Stranger Things Have Happened: An Adrien English Write Your Own Damn Story (The Adrien English Mysteries) (18 page)

He probably doesn’t know his own strength. He’s pretty damned strong — he’s using his other hand to keep your arms pinned over your head. It’s a tiring position, and one that emphasizes your helplessness, but when you try to lower them, he won’t let you. One hand is holding you in place, one hand is working you, and all you’re allowed to do is respond. Well, you could kick him, but if you’re honest, you don’t want to interrupt the rhythm because that delightfully familiar curl of a pleasure — too keen for such an ordinary word as “pleasure” — is starting to unwind and spiral deep inside you.

“I’m going to come,” you warn him a little late, because it’s been so long you’re caught off guard by how fast and enthusiastically your body reacts.

“You can come,” he murmurs, as though giving permission, and by God you do.

You come as though release has been bottled up inside you for years. Which, technically, no. But a bicycle built for two is so much better, even if Riordan watches you arch and pant and spill with a faint, knowledgeable smile.

When he finally lets you lower your arms, your legs are shaking so badly you can barely stand up. He turns you to the bookshelf, and you hang onto it for dear life, eyes locked on the words
Wildfire at Midnight
.

The phrase seems weirdly portentous. You can’t seem to get past it as Riordan’s fingers slip along your crack, and then pierce you with slow, deliberate intent. You shudder, but it’s not rejection. Spent though you are, you don’t want the connection to end.

He’s got something slick and silky on his fingers. Is that…? Or did he bring something?

Wild…fire…at…mid…night…

Riordan’s finger presses in, pulls out, presses in, pushes further. It feels good, that friction. You moan.

“It’s been a while,” he remarks. He kisses the curve of your shoulder and continues to explore all your little nooks and crannies by press and push and prod. By the time he finishes, you’re flushed and breathless with anticipation — and yes, maybe a little anxiety. You don’t have to wait long.

Riordan spreads your ass cheeks and pushes in. He gives a little groan.

“Jesus fucking Christ. That’s nice.” One of his hands is locked on your hip. The other rubs your belly. Does he think you bring good luck to the wearer? It hasn’t worked that way so far.

You’re not sure you can take him without splitting apart, but since that’s not an option, your body — and mind — submit, sphincter muscle spasming around his stiffness as he shoves the rest of the way in.

“Okay?” he asks in that rough, unsteady voice. He gives a little instinctive thrust.

You nod. You give an instinctive push back.

The side door swings open and you both freeze.

No mistake. The side door to the building is open. Someone has picked the lock and slipped into the building. The night scent of the city pours in on a draft of cold air — and with it a hint of something else. Gasoline?

Terrifying. And embarrassing. Mostly terrifying. Although Riordan’s reaction seems to be mostly rage. He pulls out of you — ouch — and shoves you down. “Stay here, baby.”

He yanks his pants up and he’s in pursuit. Granted, a slightly stiff-legged pursuit, but he’s moving with speed and purpose through the canyons of bookshelves.

You don’t stay put, of course. You get up and move after Riordan, more slowly and more cautiously — and stopping to grab the perfectly real poker from the faux fireplace.

You catch up to Riordan in time to see him tackle a tall masked figure in a raincoat. The figure drops what he’s carrying, which turns out to be a gasoline can.

The two men go crashing into one of the bookshelves, which creates a domino effect around the room, shelf after shelf crashing into each other.

The man in the raincoat whips out a gigantic and very sharp-looking knife. Riordan wrests it from him, and then stabs him through the shoulder, pinning the man in the raincoat to the bookshelf.

Not like in the movies, that’s for sure.

The man stops fighting and begins screaming. Riordan rips off the scary skeleton mask, and you both gasp.

It’s Bruce Green.

The reporter from
Boytimes
is your stalker.

It turns out that Green is more than a stalker. After he’s arrested and interrogated, he confesses to murdering Robert. You were next on his list.

Bruce is tried but found not guilty by reason of insanity. He’s sent to the loony bin and continues to write you weekly letters, which you save to share at his eventual sanity hearing. Meantime Detective Riordan is forced to resign from the police department which takes a dim view of his having “social relations” with a suspect in a murder case. “Social” may have been a typo.

Anyway, Riordan quits the force and opens an Irish pub not far from Cloak and Dagger books.

You continue to see each other “socially” every chance you get — and you get
a lot
of chances.

The End

A
fter you hang up, another idea occurs to you. You look up the number for
Boytimes
and give them a call, but no one at
Boytimes
has ever heard of Bruce Green.

So that’s definitely weird.

Good thing you didn’t make the mistake of talking to him.

You get the owners of the Thai restaurant next door to help you lift the bookshelves upright and you spend the rest of the evening putting books away and carrying broken records and smashed glass to the dumpster in the alley.

When you’re done, you drag yourself upstairs, take the phone off the hook, and fall into bed.

When you open your eyes your bedroom is full of white mist.

Fire!
you think, not unreasonably mistaking all that swirling pale vapor for smoke. You leap out of bed, feeling your way to the door, but after a few steps, the bone-chilling damp of the room stops you in your tracks.

There is no fire.

There is no warmth in the entire building. You might as well be standing outside. In fact…you peer through the shape-shifting fog. You can’t see the door at all, and your dresser looks more like…a hedge. With white berries.

Weird and weirder.

You must have left a window open. But when you turn to the window, you can’t make it out at all. You walk toward where the window should be, and your feet sink into the soft, spongy ground. Wait. Wait. This is too weird. The floorboards are gone and you’re standing in wet grass.

You take another step forward and not only is the window gone, the walls of your room look more like the crumbled walls of an ancient building.

A small, square building.

A tomb.

Okay. You’re dreaming, so no need to panic.

You should probably take control by getting back in bed, closing your eyes, and thinking of something pleasant.

But when you turn around there’s no sign of your bed. Or your bedroom. Or Cloak and Dagger Books. Or Pasadena.

What the…?

The hedge to your left rustles loudly, and you whirl around in time to see a man and woman in long black capes gliding toward you. There’s something vaguely familiar about them — or there would be if they weren’t…

No. It has to be the light.

They can’t really be…purple. Can they?

You stare more closely. The man is, yes, purple, but aside from that, he’s elderly, medium height, spare build. He has thinning jet-black hair and a pencil-thin mustache. You know you’ve seen him before. But where?

The woman is, yes, purple, middle-aged, portly, with a mild expression and frizzy dark hair.

Then it clicks. These two were with that bus tour that showed up at your shop this morning. The two you found wandering around your living quarters.

Except they weren’t purple this morning. And they didn’t have flowing capes. And they weren’t gliding eerily through the mists.

You take a couple of steps back as they skate toward you.

“Can I help you?” you ask.

They answer, but it’s hard to understand them because they speak in a kind of hiss. Actually, it’s hard to understand them because those fangs — like snake fangs — are all you can think about. Those are two sets of scary teeth. It’s difficult to concentrate on anything else as they continue toward you, making that clicking, hissing noise.

“Okay. Stop.” You hold up your hands, index fingers crossed like in a…cross. Yes, you feel completely silly because this has got to be a dream, right? You’ve been having some very weird dreams lately. And they’re purple, after all. The vampires, not your dreams. Though some of your dreams are admittedly purple.

But getting back to the vampires, with that skin tone they could be related to Count von Count. For all you know they just want to help you with your bookkeeping.

Maybe the crossed fingers work because the vampires pause about arm’s length from you.

“Where ith it?” the lady vampire says.

“Where ith what?” You lick your teeth. “Where
is
what?”

“The Croth of Ruin,” the older vampire says in an older crotchety vampire voice.

“I truly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

This is not the answer they want and they bare their fangs and hiss more loudly.

“I don’t recognize that title,” you protest. “Do you know who wrote it? Who’s the publisher? ISBN number? Work with me.”

“Ith not a book!” the lady vampire snarls. Well, it’s a lisping sort of snarl. She gets the point across. She rakes her claws at you — she’s wearing purple nail polish too — but she doesn’t touch you. So the crossed fingers must work. Good to know.

“Well, this is a bookstore,” you tell her. At least it was when you went to bed. It does appear to be a ruined tomb in the middle of a forest now, but still. “If it’s a DVD or a CD, I can direct you to —”

They’re practically fizzing with frustration now and they are both making little lunges at you. This time one of the lady vampire’s long purple fingernails rakes your wrist.

“Hey!” You stare down at the dots of blood.

“You think to keep it for yourthelf!” snarls the old vampire.

“I don’t even know what it ith.
Is
.”

“The Croth of Ruin!” They shriek at you in unison.

“I heard you the firth time,” you yell back. “I don’t know what that is.”

For some minutes now you’ve been aware of a growling sound in the distance. The growl grows louder and louder and you recognize the purr of a powerful engine. About the same time you make the connection, a black-garbed figure roars up on a gleaming motorcycle the size of a small silver buffalo.

A large man leaps from the motorcycle and whips out two gleaming, razor sharp butterfly swords. He briskly spins them over his head and shoulders in a complicated choreographed move and then advances on the two vampires who fall back, cowering behind their raised capes.

“Stand aside, Sir English,” the man commands. “I’ve got this.”

You peer at him more closely.

He looks a lot like Detective Riordan except he’s dressed all in black leather beneath one of those soft, swirly, wool duster coats. His hair is a little longer than Riordan’s and he’s wearing an eyepatch.

“Who are you supposed to be?” you inquire. Clearly you have got to stop eating cheese before bedtime.

“Professor Janick Von Riesling. Vampire Slayer,” he throws over his shoulder.

“Isn’t your last name supposed to be Van Helsing?” you ask doubtfully.

“You drink what you like, I’ll drink what I like.” Von Riesling sets off in pursuit of the vampires who are gliding away at top speed, still sputtering and sizzling their discontent.

This is a very exhausting dream. You sit down on the wall of the tomb and close your eyes. Whatever happened to nice normal nightmares about showing up for finals after missing six weeks of all your college courses? Or giving a speech and realizing you’re naked? No, you’ve got to have these complicated supernatural…

“That’s that,” Von Riesling says briskly right next to you, and you sit up straight, realizing that you were falling asleep again. Of course you’re already asleep so…it’s kind of confusing. “Good thing I was in time,” Von Riesling adds.

You nod. He really looks
a lot
like Detective Riordan. Except Detective Riordan doesn’t usually gaze at you with that sort of speculative glint in his eyes. Eye.

Or does he?

“Here, let me give you a hand,” Von Riesling says gallantly, slipping an arm around you and lifting you to your feet.

“What happened to your other eye?” you ask.

“Nothing. I think the eyepatch looks more formidable, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

He pushes the eyepatch back. His eyes are green. So green they almost seem to glow as he gazes intently into your eyes, and his mouth is coming ever closer to yours. In fact, his lips are only a kiss away when you start to say, “You know, you look ecthackly like —”

His mouth covers yours in a kiss so deliciously sweet it seems to stop your heart in your chest. You kiss him back, harder. You can’t seem to get enough of him.

“Ow!” Von Riesling’s hands fasten on your biceps and he pushes you back. “Did you just bite me?”

You blush and lick your lip. You do taste a hint of copper on your tongue. You put a hand to your mouth, and wow your teeth are sharp. You don’t remember your incisors ever being quite so pointy.

“Thorry,” you murmur.

“No biting,” Von Riesling warns you. “No teeth. No scratching either.”

You nod. He leans in to kiss you again. Oh, it’s even nicer the second time. He tastes lovely and he’s
such
a good kisser. This is the nicest dream you’ve had in ages…

“Oh thit!” Von Riesling says suddenly.

The End