You Suck (13 page)

“Fuck this,” Monet said. This whole thing was just too embarrassing. He’d paid rent on the gun, hadn’t he? He drew the Glock from his waistband and squeezed one off at the statue.

“Shit,” P.J. said, ducking. “Are you crazy?”

“Bi-atch need to learn a—” Monet’s comment was choked off.

P.J. stood up and looked back. There was smoke streaming out of the bullet hole in the statue, and in the second he watched, it had formed into a hand and grabbed Monet by the throat. P.J. turned to run, but something caught the hood of his tracksuit and yanked him back off his feet. He could hear Monet gagging and choking. Then he felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck and he felt suddenly light-headed.

The last thing he saw was Fly peeling away in the Honda.

B
ow before me, skeezy mortals, for now I see you for the pathetic little rodents that you are. Scurry before my dazzling darkness, daysters, for I am your mistress, your queen, your goddess—I have been brought into the fold—I am Abigail Von Normal, NOSFERATU, bitches!

Sort of.

OMG. It was so fucking cool—like coming twice with Skittles and a Coke. I was in the loft, spacing into my jams on my MP3 player. I had downloaded the latest Dead Can Dub CD (
Death Boots Badonka Mix
) at the Starbucks and it was totally transcendent. I was transported to an ancient Romanian castle, where everyone had done X and was dancing totally chill and sensuous (with perfect hair). I was grinding a free-form booty dance on the armchair—perfecting my dance gestalt—when I saw some smoke coming in under the door.

(I can’t wait to dance with Jared to this new CD. He’s so going to love this move I do. That’s what I love about dancing with gay guys. If they get wood during a booty dance, you can just take it as a compliment, not an agenda. Jared said that if I was a guy, he would totally suck my dick. He can be so sweet.)

So I pulled out one of my headphones and I was like, “Whoa, fire in the staircase—sucks to be me.” There’s only one exit, so, you know, blackened Abby coming up.

But the smoke formed into a pillar, and then it started growing arms and legs. When I saw it had eyes I ran into the bedroom and shut the door. I wasn’t trippin’ or anything, just totally calm. But it wasn’t like when your friends hold your hair while you puke and tell you it’s just the drugs and you’ll be okay—so I went for the safe thing of locking the door so I could assess the situation. Then the door just ’splodes into splinters and there’s the Countess, totally naked, standing in the doorway with the knob in her hand. And she was totally hot, except that her legs were all fucked up, like they were burned or rotted or something.

So I’m all, “You totally wrecked your deposit.”

And the Countess like grabs my hair and pulls me to her and bites my neck, just like that. It didn’t really hurt—it was more surprising—like you woke up from getting a root canal to find your dentist going down on you. Well, not exactly like that—more mystical. But still, surprising. (Okay, it hurt, but not as much as the time Lily tried to pierce our nipples with a compass from geometry class and an ice cube. Youch!)
She smelled like burning meat, and I tried to push her away, but it was like my limbs were paralyzed or there was a fat guy sitting on me—like I was buried alive or something, just watching it happen. And then I started to get light-headed and I thought I was going to pass out. That’s when the ho dropped me.

She goes, “Go downstairs and get my clothes off the sidewalk. And make coffee.”

And I’m like,
Wait a minute, I just lost my mortality virginity, shouldn’t I get a cigarette and a fucking towel or something?
But I just said, “Okay,” because where the Countess was all burned was healing while I watched, and it was kind of freaking me out to be looking at her naked, burned-up thighs and her totally red pubes anyway. So I went downstairs and just outside the door there was a homeless guy digging through a pile of clothes. Well, really, he was sniffing her pan ties. And because I don’t feel we always do enough to help the homeless, I was like, “Take them, and tell no one what you witnessed here to night.”

(I was already feeling the superiority of my Nosferatitude, so it only seemed appropriate that I go all noblesse oblige on his ass.) So off he went to sniff the lacy crotch of the undead while I went back upstairs to find coffee filters.

So when I get up there the Countess is dressed and hair brushed and she’s all, “Where is Tommy? Have you seen Tommy? Did you talk to those cops? And where’s Tommy?”

And I was all, “Countess, begging your pardon and shit, but you need to chill. The vampyre Flood was gone when
I got here this morning, and so was that bronze statue from the other side. I thought you guys went off to sleep in the damp womb of your native soil or something.”

“Yuck!” goes the Countess. Then she tightens down all of sudden. “Make me a cup of coffee, two sugars, and squeeze one of those vials of blood into it—and call us a cab.”

And I was like, “Hey, step off, Countess. I’m one of you and you are not the boss of me and—”

And she said, “I said for
us,
didn’t I?”

So I did her bidding—well,
our
bidding, really—and we took a cab over to the Marina Safeway, but why we didn’t transform into bats and fly is beyond me. Anyway, we were there in ten minutes. But as we start to pull in, the Countess tells the driver to keep going.

She was all, “It’s Rivera and Cavuto. This is not good.”

The POS brown cop car was parked in front of the store. I was all, “Cops? Their shit is weak.”

She seemed surprised that I knew the cops, but I told her how I had owned them like the little wussy-boys that they are and I could tell that the Countess was feeling pretty good about bringing me into the dark fold of the coven.

Then she was all, “Fucking Clint—he’s telling them about Tommy.”

But I couldn’t even see what she was looking at beyond the big glass front of the Safeway. I guess my powers will develop as time goes on. Five hundred years is a long time to get your vampyre kung fu down.

The Countess had the driver drop us at Fort Mason, so
we could still see the front of the Safeway, and we stood in the fog like the creatures of the night that we were while we waited for the cops to leave.

Then the Countess put her arm around my shoulders and she was all, “Abby, I’m sorry I, uh, attacked you like that. I was hurt really badly and to heal I needed fresh blood. I wasn’t really in control of myself. It won’t happen again.”

“No worries,” I told her. “I’m honored to be promoted. Besides, it was kind of hot.” Which it was, you know, except for the smell of burning flesh and stuff.

And she was all, “Well, thanks for looking out for us.”

And I was all, “Pardon, Countess, but why are we at the Safeway?” Because it’s not like we needed groceries.

And she was all, “These guys used to work with Tommy, and one of them knows that he is, uh, one of the children of the night. I think they might know something about where he is now.”

Then, over at the Safeway, we saw this goofy-looking guy with frizzy hair and glasses unlock the front door and let the cops out. They got in their car and the frizzy guy locked the front door behind them.

“Showtime,” said the Countess. She zipped up her leather jacket, took a pair of sunglasses out of her jacket pocket, and put them on. She goes, “Stay back, Abby. I’ll be right back.” Then she started across the parking lot toward the Safeway, taking big strides and looking all angel of vengeance, with her red hair flying out behind her, and the lights shining down on her through the fog.

I was like, “Oh shit!”

She didn’t even slow down. When she got about ten feet from the front window she snatched up one of the steel-reinforced trash cans like it was made of cardboard and flung it through the window. And she just kept walking! Little cubes of safety glass rained down on her and she just walked through the front of the store like she owned it and everyone in it—which she did.

Before I even got in the store, she was coming back around the corner, dragging the frizzy-haired guy by the throat. She threw him up against a rack of wine bottles, which shattered, spilling red all over the floor and splattering the registers and stuff.

I was all, “Oh, dog, Countess gonna crack open a forty of whup-ass on you now. Oh, you in the shit now, wigga!” (I am not inclined to use hip-hop vernacular often, but there are times when, like French, it just better expresses the sentiment of the moment.)

Just then the whole crowd of guys I’d seen in the limo came running around the corner. The Countess snatched a wine bottle off the rack, and without a second of hesitation, she threw it and it hit the first guy, a tall, hippie-looking guy, right in the middle of the forehead and he went down like he was shot.

She goes, “Back!” and they all headed back around the corner the way they came, except the hippie-looking guy, who was out cold.

Then the Countess picked up the guy with glasses by
the throat. And even though he was like a foot taller than her, she whipped him around like a rag doll until he was screaming stuff about Satan and Jesus and telling her to get behind him and shit. And the Countess was all, “Where is Tommy?”

And he was all, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

And the Countess grabbed him by the hair and held his head steady against the wine rack. Real chilly, she says, “Clint, I’m going to take your right eye now. Then if you don’t tell me where Tommy is, I’m going to take your left. Ready. On three. One…Two…”

Then he’s all, “I didn’t have anything to do with it. She’s the spawn of Satan, I told them that.”

“Three!” goes the Countess.

“He’s in Lash’s apartment on Northpoint. I don’t know the number.”

And the Countess just yells “Number?” out to the whole store.

And the black guy pops up from behind a display of Cheerios and is all, “Six ninety-three Northpoint, Apartment 301.” And one of the other guys pulls him back down.

Then the Countess is all, “Thank you. If he’s hurt, I’ll be back.” And she throws the Clint guy through a rack of Doritos, which exploded their nacho cheesy goodness all over the place.

Then she’s all, “Well, that’s a nice surprise.”

And I’m all, “That Lord Flood is in an apartment on Northpoint?”

“I didn’t think they would really know. I just didn’t know where else to start.”

“Probably your senses attuned to Lord Flood’s presence over the eons,” I said, like a total tard.

And she’s all, “Let’s go, Abby.”

And I don’t know why, I guess because I had like low blood sugar or something from blood loss, but I was like, “Can I get some gum?”

And she was all, “Sure. Grab some coffee, too. Whole beans. We’re almost out.”

So I did. And when I caught up with her, she was halfway across the parking lot, headed back toward Ghirardelli Square, and little pieces of safety glass were still shining in her hair and she smiled at me when I caught up and I just couldn’t help myself, because that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Ever! And I was all, “Countess, I love you.”

And she put her arm around me and kissed me on the forehead and goes, “Let’s get Tommy.”

I guess I’ll start feeling my vampyre powers tomorrow night, but right now I feel like a total fucking loser. But I am so going to rule when school starts again.

F
inding her boyfriend tied naked to an upright bed frame, covered in blood, with a dead, blue dominatrix at his feet would be enough to rattle some women’s confidence in the stability of their relationship. Some women might even take it as a sign of trouble. But Jody had been single for a number of years—she’d dated rock musicians and stockbrokers—and was conditioned to unusual bumps on the road of romance, so she simply sighed and kicked the hooker in the ribs—more as a conversation opener than a confirmation that the ho was dead—and said, “So, rough night?”

“Awk-ward,” Abby sang, peeking in the door, then immediately swinging back into the hallway.

“I forgot my safety word,” Tommy said.

Jody nodded. “Well, that had to be embarrassing.”

“She beat me.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. But it hurt. A lot.” Tommy looked past Jody toward the door. “Hi, Abby!”

Abby swung around the corner. “Lord Flood,” she said, with a nod and a little grin. Then she looked down at the body, her eyes went wide, and she swung back out into the hall.

“How’re your sister’s lice?” Tommy said.

“Shampoo didn’t work.” Abby called, without looking in. “We had to shave her head.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. She looks kind of cool, in a ‘Make a Wish kid’ kind of way.”

Jody said. “Abby, why don’t you come in and shut the door? If someone walks by and looks in, it might, oh, I don’t know, freak them out a little.”

“’Kay,” said Abby. She stepped in and palmed the door shut behind her, as if the clicking of the door latch might actually be the thing that would attract attention.

“I think I killed her,” Tommy said. “She was beating me, and she wanted me to bite her, so I did. I think I drained her dry.”

“Well, she’s dead all right.” Jody reached down and tossed the blue hooker’s arm up. It fell back to the floor. “But you didn’t drain her.”

“I didn’t?”

“She’d be dust if you did. Heart attack or stroke or something. Looks like most of her blood went on you and the carpet.”

“Yeah, I sort of tore her throat out and she fell before I could finish.”

“Well, what did she expect? You were tied up.”

“You don’t seem that bothered by it. I thought you’d be jealous.”

“Did you ask her to bring you here and beat you until you snapped and killed her?”

“Nope.”

“Did you encourage her to beat you until you snapped and killed her?”

“Of course not.”

“And you didn’t get off on her beating you until you snapped and killed her.”

“Honestly?”

“You’re naked and chained to a bed frame, and I’m just inches away from both a riding crop and your genitals. I think honesty would be a good policy.”

“Well, honestly, the killing part was kind of a turn-on.”

“But not sexual.”

“No way. It was totally homicidal lust.”

“Then we’re okay.”

“Really, you’re not mad?”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I should feel bad about it, I know, but I don’t.”

“That happens.”

“Some bitches just need killing,” Abby said, looking briefly at Tommy, then realizing he was naked under all that blood, looking away quickly.

“There you go,” Jody said. She stepped up and began to undo his restraints. They were double bands of fleece and nylon, with heavy metal shackles locked over them. “What did she buy these for, to handcuff a grizzly bear? Abby, check the body for a key.”

“Nuh-uh,” Abby said, staring down at the dead blue hooker.

Jody noticed that the kid was focused on the breasts, which were defying gravity, and apparently death itself, by standing there at complete attention. “Those aren’t real,” Jody said.

“I knew that.”

“She was a very mean woman,” Tommy said, trying to help. “With really big but insincere boobs. Don’t be afraid.”

Abby tore her gaze from the dead woman’s chest and looked from Tommy, to Jody, to Jody’s chest, and back to the body. “Fucksocks! Does everybody have big boobs but me? God, I hate you guys!” She ran out the door and slammed it behind her.

“I
do not
have big boobs,” Jody said.

“Perfectly proportioned,” Tommy said. “Perfect, really.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” Jody said, kissing him on the lips lightly so as not to get a taste of the whore’s blood.

“I think I saw her hang the key in Lash’s Forty-Fucking-Niners hat rack by the door.”

“I really need to teach you how to go to mist,” Jody said, retrieving the key.

“Yeah, that would have helped me avoid a lot of this.”

“You know the Animals sold you out, right?”

“I can’t see them doing that. She must have blackmailed them or something.”

“Clint told the cops, too. Rivera and Cavuto had our loft staked out.”

“Clint doesn’t really count, though. He traded in all his moral credibility in this world when he committed to live forever.”

“Amazing how badly the promise of immortality makes people behave.”

“Like it doesn’t matter how you treat people,” Tommy said.

“There!” Jody finally got the shackle on Tommy’s right wrist unlocked and started working on the left. They were heavy, but she thought that given the motivation of torture, she could have broken loose, or at least torn apart the bed frame. “You couldn’t just snap these?”

“I guess I need to work out.” He scratched his nose furiously. “So, should we hide the body or something?”

“No, I think it’s a good warning for your buddies.”

“Right.”

“What about the cops?”

“Not our problem,” she said as she twisted the key in the lock and snapped the restraint off his left wrist. “We don’t have a dead blue hooker in
our
apartment.”

“That’s an excellent point,” Tommy said, rubbing his wrist. “Thank you for rescuing me, by the way. I love you.” He grabbed her and pulled her to him, nearly tumbling over
on his face when she stepped back and he encountered the resistance of his ankle restraints.

“I love you, too,” she said, palming his forehead and pushing him back on balance, “but you are covered with skank oil and you will not get it on my new leather jacket.”

I
n the cab, Abby pouted—sticking out her lower lip far enough that pink was showing above her black lipstick, making her look vaguely like a cat eating a plum.

“Just drop me at my house.”

Tommy, who sat in the middle, wearing one of Lash’s Forty-Niners jerseys, put his arm around Abby’s shoulders to comfort her.

“It’s okay, kid. You did great. We are most pleased with you.”

Abby snorted and looked out the window. Jody, in turn, put her arm around Tommy’s neck and dug her nails into his shoulder. “Shut up,” she whispered, so soft that only Tommy would be able to hear it. “You’re not helping.”

“Look, Abby,” Jody said, “it’s not something that happens all at once, like in the movies. Sometimes you have to eat bugs for years before you become one of the chosen.”

“I know I did,” Tommy said. “Beetles, bugs, spiders, mice, rats, snakes, marmosets, OUCH! Stop that, I’ve been tortured already to night.”

“You two are just into each other,” Abby said. “You don’t care about anyone else. We’re like cattle to you.”

The cabdriver, who was a Hindu, looked in the rear-view mirror.

“So what’s your point?” Jody said.

Tommy elbowed her in the ribs.

“Kidding. Jeez. Abby, we care very deeply about you. We’ve trusted you with everything. In fact, you may have saved my life to night.”

Tommy reared back and looked at Jody.

“Long story,” the redhead said. Then to Abby again: “Get some rest and come to the loft tomorrow at dusk. We’ll talk about your future.”

Abby crossed her arms. “Tomorrow is Christmas. I’m trapped with the family.”

“Tomorrow is Christmas?” Tommy said.

“Yeah,” Jody said. “So?”

“The Animals won’t be working. I have some issues with them.”

“You were thinking revenge?”

“Well, yeah.”

Jody patted the flight bag on the seat, which held all of the money that the Animals had paid to Blue, almost six hundred thousand dollars. “I think you have that covered.”

Tommy frowned. “I’m beginning to doubt the steadiness of your moral compass.”

“Sure, I’m the one with skewed ethics, when you spent the whole night tied up and beaten by a blue dominatrix and then ripping her throat out.”

“You make everything sound so sleazy.”

Abby put her fingers in her mouth and whistled—shrill and nearly deafening in the enclosed space. “Hello, there’s a cabdriver here. Would you two shut the fuck up.”

“Hey,” Jody said.

“Hey,” Tommy said.

“Hey, you, little creepy girl,” said the cabdriver, “you will not be whistling in my cab again or I will be putting you out on the curb.”

“Sorry,” Abby said.

“Sorry,” Tommy and Jody said in unison.

W
ith the exception of the odd serial killer, and car salesmen who think of them as the perfect unit for measuring trunk space, nobody likes a dead whore. (“Yeah, you can get five-maybe six dead hookers in this baby.”)

“She looks so natural,” said Troy Lee, looking down on Blue. “Except for the way her arm is bent under her—and the riding crop—and the blood everywhere, I mean.”

“And she’s blue,” said Lash.

The other Animals nodded mournfully.

It was turning out to be a stressful morning for the Animals: cleaning up the mess that Jody had made of the store, getting Drew to the emergency room to get his forehead sewn up where the wine bottle had hit him (they immediately passed around the painkillers he was prescribed, which help to take the edge off), then explaining the broken front window to the manager when he came in, and now this—

“You’re the one with almost an MBA,” Barry, the short balding one, said to Lash. “You should know what to do.”

“They don’t cover what to do with a dead hooker,” Lash countered. “That’s a whole different program. Political science, I think.”

Despite the dulling they’d given themselves with the painkillers and a case of beer they’d shared in the parking lot at the Safeway, they were all feeling sad, and a little frightened.

“Gustavo is the porter,” Clint said. “Shouldn’t he do the cleanups?”

“Ahhhhh!” said Jeff, the tall ex-jock, as he thumped Clint on the head with a protruding knuckle. Feeling like the knuckle might not quite be enough, he snatched off Clint’s horn-rimmed glasses and threw them to Troy Lee, who snapped them into four neat pieces and handed them back to Clint.

“This is all your fault,” Lash said. “If you hadn’t ratted Flood out to the cops, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“I just told them that Tommy was a vampire,” Clint whined. “I didn’t tell them he was here. I didn’t tell them about your whore of Babylon.”

“You didn’t know her like we did,” Barry added, his voice breaking a little. “She was special.”

“Expensive,” Drew said.

“
Sí,
expensive,” added Gustavo.

“She probably could finally afford to go to Babylon,” said Lash.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” Clint said.

Troy Lee bent and examined Blue, careful not to touch her. “It’s hard to see bruising through the blue dye, but I guess she broke her neck. The blood must be Flood’s. I don’t see any marks on her.”

“No bite marks, you mean,” said Clint.

“Of course that’s what I mean, nit wit. You know Flood’s girlfriend did this, right?”

“How do you know?” Lash asked. “It could have been Flood.”

“I don’t think so,” said Troy Lee. “Tommy was tied up here—see the orange crap all over the restraints. And these were unlocked, not broken.”

“Maybe when Blue let him go he killed her.”

Troy Lee picked something off of Blue’s face, as delicately as if he were taking her ghost. “Except for this.”

He held a long red hair up where Lash could see it. “No reason for her to be here, if Flood was loose.”

“Dude, you’re like one of those
CSI
guys,” Drew said.

“We should call those two homicide cops,” Barry said, like he was the first who might have thought of it.

“And tell them to come help us with our dead hooker,” Lash said.

“Well they know about the vampires,” Barry said. “Maybe they’ll help us.”

“How ’bout we move her to your apartment, and then call them?”

“Well, what are we going to do with her?” Barry said, standing feet apart, hands behind his back, a brave Hobbit ready to face a dragon.

Troy Lee shrugged. “Wait until dark, then drop her in the Bay?”

“I can’t bear to touch her,” Barry said. “Not after the moments we shared.”

“You little
puntas,
” Gustavo said, stepping up and beginning to roll up the bloodstained rug. He had a wife and five children, and although he had never disposed of a dead hooker before, he thought that it couldn’t be any worse than changing the diaper on a gloopy infant.

The other Animals all looked at one another, embarrassed, until Gustavo growled at them and they jumped to move the heavy bed frame out of his way.

“I never really liked her that much, anyway,” Barry said.

“She really did take advantage of us,” Jeff said.

“I just went along with you guys so I didn’t ruin the party,” said Troy Lee. “I didn’t enjoy even half of those blow jobs.”

“Let’s just put her in my closet until to night, then a couple of us can sneak the bitch out to Hunter’s Point and drop her off.”

“On Christmas?” Drew asked.

“Can’t believe she took all our money and now she’s going to ruin Christmas,” said Troy Lee.

“Our money!” said Lash. “That bitch!”

Nobody likes a dead whore.

I
do like a dead whore now and then,” said the vampire Elijah Ben Sapir, derailing a perfectly good theme. He’d snapped the whore’s neck right before she was completely drained so there would be a body. “But one doesn’t want to be too obvious.” He dragged the whore’s body behind a Dumpster, and watched as the wounds on her neck healed over. He’d taken her in an alley near Tenth and Mission streets. He’d had the hood up on the oversized tracksuit he was wearing, so she’d been surprised when they’d ventured down the alley and he threw it back to reveal a very pale Semitic man.