hair cut in a severe bob framing a round, cheerful face. Her gray eyes sparkled. "Wake up on the wrong side of your coffin, Mommy Dearest?"
"Don't start with me, Jennifer. Jesus might forgive JoAnn, but I ain't frigging Jesus!" I flopped into a chair.
JoAnn slapped the conference table, showing off well-manicured fingernails. "You're going straight to Hell for using the Lord's name in vain! And you look like you died in those clothes."
After I hooded my eyes, I looked down at my tattered Old Navy T, camo shorts and scruffy ten-year-old Doc Martins then back at my sister. "Ya know, you should be chasing the fruit of your fangs instead of sucking blood through bendy straws from a juice box then maybe you'd look like you died in your clothes, too." I pointed a stubby finger at her, my nails chewed to the quick.
JoAnn's brows did a little dance on her forehead. She crossed her legs, adjusted the belt on her white linen shorts and checked her pink Tommy T-shirt for wrinkles. A Nike clad foot bounced under the table, sock scrunched perfectly around her fragile ankle. She stood four-eleven with her shoes on and had soft blonde hair, coiffed in the same straight, shoulder length style she'd worn forever.
"I don't suck from animals or anyone else, and you know it." JoAnn pouted. "If you would have gotten me blood that day like I asked, none of this would have happened. I was only trying to protect myself from a rabid raccoon—the poor thing. I pray for it every night, locked down there in one of Dorius' cages. I even got one of those little hamster watering thingy's, the kind you hang on metal bars, and I keep it full of blood."
That's JoAnn, mentality of a senior citizen tiptoeing through the world of Alzheimer's.
"I don't pray, JoAnn." Mom laughed. "I ask the devil for suggestions. We're vampires—we suck blood—get with the program."
"Alright, ladies, don't get your thongs in a wad," Jeni interjected. "Let's discuss your next mission, shall we?"
I smiled; teeth together, sucking in air.
Thirty minutes later we were still arguing and we all looked up when Dorius, the head of the Rogue Hunters at BAMVC, walked into the room with the rest of our team.
"Evening ladies, how are my little immortal Critter Catchers tonight?" Dorius said, immediately pissing me off.
"I'm not hunting vamp-animals anymore." I shot JoAnn a raised brow. "Let someone else have a crack at it."
Jake, a shape-shifter dragon standing beside Dorius, turned red, hiccupped, then burped, emitting a small burst of fire from his mouth.
Everyone moved a good three feet away from him.
Christopher picked up the Critter-Catcher jumpsuit folded on his chair and put it on. The logo of a bear with a human head between its teeth covered his back as he zipped up and sat down at the table. He picked up a yellow number-two pencil and started chewing on the eraser, eyeing the dragon and a fire extinguisher on the wall beside him.
Gibbie, a cute little fairy with a bold personality flew into the room in a flutter of silver sparkles. "Hey, everyone, what'd I miss?" He always sounded like he'd just taken a hit off a helium balloon.
"You haven't missed anything," Christopher said. "Just the same old argument—JoAnn's little faux pas."
I shot him a look that told him to zip it. He waggled his eyebrows at me.
Dorius cleared his throat. "Everyone settle down."
Paul, the resident Werewolf, slid into the chair next to Jeni and smiled at her. She smiled back. Another thorn in my side. I was not fond of the attraction between the two.
Dorius passed around one of his snide grins and began dishing out orders, starting with Mom. He vacillated between calling her by her birth name, Concetta, and her nickname. "Chick, you have the paperwork. Pass it around, and let's begin."
My mother jumped to attention. "Yes sir. Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber already have theirs." Mom looked from me to JoAnn as she handed the rest of the team theirs.
Dorius went on. "Everyone leaves tomorrow night except Zaire and Resi. I have another assignment for them. Jeni and JoAnn will remain here, of course, in constant communication with both teams."
"Hey, that's not fair!" I shouted at Dorius. I knew I wasn't one of his favorite immortals, but if anyone should snag another mission, it should be me, not my younger daughter and her lover.
Dorius gave me a look that had me gritting my teeth. "I need Resi's mentalist skills for this job. Sorry, you just don't have what it takes. And they make a good team, especially since they're blood-mates."
"Will you ever get over the fact that your brother is my mate? It's not my faul
t yours ended up dead." I suppose I should give him a bit of respect, since he's over fifteen-hundred years old, but I really don't like him.
"The last time I checked, I was in charge of my Rogue Hunters. I dispatch. You submit. Got it? Your alternative would not be pleasant." Dorius shot me one of his authoritative sneers.
Jake squirmed, emitting a foul smell. Everyone started fanning their faces.
"Sorry, confrontation triggers my flatulence issues," Jake said, wiggling into a chair.
We all scooted further down the conference table.
"Jake, maybe you should try that Beano stuff," JoAnn suggested. "It prevents gas, bloating and discomfort. You can get it at the pharmacy, you know."
"Yeah, it really works," Mom said. "I've used it myself. But now that I can suck humans, I don't have a gas problem."
"Really? Beano, you say?" Jake scribbled a note on a pad in front of him.
"I didn't off your mate, Dorius." I just couldn't let up.
Christopher actually offed her, and then turned me. That won him a seat on our team of vamp-animal extinguishers. I was pretty sure Dorius was sending the girls on a real mission just to piss me off.
Jake burped. Smoke wafted out his ears.
Paul smiled. "Susan, can we get on with this before the dragon sets the room aflame?"
Jake looked like a sexy Rican with black hair and dark eyes, but I'd seen the dragon, big ass teeth and all thirty-feet of its glorious purple scales.
Dorius continued. "Paul, you and Gibbie will go into the park during the day. You can phase, do a little sniffing around, and Gibbie can check the buildings."
"Sounds good. What exactly are we looking for?" Paul asked.
"Another vamp-gator," Dorius answered. "Red flags went up this morning when I had a conversation with the curator at the park. It is viciously trying to attack the human visitors but bedding down with raccoons and they're still alive in the morning." Dorius looked way too happy.
"How in the hell do these gators keep getting made?" I wanted to know "They have skin like asphalt. Not even you could bite one."
"There have only been two that we know of. Mort destroyed the first one the day all of you tried to escape from me, remember?" Dorius raised one eyebrow.
