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

I gazed up at the ruddy face of the nearest
zombie and handed the boy the card. "Good luck." He broke character
to give me an odd smile and a wink of interest, the expression cracking the
thick smear of gray make-up on his cheek; it peeled away in a solid strip and
fell on the table. Following it down, I noted another arm darting from beside
his hip.

Quick.

Naturally gray and veiny.

Feminine.

Before I could do or say anything the
hand closed in around the package of cloud and snatched it away. The woman
disappeared into the throng as quickly as she’d come. Wendy's hands turned to
claws and she threw herself across the table, jaw cracking like knuckles as her
a scream bellowed from her quickly ratcheting mouth.

"Cuddler!" she screamed. "Get
an eye on that bitch!"

Leaning from the window, cloud pilling in
his chest hair like cheap deodorant, the man grinned and pointed. “Turning the
corner just now, west on St. Helens.”

And then we were moving.

Wendy snarled and snapped her way through
the grungy crowd, the moans louder from the center than the periphery. I felt
my phone vibrating up the handle of my Birkin. Gil never could stand to be
outside of the action, he had a sixth sense for drama. He was probably pacing
the basement, cursing and mumbling to himself that nothing good ever happened
at night.

When we broke from the crowd, Wendy in
the lead—windmill-arming as she ran, purse hurdling before her like a medieval
weapon—I caught sight of the thief blazing up the hill, the package
tucked under one arm like a football, her other hand holding that damn floppy
sun hat in place.

“That’s her!” I shouted and from beside
my head saw the barrel of Abuelita’s gun level and ducked. Not a second later
the concussion flipped my hair and my eardrum thudded as though it’d been hit
by a hammer. I shot the woman a look that was also a promise to cut her when I
got the chance.

Her lip curled away from her teeth in a
grin that said she was looking for a reason to take me out.

“Car!” Wendy cried and threw herself in
front of a gray sub-compact puttering along in their wake, sliding across the
hood as though there were a crate of Twix on the other side—don’t let me
get started on Wendy’s Twix addiction (unless you enjoy scat chat, in which
case, I charge hourly for that).

Before I could detect her exact intent,
Wendy had wrangled the driver out of the front seat, tossed him onto the
concrete and slipped behind the wheel into the still rolling car. With her
frenzied expression, I didn’t have to think twice before diving for the
passenger door, Abuelita wasn't far behind but neither of us was quick enough
to get our doors closed before Wendy tore off in the direction of Paula
Prentiss.

“Jesus,” she snapped in my direction.
“Could you be any slower?”

Up ahead, the zombie dressed as a zombie
leapt onto a motorcycle and ripped off down the street, leaving a puff of smoke
and two incredibly pissed off cloud dealers in her wake.

Never the best driver in the calmest of
circumstances, Wendy bounced the little car over curbs, side-swiped mirrors
clean off of parked cars and blistered the concrete running lights, barely
escaping not one, but seven t-bones.

Meanwhile, I quickly checked my texts to
find:

Gil

Managed
a trio of invites for the Napa Valley Vein Train. I know blood's not your
thing, but there'll be celebrities there and I know they very much are.

Me

You
make me sound like some kind of starfucker.

I held the phone up to Wendy.
“Gil wants us to—”

“I'm going to stop you right there,” she
said, white-knuckling the wheel. “If I'm not going to go with you to your
little book thing then I'm certainly not gearing my calendar around Gil's
shit.”

Me

Wendy's
being a cooch. Let's beat her over the head, shove her in burlap (she's
allergic) and drop her in the Sound.

Gil

Perfect.
I'll bring a few bottles. My fave Jami Gertz varietal and some Grey Goose for
you. We'll watch her sink in style.

I glanced up, just as Wendy drove the car
over the divider into the eastbound lane, my arm slamming into the door roughly
as she swerved to avoid a head-on collision with a truck. I scrambled for the
seatbelt, but it was too late, a sharp right planted me firmly against Wendy's
hip, the stick shift digging into my thigh brutally.

"Dammit!"

"Not a word, Amanda!" Wendy was
hunched over the steering wheel, teeth grinding and eyes homicidal.

To her credit, they were making endways
in the pursuit. The motorcycle weaved back and forth between cars only a block
away and slipped out of view as it took a hard right at the Space Needle and
headed toward the port.

"Hurry, Missus! Rapido!” Abuelita
belched from the back seat, still holding that damn gun.

Which reminded me. The bitch had nearly
blown my hearing out and was thus a danger to my well-being. I spun around and
before she could protect it, snatched the Glock 9mm from her hand. "I'll
be damned if you pull that shit again!" And crammed it in my purse to
avoid her clawing hands.

“Missus!” the woman whined.

“Abuelita!” Wendy shouted. “Leave it.
We've got more pressing matters.”

The thief made a turn toward the cruise
port and though they were right on her tail, when Wendy slammed on the brakes
to give chase on foot the woman had already jumped from the stolen bike and
entered the building beside one of the mammoth ships. Wendy swerved to a stop
and we darted, throwing open the double doors just in time to see her disappear
through the TSA security line.

Wendy approached the grim-faced agent
behind the podium and began to plead. “That woman you just let through, she's a
thief! She stole my...” she stumbled for words.

“Face cream?” I suggested.

“Drugs!” Abuelita howled.

Her words seemed to have the opposite
effect as she'd intended, as we were forcibly removed from the building by a
trio of security guards, only one of which, a delicious islander of some sort,
muscled and lean, was even remotely edible and/or fuckable.

“You want to take a ride with us—um,”
I leaned in to look at his badge. “Pinchy? Your name is Pinchy?”

He mugged, ran his long fingers through
his thick black hair. I groaned. “I've got something you can pinch,” I said. “Two
actually.”

“Or more,” Wendy said, snidely, her eyes trained
on the ship and the woman who'd stolen her stash. She stood at the railing
sipping from a coconut and holding the package up high like a trophy with her
other hand.

“Where's this ship going, hon?” Wendy
asked, turning a bitter smile toward Pinchy and running her fingers across his
tan cheek.

“It's a turnaround. They're going to L.A.
I think they might be stopping in San Francisco.”

I could see the wheels turning in Wendy's
head. She glanced at me and shook her head, no.

“What? I wasn't thinking anything.”

“You weren’t thinking that we should jump
in the car and kill three birds with one stone on a bloodthirsty west coast
road trip?”

“Oh yeah, I was totally thinking that.
Please can we?”

Wendy looked off at the cruise ship
easing away from the dock and nodded slowly. “Maybe. I’ve got to make a few
calls. Rule out some territories. There’s no way she’s affiliated with the
Xhangzou Poltergeists in B.C., they don’t employ zombies. So it’s Cali. For
sure.” Her eyes narrowed viciously.

I scrambled for my phone and texted Gil:

It's
on. Book thing, wine country Vein Train, then S.F. and maybe L.A. for a
supernatural gangland murder. Wendy's on board. Good times.

Behavior
: N (needs improvement)

Comment
: Amanda, while obviously smart, is prone to
bouts of rash behavior. During the fall trimester alone she’s been unable to
refrain from biting…at the expense of three of her classmates. No skin was
broken, but I fear it’s only a matter of time. –Mrs. Helen Montclair

—First
Grade Report Card

Lapham
Elementary School

Gil’s
house on Queen Anne was a dilapidated monster—three floors of dandruffy clapboard,
loose brick and windows shuttered up tighter than old lady cooch. The porch
dimpled in the middle like the sagging back of a nag on its way to the dog food
factory and veils of tarp draped over the mossy roof giving the whole place the
look of a grieving mafia widow.

“How is it possible that it looks worse
than the last time we were here?” Wendy shuddered, adding, “Yesterday.”

The mansion had probably been a showpiece
in its time, but now it was the kind of place that made home renovation show
hosts either cream their collective panties or run, windmill-armed in the
opposite direction. The disheveled look was overkill considering it was
entirely manufactured. The house had been gorgeous when Gil bought it. Gil
claimed the work he’d put into the place was “distressing”—I’ll
say—like holey-kneed worn-in jeans that you pay extra for so people think
you have someone to get on your knees for. Of all the houses on the street,
Gil’s was most likely to be compared to a used up hooker.

And he liked it like that.

People, for the most part stayed away,
except for the obsessed. Gil had started his own rumors about the place at
every supernatural website and local Facebook page comment thread about
hauntings. The news drew thrill seekers to the house from far and wide but they
always left dazed and a little thinner. Drained of some of the red stuff.

It was quite the racket.

And I had to say I was more than a little
jealous that his food was delivered free of charge and sans gratuity. But I
wouldn't trade places with him. Not since his boyfriend Vance left and the
depression rolled in like a fog bank.

He was probably moping around his
lavishly appointed basement right then, dwelling about the last time he got “catfished”
or commiserating with some online friend about why guys only wanted to send
fang pics. He'd tell them no and then the very next text was some lewd shot of
their big fat fangs, usually slathered in saliva droplets or some other bodily
fluid that isn’t captured often on Instagram.

Those weren’t nearly as bad as the bait
and switch vamps that lured him in with shots of six pack abs and showed up
with pony keg guts. Of course, Gil would immediately forward those pics to
Wendy and I, no matter how vomit-inducing.

I texted Gil and looked up from my phone
just in time to witness Wendy angrily pound the horn. I swatted her hand aside
and pivoted in my seat for the inevitable confrontation.

“Oh no, bitch. You need to get a grip.
We're going to be together for a few days and not just because we're trying to
beat a cruise ship down the coast.”

“I know. I know. We're mending fences.
It's our mending fences road trip. I might add that the last time you talked me
into one of these, you ended up with a boyfriend…”

For what that’s worth, I thought.

“…And I ended up with a hole in my
mid-section I had to pack with newspaper. It wasn't cute.”

I cringed, remembering the clean lines of
the blast, you could see right through her—just like when she tried to
lie—but those were the risks during a zombie outbreak, people get shot.
But she couldn’t hold it against me forever, could she?

“Listen. It's not going to be like that,”
I said. “We're going to have a great time. Hang out with Gil—”

“And Abuelita,” a small voice bit the
words out from the shadows of the back seat.

I rolled my eyes. “And Abuelita. I’ll
sign a few books; we’ll feast on some seaside delicacies, meet up with
celebrities at Gil's Vein Train thingy in Sonoma and just generally have a
great time. Maybe even give you a reason to unlock the chastity belt and air
out the lady bits.”

Wendy chuckled at that, but didn't let
the change in her mood stop her from reaching over and slapping my horn again.

“Gah!” I yelled.

I followed her gaze to Gil's loping
silhouetted form, a huge suitcase teetering atop his head like the shadow of a
hammerhead shark. When he broke into the cone of the streetlights Wendy and I
both shielded our eyes.

Now, vampires aren't known for their
Caribbean bronze tans, but Gil's sequestration to his basement for lo these
five months had stripped his skin of nearly all its pigment. He was marble
white and that's never a good look. It's terrible advertising, for one, because
it reminds a buyer of those ancient statuary of nude men with micro-penises.
And in this world full of size queens, that's the last thing a gay vamp wants
to nestle into a potential lover's mind.