No Rest for the Wicked (14 page)

“Dammit,” said Peter. “Scrap the mission and get out of there.”

I texted both Caballo and Drew with the message.

I'm lost
, Drew texted back.
where r u?

You high?

No
, said the message. A minute later another appeared.
Ok. Yes. Where r u?

I looked around. The lights were illuminating only portions of the room, and there was still quite a mob of kids pushing and clawing at every doorway.

Stay put
, I texted.

NM
, he replied.
M nose way out.

NO. WAIT
, I texted, looking around wildly. I hopped up on the stage so I could see better.

Cables and power strips and LED lights were strewn everywhere, and I had to pick my way through the tangle as I ran its length, scanning the crowd for Drew's silky black hair and the necklace of lights. About ten yards away, in a thick of girls, I saw him, and I leaped off the stage and pushed the girls aside only to find the wearer of the lights was a tall Asian girl.

Stay put
, I texted again. There was no reply from Drew.

I hopped down from the stage and went back to the stairway where I'd last seen him. A fire door there was barricaded shut but I took the stairs three at a time, hoping to find the legally required fire exit on the second floor.

The lighted EXIT signs led me to it, but there was no sign of Drew or Mitch. Through a window on the landing, I saw cruisers arriving below, a mob in the parking lot separating to allow them access. I ran back inside and began methodically opening the doors, peering inside each before running to the next one.

There was a body in the third room I entered.

“Dammit.” I smelled him when I opened the door. He lay behind a couch, the area rug rucked up beneath his feet as if he'd been dragged there. With his belly dominant and black shoes pointed toward me, I didn't recognize him until I trotted around and saw his face. Ghastly white

and staring, as if into the eyes of the monster that had punctured his neck and sucked out his life's blood.

I punched Peter's number. “I've found Suits,” I said. “He's dead. Bitten.”

Peter swore. “Get the hell out of there. Davis and his crew have arrived.”

* * *

“What the hell is going on?” I was sequestered with Nancy in the black van. She'd appeared at my elbow the instant I'd emerged from the building and shepherded me into the van.

On the monitors I could see every corner of the parking lot where hundreds of kids still milled about with the lost, ashen faces of the damned, five black-and-whites in the parking lot, lights cycling, officers interviewing each child one at a time.

Above, a couple of news helicopters' lights swept the parking lot, and I could see the NBC

van spewing forth a couple of reporters as we watched.

At one corner, Peter. Head down, arms crossed, feet planted. Saying nothing as Davis poured a river of what I could only assume was righteous displeasure down upon him.

“I tried to talk him into leaving before they showed up,” she said. “He wouldn't budge.”

A hammering at the door and Richardson said, “It's the black kid.”

Caballo climbed into the back, cursing. “You fucking forget about me, dog?” The dance had lit him up. He was shining with perspiration, and his eyes were alight with that inner fire, the color in his cheeks high. “Where's the geek?” he asked me.

“I lost track of him in the chaos,” I admitted.

“How could you lose him?” Caballo was in my face, eyes blazing fluorescent green, teeth exposed and expression wild.

Richardson pushed aside his headphone long enough to say, “We've got the track on his phone. He's moving down Wilshire at about thirty-five miles per hour.”

“Dammit, he's left with Mitch,” I told Caballo.

Caballo swore. “Betsy's gonna kill me.”

“I can set you up with an earpiece and feed his location to you if you want to follow him,”

Richardson said.

Caballo snatched up his helmet. “Yeah, let's do that. You coming, Adam?”

“Hang on a second.”

On the monitor I saw Davis walking away from Peter, his little entourage trailing behind him. A couple of the unis nearby still stood, hands on hips, their heads down as if embarrassed by whatever they'd just witnessed happening to Peter.

Caballo cast an impatient look at the monitor. “Your boyfriend's fine, dog. Let's roll.”

“Just a minute.” I knew a few of the cops trolling the parking lot, so I couldn't go out there.

I dialed Peter's phone, and he opened it up with a chagrined expression on his face.

“Guess I have that break I promised you,” he said.

“How much trouble are you in?”

A pained laugh. “Remains to be seen. I've got to head downtown and explain why I was here when a young woman and a murder suspect were killed. It'd be nice if I knew.”

“You couldn't help it, Peter.”

“Couldn't I?”

Caballo gave me a sharp punch in the shoulder. “Let's go, bitch.”

In the monitor I saw Peter's face. Grim, ashen, and exhausted. “Maybe Davis is right. My head's been screwed on all wrong for months now—”

“Davis is a stupid dick. Don't let him get to you.”

“Are all of you okay?”

The last thing Peter needed was to hear that we'd lost Drew. “Sure.”

“Great. Well, then, I'll talk to you when I get home?
If
I get home…”

“I'll see you there.” I disconnected and turned to Caballo. “Don't worry about the geek.

He's tougher than he looks.”

“You better hope so,” said Caballo.

Nancy was sitting next to Richardson, following the GPS signal on the screen.

“Peter's taking the hit for you,” I said to her.

She looked up at me with those pale cold eyes, and it occurred to me that one of the reasons Nancy Dickes was friendless was her absolute willingness to use other people in the pursuit of her goals. In that way, she was like every other fed I'd ever met.

“I know.”

“You owe him.”

She compressed her lips but didn't comment.

“He may not call in the chip, but I will,” I said to her.

She jerked her chin in a nod. “Understood.”

We sorted things out with the headsets Richardson had. I figured we were going in deep enough to take precautions, so I prevailed upon Caballo to surrender his personal cell phone, as I did, and take one of the disposables the agents provided. Nothing will blow your cover faster than having a cop on speed dial.

They made us sign a voucher for the disposables and for the earpiece they gave me.

You want job security? Become an accountant for the government, boys and girls. That's the best advice I'll ever give you.

We fetched our bikes with a certain amount of stealth. The LAPD were mostly focused on the mobs of children they'd extracted from the club, but we rolled the bikes down the street before kicking them into gear.

Caballo was still raging at me for losing Drew, his whole body vibrating. “You're losing your edge, dog. Comes of drinking that fake blood.”

“What?”

But he revved his Kawasaki, slapped his visor closed, and shot down the street, his bike describing a wide arc at the corner.

Richardson fed me the street names until he reported that Drew's phone had stopped moving at an address several miles south of the border that defined Compton, near 124th Street.

It was a two-story building, the lower windows covered with white graffiti. We spotted a 2001

blue Toyota four-door that Caballo swore he'd seen in the parking lot outside the rave.

It looked like the sort of car a Mitch would drive.

We drove on until we found a lot with a leg invisible from the street where we felt we could stash our bikes.

Caballo had an alarm on his bike that could wake the proverbial dead. My security had always been my Mongol OMG membership. No meathead would steal a Mongol bike. These days, I had nothing, so we chained our bikes together.

Nobody could get the Beast started but me anyway.

Then Caballo and I shambled out onto the main sidewalk, trying to look a little like addicts. It's not a hard look for me to achieve, but Caballo glows in the dark, and in a few minutes we'd attracted a couple of admirers.

From the cloud of homeless ebbing and flowing at the edge of buildings and alleys, two ventured across the street so that they stood on the corner of our block. They shared a bottle in a paper bag back and forth, trying to pretend that they weren't watching us. As we strolled in their direction, they came toward us until they stood about twenty feet away.

“Shit,” said Caballo. “We gotta toss that trash, dog.”

“Don't flash your face, yet. Somebody might be watching.”

“Hey man, you got a quarter?” said bum number one. Six feet away, and he had that redolent meaty smell of illness.

I tried to look high. “No, man. Sorry.”

“You sure?” The two of them shambled closer. The one who addressed me was no threat to anybody, obviously ill, his skin reddened and peeling from exposure. He wiped at a running nose with the back of his arm. The other guy, though, still had good musculature, and all I smelled on him was booze.

“I told you I don't have cash, man.” We were standing just in front of the building Richardson had directed us to. I imagined I could feel a hundred eyes upon us. Or maybe it wasn't my imagination.

“We don't want any trouble,” I reminded Caballo.

In his designer jeans and artfully crafted tattoo muscle shirt, Caballo reeked of money, and both men seemed fixated on him.

“You want somefin', faggot?” He turned to face down the drunk one.

“Kin I bum a smoke?” said the guy, moving in. He had undoubtedly decided that he and his pal could take us, because he came in fast and only made the slightest sound of dismay and pain when Caballo grabbed him, whipped him around, slammed him on the ground, and planted his fangs in his neck.

His buddy jumped back as if shocked, then whipped around and in seconds was no more than a wisp of smoke and the sound of rubber soles headed away.

At my feet, Caballo was focused, both hands planted on his victim, holding the man's greasy hair back as he swallowed.

“Let him up,” I said to Caballo. The smell of the man's blood curled up from him like the smell of steak on a grill. I fought against the desire that rose in me to drop to my knees and join Caballo there on the pavement.

Peter had been very clear, though. He didn't want to see a trail of dead bodies following yours truly around Los Angeles.

Caballo's victim exhaled a gurgling sound that I feared was that of a man dying of vampire bite. I grabbed Caballo and had to shake him a few times before I pulled him off.

Of course, he turned on me. A hundred and eighty pounds of rottweiler-like fury in a lean demonic body. Plus, he had the blood hunger, and I was disinclined to kill him. So, he had a slight advantage for a minute or two. He threw me against the hurricane fencing, and I fell to the

sidewalk. When he jumped on me I rolled, but he got hold of me and his knee did its best to break my spine.

I relaxed into the hold, then bucked. Loosening his grip enough that I could roll, get him in a leg lock and, using my superior weight, roll over on top of him, my arm across his neck, struggling to hold him, while he growled and hissed and spat, clawing at my arm. It fucking stung is what it did, and I squeezed his face a little. “Stop that. Get hold of yourself, puta,” I said.

Caballo, breathing hard, a kind of deep growl emanating from his chest, gradually gained control. I released him when I felt he'd had enough, and he sat up wiping his mouth with the back of his arm, leaving a long dark smear on his forearm. “Fucking trash,” he said.

We hadn't eaten in hours. The smell of the man's blood was making my mouth water too. I picked up the bum and pushed him, bleeding and barely able to walk, back the way he'd come.

He staggered off, whimpering and holding his neck. I figured he'd wake up the next day not remembering a thing.

When I went undercover with the Mongol motorcycle gang, it took about three months to set up my identity. And another year for the CI who was working with us to bring me into the gang. Contrary to what you see on television, the best way to break into a gang is
not
to walk into that gang's territory and start a fight.

That's just a really good way to get killed.

I felt it seconds before I heard it. And I spun around just in time to catch the first boot heel in my face.

There had to have been about five of them. I didn't stop to count. I'd been so busy trying
not
to smell the blood of the bum, I'd ignored the warnings of my own nose, and now Caballo and I were surrounded.

After a while, I noticed that Caballo was prone and only emitting the occasional pained grunt as another foot registered with his belly. I couldn't see out of one eye, and it was a good thing I didn't need air, because my nose was broken and filling with blood.

“Wait!” I heard a voice call out. I reeled and almost fell, holding my hands out more as a plea for mercy than a defensive posture, and Nicolas, from the party, grabbed my chin and raised my face so he could peer into my one good eye.

“I know you,” he said.

I spat blood. “I followed your little dude,” I said.

He released my chin and stepped back. “Why?”

The bleeding had stopped, and I could feel my nose beginning to heal. I swabbed at it with my shirt sleeve to give myself time to think.

“Nothing else to do. It seemed like a hoot.”

He scrutinized me, then nodded at Caballo who still lay on his belly, drooling blood onto the pavement. “Your friend here spoiled it for all of us. You think that was a hoot too?”

“What are you talking about?”

“We don't feed at the club,” said Nicolas. “I made that clear. It causes problems for everybody, and it spooks the new kids.”

I looked at Caballo. He had bright maroon bruises on his neck, his face. The brunt of the brutality just now had definitely been directed at him.

“Your friend ate a girl in the bathroom,” said Nicolas.