Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

It struck him that he was going to be around for a Man Made Murder show, and three years ago—man, he would have loved to go to a Man Made Murder show. Bands didn’t come where he lived; you had to drive up to Albuquerque for that, and he hadn’t had the Cougar then. He
did
have two parents and a sister, though. Wished he’d appreciated
that
a little bit harder at seventeen.

Yeah, he was going to be around for a Man Made Murder show, but it wasn’t likely he’d see it.

So he wondered instead what it looked like when you staked a vampire—was it going to burst into flame and disintegrate to a pile of ashes, like in the movies? Was it even going to be as easy to stake him as they made it look?

The leather jacket was going to be a problem—another reason why he couldn’t just stake the fucker where he was. It was zipped up, and the zipper was pressed against the belly of the bus. As he wiped pizza grease off his fingers, Carl decided you
could
technically stake a vampire from behind, but the leather jacket was still a problem.

Three guys huddled at the mouth of the alley, nodding toward the bus, bumping each other with their shoulders.

In all likelihood, Carl thought, when you staked a vampire, he bled and he died, and everyone would think you’d just killed a man. And then you’d go to prison, and everyone there would think you were off your rocker when you told them your story of revenge against the vampire who’d killed your little sister. They’d probably fuck him up the ass while they made fun of him, and that would be his life, for the rest of his days, however long that lasted.

But
he’d
know. He’d know what he’d really done.

He dropped a tip on the table.

S
ound check ran long
. They were having too much of a good time—they pulled out a few more
Mercy
tunes, ones they hadn’t rehearsed, laughing as they lost their way, fumbled back. The longer they played, even without the heat of stage lights, the more they perspired. The stronger they smelled. By the third time through “Josephine,” Dean had an edge in him—restless and pacing, like a caged lion. He wiped his brow, grabbed the cold beer Teddy brought him. Tried to drown the restlessness with a big gulp of it.

It hit his throat and he started coughing, his stomach lurching. He spat what hadn’t gone down his throat onto the floor.

“All right?” Shawn asked.

“Fuck. I should’ve started with the harder stuff.”

Nick grinned from behind the kit.

His stomach rebelled. He hoped to fuck the harder stuff didn’t do the same because right now he needed a fucking drink. He coughed and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I think that’s a good sign to let the other band have a few minutes of their sound check.”

The others were grinning as they set their equipment down.

Teddy was there to take the guitar. His fingers brushed Dean’s shoulder as he lifted the strap.

The edge inside Dean reared up, and Dean pulled away, slipping free of the strap and guitar, walking away fast without a word. Clenching his damaged hand just to feel something besides the demon rocking in him.

“Food’s on the way,” Jessie said as Dean passed through the dressing room.

“Save me some,” he said, his stomach wrenching at the thought.

He found Nick around the corner, chatting up a chick with Farrah hair and a beauty mark on her cheek, her lips like pink raspberries. Sidling up to him without getting close enough to touch, he said, “You got any of that JD left?”

“Hi!” the girl said with a smile, the gum she was chewing even pinker than her lips.

“Nada,” Nick said. “Mike’s got drink chits, though.”

Dean wondered if Mike had enough chits to get him a whole bottle.

“Oh, hey, I like that,” the girl said, reaching toward Dean’s wristwatch.

He slipped away before her fingers could touch it. “Thanks,” he said to Nick, getting away from the bubblegum and the sweet berry scent of her lip gloss, the dark earthy notes pulsing underneath.

Thieves’s sound check bled through the walls.

He found Mike, asked for chits.

“You look like shit, you know.”

“Yeah. It’s just a bug.”

“So you’re going to use these for orange juice?” he said about the two tokens he dropped in Dean’s hand.

His stomach clenched as the cloying sweetness of that thought splashed through his brain.

“Sound check was good. You’ve got a meet and greet in a few,” Mike said, and before Dean realized what Mike was doing, Mike had a hand to his forehead.

Dean reared back, stumbling over his own foot. “Don’t think I’m gonna make it.”

“You don’t feel warm.”

“I’m just wicked run down. Vitamins and some rest, and I’ll be good for the show.”

“All right. Get on the bus. I’ll send someone with juice. Go on.”

He went on, straight through the door to the main hall, music blaring as he crossed into it. Ignoring the band on stage, he made a beeline for the bartender, who was pulling bottles out of a cardboard box.

“Whiskey, double. Put it in something portable.”

While he waited, he watched Thieves start then stop a song, their electric piano cutting out on them.

He slid the chits across the bar and took his drink. Headed back out the door while the other band crouched around the Wurly, trying to get it running again.

The sun was an orange tint low in the sky when he shoved open the venue’s back door. He ducked his head, keeping his eyes on the ground. He made it to the bus with only traces of an irritated headache, fumbled his bus key out of his pocket, got himself inside, half stumbling up the steps. Dread tightened his chest again. Fuck it.
Fuck
it—he was alone. He could sense no living thing on the entire bus, and he was closed in on all sides. He could live with the dread if it got him a respite from the restlessness.

The bunks, once he shut the doors on both ends, were blessedly dark, and the low throb of the nascent headache at the back of his eyes went away as quickly as it had come. He raked the curtain open and sat on the edge of his bunk. Tossed the whiskey back and closed his eyes at the trail it warmed down his gullet. No queasy stomach from that. Thank God for some favors.

When the whiskey stopped burning his nostrils, he picked up a smell again. One he’d gotten used to overnight. He lifted his palm to his nose, sniffing the bandages. It was that—but it wasn’t
from
that. It was all around him.

Actually, it wasn’t a smell at all; it felt like one because it was high up in his nostrils. Not like the tickle of a sneeze. Just…a sense.

He pulled to his feet and walked toward the back lounge. The sense in his nostrils faded a little—even more so once he yanked the flimsy door between the lounge and the bunks shut. He sat on the couch, feeling for his cigarettes, still holding the empty plastic cup in one hand. He was going to need more of what had been in that cup. A lot more. When the orange juice showed up, he’d send the runner back to the bar.

Why did it all have to get fucked up now? Those fucking
Mercy
songs—they were going to blow people away. And here he was falling apart, just when they were ready to start bringing them out.

He had to hold it together for this one show, just one fucking show. Then maybe check into a hospital. Find out what was wrong with him, before it really did kill him. He was fucking
losing
it.

E
vening bled
across the late afternoon. Traffic congealed. Activity around the bus, if not
at
the bus, picked up. One of the guys from the band had staggered out of the venue, not looking too well, and climbed on board about ten minutes ago. And in the time since, Carl had paced. And watched. And gritted his teeth in frustration—a roadie came out the back door and opened one of the bays under the bus to dig for something. Fans stopped, some of them brave enough to walk right up to and around the bus, their sneakers passing where the biker was nestled.

Carl wondered if maybe he was wrong and the biker had maybe in fact bled to death there under the bus. He’d hunkered down to the ground—a good thirty feet back from the bus—to take a look, and he couldn’t tell anything from that distance.

No, he wasn’t going to know until he reached under there again and tried to grab him out.

Three more goddamned fans wandered into the alley, talking about the bus, wondering if the band were inside. Daring each other to knock.

Given what had happened last time, he was thinking it’d be best to go for the biker’s feet. If he could get the ankle that was hooked around the under-workings of the bus and pull that out from under the edge of the bus, he’d have the leverage of the bus itself to brace against as he struggled to drag the rest of him out.

The plan of exposing him to sunlight, however, was rapidly getting away from him.

The three stakes leaned against the wall of the building opposite the venue in the alley, a women’s clothing store with white mannequins in its windows—dresses, hats, and gloves in the browns, yellows, and oranges of autumn, with a scattering of construction-paper leaves around the toes of their smart shoes.

New plan, if he didn’t lose the fucking vampire as soon as it got full dark: wait until the show was starting. Fans would be inside, along with the band and, hopefully, the crew.

After another twenty minutes, the street took on that cozy evening feel—the pizza place was lit up, headlights were on, the sky a deep magenta heading toward black. The first few stars twinkled in the heavens.

Carl shifted his weight to his other foot, arms crossed, neck stiff from sitting and sleeping in his car.

One last huddle of fans hung on, reluctant to leave the proximity of the bus to join the crowd shuffling into the building.

Carl pulled in a deep lungful of air. He had to do something. Letting it out, he said, “Hey, do you know who’s opening for them?”

A guy with his back to him half turned. “Thieves.”

“Shit. Really?”

“You heard of them?”

“My brother saw them open for Aerosmith. He’d fucking kill to see them again. I wish he’d known.”

“They’re that good, huh?”

“That’s what he says. He’d know better than me. He deejays, out in—” He caught himself on the brink of naming his own town, leaving something for the cops to go on, assuming he managed to get away after taking care of the biker. “Out in Los Angeles.” There, that should have enough prestige. “They’ll probably be hitting the stage soon. You should check them out.”

“What about you?”

“I’m just waiting for my sister. Supposed to take her to dinner for her birthday. If I’d known Man Made Murder was playing…Hey, you guys have a good time in there.”

The guys talked for another minute or two amongst themselves before shrugging and heading up the alley, around the corner, digging in their pockets for tickets.

Carl let out a pent-up breath. Grasping the stakes in one hand, he turned his attention to the bus.

It jostled. He chalked it up to the guy inside walking around.

Moving quickly, he crossed the alley and stayed close to the venue’s wall, praying the door didn’t swing open and spit more people out.

He made it to the rear tires and slowed, calculating distances, stopping shy of where he wanted to be, giving himself a chance to duck for a look.

With the sun behind the building, the underside of the bus was black as night.

He didn’t see what he’d expected to see—but it was dark. He slid over a few feet, to where he wanted to be, and checked again.

Shit. His eyes must be fucking with him. He’d been right
here
the whole time it’d been getting dark. He’d have seen the fucking biker walking around.

Swearing in a whispered breath, he flattened himself to get underneath the bus, just to make sure.

There was fucking nothing there.

A
s his third
cigarette burned down to the filter, Dean heard a scrape from farther up the bus. His orange juice, hopefully—which meant he’d be able to put in an order for whiskey. He stubbed the cigarette out, his lip curling at the thought of the juice.

Another scrape, and the skin behind his ears tightened, his chin lifting toward the bus’s roof. He got slowly to his feet, an arm out to steady himself, a hand reaching back to his pocket, where he’d stowed his knife. He turned his eyes to the ceiling.

The voice of a rational Dean—the old Dean, before all of this—was telling him it was just a pigeon or something.

At night?

An alley cat then.

A quick shuffle overhead, farther up the bus, was followed by a
thump
he felt through the bus floor.

Your orange juice
, old Dean said, but today’s Dean unfolded the knife, gripping the handle tight. He switched out the light in the back lounge before darting a glance through the darkness, trying to think of where he could go.

It’s Nick, fucking around. He’d been eying those hatches on the roof.

He flattened himself beside the door. Trying not to breathe.

His bones felt like they were starting to crack under the weight of dread. He felt like he was back in his truck, out on that black road—like he’d never left it. Like there was no escape, really. His throat held back the edge of a noise. He touched his fingers to the back of the door—cheap plastic with a lock a four-year-old could break.

He didn’t need to hear footsteps: he could map the approach with that weird sense high in his nostrils. He turned his cheek to the wall, teeth gritted. Breathing out his nostrils so he wouldn’t breathe in the fermented meat smell.

The knife handle was hard in his fist.

From the bunkroom came the light scrape of curtain tracks, the soft rustle of fabric.

Then silence like a precipice.

He wanted to be anywhere but here. Anyfuckingwhere.

The door made a quiet click before it juttered on its tracks.

He felt like he was free-falling off the precipice.

The full smell of the biker rolled in—leather and exhaust, road grit and oil, and that hint of fermented meat.