Biting Nixie (11 page)

“And who was that young man you were seen with at the mayor's office?”

“Yes, moth…
what
?”

“Alba Gruen heard it from Kristin Fenster who was at Dolly Barton's Curl Up and Dye today getting her roots touched up.”

Oh, great. I was featured gossip at Dolly Barton's, Meiers Corners's gigabit rumor router. “Um, I wasn't with anybody. You done with that?” I sprang up, grabbed the desert plates and escaped into the kitchen. There, I took my time rinsing them and putting them in the dishwasher. As I added soap and started the cycle I wondered if all the uncomfortable questions were a secret mother ploy just to get me to do the dishes.

 

I left my parents' house and headed southwest. It was still too early to go to band auditions. I got the bright idea that I should go walk around the festival area. Then I could decide if I needed a shuttle, or if the drunk people could just stumble from one event to the next.

My parents lived on Fourth and Roosevelt, on the upper east side. The official festival parking lot was at Nieman's Bar, where we'd also be holding the Sheepshead Tournament. That was on West Fifth and Main. I humped the mile over.

It took me about fifteen minutes. I still had an hour or so to kill until auditions. So I walked north on Fifth, then ambled around the area.

The beer tent would go nicely in the Good Shepherd parking lot, one block north of Nieman's. The midway (sans rides) would be set up in the church basement. I kept going.

The whole next block was tourist central. Fudge shoppe (The Fudgy Delight), pastry/bakery store (The Pie Delight), deli (you guessed it, the Deli Delight), and the Caffeine Café. The deli would host the cheese tasting, the pastry/bakery was doing the cake contest. The beauty pageant, perversely enough, was being held at the Fudgy Delight. That had been a dance hall in the forties and had a small platform stage and twenty tables with chairs. Chairs, of course, were the rarest commodity. So far, so good.

The biggest problem was finding someplace large enough to house the bands. It was bad enough trying to find a place to audition them. Having a crowd listening and dancing added a whole new level of logistic and equipment nightmares. Dentist office, nope. Dolly Barton's salon, nope. Blood Center, double-nope with a dollop of ick.

Sighing, I walked back to the fudge shoppe. Not enough room for performance, but it would do for tonight's auditions. Cary Grant still hadn't paid his electric bill and The Fudgy Delight was the only place big enough that wasn't full of customers on a Thursday night. I stopped in, to double-checked the arrangements.

To my surprise, an auditionee was already there, setting up a karaoke machine. The comfortable, baggy clothes and haphazard chestnut hair clued me to her identity even before I saw her face. Rocky Hrbek, the flute player in our orchestra.

I knew Rocky from high school. As a gawkward teenager, Rocky was overweight and plagued with acne and greasy hair. Her best friend was her flute. I sort of empathized with her, since mine was my guitar Oscar. I never knew what she called hers.

High school was not forever, thank heavens. After college Rocky came back to Meiers Corners slimmed down and cleared up. She was now incredibly hot.

She didn't know it. Not a clue. In some ways that made her hotter. Guys…and even some gals…made passes at her, but Rocky just didn't get it. She dressed like a frump, cut her own hair, and never wore makeup. She was hot, but I think she still
felt
like a high school misfit. I really sympathized with that.

The door of the Fudgy Delight jingled when I entered. Rocky turned. Seeing me, she gave me her stunning smile. Stunning, as in I had to pick my jaw up from the floor. “Hey, Nixie.” She had a smooth contralto that sounded like honey.

I cleared my throat, to give me time to recover my composure. “Hey yourself. Um…what are you doing here?”

“Auditioning,” Rocky said, as if it were the most natural assumption in the world. “I came early so I could warm up.”

I stared at her. Rocky was classically trained, more comfortable with Dvorak than Dragonforce. “This is for rock bands.”

“Yes, I know.” She patted the machine. “That's why I brought this.”

“You're…singing?”

“Of course not, Nixie.” Rocky laughed, a bell-like sound that made you want to amuse her forever just to hear it. “I'm playing my flute. The Mozart Concerto in G.”

“But—” How did I phrase this? “Isn't that classical?”

“Sure. But I rearranged it. Flute and garage band. I thought it'd make a nice alternative to sappy pop charts everyone else will be doing.”

I was speechless but tried anyway. “Uh…but…”

“I based my arrangement on Weird Al's sound. I like what he does with accordion.”

I didn't bother to point out that Weird Al does parodies. Flute and garage band was already disastrous enough. But sarcastic flute and garage band? Yikes. I was trying to work out what I could possibly say when my cell phone tweedled “Flight of the Bumblebee”.

My phone is set with a different ring tone for each of my family and friends. My parents are “Home on the Range”. Elena is the theme from
Cops
. You get the picture.

“Flight of the Bumblebee”
meant Unknown Number. I pulled out my phone and stared at the display. Blocked call.

Interesting. And fortunate. “I've got to take this. Um, see you in thirty, Rocky.” Maybe I would think of something to say by then. As Rocky waved a cheerful goodbye I slipped out the door and spun open my Juke. “Talk to me.”

A slight pause. Then a harsh, deep voice rasped, “Dietlinde Schmeling.”

There was something creepy about the voice. It sounded hollow. Too hollow. Spooky-hollow, like there was no person behind it. It had to be machine-enhanced because no human vocal cords could have produced that voice.

The best defense against spooky is Attitude. I reached in my pocket for some chewing gum. As I popped it out of the blister-pack I stuck the phone between shoulder and jaw. Using my best punk tone I said, “What'cha want?”

“Dietlinde Schmeling. You will resign.”

He kept repeating my daggy legal name. No matter how creepy, that was plain annoying. “Resign what, Deep Throat?”

“You will resign as head of the fundraiser, Dietlinde Schmeling.”

He'd done it again.
Dietlinde.
It was like a hit between the shoulder blades. “That don't make no sense, Deep Whoever-you-are. Why should I?”

“Because if you don't”—ominous pause—“something
bad
will happen.”

“Something bad, uh-huh. Is that something
bad
or something
Bad
? Or something
B-A-D
? And who the hell are you, anyway?”

“This is no joke, Dietlinde Schmeling. If you do not resign immediately, you
will
regret it. Do
not
cross Lord Ruthven.” He hung up.

I stared at my phone a moment before swinging it shut. That was just psycho. Especially that “Lord Ruthven” shit. Who'd he think he was, Bob Dole? I began to wonder if maybe Bruno wasn't on to something with all his woo-woo theories.

I shook the thought away. I still had to find a place for the bands to perform.

So, trying to put that double-weird conversation out of my mind, I walked one block east, to Fourth and Jefferson.

And saw it.

Heavenly angels sang, fairies danced, and fireworks lit the night sky. It was the Perfect Place.

Kalten's Roller Skating Rink had been a hopping spot in the heyday of roller blades. Now it did more weddings and parties than skating. But it was big, it had chairs, and it was near enough to the other venues for people to walk (or stumble, if they were drunk, or drag themselves there with their lips). A convenient little sign in the door gave me a number to call for party reservations. I pulled out my cell phone, punched it in. I got an answering machine, but I left my name and number and slipped my phone away, feeling tons lighter.

“Well, well. What have we here? It's Emerson's little blood-chick.”

I jerked around. A man emerged from the shadows. A man in a suit. He looked like—no, that was impossible.

This was even creepier than the voice. The guy emerging from the shadows looked like the suit from the gang. The
first
suit. The Der Arnold guy—Cutter. Who had possibly been a headless body the last time I saw him.

He was remarkably recovered now.

I kicked my breastbone up. My shoulders automatically squared, my spine straightened. I was scared, but at least it didn't show. “What do you want?”

“Where's your protector, chickadee?” Cutter murmured, coming closer. “Are you all alone? Mine for the taking?” He reached out, skimmed fingers along my jaw. I jerked back.

He smiled at my reaction. It revealed long canines. Really long. Almost like—fangs.

I didn't stop to think. I whipped my keys out of my pocket, fanned like claws between the fingers of my fist. Putting my body behind it, I slashed them up into his face.

Cutter
howled
, covered his face with his hands. Blood dripped from behind.

I ran.

Straight into one of the long coats. “Where do you think you're going, blood bitch?” Long fingers tightened cruelly around my upper arms, pricked into my skin. I glanced down in panic. They were—real claws.

Chapter Nine

“Let me go!” I shrieked, struggling like a maniac.

It was like I did
nothing
. The guy's strength was immense.

Until square, competent fingers wrapped around the claws. Square, bronzed fingers which pulled the claws away with startling ease.

The gang guy's strength was immense, but Julian Emerson was stronger by far.

I expected one of those blasé comments of his. About this being particularly ill-considered, or believing the fellow was out of line.

Instead, Julian
growled
. “Let the
fuck
go of her.”

With a grimace of pain, the coat taunted, “Why? She your chew toy, Emerson? Oh, that's right. You and your kind call them
donors
.”

Time out here. I
did
note all the blood references. But in my defense, I thought it was only a gang thing. A code for how dangerous they were, like tattoos or signs.

Of course, that didn't explain how I missed the other glaring inconsistencies, like what a big Chicago gang really wanted with tiny Meiers Corners (our two-hundred-fifty-dollars-per-year drug money? The joy of knocking over our one-man convenience store?). Maybe I just didn't want to notice.

I preferred to think I was distracted by Julian Emerson's rampant masculinity.

Speaking of which…at the gang guy's taunt, Julian's eyes turned hard as rubies. Through tightly closed lips he said, “You are an unprincipled savage.” Then he seized the gang guy and tossed him twenty yards like a pitcher nailing home plate.

My jaw dropped. Julian had flung a two-hundred-pound man like a baseball. And a man who had come back from the dead had honest-to-gosh, real-live mastiff-sized fangs. Glinting in the moonlight, not plastic, not imaginary. Not anything but
scary
.

Obviously we had left the Topeka airport, Toto, and were circling over Sunnydale.

Cutter sprang forward. He bared fangs at Julian and hissed. Not a human hiss, but the low, deadly warning of a beast. The hairs raised on the back of my neck.

Cutter's face was completely unmarked, which unnerved me even more. I had raked keys over that face. I had seen blood dripping from between his fingers. Yet now he could be a Coverboy makeup model.

I was unnerved, but Julian wasn't even fazed. He stalked toward Cutter, so big and menacing that
I
shivered. “You and your gang will get one thing straight, Cutter. If even a single child or female complains of so much as a pinprick, I am coming after you. And I will
shred
you. I will feed you strip by strip into the furnace of the sun.”

It sounded gruesome. And strangely, I didn't get the feeling Julian thought he was exaggerating.

“But if you or
any
of your gang even
touch
Nixie”—and here Julian emitted a growl that sounded like it came from a twelve-foot tiger—“I will personally disembowel each and every one of you and toss your guts to the crows while you watch. And that's just to start.”

In response, Cutter and his hench mutant squeaked. Backing away, they faded silently into the night.

Well. Apparently civilized suit Julian Emerson had a savage side. It made me…hot.

Until he turned his fierce expression on me. “What the hell were you doing? Didn't I tell you
not
to go out alone at night?”

Relief evaporated. I drew myself up to my full height and glared back. “What was I supposed to do?” I returned, fists hitting hips. “Call on you, O Great Protector? Oh, wait, I can't. You never gave me your phone number.”

“I'm staying at Strongwell's. You know that number, yes?”

Okay, that explained why he'd been working out half-naked there. In my own defense, I'd been a little distracted by pumped pecs and sleek bronzed skin and…yeah.

“But to remove even that excuse—here.” Julian whipped out a card, so fast that if it had been a knife it would have sliced the night in two. “My cell phone. Next time,
call
.”

“Gee, thanks, SuperLegal.” I stuck the card in my jeans pocket without a glance. “Don't you have more important things to do, Emerson? Like drawing up torts or researching precedent or something? The things we're paying your five-fucking-C fee for?”

His fingers went around my upper arms. His eyes flared almost red in the streetlight. He looked like he wanted to shake me. “Stopping the courts is worthless if I can't stop the gang.”

Well, that was just laughable, so I laughed. “You? You personally are going to stop a
gang
? How? By throwing your law books at them? By
talking
them to death?”