The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (14 page)

“It’s a long story . . .” Annie B
whispered.

The car shifted. For a moment I thought she
might try to lift it, but it settled back down. Her hand hadn’t
moved. “You ain’t trying to escape, are you? If you ain’t escaping,
it looks like we have some time to ruminate.” Learned that one at
the Asylum. Always liked it.
Ruminate
. Good word.

Her voice came from somewhere under the car,
from lips I hoped were pressed against concrete, each word
scratching them raw. Being kidnapped had brought a surprisingly
sadistic streak out in my usual abrasive personality. “An artifact
placed in our keep has been stolen. I need you to confirm the
artifact’s ability based on the anima it left in its safe.”

“It’s leaking anima?” I asked, unable to
help myself.

“Yes.”

“Enough to saturate the area and not burn
off?”

“Yes,” this time weaker.

I thought about it. That’s something I
wanted to see. “It’s not going corporeal is it?”

“We don’t believe so. Sorry about the lack
of details but the geomancer I used first wasn’t worth his weight
in blood.”

She should have told me this crap before she
tried to kidnap me. Would have saved us a lot of time. I said as
much. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I was asked not to . . . Can you get this
car off me?”

“No . . . I can’t pool for nothing right
now.” Which was probably stupid to say. “I’ll call a tow-truck and
then you can get loose and he’ll be your snack, what you say?”

No answer.

“Annie B?” My foot touched her hand. It
slapped at me.
Okay
. “Who told you I was available for
this?”

“An old friend,” the barest whisper.

I had a sinking suspicion. Plutarch,
Ceinwyn, or the Lady. Who would screw with me first and foremost
just to see what would happen? “Fucking Ceinwyn do this to me?”

No answer.

I touched the hand yet again with my foot.
It touched back. “You okay?” I asked again.

“I’m fine, King Henry.”

This didn’t come from the car.

This came right behind me.

Like a dumbass, I turned around. Give me a
break. I was in shock or something. Annie B was standing there, her
right arm missing from the elbow down. It wasn’t like seeing an
amputee with folded over skin. The cut was open. Muscle, bone, all
easy to
see
, a clean cut, only all covered with a layer a
gooey vampire blood. Like I told you: starfish, amoeba, a
sea-creature, nothing human.

Her punch into my stunned face hit me so
hard my legs went out from underneath me for the third time that
night. My plump booty hit asphalt too.

Annie B looked down on me with an expression
that said, ‘
bad food
’. “Ceinwyn says hello, King Henry,” she
told me. Then she smashed her foot into my balls so hard I blacked
out.

Stay away from the vampires, King Henry.
Don’t cause problems, King Henry. No fighting, King Henry
.

Always bullshit with that woman.

[CLICK]

I woke up lightheaded. There was water
running. I was in a bed. I knew from the sound of the springs as I
moved my head back and forth to check out the room. The only light
came from a table-lamp that had seen better days. Actually . . .
the things the table-lamp had seen are probably what made it look
so haggard.

I stayed there in my haze. Bitch had eaten
me. I could feel it in the lost blood, the kind of woozy dreamlike
state where you’re barely aware the world exists. Weirdest part was
. . . my hand felt numb. I pulled it up with my other, since it
didn’t feel like working very well either, and was unsurprised to
find a band-aid slapped over a cut, blood crusting around my
palm.

Bitch had eaten me.

And then used a
Carebears
band-aid.

That’s some cruel and unusual punishment
right there . . .

The shower went off. A hiss to a drizzle to
nothing.

Barely awake, I couldn’t help but feel
betrayed over Ceinwyn apparently hiring me out to this crazy bitch.
I mean, I owed her money, and never let anyone tell you Ceinwyn
Dale ain’t a hardass, but this was a step too far even for her. Why
did I deserve getting eaten? Or getting knocked out? Why give
my
name?

Unless it was because she trusted me to do
something . . .

Unless it was because she didn’t trust
anyone else with this item . . .

Unless she was trying to teach me some kind
of lesson which only getting surprised by a vamp could bring . .
.

And here I thought my school time was
over.

Annie B stepped out of the bathroom, still
mostly undressed. All she had on was a pair of black underwear that
showed more than they covered. Any other woman stepping out of a
bathroom and I’d have been ogling her body. Hips that knew the word
‘
hourglass
,’ a stomach so tight it defied anatomy, and a
pair of tits at just the right size before too-large, that didn’t
know the word ‘
gravity
’ and had never experienced it. And
shoulder-bones and a hint of collar bone, and a neck that went on
and on, and lips twisting in enjoyment as I studied her, and eyes
that whispered what I could have had but had turned down.

I didn’t ogle at all this amazing
physicality that naturally defeated any plastic surgeon alive
because my eyes couldn’t leave her right arm, back where it
hadn’t
been earlier. It wasn’t even bruised.

“Is it the same one, or do you grow a new
one like a lizard?” I asked.

Annie B laughed. With a shake of her head,
she ran her hands through her hair. Water dripped from it to the
floor. Without the help of a towel, it dried in seconds. She kept
at it, bending over to arch her back towards me, showing me the
other side of the moon. She looked better from that angle . . . I
think . . . it’s hard to decide . . . I’m a big fan of both . .
.

“It’s the same one,” she finally answered
about the arm.

“Huh,” was my expert opinion.

Her hair dry, she stood straight and finally
got about clothing herself. New clothes. A pair of shorts and one
of those airy looking half-dress, half-shirt things most girls wear
during the summer with another top beneath it. I don’t know the
name for it. I remember it was violet though. January and she was
dressing for July. A slutty no-bra, no-undershirt July too. It
looked cold. Douchebag showoff vampires.

“Do you go naked in the summer then?”

It was too easy for her. With a
straightforward look-you-in-the-eyes glance on her face, she told
me, “I go naked whenever I possibly can, King Henry.”

“Huh,” was my continued expert opinion.

Give me a break, guys. She could have
stripped naked and dry humped me, it wouldn’t have mattered. I
didn’t have the blood in me to walk without feeling woozy, Prince
Henry popping a stiffy would have knocked my ass back out quicker
than an eighty-year-old geezer downing handfuls of Viagra.

Annie B continued with the freaky, putting
her hands through her hair and styling it like she had globs of
styling junk. Only there was nothing. The hair knew what she wanted
and stayed exactly where she put it. Retaining the exact amount of
fluid to keep the position. Douchebag showoff vampires. A press of
finger at her lips and cheeks rushed in blood, completing the look
without a single bit of makeup.

When she moved to put her heels on, I
decided it was time to talk. My head was starting to feel better
and I knew I didn’t want to leave that room without an
understanding between us of what’s cool and what’s
not cool
.
“Why didn’t you just tell me Ceinwyn sent you?”

Her heels looked sharp. I reminded myself I
didn’t want to get kicked again that night. “Ceinwyn didn’t send
me. I informed Ceinwyn about my problem and then she mentioned you
might be helpful. She seemed to think you could handle yourself but
I decided I’d test you out.”

“I’m going to guess I passed since I’m
alive.”

“Yes, you passed.” Annie B walked over to me
and sat on the bed. “You passed after the first fight. I was going
to bring you here and we were going to play a bit and then I was
going to tell you everything I needed from you. From your
reputation and a joke of Ceinwyn’s I never thought you would turn
down a little tumble. The second fight was very naughty, King
Henry.”

“So you thought that since you have the best
ass I’ve ever seen,” I figured, “you’d just wiggle it and I’d do
whatever you wanted?”

She licked her lips again. “Something like
that.”

“Did you tell this idea to Ceinwyn?” I
asked.

“Yes . . . she seemed to think there was a
chance it could work.”

I started laughing. Ceinwyn Dale. Still
testing me. Still seeing which way I jumped. And not just me
either. “You got taken, Annie B.”

Her tongue disappeared. Her lips went
straight. “She knew you well?”

“Yeah, she knows me as well as anyone
does.”

“She used us to test each other,” she
thought aloud.

“Yeah, like that.”

I’d seen the look that came over Annie B’s
face before. Usually I was the one wearing it when Ceinwyn screwed
with me. “I’m almost five-hundred years old and she treats me like
a toy,” she said in a hiss.

“Only twenty-two, but yeah . . . feeling
ya.”

She studied me. “Will you still help
me?”

There’s an interesting question. As I
ruminated, already knowing the answer, I couldn’t help but feel the
irony that it wasn’t going to be my dick getting me into trouble
with this gorgeous creature, but my brain. “It’s really leaking
anima?” I asked.

“We believe so. We, however, only have a
simple geomancer in our service.”

I ruminated about it some more. My brain’s
going to get me killed one day. “And you’re paying me?”

“Of course.”

“And you won’t eat me again?”

For the first time since she’d come into my
shop and my life, Annie B seemed embarrassed. “I’m sorry our
misunderstanding led to your blood being required,” she mouthed
out, like it was a great difficulty. I suppose it was. Not like I
told pigs sorry before I ate bacon. If I told bacon anything it
was, ‘
you’re so yummy! Yes, you are!
’

“Well . . . I guess dropping a car on you
was a bit much . . .”

“A bit shocking, yes,” she agreed. “So was
the ring.”

“I want it back,” I told her.

“Of course.”

“And my vial of anima.”

“It as well.”

“And the Cold Cuffs.”

With a perfectly innocent face she said, “I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I woke up in easily the most comfortable bed
I had slept in at that point in my fourteen-year-old life. You know
what . . . check that, the bed is still the most comfortable I’ve
ever slept in. It was missing the embrace of a beautiful and
hopefully naked woman, plus the musk of ten hours of raging
grunting and humping sessions, but we won’t hold it against the
bed. That’s not the bed’s fault. So most comfortable ever, created
by expense and a lack of use most likely. Ceinwyn Dale’s guestroom
bed.

Yeah, that’s where I was. Took me awhile to
realize it.

First, I had to remember the day before
ending with the giant needle into my neck. That wasn’t very damned
pleasurable. Here’s free advice, children: bring up the blindfold
before the needle comes into play, because once the needle comes
into play the bastard is entering your body and it’s not going in
the fun places people generally like to get poked.

I sat myself up to have a look-see. Some say
you can take a look at what a person’s home has in it and say what
they’re like. I don’t know if that’s true. Probably bullshit like
all the rest. If a person’s poor, they’re going to have poor shit.
If a person’s rich, they’re going to have rich shit. What the fuck
does that have to do with personality?

Ceinwyn Dale’s guestroom is clean, wood
floors and soft rugs. Blues and whites . . . very—airy, as it were.
There were pictures too. Made the same way she had made my little
one of Mom and Dad. Mountains and villages, town houses, shanties
by the sea. Tons of tiny little pictures taking up the walls. Small
looking large by being all together.

Ceinwyn Dale is the Head of Recruiting for
the Asylum, she’s flown throughout the world and back again.
How
many late arrives have woken up in the bed just like I did?
I
ask myself, looking back on it.

Most kids, it’s easy. Parents are mancers or
someone in the family is—there are whole computers dedicated to
family trees somewhere in the administration offices in the vain
attempt to figure out
why
one family member is a mancer and
another ain’t. Others . . . mancers keep an eye out around their
neighbors. Little Val caught the dog on fire. Cousin Heinrich talks
to his dead grandfather. That kind of thing.

Another common way is for countries friendly
to the United States, without schools of their own, to offer up an
exchange student for cash. Sure, Europe has had a school of their
own for almost as long as the Asylum has been around, so do the old
USSR countries and China. Ottoman Empire used to have one, the
Papacy too. India had built one, and Brazil was working on it by
the time I got recruited—think they just finished it actually. But
if you’re from shithole Nigeria or equally shithole Mexico like two
of my classmates were? Ceinwyn Dale is going to be the one to bring
you to the Asylum.

Sometimes it ain’t even shithole countries,
it’s just population problems. Ratio breeds true as they say—they
got computers for it too. Do the math. You got seven million people
in your country . . . this means you got twenty-seven Ultras, one
born every three years we’ll assume. You got yourself a
fourteen-year-old sciomancer from Israel and no sciomancer to train
her; you can either ship her to one of the schools or let her go
insane. What do you do? A sciomancer . . . especially a
Shadeshifter, that’s a valuable tool to let rust. For Eva Reti, you
have a meeting with a smiling blond lady and your family up and
moves to the Unites States on a seven year visa.