Chapter Eleven – Jack
Chapter Eleven
Jack
“I’d remind you that you can stay, but I already know that you’re going, aren’t you,” Paco shouted at me from his living room.
He’d heard the shower stop—and I came out with an amazingly plush towel around my waist. Paco’s boyfriend had as excellent taste in couches and towels as he did in boyfriends.
“Yeah, sorry,” I apologized. I had to go, while Paco’s blood was still singing inside me. There were some things I could only do after a fresh feed.
“Yeah, I know,” Paco said, with a tease.
I dried myself off and swung the towel out to him. “You missed a spot,” I said, swirling my hand over my stomach, where his was still sticky with cum.
He swatted it away. “I’m waiting for the Oreos to give me strength.” He’d retrieved them from where they’d landed earlier.
“You just like smelling like me.”
“Like us,” he emphasized. “Although I’m glad we didn’t make it to the bedroom. I might be too tired to change the sheets. As it is….” He looked at the disarray of couch cushions behind him, “I’m going to be tipping Imelda extra tomorrow.”
I grinned. “Hey, so,” I began.
Before I could say another word, he jumped in. “Here it comes.”
“What?”
Paco set the Oreos aside and stood, and I appreciated him anew.
He’d put on forty pounds of muscle since we’d first met—he’d been a scrawny club kid, and I’d been looking for easy prey, when he’d awakened a different hunger in me I hadn’t known I’d had.
Over the years, Paco’d become one of Vegas’s most sought after bodyguards, and now he had a long-term contract with the Fleur de Lis, Vegas’s newest, classiest, casino.
From here, with the tasteful lighting from above, I could see the puckered scar where a bullet had found his shoulder instead of a client’s heart.
And me? I hadn’t changed. At all.
“You’re a proud asshole, you know that?” he told me, falling back into drill sergeant mode.
“The proudest,” I said, laying claim. Proudest that I was Paco’s only, ever, top. I could go either way in the right situation, but I was the only one that ever saw that man face down.
“So now that we’re agreed—yeah, I’ll ask my friends on the force about Bella for you. There aren’t violent murders in Summerlin too often, my curiosity’ll seem natural.”
“Thanks, Paco. And….”
I walked out of the magician’s house, holding keys to Paco’s car and wearing one of the magician’s long sleeved shirts.
I drove Paco’s dark sedan to Summerlin and parked a few blocks away from Bella’s house. My car was nothing but noticeable, and there was a chance its engine had woken a few people up the prior night coming and going—I didn’t want anyone thinking I’d returned to the scene of the crime.
I made sure on my way in to be unseen, which was easy, Paco’s willing blood had my powers flowing at full blast. The magic that made you a vampire—it was like always being lucky.
Beautiful women would angle across a room to you.
Dice would roll in your favor. And what you weren’t already given you could most often charm.
Someone, cops or a neighbor, had tacked some wood up over where Bella’s door had been. I took some solace in the fact the lock I’d set hadn’t had a chance to work—the door’d been ripped off its hinges and flung aside, pressing down a square patch of clover in the yard.
I looked around again then set my fingers against the plywood they’d replaced it with and tugged. The nails unsealed from the surrounding wood. The second it was wide enough I slunk in.
I could smell the fight before I saw it, my eyes adjusting to the darker space indoors.
Bella’s fear, her blood—blood I’d always wanted to know, and held back from—and the scent of her attackers.
Someone—someones, at least two of them, but they smelled the same.
Grease, like from a car shop, and something else, more animal and musty.
I made careful not to touch anything, although as a vampire I didn’t have fingerprints—almost like the magic that ruled us knew we were destined for lives of crime—because if there was something the police could do, I wanted them to be able to eventually do it.
I only wanted to do it faster—because the punishments I could dole out were ever so much more just.
There were signs of a struggle, strewn tarot cards, shattered crystal skulls. Her laptop was gone, and I didn’t know who’d taken it, the attackers or the police. And in the bedroom, where I’d fucked her less than a day ago, a massive blood stain and a sense of death.
I walked over the line she’d drawn, her ritual spell meant to trap me—and now, with Paco’s blood on board, I could feel its pull. I knelt down beside it and waved my hand out and it tugged me every time. My little witch had been magical after all—just less magical than me.
So had she seen the future? Hers—and mine? My black aura, my evilness? I waved my hand across the spell one more time, then stood. There was nothing else for me here, and it was time for some magic of my own.
I got into Paco’s car and drove out of Summerlin.
Vegas wasn’t that big a city and I had hours left till dawn—it was time to cruise.
I drove for downtown, intent on Bella, the scent of her blood still fresh in my nostrils.
If her killers were still in Las Vegas tonight, there was a good chance I’d find them.
How? By being me—and full of blood. It was some sort of psychic dowsing—the same thing that pulled innocent creatures into my path to bleed could pull other people toward me, or me to them. So I drove east on 515 and waited.
Just past downtown, I felt a tug. Like someone was pulling a string tied around my chest. I flipped my turn signal on and followed it.
The dowsing pulled me away from the strip and further out, into the endless suburbs on Vegas’s other side, until it led me into a parking lot and faded.
I was circled by off brand restaurants, used clothing stores, and pawn shops—and a dive bar with all sorts of motorcycles parked out front.
Hogg’s Heaven, with the image of a happy pig—like it used to be a BBQ joint, except now the ‘hog’ referred to all the bikes parked outside. I got out of Paco’s car and walked in.
I was plenty used to these kind of places.
But I’d borrowed a shirt for the sleeves, I didn’t want to make identifying me later any easier than it was, and the magician’s starched collar made me look a little stuffy.
Maybe that was a good thing and I should go with the whole tourist shtick.
So instead of my usual swagger, I paused at the outside of the line of motorcycles and swallowed nervously, appearing to gather my strength before I pushed through.
My nose told me this was the right place, as soon as I walked in.
The scent of a working shop and that animal undertone hovered in the air.
How would I know who it belonged to? One of the people casting me glances and pretending not to, or one of the people giving me outright glares?
I couldn’t go around sniffing people, so I walked over to the bar, where the bartender ignored me.
I knew he could see me, I was the only person here not wearing some sort of leather, and I might’ve been the only person to put on deodorant.
The men around me, in conversation with one another and/or their beers, ranged in age from early twenties to late fifties, but the one thing they all had in common was that they all looked muscled and angry.
The few women present had the same age range as well, only they went from nubile to weatherbeaten.
Sunscreen was clearly not popular among this set.
One of the younger women broke away from a crowded pool table and walked over. “Can I help you?” Paco’s blood just kept on giving.
“He was on his way out,” answered the bartender for me. There was an angry scar from his eye down to his neck.
I turned toward her and smiled like I’d won the lottery, letting all of my magnetism beam down.
“I was actually looking for a friend. About this tall? Dark hair? Curvy?” I used my hands to show the space Bella would occupy.
“I met her, and she said she comes here.” I did my best to sound missed-connections, not stalkery.
A frown crinkled her face. “Yeah, um, I haven’t seen anyone like that in a while now.”
She was pretty by Midwestern standards, shoulder-height to me, petite all around, perky-breasts under a patterned tee, with a denim mini and low-cut cowboy boots to show off all the leg in between.
There was something earthy about her though, a little too weary and a little too wise, and I knew she was lying about seeing Bella.
“You’re sure?” I pressed, positively glowing at her. I saw something flicker in her eyes, some doubt or uncertainty, but then the bartender answered.
“She’s sure.”
“I’ll have to drink her away then.” I sank against the bar dramatically, playing the mortally wounded tourist. “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Present company excluded, of course.”
The girl’s eyebrows rose and she laughed, turning back to the bartender. “Come on, Wade. Let him have just one beer.” Wade’s leather vest had a patch that said Davis on it—so clearly he and she were on a first name basis.
I came forward, wallet at the ready. “Only if I can buy one for my champion too.”
She bit her bottom lip for a second. “Any of these guys here can buy me beer anytime,” she said, gesturing to the surrounding men, several of whom were keeping an eye on us. “But you can only buy me one if you go to the jukebox and pick the right song.”
And that…was something the blood likely wouldn’t help me with. I gave her a tight smile and tried to sound at ease. “Sure. Wait right here.”
I walked over to the jukebox—it was one of those electronic numbers with an infinity of songs to choose from.
And unless the magician’s shirt had actual magic in it—I put one arm up against the machine, and used the other to flip through the screens.
I was a fan of The Black Keys. Sinister Kid felt a little too on the nose, given what I was—but I’d always loved Howlin’ for You.
I ran my card through, punched the numbers, and returned to find a beer of unknown origin waiting beside the woman for me.
I took a sip, glad I was immortal and likely immune to whatever the bartender’d poisoned it with, and watched the girl’s face as the current song faded, and Howlin’ for You came on.
As the first few chords picked up, she broke into a wide grin and gave me a sly look. “Well what do you know—you found it.”
I grinned back at her and then crooked a finger at the bartender as pretentiously as possible.