Lots of people signed up to work for individual biters, most unwittingly. The monsters had their blood-drenched claws everywhere, or so it seemed; bloodsucking came with lots of business success, most on the quasi-legal side but no few were entirely on the up-and-up save for entirely law-abiding tax evasion of the sort rich people throughout history had always excelled at. Some of the bodyguards and close personal servants seemed to be as durable as other demimonde species, and the argument over whether they’d been given a bit of biter blood like the stories claimed or were something else entirely was perennial. Some people swore little green goblins and aliens with black bug-eyes worked for the vampires as well, not to mention certain species of chupacabra.
Good help was hard to find for everyone these days.
Steve-o had shoved his whole head into the utility sink; the dark mop glistened with moisture. Now he scrubbed at his underarms with a dirty T-shirt since all the towels were stiff and smelled bad; he hadn’t spoken yet. His expression was sour as the laundry.
“Yeah, that’s four henchmen who won’t be licking Dracula’s ass.” Ack didn’t seem pleased, though he reserved his coldest, most ardent hatred for those provably signed up to serve biters for their own gain. Apparently he’d run afoul of a willing servant sometime in the past, but he rarely elaborated. “But they almost had you and Steve. I think I clipped a civilian, covering you.”
“Collateral damage.” Ben took another hit off his can, blinking hard—probably against the tingle of carbonation in his nose—while staring at Layla’s chest.
She was used to that, so far as was possible. Wearing a bra under these conditions was more trouble than it was worth. At least his constant gawping could explain the sensation of eyes on her every goddamn move.
Steve finally piped up. “That’s bad luck, man.” He had a nice baritone; Layla often wondered what he’d sound like singing. “Man, I once thought y’all were professionals.”
Shawn had offered to let Steve into his group, while turning down Layla in the nicest possible way. Later, Steve had asked her quietly not to let Dan know, and she’d nodded, well aware of the fireworks that piece of information would cause—not from Dan himself, but from Ben.
Just one more service she provided, really. Now there was yet more smoothing the waters to do, and the task filled her with dread.
“We’ve collected the bounty on two biters already,” she pointed out. The fact that the money had been from low-level mobsters who felt a particular type of weird murder-y shit was cutting into profits was neither here nor there; if regular municipal authorities wouldn’t pony up, organized crime would. Shawn’s crew had been bankrolled by a hush-hush Vatican program, or so they said, but good luck getting the Church to share the collection-plate take with regular old American heretics. “That’s good, right?”
“Yeah, well.” Steve-o dragged another camp chair toward the table and lowered himself to sit in stages, like an old man.
Nobody would admit Ack getting headshots on two baby fangers with the new ammo while Steve and Dan pumped the rest of the creatures’ bodies full of yet more fancy-dancy exploding bullets was more a fluke than anything else. That was just three months ago in Chicago, another operation gone almost-wrong, and she hated thinking about it.
She’d done a great job as decoy, even Ben had to admit as much. Both biters had locked right on her, and she’d led them into the ambush without any trouble at all. In fact, they’d acted skunk-drunk and were still trying to get at her as the bullets hit. And how they’d screamed before falling apart, violated tissuespoofing into fine, gritty dust, a sound fit for nightmares if she didn’t already have so many.
Mostly centering on poor Suzy.
Maybe that job was why Ben had opened fire early tonight. He constantly talked about getting a few notches in his belt, a phrase which seemed to apply both to vampire-hunting and to sex, but he never mentionedwhyhe had taken up the former.
Of course, neither did Steve, but the look on his face whenever the subject came up spoke volumes.
Dan sighed. Everyone quieted, waiting. When he finally broke the hush, though, it wasn’t to start the official debrief. Instead, he lifted his sweating Coors can and looked at it like he didn’t quite understand how it had gotten into his hand.
“Fuck it,” he said, tonelessly. Dim backwash from the tensor accentuated fine lines around his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. “I quit.”
A strange murmuring silence filled their temporary, derelict home. A past-midnight train was barreling nearby, rhythmic wheel-clacks like a heartbeat; the formless mutter of traffic was so familiar it went unnoticed until something awkward happened.
Layla’s throat was dry. Even the beer, yeasty and pisswatery, was starting to sound good.
“Three years of bullshit,” Dan continued. “Four, if you count… just fuck it. I’m going back home, I’m forgetting all about this creepy shit, and I suggest y’all do the same.”
What. The hell. Layla had to un-grit her teeth before she could get a word out. “What do you mean, you quit?” Hunting biters wasn’t the sort of thing you walked away from. Especially when they killed yourwife, for God’s sake.
That went double for showing up at Layla’s door, blubbering-drunk about how Suzy was gone, it was real and Suze wasgone.And then asking her to go to the morgue to help identify the body, because he couldn’t face it alone.
“Do you need a fucking dictionary, Lay? I. Fucking.Quit.” Dan glared at her, coffee-colored eyes gone cold and strange, just like when she’d opened the door to the hotel room before the wedding and found him with Cindy Asterly.
No tears that time, no sir. He hadn’t even pleaded with her not to tell, justlookedat her like that.
Like she was a stranger.
“But…” There wasn’t enough air in this stupid falling-apart building packed with junk; she sounded like she’d been punched right in the gut. “ButSuzy.”
Poor, sweet, friendly Suzy, who never hurt a fly. Who never seemed to care Layla’s house was on the wrong side of the tracks, who called herbestieand even uninvited Mary LaCosta from her thirteenth birthday party because the little bitch had spread rumors about Layla and Bobby Myers.
“For fuck’s sake, I didn’t even love her,” Dan spat, his mouth contorting for a swift, terrible moment. The dark circles under his eyes had somehow gotten worse in the past half-hour, as if years of sleep deprivation had settled in all at once. “She fucking forced me to marry her, all right? Said she was pregnant.”
But youdidmarry her. Even after I caught you. Layla stared at him, dimly aware her mouth was slightly open. A weird slipping sensation vibrated under her still tightly laced boots, as if a minor earthquake had chosen this particular moment to strike.
