The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (30 page)

Annie B grabbing me by the throat and
hauling me through the backyard hadn’t been in my plan, but it
happened anyway. So did her switching me into a fireman’s carry
despite my not so quiet protests and her launching the pair of us
over a backyard gate in a single sure leap, booted feet smashing
down against concrete on the opposite side.

Annie B didn’t stop. I hung on for my life
as she sprinted away from the house, down a driveway and out onto
the road. There was a man-made—or vamp-made I suppose—lake in the
middle of the place, with the homes build all around it in an oval,
so every home had a lakefront view, nothing on the other side
distracting them. Seemed like a waste of space, but that’s rich
people for you.

Annie B knew where she was heading even if I
didn’t. To me it all looked the same, what I could see of it with
the Fog still holding on. For morning, even for morning in the
winter with gray all around, the place looked deserted. A normal
neighborhood you’d expect kids walking to school, cars packing up
for work—sure, it wouldn’t be a busy summer afternoon, but there
would be little specks of life inside the gray.

Here, in the gated vamp community, there was
nothing. 8AM and they were all in bed, or at least all inside. It
was only Annie B hauling me at thirty miles-per-hour, no
suspension, no seat, my ribs banging into her shoulders, my hands
grabbing onto her arms and chest in a purely
I-don’t-want-to-smash-into-the-pavement kind of way that’s not sexy
at all. Behind us, the one lone beacon of light faded away.

No one followed.

Well . . .
crap
.

I got dropped to the ground without much
love. Guess I’m-going-to-die sex doesn’t buy you as much as it used
too.

“Pretty impressive, what’s your forty time?”
I groaned another question.

Her whole body quivered. Her velvet eyes
went especially dark in the gray. All around her, vapor twisted.
“
Why?
”

“Huh?” I asked, rolling to my stomach and
pushing up.

“Why
after I told you to shut up
are
you still
fucking talking
, you
asshole
?” she
screeched at me, louder than I’d ever been.

“What?”

“Do I have to rip your tongue out?” she
asked like it might be a serious possibility.

“Pretty sure I’d scream if you did.”

A pair of house lights near us came on.
Annie B paused to watch them. “Did you really not understand the
part about how if we get caught I’m going to die?”

I winked. “I won’t let you.”

I had the warning of her face scrunching up
only a moment before she punched me in the chest, just like in the
car. I managed to turn my shoulder in time and didn’t collapse to
the pavement yet again, instead I only
felt
like I should
collapse to the pavement.

“You can’t stop it!” she growled at me, eyes
flashing.

Another light turned on.

“We need to get to the Fresno Embassy,” I
told her.

She blinked at me, unable to believe the
words coming out of my mouth. “Through the entire community?”

“Sneaking is a bad idea, sorry, but this is
better.”

Her hands found my coat, pulling me right up
close to her face. “Then why didn’t you point it out
before
we set off, if you had so many concerns?” she hissed.

“Well . . . you never would have changed the
plan to do it my way.”

Another light turned on.

“Trust me,” I continued. “I got this totally
under control.”

She pushed me back hard enough that I fell
on my ass. Which is not of the plump and well-cushioned variety.
“If I’m forced from my body, King Henry, I’m taking yours. For your
sake, I hope you do have it under control.”

Yup, I’m-going-to-die sex definitely doesn’t
have much shelf life nowadays.

“What’s going on here?” came from the
nearest driveway.

A skinny guy in a pair of boxers and nothing
else stood with his arms crossed, typical pissed-off neighbor
expression on his face, just a touch below a glare. For all the
world normal, but vampire given his lack of clothing.

Weird
.

“I’m all for some morning funny, but keep it
down, you hear? Some of us don’t have the constitution for the
day-humping.”

Day-humping
. . . I liked that one
better than
blood-whore
, but not as good as
sun-fucker
.

“I can’t believe this shit actually exists,”
came out of my mouth.

The vampire guy’s expression changed as he
actually stopped being pissed and moved towards seeing us for who
we were. We’d cleaned up after the
hump-that-shall-not-be-talked-about, gone was my
Carebears
band-aid, the ring of blood around my neck, and all the obvious
stuff. But we weren’t dressed for . . .
morning funny
.

I had on a new pair of jeans, a fresh shirt,
and a spare geomancer coat of deep brown—$49.95 at the Asylum
Administration building—a sign that said mancer to anyone that knew
we existed, and my static ring glinted on my finger, the initials
of KHP shining, might as well have flashed ‘
artifact
’ over
and over like a neon sign.

Annie B had dressed to kill, her darkest
clothing, her jacket, a pistol at her hip and a pair of knives
hanging from the other side. Then there’s her choker and that great
big
B
at her throat and the fact that—
she looked like
what she looked like
. Even among vampires she’s downright,
stop-your-breath stunning. For wanting to be sneaking, the woman
sure did stand out.

The vamp guy’s eyes went wide. “Baroness?”
he asked.

That
well known? Hadn’t guessed that
. . .

Annie B moved across the rest of the street
and into his space before either he or I could react. A knife
sprung in each hand, a slice and dice job on the way.

Odds were the guy’s a gentleman, so give him
a hundred years, maybe more, maybe less, but nothing extra special.
Just like the average mancer doesn’t get in a life or death fight
and find their extra tricks, it had to be the same for vampires.
This guy probably ate off donors, his death count a handful
out-of-necessity types. But Annie B . . . she knew what to do to
him.

Trust me . . . the woman has tricks.

She sliced out his throat first, a backhand
slash that went right across his vocal cords, biting deep but not
deep enough to hit his spine. Her other hand stabbed, three quick
gut wounds, painful as hell. Then she stopped, apparently finished.
It wouldn’t kill him. I figured that right off the bat. She’d shut
him up and put him down. Guess killing random vampires ain’t in her
protocols, just those connected to the theft.

At her feet, vampire guy bled a pool of red
goo.

“How long we got?” I asked as she trotted
back to me and grabbed my shoulder to get me jogging with her.

“Not long.”

“Like a minute not long or five minutes not
long?”

More house lights were going online.

“More like a minute.” She glanced over her
shoulder. “Not from him. One of those houses will phone the embassy
about a vampire sneaking around with a human. They’ll send out what
will look like your usual rent-a-cop patrol car, but is really
gentles trained for combat to protect the embassy.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Fuck you, King Henry.”

“Love you too, Annie.”

I was more out of breath than Annie B as we
hurried down the street. In fact, she wasn’t out of breath at all.
Douchebag showoff vampires.

“Why did you do this?”

“It will work out,” I gasped, shouldn’t have
made her pick up drive-through before we came, the indigestion was
brutal. “Trust me. I got this.”

“
Tell me now
,” she growled.

“We get into the embassy, we get caught, you
kill the duke, I take care of the Shaky Stick. Simple.”

“Only I
can’t
kill the duke.”

“I got it covered.”

“How?” she asked, starting to look just a
tad hopeful.

“Later.”

“King Henry!”

“There’s the rent-a-cops!” I pointed.

Annie B pulled her gun. And I thought the
knives were sexy. She headshotted both of the poor bastards from
fifty yards before they could even stop the car. They didn’t have a
chance. The car kept going until it ran into a mini-van parked
along the sidewalk.

“Well . . . that was
noisy
,” I
muttered.

“Shut up!”

“Now what?”

She checked out the rent-a-car as we ran
past, apparently fine with the way one of the gentles got wounded
but put another bullet in the second one’s shoulder just to be
safe. “Now they’ll get together all the embassy guards and start
searching for us.”

“Good, that’s what I thought.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, good.”

Her expression reminded me of a pissed off
Miranda Daniels thinking about shoving air up my dick-hole. “If I
didn’t need you to run hard, I’d kneecap you.”

“Lucky for me, you do.”

“I can’t believe I slept with you . . .”

“You were desperate.”

She pointed at what was apparently the
community recreation hall. “That’s the Fresno Embassy.”

I couldn’t help it. “This just keeps getting
weirder.”

“Listen, dude, I don’t care what this is if
it means we don’t have to take Dingle’s final for a whole extra
day. It can be the most boring experience in my life, it can be sex
with Soto-crazy, I’m still going to suckle the thing at the teat
and enjoy the crap out of it, ya feel me? Besides, we’ve been
hearing about this for four years. It’s
our turn
, dude, so
quit whining and stand up like a man—you’re going with us.”

That’s my best friend in the whole world.
Preston Landry,
Pocket
to his friends. Pocket grew up in the
part of California that mattered, the part where they still used
‘
dude
’ as a word, on the coast. Floromancer, Ultra of
course, he started out a better student and ended up a worse one by
the time we graduated. Not his fault so much as mine. Pocket’s a
middle-of-the-road kind of guy, but he’ll stand up for you, even
when you’re the one that’s blasting yourself.

“Why did you even try to go with her again,
El Rey
? Last time you said ‘
never again, Jesus, she’s
plain crazy
’. I remember because you said my name like a white
boy back then, yet you did it
again
. And now look at you.
She dumped you
again
, she called you scum, and you went and
got pissed drunk. But, more importantly: where are you getting the
booze and why haven’t you told me about the connections?”

Jesus Valencia, on account of being named
Jesus didn’t need a nickname, though sometimes I called him
‘
Lord and Savior
’ when I felt particularly blasphemous. He
came to the Asylum speaking not one word of English, born and bred
an orphan of Mexico, which means he’s a bad motherfucker when he
wants to be. He’s also a certifiable genius and if it wasn’t for
the fact he played catch up from so far behind, he’d have lapped
everyone else. Faunamancer, Ultra, has an affinity for dogs,
especially strays. By the first week of Single year, he already
picked up the important words, like ‘
fucker
’ and
‘
bathroom
’; by the time this conversation is taking place,
he spoke better English and had a bigger vocabulary than I did when
he actually wanted to use it. Jesus has a thing for playing weak
and playing dumb, kept him alive for many years he’s told me.

“Who are we to stand in the way of love?
Valentine and King Henry are meant to struggle through life
together, fighting and breaking apart and coming together again,
creation and destruction, it’s when they are most miserable that
they are happy. Look at him, a broken man hugging his pillow and
he’s enjoying every moment of the angst.”

Raj Malik. Cryomancer, Ultra.
Second-generation Indian-American, second-generation mancer. He was
born in Oregon of all places and his father owns quite a few
businesses up that way, mostly franchise stuff. He’s never had an
enemy in his life and hate has never entered his heart. Guy’s a
walking Hindu stereotype but then who am I to talk, white-trash
stamped on my forehead?

Pocket poked me with a finger. “You have to
get up, dude. It’s the
Jobs Fair
. We’ve been talking about
it all year. Been dreaming about it since Single. The moment has
come, dude. Ball up. Bros before hoes!”

I was face down on my bed in the Ultra
dorms, enjoying the misery of being dumped by Valentine Ward for
the second time in my life, for trying to do something with her
we’d done plenty of times before, though not in a while leading up
to the moment, sadly.

“She said she’d never speak with me again,”
I mumbled into my pillow.

My three friends huddled around me. Raj in
white with blue trim colors that always matched with his turban,
and Jesus and Pocket looking like the least identical twins in
existence, Jesus dark-skinned and as short as I was, Pocket
tall—not a rival for Welf, but still over six feet—and the
archetypical white guy of brown hair and green eyes. It was only
made worse by their colors, one brown with green trim and the other
green with brown trim. Like I told you earlier, commie shit those
uniforms.

Raj kept as optimistic as always. “She’ll
speak with you again, she lights up when you are with her. You
can’t beat that.”

“Unless you’re good looking and wealthy,”
Jesus didn’t help.

“Like Welf,” Pocket helped as well.

I screamed into my pillow—but like a guy
scream . . . roar even. Not girly at all. “How do I keep screwing
this up? One month she’s sneaking into my bed and the next she’s
acting like one little hand down her skirt while we’re making out
is the end of the world!”