No Rest for the Wicked (11 page)

“Ow,” he whispered. His skin was dry, probably from the cold meds.

“Move up,” I told him and held both tight buns in my hands as I laved his hole with my tongue. I don't rim Peter often and he went batshit, wriggling and whimpering, clawing at the cushions.

He tasted like Peter and cherry cough syrup. A strange combo, but not altogether awful, and I was well into it, the point of my tongue plunging in when I heard him saying my name.

“Adam. Enough. Fuck me dammit.”

“Bossy bottom boy.” I chuckled, getting my dick in place.

Peter moaned when I pressed myself in, and then just hung on to the cushions, the sofa banging against the wall, Peter oofing with every stroke, his lungs protesting as he gasped for air and demanded that I do it harder and faster.

My orgasm surprised me, lighting up my brain like a lightning bolt. I remember I lifted him a bit; maybe I even howled.

Afterward I lay spread across his back. “I think you cleared my sinuses,” Peter whispered, and there was a smile in his voice.

“Call me Dr. Good Fuck.” I chuckled.

We were drenched with sweat and though Peter's skin was still hot, he was shivering violently.

“I think we could both use a hot shower,” I said, helping him to his feet.

He was oddly passive. I bundled him into the bathroom and under the hot spray, then stood there with my arms wrapped around him for a while. By the time he'd reached down to turn off the water, my cock was hard against his backside again, but this time Peter was definitely not up for it.

“Nancy will be here soon.” He rubbed a towel over his wet hair, evading my hands every time I reached for him.

I followed him out, pulling a clean T-shirt over my head in time to see him swallowing more of the gel capsules. “Didn't you just take some of those?”

“Did I?” He looked at the empty palm of his hand in bewilderment. The condo buzzer rang at that moment, and I went to let Nancy in.

“You look terrible,” she told Peter as she came through the door. I saw her detective's gaze go from my wet head to his, add it up, store it away, and move on. “So, Peter told me we're meeting some more of these creatures tonight. Your friends?”

“Associates,” I said.
Creatures?

“I'm not clear on something, Adam. If this goes to trial, could any of you testify?”

I looked at Peter. This touched on one of the reasons we hadn't told the department of my existence. He rubbed his swollen nose and shook his head. “None of dese guys would make it to trial,” he told her. “Transport, jail, the whole system, sooner or later they'd step into the sunlight.

Plus, it's hard to say if they would be allowed to testify. I doubt the DA wants a deposition from a dead man.”

Nancy looked me up and down. “What happens with sunlight?”

“Spontaneous combustion.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh.” I could see her puzzling it out. “The perfect hit men, really. They can't testify against you, even if they want to. And why would they want to? They're already dead.”

Peter had gone into the kitchen and come out with a bottle of water. I snatched the cold tablets from Peter's hand before he swallowed them. “You already took those,” I said.

“Did I? Why don't I feel better?” He snagged some Kleenex from the box and blew his nose. The process looked painful. “So did you find the girl?” he asked Nancy.

“Not yet.” She filled me in. “Eclypse was enrolled at CSUN but she's missed all her classes these past couple of days, and no one I spoke to seems to have seen her.”

“Sounds like we can assume somebody ate the girlfriend too,” I said.

“Ate? Why do you put it that way?” asked Nancy.

I shrugged. “Dunno. It's food, I guess.”

“Do I look like food to you?” she asked. She didn't look scared. Angry, maybe. I decided to change the subject.

“Wasn't Lake a little old to be dating a college kid?”

“Sounds like your classic midlife crisis.”

“Yeah.” I gave Peter a look with my eyebrows raised. How old was Jonathan? Late twenties maybe? “Lot of men get insecure around their forties, I guess.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “I'm going to get changed.” He padded off to the bedroom, pulling more Kleenex from his pocket as he went.

Nancy watched him go. “He shouldn't be out of bed.”

“I've been telling him the same thing.”

She looked mildly amused. “You've known each other for a long time.”

“Peter and I met at the Academy.”

“So this…condition of yours hasn't changed anything?”

The question made me feel twitchy and irritated. “Why should it?” I left her and followed Peter into the bedroom. He was just standing there, staring at a shirt in his hands. “Peter?”

He looked up at me. “What?”

Christ
. “Are you almost ready?”

The years had left their mark on Peter, like they do on anybody. He's got lines around his eyes and parenthesizing his mouth. A certain weary look to him that probably came of seeing too many people dead for no good reason. Plus, just the wear and tear of life.

But in the dim light of the bedroom, his eyes bright with fever, cheeks flushed. Standing there in his undershirt and jeans, he looked like the hard-bodied cadet I'd first lusted after.

“We don't have to go,” I said, moving in so I could wrap my arms around his hot body.

“Nancy's waiting,” he said.

I nuzzled the hot skin just behind his ear. “She says I should put you to bed.”

“I'll bet.” He pushed me away and pulled the sweater on over his head. He went to the closet and brought out his shoulder holster. It was the old one, and instead of his service revolver he went to the other side of the closet and found the older Smith & Wesson he'd used a decade ago when he was still a beat cop.

“Where's your piece?”

He looked at the gun like he'd only just realized it wasn't his usual one. “Needs to be cleaned,” he said.

Keep in mind I've sat here and watched Peter get ready for work more times than I can count. And Peter is as methodical and predictable as a single man with a controlling bent can be.

When he didn't reach into the left drawer of his dresser and bring out his shield and its clip, I knew.

“What exactly happened between you and Davis?” I asked.

He froze as if caught. “Davis is a dick.”

“Given. You didn't really retire, did you?”

Peter pursed his lips and finished stuffing his wallet and handkerchief into his pockets.

“I've got several weeks paid leave coming to me. We decided I should take off for a few of them.”

“He
suspended
you? Peter, what the
hell
did you say to him?”

“I didn't say anything. I punched a fucking hole in his wall, and he took it the wrong way.”

“How many ways are there to take something like that?”

Nancy peeked around the doorway. “Thank God,” she said. “I was afraid you were doing something else. You ready?”

“Not quite,” I said.

“Yes, we're ready,” said Peter, getting that stubborn set to his jaw that brooked no argument. “Call your people. Let's roll.”

We were set to meet near the corner of Adams and Fourth in the Los Angeles warehouse district. Gentrification was creeping like overpriced mold across the city, but it hadn't yet hit this part of town.

I'd been a cop in Los Angeles for over a decade and I still sometimes wondered what was going on in the so-called loft district. The ebb and flow of businesses and usage permits was so fluid it would have taken a mathematician to track them. Buildings that appeared to be empty would suddenly light up at night and sprout an artsy sign. Then, just as suddenly, the lights would be gone. After a while, the sign would disappear too.

NEWLY REFURBISHED LOFTS! said a poster on the building across the way. THE

NEW ARTS DISTRICT! bragged another. The colors on it were faded, and something had torn a hole in one corner.

“We have an arts district?” I asked Peter.

He looked at his watch. “You sure these people are going to show?”

The one constant in this neighborhood were the homeless who sheltered in the arched doorways and recessed windows of the old brick buildings. They'd receded when we first entered the street, but began to reemerge while we waited. Hulking, shambling, shadowed creatures, like some old horror movie.

At Peter's question, Nancy popped open her phone and made a call. She flipped it closed and stuffed it deep into the pockets of her London Fog raincoat. The thing was as wrinkled as her suits and looked sorely in need of cleaning. “Richardson and Selkey are parked two blocks from here,” she told us.

Peter looked at me.

“They'll show,” I assured them. “Remember: Don't give them your last names or addresses.

Don't divulge any personal information that they could use to find you if they wanted to.”

“I thought these people were your friends,” said Nancy.

“Don't trust them; that's all I'm saying.” I could hear now the whine of a high-powered motorcycle at a distance, and several blocks down I saw the white square of the ice-cream truck coming around a corner.

Peter watched it coming, his eyes acquiring that meditative look they got when the tumblers of his memory were turning.

“You'll finally meet Caballo,” I said to distract him.

It did more than distract him. “The Crip you cohabited with at the vampire compound?”

“We were prisoners, Peter,” I said. “Hardly roommates.”

But he had that closed-down expression I'd only recently begun to notice. And when Caballo pulled up and hopped off his bike, I could see Peter observing and taking note of his tall, lean, well-muscled body, broad shoulders, the generous package that had given him his nickname, barely hidden by tight black jeans. Glossy skin, big dark eyes, and wide white smile.

That cock-of-the-walk swagger of his as he strutted his stuff for anyone willing to look. Caballo oozed sex and danger and a loose willingness.

“Must have been tough,” said Peter in that stony little voice that told me I was on thin ice again.

* * *

“It's the cop,” said Caballo, dark eyes lidded and amused. He proffered his hand.

Peter pursed his lips and buried his hands deeper into the pockets of his LAPD blue windbreaker. “I god a cold,” he said. “Don't want you to catch it.”

“You can't get me sick, man,” said Caballo, sneering like illness was a weapon against which Caballo was more than sufficiently armed.

Peter had that expression that citizens call “cop eyes.” He didn't blink. “Good to know.”

I hadn't thought about what this meeting might mean to Peter. Because, well, since when do I think? But, of course, Peter knew of Caballo and our brief relationship. I'd debriefed Peter after my adventures with the OMG vampire club.

“This Caballo saved your life,” he said. He'd been typing a report as I spoke. God knew
how he was explaining half of it. How does the PD suggest you refer to informants who were
now drifting piles of ash, after all? The deceased? The redeceased?

“More than once.” I nodded.

“Nice guy,” Peter's face was expressionless. Nonjudgmental. It made every hair on my
neck rise.

“No, not really. He was a Crip in Chicago, and he was cooperating with La Eme when I
met him. For the blood, as far as I can tell.”

“Wonder what he thought he could get from you.”

I set down the beer bottle I'd been holding. “You want details?”

Peter turned his head and looked away from me. “No, I guess I don't.”

It was only sex. I'd be lying if I said I understood his issue with it. But it had finally sunk into my thick skull that he
did
have an issue with it.

Plus, Caballo was grinning at Peter with an expression that was pure evil.

“They can't catch colds,” Drew told Peter. “Though we don't have enough facts to explain why or if they are immune to more serious diseases, or if they can pass diseases to humans.”

The whine and spit of another motorbike then, and we turned to see Betsy appear around the corner, keeping on a straight path with difficulty, her mufflers belching.

A few months back Betsy had scavenged a beaten old Roadster from somewhere. Caballo and I had worked on it a bit, but it was a piece of tin with a bad carburetor, and Betsy was no biker.

She managed to pull to a stop without dumping and stalled the engine. She climbed off, pulling a helmet off of her wildly big hair, her skirt hiked up and clipped, showing the black-and-red striped stockings above her boots. She looked exactly like a goth Pippi Longstocking.

And if you think that's cute, I didn't describe her sufficiently.

“Good Lord,” said Nancy.

Betsy zeroed in on the one woman and stalked toward her, buckles ringing with every mincing step. She stuck out her hand, palm down, as if she meant it to be kissed and said, “You don't look like a cop.”

Nancy made that
heh
noise that I'd learned was her version of a laugh. “No, I guess I don't.”

“You look like a burnout,” said Betsy. “What's your angle anyway?”

Nancy tipped her head just slightly. “I guess I'm just sick to death of lies. What's yours?”

“I care about the kids.” Betsy regarded our little group with the haughty attitude of the queen regarding the rabble. “So, where's my guarantee that they won't be arrested, cop?”

Peter cast me a dark look, but he said to Betsy, “If they haven't committed a crime, they don't have to worry. And if they've committed murder…”

“Then we'll take care of it,” Betsy told him

Peter's eyebrows went up and his mouth opened.

“Moonlight's burning, guys,” I interrupted.

“Of course.” Nancy raised a walkie-talkie to her lips and pronounced, “Alpha alpha…” A staticky voice answered her, and after carrying on a conversation with whomever it was, she waved us to follow her to an alley some twenty yards away at the end of which a large unmarked black van waited.

It might as well have been sprayed with the letters F B I in neon paint.

Caballo brushed up against me, and his hand made fleeting contact with my ass. I would have smacked him if Peter weren't watching us. Instead I just swung out of his reach and hissed.