A friend of mine said something like, “Why not vampires?” And it occurred to me that there was no good reason…
Julia was the very first protagonist in the very first erotic story I ever wrote, A New Running Partner, and has made occasional returns since. She dates bad boys, werewolves and the like. As for Felix? He made his first appearance at a brothel on the original Valentine’s Day, in a story I wrote some time ago, where he learned how NOT to win the next bet.
I hope y’all enjoy this little contribution. Make sure you read all the Halloween Contest stories and vote up your favorites!
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I. Praeparatio
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The engine roared as I piloted my car through the spooky moonlit hills out on the north edge of town. That’s one thing that’s always been perfect about my car: the sound it makes when I rev it.
Of course, pretty much everything else about it is dogshit.
I was studying the road ahead, partly because it twists a lot but mostly just to avoid my passenger’s worried eyes. She swallowed; I could hear it, her throat totally dry. “But, like, who are they?”
I sighed hard and let her hear it. “Baby. I’ve told you fifteen thousand times: they’re clients. Like every other client. They want something, we want something, just like always.” I hesitated, but couldn’t help adding, “Don’t make me tell you all this again, or I’ll kick your ass.” I felt like that was something a pimp should say, but of course Andrea knew me too well to believe I’d actually hurt her. They all knew me too well.
“So, just fucking?” she pressed, and I looked out the side window as the big old houses whipped past; she knew something was wrong. I grimaced.
“Like every other client,” I grated. “They want it, they can pay for it, they get it. Right?”
“But, like you told them I don’t like anal?” she whined.
“Yes,” I lied, “but don’t get all squeamish and shit. You don’t get to dictate how this goes, honey. You gave up that right.” Again, I felt like it was something a pimp should say, only this time I had a point. She frowned deeply, deeply enough that even the corner of my eye could catch it as we motored out toward Glenview. “They usually don’t say anything about anal,” I added, my voice a growl, and that was true enough as far as it went.
They never said much at all, at least not to me. That’s part of what made them so spooky.
She tried again. “But it’s a threesome?”
“It’s a foursome, baby.”
“You said three guys!” she bleated.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. Three guys, plus you. That’s four. A foursome.”
She thought about that. “Oh,” she said at last, in a tiny voice. She’d never done three guys. She was going to have a lot of firsts tonight, I thought bleakly, and then one big last. But then I stopped thinking much, because I didn’t like pondering that. It made me feel like a horrible person.
Which I am, obviously. But not irredeemably bad, I liked to think. What I was doing that night, though, just a couple months shy of Halloween, really was irredeemable. “They seem like nice guys,” I added dully. “None of the other girls has told me there’s anything wrong with them.” Which was technically true.
“Well,” she sniped, “except that there’s three of them.”
I finally stared over at her now, incredulous. Andrea looked absolutely fucking gorgeous, her minidress tight over a tiny, compact body; she was small everywhere but her ass, which swayed like palm trees in a breeze. Her makeup looked great, not too much and not too little; she was always a top-notch girl, appearance-wise. I was sorry I’d be losing her. Forever. “You’re a whore,” I finally coughed. “Three men want to pay you. That’s all that matters.”
“No,” she corrected after a sullen moment, “they want to pay you, Ricky.”
“Yeah,” I snapped, letting her hear the bitterness about the choice she’d forced me to make, “because you didn’t.” She shut her fucking mouth at that, jaws clamping like those plastic hippos in that stupid game, the one with the marbles. I went on, my voice savage. “It’s like I always tell you girls: you’re late with my cut? You pay some other way.” I shrugged. “In this case? Three other ways.”
“Shit,” she sighed.
“Yep.” I wanted to say more, but held my tongue. She was going to pay in more ways, too. In every way she possibly could, and then some. I glanced once more at her, thinking how weird it was that I’d never see her again after tonight. But I couldn’t tell her that. “You’ll be fine,” I said instead.
“Are they old? Ugly?” She was intrigued, at least. “Gay? Why three guys living alone together?”
“They’re not old, really,” I mused. “You’ll see. They seem about forty? Handsome. One of them is a doctor.” I reflected, thinking about what I’d seen them doing to Erin before I’d been urged out of the house: not gay. Not gay at all, and I told her so. Though, they did seem older than they looked. Once again, I looked away. I had no idea what the three mysterious guys who lived at the top of Briggs Road did with the women I brought them. I thought I could guess. I didn’t want to think about it. Bring us only such women as you don’t need to see again, they’d said. Only tasty little morsels, please.
They were as good as their word, too; I’d never again seen any of the other four girls I’d brought to the top of Briggs. And they paid half a million in cash each time, so…
Yeah. I thought I could guess. But I preferred not to think about it, about what the three guys had in store for Andrea tonight. I drummed the steering wheel. “You just shouldn’t have been late with my cut, baby,” I muttered.
“I told you,” she whined, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t do it,” I groused, and it didn’t. Not when you needed money the way I did.
“Rita’s been late with her money before too,” she pointed out viciously.
“Rita’s a better whore than you are,” I told her bluntly, but of course she was right; Rita stiffed me routinely. Which was making me mad, now; I had a soft spot for Rita (more accurately, I had a hard dick for her), but she was about to leave me with no choice. Eventually, the three weirdos at the top of Briggs would want another girl, and I knew it would have to be Rita next. No matter how many enthusiastic blowjobs she gave me. “Mind your business,” I went on, needlessly, because it hardly mattered now: the road was ending, and so was Andrea’s time here.
She’d no longer benefit from anything I said. Mind your business. It meant nothing tonight, or wouldn’t soon enough.
“Now then,” I began, low-voiced in the close, foggy night; I’d just pulled over at the base of their long, winding driveway, “here’s the thing. The other girls I’ve brought up here all say the same thing: that it’s important to follow instructions once you get in there. These guys don’t like to repeat themselves.” This wasn’t strictly true: the other girls hadn’t said anything to me. But the guys had, and it was their words I was saying to Andrea now.
The other girls. Monica, late with my share of her whoring. Erin, who’d stolen from a client. The other Andrea, The First Andrea, who’d never done anything wrong; I’d had to pick someone when the top of Briggs Road had called urgently one night, last Halloween in fact. And then Mia, back in March; she’d been late with my share, too. Since then I’d heard not a whisper from Briggs, until now: they wanted another one tonight. And fortunately I happened to have another late girl… but I didn’t want to give up Andrea.
I was sure there’d be another call, probably another urgent one, come October 31st. I’d lose Rita then, but the men had paid extra for the other Andrea, so I’d make them do the same for Rita. An extra hundred grand, at least, and I needed every penny. “You’ll go inside. I’ll be with you; just follow me. Just inside the front door is, like, a little room with a coat rack; you’ll take your clothes off and there’ll be, like, a robe there.”
“A bathrobe?”
“More like a gown,” I shrugged, still looking carefully away from her.
“Where do I put my clothes?”
“Baby, don’t I always take care of you?” I made myself smile at her. “I’ll take your clothes.” It mattered for nothing. Her clothes would be completely meaningless in a few more minutes, a dead woman’s clothes. “I’ll even get them dry-cleaned,” I added, my guts seizing up a little when she smiled gratefully. “But here’s the thing. From that point on, say nothing. Just follow me wherever I go, with your hands clasped in front of you. Say nothing, got it?”
“Got it.”
“Nothing at all. That’s what the others said,” I ended lamely. “Then I’ll step aside and introduce you, and then it’s all you.” I reached out to caress her cheek. “And you always know what to do, honey.”
“Three men.” She still looked hesitant. “I hope they don’t fuck my ass. How much are they paying you, Ricky?”
“Ten grand,” I lied, but her eyes widened. “You see? This isn’t just a punishment for you; it’s a nice chunk of change, too. I’ll give you a little bit, obviously, but do your part. Right?” I leaned over toward her, the mens’ instructions clear in my mind. “Say nothing. Follow directions.”
“Should I, like, call them sir?” She made herself chuckle. “Master? My lord?”
“You should call them whatever the fuck they tell you to call them,” I muttered shortly. Above us stood their house, tall and spindly against the summer moon, at the end of the driveway. “They’ve got, like, rituals. Probably strange kinks. You’ll even hear me say some weird shit. Got all that? I don’t want to be late.”
“No, it’s fine.” She ran a hand through her lustrous black curls. “Thanks, Ricky. For the chance to make it up to you. I promise, I’ll never be late again.”
“That’s my girl,” I managed. It was true: she’d never again be late with my cut. I smiled, fakely, and even gave her a peck on the cheek. She smelled good, all perfume and hairspray, her curls brushing my forehead. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
“Ten grand,” she marveled, stepping out of my Dodge. The passenger door creaked as she knocked it closed with her formidable ass. ” After tonight, I’ll be able to call my self a ten-thousand-dollar hooker. I’ll make you proud, Ricky.” She waited while I came around the front of the car and led her between the tall stone gateposts at the base of the drive.
“Aww.” One syllable, all I could produce now with the fear starting in my gut. I didn’t like this house, nor the people in it, and I certainly didn’t like what was going to happen to my girl. But I liked being in debt to the tune of almost two million dollars even less, and I still had a business to open if I wanted to go legit. We walked up the broad steps, the night misty all around us, before the big old door opened noiselessly to my push.
“They don’t even latch the door?” Andrea’s voice sounded unnaturally loud to me. “What’s up with that?”
I paused on the threshold, the fear spiking suddenly as I swung around toward her. I towered over her short, sexy frame. “Did you not listen, you dumbass?” I hissed. “Say nothing!”
“Sorry.” She almost mouthed it, her head dropping to her chest, and I reckoned that was the last thing I’d ever hear her say. I glanced fearfully into a tall, gloomy front hall lit by sconces down low, the kind that had dim little bulbs to resemble old gaslights. The air smelled as musty as it had last time, when I’d brought Mia here. I laid my hand on Andrea’s lower back, pushing her roughly toward the little corner of the vestibule where the black robes hung.
She glanced back at me once, the front door closing soundlessly. This time, it did latch, the little snikking noise loud and precise in the gloomy vestibule with its weird shadows. I leaned against the big carved doorway, ill at ease in my best suit and one of my many old Jerry Garcia ties, watching as Andrea quicky disassembled her clothes.
I’d seen her naked many times, obviously: I was her pimp. It goes with the territory. Andrea’s skin was completely unmarked, still young and supple, for the girl was only twenty. She’d let her pubes grow out a bit, on my orders, and now they curled tightly in a dark strip above her strong thighs. Even I, jaded creep that I am, gave a slight gasp when she turned to reach for one of the robes. The ass on her!
That ass was my best one. I’d need to start looking for another, I realized, adjusting my cock.
She shrugged into one of the gowns, wrinkling her cute little nose. I saw her open her mouth to say something, but my glance must have given her enough warning that she remembered to keep her trap shut. The robe billowed a bit, gaping slightly in the front, her skin a caramel-colored strip fanning from a small jeweled brooch at her throat.
Swallowing, mindful of my own orders from the mysterious men who lived in this house, I shuffled forward. Her whole body trembled slightly under my palms as I took her shoulders, rubbing them once before I pulled the hood over her marvelous hair and then stepped back. “Follow,” I told her shortly, and that was the very last order I ever gave her as her pimp.
My dress shoes clicked loudly on the old hardwood floors as I led Andrea into the dining room off to the right of the hall, the low muttering glow of firelight glinting through the arched passage. As I stepped from the hardwood to the old checkerboard tiling of the high dining room, I opened my mouth as I’d been taught.
“Your servant comes, my lords.” I always felt self-conscious, saying that, but when you pay me $500,000 I’ll say whatever the fuck you want, with feeling. “I bring you a gift.”
“Who comes?” The voices, three of them, spoke at once. They blended into a weirdly spectral chorus, twisting oddly through my mind. Behind me I heard Andrea’s bare feet falter, then keep up with me. It was always like that, when you heard their voices.
They stopped you.
“It is I, Richard Turco,” I called, the three figures at the head of the wide table gaining definition as I advanced. The fire was behind me, casting our shadows ahead, the room suffocating in a close, even heat. “My gift is Andrea Gutierrez.”
“You already brought us an Andrea,” one of them pointed out. His face shimmered into view as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, dark and square, framed by a short-trimmed beard.
“She was delicious,” the middle one intoned. His face tapered sharply to a chin like a needle, offset by a high forehead. This was Zondervan, who usually did most of the talking. The one who’d negotiated my prices with me. “A tasty meal. I look forward to another, Mr Turco.” He nodded grandly. “She is pleasing to us.”
The third one, short and grim, said nothing. The third one often said nothing, and when he did speak his voice was gravel spread across the road. I licked my lips, stepped aside, and bowed. “Ms Gutierrez,” I said formally, sweeping my arm toward the distant seats and naming them one by one, starting with the silent one, “these are Mr Felix, Dr Zondervan, and Mr Millow.”
The air seemed to have weight. It always did, and I never seemed to notice it until I’d named them. It felt suddenly as though the room around me was pressing on my head, my shoulders, bearing me down. As if I was being buried.
But I had to say the words. I cleared my throat and looked at the three weirdos. “She belongs to you now, my lords.”
A sign from Dr Zondervan motioned me off to the side; I was no longer needed. He’d explained this to me first time, with placid little Monica. “This part is important, Mr Turco,” he’d said. He had a distinctive voice, sort of neutral in its affect, as though he had no accent at all. Or all the accents; whichever. It was not a pleasant voice. “Like at a wedding, when the father gives the bride to the bridegroom. She leaves the protection of the one, in favor of protection from the other.” He’d smiled at Monica then, and it hadn’t been a warm smile. “You, my dear girl, have now left Mr Turco’s protection. Come to ours.”
He watched now as Andrea stood uncertainly in her velvet robe, nodding as he got to his feet. All three of them moved strangely fast; when he got out of the chair, he didn’t get up like a normal person. He just seemed to be sitting one moment, on his feet the next. And when he took a step forward, long-nailed fingers extended toward her, he almost seemed to glide. Andrea looked nervously over at me, but she stayed where she was. Dr Zondervan halted within her arm’s reach, his hand still outstretched.
“You no longer need Mr Turco, dear Andrea,” he said calmly. Deeply. His voice seemed visible in the heavy air, like tendrils whirling into her ear. “Come to us.”
And she did, licking her lips, her eyes already huge as they stared out from underneath the outlandish hood. I watched as Zondervan took her hand, the other two men rising now and watching in solemn silence in that heavy old room as Andrea, suddenly gliding like Zondervan, moved to stand in between the three, whose eyes seemed to smoulder. Just like with my other four girls, I couldn’t tell how they got the brooch unfastened, but the heavy robe slipped from her nude young body in a sudden swirl of dust.
She stood, her coffee-colored skin seeming to shine in the firelight, as the three studied her gravely, and then Millow nodded. When he spoke, his voice was much more vibrant than Zondervan’s. “She’ll do nicely, Mr Turco.” He smiled at me, his teeth very unpleasant in a way that was hard to define. “Your payment is in the basket by the front door.”
“You may leave now,” the doctor added, close enough to Andrea that his breath as he spoke stirred her hair. “Go in peace.” I stayed just a moment longer as Andrea cast her eyes my way; I’d told her, when I persuaded her to get into my car, that I’d wait for her and make sure she was safe. I’d been lying then, and her eyes told me she knew it now. But when short, silent Felix stepped forward, his arm low to cup her pussy, her eyes fluttered shut and she stopped thinking much about me.
So I fled. Her clothes, cast off in the vestibule, I left where they were. I didn’t need the reminder of what I’d done.
* * *
Obviously, the three weirdos were vampires.
I don’t really mean I thought they were, not then. I thought they thought they were vampires, the way wiccans think they can control the harvest: in their minds, the magic is there. Even if it’s not, they believe it is.
That’s what I thought then. My rational mind told me that Zondervan, Felix, and Millow were just mysterious gentlemen, maybe from Europe, with a lot of money and a weird sense that they were special in a Bram Stoker sort of way. Or that they’d seen Lost Boys a couple times too many.
Sure, they lived in a creepy house. Sure, the air in there felt like the grave. Sure, they seemed to live in a permanent fog and move with amazing speed. Sure, it looked like their teeth might be a little fucked up (understandable, if they were Europeans, I reasoned). Sure, they paid wicked good money for my girls. And then made them disappear forever.
That was all odd. No doubt. But my mind still wouldn’t make that last leap, that move into acceptance: that I was dealing with undead people. Taking vast sums of money from demon spawn. Selling my girls to hellish spirits of the underworld: no. I couldn’t be. Because I lived in the real world, and in the real world there’s no such thing as vampires.
There is, however, such a thing as compensatory damage judgments when you fuck up. My lawyer, as she usually did, raised an eyebrow when I showed up with $500,000 in cash. “Do I want to know where this came from?” she asked flatly.
“No.” I sat across from her in her stuffy little law office and pretended not to look at her chest. “Just put it toward the judgment. I think this brings it down to 1.5 million.”
“About that.” She eyed me carefully, her eyes slitted. “Look, Ricky, I’m an officer of the court. I know how you make your money. I’m not happy about it, but I can look the other way. Until you come in here with half a million and then I start getting worried. Because I was never a hooker, but I can’t imagine you can make this kind of cash by running a string of girls, unless it’s a damned long string.”
“Just pay the fucking judgment.” I wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Less your fee. Which, I know, is substantial.” She made a face at that, but I didn’t care; she took the money and gave me a receipt, and out I went.
It was supposed to take me thirty years to pay off that judgment, and I was going to do it in five. I was sure the family of the guy I’d killed would be very unhappy once I did, but I couldn’t give a shit about that. I had a life to live, a shop to open, a society to be a part of. And I didn’t want to do it by selling pussy. Nobody sets out in life trying to be a pimp; it just happens, and a lot of us wish we weren’t.
There were compensations, though, and one of them awaited me outside my little apartment when I got home. I’d never been a guy to let the grass grow beneath my feet, and in need of a sublime new rump to replace Andrea’s I’d gone out hunting right away. Now, a couple days later, my newest target had shown up to audition. I remembered her name with a bright smile, the kind that (I knew) made me look roguish. “Hi!” I winked as I fumbled for my house keys. “It’s Katie, isn’t it?”
“Kaylee,” she corrected, her voice low and brief. I’d need to correct that; I taught my women that anytime they’re disagreeing with a man, they better put a honey or a cutie or a sir at the end of the phrase, depending on his preference.
I leaned up against the wall outside my door, facing her. “Let’s try and flirt a little. Try saying, ‘Kaylee, baby.'”
“Kaylee, baby,” she sang, a small smile playing at the sides of her mouth.
“Good.” I was feeling a lump in my pants. She was in short shorts and a tanktop, and she looked great. “Now push your hip out a little when you say it, and then run your fingers along my forearm.”
“Yeah?” She looked doubtfully at me from over her sunglasses.
“‘Yeah, honey,'” I corrected. “Get it right if you want this job.”
She flushed suddenly, but hung in there. “I definitely want this job. Baby.”
“Much better.” I watched, smiling now, as she reached out and drifted her hand down my arm, the one that was in my pocket. She hooked her forefinger around my hand when she reached my jeans. “Pretend I’m your customer. How bad do you want it?”
Kaylee (Katie? It always took me awhile; at the moment, my brain had given her the cognitive label “Brunette, Nice Ass”) claimed to be a pretty experienced whore, but she’d told me she’d gotten her start as a stripper and I’d learned over the years that those girls sometimes had some un-learning to do. I pegged her for about 21, meaning she’d spent at least a couple years on the pole before she’d branched out and started taking dick. I watched her carefully to see how well she’d do; you can tell a lot from the audition.
She smiled now, her smirk not bad but a little too fake. I made a mental note to correct her later, but her eyes needed no work; she lowered those big lashes with just the right mix of confidence and submission. My dick stirred some more. “Want to take me inside and find out how bad I want it?” It came out breathy, almost perfect already, and my heart rose along with my penis.
Always nice to find a natural.
She stepped up to me, her tits grazing my jacket, and when she whispered in my ear I could smell the coffee she’d had that morning. “Take it out.”
I chuckled. A natural. “Here? On my porch?”
“Yep.” I felt the slither of a thick, wet tongue on my earlobe, testing, as her hand left mine and drifted across the front of my Lucky jeans. “Why wait?”
I nodded as she bit her lip and looked down at where her fingers cupped my crotch, exploring. “You really do want to work for me,” I grunted.
“The word is that you don’t beat up women.” Those long eyelashes flickered up once, glancing into my eyes. “That true?”
“I don’t believe in bruising the fruit,” I replied evenly. That drew a giggle, the worried kind, her hand still working the front of my jeans. “Why? You going to give me a reason to beat you up?”
“I’m not planning on it,” she sighed, lips finding my face. She ran them, dry, along my jaw. “If you give me the job.”
I was already more than halfway toward taking her aboard, as she had to know damn well. She’d known it from the moment I’d invited her to come by, sliding my address on a post-it note out my car window the night before. I’m not the greatest pimp out there, but it’s true: I don’t hit the girls. That’s more drama than I need. It’s always awkward the next day, too. “My key’s in my pocket,” I murmured into her thick dark hair. “Reach in and grab it.” Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement across the courtyard, my nosy neighbor Mrs Harris probably wondering why I was showing up at my apartment with yet another strange young woman.
Kaylee backed up slightly, her smirk becoming more natural as she slid long-nailed fingers into my hip pocket. I was expecting her to burrow around a bit and grab my cock, so I wasn’t surprised when she did. Her fingers pressed hard into the side of my shaft, now half-hard and bunched uncomfortably behind my fly. She looked up at me, her eyes questioning, when I locked my hand around her wrist and stopped her. “What?”
“Girls never understand how painful it is to get hard in a pair of pants. Don’t fuck around in there. You already felt me up; you know you’ve got me. Now you want to get the guy inside and get him naked. Just get the keys and seal the deal.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah baby,” I corrected, my fingers tightening, and she nodded.
“Sorry.” She stopped poking and prodding, swiveling her hand to haul out the thick wad of keys I kept in there. “I’m a little nervous,” she confessed.
“Never tell a customer anything like that,” I snapped quietly, “but if you want to tell me about it? Make sure nobody’s listening,” I urged, my lips brushing her ear now, “and relax when I whisper that you’ve got no reason to be nervous. That you’re a hot little bitch, and every man who sees you wants to fuck you.” She relaxed slightly, getting the keys out, and I kissed her cheek for encouragement. “A hot little bitch, Katie. Now let me in.”
“Oh, I’ll definitely let you in, sugar,” she winked, back in character, her voice with that throaty burr some women get. “I’ll let you in anywhere. But it’s Kaylee, baby.”
“Whatever.” My hand found that sublime ass through her denims as she opened my door. I hadn’t really cleaned for her, but I’m a reasonably tidy person anyway. Not that I planned to give her a chance to look around much. She was about to join my string, and I don’t like it when employees come over. But sometimes I made exceptions, and that supple dancer’s ass under my palm right then might just be enough to make that happen. “So where’s your — ”
Bedroom would have been the next word, of course, but she said it into the wall as I shoved her hard from behind, my hand straight up inside her tanktop and feeling a nice, firm tit under one of Secret Whispers’ lower-grade bras. I’d need to upgrade her underwear, I told myself, my mental cash register already ringing up expenses; some of that I’d take out of her earnings, but most I’d pay for.
A goodwill gesture for the new filly, from her new fella.
She gasped when I leaned into her hard, my body forcing her smaller one into a helplessly squashed position spread-eagled against the drywall. “What are you… fuck,” she moaned as my head plunged into her hair, lips opening, sucking at her neck. “Fuck.”
“That’s the idea,” I grunted, pushing forward. Her body felt firm and tight against mine; the girl definitely had great potential. Curb appeal, I mused, my hand roaming along her skin. “I’m impressed so far,” I went on, and I know she had to feel my raging erection against her butt. I gripped the back of her waistband and pulled her unceremoniously off my wall so I could slide my other hand around her hips, reaching down, pushing roughly into the front of her shorts.
She tensed when she felt me inside her panties, but she didn’t pull away; still, we’d need to work on that. That alone, that flexion in her entire body, told me she wasn’t as seasoned a whore as she’d claimed. But I could work with that. “Relax, girl,” I growled in her ear, my hand finding nothing but waxed skin down there. We’d work on that, too. Her pussy was hot, but not wet enough.
First things first.
“You need to sell it, Kaylee,” I told her softly, my finger circling along the edges of her pussy lips while she sagged slowly back against me. “Want me. Even if you don’t. You need to imagine that you do.”
“I do,” she insisted, voice hoarse, and then she squeaked a little as I pinched her clit. Finally, my probing fingers found her dew… “I fucking do.”
“No,” I breathed, and now my other hand reached high along her ribcage to test her nipple: soft. “You just want me to be your protector. Your shield. Your pimp.” I kissed again at her neck. “But that thing you did just now? Where you got all rigid for a second when I grabbed your cunt?” She lurched, just a bit. “And there? When I said that? That shit’s got to stop soon, honey.” I tasted her sweat on my tongue when I nuzzled her collarbone. “You’re a goddess. You were made for dick. You wanna fuck. So when guys touch you, or when they say cunt, you don’t twitch. You melt.” I hooked at her clit again, surprising another gasp from her. “Understand?”
“Fuck. That feels so good, baby,” she whispered, beginning that deep-breaths thing that some chicks do when they’re starting to get into it, and once again my heart leapt: if she wasn’t starting to get aroused, she was doing a damn fine job convincing me. Now she ground that fine ass back against my meat, trapping my shaft between her enticing cheeks. “Let me take care of that for you, lover.”
“Don’t plead,” I sighed; her butt really did feel good up on my junk. Two or three years giving lapdances had given her excellent form. I hunched forward slightly, letting her know she was doing a good job. “Just feel what I want and respond to it.” I held my breath then. Some girls don’t take hints, but the good ones do; the good ones take control. And this one waited only a couple seconds more before, with a hard eager shimmy against my dick, she turned to face me and leaned back against my wall.
When she sank to her knees, she did it with that well-trained grace that dancers almost always have; I assumed she must have done ballet, or been some kind of athlete or something, because her control of her legs was incredible. She stayed straight, back and neck a tight line, tits bursting forward as she found my eyes and held them, her hands trailing down my jacket to my belt buckle. I nodded as she began to undress me.
“Right now,” I rasped, my own voice husky, “I’ve got a bitch named Rita who gives the best blowjobs a guy ever had.” She smiled despite herself when I stroked her cheek lightly, her neck still glistening from where my mouth had given her a hickey. “Show me you can do better, angel.”
She flushed again, bright red, and I saw my market: I could put her in pigtails and a Sailor Moon getup and pimp her out to bachelor parties, no problem. That blush she had… guys would be falling over themselves to defile her. I mean, I was! She traced the ridge of my cock once before she worked my zipper down, and then she was pawing at my waistband.
I felt a buzzing heaviness in my head as she pulled my cock free, my jeans and boxers dragging down across it until it flew up on its own, still way above the horizontal even after all the workouts I’d given it since I’d turned eighteen. She gazed at it, a fat rocket trembling, poised for takeoff, and she was still pushing my belt past my knees when she leaned forward and kissed it.
I watched carefully as the kiss, a delicate flutter from her lips right on the tip of my dick, slowly and perfectly became something more, her lips spreading slowly around my cockhead like a virgin pussy, tight and hot and welcoming. I closed my eyes and concentrated, seeking flaws I’d need to correct: teeth, or inadequate tongue movement, or excessive snot.
My girls are good. Really good.
Eventually I realized this girl was good too, and I allowed myself to feel a surge of satisfaction that mine was the cock she had in her mouth right now. I’d picked a winner, and as I looked down her back at the peach-plump globes of her ass, shoving hard at the inside of her shorts, I couldn’t help but gasp.
She was amazing.
Impatiently, I grabbed her long dark hair and pulled her in, slowly but firmly, ignoring her gasps. “Yeah,” I crooned, evaluating, judging. She was fighting hard not to puke. “Get ready, hon,” I rasped, and when she’d gotten herself under control, her hands fending off my thighs, I threw my hips forward and felt my head wriggle into the top of her throat. “Swallow, bitch,” I hissed, willing her to take me deep. It occurred to me that I’d have nail-marks on my quads when this was done, her fingers gripping me desperately, trying to push me back out. But I needed to see that she could do this. “Swallow!” I barked impatiently, my knuckles white in her hair.
And she did. Straining, heaving, her back arching, she drove herself forward on her own; I was impressed when her hair slackened in my grip, Kaylee swallowing desperately with tears in her eyes, gazing upward like a woman praying to her god, and I nodded back at her and made my decision: yes. I’d take this bitch, I’d doll her up, and I’d pimp her right the fuck out. She’d make me thousands. I pushed until I felt spitty breath on my balls, her nose buried in my ungroomed pubes, and then I gave her about five minutes of that before I realized she’d figured this out. She’d passed.
So I backed out, thinking again of sailor suits and frat parties, my dick a rampant sausage with a thick coating of the girl’s spit. “Get the fuck up,” I snarled, pulling at her hair, and she came up wiping desperately at her nose. I waited until she’d gotten her panting under control, at least a little, and then I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her close. “Still want to be one of mine?” I asked her intently.
“Fuck yes,” she gasped, her face a mess, and the sight of her ruined makeup made my balls lurch suddenly.
“You on the Pill?” I demanded. “Guys pay more not to glove up. I’ll get you a doctor, obviously, regardless.”
“Yes, yes, I’m on the Pill.” It came out throaty, her lungs still working hard. “Goddamn,” she marveled, looking down at my cock and wondering how she’d choked it down.
“Strip.” It was an order, my first real command, lashing hard at her soul, and in that moment there was no way she’d disobey. I stepped out of my own pants too, then my shirt joined it on the floor even as she scrambled to get her bra off. “You’ll learn to take your clothes off gracefully, eventually,” I mused, “but you’ve got an audition to complete first.”
She recovered quickly, finding herself, her dancer’s poise reasserting itself. “Audition?” she spat. I watched as she lifted her nose in the air, her whole body suggesting outrage. “You think I’ll have any problem making you cum?” Her eyes blazed, and all at once I went harder than I could remember being since my first time, harder than she could handle, my eyes seeing red lust close in on her from both sides. She flung her bra aside and stood there, hands on hips, her body perfect and tight and flushed from toe to forehead. Her nipples poked fat and ready from her firm, eager tits, and already I could smell her pussy. “Do you, baby?”
I answered with a shove, clinical and businesslike rather than angry, urging her on rather than trying to cow her. “That way,” I grunted, “down the hall,” and the two of us fled for my bedroom already fully primed to fuck, our mouths watering and our eyes large.
When she turned and leaned against my footboard, I could tell from her face that she had a plan. That impressed me: either I’d turned her on, zero to sixty, or she was pretending I had, and if she could look at her clients the way she was looking at me, it didn’t matter whether she was acting. I held my tongue, jacking my long cock slowly, watching her eyes light up as she saw my balls tremble. “Lie down on your bed, baby,” she drawled, and her voice was honey.
I nodded, letting the backs of my fingers indulge themselves with one long, slow pass down over her tits as I walked by; the sight of her nipples bobbing in my wake gave an added twinge to my hard, eager cock. I hiked myself up on my mattress, among the unmade sheets, and lay with my hands behind my head, the picture of arrogant male insolence, waiting impatiently to be mounted.
Kaylee strutted to me. She had a nightclub walk that emphasized her flexibility, but that probably looked much better when she had clothes on; I made a mental note to break her out of that habit, but by then she was at the side of the bed, looking down at me from behind the curtain of her thick hair with her lower lip between her teeth. “You’re so hard, honey,” she cooed, and once again I had no idea whether she was acting, that flush of hers now spreading over her supple tits.
I watched carefully as she swung her leg up over me, hopping on from the floor; that could be a tricky move to do well. “Might think about kneeling on the bed first, sexy,” I told her coolly. “If you lost your balance and fell on your ass, I’d take it out of your earnings.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she nodded, still purring at me, her inner thighs hot and sticky on my lap. My penis was a buzzing live wire, brutally long and thick before her. She nodded down at it, smiling, judging how deeply it would go. “I love your dick, baby,” she breathed.
I nodded, my body still relaxed, watching what she’d do. She waited until my eyes found hers, swaying hypnotically with her stripper’s instincts while I studied the way her pussy loomed, its symmetrical hot-pink maw now kissing my ballsack. Once she was sure she had my attention she rose up onto her knees, her fingers tracing down my abdomen and lifting my dick high for her.
“No,” I said quietly, “reach from behind. From around your butt.” Her eyebrows rose, so I explained. “Your customers want to watch themselves slide into that pretty little pussy of yours. I don’t want your arm blocking the view.” She nodded, her thin lip still clasped between small white teeth, and when she leaned back and reached between her own legs, I let my breath leave me in a low exhale as I watched the way her motions made her tits bounce. “You’re a sexy one, Katie, you know that?”
“It’s Kaylee, loverboy,” she smiled, “but thanks.” My cock twitched into her hand, and she raised it once more to line it up with that lovely gash of hers. We both held our breath when we felt my head begin to pierce her, then sighed together when she lined herself up and sank slowly, exquisitely, down until my veiny length disappeared within her body. “Whoah. You’re big.”
“You feel fucking good, Kaylee.” She did, too, with just the right mix of tightness and heat to make me think she was just some sweet young lady, rather than a stripteasing whore. I brought my hand around and gave her ass a spank. “Fucking great, actually.”
“Just wait.” She flushed when she said it, clearly excited to have me pubes-deep in that slit of hers, and when she began to work her hips over my lap, tightening and twisting on my meat, I burrowed my head back into the pillows and groaned. “See? Toldja so, cutie.”
Goddamn, I thought to myself, you sure can pick ’em, Tricky Ricky! as she slithered and swung with my cock firmly clasped within her, little lightning bolts shooting along my shaft. The girl was amazing, super-sexy. Almost as good as my main girl Danae, who could really work a cock. She had that good sense of timing, too, grinding on my body until I was just about ready to urge her to ride me harder… but she figured it out for herself, at just the right moment, flexing her hips to rise up off me and then driving herself back down, her face serious as she focused on our bodies.
I felt myself respond, letting her rise and fall a couple times before I caught the rhythm and joined in, bucking up high as she came down to meet me, surprising a little gaspy laugh out of her when she bottomed out on me. “Fuck,” she blurted.
“More,” I ordered, thrusting upward, watching her nipples as they bobbed in those little circles that firm titties make when you thrust into the vag they belong to. I saw sweat sheening her body in the light from my bedroom window, the breaths starting to come faster and deeper. “Go on. Fuck me harder,” I moaned, doing my part, the two of us churning together in time to the slapping of our skin and the squelching sound I was making in her cunt. At some point, I realized hazily, I’d moved both hands around to grip her glorious ass, holding her tight so I could jam myself into her; I was already starting to lose myself, which was a good sign.
Her face swam above me, mouth open, eyes closed, and then she did that thing some women do where they run their hands through their hair and then stretch them high, arching backward toward my feet, and there was something there in the cascade of her hair and the smooth flow of muscles in her body that made me lose it completely.
I didn’t take the time to warn her. I just pulled her hips down onto me and came, hard and deep, letting out a long cracked groan as I did it. She didn’t seem to realize right away (which I noticed; she’d need a little bit of remedial training), still churning on me, but all at once her eyes flew open and her lips curved up in an ecstatic, open-lipped grin. “Oh yeah, baby!” she crowed.
Like I needed the urging; my cock was jerking like a machine gun inside her, launching spurt after spurt up into her tight, needy little pussy. She moaned loudly, her hand going to her clit and frigging herself dramatically against my cock; it all looked pretty fake, but afterward she swore to me that she actually had cum, albeit a little late.
But I couldn’t tell, and that’s all that mattered.
She curled against me afterward, sighing a breezy little giggle, and it felt, for just that split second, that we were in love instead of in business. I often got that feeling, but only for an instant. She sensed it too, drawing back away from my armpit with crafty eyes. “So. Is that it?” When she leaned in and gave me a kiss now, it did feel like a transaction. “Want me to be one of your girls?”
I scanned down her body, nodding, appreciating her shape. She’d be good for several years, definitely, and she looked incredibly sexy lying there with my cum starting to seep down her leg. “You’ll do,” I sighed. “Come back over here tomorrow. I’ll take you shopping.”
“Yay!” she grinned, and it amazed me once again how desperately pathetic were the lives of street whores, that they would glom onto me so happily. When she kissed me this time, it felt more spontaneous. “You won’t be sorry.”
“I get my cut of your earnings by midnight on Tuesdays. Not an instant later.”
“Or?” She smiled. “You won’t hit me.”
I waited silently until the smile faded, thinking of the weird trio at the top of Briggs Rd. “Not an instant later.” She swallowed once, nodding. “I get seventy percent of everything you make. I know that sounds like a shit deal for you, but once I start trusting you it goes down a little. Maybe to sixty. And if you ever need money for anything, I’ll be here to give you some.” I rolled out of her arms, reaching for the drawer in my bedside table, where I pulled out a wad of cash as thick as a slice of wedding cake. Her eyes widened, and I casually shook a few twenties and fifties out of the stack. “Like, for instance, here you go. That’s yours. Go buy dinner or something, groceries. Whatever. I don’t keep books and I don’t worry about what I give my bitches, but in return you don’t abuse me. Right?”
“I won’t, Ricky.” Her eyes were solemn, staring at the little pile of money I’d left her on the mattress just above the wet spot. “Fuck. There’s like almost two hundred there.”
“Take it. And I’ll buy your clothes tomorrow. But?” I prodded her tit with my finger to punctuate every word. “Midnight. Tuesdays. Not an instant later.”
“Okay.”
“Some friends I have, we meet every now and then. Pimps. They run their own strings. We sit and we talk and we divide up territory to make sure our girls stay out of each other’s way, right? I’ll give you my number. Always keep your phone nearby. Any other bitch gives you trouble? Let me know. Any customer tries to stiff you? Take his picture and send it to me. Another pimp rolls up? Tell me.” I reached absently down and scratched, my balls all matted with her juices. “And clean me off, Kaylee. I’m all gummy.”
Her smile this time was wicked. “Okay, baby. Just lie back.” She uncurled her sublime body and went to work.
* * *
It was in late September on a drizzly night, as I sat outside the Mezzo Bar with a ginger ale, that my life changed.
I was in this part of town because my sexy Rita was having problems with some of the girls on Third Avenue. I’d had an arrangement with another pimp, Jackson Clymer, that his girls and mine alternated sides of the street during the summer months; Rita and Lisa had both come to me, bitching about other sluts horning in on their turf, but Clymer swore up and down that it wasn’t his string. “I’m telling you, Tricky,” he’d burbled over the phone in his high-pitched cocaine-y whine, “my girls, they steer clear of yours. If you’re saying Lisa and that other chick are complaining, it’s not my product they’re complaining about.”
“Whose is it?” I’d pressed. “Aren’t your girls bitching, too?”
“Nah. My girls know better than to bitch to me,” he’d snickered, and that was surely true: Jacky Clymer had a reputation with his fists. So here I sat at the corner of Third and Armistead, scanning around as the sun went down, pretending I was just some kind of dude in town looking for a good time that night. And I felt like I was, until my phone warbled with an incoming text.
Come up to the House, said the text, and it came from the contact I’d named Briggs. I felt a chill rattle my hands, the ginger ale shaking as I set it on Mezzo’s little metal table. At once, I felt a queasiness in my gut, a sense that nothing was going to go right tonight, that I’d stumbled into a hole I couldn’t get out of without leaving my bitches in there behind me.
That I’d made a grave mistake in ever going up Briggs Road.
Instinctively I glanced across Armistead, searching for Rita. She’d been on time with my cut now for most of the month, but just last week she’d been late again and had quickly tried to make it up to me by taking my load in her mouth. Again. I wasn’t getting tired of that (does a man ever get tired of a blowjob?), but I wanted her to get her shit straight and start paying me. Or else?
“Vampires.” That’s what else.
And now… what? Did they want her tonight? I’d never gotten a message quite like that from Zondervan. Normally he gave me a few days’ warning, and ever since that first time with Monica I’d made a point of taking the sacrificial lamb out for a nice dinner. But if the weirdos up Briggs wanted to see me now? Right now?
Rita, across the street, was leaning into a passing Toyota’s passenger window, and even from over here her ass looked tempting. She’d already picked up a trick this evening, before sunset, and now she was looking for Number Two. I swallowed, thinking about how I’d need to shoot across Armistead and grab her, stuffing her into my ’72 Charger and whisking her off to… what? To her death, that’s what.
My phone chirped again. Now, it urged me, and my trembling hands tapped out a shaky reply.
Do you require a young lady?
My guts twisted, awaiting the reply. I was sure they’d demand my Rita, and just as sure I’d stick them for an extra fee for the rush. They’d pay, too; they hadn’t even blinked when I’d asked, timidly, for the extra six figures for The First Andrea last Halloween. But it would be such a blow, giving her up. My heart beat faster, willing the guy in the Toyota to pick her up, meaning I could go across and sacrifice Lisa instead, though she’d never done anything wrong to me…
My phone went. Not necessary. Only yourself, Mr Turco. You will be compensated.
I sagged into the little patio chair, relieved, feeling like a death-row inmate in whom the Supreme Court has taken a midnight interest. Of course, I wasn’t: it wasn’t me who was on death row. It was Rita. But she didn’t know that and I did, and that was bad enough.
The night deepened. I had to go.
* * *
I’d not been up to the house at the top of Briggs Road alone since that first time, when Dr Zondervan had talked to me in the hall and we’d struck that bargain of ours, the unholy one that would get me out from under that damned wrongful-death judgment and, hopefully, into legitimacy with my own repair shop. Ever since then, for more than a year, my visits had included an unwilling pawn, supplied by me for whatever wild rituals the three weirdos had in mind.
And my pawns were never seen again, at least not by me. That was getting harder and harder to square with my conscience each time, and by now I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what I’d become a part of.
This time, I got a surprise when I parked my Dodge at the base of the driveway and started up between the stone gateposts. For the first time, looming out of the night, one of my three odd clients was outside waiting for me. I blinked at him through my car window, seeing a shadowy face in what looked like a heavy black duster, an umbrella spread against the early-autumn drizzle. My dome light seemed to make the fellow squint, but when I slammed my door he waited patiently enough with a thin-lipped smile.
It was the quiet one, Mr Felix. He nodded gravely as I stepped up, my hands in my pocket. I kept my little snub-nosed Smith & Wesson in there, though I’d long since suspected it wouldn’t be all that useful against any of these three. “Good evening, Mr Turco.” The voice was as gravelly as usual, but not without warmth. “I thank you for coming.”
“It’s my pleasure.” I fidgeted. “The text mentioned compensation? I happen to be pretty busy this evening, Mr Felix.”
He laughed unpleasantly. “Yes. This will be worth your while, Mr Turco. Well worth it, I hope.” He paused, glancing around. “I thought we could enjoy a walk in the garden this evening.”
“Uh, okay.” It seemed to be more of an order than a request, so I fell in curiously beside him as he stepped off the driveway and onto the well-kept lawn that covered the whole hilltop. The rain had been hit-or-miss tonight, but the grass was soaked where it wasn’t covered by brittle early-autumn leaves, and I knew I’d need to be careful not to slip in my Frye boots. Felix, like his two buddies, seemed to move with that same fluid grace whether he was on a slippery lawn or a tiled dining room. “So how’ve you been?” I ventured, wondering what you were supposed to say to a vampire when you turned up emptyhanded.
He laughed, that same unhappy snort as before. “How much compensation do you expect tonight, Mr Turco? I’m curious.”
A shadow fell over my heart at his tone, and I wondered suddenly whether I was about to see those departed members of my string again, one way or another. My grip tightened on the revolver. Maybe I could at least fire in the air, summon a neighbor or something. Not that there seemed to be any houses, not for miles…”It’s just that I’m losing money, potentially, by coming here. I’ve been having some problems with, like, a competitor, and I was hoping to sort them out tonight.”
He smiled again. “I know you need the money, Mr Turco.” He sighed, looking away from me into the trees that fringed the property. “You had a court judgement entered against you three years ago. Wrongful death.” I felt my legs go a little numb, and had to force myself to keep stepping. “You were acquitted of manslaughter, but many thought it should have been a conviction. For murder.” He was right. “In any case, here you are. Needing money.” The leaves barely stirred under his feet. “Not to worry. Your retainer for speaking with me will make you feel as though coming here was well worth your time. Do you believe me, Mr Turco?”
I swallowed. “I do.” Like I had a choice.
Felix nodded, the two of us angling around the contour of the hill toward a rain-draggled kitchen garden. Up the hill loomed the house, which I’d never seen from this side, looking oddly sinister. Almost, in a way, decayed. As though there was nothing holding it up. The moon struggled to show itself through a thin, drifting mat of clouds above, which glowed with a weird bluish cast. “I’ve known men like you, Mr Turco.” He flicked a glance sideways. “People call you Tricky Ricky, is that right?”
“It is, Mr Felix.” I swallowed. “You’re paying the freight, so you can call me whatever you want.”
“Tricky Ricky,” Felix grated with some relish. “I’ve heard. Well, as I was saying, we’ve known a great many fellows like you, you know? Pimps. Panders. Procurers. Slavers, sometimes, in some places. You’ve all been quite useful to us. But you remind me of a man I once knew.”
I felt that shadow stab my heart again. We walked alongside a low iron trellis, crawling with sickly vines. “‘In some places?’ Like where, Mr Felix?”
“It’s not the places, really, so much as the times.” When he looked at me, I saw in the dim grey light that his eyes were oddly pale. I wondered why I’d never noticed that. “The times are what is important, the fact that some things change and others do not. Men like you, Mr Turco, you’re usually the same.” He laid a cold hand on my arm. “I mean no offense, you understand.”
“None taken.” I jumped at his touch.
“No,” he sighed, seeming to take no notice of my discomfort, “this was a long time ago, this man I knew. The man you remind me of. A very long time ago. His name was Halbrecht. Halbrecht of Prague, though he actually came from Teplice. They called it Teplitz then.” He sighed, as if with some happy memory. “I don’t believe that was very long before we met Zondervan.”
“Yeah?” I had no clue what he was saying. I was torn with worry now, desperate for Felix to remove those cold, sharp fingers from my arm.
“Halbrecht was smart. He was clever. He was like you, very handsome.” The fingers squeezed, and I had a sudden urge to vomit. “Very popular. He had no difficulty in luring women to fuck for him.” I became aware he was watching me closely, curious about my reactions. “That’s what you do, yes? You lure girls?”
I didn’t want to think about that. “I know women,” I tried to explain, on the verge of twisting my arm out of that deceptively light-handed grasp. “Some of them choose to sell themselves, and sometimes I benefit.”
“Yes,” Felix chuckled, “Halbrecht talked like a lawyer, too.” We left the trellis behind, trading it for a moldering brick wall. I no longer tried to look up at the house. It was busy looking at me, I felt. “Halbrecht thought he was very clever, but his need for money… well.” At last, with that same feeling I’d had when they’d found me not guilty of manslaughter, Felix removed his hand. “He came to a bad end. A deserved end, though, for a man so disreputable. I did not like him, Mr Turco, nor did I respect him.”
“I’m respectable, Mr Felix.”
“Yes. Sometimes.” He paused, looking again into the trees. “Halbrecht of Prague died, Mr Turco, in 1426. The Hussites took the town and he went back to fetch his gold. Failed to escape.” Again, I knew he was watching me closely. “They flayed him, then jammed a pike up his ass as he died. You don’t believe I was there,” he went on softly, nodding. “It’s far, far outside your experience that a man could live that long. Especially a man who looks as young as I.”
“I don’t want to know,” I blurted, and I meant it. Because if the nagging sense in my mind was right, if it was true that this weirdo was… well, for lack of a better term, a vampire…
I was in deep shit, I realized abruptly.
“It’s important that you understand me, Mr Turco,” he went on, his stony voice quiet as my footsteps crushed the wet leaves. “I’ll be asking you to do something very, very important to me, and I need to impress upon you just how important it is.”
“I’m listening.” I wondered whether I sounded as rattled as I felt.
“I shall put the end before the beginning,” Felix smiled. “You need a certain amount of money, yes? To make your legal judgment disappear?”
“I need a million and a half,” I rapped out.
“No, my friend, you need $1.46 million,” Felix went on placidly, “but you also want to open a machine shop? For the… for auto repairs and such?” He nodded, the rain beginning to patter on his umbrella. “Two million is quite a lot of money, even for men who have been saving for a great many years.”
“How many years, Mr Felix?” I demanded, the question torn from me. I didn’t want to know what was going on with the three weirdos, but here I was. And here he was. And I had to know.
The odd man stopped, waiting for me to turn and face him. He looked at me coolly, and in a sudden drift of the moon into clear velvet sky I saw those pale eyes were much, much older than the rest of his face. I was trembling slightly, thinking of my revolver, when he told me, “I was born during the reign of Emperor Severus Alexander. The latter part of his reign; I do not know the year. Nobody where I came from ever knew what year it was.”
I swallowed hard. “Greek?”
“Roman, actually.” He smiled gently. “Your education does you no credit. But I have walked the earth for a millennium and three quarters, Mr Turco. And I have seen much and learned much and forgotten much.”
I fidgeted in my pocket. I was certain Felix knew I had a gun, and just as certain he did not care. The strange house brooded above me, my feet lost amid trailing vines and old, wet flowers. I had a hard time making words come out. “And… the others? Your, ah, roommates?”
He cocked his head. “They are not involved in this thing we speak of, Mr Turco.”
I shuddered. “Humor me.” I had to know.
Felix blinked those odd pale eyes, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Doctor Nicklaas Zondervan. Born, perhaps, in 1540. Thereabouts. He found his way to England later in the century and met us around 1660.” He went on, his voice quite dry. Almost brittle. “I was keeping company, as I had for many years, with Godmer of Millow. We were disciples of John Locke. Tell me, Mr Turco, did your cacata carta educatione, your shitty schooling… did it include mention of something called the Doomsday Book?”
“If it did, I was probably too busy chasing pussy to remember it.” That was it. That was all the bravado I could muster.
He smiled at that, looking more genuine now. “Can I blame you? I cannot. Well. My companion Godmer is mentioned there, a minor thegn. And then there is a fourth of us, Tanaka-san, born almost a thousand years ago. I like him, but he often roams.” He considered, seeming to study the sky. “I believe he is in Alaska now. Or Tasmania; it can be difficult to tell. He’ll return soon, as we reckon these things; almost certainly within the next hundred years. Perhaps a hundred-fifty?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.” He arched an eyebrow. “It is a lot for you, I know. These are things you’ve always been taught as legends, or myths… as lies, regardless. But behind every fable lies truth, Mr Turco. And we are the truth.” He leaned forward with a strange intensity crackling behind his face, then pulled his lip upward in a hideous sneer. Despite myself, I cried out and crouched low, my gun suddenly out of my pocket and wavering toward the strange, malevolent being before me…
But he just smiled, looking curiously at the revolver shaking at the end of my arm. “I assure you, that would do nothing to me,” he told me quietly, squinting at the muzzle. “.38 special? No. Perhaps a .44 magnum would knock me down, but unless you had very unique ammunition and hit me very precisely, you’d just piss me off.” He curled his lip once more. “Get up, Mr Turco; there’s no cause for alarm. I was just showing you my rather abnormal orthodonture.”
I peered up in the bluish light, surrounded by the smells of wet grass and earth, and I saw that his mouth did, indeed, sport a needle-sharp pair of fangs, now peeking out over his lower lip. I shook, the gun bouncing. He glanced at it calmly. “Put that away. You’re in no danger from me.”
I wavered, then saw that he had extended one of those sharp-fingered hands down to me. I wasn’t sure whether he wanted my hand, or my gun, but I opted for the former. My Lucky jeans were wet where I’d knelt in the grass as he helped me up, the house casting a cold moonshadow across us. “Thanks,” I managed, batting at my knees.
“We have a way of striking terror into mortals,” he sighed. “Occupational hazard.”
I stared hard, remembering those teeth. “You… you’re really… I mean, you’re a vam…” I couldn’t get the word out, but he just smiled that thin smile of his.
“Your word, Mr Turco, not mine. Your society… this society.” He gazed around him and shuddered. “We were supposed to be better over here in this New World. That’s what Locke always claimed it would be at Oxford so long ago.” I just gaped, and he shook his head. “I know. You have no clue, Mr Turco. I am what my people called a lamia, though it’s confusing; it was a feminine word, but most of us are men.” He sighed. “Succo, sometimes, that’s another thing they called us so long ago, as my empire collapsed. Millow’s folk had no real word for us, but wearh comes closest. Zondervan’s people called him a bloedzuiger, I think, but by then I do believe that ‘vampire’ had, indeed, become the term of choice.”
I knew I was gaping, pale, speechless. His pronunciations had made little sense to me, uttered flawlessly. Fluently.
“It’s okay,” he went on carelessly, his rock-slide voice quiet. “I can tell you the truth. You don’t truly believe it. You are a child of a rational age.” He shrugged. “But, again, it is necessary that you believe what I am saying, at least a little bit. So that you understand what I require of you.”
I tried to start waking again, faltering. “I… what is that? I mean, what do you want me to do?”
“Almost two thousand years, I’ve been alive. Some of that has been mortal, most has not. And my heart has felt differently over all those years, all those centuries.” An animal skittered past in the bushes beside me, the hairs rising on my neck. Squirrel? Skunk? Hellhound? I thought of those fangs again.
“You traffic in lust, Mr Turco, in the simulacrum of love. But have you ever felt love yourself?”
“I…” I frowned in the night, the rain lifting once more, very aware of the night-sounds and the smells about me. “I have.”
“No.” He sounded sure. “If you had, you’d not have hesitated.” He sighed and paused, staring down off the back of the hill into some woods, down there where I could hear running water almost moating the hill. “Twice, Mr Turco. In all that time, all that life, all that death, all those centuries… only twice have I felt love.”
I held my tongue, feeling sure he had more to say, but my mind whirled. Almost two thousand years, and only two women?
“I hear your thoughts, my friend,” he stirred. “No. I have fucked many, many more than two women. Many times many. Thousands?” He frowned. “I’m not sure it’s possible to count all those snacks. But no. I speak of love, Mr Turco, not of lust. Of the heart, not of the flesh. Twice only. Once a humble whore in Rome, on the day of St Valentine so, so many years ago.” I gazed at his face in profile, a smile spreading wistfully. “Fervena was her name, and I loved her with the pure white-hot love of the Roman sun.” He hesitated.
“And, um, the other?” I felt he needed the prompt.
“The other.” He turned back to me, slowly, his feet seeming not to move over the sodden slope. “The other, Mr Turco, I fell in love with this morning.”
“Wait. What?” I blinked. Was this guy serious? “Two thousand years, and you fall for some chick this morning?”
The smile stayed, though, his eyes far away. “You crave things, Mr Turco, after so long. Not food, nor wine. I’ve tasted the best of both. Not comforts, nor the sight of the sun rising over mountains, nor of the moon over a river.” He sighed. “I lost Fervena when I was made a vampire. She died before I understood what had happened to me, what I could and could not do with my powers.” He sighed. “I could have her with me now, but I do not. I regret that every day. Think of that.”
My throat had gone dry. I couldn’t even come close to thinking of anything like that.
“From the day she died until this morning, Mr Turco, I have sought for another like her. Nobody has come close until now.” I kept silent. I was dreading what he was going to ask me to do; I could feel his requirement pursuing me, a pair of evil feet dogging me. “Nobody. And now I do not intend to let it happen again.”
I cleared my throat with some difficulty. “You want me to…”
“I want you to help me.” He sighed. “For two million dollars, I want you to find this woman. I want you to bring her to me before All Hallows, before the 31st. I want her.”
My mind spun, thinking of the money. The ease. The speed with which my lawyer could put everything behind me… plus half a million in capital! I pondered, nodding, thinking of my five lost whores. “You want her… for what?”
“I love her, Mr Turco.” As if that explained everything. The rain started to patter again, and against my better judgement I pressed.
“By Halloween?” My cock lurched when I thought of Rita. “Like, instead of any other girl?”
“This woman,” he replied solemnly, “is beyond all price. She will more than suffice.”
My conscience gave one final gnaw. “But what are you going to do with her?”
He stopped then, leaving me to trudge on a couple more steps before I turned to face him. His face in the cloudy moonlight showed a feral, unsettling grimace. “Shall I find another pimp, Mr Turco? I’m sure Mr Clymer might want this opportunity?”
I hesitated. “In one breath you warn me not to follow the example of your… Albert? The Prague guy?”
“Halbrecht.” The correction came out of the night, sibilant.
“But then you tempt me with the financial solution to all my problems.”
He nodded. “Mr Turco, you did not ask for two million.” He let that sink in. “Halbrecht would have. He was an odious little twat.”
I shook my head. “And yet you offer me exactly that.”
His smile now was sad. “I’d offer three, if it brings me my love.”
Jesus Christ. I stared up into the rain, past the ornate shingling at the back of the house. A light showed in one of the windows up there, drifting as if someone were holding it. I closed my eyes and sighed.
“What’s her name?”
* * *
II. Impetratio
* * *
Once upon a time, I took an online course to get a license as a Private Investigator. I was almost done with the course when I… well, I’ll say I got into a traffic accident and allegedly caused a fatality.
They don’t give PI licenses to people who get arrested for manslaughter, acquittal aside.
But I still had the binoculars and some half-remembered videos about how to follow people without being seen, and I hoped I was doing a good job as I trailed the woman down Shore Road a couple days later. She was making it excessively difficult for me, because she was a serious runner.
She darted along the crowded sidewalk now, twisting sinuously past bemused locals, looking like a personal trainer in a tight ocher tanktop and a pair of dark grey running shorts that showed long, clean legs. Her tits had been hard to make out from my car: jogging bras are usually pretty ruthless, but from the way the rest of her body looked, and from her motion, she certainly looked like a ripe one.
It was her face that destroyed me, though, as it was destroying legions of men all up and down the beach. Their jaws dropped in wonder as she fleeted past, captivated by the face and then staring after the jaunty flag of red hair that streamed behind her. Even in her shades, beauty radiated from her face in simple, unblemished waves, capturing everyone who saw her. Including a certain probable vampire who’d last fallen in love during the third century, or so.
And capturing me.
She ran loose and carefree, her skin flushed with exertion, down past the beach parking lot and then up the hill toward downtown, where I already knew she’d left her car. The tanktop left a tempting sliver of skin exposed around her waist, and I felt my mouth water at the health and vitality that rolled off her like sunrays, like sweat, like the stares of the people around her. I saw a girl who loved life: she loved running, and music, and good food, and sex. You can just tell sometimes when a woman will be great in bed, and in my line of work I was pretty good at it.
I wanted her already. And not to pimp her out; no, I wanted her for myself.
She was a canny one, too, making sure she stayed off the internet as much as possible; I’d researched her for five hours and come up drier than expected. Julia Cooney. 25 years old. Taught first grade at CR Milne Elementary. She’d been entered in a ballroom dance competition and taken fourth place, but that was years ago. Avid runner; I’d stumbled across her results from several local 5k races, usually featuring her in the top 25 or so. She hadn’t been married from what I could tell, and I could find just one ex-boyfriend: a tax lawyer named Steve Porvek. I’d found a blurred pic of her from the back page of the local paper, standing between him and a local politician at some sort of fundraiser.
Something had seemed a bit off about Steve. He’d had a weird look in his eyes, and you could see his armhair curling out from the cuff of his suit jacket even in that fuzzy picture. But other than that one pic and a sterile headshot of her on the CR Milne website, I’d found almost nothing much.
So? In the absence of intelligence, I’d need to do this the old-fashioned way. I’d need to meet her and smile at her and get her to smile back. I’d need to laugh with her, and talk with her, and maybe buy her a coffee… and then I’d need to deliver her as a sacrifice to the top of Briggs Road in return for enough money to clear my debt forever.
I sighed, feeling the first twinges of heartburn, but I knew this was no time for me to develop a conscience. If I could bring this chick to Felix by Halloween, that’d be it. The last bad thing I’d ever need to do. I could wash my hands of the weirdo vampires up Briggs and go buy that industrial space in South Side, the one next to that famous artist’s studio, where I could set up my auto place in peace.
Peace.
But first? Showtime. I accelerated, speeding past the beguiling Ms Cooney and her bobbing wake of admirers. I checked myself in the rearview mirror when I pulled into the space across from Julia’s Acura in the municipal lot at the top of the hill, taking in my tan, my Wayfarers, my general air of amiable dishevelment. I gave myself that grin I thought of as “roguish,” then twisted around to wait for her.
I’d decided to approach this like any other try at recruiting any other whore. She was in a vastly different social bracket than the women I normally targeted, but I seldom failed in getting chicks to agree to fuck for money. This time, I’d just have to convince her to fuck one guy instead of many guys. And then…
I looked away. I didn’t want to think about that, what Felix and his cronies would do to her. After they were done with her. Not my problem, I told myself savagely.
I’d made my plan after I’d seen the sticker in Julia’s rear window; she was a lieutenant in the National Guard, or had been at one time, and I’d done my research with care. I timed everything carefully; I needed to be walking toward my car, obliquely to hers, just as she trotted up. Anytime now, her flashing red hair would shine out from the crowd down along the beach, her sublime legs churning, pushing her up the hill toward her car.
Toward me, and her fate.
She was sweating when she came, the tanktop tight and damp over a chest that, I could now see, bobbed with the impressive, hypnotic majesty of a perfect pair of tits in their prime. Her face glowed as she panted, feet light on the asphalt footpath, and I started off, moseying in my joe-cool way, heading to intercept her just as she’d reach her car, the decal in the rear window showing a pair of old-school pistols crossed in an X.
Military Police. That’s what the internet had told me.
Julia crashed into the parking lot, huffing, her face streaming with sweat as those fine big tits led the way to her trunk. I was about ten feet back, moving with my usual cocky pace as she fetched up against her trunk and laid her two hands there in steaming, sweaty exhaustion. I took a moment to admire her ass, firm and rounded, peeking out from beneath her little grey running shorts.
“Whoah!” I called, letting my usual saucy charm work its way out from my vocal chords and toward that tempting ass. “Slow down, there. You just about ran me over.”
She turned slowly, her shoulders rocking as she panted, aware that I had to be staring at her ass but not giving much of a shit about it. I could feel the confidence oozing off her like the sweat that dripped off her nose. “If I’d have meant to run you over,” she replied, her voice low, controlled despite her exertion, “I wouldn’t have missed.”
I nodded to myself. Not bad. She’d responded already; good start. “Yeah, I’ll bet.” I squinted at her window as I drew closer. “MP, hmm? Or is that your husband or something?”
“Nah. It’s me.” She pranced around the corner of her car, flushed but self-assured. “I’m a lieutenant in the Guard. 124th MP Company, out of the East Adams armory.” Her forehead wrinkled as she squinted at me from behind her shades. “You’re not in the military.”
“I was,” I lied. “I’m not as impressive as you, though. I was a tank guy. Baumholder.” I swallowed, reading her, watching the lie pass over her and through her and knowing I was okay once she accepted it. “I got out a long time ago, though.”
“Cool.” She’d opened her car door, having left it unlocked, and pulled out a big bottle of water clinking with ice. “Like, did you ever deploy or anything?”
I shook my head; I’d decided to keep things simple. I didn’t need to be spinning lies about bad guys shooting at me. I’d researched tanks, gambling she wouldn’t know much about them. Women didn’t serve in tanks, apparently. “Just stayed in Germany the whole time.” I paused, digging my toe into the pavement, letting her see me hesitate. “Gotta say,” I continued at last, looking away, “the MPs there were not like the MPs here. If you know what I’m saying.”
“Yeah?” Her lips curled in a slow smirk. “Meaning, they were lazy fuckups?”
I returned her smile. Perfect. “Meaning, they were burly guys from Arkansas.” I cocked my head, making like I was remembering. “I’m not sure there were any women in that unit at all, honestly.”
“Yeah, they keep all of us here.” The smirk twitched higher. “I think they don’t trust us if we go overseas.” She was calming down, and when she took her glasses off to wipe them down I caught dark, flashy brown eyes.
“Keeping you out of trouble.” I nodded seriously.
“No,” she chuckled, “I think it’s more like they know what we’d do to all the tankers in Baumholder.”
“Fuck,” I marveled, low and drawn-out like an Army guy I’d seen on YouTube the other day. “I bet you would.” I let my head rove down, then up, telling her I was checking her out. I already knew she wouldn’t mind. A girl like this? She’d known I’d been ogling her this whole time. “Honestly? If we’d had officers like you, I might have stayed in.”
“But you didn’t,” she shrugged, “because like I said, they keep all of us here.” The water beaded on her upper lip after she took a drink. “Well. I stink. I need to get home.”
“Oh,” I nodded. “I was wondering what I smelled.” She laughed a little bit dutifully, I noticed, and I knew it was time to move on. “I’ll see you around. I’m Ricky Turco.”
“I’m Julia,” she replied pleasantly enough. She already had the driver’s door open. “Nice meeting you, Ricky. That sounds like a kid’s name.”
“Well it was, when I was a kid.” I was already digging for my keys, crossing toward my car. “My friends call me Tricky Ricky,” I added, all casual-like, flashing my smile.
“Ah.” She paused as she was getting in. “Well. They don’t call me anything but Julia. Or ‘bitch.'” She smiled, a warm and genuine one. “I’ll catch you later, Tricky Ricky.”
“Only if I’m lucky, bitch,” I grinned, and she was laughing when the door slammed shut.
Perfect.
* * *
The second meeting was even easier to engineer; I’d found out she lived on Shasta Street just down from the intersection where I dropped Danae off on the mornings after her standing appointment fucking the guys at the police station on the South Side. She didn’t like doing cops, but they paid me through the nose in cash and drugs, which I usually punted for a healthy profit through my buddy Shoebox Joe. I’d boot Danae out into the dawn light of the early-morning bus stop, then head for the nearest Ahab’s to pick up a coffee before coming back in time to tail Julia Cooney to school.
Not that I needed to. I knew where she worked. I just wanted to watch her coming out of her house, to see those bold legs swishing down her front walk. And I’d followed her for a few days, long enough to get a sense of her timing.
So I waited outside Milne Elementary one Wednesday afternoon when I knew band practice would be going on. I’d found out a kid in there had Rosario as a last name, and I had some cousins who were Rosarios.
Close enough.
I sat perched on the trunk of my Charger outside the main door of the building when she came strolling out with another teacher. She looked like a piece of candy in her short striped dress, and I thought I could feel my mouth actually watering. I’d had trouble finding out when the release time for teachers was, until I’d hit on the simple expedient a couple days before of standing behind a tree down the street and just waiting until a bunch of adult women came boiling out of the building.
She paused when she reached the sidewalk, looking vaguely in my direction, then gave the other teacher a smiling nod and strode my way, paying no attention to the crosswalks. Her shades were huge, stylish, different from the outdoorsy pair she’d sported on the run. “That’s a familiar-looking car,” she called as she neared me. She wasn’t smiling. “I might almost begin to think you’re stalking me.”
I feigned shock, as well I might; I wasn’t supposed to know she taught here. In my mind was a twinge of fright as I tried to work out whether she’d seen my car following her, but then I calmed myself: she’d seen it in the beach parking lot. “Wait. Can it possibly be that pretty lady I saw above the beach? The MP?” I smiled my warmest, toothiest smile. “What would you say if I told you I was stalking you?”
She did smile now, a cool quick smirk. “I’d say you better be careful to know who you’re after before you start.” I laughed easily. “But no. You’re not stalking me. You’re picking someone up?”
Here it was, the only hole in this plan: if little Annette Rosario came out of band practice early, I was fucked. But last Wednesday the kids hadn’t left until four, which was safely an hour away. I was counting on Julia cutting out long before then. “My cousin. Well, her daughter. Annette Rosario?”
“Mmhmm.” She didn’t seem to care, her lashes flickering behind the big sunglasses as she pondered me. “Band practice? You’re early, Tricky Ricky.”
“No shit?” I raised my eyebrows, the picture of innocence. “My cousin told me they let out at three!”
“Four,” she corrected, shifting a heavy leather school bag from one shoulder to the other. Other teachers were leaving behind her, glancing curiously at us. I could see the lines of her bra across her large, firm tits, visible through the fabric of her dress; already, I had to will my cock to behave. “You’re screwed. You’ve got an hour to kill.”
“Yeah?” She hadn’t fled, and showed no signs of hurrying away; I dared to think this might be going exactly as I’d hoped it might. It would all be so much easier if she was attracted to me. “This isn’t my neighborhood, MP. Got any suggestions in mind?”
“There’s a little place a few blocks up that way,” she said immediately, gesturing with her chin. I shuddered at the graceful, female line of her throat, almost seeing her pulse there; this woman was so vibrant. How was she not taken yet? “I’d give you better directions, but there’s a problem with that.”
“Yeah?” I frowned, mock-serious. Fuck. The woman was flirting with me! “You don’t say.”
“See, if I tell you where it is,” she went on slowly, “you’ll just pick up and go. Then I’ll be left standing here next to this shitty car, and everyone will assume it’s mine.” She shook her head deliberately. “Unacceptable.”
“Yeah?” I slid off my trunk, loose-limbed and easy, then leaned on the primer-coated metal. “Ever see Star Wars?”
“Which one?” She stood tall and lithe, her feet spread slightly, the wind rustling her hair.
“Which one,” I scoffed. “The first one. The only one. This car?” I patted the trunk. “This is the Milennium fucking Falcon, darling. May not look like much, but…”
She was nodding now, thoughtful. “Bet you get a lot of girls driving in a car like this, Tricky Ricky,” she said quietly.
My heart leapt. Perfect. This chick was amazing. I wondered whether she could see my semi in my jeans. “You can find out, if you want. Julia.”
She cocked her head, a slow smile spreading across her face. “You’re offering me a ride? In this shitbox? To where?”
“To a little place a few blocks up that way,” I smiled. “To kill an hour. I promise,” I went on, spreading my open hands, “I’m not an axe murderer.”
“And even if you were,” she nodded, “you’ve got no axe.” She frowned. “I’ll let you take me out, but not in this. You can walk with me.”
“Okay.” I almost preened, amazed at how well this was going. “If you want, you can leave your stuff in here. The doors actually lock,” I pointed out, messing with the manual lock on the window rim.
She laughed now, a plummy laugh, tired after a long day in front of the classroom. “Do they?” She sighed, hoisting her bag onto the passenger seat as I held the creaky door open. “Fine. I’m parked back this way, anyway.”
I slammed the door. “So I can’t say I’d have pegged you for a teacher, Julia,” I ventured, starting off with her slightly ahead.
“What’s that mean?” She wasn’t offended, but the glance she threw over at me was cool.
“Just that I always think of elementary teachers as people who looked like mine.” I shrugged, my hands riding in my pockets. “Old. Cranky. Hags, for lack of a better term.” The neighborhood around Milne was suburbia in all its glory, an area of homes costing maybe three hundred thousand. “They all reminded me of my grandmother.”
She sighed. “Let me tell you, I can certainly be cranky sometimes.” She was smiling at me now. “Nice to know I’m not a hag, though.”
“Far from,” I agreed. “I don’t think you ever will be, either.”
“Oh stop.” She tossed her hair back. “Everybody gets old and haggy. Especially teachers. You said it yourself.”
“Nah.” I felt sure, somehow. A few blocks ahead I could see a small business district, older, the kind that would have once had a bank, a bikeshop, and a florist across from a diner. “Some women never really lose it,” I mused.
“Lose what?”
“Youth. Vitality. Vigor.” I didn’t even know what I was saying. There are times, with a woman, when I just feel my game is so strong that I don’t even think about the words. I just let them flow. They certainly seemed to be working this time; Julia was walking tall and confident, with no hint of hesitation or worry. I wasn’t freaking her out. “Some women have it, a certain air about them.”
“You know a lot about women, hmm?” She was grinning as she said it, but it was a teasing grin and not a mocking one.
I decided on the truth. She’d never believe it. “I do. Professionally.” When she half-turned, walking sideways beside me with her splendid body tugging at her dress, I let her see my eyes flicker down to her chest. “I’m a pimp.”
“Well, shit,” she nodded, her eyes narrowing in mirth behind the shades, “this is my lucky day. I’ve been looking for a career change.” We both laughed, the simple laughs of people who’ve met and decided they match, and when I reached impulsively for her hand she did not pull away.
* * *
My stomach lurched sourly on the walk back to my car; I’d accepted tea, and that was almost always a bad idea for me. Especially the herbal crap Julia had bought for us. I’d handled the cookies, sumptuous creations from a gorgeous glass case beside the coffee urn.
But this time, she was the one who reached for my hand. So I ignored my heartburn and just walked quietly beside her, the two of us replaying the conversation over the little round table in the corner.
We’d discussed it all. Her job. Her past. My accident. The court case. She did not ask me about pimping, and I did not volunteer. But she did, at one point, mention something interesting when I noticed a jagged scar across the back of her hand. “Recreational knife fighting?” I asked.
She’d cocked her head and gazed at me like a curious magpie before nodding slowly. “An ex-boyfriend did that to me.” She took in my raised eyebrows. “No, it wasn’t abuse or anything. He just used to get… well, a little carried away. During, uh… mutual nocturnal activities. If you know what I mean.”
“Oh!” I’d leaned back, the hard coffeehouse chair digging into my shoulderblades. “I’ve been guilty of that myself, sometimes.”
She’d thrown a furtive glance around the room, then leaned in close so that I could glance down past her face and see her firm, smooth white tits straining at her dress. “But you clip your nails,” she pointed out. “He had, like, claws.”
“Claws?” I smiled and made my eyes stay on hers. “Like a cat?”
“More like a wolf, sorta.” She licked her lips. “Like a big wolf-man. He behaved like that too. Like a beast.” Her eyes took on a faraway look, lips pursing in satisfaction. “It was kind of a relief to break up with him. He never meant to hurt me, but he didn’t seem to be able to help himself.”
“A wolf-man.” I smiled through my sudden unease. “Julia, Halloween is coming soon. But that doesn’t mean you should be going around dating werewolves.” I laughed, and it took me a few seconds to realize she wasn’t.
“Well.” She sipped her tea. “Let’s just say I apparently attract weirdos, sometimes. My legs have scars too.”
I arched an eyebrow, not too sure why I felt a nagging sense of unease. “He didn’t cut his toenails, either?”
She just stared at me, curiously intense. “Claws I said, Tricky Ricky. Claws.”
The rest of the conversation had gone smoothly enough, though, and by the time I got her back to my car, the leaves had already made orange-red speckles on the Dodge’s long hood. It was a gorgeous fall day. “So,” I said casually, admiring her ass as she bent to get her bag, “this is probably the part where we exchange contact info.”
“If you hadn’t brought it up, I would have.” She straightened, nodding. “I’m not going to kiss you, though.”
“Of course not,” I agreed solemnly. “Nobody wants to see a teacher being naughty right across from the school.” It was almost four, and the band parents were already milling around. I was keenly aware that I needed to get her the fuck away from me before Annette Rosario (whoever she was) came out to find her actual pick-up. I nodded at the assembling parents. “Better scram. You’ll need to beat all the traffic.”
She nibbled on her lower lip, then pulled a post-it deliberately out of her massive bag and scribbled a number on it. I already had that same number, from my sleuthing, but I’d never have cold-called her. “Text me if you want to get together again.”
I waited in silence until she looked back into my eyes, then nodded. “I want to get together again.”
“Okay.” She smiled then, a wistfully brief one, then winked. “Good. Because I do too.” Her dress swished in the breeze as I watched her march off toward the teacher lot around the side. I was hard as a rock.
* * *
She only asked me once about pimping, on our third date. I’d just taken her for dinner at Zimbardo’s and she’d put away a ribeye (medium rare, I was pleased to see) with a baked potato, and peach cobbler for dessert. She watched that night as I took the check and eased my wad out of my pocket. “You always have so much cash,” she mused. “I almost never do.”
“I don’t get obsessive about cards being bad juju or people tracking us or anything weird like that,” I shrugged, figuring the tip, “but I do like doing business in cash. It’s no-nonsense. You always know where it is.”
“Do you keep your stash tucked inside a Playboy under your mattress?” she giggled. She was looking extra vivacious tonight in a short red dress. I knew I could get her clothes off easily, and that she’d probably let me fuck her. I also knew my dick was still sore from Kaylee’s “improvement” session the night before, though, and there was something else holding me back: a crusty-voiced old vampire with a shriveled, lovesick heart. I was all but certain Felix would be very, very unhappy if I seduced the love of his life and took her to bed.
Very, very unhappy.
So I leaned back and smiled. “Playboy is all the action I’m getting these days,” I lied, remembering Kaylee’s sweet little ass in my hand.
“Bullshit,” she smiled. “You said you were a pimp. Don’t pimps score all the time?”
I hesitated, my smile frozen, dredging a steak frite through the remains of my béarnaise sauce. “I mean, I guess it depends on the pimp,” I laughed, and then I saw her whole body unclench as she decided, no, this new guy I’m hanging out with is not actually trafficking women. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d actually believe me. “Call me what you want, Julia, I’m not getting much.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe I’d like to change that,” she husked, and God help me if my sore, Kaylee-drained penis didn’t lurch, just like that, right there in the restaurant.
I let my lip rise in a smirk. “You want to change… what? You want me to start using a credit card? Or you’d rather I read Penthouse?”
She was still nodding. “See? This is why I like you,” she sighed. “You’re fucking funny. Make a woman laugh, and you’re halfway into her pants.”
“I think Plato said that.”
“Now you’re more than halfway.” She was toying with my hand now, her fingers twining in amongst mine, and I looked at them and thought of Halloween, of Felix, and I shuddered. She noticed. “Do you want to be more than halfway, Ricky?”
Goddamn, I realized as I met her eyes. She thought I was some sort of virgin. Or celibate or something. I thought of Felix’ weird eyes once more, then pushed them from my mind. “No,” I told her quietly. “That’s just quibbling. I want to be all the way.”
Her answering smile had that confident, testing feminine quality I never seemed to see in any of my whores. That look that told me she was 100% confident she was going to get laid tonight, on her own merits. Because she’d make me want her. And, of course, she had. Just like she’d done to the men on the beach as she ran. As she’d done to that mysteriously gruff old weirdo at the top of Briggs.
I suddenly wondered whether Millow and Zondervan knew that Felix had made a special request. The thought shivered somewhere in the back of my mind, but by that time Julia Cooney had leaned across the little table, her face alight, lips parting, with everything about her shouting ripe, eager lust of the kind that only comes along once in two thousand years…
Her lips were hot and firm, dry with the dulled sheen of red lipstick I could taste suddenly as my tongue darted out without even a moment’s thought. She accepted willingly, her lips spreading with that sedated passion that tells you she’s thinking I want to get drilled over the table with her hot, blaring lizard-brain while her better judgement reminds her that, no, I’m at Zimbardo’s and I might want to come back here with some other guy someday…
We parted in a gentle slough of saliva, coating her chin like she’d just taken a drink of water. My head buzzed, light and a little dizzy, and my cock had already gone painfully hard in my jeans. She was smiling a little dreamily as she drifted back, her eyes closed until those long lashes fluttered up. “Usually, I don’t wait until the third date to kiss a man I like,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” I nodded, “same here.” This was true, of course: one occupational hazard of pimping is that you tend not to get too many dates under your belt before you’re cumming in the woman’s ass, or something. I let her see my eyes search her face, her neck, her chest. “I’m impressed with my self-control. You’re a difficult woman to wait for.”
“So you’re saying we should make up for lost time?” She eyed the pile of cash I’d tucked into the waiter’s little folder. “Is there a reason we’re still sitting here, Tricky Ricky?”
“Yes,” I smirked. “If I were to get up right now, I’d be showing the world what you’ve done to my dick.”
She burst out laughing, drawing glances from across the restaurant. “Let them look,” she declared, glancing down at herself, “if they bother looking at anything but my nipples. Can we go to your place?” She sounded apologetic. “My apartment is getting renovated. Dust everywhere.”
“Sure.” I’d need to call my apartment from the car, obviously, while Julia followed me: Lisa had been crashing at my place for a couple of nights, and she’d need to be told to scram, and tout suite. I hadn’t bothered kicking her out the night before, which I’d spent with Kaylee; we’d given Lisa the couch. “I’m a single man. I’m not promising the tidiest house in the world.”
“Sightseeing is not my expectation, Ricky.” She winked, blushing from her lovely breasts all the way up to her cheekbones, and the flush was still there when her heels clacked across from the guest space at my apartment parking lot to meet me in the stairwell. She took my arm as we headed up toward my door, her body close and warm and solid without being clingy; she moved with a sort of unconsciously graceful hauteur, making me feel like a schlub by comparison.
But as soon as I motioned her through the door, not even worried I’d find Rita there (my orders to her over the phone had been quite forceful), I stopped worrying so much about how I looked. Because once the door closed behind us, nothing in her manner mattered anymore to anyone but me.
I watched as she strode into my living room, her fingers moving to the back of her head to unwind her fiery hair from the prison of its scrunchie, letting its thick auburn waves scatter down her back. I was already shrugging out of my jacket as she turned, her fingers trailing along the top of my sofa. “What can I get you to drink?” I asked, smiling. I could smell Lisa’s deodorant, but only slightly; I had no doubt I’d still find droplets of water all over the shower. She’d gotten out with admirable speed, but then that’s how I’d trained all my girls. “Tea? Bourbon? Wine?”
“Saliva? Sweat? Semen?” She said the last with a wicked grin, hiking her butt up on the back of the sofa, and that grin took me as firmly as any hook ever took any fish, pulling, my feet crossing over my grotty carpet in three long strides from the door. “I’ll have some coffee,” she husked as I drew close to her, her eyes roving wide and wet down my body, “tomorrow morning. When you make me breakfast.”
“Fuck.” I closed in on her, her smell filling me with a suddenness that banished every other woman I’d ever met: she was perfume and sweat and shampoo, hormones and pussy and need, and I was already leaning into her mouth when her hands found their way nimbly under my shirt. I felt life and passion in her fingers, but they were nothing compared to the tongue she sent boldly in between my lips, sweeping my mouth unapologetically, tasting me.
My hands found her at once, desperate to feel what that sublime body could offer me, finding full hips sweeping upward to a supple waist; I was clasping her tits before I even knew I was doing it, the flesh there giving way to my grasping fingers as she exhaled into my mouth in a moaning little sigh. I gripped firm, rounded sweetness through her thin dress and a sheer bra before she reached up, eyes wide, and pulled both dress and bra down to one side.
Her message was obvious.
The breast which popped out at me was pale, eager perfection, the nipple already poking out of a large wine-red disc of intoxicating skin, the whole thing begging for my mouth. I lowered my head at once, hearing her achy whine as she arched back to push herself into my questing mouth. She tasted of salt and naked flesh, and when I sucked hard on that inviting nipple, she burst into a ragged gasp.
The force of her surging body nearly made me take a step back, so eager was she to feel my mouth on her flesh, and I sucked greedily. Her tit gave softly under my tongue, offering itself to me, even insisting I take it for my own. And my other hand clawed mindlessly at her bodice, desperate to free my other prize.
“Oh, fuck,” she crowed in a whisper, for her fingers had just found my cock down the front of my pants. I arched forward, pushing myself deeper into her hand, hearing myself groan with desire. God bless Kaylee and her talented vagina, but I was completely rampant for Julia, as hard as I’d ever been, my balls quivering to unload inside her. And she knew it, too, her arm plunging far down inside until her desperate fingers could cup me. I felt a lurch in my stomach when she did.
We mauled each other a few minutes more, rubbing heavily against each other while our tongues smeared each other’s chins, both of us panting desperately in that close little living room, with the couch sagging as it tried to hold us upright and the faint whiff of one of my hoes still on the air. I felt my face go slack, mouth dropping open in the dull grip of the lust I was feeling, her lips curling into a wicked little smirk as her fingers probed how hard she’d made me. “You’re a big boy,” she crooned, my precum smearing her forearm. “Do you think you’ll fit inside me?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” I grated, smelling her breath as she gasped it into my face; I’d just lifted her dress and reached cruelly down to cup her mound. Her body trembled as she humped it into me. Already I felt the trickle of her juices on my palm; this girl needed cock. Badly. “As soaked as you are?” I taunted into her ear, “I bet you’d be able to fuck someone twice my size.”
“But I won’t have to,” she gasped, her mouth falling open a bit while I pulled at the front of her panties. The gasp turned into a low, warm breath when my fingers found her slit below a narrow, frizzy little bush of hair, sliding into her with a greasy wondrous sense of unreality, of detachment, like I hadn’t just succeeded in penetrating the hottest woman I’d ever felt. “Oh. Oh!”she whined. “Yeah, baby. Get in there.”
“You like that?” I certainly did. I loved being rough on a woman’s cunt. My fingers didn’t wait for her to adjust, slipping far into her hot, tight pussy while her whole body sagged down onto my hand. I kissed her again, savagely. “You do.” I pulled my fingers out suddenly, stretching her panties, then delivered a quick, firm slap to her clit. She moaned. “Goddamn, you’re so sexy,” I raved, aware that she knew it. That she needed to know I knew it.
“Fucking hit me again,” she rasped, her hips swiveling in great, wanton circles, and so I shoved her panties roughly down her thighs and cocked my wrist back, striking her pussy again and again, rapid little machine-gun slaps that had her yelping louder with each damp, splattering smack. “Goddamn!”
“Enough.” I was going to love playing with her, but my cock was a demanding taskmaster trembling within her clutching fingers and I needed to sheathe it. I dipped my fingers once more into her pussy, then pushed them into her mouth. “Clean me off and then get naked in my fucking bedroom.”
Her lips closed over me wordlessly, not even a thought of disobeying. She wanted to do whatever I told her to, which was handy because I felt exactly the same way. We were in for an amazing night, I knew, as if there’d been any doubt. Her mouth came off my fingers with a wet pop. “Yes, sir,” she mocked, her neck and chest scarlet. I waited, breathing heavily, while her eyes slid sideways to make sure which hallway led to my room, and then she was easing herself out from between me and the couch, smiling that same wicked little smirk.
She didn’t look back once she started strutting toward my bed, reaching low to gather her dress into her hands and then lift it up over her head. I saw it all from behind: those smooth, muscled runner’s legs giving way to the round perfection of her splendid ass, outlined now by a crimson thong that marched in lacy glory around the firm muscle of her waist, her back then spreading upward crossed by bra straps the same color as her underwear. She paused, posing for me in my own hall, then rolled the thong decisively down her hips before stepping out of it onto my carpet. Her bra followed, unhooked contemptuously before her long, graceful arm tossed it back over her shoulder.
And then all that was left was naked perfection topped by wild, thick red hair.
I was stripping off my clothes before she’d even entered my room; I figured she could find the bed. I had enough difficulty navigating my pants and boxers off over my strong, jutting erection, which trembled like a leaf as I stared down at it. The pussy I’d just pulled my hand out of was about to take that very dick, and I marveled that I was about to score such a perfect example of the female body; the sight of her body as the dress revealed it had stolen my breath. Felix was far, far away from me now.
I was pulling on my cock when I entered my bedroom, knowing what I’d see and yet still unprepared for it: Julia lay sprawled on my comforter, her hair scattered across the pillows, her entire luscious body on full display for me as her fingers traced the red, swollen lips of her pussy. Her mouth was a cruel line. “Come fuck me,” she demanded, husky like she was pushing the words out through a thick haze in her throat.
“Yeah?” I challenged, striding to my bedside, displaying my cock for her. She watched it greedily as I let it bounce over her body, but she made no move to touch it; she was too busy slicking her fingers with her own juices. “What was that? You want me to fuck you?”
“You know I do,” she nodded, licking her lips. “And I know you do.”
“Jesus,” I sighed, dick surging, and then my legs were bending, climbing onto my own mattress atop this burgeoning, lush woman as if she were controlling them instead of me. We both watched, eyes narrowed, as her legs flew open, wide and needy, giving me her whole world between her own questing fingers. I knelt, settling, pushing my dick low to meet her hand as I leaned down. The room already reeked of naked, ready bodies, pushed to the limit of their tolerance, ready to unleash each other.
Our breathing had long since gone ragged as we both stared at where my thick head waited to split Julia’s weepy pussy wide open, almost threatening in its raw power, she and I both wide-eyed. Her fingers had gone still, holding her lips wide open, showing me scarlet flesh and the bewitching symmetry of her perfect wet cunt, begging to swallow me even as I inched lower. “Oh my god!” she blurted, low and desperate, her head wallowing in the pillow at the moment we both felt that first contact, the first touch, the kiss of my cockhead against the overheated flesh between her fingers…
I could only wait a second or two. That was the only self-control I could muster before, with a whimpery sigh of relief, I sank into her, balls-deep, her pussy nearly sucking me in with its fiery urgency. We both groaned, shifting, merging.
I was pumping at once, desperate to make her orgasm, wanting that for her more than I wanted it for myself. Her hips bucked hard up toward me, in control, her rhythm matching mine as precisely as any professional whore’s, as if she’d been taking dick all her life. She was made for sex, crafted for it with a master sculptor’s eye for detail. Julia fucked me with her whole body, breasts moving in hypnotic unison, even her face chiseled into a rictus of agonized need, eyes closing as she focused on her release with her hand still, always, gracefully circling her own clit.
So I changed my motion, arching up and down rather than in and out, so that my shaft would saw across where her fingers were playing. She reacted at once, crying out, and in a lustful haze I felt the hot bite of her teeth on my shoulder as she choked back a shout of ecstasy. I was panting, holding her close under her arms and around her shoulders, my sweat dripping from my face to hers as we stared at each other.
“Fuck me,” she breathed, over and over. “Fuck me. Fuck me.” Her hips continued swinging in strong, capable arcs, using my cock to claw her way toward orgasm while I gritted my teeth, striving to avoid shooting until she’d already gotten there. Our bodies slithered close, needing the contact, her feet drawn high up above my ass, fucking me back in a tight, sturdy rhythm, just as determined for me to cum as I was for her.
So? Why not a tie?
I slid my cheek beside hers, our hips slamming. “I need to cum, baby. Where do you want me to?” This was unheard-of; I was not known for letting the woman choose. I was hoping she’d give me the right answer, though, and as with everything else about her, she did not disappoint.
She pushed my shoulders off her, both of us still churning, my cock making lewdly glorious soupy noises as I plunged into her. She waited until my eyes focused on hers. “I want you to cum in my pussy, stud,” she grunted, her face red.
“Cum with me,” I urged, but it came out as more of a bark, and then she was nodding, her perfect body straining as my cock sang past her clit, pushing her, driving her off the cliff we were both racing for.
“Yes,” she gasped, guttural, craving it just like I was, and when she came she clung to my body hard with every part of her, legs and fingers and pussy and lips, sucking my tongue deep against hers. I felt her cunt surge and flutter along my length in spasms, and I was only dimly aware of my own cum surging out my cock and deep, deep into her perfect body, realizing only after I’d released that I was pushing far inside her, her hips angled up, accepting me as she gusted cracked breaths into my face.
The closeness. The connection. Lightning passed between our eyes that night, I’m convinced. And it forked as it reached us, ending up where my semen sloshed, corked deep inside her while we held each other impossibly tight, staring into each others’ eyes as the night deepened around us on my puddled bed.
* * *
III. Malum
* * *
We fucked everywhere that October.
I took her ass, her pussy, her mouth. She gave me handjobs and titfucks and even, once, a footjob I didn’t even know I’d want. She let me watch her do her yoga routines without her clothes on, and then afterward she took my dick eagerly. We went to the beach in the early morning and I claimed her from behind among the dunes. We parked in my Charger in the night overlooking the town and she rode me in the backseat before I had her over the hood. She returned from her National Guard drill the weekend after I met her and I practically slashed the fatigues from her dirty body.
I sent her to school almost every morning sloshing with my cum, and in the process I’m afraid I neglected poor Kaylee’s training. And poor Rita’s mouth. And Catherine’s tendency to dawdle when she was supposed to be hustling. And Lisa’s homelessness. And my lawyer’s endless entreaties for more money. And my real-estate guy’s demands for a commitment of some sort on that shop space on the South Side, which surely wasn’t going to stay vacant for long…
None of that mattered. She mattered.
She captured me as effortlessly as she’d always captured every other man in her life, probably. I’m not sure I was in love, but I was certainly getting there: my mind suddenly spun with ideas, wild plans involving bank robberies and scams and other assorted skullduggeries. I needed her, and I needed to be free of my crushing debt, and in the dark days around the twentieth I sat down one day for an avocado-toast breakfast and found myself wondering whether Felix would take Rita instead. Or Rita and Catherine, on a two-for-one. Or both of them, plus Danae.
Or? Hell. Felix could have the whole damn string.
I stopped thinking about him after a week or so, just enjoying myself with Julia. She yelled at me to go running with her, until I finally did… at which point I held her back so badly that she just smiled next time I asked about it. “Dumbass,” she told me, “I’m not going running with you again. I don’t run with slowpokes.” Then I laughed, and tackled her, and fucked her mouth until she drank my cum.
But reality was bound to intrude sooner or later, and for me it happened when I sat at Mezzo watching one of the employees put up a plastic jack o’ lantern for the next night’s big Halloween function. I wondered, later on, whether I just should have avoided the Mezzo Bar on snappy autumn nights, or at least left my phone at home… but this time, it whirred again as it vibrated next to my napkin.
I was waiting there to meet Julia. Of course.
My lips spread into a scowl when I saw the contact on my phone: Briggs. I debated about whether to ignore it, but then I remembered the menace of Felix and his weirdo buddies and I picked it up to study the incoming text. My blood froze as soon as I saw it. Your deadline approaches. You may bring Julia Cooney tonight, or anytime after sunset tomorrow. Thank you.
I dropped that phone like a hot potato, my nerveless fingers trembling already. I glanced at my tonic water, pretty sure I didn’t want it anymore, a sudden sick dread drifting over my heart as if it came from the phone. Across the street from me, at Third and Armistead, Rita and Danae leaned coolly against the wall of Trovatore’s Bistro in their fishnets and leather bustiers, and suddenly they were in a completely different world. My planet no longer included my girls. It was now cold, a chilly icy hilltop at the upper end of Briggs Road, fringed by woods and crowned with a mysterious manse up the path from a soggy garden… Traffic whirled by, but I didn’t see it. The waitress hovered, but I didn’t even look at her ass. Everything was that damning text, and what it implied: two million dollars.
I closed my eyes against a sudden spastic wave of fear, and when I opened them again I raised my head to see Julia, my Julia, Felix’ Julia, standing there in a mid-length skirt and a leather coat that went down about as far, leaving her lower legs sticking out from an old pair of Uggs in a set of purple striped tights I’d last seen sailing across the room at her place, after I jerked them off her legs. She cocked her head. “Something wrong, Ricky-baby?” She’d started calling me that after she’d let me have her ass the first time.
Already, it sounded like the past.
So I forced a smile, patted the little metal seat beside me, and turned my phone facedown. “Nothing at all. Let’s get some dessert.”
* * *
I’m still not sure why I took her up Briggs Road the next night, wending through crowds of early trick-or-treaters. It wasn’t that I wanted to lose her forever, of course; it was mostly the promise of Mr Felix’ 2 million, and everything it represented in my life once my lawyer got ahold of it. But it was more than that.
The text from Felix had reminded me of something: that the weirdos up Briggs had a hold on me, something I’d never be able to shake. I was into this way, way too deep already, even before I’d met Julia. And that was the point, naturally: Felix had selected me to do this because he’d known I wouldn’t, couldn’t, say no.
And he knew I knew it.
I was staring out the window as we motored through the dusk, my Charger growling. If taking my other girls up there had made me uncomfortable, this one made me want to kill myself. Every part of me yelled that I should slam on the brakes, flip a U-turn, and skedaddle…
…to what, though? To a life of pimping inadequately, my ready money shut off like a spigot? To telling Julia the truth about me, and having her leave me? And what did I think Felix and his spooky brothers would do to me? Leave me alone? Fuck that. I’d be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
Hell, I reflected. I already would be.
So, like a fly enmeshing itself more deeply into the web, I gritted my teeth and went doggedly on. And tried to ignore my passenger seat.
She’d come with me willingly, even smilingly, believing some tale I spun about rumors of a really nice haunted house party up in the hills out south of Adams. “Cool!” she’d enthused. “I love a haunted house!” And so here she was, tapping placidly into her phone, texting arbitrarily with some friends of hers. Friends who would probably be calling the cops in a few days, I reflected with a sinking feeling, when she didn’t turn up anywhere.
Nothing I could do about that.
I turned onto Briggs, my engine purring, and began wending my way up the hill just as the moon started to pop out. “So,” I managed at last, forcing a smile, “there’s, like, a theme. Sort of like a version of that Kubrick movie, with the weird house and the secret society and all that?”
She arched an innocent eyebrow. “The one with Tom Cruise?”
“I guess?” To be honest, I mostly just remembered boobs from that movie. I glanced at the rearview mirror, but just like with every other time I’d come up here, there were no headlights. Nobody had a good reason to come to the top of Briggs Road, it seemed. Even me. “All I know is a buddy of mine texted me. There’s a dress code, but they give you the costume.”
“Oh!” I felt a stab of intense guilt when she grinned mischievously. “I love a costume party.” She looked again at my suit. “You look so fucking good, honey. I’m going to make you fuck me so hard later.” She rubbed her hands together. “I’m totally going to get eaten tonight!” she announced.
I sighed and looked away once more, the clouds riding over the moon. “Yeah,” I replied faintly, “count on it.” The trees thinned out as we passed over the river into Glenview, and below me the lights of the South Side blanketed the whole flat expanse of darkness, down to where a dark silent horizon showed me where the sea lay. But my road didn’t lead that way. “So. I came to this party last year,” I started, sighing, “and it’s a little… weird. Great party but, like, secretive.”
“I’m intrigued.” Her fine brows rose to her lustrous hair as I made myself smile and went into my spiel.
“We’ll go inside. I’ll be with you; just follow me. Just inside the front door is, like, a little room with a coat rack; you’ll take your clothes off and there’ll be, like, a robe there…”
She almost launched herself out of the car when I pulled up at the gates, champing at the bit, overwhelmed with curiosity. “Will I know anyone?” She was twisting her hair around her long fingers, her lower lip between her teeth, and I had to grit my teeth as I told myself what a mistake I was making. “I mean, not that I’m all that cool, but I did pass up another party for this, Ricky-baby.” She winked. “For you.”
Fuck.
“I’m telling you,” I said weakly, “this is a once-in-a-lifetime.” I nodded at the house. “See? You can’t beat this atmosphere, huh?”
“Dude.” She sprang up the walk between those brooding gateposts, with me following along like a threatened dog. “I hope there’s food. I’m hungry.”
This time, I couldn’t even answer. I just followed, admiring her butt for the very last time before I lost her forever. The big door opened for me one more time, the drafty foyer beckoning. Julia squinted inside.
“This is, like, an actual haunted house.” She laid a hand on my arm. “Feels like it, huh?” She peered more closely at me. “Ricky-baby! Are you scared? You look like you’re being dragged into the grave, or something.”
I made myself meet those lively eyes, forcing a smile. “I mean, it’s Halloween. I think I’m just tired, baby.”
She smiled, leaned in, and kissed me softly. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” She giggled, her laughter a mockery of what I knew was coming, and leapt lightly over the threshold.
The vestibule yawned to our right, the hanging cloaks there waiting to shield her nakedness. And I looked away once more as they did.
I know my hand trembled as I took her through that great, echoing hall, to those vast arched doors leading to the fateful dining room, and toward the chamber where those three awful figures had always awaited me. Just before I reached the dining-room door, I held her up and whispered into her ear. “Look, um, there’s a ritual. It’s a little weird. Just… whatever goes down, just close your eyes and let it happen.” I sighed deeply. “Sooner it’s over, the better.”
“Why? So that we can eat?” Mischief still danced in her beautiful eyes, for another few moments at least, but then she chuckled again. “Don’t worry. I can play a role. As long as you weren’t lying when you said this was a super-cool party.”
“Oh. You’ll never go to another one like it. Just, again, remember to be quiet at first. Say nothing.” I hesitated one final moment, then gave her one last smile as my dress shoes hit the checkerboard tiling of that ghostly dining room. I cleared my throat, my eyes adjusting to the usual hazy gloom. “Your servant comes, my lords…” I began, but all at once my voice died out like a fading fire.
For there were no lords in the room now. There was only one. Felix stood in an old-school tailcoat, looking like European royalty in the strong shadowy firelight, his hand trembling on the back of one of their ornately carved chairs. He let the silence stretch; behind me I heard Julia’s feet enter the room unbidden, her stupendous face and hair shadowed under the heavy cloak and hood. I saw Felix purse his lips, a strange fiery light in his pallid eyes. “Go on, please,” he said, making an obvious effort to control his voice. “I wait.”
I gulped, knowing I was in over my head as never before, but knowing also that I was far, far past any point at which it was safe for me to duck out. I tried again. “My lord,” I tried, my tongue finally settling. “I bring you a gift.”
“No.” His voice was a guillotine. “You bring me my love. Who comes?”
My heart thumping, I struggled against a rising fear. Julia stirred beside me, cheerfully nude beneath the heavy cloak, clearly curious as I drew another breath. “It is I, Richard Turco… and your love is Julia Cooney.”
“She is pleasing to me,” he said at once. His fingers drummed the wood.
I paused, unable to make myself say the words, my eyes low as I turned to Julia. My Julia. “Ms Cooney,” I recited, my arm making a halfhearted sweep toward the weirdo by the chair, “this is Mr Felix.” Once again, as it always had, the air gained weight, definition, whirling down onto my head like soil on a grave: I felt that very clearly tonight. But I had one more thing to say, and before I did it I raised my eyes to meet hers.
Julia stood proud and tall, her eyes shining bravely. She smiled at me, her lips glorious and ripe and beautiful, and all at once the heaviness in the air seemed to lift a little, the fire giving off warmth and light instead of simply shadows. I felt my eyes widen, a gasp choking its way past my Jerry Garcia tie, and all of a sudden I could say nothing more at all.
She was so beautiful. Her mouth opened, but my eyes warned her about what I’d told her earlier: say nothing.
“Mr Turco.” Felix’ voice rolled cold and imperious from behind me now. “Say the words, please. To whom does she belong?”
Julia’s smile merely grew, and in her eyes was perfection. Passion. Life. Love. I nodded and turned. “She belongs to me now, my lord.”
There was no way I could ever have been prepared for the speed with which Felix leapt upon me. The Smith & Wesson in my pocket never even registered. My shocked senses recorded flashing impressions: the shadow of his body, blotting out the fire. The light in his eyes, fey, deadly. His mouth open in a sneering rictus. His breath, hissing, smelling like the grave. And, at the last, holding the very last fragment of my attention, the firelight playing off the coldly unnatural ivory of his sharp fangs, reaching for my throat, ready to mark me forever…
The cruel points pierced my neck. And I knew nothing more for a long while.
* * *
Postea
* * *
They found my ’72 Charger in a ravine near Ray Peak. It was still there over a hundred years later, after Felix unearthed me, when he and Millow at last trusted me to leave the manse at the top of Briggs Road. So I finally made it out there to look at my car under the light of an autumn moon. I had no difficulty seeing its rusted, bramble-covered remnants, even under nothing but starlight, for I had learned that Felix’ bite had given me many gifts. Superior vision was one of those.
Ahh, but that bite had also taken. It had taken so much from me…
Life, for one thing. It had been explained to me, after I’d been taken from the grave, that I was well and truly undead. My friends, my sister, my string of whores… all in the ground by now, in their own mortal time. “You’ll learn a new world, Turco,” Felix had assured me; no more Mr, not anymore, not from him, “but you will learn it by night.”
My money, for another. Zondervan told me quite calmly that they’d not bothered to pay my two million to my lawyer; I’d had a momentary, panicked thought, there in those first hours after I’d been unearthed, that the wrongful death judgment was still out there, lurking, awaiting me. “Did they issue a warrant for the full amount once I defaulted?” I asked.
Zondervan had cocked his head. “It’s easy to escape arrest and prosecution,” he pointed out gently in that strangely accentless voice, “when three vampires are keeping you in a coffin for eighty or ninety years.”
And, worst of all, my Julia. She looked at me a bit oddly these days, as if she wasn’t sure what to make of me, but then that made sense: she was a queen now, chosen by Felix Gnaeus, mighty among our kind. But she was not cruel to me. Not like Felix and the others, who still called me Halbrecht sometimes. I doubted they did this by accident. And Julia, who had spent my long imprisonment forgetting all about me, did not call me Ricky-baby anymore.
She was a queen, yes. And I was worse than a servant. I would spend centuries, as far as I was aware, waiting upon the succubi who served my three masters. But those succubi were mostly kind to me, even after I’d sold them into this life: Monica, Erin, Mia, and Andrea Gutierrez, all ethereally beautiful now, all immortal as I was. All perfect. I’d thought I’d been killing them, but instead I’d been doing something much worse in some ways. And yet, they were usually kind to me.
Except poor Andrea, The First Andrea, who’d never done anything wrong except be available one Halloween, so long ago. My second-to-last Halloween, though I didn’t know that at the time. No, she’s still kind of a bitch to me. But I have eternity to try to win her over.
* * *
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