Zombie's Bite

Apocalypse -- how appropriate, Dory thought -- was the bar/hangout/hook up joint for the local sup community. At least, it usually was. But tonight it was all slickly dressed people, a special concert in honor of the consuls' visit, and invitation only.

  Dory didn't have an invitation.

  She didn't have any fucks left, either.

  "I don't know how you're going to-urp," Dreads said, as Dory tossed him up to the balcony of a nearby building. She waited a moment while a group of partiers ran by, laughing and slipping on the watery street, while they all tried to fit under the same umbrella. And then she jumped up herself.

  "Are you gonna do that again?" Dreads asked, clinging to the balcony as she looked upward.

  "Why?"

  "'Cause I want to know if I should throw up now or later!"

  "Later," she told him, and repeated the process.

  "Why are we here?" he demanded, as they clambered over the third floor railing. "I told you, I already made the call --"

  "And got nowhere, because the senate isn't in Vegas right now, it's here."

  "Yeah, but I left the warning, like you said --"

  "And I appreciate it," she said, pulling him to the end of the balcony. There was no railing there, and the club roof was just across a narrow alley. "Unfortunately, there's only one guy who might have believed you, and he's here."

  "So you're gonna go warn him?"

  "We are."

  "Wait," he said, looking down three stories at the wet, hard cobblestones below. "I ain't Shaft, all right? I won't do you any good in there --"

  "You won't have to fight."

  "Then why I gotta go at all?"

  "Because invisibility doesn't work on the nose, especially vampire ones. An invisible puddle of fish guts, rum and swamp gunk moving around is going to attract attention -- unless they have somebody to blame it on. Somebody visible."

  He frowned at her. "So I'm what? A human air freshener?"

  "Sort of the reverse," Dory said, and tossed him onto the roof of the club.

  Predictably, he screamed the whole way. But that turned out to be a good thing. Because there were a couple guards, one on each side of the peak, who came over to see what the commotion was about. Giving her a perfect chance to --

  Wait.

  Dory paused, stake in hand, a frown crossing her features. Wait, she couldn't whack them, could she? They were technically the good guys, just a couple of the senate's vamps who had pissed somebody off enough to get stuck on a roof in the rain. They didn't deserve to die for that.

  And, okay, that was . . . inconvenient.

  She left Dreads to it, while she started searching through her bag for something less lethal.

  Guns, ammo, plastic explosives . . . .

  "Man, I just want to listen to some tunes, you know what I'm sayin'?" he was telling them. The redhead grabbed his arm. "Hey man, it's Jazz Fest, man. Don't be like that."

  "What do you want to do with the Stoner?" The ginger asked his partner, whose expensive Jheri Curl was getting ruined by the rain.

  "I have a couple ideas."

  The ginger vamp grinned. "You'd get high."

  "I'd like to get high. This thing was supposed to start an hour ago."

  "When you're consul, the party starts when you get there," Ginger said dryly.

  Bowie knife, tire iron, grappling hook, rope . . . .

  Jheri looked over the side of the roof. "How about we drop him off, see how big of a spot he leaves?"

  "Hey man," Dreads said, looking alarmed. "Naw man, I-I'll just be goin' --"

  "Thought you wanted to hear some tunes."

  "Well, not if you're gonna be like that about it."

  Ginger sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We're going get more of these as the night goes on, aren't we?"

  His companion shrugged. "Probably."

  "I need a drink."

  "Won't help."

  "Hey," Dreads said, looking back and forth between them. "Hey, but seriously man, you two wanna get high? 'Cause I can make that happen."

  The vamps exchanged a look.

  Shit, Dory thought, and started searching faster.

  "What do you have?" Jheri asked.

  "My man!" Dreads grinned at him, because he really didn't know much about vamps, did he? He threw open his jacket. "Ask and ye shall receive. I got your three b's: bud, beans and black beauties. I got cocoa puff, if you want something with a little more kick. I got 'shrooms that, whew, will get the party started, if you know what I --"

  "Take whatever you want," Jheri told him.

  "Take? Naw, man, I'm sellin'. Gotta keep circulatin', you know? I'll drop a little something later --"

  "You'll drop it now."

  "What?"

  "It's like the man said," Ginger told him, lips twitching. "We only get high if we get it in a form our systems can handle."

  "W-what form?"

  They grinned.

  "Oh, shit!" Dreads said, and gave a panicked look in Dory's general direction. "Aren't you done yet?"

  Guess so, she thought.

  And staked them.

  "The fuck?" Dreads said, stumbling back as twin bodies collapsed to their knees in front of him.

  "It's okay," Dory said, leveraging them to the roof. "You have to take head and heart to kill them, and I only took --"

  "The fuck?"

  "-- one, so they'll live. But they'll be immobilized until someone removes the stakes. They're not powerful enough to --"

  "The fuck?"

  "Are you going to keep saying that?"

  "What the hell you expect? You killed them!"

  "They were dead anyway," she said, picking up her bag and putting a soothing arm around his shoulders. "Someone will find and unstake them sooner or later, and until then, they're really better off."

  "Better?" He craned his neck back around, because Dory was walking him over to a dormer window.

  "Well, it was either that or kill them for good. And they did say they were bored --"

  "I need to puke," he told her, and really kind of looked it.

  "All right." She waited.

  "All right . . . what?"

  "Puke. It's better out here than inside, with a bunch of super sensitive noses-"

  "You . . . you're the most . . . you . . . damn it!"

  Dory waited some more. He didn't puke. He just stood there, vibrating slightly. "You ready?" she finally asked.

  "Hell no! But let's get this damned thing over with!"

  "Good answer." She led the way through the dormer.

  Inside was what looked like a breakroom for the staff: cot, arm chair, small T.V., overflowing ashtray. But no people. Although it was hard to tell, since the music was loud enough to shake the rafters, making the whole place seem to move with it. The concert might have waited, but the party obviously hadn't, a fact borne out when they slipped into the hall, which was splashed with blue, pulsing light from a stairwell.

  "Okay, here's the deal," Dory said. "We're going downstairs and check it out. If the senator I know is there, we warn him and done. If he isn't, he's probably with the consul. So we keep watch for the vamp and hope she gets here before he does."

  "And if she don't?"

  "Let's . . . hope she does," Dory said, trying to sound upbeat.

  Dreads looked like he was going to comment, then changed his mind. Just as well. She would have had a hard time explaining what she intended to do about Marlowe since she didn't know herself.

  Among other things, the lanky bastard back in the swamp had informed her that she wasn't just dealing with a first-level master which - hello -- she'd already guessed, but with a senate member. And she couldn't take one of those on her best day. As she'd proved when he'd almost killed her while on fire.

  So, yeah, if he showed up to assassinate the senate leaders -- or any damned body else -- he was probably going to succeed. Unless she warned them first. Or suddenly got about ten times stronger, which didn't seem likely.

  "We . . .
could just leave a note," Dreads said, looking at her. Like he knew what she was thinking even though he couldn't see her face.

  And damn, that sounded really good. But while Dory might not like vamps, she liked even less the idea of the senate, the one group mostly keeping them in line, suddenly being in chaos. While a bunch of drug running assholes ran amuck, plundering at will.

  Because that was the plan behind all this. Get their damned rum down the throat of a master -- any master -- and they could control him, and thereby his family. Could get them to sign over deeds, empty bank accounts, and then stake each other once it was over, hiding the evidence.

  And meanwhile the senate, who was supposed to stop that sort of thing, would be in disarray, being challenged for control by Alejandro's masters. Who thought they were about to have it all: his senate, which they all but ran anyway, and the North American one. Which would be vulnerable after the death of its leader, and subject to an antiquated system of duels to decide on a replacement.

  But in reality, they were being played, too, by bunch of necromancers with delusions of grandeur. But their delusions were much more likely to become reality. Because something like this wouldn't just eviscerate the senate. If they succeeded, it could alter the power structure of the entire supernatural community, weakening the vamps, giving the mages an unprecedented advantage, and throwing off the balance of power that had kept the peace for centuries.

  Mages attacking vamps. Vamps attacking mages. And the necromancers cleaning up while everyone else fought for their lives.

  So, no, as much as she'd like to leave a warning and get out of there, she couldn't. Because she couldn't know that it would go to the right guy, or that it would go anywhere at all. Or that it would be in time if it did.

  Dory swallowed. "We're staying."

  Dreads sighed. "Okay, but how am I supposed to mingle like this?" He looked down at his tie dye T-shirt and old jean jacket ensemble.

  Dory took a moment to realize what he meant; fashion had never really been her thing. But he had a point. Everyone downstairs looked like they'd just walked out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Dreads was going to be thrown out on his ass in about ten seconds flat.

  And they didn't exactly have time to go shopping.

  "I don't need the whole suit," he told her. "You get me a tux jacket and a top hat, and I can make it work. Go as a local character, you know?"

  "A local character?"

  "Yeah, you know. Like Ruthie the Duck Girl."

  "What?"

  "Not what, who. Roller-skating in her wedding gown through the Vieux Carre, trailed by a bunch of ducks. Ain't you never seen her?"

  "No." Dory thought she might remember that.

  "Or Chicken Man. Claims to be a voodoo priest, but it's all show. He ain't even a mage. But he always draws a crowd anyway. Not every day you see somebody bite the head off a live chicken, and drink its blood right outta the neck."

  "Okay --"

  "Or the Lady with the Cross. She carries a big cross with her everywhere she goes, and crawls along the sidewalk. They say it's in penance for killing her sister --"

  "Okay." Dory stopped him before she got a whole history of the city. "A jacket and a top hat?"

  "A jacket and a top hat. Then I can be . . . Professor Ganja, Vieux Carre fixture and Jazz enthusiast." He grinned. "Might even make a few sales."

  Dory nodded. She didn't like to waste the time, but it would be a waste if they got thrown out as soon as they showed up. "All right, check the break room; there was a closet in there. I'll take this one," she told him, and opened the door to a room across the hall.

  And met Marlowe coming out of it.

  Chapter Twelve