High Bloods (16 page)

I paused near the van to watch the multicamera action on the Jumbotron. My perspective was distorted; the crush of sound
and flashing light show gave me the feeling that the trembling earth might open beneath my feet at any moment.

The man had style and presence, no denying that. He was nearly seven feet tall and probably more than three hundred pounds in a draped pearl-gray silk suit that glistened like sunlight on a waterfall. But he had the moves of a dancing pony and he didn’t need amps to deliver his simple message. Each time he shouted “Brothers and sisters, Jesus loves you!” to a crowd that may have been ninety percent Lycan, their celebration reached a new height of ecstasy. Each time he wiped his streaming brow on a fresh white handkerchief and dropped the hanky into eager hands below the stage, more young and even middle-aged Lycans fell to the ground in paroxysms of religious fervor. In the stands tens of thousands of hands were thrust on high, shaking in spasms of emotional hunger, charging the air with an energy that ignited their tainted blood and empowered their nascent beasthood.

(So promise them, Brother Kingworthy, what no impalpable deity can hope to provide. Lead them all out of the wilderness, but to what? An even more violent and nightmarish wilderness.

Because if you disappoint them, and you will, see what happens to the civilization we’re barely clinging to now.)

My chest was tightening. I felt angry. I hated the spectacle and was afraid of the ease with which the preacher inspired their frenzy, reminded each Lycan of his low earthly status and the fact of his captivity. I was hearing wolf-cries now. There was an underlying, malevolent potential in the Reverend Kingworthy’s congregation, so close to becoming a mob. The moon was overhead at this hour, only a couple of days shy of peak power—the power in the blood of all Lycans that no wall could be built high enough or strong enough to resist.

Chimera had come out of her starbus with her band and her entourage and was on her way backstage. Bucky Spartacus appeared, likewise surrounded by his court, and the two luminaries
paused to embrace. Chimera had a hit on the joint Bucky was smoking. There seemed to be a lot of in-group camaraderie.

Bucky was tall and splinter-thin. He wore an open leather vest that framed a full-torso tattoo elaborate as an epic poem. His low-slung leather jeans were ornamented in flashy silver. He had to have a high threshold for pain just to walk in those jeans, let alone strut a stage. Chimera’s erotic laminates and usual see-through costuming made genital herpes seem almost wholesome. In the later years of a hard-boiled career she didn’t just have a bad reputation; she had chronicles of infamy.

My wristpac vibrated. I had a text message.

I looked up, then around the crew lot behind the big stage. There were only a couple of unpaved acres, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The lot was no better lighted than it had to be. A scrim of squantch-tainted smoke and pale dust further dimmed the lot’s worklights. Faces less than thirty feet away were hard to make out. Most of the available space was devoted to limos, the starbuses, and at least ten large tractor-trailer rings that belonged to the stage-lighting techs, the set construction gang, event staff, and the satellite network that was taping the concert.

I saw Miles Brenta and Francesca Obregon get back into their limo instead of heading for the show. Maybe they were bothered by all the dust. The star attractions were on their way up the wide ramp to the backstage area.

There was a shortcut down an alley between two eighteen-wheelers and I took it, wondering how the hell I was going to stop the show with no good reason for doing so, and on dubious authority. But Elena, no matter how elusive and mysterious she was acting now, whatever her state of mind might be, was someone I couldn’t believe would, as Bea had put it, fuck with my head.

My mind and eyes were on Bucky Spartacus and I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have to a couple of Latinos sitting high inside the cab of the big rig on my left. The one closest to the open door had a walkie-talkie to his ear. About sixty pounds of sagging gut spilled over his belt. I barely noticed the other one.

The next thing I was conscious of I was flat on my face in the dirt with Taser barbs in my neck, twitching out of control, the aftermath of a lightning bolt flickering through muscle, nerves, and brain.

El Gordo and his partner hauled me back into the shadowland between trailers and dumped me on my back. I was still powerless. They had quick hands, sorting through my pockets, yanking my earbud, gun, and wristpac and pitching them under a trailer.

“
Hola, jefe
,” El Gordo said, the ribbed sole of a boot on my neck. “You doan take a hint so good.” He had a definitive wheeze, a voice that was familiar even in my befuddled state.

His partner smiled and walked away and waved a flashlight over his head, signaling somone.

I heard the whoosh of a truck’s airbrakes being released. El Gordo’s pocked swarthy face reddened from the tailights of a forty-foot trailer as the driver jockeyed his rig, warning beeper sounding, into the alley we occupied. Gordo’s partner came back and I was hauled to my feet, strong-armed up against the ribbed side of a parked trailer. There we waited for the rig to come close enough to dump me under a set of wheels. I was an accident about to happen. I still had the Taser barbs in my neck and no fight in me. I could’ve used another thirty seconds. I wasn’t going to get them.

A motorcycle headlight flashed at the other end of the trailer alley as the rider made a tight turn and came slowly toward us. The truck driver must have seen the bike in his rearview. He stopped his rig to assess the situation.

El Gordo and his partner stared at the oncoming biker, who was astride what looked like the 650 cc Kawasaki Ninja, maneuvering the sport bike with one hand and boots on the ground. The other gloved hand held a sawed-off shotgun. I didn’t know whether to feel good or bad about that.

Gordo knew. His smile signaled a discreet retreat. His grip on me loosened. He shrugged and gave me a little push away from him.

“
Muy borracho
,” he explained to the unknown biker, and showed more of his teeth. I participated unwillingly in his charade by taking two wobbly steps and pitching to my knees. I squinted up into the headlight of the rice rocket, built for speed. So was the slender biker, anonymous in black from helmet and face shield to buckled boots.

The biker didn’t say anything, to me or the Latinos. The double-barreled muzzle of the shotgun motioned me to my feet. I was happy to oblige. I looked back at El Gordo and partner. Each man was the soul of innocence. I knew that the fat man was at least partly responsible for the murder of Sunny Chagrin. I was breathing hard, feeling a flush climbing above my barbed neck to my temples. I would have trouble, given the condition I was in, taking him apart with my bare hands. But it was going to be done.

The biker may have sensed what was on my mind. The shotgun moved again, motioned me to follow as the Kawasaki was backed out of the trailer alley.

I backed up too, keeping my eyes on El Gordo, who took the walkie off his belt. He said a few words, then walked away, his belly fat bouncing. But he moved with deceptive speed; his partner scrambled to keep up.

The sky was rosy from fireworks. Concussions from FX mortars rolled around the amphitheater. All that noise and the screaming crowd deafened me. I glanced up at Bucky Spartacus and his band on the Jumbotron screen and almost fell over the Kawasaki. The biker shoved me away.

El Gordo and the other man climbed into the back of a limousine that could have been dark blue or purple—color values were distorted beneath the flush of sky and the dust-shrouded sodium vapor lights. The limo raised more dust in getaway mode.

I turned and grabbed the biker’s shoulder.

“I’m ILC!” I yelled. “The fat bastard killed my partner! Give me the goddamn shotgun!”

Even though we were only a few feet apart, the biker probably didn’t hear me. My intention was clear. I reached for the shotgun but had it yanked from my grip, which wasn’t all that strong.

Then the biker wheeled about, the back tire spraying dirt in my face, and zoomed off in a direction opposite that which the limo had taken.

I was blinking and spitting mud when Lew Rolling showed up.

“Looking for you! Jesus, R! What the hell—”

“It’s a dead-red,” I told him. “Bucky Spartacus!”

“Jesus!”

I grabbed the handkerchief he handed me, wiped my eyes. Then I pulled Lew toward the tech trailer from which the lighting and stage effects were controlled. It was parked near the backstage ramp.

“Give me your piece!”

Lew was a little slow complying; I yanked the. 40 caliber auto from his belt holster and gave him a push. “Tell them to pull the plug! Stop the show! I’ll get Bucky off the stage!”

“But are you—”

“Do it!” I yelled, still barely able to hear anything, including myself. I ran past Lew to the ramp. And a dozen feet up the
ramp. And stalled there, as if the remainder of the ramp had become a vertical wall. I dropped to my hands and knees, trembling. Fucking Tasers!

This time the helping hand belonged to Beatrice Harp.

“What in the name of—”

“Bucky’s about to be assassinated! Get me to the stage!”

Easier said than done. I had some trouble keeping my feet going in a straight line. Before we made it backstage we were attracting attention, including armed security personnel. Three of them, and I had a gun in my hand. Bea and I kept yelling “ILC!” but they weren’t buying it. Taking into account how I must have looked, I couldn’t blame them.

So I was disarmed, manhandled again in spite of Bea’s screams of protest. While we fought not to have our wrists cuffed behind our backs the show went on, Chimera and Bucky Spartacus belting out a rocker.

I would’ve been on my way to the closest lockup, but Ben Waxman and Harry Stiles, alerted by Lew Rolling’s signal, got there on the run and began trying to control the situation. I kept repeating “Dead-red!” and “Get Bucky off the stage!”

About then Bucky missed a riff on his Stratocaster and muffed a lyric out there. Chimera covered for him, but Bucky couldn’t resume the beat. He looked glassy-eyed. Then he stopped trying to play altogether and took himself out of the show.

His head jerked back as Chimera put a hand on his shoulder. There was no spray of blood and brains from a sniper’s shot. He began to convulse. Chimera backed off, looking our way for help. It was not just an impromptu sideshow and she knew it. I was still partially deaf but I could hear and feel the crowd reaction, a change in tone and mood. The boys in the band were looking at each other, but when Bucky dropped to his knees they finally stopped playing.

It wasn’t the dead-red I had anticipated that soon had him
writhing and howling in torment while Chimera continued to back away, a hand pressed to her pouty mouth, eyes white from shock. If anything, considering the bloodlines of most of those watching, it was worse. Bucky Spartacus was hairing-up in front of a shitload of Lycans.

Bucky was a werewolf.

e all play a game with ourselves called “What If?
”

There has never been a winner.

Maybe
if
I had trusted my gut instead of accepting Joe Cronin’s ground rules and had gone straight to Bucky when I arrived at the amphitheater, I would have sniffed the kid out before any harm came to him. There are two kinds of rogues, i.e., unregulated werewolves: those who know what they are and don’t give a damn, and those so recently infected they have not yet felt the impact of their first full moon.

Of course the moon wasn’t completely full when Bucky rose up howling onstage, tearing off what was left of his rocker duds. Which made him, like his girlfriend Chickie, an OOPs.

And there are two kinds of people who find themselves in the vicinity of a raging Hairball: the lucky and the seriously screwed.

The bass player was a few steps too close to his former front man, and a second too slow reacting.

When his mangled remains fell in the midst of the infield crowd, panic turned to havoc. Or maybe it was the other way around. Law-abiding Lycans and High Bloods alike were falling over one another to get out of range: an adult werewolf could leap nearly thirty feet from a standing start, and as much as twelve
feet vertically. They had a lot of fast-twitch fiber in their bulked-up, zoomorphic thighs.

After killing the bass player the Hairball was having a look around. The other band members had climbed to a higher level on the stage, dragging Chimera along with them.

“Who’s packing silver?” I yelled.

Nobody was. Wrong time of the month. I had silvertips as part of the load in my Glock, but it was still under a trailer in the lot.

The Hairball dropped to all fours, looking our way. Then it cast a yellow eye on a boom-mounted camera that was being remotely operated from the tech truck.