Beach Blanket Bloodbath (Amanda Feral Book 4) (14 page)

I dove into the dune grass as they sped
by.

Fucking Golden Boys. That’s just what I
needed. I decided then and there I’d be keeping that bit of hell a secret from
Wendy. She’d go ballistic if she knew there was something else out there
plotting to delay our route.

The popping of stray rocks in the sand
diminished to a distant crackle, I bounded for the Dunes of Hazard. The windows
across the front of the house were dark and the door locked. I glanced at my
watch. Two in the morning, time really flew when you were in the midst of an
investigation, or, you know, screwing. I’d have thought Gil, at the very least
should be raring to go and waiting on the stoop for me to take him out
somewhere to reek havoc.

Nothing.

Luckily my room key opened the locked
front door, but as I entered the last bastion of Studio 54, I heard the soft
wheeze of a sleeping human. The smell wafting from Mrs. Winterford was familiar
to most writers…the rich malty scent of bourbon pushing out of the skin like
bot fly larvae.

I crept passed the old woman, but
something told me I’d have to drop an anvil to rustle her out of drunken
slumber. I peeked at the register and noted that Wendy had been booked into a
room on the main floor. Number three was halfway down the hall, conveniently
located bathroom-adjacent. After listening at the door and hearing a near constant
stream of curse words, figured out that Wendy was still dealing with the cloud
theft. Her tone was the opposite of receptive to a fun night on the town
hunting down killers.

Thank god for spongy floor-coverings,
disguising my retreat to the stairs. A pair of mismatched snorts drew my
attention back to the sleeping writer. I stood over her, and for the first time
in a long while, felt absolutely no urge to chomp into human flesh. The woman’s
cheeks were chalky, yet damp as though she’d smeared herself with toothpaste.
She murmured a word, just beneath intelligible. Something like garbled and
angry.

Finally as she said it again, I
understood it clear as a bell.

“Critics!”

The scourge of human writers everywhere.
They didn’t have a clue about critical attention until they’d read a review in
a supernatural rag. Humans might pride themselves on a modicum of ethics and
sensitivity. But the starting point for a vampire or zombie critic—and
don’t let me get started on the shapeshifting fuckers—is a flat out character
assault that leads to a dissection of any written work as being a thinly veiled
memoir, regardless of whether it was a thinly veiled memoir—and by
thinly-veiled, I mean totally accurate. Whatever.

“Live with it,” I whispered. “You can’t
kill all of them. I’ve tried.”

I pulled out my phone and snapped a
picture of her. I’d need it when I questioned Miss Sandflea. Kids these days
are visual learners—or at least that’s what we tell ourselves to excuse
the fact that they operate on a diminished vocabulary—thank you,
standardized testing, we don’t need smart kids anyway.

Downstairs, a puddle of light spilled
across the rug in front of Gil’s door and before I even stood before it, I
could hear hushed voices, sultry slurring and the occasional moan. But there
was a mechanical buzz that didn’t read vibrator, but rather computer.

You have to understand that by this point,
I’d seen Gil in flagrante delicto on a number of occasions as his feeding
sometimes kicks into something a little more sensual/disgusting. So I twisted
the knob and peeked in.

The light was glaring. Or lights rather.

Three of them, set up on tripods next to
a camera, all pointing at the bed and Gil, sprawled out, blisteringly white
from head to toe, except for the sprays of blood that dotted his lower jaw,
chest and arms. Masturbating furiously, his penis glowing like a light bulb.

“What the fuck?” I pressed my palm over
my mouth stifling a shocked laugh.

Gil gasped and scrambled to cover himself
with the blood-spattered sheet. He tumbled over the edge of the bed, struggling
to shut off the camera. Shouts arose from the direction of the computer, a
litany of men complaining.

“We already paid!”

“Twice as long next time, guys.” Gil
promised before clamping down the lid of his laptop. Gil turned and stared,
mouth moving soundlessly.

“I’ll just go,” I said, shutting the
door.

Walking slowly, I debated going back.

As a pay-for-bloodplay porn star, Gil
probably felt like he needed to explain himself. The idea of it made part of me
a little sad and the other part extremely happy to have something this horrible
to hold over his head. The ribbing would have to be near constant. Daily. How
else was he to know that I loved him?

I was on my own again and the night was
young. My phone vibrated with Miss Sandflea’s number. I shot Moonglow a quick text
that was, as adolescence these days requires, responded to nearly instantly. We
set up a three a.m. rendezvous and I slipped the phone back in my Birkin. As I
jiggled open my door, Gil bounded into the hallway, surprisingly clean and put
together in a pair of jeans and a black dress shirt.

Our eyes met and he merely nodded. I did,
too.

There were no words…not yet. There’d be
plenty later. Plenty.

His tightened shoulders relaxed, as he
rushed to hug me, stopping about a foot away.

“Oh my God.” Gil recoiled, covering his
mouth as though he might vomit.

“What?”

“Did you fall into the harbor? You smell
like an anchovy factory. It’s disgusting.”

I raised my arm and sniffed. “I don’t—”

The stairs creaked and Wendy strode in to
the hall, she doubled over and howled. “Jesus!” When she regained composure she’d
pinched off her nose. “What have
you
been up to?”

“This from the zombie who’s been
polluting the Las Felicitas sewer system for the last two hours?”

“I think they’re on septic, and it’s
probably full now.” Wendy grinned sheepishly.

Disgusting.

“So, while you were shitting yourself and
Gil was doing God knows what on his computer. I was conducting a thorough
investigation.”

“Bravo.” Wendy made a round of annoyed
golf claps.

Gil cocked his head, a giddy smile
replacing the disgust. “Did you find our wereshark?”

I nodded. “His name is Thad.”

“Thad?”

“Yeah and he admits to doing it, but he’s
just a patsy. Totally the weapon of some sick pageant-hating psychopath. Bitch
got chummed.”

“Oh.” Wendy laughed. “Listen to her tone,
Gil. So dismissive. If he did it, we turn him over and motor on out of here.”

I winced. “Or how about we don’t.”

“Jesus Christ. You fucked him. Right? You
fucked him?” She nodded helpfully, encouraging me to join her in that nod.

“I don’t talk about that kind of stuff.”

“Oh my God. Since when?” Gil’s eyes went
wide. He rubbed his hands against his jeans legs nervously. “I didn’t get the
memo that we weren’t talking about that anymore. Not that I have anything to
talk about. Honest. Swear to God.” This last bit was more for Wendy’s benefit,
obviously.

I glanced at Wendy and watched her eyes
narrow at Gil. “You have a secret.”

“I absolutely don’t.”

For once, I wasn’t in the mood to jump on
a humiliation train. I gave Gil an out. “Oh!” I shouted. “And guess who’s in
town?”

“Burt Bacharach?”

“RuPaul?”

“Neither. The Golden Boys. They’ve
followed us here. I had to jump into the bushes to avoid their searchlights of
doom.”

“Where were they?”

“Here. Right here. Out on Ocean Lane. No
clue how they found us either. It’s really eerie.”

Wendy’s playful demeanor disappeared
instantly. She approached with her index finger stiff as Gil’s blood-misted
dick. “I’m warning you, Amanda. If we’re not on the road tomorrow night, I’m
gonna be really pissed.”

“So, this right here,” I gestured to her
current countenance. “Is just mildly aggravated?”

She spun without another word and
disappeared up the stairs.

I glanced at my watch and then up at Gil,
“You wanna go shake down a teenager?”

“Duh.”

A quick spritzing of my Issey Miyake and
we were outside. Gil’s hips and legs protruded from the floorboard of Mrs.
Winterford’s handicap-accessible van, his Chuck Taylor scuffing against the
gravel for leverage. The car cranked up and we jumped in, creeping backward
from the driveway and out onto Ocean Lane.

 
“Where’d you learn to hotwire a car?”

Gil shrugged. “Internet. I do a lot of
browsing.”

Having fed less than six hours
previously, Gil should have been flush with blood, rosy around the cheeks.
Instead in the glow of the dash lights he appeared sallow and jaundiced. It
didn’t take an addictions specialist to figure out that Gil had a problem with
being overly connected to the electronic world and completely disconnected from
his old love...dick.

Or should I say, other people’s dicks.

“Alright,” I said, lighting a cigarette.
“Spill it.”

Gil rubbed his lips, as though preparing
to reveal some life-altering secret. “Jesus. All right. But keep it to
yourself, okay?”

I nodded.

“A while back, totally innocently, I
started jerking off with fade cream.”

The cigarette dangled from my lip. I was
at a loss for words—a rare occurrence, you must admit, so make a note of
it.

Gil raised his hand as though he were
being sworn in as a witness for the defense. “I’m telling you, Amanda. My dick
never looked younger.”

“You’re a vampire, Gil. You should have a
perpetually youthful dick.”

He waved off my suggestion. “Yeah, but
it’s really pink now. Like uniformly pink. You can barely see the veins.”

I tried to scrub the image from my brain.
“Is this like a mid-life crisis or some shit?”

“No, no. I had just been shooting for
that just grown-in adolescent look. It’s perfectly natural.”

“You know, I guess I was wrong. It’s
perfectly okay for friends to keep secrets from each other, particularly one’s
like that.”

He waved off my comment. “Anyway, I shot
off a quick email to the fade cream company, asking if they’d ever heard of
this particular effect. The guy I spoke with was very excited.” Gil leaned over
and whispered the next bit, salaciously. “Wanted to see it for himself.”

“Of course.”

“He asked if I had Skype, and I’ve never
heard of that and really hoped it wasn’t some STD, but it was right there on my
computer, a program that lets you talk to someone through the little camera. So…I
did it.”

“You jerked off, blood spewing all over
yourself in the process? With photography studio lighting?”

“The diffusers help with glare. But no.
That’s just where I got the idea. There’s money to be made from the vast
network of perverts around the world. I could bankroll an island nation with my
shtick.”

Now, I don’t have a problem with
self-exploitation. My mother is the strip club queen of Seattle, after all. And
I can tell you, from actual conversations with those women (and some men) that
they use the money they make shoving their ass in men’s faces for purely
philanthropic purposes.

I mean meth, obviously.

But Gil? Gil was brilliant at
business—sort of—his last scheme, a luxury vampire-turning business,
had netted him at least a few million. I couldn’t help but think his current
business opportunity had more to do with attention seeking than financial
solvency.

I sighed, turning onto the actual tarmac
from the sandy lane. “You need to figure out another way to get over Vance.”

“My online support group says social
network friends are just as valid as IRL friends. Especially ones that pay for
the privilege.”

I rolled my eyes. “And yet, every time I
see you I can’t help noticing how
invalid
you’ve become. In fact, you’ve lost something.”

“Oh really? And what might that be?”

“Your edge. Your bite. I’ve seen you
feeding and even that connection, body to body isn’t doing it for you anymore.
Did you even drain that girl tonight?”

Gil laughed. “Of course.”

“Completely?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe?”

“So blasé. It makes me sick. You used to
be so passionate about your kills you’d even screw some of them. Remember? It
was disgusting but I couldn’t fault your enthusiasm.”

Gil stared out the front window, the
occasional streetlight illuminating a sadness I knew was there, but wasn’t sure
how to fix. Was it even my place to fix it? For nearly three years, Wendy, Gil
and I had been nearly inseparable and it seemed I wasn’t any closer to figuring
out what it meant to be a friend.

“You’re jealous of Wendy,” he said,
finally.