The Nightlife San Antonio: (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (11 page)

No matter how intense the workout
, he couldn’t stop thinking of her lying in his bed, waiting for him. He couldn’t shake the memory of her teeth sinking into his flesh, and that wonderful feeling of utter joy. For the first time ever, Adrian had it bad. Is this what love felt like, this constant need for someone else? He had never said the words to any woman, not even when a couple of them begged him to say
I love you
. He’d never wanted the strings that went with it, either. He hadn’t wanted any damn connections to this vampire beyond the few days she planned on hiding out at his place. The plan from the start was hit it and quit it. Same plan he’d always had.

If this feeling he had was love, then love
sucked ass.

Jane Doe vampire
was the last woman on earth he should ever get involved with, but he couldn’t stop obsessing about her. If he let go the handles of that rowing machine, he’d race right back to his apartment and sit there like a lapdog waiting for the sun to drop.

“
Fuck that.”

He kept on rowing.

* * * *

Perspiration dripped from his forehead and stung his eyes while the rest of his body hummed from the flush of blood coursing through well-used muscles. He felt good, sore, but loose and slightly less edgy. He strolled out to the gym parking lot in the fading sunlight. His internal clock counted down the minutes to sunset as he sped towards the I-35 frontage road, and home to his apartment. If she wasn’t awake and ready for him when he showed up, there would be hell to pay.

This was not the deal he had made, this funky obsession. She was
supposed to hide out, suck on his blood once in a while, bang him till she could barely walk, and generally be a decent houseguest. By the time he pulled into the covered parking in front of his apartment, right at sunset, he was so anxious to dash inside he almost missed the blue Camaro that pulled in after him. Out the corner of his eye he caught the driver’s arm hanging out the window, wife-beater tank top, with a distinctive solid black handprint tattoo on his shoulder.

Any other day, that wouldn’t have meant anything to him, but today, Adrian had seen that same
guy, same tattoo roaming around Planet Fitness, not doing much of anything but checking him out. Now he conveniently shows up at Adrian’s Apartment? Just so he could roll past all slow and easy, looking cool in his old-school Camaro?

Not.

The tattoo worried Adrian the most. He knew of a certain group of people who wore those tattoos for a reason, and he wanted nothing to do with them.

Suddenly, he wasn’t in such a hurry to get inside. Adrian shut off the truck, wiped his face and hands with a wet wipe, and tried to look
casual about watching the Camaro as it parked a few cars down from him. He had that feeling again, that yucky feeling when something just wasn’t right. Why the hell would this guy be following him, and who the hell sent him?

He slipped from his Chevy
truck and assessed the advancing darkness. Just far enough into twilight he might be able to catch the guy unaware. Adrian snagged a roll of quarters he kept in the ash tray and wrapped his hand around it tightly. He walked past the Camaro, away from the front porch of his apartment. The man sat in his car, hadn’t made any moves like he intended to get out. Adrian walked further down to the end of the apartments, near the alley, and heard that sound, the clang of a car door closing. He went straight to the door of the last apartment, and stood at the porch pretending to look for his keys. Wife-beater wasn’t much for stealth. Adrian could hear his footfalls along with his breathing.

Adrian
grumbled to himself about forgetting his damn keys and turned around to go back to his truck, heading straight for Wife-beater who shot him a squinty-eyed look of suspicion, but kept advancing on him.

The man feigned a
pretense of casual movement. “Hey, I need to make a phone call. Can I use your phone?” The casual look evaporated as his face morphed into a menacing grimace and his hand emerged from behind him with a gleaming, black semi-auto pistol.

With a fistful
of quarters, Adrian smashed through Wife-beater’s nose like so much useless flesh. The guy went up in the air, almost floating, and then dropped to the sidewalk on his back with a grunt. “Motherfucker.” His voice sounded wet with blood from his busted face.

Adrian
stomped on his gun hand. A meaty crunch was followed by a little squeal of pain. The gun wasn’t going anywhere, probably a couple of broken digits in there. He glanced around to see if anyone witnessed his little altercation and then scooped up the pistol and slipped it into his sweatpants’ pocket. He didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t some nosy a-hole hiding behind window blinds calling the cops right now.

T
he cops were the least of Adrian’s worries at the moment. The Black Hand on the ground spitting blood and cursing Adrian’s mother was the real issue. Adrian grabbed his foot and dragged him off the sidewalk, the back of his head bouncing on the asphalt. He pulled him all the way around the corner into the entrance of the alleyway. No one could see them unless they actually came down the alley. No floodlights anywhere.

Wife
-beater started to catch his wits and struggle, kicking to free his foot. With a two-handed grip, Adrian twisted to the left. Wife-beater did what they always do, he fought that momentum. Then Adrian did what he always did, reversed the twist to the right in a snap-back motion. Working with the tension of the man’s fight, his ankle spun all the way around and gave way with a sickening crack. The body can’t spin fast enough to go with it, so the ankle pops.

Wife
-beater cried out, like they always do when their ankle breaks in his hands. The guy wasn’t going to be jogging anywhere for a while.

“Motherfucking puto! I’m go
nna kill you. Chinga su madre, I’m gonna fuck you up. That’s a promise.”

They don’t usually talk so much shit with a broken ankle
and fingers. This guy proved an exceptional shit-talker.

Adrian held pressure on the break, bringing the shit-talker to
a slow, whining silence. “You’re not going to kill anyone, not tonight. There’s two ways this goes down. One, you tell me what I want to know, and you can crawl home to whatever rock you came out from under. Two, you don’t tell me, or you lie, and you never see home again. This alley, and my face, will be the last things you ever see in this world.”

When he spo
ke to a man under such an exhilaratingly intense situation, Adrian made sure his voice was calm, quiet. He made sure they understood the gravity of the moment. Never let it be said he didn’t give a man a chance to talk.

“I don’
t care what you say, puto. You and that bitch, La Reina, are already dead. La Eme got a contract, and they sent me here.”

Adrian cranked
his ankle hard to the left and then right. The grinding of broken bones and tendons accompanied the man’s whimpers. Even tough guys whimper under this kind of pain. He wasn’t sure how far to go. Here in civilian land, there were no rules of engagement. He’d never had to worry about it in Iraq or Kuwait. They’d told him when to go, and who to grab, and he did as told.

“Aye chingao madre! You coulda walked, cabron.
” Blood and spittle flew from his mouth as he groaned in agony. “But no, not when La Eme sees what you did to me. You wanna die to protect that bitch? The word came straight from the Generals. La Reina goes down, no matter what. If you know who she is, you’d know this ain’t no business for gringos. La Eme viene para ella, and there ain’t no stopping them soldiers. I came to find out what you know. But you got me all fucked up.”

That’s exactly what Adrian was afraid of. Though he might be a bit extreme in moments like these, he wasn’t an idi
ot. He knew when he was holding a poisonous snake with real bite. This man was a serious problem. He would become a much bigger problem if he ever spoke of this encounter.

Wife
-beater wasn’t giving Adrian any reason to let him live.

At Adrian’
s silence, the man pushed his agenda harder. “Do you know her? Did she speak to you? Talk to me, maybe you can live. Maybe.”

This was not working out so hot. The guy was
supposed to be begging. They all beg. These Black Hands were hard bastards.
Fuck!

A voice called out of the dark.
“Adrian, is that you? What’s going on?”

Shit, Crenshaw!
No time for anything else.

Adrian
leaped atop the man and grabbed his head in both hands. A hard jerk left, then right, then the telltale
crunchy
-
crack
of a broken spinal column. The man’s breath slid out in a slow hiss as his body relaxed, unconscious. Death would soon follow.

The neck breaks
easier than the ankle.

Adrian stood up and stepped away just in time for Crenshaw to come around the corner and catc
h him staring down at the body of a Mexican Mafia.

“Son of a bitch! Adrian, did you do this? W
hat happened?”

A
drian looked at him, calmly.
No murderers around here
. “This is how I found him.”

Crenshaw looked at him, his head cocked sideways.
Confusion and disbelief flitted across his face. “Are you serious? You just found him like this? Didn’t see no one?”

Adrian nodded, cool as could
be, trying his best to calm the racing beat of his lying heart. “I was walking past, and saw him like this.”

Crenshaw turned in a circle, looking around the parking lot, and then up and dow
n the alley. “Well, I didn’t see nothing. I don’t know shit.”

He stepped up
to get a closer look, and knelt down to inspect the tattoo on the guy’s shoulder. “Fucking Mexican Mafia. You see the black hand, with the E M E inset? And this tattoo here of the Eagle and Snake? This guy was a soldier in the Mexican Mafia. Somebody’s gonna be in the shit on this deal. They always retaliate in full force. These guys run the show, dude. They run the prisons, the streets, and they’re tied to every major cartel in Mexico.”

Crenshaw scowled. “They definitely got a grip on San Antonio.
” Apparently this little fact bothered Crenshaw, a lot.

Adrian stepped back and shrugged. “Like I said, I found him this way.
It’s got nothing to do with me.”

Crenshaw stared
Adrian in the eyes. “I ain’t gonna say squat. One dead gang-banger is one less on the streets. No skin off my hide.”

“You sure I can count on you? I don’t want t
o get dragged into any gang shit. You promise you won’t tell anybody?” Adrian watched him closely, a heavy feeling of unease in his gut.

Crenshaw seemed taken aback. “Dude, serious? You know I got your back. I didn’t see nothing
. I don’t know nothing about no dead bodies in the alley. And if you know what’s good for you, that’s exactly what you’ll say if anyone ever asks.”

* * * *

Waking up to a cold
, empty bed was not her idea of fun. “Adrian, this is not the deal I made.” She called his name several more times. The silence confirmed what she had already sensed. The apartment was empty.

Where was her
personal bodyguard and bloodslave? He was supposed to be here, for her, when she needed him, when she was hungry, when she wanted a warm body to keep her safe and help find the answers to her missing life. No note on the refrigerator, no sign of where he went or when he would return. She prowled his apartment, alone again, with no answers, and enemies she couldn’t even remember. Her stomach growled in gnawing, churning hunger.

Standing in front of an open refrigerator full of food she couldn’t eat, she felt hungry enough to drain a man dry.
She sniffed at herself. “Ugh, I smell like Adrian, and sex.” Shower time.

Un
der the steaming hot water, she used the only soap she could find, man-scent shampoo-body wash. She still ended up smelling like him. At least she was clean. Her stomach rumbled and her teeth dropped down, sharp and ready to munch on someone.

She toweled off and used his toothbrush and toothpaste, pretty much used whatever he h
ad. It was glaringly obvious the man had never lived with a woman. He didn’t own any lotion, no hairspray, no styling gel, no conditioner, no face-wash, not one thing a woman wants or needs in a bathroom. His closet proved the same. Nothing but extra-large shirts and jeans three sizes too big for her. Her selection became a lesser of evils. The oversized t-shirt that barely covered her ass, or the way oversized button down shirt that fit so loose she might as well wrap herself in a bed sheet.