Chapter 3 #2
“You’re absolutely sure?” Pete persisted, rubbing his knuckles like he always did when really bad news hit.
“He looked right at me. Of course I’m fucking sure.
” She couldn’t suppress a shiver, carefully laying the washcloth on the table’s edge.
“I mean, on the bright side, he’s probably done for the Blue Moon biter.
Maybe we can turn in the kill and get the bounty?
” The idea of going back to that particular mobster watering-hold and asking for money just made her more tired.
Christ knew she’d probably be the one doing the actual work of gathering a package of gruesome proof.
“Good luck with that.” Tall, blue-eyed Ben rubbed at his cheeks, callused palms scraping stubble, and let out a massive beery belch.
He’d apparently stopped for a case of suds on the way back to base, which would’ve gotten anyone else a chewing out from Dan—both for the expense and for showing up on a gas-station camera or two.
“If we don’t have actual footage of the kill, they won’t put out. Fucking bastards.”
The kill, as if he did this every day of the week. Sure, he’d been part of that terrible two-fer, the baby biters which so far represented their group’s only success—albeit more luck than anything else, but still. Layla restrained the urge to roll her eyes.
Which took serious effort. All she could do was wait to see how Dan was going to deal with this.
Their leader just sat in a camp chair, an open Coors can in his hand, staring bleakly at a nearby wall made entirely of stacked, shadowed garbage.
“I only saw the back of his head.” Wiry, buzzcut Ackerman had helped himself to a can as well, but he wasn’t drinking, just rolling the damp aluminum across his forehead.
There were shadows under his bright hazel eyes, and his baggy fatigues had seen much better days.
He’d already cleaned his rifle twice and kept glancing nervously in Dan’s direction.
Now, however, he tipped his chin in Ben’s general direction. “Then genius here started shooting.”
“Early bird gets the worm.” Ben grinned, lifting his beer can, clearly not chastened in the slightest. “We popped some of the hypnotized fucks, at least.”
Lots of people signed up to work for individual biters, most unwittingly.
The monsters had their blood-drenched claws everywhere, or so it seemed; bloodsucking came with lots of business success, most on the quasi-legal side but no few were entirely on the up-and-up save for entirely law-abiding tax evasion of the sort rich people throughout history had always excelled at.
Some of the bodyguards and close personal servants seemed to be as durable as other demimonde species, and the argument over whether they’d been given a bit of biter blood like the stories claimed or were something else entirely was perennial.
Some people swore little green goblins and aliens with black bug-eyes worked for the vampires as well, not to mention certain species of chupacabra.
Good help was hard to find for everyone these days.
Steve-o had shoved his whole head into the utility sink; the dark mop glistened with moisture. Now he scrubbed at his underarms with a dirty T-shirt since all the towels were stiff and smelled bad; he hadn’t spoken yet. His expression was sour as the laundry.
“Yeah, that’s four henchmen who won’t be licking Dracula’s ass.
” Ack didn’t seem pleased, though he reserved his coldest, most ardent hatred for those provably signed up to serve biters for their own gain.
Apparently he’d run afoul of a willing servant sometime in the past, but he rarely elaborated.
“But they almost had you and Steve. I think I clipped a civilian, covering you.”
“Collateral damage.” Ben took another hit off his can, blinking hard—probably against the tingle of carbonation in his nose—while staring at Layla’s chest.
She was used to that, so far as was possible. Wearing a bra under these conditions was more trouble than it was worth. At least his constant gawping could explain the sensation of eyes on her every goddamn move.
Steve finally piped up. “That’s bad luck, man.” He had a nice baritone; Layla often wondered what he’d sound like singing. “Man, I once thought y’all were professionals.”
Shawn had offered to let Steve into his group, while turning down Layla in the nicest possible way. Later, Steve had asked her quietly not to let Dan know, and she’d nodded, well aware of the fireworks that piece of information would cause—not from Dan himself, but from Ben.
Just one more service she provided, really. Now there was yet more smoothing the waters to do, and the task filled her with dread.
“We’ve collected the bounty on two biters already,” she pointed out.
The fact that the money had been from low-level mobsters who felt a particular type of weird murder-y shit was cutting into profits was neither here nor there; if regular municipal authorities wouldn’t pony up, organized crime would.
Shawn’s crew had been bankrolled by a hush-hush Vatican program, or so they said, but good luck getting the Church to share the collection-plate take with regular old American heretics. “That’s good, right?”
“Yeah, well.” Steve-o dragged another camp chair toward the table and lowered himself to sit in stages, like an old man.
Nobody would admit Ack getting headshots on two baby fangers with the new ammo while Steve and Dan pumped the rest of the creatures’ bodies full of yet more fancy-dancy exploding bullets was more a fluke than anything else.
That was just three months ago in Chicago, another operation gone almost-wrong, and she hated thinking about it.
She’d done a great job as decoy, even Ben had to admit as much.
Both biters had locked right on her, and she’d led them into the ambush without any trouble at all.
In fact, they’d acted skunk-drunk and were still trying to get at her as the bullets hit.
And how they’d screamed before falling apart, violated tissues poofing into fine, gritty dust, a sound fit for nightmares if she didn’t already have so many.
Mostly centering on poor Suzy.
Maybe that job was why Ben had opened fire early tonight. He constantly talked about getting a few notches in his belt, a phrase which seemed to apply both to vampire-hunting and to sex, but he never mentioned why he had taken up the former.
Of course, neither did Steve, but the look on his face whenever the subject came up spoke volumes.
Dan sighed. Everyone quieted, waiting. When he finally broke the hush, though, it wasn’t to start the official debrief. Instead, he lifted his sweating Coors can and looked at it like he didn’t quite understand how it had gotten into his hand.
“Fuck it,” he said, tonelessly. Dim backwash from the tensor accentuated fine lines around his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. “I quit.”
A strange murmuring silence filled their temporary, derelict home. A past-midnight train was barreling nearby, rhythmic wheel-clacks like a heartbeat; the formless mutter of traffic was so familiar it went unnoticed until something awkward happened.
Layla’s throat was dry. Even the beer, yeasty and pisswatery, was starting to sound good.
“Three years of bullshit,” Dan continued. “Four, if you count… just fuck it. I’m going back home, I’m forgetting all about this creepy shit, and I suggest y’all do the same.”
What. The hell. Layla had to un-grit her teeth before she could get a word out. “What do you mean, you quit?” Hunting biters wasn’t the sort of thing you walked away from. Especially when they killed your wife, for God’s sake.
That went double for showing up at Layla’s door, blubbering-drunk about how Suzy was gone, it was real and Suze was gone. And then asking her to go to the morgue to help identify the body, because he couldn’t face it alone.
“Do you need a fucking dictionary, Lay? I. Fucking. Quit.” Dan glared at her, coffee-colored eyes gone cold and strange, just like when she’d opened the door to the hotel room before the wedding and found him with Cindy Asterly.
No tears that time, no sir. He hadn’t even pleaded with her not to tell, just looked at her like that.
Like she was a stranger.
“But…” There wasn’t enough air in this stupid falling-apart building packed with junk; she sounded like she’d been punched right in the gut. “But Suzy.”
Poor, sweet, friendly Suzy, who never hurt a fly. Who never seemed to care Layla’s house was on the wrong side of the tracks, who called her bestie and even uninvited Mary LaCosta from her thirteenth birthday party because the little bitch had spread rumors about Layla and Bobby Myers.
“For fuck’s sake, I didn’t even love her,” Dan spat, his mouth contorting for a swift, terrible moment.
The dark circles under his eyes had somehow gotten worse in the past half-hour, as if years of sleep deprivation had settled in all at once.
“She fucking forced me to marry her, all right? Said she was pregnant.”
But you did marry her. Even after I caught you. Layla stared at him, dimly aware her mouth was slightly open. A weird slipping sensation vibrated under her still tightly laced boots, as if a minor earthquake had chosen this particular moment to strike.
“Uh-oh,” Ben mock-whispered, grinning. “Trouble in paradise, Mommy and Daddy are fighting—”
“Will you just shut the entire fuck up?” Steve-o snarled—another shock, he was always so laid-back. “I’ve had about enough of your bullshit, man.”
Layla knew she should say something, anything to fix things, to smooth this over. The words dammed up in her throat, dry and horrible, and Dan’s face—once capable of making her melt like ice cream on a hot sidewalk—had turned into a stranger’s.
He lifted his Coors can, still staring at her with that cold, awful expression.
Ben belched again, the sound turning into words. “Brrrrr-uck you.” He was probably proud of being able to perform that feat. “Shouldn’t have a cunt with us in the first place. Bad luck.”
Pete turned, his hip banging the trestle table, which squeaked and wobbled alarmingly. “Shut up,” he hissed. “Jesus Christ, you’re such a fucking amateur.”
“None of us are pros,” Ack weighed in, and thank God for that. If someone with a dick was playing peacemaker, it might have a chance of working. “Let’s just all calm do—”
Ben was, of course, unwilling to be reasonable. “Oh, you think you’re gonna get in the cunt’s pants? She don’t even notice you, man, you—ulp!”
At first she thought Steve had stood up, walked around the table, and punched him.
But when Layla’s head turned, she saw Steve still in the camp chair, gazing at the spot where Ben had been.
Steve’s jaw was loose, blue eyes cartoonishly round, and the shirt draped over the chair’s arm fluttered on a stray draft.
Where Ben had stood there was nothing. He’d vanished into thin air.
What the…
She couldn’t even finish the thought. A flicker in her peripheral vision, soft whuff of displaced air touching her cheek, and Dan’s chair hit the concrete, the Coors can describing a high, perfect arc before impact, splattering yeasty white foam.
The trestle table wobbled harder, the tensor’s glow casting crazy shadows and stacked guns, knives, and ammo clips clattering uneasily.
“Run!” Ackerman yelled.