No Rest for the Wicked (19 page)

It appeared that Frank had literally fed until he'd puked. I dragged him out of the closet and shook him when he didn't respond to my question.

“Where did they go?”

Frank's eyes bulged. He bent forward and I leaped backward just in time to avoid the splash when he upchucked again all over the floor.

“She said stay here,” he moaned, head down, holding his belly.

If I hadn't known better, I'd have sworn the little bloodsucker was drunk.

“Did she say where she was going?”

He shook his head.

I knew though, didn't I? I stopped long enough to check the refrigerators. They were almost empty. Frank must have consumed several gallons of blood.

Outside, I'd climbed back on the Beast and was donning my helmet when I saw the back door of the video store open, a couple of big men loading boxes from a truck into it. It was generally known that the videos the store sold were black market, but that wasn't what struck me.

It was the Red Patrol officer sitting there on his bike chatting up the night clerk while they did so.

It was odd enough to stop me in my tracks for a second. The officer looked up, saw me, and hailed me with a wave of his gloved hand.

“Ola!” he called brightly and with a weirdly Asian accent. I was going to ride off anyway, but then he pointed to the Empress Parlor and said, “You live there, right?”

I put my helmet down. “No,” I said. “I'm visiting a friend who works there.”

He came strolling toward me, smiling widely. He wore the bicycling gear of red and white, his spandex pants clipped at one ankle, a stun gun and walkie-talkie on his belt. From a satchel he brought out a sheet of paper and proffered it toward me.

“You know this girl?”

It was a grainy school photo of a high-school girl. Bad skin, hair in braids so she looked about twelve. The collar of what I felt sure was some sort of parochial-school uniform. It had to have been at least five years old and she wasn't wearing her accustomed inch of eyeliner, but it was definitely Betsy.

“Never seen her.” I passed the image back to the guy.

He gave me a canny look. “A few of the shopkeepers say they've seen her in the neighborhood.”

I shrugged. “It's possible.” I slid my helmet on. He seemed disinclined to walk away, but then I started up my Harley and that pretty much ended the conversation.

* * *

By the time I'd arrived at the building on 124th Street, I'd put the Red Patrol officer from my mind.

I'd circled the neighborhood, looking for Caballo's and Betsy's bikes and sussing things out a bit. I didn't see any sign of their rides, and I finally settled on an empty lot where I could sit on my bike and smoke a cigarette, considering my options and trying to think of a way into the building that wouldn't result in my being shackled to the pavement beside the Los Angeles River again.

As I sat there, I noticed the occasional bloodsucker venturing outside. He or she would stalk one of the bums and take him down. It was a little like watching a young lioness learn to kill, and it would have been entertaining if the prey weren't human beings.

The first one went down before I could consider my position, but I watched, trying to think what I could do, when the next young woman trailed an old man for about ten minutes. It's a fact that undercover work often involves turning a blind eye to illegal activities. I'd say most cops try to draw the line at ignoring incidences of assault and murder, though. I mean, if it doesn't bother you, what are you doing in the uniform, right?

When she jumped him and he fell, groaning and protesting weakly like one of the sad old water buffaloes on the Discovery Channel, I didn't even think. I tossed my cigarette, sprinted across the road, and pushed her hard enough to get the old man away from her.

I flashed into battle face and snarled at her. “He's mine.”

She couldn't have been more than twenty. Slim with short hair shorn in a pixie cut. Small hands and a tiny mouth that opened in surprise and fear as she skittered away from me.

I hustled the bum a block away and down an alley, hopefully to live another day.

When I reemerged, the girl was gone, but a teenager was staggering down the sidewalk, headed my way.

His face was bloody and there was a pink stain on his shirt. He looked like he was drunk.

“Whoa, there.” I caught him as he wove and almost slammed into the stucco wall of a building.

His pupils were tiny and one of his eyelids drooped more than the other.

“Whooer you?” he asked.

“Damn, you get hold of some bad blood?” I asked him. I hefted him and eased him down to the pavement gently, then squatted next to him.

“Th-th-thought he was just drunk,” said the kid blearily.

“Looks like you got hold of a junkie,” I opined. “Don't worry. It'll wear off soon. I'll just sit here with you until you can walk again.”

“Thanks, man.” He tipped his head back then, eyes rolling up, and seemed to drift for a few minutes. The cure kicked in fairly quickly, though. He blinked and seemed to see me again, held a hand out toward me. “Thanks, dude. Really. Name's Rick.”

We shook. He had soft hands and an anemic handshake. “Adam,” I said. “My friends call me Snake.”

“Snake? That's a cool name. I should get a cool name,” said Rick.

“What's wrong with Rick?”

“Oh, you know, the fellas said I should get a cool name. To…to go with…you know…”

He gestured to his vampiric body. He glanced nervously down the block toward the building from which he had emerged. “They'll yell at me if I don't get back soon. We only have a half-hour break.”

“Right. You need help walking back?”

“Sure. Thanks.” He leaned heavily on me as we went. “You aren't the regular teaching staff, are you?” he said.

“Um. No. No, I'm a special tutor.”

“Really? Cool.”

“Listen, you were passed out for longer than you think. Maybe you'd better not let them see you coming in late.”

He stopped walking, still weaving a bit. “Damn.”

“You know that entrance you can sneak in at?”

“Yeah. I do. Good idea. Boy, you're so much cooler than my other teachers.”

He veered left and made his way clumsily, trying to slide through an opening in a fence and almost falling as he did so. I'd meant to tail him discreetly, but it was so much easier just to offer to help him.

A few minutes later, Rick was sneaking down a hallway and I was standing in an empty stairwell that reeked strongly of something dead of undetermined origin. And under all that the smell of fresh human blood.

I padded as quietly as I could up the stairs, using my nose as a compass. The first door smelled, incredibly, like chalk. And I assumed it was where the classrooms were situated. My curiosity about this particular facet was overwhelming, but I wanted to locate Drew before he did something foolish.

I was sniffing around the second landing when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I opened it, hoping that the call was from Betsy. Instead, I saw an unknown caller number.

“Yeah?” I whispered into it.

“Adam? It's Jonathan.”

My old dead heart performed a little stutter in my chest. “Is Peter okay?”

“I guess. He's checked out.”

“What?”

“Checked out of the hospital. You were right. I couldn't stop him.”

I cursed. Worse things have come out of my mouth, but Jonathan snapped. “You don't have to use foul language.”

“Did he say where he was headed?”

“No, but he called that woman before he took off.”

“Nancy?” I could hear voices and feel the vibration of footsteps in the floors. “Gotta go,” I said.

“Sure, but—”

I stuffed the phone back into my pocket and crouched, ear pressed to the wall, listening.

There were voices, but there were also moans. Ululating moans as from a multitude of throats. They sounded like the voices of the dead, and the hair rose up my back. I couldn't hear the words being spoken in the hallway on the other side of the door, but the deep voices and heavy vibration of their footsteps told me the speakers were hefty men.

“…so full I could spew…” said one voice.

The footsteps stopped just outside the door.

“You complainin'?” said a different voice. They were so close I could smell them.

“They don't fucking shut up,” said the first voice. “Bullet up on the fourth, he don't have to listen to that whinin' shit.”

“You know what I heard about him, though?” And the sound of a hand on the doorknob. I ran up the stairs so I could crouch on the landing just above them. The moans were louder as they came though the fire door and proceeded, thank Christ, down the stairs.

“I should ask for a raise,” said one of the men. And the rest of the conversation was buried in the clang and thump of their boots. I heard the door below me swing open and close.

I ran back down to the door I'd been at, and listened hard for a while, but there was no choice but to take my chances and open it.

I was lucky. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the hallway. It was pitch-black, but my night vision kicked in, and in the bluish glow I could see a row of doors down either side, each with a dead-bolt lock on the outside.

As if to hold somebody in.

I tiptoed down the hallway, following, as they say, my nose, which told me injured humans were bleeding freely behind those doors.

At the end of the hallway, a window had been broken out and recovered with thin wood, which I was able to ply back with ease to look out. Looked like a leap of about three stories down to a heap of broken wood and glass, but it was something I could do if pressed.

The unnerving moans had begun again, so I just bit the bullet and snapped the lock on the first door near the window.

I waited, tensed up and ready to spring, but the sound of the lock breaking did not bring any fanged soldiers into the hallway.

I pushed gently, and the door just swung open. I couldn't control the reaction of my body to the smell of warm blood or the sight of the woman curled on a low bed, bathed in the light of the candles around her. She rolled and looked up at me. “So soon?”

“Shh, I'm here to help you,” I whispered, crouching beside her.

Her skin was ice-cold despite the blankets piled on top of her, and her eyes had the hazy look of someone deeply drugged. The candles were set on a small bedside table that also held

framed photographs. Family stuff, kids and dogs. A rose floated in a bowl, and an MP3 player with headphones rested there as well.

“I'll take you somewhere safe,” I whispered and slid my arms under her thin body to lift her. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with her, but I couldn't leave someone lying here waiting to be fed upon.

“No.” She pushed at me feebly with both hands. “Leave me alone.”

My eyes were bulging, and I could feel my teeth cutting into my lower lip. “It's okay,” I said. “I'm not going to bite you.”

Still she struggled. Enough that I had trouble standing upright with her in my arms.

“I can't get you out of here if you don't calm down,” I told her.

“Out of here?” she asked. “Why? What did I do wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“This isn't fair,” she said, and she seemed to rally somewhat, fighting against me in earnest.

I took hold of her chin so I could look directly into her eyes. “I'm trying to help you.”

She spat at me.

Okay, this was weird.

“Don't make me leave,” she begged.

I sat back on my haunches, scratching my head, so to speak. “Make you?”

“Please,” she said.

“You want to die?”

“No. I want to live. That's why I'm here.”

She was so white she was almost clear; her pulse under my fingers came in soft fluttery beats. “I have advanced MS. The doctor gave me maybe two more years. This organization promised I'd live forever.”

That set me back hard. “Say what?” But even while she explained it, I knew.

“I was diagnosed years ago,” she said. “Some people have stages of remission, but I never did. There's some treatment still in the test stages, and it costs a fortune. Just a fortune. I could die and my family would be wiped out. So…”

“This seemed like a better gamble.” I could see the odds myself. I'd probably have taken them.

“I want to see my kids grow up. They need me. It was a choice between abandoning them and…and this.”

I looked at the framed photograph on her bedside table. “But you know what that would mean? You know you'd have to kill people?”

She raised her wobbly chin defiantly. “I'll choose not to.”

I didn't know what to do with her.

“But you
might
die,” I pointed out.

“They are very clear about your odds. They make you take a seminar before signing the contract,” she assured me. She was obviously too weak to stay upright for long and now sank back into the mattress. “They say they've been studying the process and the success rate is almost eighty percent.”

That sounded pretty optimistic an average to me. Maybe these guys had learned something.

The thought was disturbingly attractive.

“Listen, I've got a friend. Asian guy in his late twenties, about five-ten? Have you seen him?”

Her head sank again into the pillow. She shook it, eyes closed. “I don't know. Why don't you let him make his own decisions?”

Before I could reply, I heard those baritone voices again, coming down the hallway. I was figuring out my next move when the woman who lay before me suddenly opened her eyes wide.

She stared straight at me, opened her mouth. “Help!” cried my damsel in distress. Loud enough to be heard.

Fuck.

The door swung open hard, and a hairy gorilla with a bloody face filled the frame. Two hanks of blond hair hung down from a balding top. His mustache was dyed with blood and his

slit-iris, pale green eyes were wild. He was about my size, with abnormally long arms. Both were smeared with blood.

“Hey, they told me to come up here. They said they had some new Asian guy. I love Chinese,” I babbled.

The gorilla just snarled, baring all those teeth.