Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01 (24 page)

“While this is completely interesting, it is not exploring new territory. This isn’t what I need from you,” Ricardo said. “What I’m asking is that you tell us about the experience of being around Elizabeth. How it felt within you.” Ricardo met my eyes. I recalled our run-in. The same force that Snell expressed came from Elizabeth. They were like moons altering the tides. That couldn’t be said, as I recall, about Claire Bandon.

“I felt…uh…flattered by her attention. She is a beautiful woman—”

“Exactly!” I shouted. “Claire Bandon
is
behind this.”

“Why do you say that?” Shane asked, confusion spreading.

“Because Elizabeth, and Snell, too, send out a vibration that presses into you like a bear hug. It’s a threatening feeling. Although, now, I’m not sure if it’s meant to be.”

Ricardo nodded, with a small smile. “Elizabeth would be furious if she knew she was being impersonated. Or that we were having this conversation, at all, without her presence.”

“Is she coming to the opening?” Wendy asked.

“She’s been sent a personal invitation, of course. But it would be rude not to alert her as to what is happening.”

I wasn’t following the train of thought. “Why don’t we just march outside and drag little miss copycat in here and interrogate her?”

“I’d think that would be fairly obvious.”

“Well, as it turns out…Not so much.”

“Claire has gathered an immense amount of strength around her, the ability to change at will into another person, as you say, and some kind of mind control or manipulation of these coffee girls, not to mention, Ms. Ali. At least in regards to the car accident.”

“Rochelle? I hadn’t thought she’d been under anyone’s control. I was just thinking crazy stalker. I thought she was gunning for me because I’d expressed interest in Oliver.”

“I can’t imagine that’s true, but we’ll agree to disagree, and maybe we’ll never know,” Ricardo said, with his palms up. “I believe it is in our best interest to meet with Elizabeth and discuss a plan to stop Claire. As it stands, we could nab the changeling and still be unsuccessful in stopping the plague.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Shane said. “There seemed to be a missing piece. An ingredient that was sparse in the capsule. Karkaroff…uh…Claire had mentioned it once, in a conversation with one of her associates. An elderly man, zombie, I think.”

My memory twitched like fresh road kill. Elderly zombie? “Black man?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded. “Come to think of it.”

Wendy and Gil looked at each other, then me. “Let’s take a meeting with Ms. Karkaroff.”

“I think I’d better do that,” Ricardo said. “Elizabeth and I have an ongoing relationship, of sorts.”

Again, with the vague. Do you see what I mean? It’s no wonder I’m not figuring stuff out. There must be a global brain rot going on, for people to be so forgetful and chintzy with their info.

I always liked to think of my Riedel glass of Pinot Noir as half full, while yours, on the other hand, is and will always be half empty. To my dismay, I found the opposite might just be the case. Not only was I seemingly unprepared for the cerebral task of solving mysteries, but I was starving and hadn’t even thought to eat. I told Wendy I’d meet her at her car, but she was busy chatting up Gil, about the plot, and how horrifying to think that there’d be no more life to feed off if the zombie plague was successful. I’d already thought of other options. I’d start with the werebears—in human form obviously—they seemed particularly meaty.

On the way to the car, I snatched the closest hobo—yes, they still exist, although they’ve ditched the stick and hanky bag for stolen Chanel and Louis Vuitton knock-off duffels. Before he had a chance to scream, I’d unhinged my jaw, alligator-like, and swallowed him in five bites.

“Impressive efficiency,” Wendy said, coming up from behind me. “Weird about Cameron and Liesl, right?”

“God, gag.” I mimed an anorexia finger.

Cameron had gone back to the birthing center to be with his other, while Gil and Shane went on a blood hunt, although it was highly unlikely they’d gone together. Wendy suggested that we needed bonding time, and pampering. The slew of revelations and near deader experiences had me exhausted. I needed a massage and more cocktails.

Wendy knew of an all-night supernatural spa on First Avenue, just past the rescue mission
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. To human eyes, the retreat was a boarded-up brick apartment building, to ours it was an oasis of shimmer and relaxation.

“Welcome to Riyadh Morte.” The female greeter wore white silk pajamas, a white fez and sparkly bright vampire teeth that looked like she’d undergone Zoom!
^®
Her hair was pinned into a loose up-do; copper curls trailed down the side of fake tan cheeks.

The front doors swung open to reveal a dark pool shimmering under a heated moon. Lofty potted palms anchored the four corners of the courtyard and shiny teak daybeds lounged under tents of striped cottons in blues and golds. Males and females of various breeds reclined, warmed by a gentle equatorial breeze, pumping its way through the room; it seemed to come from thin air, though the atmosphere was dense, scented by dates, frangipani, and flavored tobaccos.

Our vampire hostess led us to a private lounge to change into silk robes for our treatments, which apparently didn’t require discussion.

“Your assessor will be by shortly to detail your luxuries,” she said in a French accent and an obligatory smile, that somehow came off as genuine—and, I didn’t even see any cloud Band-Aids—so, go figure.

Luxuries
. That single word nearly erased the toxic events of the last week. I wondered what kind of pleasures were in store. We disrobed and waited on the thick fluff of silk floor pillows for the mysterious “assessor.”

“God, I really need to just chill out.” I rolled my head in a circuit from right shoulder to left, and back again. “All the shit seems to be dropping down the chute.”

“You’ve been through a lot. A massage will do the trick.”

The private lounge was sectioned off from the courtyard by a thick curtain, and the interior had the appearance of the inside of a round pouf ottoman. Shantung, in cocoa and raspberry, was drawn up the walls in pleats and across the ceiling in a swirl, tightened by a single fabric-covered button, the size of a dinner plate, and resembling a dimpled nonpareil.

A shirtless young man entered; his hair was wavy black and hit just above muscular shoulders attached like epulets. He’d walked off a cheesy romance cover, to sit between us on the pillowed floor. His dark nipples, erect despite the humid warmth, stood out on olive pecs glistening with oil that smelled of cinnamon. Or, maybe, this was just a perception. The assessor was clearly Middle-Eastern, with large brown sinister eyes ringed dark to the point of shadow
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; I wondered if he tasted like baklava, or even Turkish delight. Did I just drool, I wondered and pressed my fingers to the corners of my mouth. He smiled graciously, and looked not only at our bodies but around them, as well.

“Ladies, you seem to be tense. Your auras are dark and swirling with black notes. I interpret these to be confusion and fear, on the one…” he remarked in a thick Arabic accent that hummed as though escaping the dense sweetness of a bowl of medjools, “…and ooh,” he said, as though finding a rare album of Islamic prayers, and rubbing his palms together. “Anger, on the other. Both are treated the same. We’ll start with the aural massage and proceed to the venal shower and wraps.”

“Oral massage?” I asked, gulping. I envisioned his mouth moving over every inch of my body. “And, venal shower?”

“Yes, our own patented technique of reenergizing the flesh of the dead, by infusing it with the platelets of the living. It’s so relaxing. It’s my favorite treatment.” He licked his lips and winked from a naughty place. “You’re going to love it. Follow me.”

He led us through the courtyard. This time, a trio of Italianate beauties in the short white robes of Cinemax softcore porn, lounged at the edge of the pond. They hummed and chirped back and forth, in such a way that even the assessor strayed from his course to be near them. Their cadence churned around us. We were standing before them without any real desire to do so.

“Good evening ladies,” the assessor said, “How were your treatments?”

They hummed in response, and a vibrating flutter of pleasure rippled inside my chest.

“Excellent, glad to hear it.” The assessor led us from the courtyard through a hall lined with fluted columns interspersed with statuary. He explained, “The sirens take so little time for self-care. So dedicated to ship disasters, mainly ferries, you really have to respect them for centuries of hard work.”

I imagined ships broken and impaled on rocky crags, dead and dying sailors and passengers strewn about or floating lifeless. Nearby the sirens filed each other’s nails and spray tanned. Wendy and I nodded and continued to follow.

The passage funneled into a sunken chamber, at the base of a shallow stair. The floor was covered in a voluminous layer of pink sand. It shifted under us, enveloping our weary feet in subtle warmth. Two pillars of stone provided the base for massage tables, topped with sumptuous mattresses, one for each of us. The brown-skinned boy gestured for us to lie on the beds, and then exited with a tight bow.

The ceiling above us appeared to be the natural stone dome of a cave, slick, and flecked with gold sparkles and veins of ore, but free of artificial accessories—one of the few times it’s excusable. There were no obvious lights in the room, yet it was illuminated.

“Neat trick with the lighting.” I lay on my back and turned my head to the side to connect with Wendy.

“Mmm-hmm.” Wendy’s eyes were glued to the ceiling. She was not at all talkative. So unusual for her. I decided maybe we should discuss her favorite topic.

“Didn’t you say you were going to bag Julian?” I asked, making up the name. They changed every day anyway.

“Yep, nailed him. I’m going to see him tonight, as well.”

“Oh,” I said in reply, but thought, what had she just said? She “nailed him and was going to see him tonight, too”? Odd, that never happened. Wendy’s style was unwavering: pick up, fuck, eat. I decided to dig.

“You’re going to see a human man, on two separate occasions. Since when?”

“What are you talking about?” Wendy said; her voice had taken on a tone of defense. And, as you know, I don’t
do
tones.

“Nothing, nothing. How did the first date go, then?”

“You know, getting to know him. We talked a while. I think he likes me.”

I sat up on the bed with a start, and jumped at the other woman, “Bitch, you better tell me what you did with Wendy.”

“What?” Wendy’s face registered wide-eyed shock, as she struggled under my grasp of her upper arms.

“I know it’s you in there Claire. Don’t make me beat it out of you.”

But, even as I said the words, I knew they were empty. My mistake was a lack of subtlety in a situation that demanded it. The muscles in Wendy’s arms began to thicken. Her pale smooth skin was replaced with a rapid growth of coarse black hair. In her last human words, before they were replaced by rumbling growls and that morose wilderness inspired howling, Claire said, “I thought you were too self-centered to notice.”

Claire was shifting out of her Wendy costume into an animal. Something I’d only witnessed from a full-on run, in brief over-the-shoulder glances—Samantha had every right to be pissed, I imagined, but she did go overboard with it and stopped herself before she’d done something she’d regret. I feared Claire wouldn’t have any regrets for tearing me into little chunks. Before I could withdraw my hands, her ironically feral arms slid through them. Her lengthening claws clamped on my wrists.

The skin of Wendy’s face hovered over an active construction site of bone and muscle. Her brow and cheekbones extended to either side of her large pointing ears and her muzzle stretched out to resemble the snout of a giant German police dog; a dense covering of hair followed and grew long. The monster’s chest heaved as though she’d drawn in all the air in the room and stayed puffed out while her waist thinned to an enviable degree. I followed the line of her body to her legs, which stretched out a few feet past the edge of the mattress. They were copiously corded with muscle and crunched loudly to bend in an odd angle above the foot.

But why go on? You know the drill. The bitch had turned werewolf on me.

I felt the proximity of her hot breath, before I noticed the transformation in her mouth. It washed over me in a heavy perfume of rot. Her canines expanded into blades, punctuating the horrors chattering around them. Her gums had sprouted seemingly endless rows of short, spiky, snapping teeth.

She sat up and stood, heaving me from my position of misguided attack and throwing me across the domed room with a roar.

I heard the crack of my head before I realized I’d even hit anything…

I became aware of motion, first by a jarring back and forth from head to feet and then by several jittery hops. I was laying on my side in a small space. My wrists were bound behind me and seemed to be connected to my equally pinioned ankles. The space smelled of oils and musty towels. I opened my eyes, initially to darkness and then, a thin line of muffled light became visible. But, I was drifting, again. My brain felt the soreness of a blow, like the fall in the garage that had essentially killed me. The last I knew of the space was a low pace of guitar strums accompanied by bass rhythm…

I awoke, for the second time, inside a rusty barrel at least twenty feet in diameter and towering into unknowable dark heights. I was confined to a dental chair by heavy bands of fabric tightened through metal buckles that reminded me of airline seat belts. Across from me was the huddled heap of a vacant body. His skin was dark and separated, to reveal dried muscle and tissue, the consistency of beef jerky. The remainder of his face was a lacework doily that exposed the inner workings of jaw and sinus. But, despite the state of decay, his identity was obvious.

Rude Wingtip Guy.

In an effort to determine the cause of his death, which immediately brought to mind torture, considering the state of his body, I scanned the perimeter of the room. My chair was surrounded by a roller coaster of hanging glass containers and rubber tubes. These were lit by several lamps standing on tripods of the sort mechanics use to do work on cars in driveways. Space heaters glowed red, and humidifiers hummed and sputtered puffs of moisture into the tropical climate of the room. Above my chair and slightly to the side was a stainless steel tray table crowded with nefarious metal tools, none of which looked particularly dull.

Just outside the ring of suspended glass jars and tubing, a TV flickered an image of a damp room with a single-paned window covered in condensation, its edges spotted black with mold. The walls appeared to be vinyl panels of a color not seen in this century. The carpet was shag and specked with browns and greens, but had probably been gold before the housekeeper quit. A woman was tied to an oak armchair and dressed, not in a silk bathrobe, or a terry sheet, but in obvious synthetic fibers, poly-somethings, that itched against skin like methamphetamines. What’s worse, her feet were bare, and touching the filthy floor. I realized she must be in that most horrifying of residences—if you could call it that—a trailer
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. I’d normally be only superficially disgusted, but as the woman raised her head of blonde hair, her pale skin revealed the image of my friend. Last seen exploding into a hairy monstrosity.

It was Wendy.

A jarring of turning metal sounded from within the room, followed by the squeak of decrepit hinges. Fresh air followed it into the room.

A voice projected from behind me, the direction of the damp breeze. “How are you dear?” Footsteps followed, closing in. I was in that instant enraged; I struggled against my bonds with every bit of energy I could muster. A
wondertwin
couldn’t have tried harder.