Coffin Fit (The Grateful Undead series Book 4) (20 page)

"Put me down, you goddamned demon from Hell, or I'll call your father on Susan's hPhone!"

Lily chuckled. "You will do nothing of the sort, silly-little, bulbous-breasted, red-necked woman." Lily looked adorable as she laughed at her attempted humor.

Arms flying, feet kicking, Betty screamed, "I will open my mind and let Dorius in if you keep this shit up!"

"I would not be opposed to that," Lily taunted. "An open mind is always effective. However, I
am
opposed to your trip into a place you have no business being. But my mate insisted you accompany us. I would have asked cousin Jeni to vampire-sit." Lily chuckled and circled her palm, sending Betty into a tailspin. "Alert your mate, if you wish. I'm getting bored of this."

Betty squawked and squirmed at the end of her airborne tether, hair a mutinous mass. Her left breast threatened to pop out of the halter top she was wearing. And when her left shoe fell to the grass beside the sewer drain, Betty howled a series of vulgarities.

Lily tsked. "Shall we wash
your
mouth out with soap for that kind of language,
young' un?
"

I was experiencing a painful brain freeze.

Christopher was boisterously laughing.

Betty tried to tuck her hair back into one of those comb claw-pincher type hair holders, gave up, and grabbed her hips with both hands.

"Are you willing to behave?" Lily asked. "I will not stand for unconstructive, vicious behavior."

"I'm gonna kill that kid," Betty shrieked.

"It'd be better to concede," Christopher shouted up to Betty. "I don't fight her intelligence or her powers. She wears the
control
in our relationship and I'm damn proud of it."

Betty yelped and jerked her hands from her hips when her waistline started to smoke where the red lightning bolt was tethered.

"When you're hot, you're hot," I teased.

Betty didn't look amused.

~~~

Eighteen

~~~

Chick paced in front of Resi and Zaire in the living room at the Stech house. The night was creeping up on the morning, but it would be hours before they had to retire to their coffins. Zaire was still in a pissy mood about her lack of sleep, and having to help Susan get her doublewide up over the balcony and into her room. Then there was moving the cage with the infected raccoon to the bedroom she shared with Resi until after the delivery man left.

"Did you or did you not go to
Shady Pines
and suck on the residents, Nanna?" Resi was sitting on the white leather couch next to Zaire.

Chick walked over to her makeshift altar near the dining room picnic table and beside the fireplace. She picked up a statue of Christ and kissed it.

Zaire took her socked feet off the glass-topped coffee table and tucked them under the belly of a gator that was rendered harmless by a taxidermist a few years back. "Just give it up, Chick! You did it. And we're about to see it on the late night news." She picked up the remote and began to surf the local channels. "What's it gonna cost us?"

Susan's mother slammed Christ back on the altar, turned around, and dropped her fangs. "Someone needs to kill that demon piece of crap my daughter was married to. He's the one responsible for all of this."

Resi said, "So it was you, then?"

"I can't feed on good looking men and have sex anymore, Resi!" Chick said. "They just laugh at me. I can't mind-control worth a shit. So they see me like somebody's grandmother. I can't overpower them to drink, because I'd have to kill them."

"So what does that have to do with you breaking into
Shady Pines
?" Zaire asked with arms crossed over her chest, gray eyes sparkling.

Chick's chest rumbled. Her skinny body stiffened, eyes tight, lips tight, arms swinging as she snapped, "Be
cause,
I can drink from those old farts without killing them. I'd rather be caught dead than caught trying to give one of them a hard-on. Jesus, it's frigging impossible. And all my frigging teeth are starting to fall out. What are we going to do then? Huh? What?"

While Zaire was laughing, Resi had a bit more empathy. "Okay, so we know you can drink on old men without killing them. Can we pick a more secluded site? Jeez, Nan, a nursing home?"

"Hey," Chick said, "there's the news video. I'm a freaking ghost on screen. They'll never tie it to me."

"What if the old guys start talking?" Zaire had recovered. "What then? And I bet it fuckin' hurts without mind-control. You're lucky one of them didn't go into friggin' cardiac arrest."

Resi put her arm out and bounced her palms up and down, face sympathetic to her grandmother's plight. "Okay, so we have a minor issue." As she talked, she got up and crossed the room to stand in front of the glass doors. "Look, you can't see my reflection either, Zaire. So how about I go back to
Shady Pines
with Nanna tonight and I can push a mind sweep to clear her." Looking at her grandmother, Resi said, "But no more nursing homes without me, Nanna, okay?"

Chick gave Zaire a snarky glare. "See, unlike you, Zaire, my grandkid has brains without condemnation. You need anger management classes. You need some empathy for us senior citizens."

"I gave you empathy," Zaire said, stoic voice and expression. "Empathy for the poor bastards you sucked and brain fucked."

* * *

Gibbie flew around the corner of a wall, blocking us from the entrance of Purgatory. Fetid water gurgled as it slowly rolled by. The cement wall behind my back was damp, yet marginalized by the murky atmosphere.

"So," I said as he hovered before us.

"Jake is sucking down some green steam," Gibbie slurred. "I sucked down one shot of Tupelo honey—just playing my part—but the doppelganger isn't in the bar, and the púca we talked to, his shift doesn't start for another hour. I thought I'd hang out here to see if it comes, then go warn Jake."

I stared down the long dark tunnel, the only light coming from a small window over the bar's door. "So what are we looking for?"

"That is a marvelous question, Aunty Susan," Lily said, and turned to Gibbie. "Even I cannot sense a doppelganger if it does not want me to do so. It is quite useless to observe the entrance, fairy. You must realize the doppelganger could be wearing anyone who approaches? So a logical question would be how you know the creature is not in Purgatory?"

"I asked a berserker that knows the dust cloud," Gibbie said. "He said last he saw it was around two in the morning, and it told him it was going to Orlando to pick up a ride."

"Did he mention who that 'ride'—" I made quote marks with my fingers. "—would be?"

"Nope," Gibbie said, flying erratically about our heads, his eyes on Betty. "Just that it would identify itself when it gets here."

Betty was at the edge of the turn that gave us a good view of the bar, eyes on the front door.

Gibbie ducked, and then whizzed past me so close my hair tickled my cheek from the backdraft of his wings. He landed on Betty's shoulder, stumbled, grabbed her teardrop earring, and teetered a minute. The hoops were large at the bottom, and he was able to climb through after making several amusing attempts. He sat and started to swing.

"Cut that out, sugar, 'for you mess up my hair again." Betty glared at Lily.

Lily took Christopher's hand and smiled as he said, "How?"

"Huh?" Gibbie asked, leaning around the grip he had on Betty's earring to face Christopher.

"How is it going to identify itself?" Christopher said as we all glanced down the sewer at a clatter by the door of Purgatory.

Gibbie swatted a lock of Betty's blond hair, and whispered, "Hell if I know how its gonna-"

"I'd just tell youse guys to shut your flappin' traps before youse raise the fricken dead," a female voice said from behind us.

All of us whipped around.

I plastered myself against the damp cement wall.

A sexy blond chick in her early twenties was walking toward us. She's was tan, wearing a lewdly short skirt, and a lacy bra barely covered by a leather vest. Black boots with four-inch heels caressed the undersides of her knees as she struted toward us. She locked eyes with me. "Now don't go takin' no offense, sista, eh? But you and the two kids over there," she pointed at Lily and Christopher, "are fangers." She sniffed the air in front of Lily and bobbed a finger. "Eh, an' you smell like demon, too. You a demon-fanger?" She had a wad of pink bubble gum in her mouth. While chomping, she gave Lily a thumbs up and then addressed Betty. "Damn, Chickie Babe, you're a bitchen half-breed, too, ain't cha? I like your shirt. Nice knockers. You hook?"

* * *

"I don't like just sitting here," Dorius said.

"I don't either, and I'm sure Karl doubly feels this way," Marcus said.

Dorius's left foot was resting on the rock hearth of a massive fireplace in the formal sitting room, one hand on the mantel, the other worrying his goatee. Karl and his men were due back from their hunt. The real discomfort of the wait would commence when the were-shifters arrived and the brothers could no longer speak candidly.

"Elizabeth will get a good talking to when we return," Dorius stated,

"I intend to air on the side of physical relief." Marcus chuckled.

"There will be no physical relief if your mate and her sidekick have taken Elizabeth Down Under!" Dorius hissed.

Marcus opened his mouth to speak, but the massive doors swung open and three sated wolves strutted into the room in human form.

"I take it the hunt was successful," Dorius said, eyes hard as they left his brother.

"
Per aggressuvo
," Razzo said, and added robust laughter. "
Rabbia in bottiglia e malsano!
"

Karl patted Razzo on the back. "You are right, my brother. Holding anger is counterproductive."

"The buck felt no pain after the first thirty seconds," Randel said, followed by an approving grin.

Everyone in the room shared a laugh as Karl poured drinks from a gilded bar against the back wall of the room. Razzo dropped down on a tapestry-covered arm-chair by the crackling fire. Dorius took a seat on the opposite side of the room. Marcus stretched his long legs toward the flames from under the small table where he sat. He picked up the glass of blood in front of him and took a deep drink. Candles lit overhead followed his movement with wavering shadow.

"Is Antoinette on her way, then?" Karl asked, and handed a glass half-full of amber liquid to Randy. He strutted to Razzo's armchair and gave his second in command the other drink he held, and then returned to the bar for his. "And do we have word from the fairy?"

"Yes, my sister is on her way to Miami," Dorius answered.

"Ajax informed me the bartender at Purgatory, a púca, was very helpful. Gibbie and Jake are scheduled to meet with my doppelganger associate this evening."

"And we wait," Karl said as he sat on a red velvet sofa in front of an old and colorful rug. The wolf's eyes ran over the men sipping and studying each other around the fireplace.

* * *

"Are you the doppelganger we're looking for?" I meekly asked, and then totally regretted the stupidity of the question. I sounded like a ten-year-old.

My eyes jerked from the blond woman to Gibbie and then Lily. When it was perfectly clear neither knew for sure—Lily didn't jump in, and Gibbie only scrunched his shoulders—I turned back to the doppelganger wearing the scantily clad woman in leather.

"The one an' only," the chick said with a severe northern accent. "But youse guys can call me Jane."

"Jane," Christopher said, "how do we know you're
the
doppelganger?"

Everything became acute: the water rolling by smelled more putrid. Small vermin stampeded in the shadows instead of scurrying by. The wind whistled down the sewer tunnel, and I could feel the cars drive by above ground.

Jane stopped chewing loudly and blew a big pink bubble that popped over the lower half of her face. "That's easy sweet-cheeks," Jane answered Christopher, unsticking the chewing gum from the tip of her nose and popping it back into her mouth. "The púca behind the bar told me my old friend Dorius, and I do mean old if youse get my drift, needs me." Jane tweaked Christopher's cheek. "That good enough for ya, kiddo?"

We all turned to Betty.

"Hey, don't y'all go lookin' at me," Betty said. "If I open the floodgates now, we'll all drown."

"I don't think either of us should open our minds to the guys just yet," I confirmed, and turned to our doppelganger. "Nice to meet you, ah..."

"Jane. Just call me Jane," the saucy blond said. "I am what I wear, sista." She laughed.

I didn't think a cackle could sound that sexy. I was staring. I know was. I just couldn't help myself.

Christopher asked Gibbie, "Aren't you supposed to have a question that only Dorius's doppie could answer?

"Doppie?" Jane raised a brow and tossed her right hand. "Unless you wanna meet my good friends, Smith an' Wesson, I suggest you get on with it. Ask me anything. My tits are freezing out here."

Gibbie toppled over Betty's shoulder, unhinging himself from her earring. "Jake has it. He's in the bar."

"So youse guys wanna go inside and ask Jake?" Jane pointed at Purgatory. "Then knock one back while we talk about my good buddy Dorius and the plans you have for killing our nemesis?"

I pointed at Gibbie. "You've had enough."

We strolled toward the small ray of purple light over the door on the cement wall. "Hey," I said to Jane, "can these two get in this place?" I pointed to Christopher and Lily. "They serve alcoholic beverages."

"We're Down Under, Chickie." Jane did a rolling, shaking thing with her head. "Alcohol? Pashaw! They can fornicate on the tables in there."

"Okay, now that's just disgustin'," Betty said.

I shot Betty a furrowed brow and tried not to remember walking in on her and Christopher the day we met. But the shudder that ran up my spine told me it was too late. Swell, now I'll have to hold that image like a bad song repeating itself in my head.

A few seconds later, when Jane yanked Purgatory's door open, the first thing I saw was the big black cloud sitting at the bar next to a really hunky red haired guy. When we entered, the smoky-cloud-thing elbowed the hunky guy, and he turned and they both grabbed their drinks and moved through a door in the back of the room.

Christopher pulled at my arm until I bent to his whisper. "Did you see the sooty thing at the bar?"

I nodded.

"That was a doppelganger. I wonder if they know each other." Christopher's head bounced toward Jane.

I picked my chin up off the floor and made a mental note to check out the back room. The bar was softly lit by hanging lamps with different colored bulbs—purple was the favorite, but yellow, green, pink, and blue were scatted among them like a colorfully lit Easter basket.