Immortality is the Suck

Immortality is the Suck

A. M. Riley

Immortality is the Suck Copyright © August 2009 by A. M. Riley All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. ISBN 978-1-59632-999-7 Available in PDF, HTML, Microsoft Reader, and Mobi Editor: Irene D. Williams Cover Artist: Croco Designs Printed in the United States of America

Published by Loose Id LLC 870 Market St, Suite 1201 San Francisco CA 94102-2907 www.loose-id.com This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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About this Title Genre: LGBT Vampire Paranormal Related Title: What to Buy for the Vamp Who Has Everything Adam's an undercover vice cop dealing with a dark past. He's no stranger to bad nights; in fact, he's lived a lot of them. But he won't survive this one. First, a drug deal he's working goes south. Then his partner and sometimesfuck-buddy Peter has to watch him bleed to death. But the kicker: he's not sure what's worse. Watching Peter cry over him or waking up undead. Peter's a good cop in love with a bad man. Or a bad vampire, now. Watching Adam die was the worst thing he could imagine. Until he woke up. Now their relationship's in crisis. Adam's in the middle of a vampire enclave at the center of Los Angeles motorcycle clubs and Peter just can't hack it. Adam thinks he's fine with that. He's a commitment-phobe. But he's about to discover, immortality is seriously the suck. Publisher's Note: This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable: Anal play/intercourse, male/male sexual practices, violence.

“Life is a moment between two eternities.” —Blaise Pascal

Chapter One “Adam! Adam! Stay with me here, man.” Peter's nuts. The pain was so bad I couldn't breathe and all I wanted to do was pass out. Just wake me when the morphine drip arrives. “Adam!” The son of a bitch shook me. I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off and liquid clogged my throat. I felt it spill over my chin. That can't be good. Peter's face was a blob of fear in front of me, a little slice of the warehouse door behind it. The lights of the Marina beyond all that. “There's a bus on the way,” said Peter. The pain ebbed and then flowed away like the tide. I was aware of Peter's hand on my face, the cold, wet concrete beneath my skull. The smell of diesel. I heard sirens. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. God, Adam, it's going to be all right. We'll get you through this. All you have to do is hang on.” I don't remember exactly what just went down. I came here to meet someone, but the wrong person stepped out of the shadows, and then there was shouting. Peter suddenly appeared, which didn't make sense. And then, I'm pretty sure, I fell in the proverbial hail of bullets. Just like I always knew I would. Just like I deserve. And was Peter crying? “Adam, you son of a bitch, don't you die on me.” Poor Peter. Sucks to be you, man. Me, I'm just gonna bleed out all over this nice filthy floor here. Finally. It's done. Good-bye.

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Chapter Two Except I woke up. I opened my eyes to darkness, wondering where I was. Not a new experience. I've come to in plenty of strange places, under plenty of strange circumstances. And then I remembered that I had died. Or, at least, I thought I had. Excuse me if I indulged in a moment of disappointment. I've died before. In the Marines I took a hit, and they tell me my heart stopped during surgery. When I woke, though, I felt like shit. There were needles in my arm and the sound of machinery around me. I knew I was in a hospital. When I finally could make sense of the faces leaning over me and the words they spoke, I understood that I was a hero. What a fucking joke. God, don't let that happen again. This time, though, I felt fine. Numb, maybe, but not in the lovely morphine drip way. The pain in my leg, which had been my constant companion since the service, was gone. A respite that only happened when I was stoned off my ass or dreaming. So, maybe there was some wishful thinking mixed in, but I figured there were still odds that I might be really, truly, dead. So now my thoughts went something like this: 1) Fuck, there is an afterlife, 2) And it's cold, 3) And dark. 4) This must be Hell.

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Which is what I'd always expected, but still it was a sobering thought. I hadn't paid much attention those maybe five times I sat in a church, so I needed a little reconnaissance. I cracked my eyes open and tried to see around myself. Hell was pitch black. I could hear a drip, drip of something and my imagination conjured bottomless pits full of icy cold water. The dark gradually yielded shapes, though, and I could make out a form next to me, looked like a sheet. No, wait, it was a body on a table under a sheet, proverbial toe with tag sticking out. Crap, I wasn't in Hell. I was in a morgue. I almost fell from wherever I lay, trying to get away from that thought. And that's when I realized that I was on some kind of table too. Stainless steel, by the feel of it. The sheet covering me fell to the floor and I looked down and there was my toe with a tag on it. I kid you not. They thought I was dead. Hey, so did I. I pinched myself to make sure. Ouch. It occurred to me that this might be some kind of trick. Some kind of Hellish mind game trick. But my head hurt too much to do that Rubik's Cube, and I just worked on getting the tag off my toe and my feet on the floor. Then, with my sheet wrapped around me, I walked around, trying to get my bearings. I knew this place; it was the Los Angeles County Morgue. I'd been a cop for twenty years, and in Homicide for six of those, before the Vice Department decided I was more their type. Christ, did they hit that nail on the proverbial head. So, anyway, I knew this morgue. I knew the sights and the sounds and the smells. The smell was what had usually gotten to me. The formaldehyde, mixed in with the smell of human flesh rotting, creates an odor the human body seems wired to reject. And then the ammonia they used to try to keep everything sterile just punched the other smells home and pretty soon big tough former marines were spewing into a trash can in the hallway.

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So, I could smell that smell but it didn't bother me as much. And the room was now kind of blueish, even though there was nothing but a couple of power strip lights glowing for illumination. So the whole lying alone in darkness thing, which had always given me the gibbering freak ever since I'd been buried under that house in Afghanistan, was lessened a little. This particular room was empty and dark, but in my experience, the place was usually a zoo. They must be busily cutting up someone in another room. I checked out the guy laid out on the table next to mine. He was a helluva lot cleaner than he had been the last time I saw him, but I was pretty sure it was that dude Starz. The one that I had gone to meet in the Marina. There were two good-sized bullet holes in his chest. One of them looked like it had gone right through the heart. So, he was dead too, I guessed. Careful not to assume here, seeing as I had thought I was dead also. There was another guy lying over there, without a sheet, on the table with the molded-in gutters along the sides and the drains. He was whiter than white in the weird light, and utterly still. He looked almost pristine and holy lying there in his altogether. He had the skeletal build of an addict, practically hairless, though the few strands on top of his head had been allowed to grow long. I didn't know him. Maybe he was one of the guys that jumped me. Or maybe he was another homicide that happened elsewhere. I couldn't see any obvious sign of what had killed him, but the world is a dangerous place. I'd seen people dead for an awful lot of stupid reasons in my career. Not all of them were obvious at first sight. A frickin' pair of socks would have been good. Because the concrete floor was freezing and my feet were aching with the cold. Then, I remembered where they kept the clothes they took off the dead bodies and I pushed through a big swinging door into the room next door where I found the drawers that held all the plastic bags with the names on them. My clothes were there, but they were covered with blood. I mean, the shirt was so soaked with blood it was stiff. Christ, I thought as I inspected it, how

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did I survive this? So, I went through the other boxes until I found a shirt and a pair of jeans that more or less fit. Of course, my wallet and keys and gun weren't in there. They were probably in Evidence. Which I could not get to without setting off every alarm in the place. Which I did not want to do. Because the last I remembered, my fellow LAPD officers had just surprised me in an extremely compromising position. In fact, I was willing to bet I would have been sitting in jail right at that moment if they hadn't thought I was dead. So I sat down and pondered this a bit. While I was sitting there, I caught movement from the stiff on the dolly. I rubbed my eyes and blinked hard. My eyes had always played tricks with me in here. It was just one of those spooky places that made a guy imagine things. But then, as I watched, the fucking thing, person, whatever, sat up. You know the ME was getting pretty sloppy. That's two guys they thought were dead that were not. I expected the former corpse to be as disoriented as I had been, so I was completely unprepared for him jumping up off that table and coming at me like a lion leaping on a zookeeper. Mouth open, making an otherworldly growling howling noise. Hey, I've been trained in combat and I've worked the streets of Los Angeles for a decade. I'm not the kind of guy you generally get a drop on. But a scrawny, ghost-white naked man leaping across the floor while screaming can take even me aback. I had time to throw my arms up in a defensive posture before he landed on me and we both went backward. I heard a loud crack, which was my head hitting the concrete floor. I should have been out knocked out cold. Except I wasn't. On the contrary, I was experiencing a rush of something like adrenaline with a speed chaser. Strength surged into my arms and legs, my whole body

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felt euphoric, and I found myself—gleefully, mind you—thwapping the guy's head against a wall. This seemed not to faze him in the least. He had this wide, teeth-baring grin. He looked like a bear trap, with fangs. No kidding. Fangs. His fingers wrapped around my neck. And then he kneed me. It was like getting kicked by a Clydesdale. I fell, but I kept my grip and brought him with me. A tray of equipment came down with us and I heard the ping ping ping of metal instruments raining around us. We were rolling and clawing and choking each other. I could hear myself snarling too. His eyes, close up, were yellow and his fangs snapped. The fangs kept registering in some back room of my mind, but in the forefront of consciousness I was just getting off on the violence. I let go of his neck and started punching him repeatedly in the chest. I could feel his ribs breaking. Then he screamed, grabbed my balls, and bit my neck. And at this point I'd say that the squeamish among you should avert your gaze but, seeing as you're reading this, not watching it on television, I guess I'll just warn you that the next part gets a little ugly. Nobody grabs my privates uninvited. I gripped his head with my hands and twisted. His mouth popped off my neck; I heard his vertebrae crack. For just an instant his grip on my nuts loosened and I snagged the offending hand and snapped its wrist like it was a twig. Then, for reasons I would not understand until later, I brought that broken wrist up to my mouth and bit down. His pumped up, adrenalized blood flooded my mouth. It tasted good. Better than good. It tasted better than anything I'd ever tasted in my life. I could feel him yanking out my hair, fingers gouging and clawing, but I still had him while he struggled and screamed. And then I found myself just sort of lost in the moment, as his life pumped into my mouth. Until he stopped moving and I lifted my head from his arm. And realized what I had done.

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I'd done a lot of fucked-up things in my life. This one took the proverbial cake. There was blood all over me. I touched my face and found it wet with blood. You'd think this would make me sick. Nope. I licked my lips and fingers like it was Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was hungry for more. Starving. Buzzing like I'd just snorted speed and I needed to move move move. Considering that I had just bit a corpse to death in the Los Angeles County Morgue, this urge to move seemed logical. I went to one of the sterile steel sinks and splashed water on my face. Peeled off my stolen shirt and used it to swab myself off. Then I had to go steal another shirt. This one was a worn flannel number with what looked like a couple bullet holes in it, but I'm a big guy and there weren't a lot of choices. I looked around the room and, of course, it was hopelessly trashed. My prints would be everywhere and the minute I walked out the door I'd be seen, or the security cameras would pick up my image. But I figured as soon as they saw it was my body missing, they'd know what had happened anyway, so there was no sense in trying to cover anything up. Nope. My only chance was to come up with a plausible excuse for everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. You can imagine in the past five years or so I've become something of an expert in the art of plausible excuses. A digital clock in the morgue told me it was just after 7:00 p.m. There was always a crew opening up a stiff somewhere down here, so it was just a matter of moments before somebody came back into this room and found the mess. And started looking for me. I peeked out the door and there were lights coming from a couple labs down the way, but there seemed to be a clear, unpeopled path to the back stairway that led to the ivy-covered hillside and street. I was already coming up with my excuses as I shouldered open the door. Something along the lines of “disoriented upon finding himself in a morgue” or something.

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Up the two flights of stairs, and of course somebody had left the door propped open. I saw the man probably responsible for this little security violation, standing outside having a smoke. He kind of turned his head as I passed, but my legs were made of lightning and before he could even open his mouth, I'd rounded the corner, leaped through the ivy, and was over the Hurricane fencing and halfway down the block. I paused to look down in surprise at my bad knee. Near death experiences seemed to suit it because it was working like a kid's knee. Like the seventeenyear-old tight end's knee it had been long ago. East Los Angeles is no place to be without cash or credit cards, wearing a dead man's clothes, especially in the middle of the night, so the first thing I thought was I needed to call a friend and get out of there. Of course, the problem with that was having a friend to call. So then I thought of Peter. Peter who just never seemed able to say no. We all have a Peter. Even mofobags like me have that friend who always gets the one phone call from jail. Yeah. For me, that's Peter. It took me three pay phones before I found one that still worked and placed a collect call “to Peter from Adam.” As soon as the operator announced the caller, Peter cursed and hung up. Oh, right, Peter thought I was dead. So I called again, except now, while the operator was telling him that this was a collect call for Peter from Adam, I spoke over her. “Hey Pete, it's me. I know you think I'm dead but—” He hung up. This obviously was not going to work. I looked around. I was steps from the 101 freeway overpass, the feet of the thick concrete pylons used as makeshift beds for sleeping street persons. Looking more like trash and bundles of rags there in the shadows. It was not my proudest moment, okay, but I was desperate. “Hey, gimme your cash.”

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The poor guy looked up at me with one eye. The other eye didn't seem able to open. His semitoothless mouth gaped as I just searched his pockets until I found a few bucks and some change. Then I jogged back down to the UCLA medical center and waited at the bus stop with a couple teenagers in colors, a night shift nurse still wearing scrubs, and some goon who stank worse than the morgue, and took the bus headed toward Venice, where Peter lived.

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Chapter Three Peter and I had a history. I sat on the bus, while it made its slow, lurching way down Wilshire Boulevard and let myself dwell on that. Thinking about what sort of reception I might expect. Because, you'll remember, Peter was there when the LAPD closed in to arrest me. Or, I suspected, they would have closed in if I hadn't bled out there in his arms. Peter crying and begging me not to die should have warmed the cockles of my heart, I guess, but mostly it worried me. Because when I say history, I mean it in every sense of the word. I'm talking a proverbial encyclopedia's worth of history between us. Peter and I met at the police academy. I was out of the Marines, battle scarred literally and figuratively. I won't go into why I mustered out, but let's just say it was a mutual decision. There's not a hell of a lot of options for exmilitary, despite what you see on the recruitment ads, so when I heard the LAPD was bringing in a “New Wave” of officers, I decided to give it a shot. I passed the academy entrance exam by the skin of my teeth. An 80 percent, when the lowest possible score was an 80 percent. Peter, on the other hand, was straight out of the UC school system with a degree in criminal justice. He'd probably passed the academy exam with one eye shut. We shouldn't have been best buddies, but Peter, bless him, had glommed onto me that first week and had stuck like glue ever since. “How's it going?” I looked up from my book. The young, buff, golden boy I'd noticed that first day stood on the other side of the library table. LAPD blue polo

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shirt stretched over hard round muscles. Strong neck, square chin, dark blue eyes. He smiled. I covered my paper with its erasures and unfinished equations and said, “Great.” A hand across the oak table. “Peter.” We exchanged greetings. “You know,” he said, pulling out a chair and straddling it, “you're gonna be top of our class in ballistics.” The rifle range was the only place I didn't feel like an idiot. “I've got a leg up, I guess. Been using a gun for five years now.” That steady gaze. Peter could make you feel like he read your soul. “Marines or Navy?” I felt a smile crack my face for the first time in days. “I'm no squid.” “Where were you stationed?” “Used to be a little village in Afghanistan called 'Timba.' Now it's called 'pile of rubble.'” Years later, those dark blue eyes searching mine could still make something turn over inside me. “That where you got that scar on your knee?” He must have noticed it when we were doing our laps. I felt an unaccustomed warmth beginning in my chest and rising. “I was lucky the docs were able to paste me back together. It's ugly, but it works fine.” “It's not ugly. Bet all the ladies think your war wound is sexy.” I let my gaze drop to my paper. “Listen, I've got to get this done.” A pause. I could feel him gazing at the top of my lowered head. “I had stats the last year of college,” he said. “So this time is like a review for me. Tell you what. I'll help you with the stats if you give me a few pointers on the range?” I looked up and he was giving me another one of those smiles. I found myself smiling back. “Deal,” I said. Peter was probably half the reason I'd made it to graduation. We'd stayed in touch afterward. Even when we'd been assigned to beats on opposite sides of

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town, we still met once a week for a dinner or to watch a game. Peter was why I'd headed straight for Homicide too, if I were to be honest. He and I studied for the exam together and he was, once again, one of the main reasons I passed. Don't get me wrong. I was a pretty good cop. The LAPD sets a standard, just like the Marines. And, just like the Marines, I knew exactly how far I could push it before it became a problem. I took care to never push it that far. But Peter was always headed for glory. He was a supercop. And me, well, the highlight of my career was those few years I partnered with Peter in Homicide. Then, I drifted into Vice, where I found a calling working undercover. And that's when it all started heading south. Just to be clear, the LAPD does not indulge undercover officers in the use and abuse of drugs. But over the course of the next five years, I became adept at the utilization of loopholes, a line here, a snort there, until one day I woke up and I was hooked. I still busted bad guys, but I was circling the drain. It all came to a head one day when Peter dropped by my place unannounced and found me on the floor with a needle in my arm. Short story long, he gave me an ultimatum. Clean up and come clean with the head of Vice, and he'd be there for me. Keep up what I was doing and he'd walk away. He sat me through withdrawal and maybe he thought he'd accomplished something. Maybe he had. I wasn't what you'd call clean, but I'd kicked the crack and that was saying something. The chief of Vice hadn't been what you might call supportive but they were decent enough to treat me like they would any officer wounded in the line of duty. I'd been on a three-month leave when the Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms had approached the chief of Vice with a proposition. Same short story even longer, that's what had led to me infiltrating the Mongol Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. I was perfect. I knew the distributors; I was in trouble with the law. The OMG embraced my evil ass. Which took me to the present day. Thing was, between Peter and me, there was the other history. The one in which I'd show up at his door, unannounced, and no matter what, no matter

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when, Peter would let me in and we'd do it on the floor, against the walls, and in the shower for a few days and then I'd split. These days I guess they'd call us fuck buddies. Peter was the man you called when you woke up in a jail in Tijuana, the one who came out in the rain when your ride blew a flat on the 110. The two a.m. booty call. Peter crying while yours truly met his justified sorry end? Was a disturbing occurrence and one to contemplate with due consideration. But then the bus halted at my stop and I jumped out instead. Down by the Santa Monica Pier, along the bluff's edge, there's a walkway that's always thick with pedestrians, dog-walkers, and bums. I blended into the flow, moving southward toward Venice where Peter lived. I was still hopped up, muscles tight and fast, and I was horny as an old goat. Maybe it was the fight, maybe it was thinking about Peter, or maybe it was the whole “nearly dead” thing, but my cock seemed to feel an imperative need to shoot its proverbial wad, and so, as I cruised down the boardwalk, I was also cruising the occasional tight little bit of flagrant fanny that walked by. Finally a guy I was staring at stared back and held my gaze, and I was doing a u-ey without a second thought and following him instead of heading to Peter's. He was young, maybe midtwenties. Long, messy blond hair, loose T-shirt, cut short so I could see his ass twitch as he walked. Slacks loose and too big for him, held up by a belt. Of course he knew I was following him. He idled at the light, crossed, and walked slowly down the sidewalk, ostensibly windowshopping, then quick as a wink, he hung a left and disappeared into a narrow passage between two buildings. I'll bet you're thinking how dangerous this is. How risky. See, that's what I've always liked about tricks. I never know what might happen. And that little bit of apprehension is all it takes to push me into the zone.

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This time when I came around the corner, I saw exactly what I was hoping to see. Big recycling barrel, crumbling concrete wall, topped by barbed wire fencing. And blondie, leaning against a railing so that his hips thrust forward provocatively, grinning at me as I sauntered up. “Hey,” he said. I nodded, giving his lean body an appreciative once-over. “Hey,” I said. Small talk accomplished, he unbuckled that big belt and dropped his pants. He was commando, unshaved. I could see that the blond on his head came from a bottle. His pubes were dark and glossy. From them, like the stamen from the throat of an ebony flower, jutted a sweet little pale prick. I licked my lips and undid my jeans. Watching him stroke himself, his prick lifting and filling. “I don't have a glove,” I told him, pushing my zipper away from my straining dick. He reached into a breast pocket and tossed me a foil packet. All right then. Then he turned around, showing me a high tight boy's butt, and I was out and sheathed and pressing myself in just like that. The guy grunted and grabbed hold of the brick wall with one hand and the railing with the other. It was so good, I disappeared into it. Holding his hips in both hands so that he was up on his toes, my hips pumped like a piston, like a locomotive, hard and fast. God it's the best, absolutely the best, fuck I've ever had. “Jesus Christ,” the guy said. And I realized I had him up off the ground. Then I was coming up that tight bum, so hard I saw the proverbial light. Christ. Gasping for breath, I staggered back and heard blondie curse. Belatedly, I realized that I'd just dropped him. He was sprawled there, pants down, half holding himself up against the wall. Staring at me like I was crazy.

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“Sorry,” I said. I helped him stand up, looking him over. His prick was limp and spunk drooled down his right leg. He looked dazed. “Jesus,” he said again. “What are you on, man?” “Did I hurt you?” “Hurt me? Fuck.” He shook his head as if to clear his brain. “I think my prostate saw God, man.” I decided to take that as a compliment. “Okay, then, see you around.” Because I'd remembered Peter by that time, so I took off down the alley. When I looked back, he was still staring at me.

***** I figured the first thing I was going to do when I got into Peter's place was eat something. I was so hungry my stomach felt like a live animal was in there, gnawing away at me. I had those shakes you get when your blood sugar is crashing and, weirdly, I was horny again. Peter's condominium was in one of those old mission-style courtyards, with a security gate installed in the original arched doorway. I pressed his number on the call box installed outside. “Hello, it's me,” I announced to the machine. “Let me in, man. I need to talk to you about the situation I'm in.” Nothing. I jogged around to the back where the garages are lined up on an alley. Through a grimed, painted shut little window, I could see Peter's Mustang, parked next to the old beat-up Caddy he used when he went to those places in Los Angeles the 'Stang was too pretty to go. So I went around to the front and pressed the bell again. “Peter, I know you're home.” Even if he didn't pick up, Peter would press the buzzer to let me in. Under almost any circumstances. So I pressed the bell again.

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“Peter, fuck it, man. Let me in.” The buzzer didn't sound that would release the lock on the gate, but a minute later, footsteps thundered on the concrete stairwell off to the left of the door and Peter appeared. Red in the face, he hit the gate and yelled, “What the…” Then he staggered back, staring. There's a fountain set into the wall opposite the gate. One of those jobbies you might see in Mexico, with multicolored tiles and a bowl shaped like a fat flower, and Peter almost fell into it, backing away from me. One of his hands went out and grabbed the lip on the fountain, splashing water, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. I waved. Peter kept going whiter and whiter, gasping as if he couldn't catch his breath. He looked like shit, quite honestly. In his boxers and a filthy T-shirt. Looked like he hadn't shaved. His eyes were red and swollen and when he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he swayed a bit, like he'd been drinking. “You going to let me in?” I said. “Who are you?” he whispered. Now it was getting ridiculous. “I'm cold. I'm hungry. I haven't got a sou on me and you're the only person I could think of.” The look on his face as he opened the gate was one I'd never seen before. I didn't know if he was going to hit me, kiss me, or throw up on my shoes. He chose none of the above. Just put his hand over his eyes, turning and stumbling up the stairs to his apartment. “Peter!” I yelled to his retreating back. But he ignored me. When he arrived back at the door to his condo, he slammed it in my face. I waited a minute, but he didn't come back to open it and when I tried the handle, I found it locked.

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I knocked on the door for a long time. Peter finally came and opened it. He just stood there and stared at me and then he said, “Figures,” and turned around and walked back into his place. I followed. Peter's a meticulous kind of guy, but the place was trashed. Beer bottles all over the living room, blanket on the sofa like he'd been sleeping there. Peter went over to his little kitchenette bar and picked up an eight-ounce glass with what looked like Scotch or bourbon half filling it. Judging by the almost empty Johnnie Walker bottle standing next to it, I'd guess bourbon. No ice. Now Peter's a beer drinker. Almost exclusively. It was a wonder he could walk. Over there on the dining table, I saw a couple boxes and a bunch of old photographs spread across its surface. Damn if they weren't most of them of me. Or of me and Peter. I picked up one that went back to the fishing trip we'd gone on, right after graduation. In retrospect I could see it all there. The way I looked at him, my arm draped over his shoulder. The glorious smile on his face as he grinned at the photographer. Two horny guys in denial. It made me laugh. “Can't believe you saved this,” I said to him, tossing the photo back into the box and walking over to the refrigerator. “You got anything to eat?” I asked. He looked at me with swollen eyes. “I should have known you'd haunt me.” I brought stuff out of the refrigerator and built myself a four-inch tower of roast beef, ham, and tomatoes. My stomach was rolling and creaking like a ship at sea. I stuffed half the sandwich in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed it before I realized that it tasted like mushy paper. “You got any spicy mustard?” I asked. Peter laughed into his glass. It wasn't a happy laugh. Then he stood, pitching off the stool, snatched up the glass and bottle, and staggered into the

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living area where he threw himself facedown on the sofa. I rummaged through his kitchen until I found Tabasco sauce. Now the sandwich tasted like mushy paper with Tabasco sauce on it. Gross. I ate it all anyway. My stomach grabbed hold of it. Studied it. Cramped. “Jesus…” And I ran for the bathroom.

***** I'd been in the same position many times. Sitting on a pot, waiting for my insides to deal with whatever poison I'd inflicted on my body. One had been that time Peter had helped me get clean. After a few minutes, I heard Peter's stumbling footsteps in the hallway; sounded like he was running into walls. He stopped outside the open doorway and stared at me sitting on his toilet. “Ah, memories,” he said. And then he melted down the wall opposite until he was sitting, legs splayed out to either side, bottle resting on the wooden floor between them. My bowels seemed to be taking a rest break, so I reached behind myself and flushed the toilet. Peter just sat there, goggling away at me, drunker than I've ever seen him. “You look like shit, by the way,” I told him. “What the hell is wrong with you?” “My best friend died,” said Peter. “The motherfucking son of a bitch.” I assumed he was referring to me. Pretty big assumption, maybe, because I haven't been much of a friend to Peter. “I can explain,” I said immediately. This cracked him up. “Of course you can.” He drank some more, straight out of the bottle, then pointed the bottle at me, which made him lose his balance. Poor Peter was so drunk he couldn't even sit straight. “Nobody can fuck up bigger than you can, Adam. Nobody. You managed to get a DEA agent killed, while screwing up a homicide investigation and, may I add, letting me watch you die.”

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“I didn't die.” “You asshole. You'd even lie about that, you fucker.” “I didn't die,” I told him. “Somebody screwed up.” “It's always somebody else's fault, isn't it, Adam? You lost enough blood to float a boat. You died.” Peter tipped back the bottle and drank the last ounce or so in there. Then he let the empty fall to the wooden floor and kind of pushed it away. His hand scrubbed at his eyes. “And now your ghost is fucking with me.” “You're drunk,” I said. “There's no use talking to you when you're like this.” “You're dead,” said Peter. “And there's no use telling you what a son of a bitch you are while you're like that.” And he lowered his head into his hands. “So why do you keep telling me?” Head buried in both hands, he was making some pretty disgusting noises. Sniffling and snotty and mumbling and he said, “Okay, maybe I've still got some things to say. Maybe that's why you're here.” “I told you, Peter. I need your help. They still think I'm dead, so…” “But you never wanted to hear it, so it's as much your fault as mine…” “I figure tomorrow morning when the ME finds my body missing and the bloody corpse on the table there…” Peter looked up from his hands. “Bloody corpse?” The cramps were starting up in my stomach again and I bent over, groaning. “Fuck, Peter, I'm dying here.” Peter kind of crawled back up the wall, using one hand to pull himself to his feet. He stood there, swaying, and looking down at me. “Deal with it,” he said. “I'm going to bed. When I wake up, you'll be gone. By the way, you fucker. I love you.” And he staggered off down the hallway. I heard the bedroom door slam.

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A cramp reached all the way from my anus to my throat and tried to disembowel me. Good. I deserved it.

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Chapter Four I spent the next hour or so waiting for my body to dispose of the illbegotten sandwich. In between the worst moments, I mulled over the events leading up to my supposed demise. Like I told you, I'd been working undercover for LAPD Vice. Specifically, a long-term assignment in tandem with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or ATF. I'd spent the last three years infiltrating the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, known as the Mongols. The Mongols were one of Los Angeles's most powerful OMGs, running drugs and guns from LA to Phoenix to Texas. The operation had ended in eighty-six local arrests, with charges ranging from illegal possession of firearms to rape and murder. I'd received a medal, handshake from the mayor, five seconds of fame on the local news and an urgent recommendation that I retire and move elsewhere, before the vengeful Mongols enacted their promised vengeance. But I was loath to leave town. For a lot of reasons, one of which was passed out in the nearby bedroom. My CI, and the man who had helped me infiltrate the Mongols in the first place, a certain Leonard, a.k.a Freeway, Chavez, also had reasons to linger in East Los, despite an OMG death sentence. Some personal, some financial. It was the financial reasons that he and I had in common. Freeway and I had been smuggling drugs together for three years. Of course, it was all part of my cover. I'd never skim off the top or keep a little something for myself. Of course not. That would be wrong.

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Like I said, I figured I was headed for Hell. A few days back, Freeway had heard of a dude named Starz who was supposed to be moving a large quantity of meth through Los Angeles. Rumor was he'd ripped off La Eme, the Mexican Mafia, and now found himself in the unenviable position of possessing a lot of meth and a lot of cash, with no connections or pipeline by which to dispose of either. In Southern California that's like a fox walking among a pack of hounds carrying a bag of scent. Dude was desperate for someone to take the meth off his hands, transport the payola back to a bank in Mexico, and distract La Eme long enough for him to escape in one piece. The fact that this Starz had such a large quantity of ice, and that there was, purportedly, several hundred thousand in small unmarked bills out there in search of a home was of interest to yours truly and my friend Freeway. It should have been simple. I'd meet with the guy, facilitate a few connections. Spread a little of his green here and there and, with a small broker's fee pocketed by yours truly, he'd be well on his way through San Diego county before the narcotics officers I'd tip off descended and took out the trash. Given what had gone down, it seemed somebody had misrepresented the situation. Color me surprised. None of this explained why Peter would have been there when the meet went down. Peter was Homicide Special. The proverbial crème de la crème of detectives. He worked out of Parker and only on high profile or sensitive homicide cases. I couldn't think of any reason Peter would have been down in the Marina while yours truly was meeting a meth distributor. Obviously it was a setup. But who had set up whom? And why? I cleaned myself up a bit as I considered my next moves. I needed my bike, my cell phone, a certain small black book. I splashed water on my face, found

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Peter's comb there on the sink, and looked in the bathroom mirror for the first time. And that's when I got a big shock. 'Cause I wasn't there. I opened and closed the medicine cabinet door. I held things up to the glass. The things were there, floating in the air, disembodied, but my reflection was not. I was a ghost. What the hell? But wait. Can ghosts use the can and stink up the place in the process? Can ghosts fuck skater boys by the Santa Monica pier? Had I imagined that? I went into the kitchen, where I found the evidence of the mess I'd made preparing my sandwich. I cleaned it up, thinking about anything I'd ever heard about ghosts and it was just not adding up. I peeked in at Peter who was still passed out on his bed. After his parting words I was loath to wake him. So, I prowled the condo for a few minutes like the trapped animal I was, then I went into the living room and switched on the set while I tried to think. And guess whose murder was being featured on the ten o'clock news? They'd dug up some old picture of me in my blues shaking hands with the mayor and they were going on about what a big hero I was. It was a very old picture, needless to say. None of my contemporaries would have recognized me. They had a picture of Starz too, looking clean-cut and wholesome in a suit and tie and they told me that he was an agent for Drug Enforcement. What a clusterfuck. I was up to my neck in crap. I could see that. I grabbed Peter's landline up from the end table and dialed a number from memory. “Freeway, 'mano. It's Adam. If you're watching the news now…” I was cut off by a computerized voice. “This mailbox is full.” I cursed and slammed the phone back into the cradle. “LAPD has issued these photos,” said the newscaster. And then they put a picture of one of the two “assailants” up on the screen, and I recognized the

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corpse I'd fought with down in the morgue. He was a Richie Ortiz. A “known associate” of the Mexican Mafia, and last known to be residing in Tijuana, Mexico, where he was wanted for money laundering and gun running. According to the news, there was a “citywide” investigation and they wanted any information anyone could provide about who might have offed me and DEA agent Armante. Now, I'm no Rhodes scholar, but even I could see that just calling the precinct and telling them I wasn't dead was not the way to handle things. So, I went back into Peter's room and thunked on him a few times. “Hey, dude. Wake up. I've got a real problem here.” He moaned. See? How could I be a ghost if I could elicit moans from a man who was dead drunk? I shook him and he swatted at me but he didn't seem about to wake up. And, while sitting there, I noticed the framed photograph on Peter's bedside table. The picture was of me and Peter, still in our academy days. We were out on the rifle range and he was looking down at his gun with a sheepish smile and I had my arm slung around his shoulder, smiling at him. I had no idea who had taken the picture, but I wondered how they could have snapped that shot without seeing what was so obviously between us. It made me remember things, that picture. I jumped up from the bed. Memories are like snakes. They'll bite you on the ass. And thinking had never been my strong suit anyway. It was time to take action. According to the clock on Peter's microwave, it was only 11 p.m. There were places in Los Angeles where that was normal business hours. I searched around the condo and quickly found the keys to Peter's other car and, exactly where he always kept it, Peter's old service Smith & Wesson. Bullets in the shoe box in the lower left corner of the closet.

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The gun was registered to Peter and if one of its slugs showed up anywhere it shouldn't, he'd have my head. But you didn't go where I planned on going without a weapon. I found a wad of bills in the cookie jar that added up to roughly fifty bucks, which would have gotten me about five miles if Peter hadn't kept the old beaten blue Cadillac in his garage with a full tank. As it was, I had enough to purchase a prepaid cell phone at the nearest service station. An old canvas windbreaker of Peter's that tugged at the shoulders and a pair of mirrored shades and I was good to go. I wanted my bike, but I wouldn't be recognized in this old heap. I wasn't used to traveling in a cage, though. The old interior smelled like mildewed upholstery, gunmetal, and the sickening pine air freshener hanging from the radio knob. I tossed the pine tree out of the window. The wheel was overlarge and seemed to respond ten seconds after every twist I gave it. It was like flying a crop duster as opposed to a jet and it took me awhile just to back out of the garage. As I headed out, the Caddy swayed and careened on the road like the driver was drunk. Then the soft tires squealed and the tail yawed left as I turned right onto the freeway, headed south toward my old stomping grounds and Freeway's home in Boyle Heights.

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Chapter Five Boyle Heights, from the 5, looks like a pretty stretch of little ticky-tacky boxes, sprinkled with Christmas lights. And if that's all you see when you look at it, I suggest you stay on the freeway and just keep driving until you get to San Diego. For years Boyle Heights was agricultural land. Acres of frequently flooding “flats” and the small lump of Mount Washington on the east side of the Los Angeles river isolated, in the early years, from the growing urban west side. Recent immigrants and minorities lived there until Boyle and Hollenbeck bought up the whole thing and developed it. The mayor of Los Angeles built bridges and for a while the area was opulent and pretty. Those people moved on, leaving behind crumbling mission-style houses and a new population of poor and immigrants. “The Flats” has the highest gang crime rate in Southern California. Here, the tagging is a serious form of communication and rarely does anyone argue that “it's an art form.” As I rolled off the ramp, I noticed that the “Mosca” inscribed on the stop sign there had been sprayed over with a cross and the name “Charra.” Either a threat or a brag. Charra had either taken down Mosca or intended to in the near future. I pulled off the freeway a little north, in the slightly more affluent Mount Washington area, and let the Caddy roll slowly along the road that skirted the base of Mount Washington. Stepping-stone residential blocks climbed, one beige and pink stuccoed square after another, up to the more imaginative buildings pitching off the top of the mound of earth that gave the area its

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name. Due to erosion and bad building codes, those homes teetered overhead like something from a Dr. Seuss illustration. I saw no motorbikes, no one wearing colors, and kept to the back streets, passing though Lincoln Heights, then west on Mission past the medical center and the county morgue, under the freeway, skirting the RTD and Amtrak bus yard so that I could creep up on my old stomping grounds. I could see no one on the streets and most of the homes were dark. A cat's eyes flashed green as the Caddy startled it from its hiding place under a pimped-out Silverado with extended shocks that made it loom over the pocked asphalt like a dinosaur. I slid in behind it just a couple houses down from where Freeway still lived with his mama. Freeway had grown up on this block. He'd been one of those skinny boys with long limbs and liquid dark eyes you'd see in a Mercado parking lot. Practicing flips and slides on a skateboard covered with stickers. Worn clothes kept clean by a stout mama whose vigilance and fierce love were nevertheless not enough to keep Leonard safe on streets where poor, one hundred forty pound boys, with no older brothers or cousins, were regularly pounded into hamburger meat. He'd allied himself with bigger boys, boys with guns. Joined Las Serenos, an impressively violent Latino street gang. Spent his high school years banging, freebasing, and skateboarding, until he got good enough at the last to compete and surprised his whole neighborhood by winning a few contests. He was then nineteen and that was probably the high point of his life. He used the money he won to buy himself a bright blue Harley with ape hangers that no doubt made him feel bigger and meaner than he had in his entire life. He'd told me once that he drove that bike off the dealer's lot and straight over to the local Mongol hangout, presenting himself as a prospect. “Sure,” they'd said. “Here's what you gotta do…” And that is where Freeway's and my paths had crossed.

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He'd been holding ten grams of ice, and a crate of assault rifles had been found in his mother's garage. The officer who'd busted him had perceived immediately that Freeway was in over his head. And when I went to talk to him I saw right away that Freeway wouldn't make it through the five to ten he'd probably get for possession with intent. He'd been beaten, buggered, and probably threatened with more. He already had RFFN tattooed on his knuckles, standing for the Mongol motto “Respect Few Fear None,” and he had the visage and attitude of a newly recruited martyr. But he was still scared spitless. I saw the prospect patch on the leather vest he wore. It was the same biker gang I was trying to infiltrate. So we'd chatted about the advantages of working with the good guys. Good being open to interpretation. Then I spoke for him before sentencing and he got out with time served. A week later, he introduced me to Ruben Cavaso, president of the Mongols OMG. Freeway and I had what I would have termed a good working relationship. We'd both profited and, I thought, even become friends. I pulled out the prepaid cell phone and texted a three-digit number to Freeway. He'd not recognize the caller number, but the code was a Mongol's members signal to another member to call them. Freeway might have been keeping his head down since the bust, but he'd find it hard to resist the call. Sure enough, a second later, my cell phone rang. “Que?” said Freeway crisply. “Freeway, hermano, que onda?” A stunned silence. I swore I could hear the loud, adrenalized beat of Freeway's terrified heart. “Quién como es éste?” he asked, voice wavering. “Don't you know my voice, Freeway? It's Snake.” My Mongol brothers called me that on account of my bright green eyes.

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I thought I could hear Freeway wet his lips. “Snake es muerto,” he whispered. “Not yet,” I said. And the cell disconnected. I didn't redial. I sat back and watched the house and waited. Sure enough, a few minutes later, white flashed in the small backyard behind and uphill from Freeway's mama's house. I put the car in gear and waited until I heard the belch and roar of Freeway's motorcycle, then pulled out from behind the Silverado in time to see Freeway taking the corner at the end of the block at an extreme forty-five, heading south. I followed. He expected me to follow. I saw his face, like a death's head grimace of fear, in the tall mirrors on either handlebar; he didn't recognize the Caddy at first, probably expected me on my chopper, but when he saw that I was hobbled by four wheels, he took a screaming left and went straight up a narrow alley. I took my time getting to the corner and following a parallel path. The thing was, Freeway couldn't go anywhere on the bike that I wouldn't be able to hear from miles away. Those pipes were like the roar of a train. I figured it would take him a few more blocks to figure it out, though. Sure enough, like a fox going to ground, he was heading south now, toward Hollenbeck Park. I swung the car around lazily pulling a u-ey in the middle of the abandoned boulevard and was surprised by the single bloop of a police siren and the dancing lights of a black-and-white in my rearview mirror. God fucking damn it. I weighed my options for all of two seconds. On the one hand, I knew that if these officers called in the car's tags, they'd make a courtesy call to Peter before they took any further action. Of course, I couldn't predict how Peter would react to that call. That man had become as moody as a menopausal woman lately. He might even tell them to arrest me.

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On the other hand, if I gave them reason to chase me, the damned car would be all over the morning news, followed by my ugly mug as they dragged me from the vehicle. You ever try to outrun the LAPD, my friend? Well, don't. Thing was, my only key to what had happened to me was rapidly getting away. And I knew for a fact that, since he used this car for undercover and surveillance work, Peter kept it in tip-top condition. I had the one advantage of having spent five years as an outlaw in this neighborhood, so I thought I had a good chance of outrunning the black-and-white, turbo eight engines or no. It took me two seconds to make my decision. I slowed as if to slide up to the curb. At the last minute, as the uni slowed also, I gunned the engine and surged forward, going up the curb and onto the grass. Five yards down, a long alley, barely wide enough for the Caddy's broad body and I hung a hard right into it. A second later, sirens screaming, the black-and-white was in pursuit. They turned up the alley behind me, but I'd already crashed through trash cans and headed south on the next block up. The tumbled trash containers slid and rolled behind me, creating a small obstacle course that slowed my pursuers just a bit as I hung a left up another alley and this time went left across a series of backyards, the two-ton steel body of the Cadillac demolishing a low wooden fence and a clothesline as it went. I knew the neighborhood well enough to know that if I took the next right, a left, and went down the side yard of a small house there, I could straddle and cross a ravine that led to the back of a Ralph's parking lot, where a crowd of brightly colored Harleys were parked in neat rows in back and a few young Hispanic men leaned against the building. The Caddy hurtled past the bikes in fourth gear and a few men came running from the building at the ruckus. As I caught air and bounced back into the street, I could see the uni, behind me, getting tangled up in the interference of a bunch of angry bikers.

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Some of the bikes made as if to follow me for a few minutes, but they quickly lost interest, circling and looping back to go check out the altercation their pals may have been having with the police in the space behind their clubhouse. I kept going, crashing through lights and stop signs, occasionally glancing back and thinking with half a mind about what I'd just seen. From the number of bikes and the presence of guards it appeared that a meeting of the Boyle Heights chapter of the Mongol MC was taking place. Since Mongol “church” is held every Tuesday, this must have been about something else. Possibly something to do with a recent shoot-out in a certain Marina warehouse. The Mongols would be woofing and snarling at each other over a meth distributor no one had known about. The latest sting would have set the entire paranoid, gun-slinging, outlaw motorcycle club on edge. Over the years, Freeway and I had indulged in a lot of mutual hand washing, as they say, and he'd made full patch in just two years. Freeway was now the munitions president for this particular branch of the Mongols. I hadn't seen his bike while barreling past my brother Mongols so, when I was sure I was no longer being followed, I cruised down Louise to Hollenbeck Park. There was a good chance I'd find Freeway at one of the club's “munitions” bunkers. Hollenbeck Park was closed at dusk, of course. But I found a secluded spot for the Caddy, within sight of the building where Freeway stashed arms. I tried Freeway's number again. No answer. I found a sagging point in the Hurricane fencing and clambered over it with surprising ease. Then I skirted the skateboard park and came up to the back door of the equipment offices. Just outside the equipment bunker I stopped and listened. Now, I've always been an adrenaline junkie, I suppose. The thrill of the hunt and all that. It's what I call “the zone.” But tonight my senses seemed even keener than usual. Honed. I could smell the eucalyptus and jasmine drenching the night air. Lingering tobacco smoke from a cigarette someone had smoked back here could be hours ago. The smell of the tar paper on the shed roof, some wood

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molds close to the windowsill, and very faintly but very definitely, the smell of a sweating human body. I dialed Freeway's number again and heard a cell phone ringing inside the equipment shed. I put my phone on vibrate and pocketed it. Sure enough, seconds later, it started to buzz next to my hip as Freeway did a callback. I slid around to the back of the shed where the dented aluminum door was ajar, allowing a scant inch of golden light to outline the rough stucco of the exterior wall. I could hear Freeway moving around inside, but I figured there was no way I was getting that bent old door open without a hell of a lot of racket, so I squatted down and waited until I heard him definitely heading toward me, holding myself back until his head and shoulders emerged, and then it was just a matter of getting my arm around his neck, my other hand holding both of his wrists firmly, one leg catching and hooking his right foot back, and then all of my two hundred plus pounds were on top of Freeway there in the sand and Zoysia grass. “Petiso de mierd, you set me up?” I said into Freeway's ear. It was a hypothetical question, really, as I had his face shoved into the ground and I don't think he could open his mouth to answer. He spat grass and dirt when I jerked him to sitting, my arm still around his neck. “Snake, usted me hizo mear,” he croaked. I kissed the top of his head, which increased his terror all the more. “You better start talking, pinche.” I smelled the skin behind his ear and tightened my hold around his neck. His fingers went to my arm as if he could claw himself free. “I didn't know, Snake. I swear on my mother. B-B-Betsy she said she scored ice from the dude right there on the boardwalk.”

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“Betsy?” I cast around in my memory, keeping my grip as Freeway dug in his heels and tried to leverage his body out of my arms. “She that Goth chick down on Speedway?” Freeway made an abortive attempt at escape and I hauled him sideways and to the ground again, allowing the whole of my weight to rest on him. He squeaked and squirmed like a landed salmon. “Freeway, mi usted hizo palo,” I said. “Do you want to make me hard?” “No se,” he whispered, still squirming. “We're going for a ride,” I said. I brought him to his feet and, holding his arms behind him, pushed him, stumbling and resistant to the Cadillac. “We're going to go talk to Betsy.” When I shoved him into the backseat and stood over him, he seemed to go limp. “I didn't know,” he said again. “I thought he was legit, man. Merde, son of a bitch, fucking cops…” he spat. There were dirt and grass stains on his shirt, probably from being thrown to the ground just then. But Freeway looked scruffy nonetheless. He was usually a careful man. Hair just so, white T-shirt with the Mongol crest immaculate. He wore those dark blue topstitched baggy jeans so popular with his crowd and generally kept them clean and creased. I had been treated to the sight of Freeway, thick hair in pin curls and in his shorts, ironing those jeans, more than once. Tonight, though, he wore shitty old worn jeans. A hole in the knee with dried blood around the edges. His shirt stank of fear and his hair was a lumpish mess. “What the hell is going on, Freeway?” “They'll kill me next.” I grabbed his shirt collar and his eyes went wide and shocky as he stared at me. “No me importa dos cojones,” I growled. And, I mean “growled” literally. My voice sounded fucking strange.

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Freeway's mouth moved, saliva gathering at the corners, and he wet his lips. “Sí, hermano, sí. I will tell you.” I released his shirt. My eyes felt like they were bulging out of my head for another second. “Go ahead.” “Okay, Betsy, she met up with a dude who said he could make us all some extra money. She thought he was talking a few grams, you know? Then, I talked to him and I saw what he had at the warehouse.” “Wait. You'd already met with Starz?” Freeway's gaze darted to me and away, pupils bouncing like black rubber balls. “That was a lot of ice, Snake. I…I thought, you know…” “You were going to skim the stash because you figured he'd get busted halfway to Baja anyway and never notice.” Fuck, I'd taught the little weasel too well. “You should have told me.” “You been, el loco, 'mano. Strange. I wasn't sure…” Okay, here's a little aside as he had brought it up. There were some things happening in my head just before our story opens. Stupid things. Things that girly girls and old men think about. Blame it on the damned NA meetings. And, of course, the bust had done my head in. After all, the Mongols had been like a family to me. Albeit a raping, murdering, thieving family. So ever since then, I'd been having thoughts, and they'd been messing me up. Some of those thoughts had been about Peter. This was why I'd kind of been avoiding him lately. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Save the psychoanalysis for Dr. Phil. “Snake, we was set up by La Eme, it's so fucking obvious. Fuck, little Ruben finds out I'm still in town and on his turf, he'll won't just kill me, 'mano. He'll kill my mama. He'll kill my cousins. He'll kill my fucking cat.” “Little Ruben” a.k.a Ruben Cavaso, Jr., was the son of the Mongols' president, the now incarcerated Ruben Cavaso, Sr. If I recalled the hierarchy

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correctly, he would be the new Ssergeant at Arms for the Mongols, since Freeway was marked for death. Things were a little clearer now. “How long you been hiding out?” “Betsy called last night, said a bust happened in the Marina. An hour later I get a text '86.'” "86" was the Mongol code for “go into hiding.” Don't wear colors, avoid the street, and if that wasn't possible, avoid cops. It meant something big had happened directly affecting the Mongol MC. “So, I called my old lady and she says that cop what infiltrated the Boyle Heights chapter is dead. She says I should go to Canada, or even Alaska. She says she don't want to talk to me no more, the bitch.” Freeway and his “old lady” were actually divorced, a fact he managed to forget frequently until another restraining order would remind him. “You say Betsy told you what happened in the Marina? So what do you think, maybe your girlfriend had her own agenda too?” “No, my lady loves me, man. She'd never do nothing without telling me. It was La Eme, man.” “Call her,” I commanded. He looked startled. “What?” I dug out the prepaid and handed it to him. And that's when the blackand-white rounded the corner at the end of the street. They recognized the blue Caddy immediately, and a loop of light illuminated the backseat. Goddammit. If I were the uniformed officer now pronouncing instructions over the car's speaker, I'd figured I'd just busted a buy. “You go east, I'll go west,” I said to Freeway. “Meet me back here in an hour or I'll have your ass.” Freeway slid across the seat, threw open the door, and practically fell into the road, feet already moving. Then he veered east, as I had instructed and, white soles of his sneakers flashing, took off across Hollenbeck. I hopped over

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the hood of the Caddy and through a set of bushes and across a front yard, heading west. The cruiser emitted another bloop of sound and then I could hear the distinct crunch of pavement and grit beneath running boots, heading away, toward Freeway. I glanced back as I ran and saw Freeway make for a low fence, put a hand on it, and hurdle it gracefully, one uniformed cop in pursuit behind him. Nobody seemed to be following me and I got to the back fence of the house whose driveway I'd run up, aware again of my body responding in a way it hadn't since before the corps. I clambered a couple feet and jumped the six-foot fence easily, landing in a single entrance cul de sac. And then a cruiser pulled into my path at the mouth of the road. Fuck, the partner had circled in the black-and-white and cut me off. I looked behind me and realized that I'd just jumped into a trap. He was already out of the car, holster open and hand on the butt of his gun. So I stopped dead, hands in the air. “I'm a police officer,” I announced, without thinking. He didn't even blink. They must hear that a lot. “Identification?” he said. Oh. Yeah. “I forgot it,” I said, feeling as lame as I sounded. I saw the shift in his attitude. The increased readiness. My heart sank. How could I explain any of this without making it known that Peter had kept my undead state a secret? I followed his instructions and stood before one of his headlights, my hands on the hood of the car, while he patted me down finding, of course, the Smith & Wesson with a particularly fierce joy. “I can explain,” I said, as he emptied the chambers and placed the gun about two feet before me on the hood of the car. “Okay, I'm not a cop, but I'm a CI,” I said. “I have a license for that, but it's with my ID.” Watching me, he called in the information. Then he stood and waited for them to check for any local reports of a “6 feet 4 Hispanic male, about forty, muscular build, seen in the Hollenbeck Park area.” I'm actually Italian by descent, but black hair and mocha skin in Los Angeles always reads as

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Hispanic, whether you're Iranian, Indian, or just have a great tan. The cop said, “So tell me why you and your friend ran.” “Because look where the fuck we are, man. Wouldn't you run?” Dispatch reported something back to him and I knew by the way he looked at me, and the code he enunciated into the hand mike, that suspects somewhere matched my description. Hell, half of Boyle Heights would. There'd be another unit here any minute. What I did next was just plain stupid. I ran. Scooped the gun up off the hood of the car, and ran. Something about near death did a body good. I ran like a veritable cheetah, got to the fence I'd come over, jumped it in ONE JUMP and pretty soon I was rounding the corner, keys out of my pocket, and leaping into the Cadillac before any officers had yet to appear in my rearview mirror. I peeled out. Up on the freeway, tires screaming, I could hear sirens everywhere. No idea where anyone was coming from, so I just kept heading north, took the 10 interchange, exited, circled under, up on the 110. The East LA interchange is a knot of freeways and interlapping neighborhoods. All around me I could hear sirens, see the scanning lights from helicopters. I pulled off the freeway below Mount Washington and pushed the Caddy up hairpin turns till I got to the top where I knew a house, half pitched off the cliff and former home to a Mongol soldier, currently stood empty. The gate gave way to the grille of the Caddy, and I parked the car under a tree laden with bougainvillea. Then I ran around the foot-wide space next to the home until I could perch my ass on the narrow garden wall in back. Pele and his old lady and I used to hang out and watch the fireworks over Dodger Stadium from here. I sat and watched the LAPD try to locate me. A couple of hours passed. I can be patient when it's necessary. Like, when I'm being hunted. After a while, I could see the place settling down, helicopters

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circling back toward more immediate issues on the freeways, and unis sent off to more urgent calls. As I backed the Caddy out, broken bougainvillea and jasmine branches fell from it, their odor so fragrant it sickened me and I had to stop the car to clear them away. Weird. Then I circled the back streets for half an hour or so. I sent two “call me” text messages to Freeway, but he didn't respond. Like a skulking shark, I cruised back and forth toward the park, and then I parked the car three blocks away and snuck back down to Hollenbeck. The moon had risen and sat high and full at three o'clock, so I figured we were rolling around three hours and if Freeway hadn't been arrested, he should be waiting for me inside. The first clue that something was wrong was the door, unlocked and ajar. The second was the distinct smell of blood. Do you want to hear how the smell made my mouth water? No? Fine then, I won't tell you. I pulled out the Smith & Wesson, no more useful than a paperweight without the bullets, but it could give me the second I'd need to jump back if there was someone waiting on the other side of the door. I slid around the door frame and into the room. The place had that absolute silence that seems to surround the dead and sure enough, on the floor by a workbench, there lay a body. My plans to beat the truth out of Leonard Chavez, a.k.a Freeway, had been circumvented by his untimely murder. I scanned the room quickly, but I already knew I was alone with Freeway's corpse. That same sense that allowed me to smell blood, to know he was dead, also informed me that no other living creatures were close by. I shoved the gun back into my belt and stood looking down at him. Freeway had put on some bulk since that summer he'd won the skateboard championship. His beefy neck twisted sideways, showing two blackened holes and dried blood. His head lay in a pool of the same blood; his T-shirt was rucked up at the bottom, where a shallow knife wound showed.

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A disturbing sense of regret tried to manifest in my chest. A flash of memory. Freeway's mama making me sopa in her kitchen one evening. Freeway had traveled a bit more than a lot of kids his age, making it as far as Venice Beach, which was more than a lot of Latino East Enders ever managed in their lifetimes. He'd never graduated from high school, hadn't even finished out his probation. He had managed, however, to marry and produce an heir. Not necessarily in that order. Divorced. Killed a man in cold blood. And now his body was lying in a dark equipment shed with two gaping wounds in the neck. He was twenty-two years old. I suppose you could argue that this had always been Freeway's fate; that, given his actions and background, he was destined to die young and violently in East Los Angeles. Many members of the Mongols accepted the likelihood of their probably violent ends. Still, it was one thing to take a bullet for a brother; it was another to be ritualistically slain by some psycho. I'd been part of the club long enough to feel the outrage and desire for revenge that any Mongol would feel in my position. And then there was the likelihood that Freeway's murder and mine were connected. That somebody, out there, knew a helluva lot more than I would want them to. There was anger, and a burning predatorial urge in my belly. Fight or flight pounding in my temples. Tension in all my muscles, I could smell the blood and death and it didn't disgust me, it ramped me up. It sent adrenaline through my blood and a sharp focus into my brain. It put me into the zone. I looked around, trying to quickly assess what had happened. The room was dark, but a blue luminosity filled it. It occurred to me, in some statistically cool part of my brain, that this was exactly what the darkened morgue had looked like. Perhaps near death experiences endowed one with the ability to see in the dark? Whatever. I could see every detail as I stood there. There was a large rectangular clear patch near Freeway's body where, it seemed, crate-sized objects had been stored long enough to let dust settle

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around them. Scuff and drag marks and dozens of footprints were all around the area. I tried to avoid the thick of the prints as I circled, looking around. One of the workbenches, with a dismembered skateboard on it, has been shoved out of kilter, and a couple of skateboard wheels and a screwdriver had spilled onto the floor. Dark stains on the bench that I knew were blood by the smell. Yes, you read that correctly. And speaking of smells, now I was picking up that there was something there besides Freeway's blood. Something with a different…tone is the only word I can think of to describe it. It was like I could suddenly discern shades of color in smells. So, I followed my nose, as they say, and there, behind the bench and a subwall that had been used to hang tools, was a crate about the size of a soda twelve-pack. The top was already loose. I used my shirt as a glove and lifted the lid by one corner. A compact plastic container, its sides insulated and its interior filled with ice. The ice packed firm and still very cold around what at first appeared to be half gallon white plastic milk bottles. I counted four. Each round white cap was numbered and dated in neat black Magic Marker. However long they'd been there, they were still ice-cold to the touch. Given Freeway's role with the Mongols and the fact that he'd died with this in his possession, I assumed this was some sort of new drug. I had no idea what drug it could be, though. There'd been absolutely no whisper of it on the street. So I popped the top of one and peered into the container. Ruby red and… I sniffed and immediately I knew what it was. What it was, how old it was, how great it would taste going down. I set the container down abruptly, and backed right into the bench. What the fuck was going on? Because those were cartons of blood there. Now, I've craved a few substances in my lifetime. Coke, meth, Peter's ass. You know what I mean. But I've never wanted anything like I suddenly wanted that blood.

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I realized I was breathing hard. Sweating. The ravenous hunger in my gut suddenly solved. This was what I needed. What I'd been craving. I couldn't have explained why, but I HAD to do it. I picked up the opened container. I lifted it to my lips. I drank the blood. Oh. MY. God. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted in my life. I staggered back against the workbench, holding myself up. It was like meth or horse, without the nasty side effects. It was just good. God-awful, blessed, thankyouJEEsus good. I closed my eyes and felt the stuff surge like white candy-coated bliss through my brain. The first rush passed and I felt bright and alive. Hard. And filled with a sudden intense need to move. Some part of me was counting on its fingers. Some slithering, hissing serpent in my brain told me to grab the blood, stuff it into the trunk of the Caddy, and run. I didn't even stop to consider my actions. I stuffed the carton back into the case, lifted it, and ran out the door of the equipment shed, dodging from shadow to shadow across the park, until I got to the Caddy. I popped the trunk, put the crate inside under some rags Peter kept there. My brain was focused and clear and all it would tell me was that I had to hide the stuff so nobody could find it. So nobody could take it away from me. I was like that Gollum character with the ring. “Mine mine mine.” I was halfway back to Peter's place before I'd even taken time to think.

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Chapter Six Peter lay almost exactly as I had found him. I sat on the bed next to him. His back rose and fell slowly, that one freckle on his shoulder blade riding the swell like a ship on the sea. The rush of adrenaline and rage that had followed drinking the blood had an element of lust as well, and I wanted to lick his freckle. I had enough presence of mind, though, to know that I was sweaty and probably bloody. I'd dribbled a bit from the carton down the front of the sweatshirt, and God knew what my face looked like. So I opted for a shower instead. I sing in the shower. I lathered up and launched into “Der Rosenkavalier” for a good ten minutes, using most of a bar of Peter's deodorant soap, my fingers slithering down around my hard cock and then slithering back up as I fantasized about just what my cock would be doing in a few minutes to Peter's ass. You get older, you learn. Yeah, even me. Sometimes waiting is half the fun. I scrubbed a towel over my hair, wrapped another around my hips and stepped out into the hallway, clouds of steam issuing with me. “Hold it right there.” Peter, in boxers, sleep-sticky hair askew all over his head. Bright red face and blue eyes staring, holding a Glock trained right at my head. I raised my hands and dropped the towel. Peter's a rock in a crisis. But, obviously he still thought I was dead. Because he screamed and jumped and the gun went off. Happily he thought to

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jerk his arm sideways as it did so, so a bit of molding flew through the air instead of half my brains. “I know you've warned me not to use all the hot water,” I said. “But don't you think that's a little extreme?”

***** Well, it took a while to peel Peter off the wall where he'd plastered himself, babbling like something possessed for all of ten minutes. And then I had to make him stop slapping himself in a pathetic attempt to wake up from what he thought was a horrible dream. I got him propped up in a chair in the living room, and then we had a conversation that went something like this: “You're dead.” His eyes went teary. Christ. “Touch me,” I said. He did. His hand warm on my upper arm. My cock, once more safely buried under the towel, raised its head in interest. Peter's lower lip sort of trembled. “I saw you die.” “Well, here I am, so…” “No, you're dead.” “I'm sitting right here!” “But I saw you. You were dead. They zipped up the body bag.” “Obviously, medical science still has a lot to learn.” Peter buried his head in his hands. “My head is splitting open.” So, I went to make some coffee. When I came back, he took the cup without comment and sipped at it. And I took the opportunity to just sit back and enjoy looking at him. À la dishabille, as they say. Even unshaven, his dark blond hair looking like he'd combed it with a blender, Peter was a handsome man. And he was across from me in nothing but his boxer shorts. That hard body with its golden fur all over it was more

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and more of a distraction. “Wait a minute.” Peter pointed at me. “Your neck had two holes in it as wide as my thumb.” “It did?” The disturbing image of Freeway's corpse flashed in my mind's eye. “Yeah.” Peter leaned over and studied my neck closely. Touching it with the pads of his fingers. “Not even a scar,” he breathed. For a guy who'd drunk a full bottle of bourbon and hadn't bathed yet, Peter smelled really good. He looked up at me. I grinned. And then he punched me in the mouth. I fell over the arm of the chair I was in and crashed across a magazine rack, more surprised than hurt. “You asshole,” he said, standing over me and jabbing that finger again. I touched the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand and didn't answer. He was right. “What kind of bullshit are you into now, Adam?” “Me?” How did this become my fault? “What were you doing in that warehouse?” “Hey, I was supposed to meet a guy. What were you doing there?” “Watching you stage your own death, you bastard. Tell me this, did you know I'd be the one on the scene or was it just my good luck?” “Peter, I didn't stage anything. Somebody wanted me dead.” “Why doesn't that surprise me?” If I told Peter how sexy he looked when he was pissed off he'd deck me again. So I kept my stupid mouth shut and tried to look innocent. I must not have pulled it off because he just looked more irritated and said, “Last week, we found a Mexican Mafia-associated dealer dead. Two puncture wounds to the throat, just like you, as it happens.”

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My face must have registered something because he narrowed his eyes. “What?” “It's a very long story, Peter. Who was the dealer?” “Paolo Spence.” “I thought ICE picked him up a few months ago.” Peter walked into the kitchen, letting his heels hit the wooden floorboards like a little kid throwing a tantrum. I trailed behind him. “Is that the case you were working with the DEA?” Peter parked that fine ass of his on a kitchen stool and crossed his arms. “The DEA has been building a case against the 'M' for a couple years. You knew that, right?” “Everyone knew,” I said. “That was the fucking problem. I wouldn't go near that operation with a proverbial pole, and I told them so.” “See, and I figured the only reason you might have been in that warehouse was because you'd changed your mind and were involved in the sting.” Hmm. This sounds like the blame is rounding the corner and coming right at me. “You got anything to drink here, Peter?” “How were you involved, Adam?” I opened the refrigerator, just to have a place to hide my head. While I was in there, I grabbed a bottle of water. He was glaring at me when I emerged. “I might have been looking for a new distributor,” I said. “Narcotics said they knew nothing about it. They said you were supposed to be moving out of town. And, by the way, thanks for giving me a heads up.” “Well, that's because I hadn't decided to go.” I studied the label on the bottle of water. “'Smart' water? Christ, Peter, they give water an IQ now?” “You're in a lot of trouble, Adam.” “Sounds like.” I twisted off the top of the water. “Good thing I'm dead.” I thought he was going to hit me again, but then he just made an exasperated sound.

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“Why didn't you go through channels? Why didn't you talk to me? Did you think that feigning death would solve all your problems?” I drank some water. Weird thing was, I did expect death to solve all my problems. “I told you, I didn't stage anything,” I told him. “D'you know who killed me?” “Stop saying that,” said Peter. “Hand me that carton of orange juice, will you?” I did so, and a glass. “I never saw anything,” I said. “Suppose you tell me what happened.” “Starz was the DEA's undercover. His name was Armante,” said Peter. “I saw that on the news. What was the deal?” “He thought he was meeting with a distributor associated with the 'M.'” Freeway must have told Starz he was La Eme. If he weren't already dead, I could have killed the little rat myself. “Hey,” I said. “I was trying to do a job, man. What's the DEA doing coming in and starting something?” Peter shook his head. “Like I told you. We were looking into a homicide tip. Nobody expected to see Armante there. And we were as surprised as you were when those guys showed up.” “Nobody was as surprised as I was,” I told him. “What guys?” “The ones that killed you.” He winced. “Now you've got me doing it.” “Who were they?” He drank his orange juice. “A known dealer named Richie Ortiz. Mexican Mafia. He's dead. We haven't ID'd the other guy. He got away.” So Ortiz was the stiff I'd battled in the morgue. “What'd the other guy look like?” He sighed. “Stan saw him. I was distracted.” A bleak expression passed over his face, which made me think of him crying over me in that warehouse.

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“I've got the file back at the office. The chief thought, under the circumstances, it'd be best if I went home for a few days and let someone else handle things.” “Huh,” was all I could think of to say. “How'd you do it, Adam?” “I didn't.” I shrugged. “I just…” “Why me, you asshole? Did you even think, for a minute, how I'd feel?” “I swear, Peter, I was just as surprised as you were.” “Surprised? Is that the word for it? Surprised?” Peter smacked the counter with the palm of his hand, rose, and exited down the hallway to the bathroom, angry heels thunking. Pretty soon I heard the shower running. By this time the smell and sight of him had got me thinking about things in no way related to the current weirdness, so I just tippy-toed into the bathroom where I was going to slide into the shower with him, but then I saw myself. Or rather, did not see myself, in the bathroom mirror, again. “Peter, check this out.” His wet head poked out and he glared at me. Long black eyelashes like stars above his dark blue eyes. But then he looked where I was pointing and then he almost slipped and fell in the shower. “What the fuck?” “See, this is what I've been talking about.” I made him stand in front of me and I wrapped my arms around him and I could see the impression of my arm in his wet chest hair, but I couldn't see me. While I was back there I did a little bump and grind against his ass. But Peter just shoved me away and, with his serious face on, snatched up a towel, and rubbed himself dry. “Brush your teeth, why don't you, Adam,” he said. “Your breath stinks.” Nice. When I came back out, Peter was picking up his living room. He'd pulled on a “Kings Hockey” T-shirt over the boxers.

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“Some of your clothes are in the closet,” he said. “I tossed them on the bed.” Over the years, you know, stuff gets left. A pair of jeans with a hole in one knee and an old sweatshirt with paint on it. But it felt good to get into my own clothes. When I came back into the kitchen he was sitting at the dinette table, scooping the photographs back into the box. I saw some newspaper articles in the mess too. That picture of me with the mayor. An older one I didn't even know he'd seen, of me in my Marine uniform. “What the hell were you doing with those?” I asked. Damn, had I ever been that young? He clapped the cover on the box, and walked across the room to shove it onto a shelf in the closet. “I'm calling this in right now.” “Sure.” I watched him call the station on his cell phone. I wasn't sure what to expect. “Stan,” he said. Stan was Peter's partner. But before Peter could get a word in, it appeared that Stan had something to tell Peter, and I figured from the way Peter listened, and then the way he looked at me, that Stan was telling him that a certain corpse was missing and that another corpse was a bloody mess. “I'm coming in,” said Peter. It appeared that Stan argued with him about this. “You're crazy if you think I'm going to sit at home,” Peter told him. And hung up. He looked at me. “It was self-defense,” I told him. “You tore apart a morgue defending yourself from a corpse?” “He wasn't a corpse when he attacked me!” “Well, he is now.” Peter pocketed his cell phone, frowning thoughtfully. “See, Peter? Something's not right.”

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Poor Peter. He must wonder sometimes, what he's done to deserve a friend like me. “I should have told Stan that you're standing right here in my kitchen,” he said. “You should have,” I agreed. “Why didn't you?” He just rubbed his neck and said, “Fucking hell, Adam.” This is obviously not the time to bring up the dead CI I found while he was sleeping. Or the cartons of blood still in the trunk of Peter's Cadillac. “Whoever set me up thinks I'm dead,” I told him. “We should let them keep thinking that.” He rubbed his chin. “Don't forget, they set up both you and Armante.” “What do a DEA agent and I have in common?” The right answer, of course, was “drugs,” but I saw the way Peter looked at me and knew he was coming up with a slightly more creative answer. So I preempted him quickly. “Who do you know in the DEA?” “Stan has a connection or two,” said Peter. Good old Stan. The last thing in the world I wanted was to work with him. “Does he have them on speed dial?” I asked him. “I do. Which is why I need my cell phone. And my bike. Peter, this is a Vice case, with a few dead bodies involved, not…” “A few dead bodies?” he said. “Not a Homicide case,” I finished. “What are the chances Stan's connections will give him everything they know about Armante's cases?” He looked at me. The chances were slim to none. The various agencies were very possessive of information, very distrustful, and they became even more so when one of their own got killed. “What do you suggest?” “Let me ask around. If it was the Mongols they'll be bragging about it. Somebody will be taking credit.” I couldn't help it, I was checking him out obviously now. That T-shirt was so old, it was worn through, and had shrunk

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up so that every time he moved his arm, I could see the skin between it and the top of Peter's boxers. And he'd been checking me out too. It was habit, I told myself. We weren't used to being around each other this much without sex. So, these old jeans I was wearing were paper-thin, and twice I'd seen his eyes wander down below my waistband. “I'm an idiot maybe, Peter. But I wasn't up to anything shady.” Well, not quite. I'd been killed before I could have been. “Not yet,” he said, like he could read my mind. Which, Christ, he probably could after all these years. I grinned. “I'm a bad, bad man, Peter, and you're better off without me.” “Prick.” “Absolutely.” “Big dick.” I moved in a little closer. “You ought to know.” His eyes read me. He had that scared look on his face he got around me sometimes. “Fucker,” he whispered. I could smell him again. He had a cinnamon-type smell. Spicy and sweet. And when I leaned down and kissed him, he tasted sweet too. I grabbed hold of him with both hands, pressing him against one of the walls so I could get my tongue into his mouth and just tasted him a bit. He made a sound deep in his throat and wrapped both his arms around me. He had hold of me, I had hold of him, and we were grinding and humping there against the wall. I grabbed his ass and tried to lift him so I could rub my cock up against his. Now I've got a good two inches and twenty pounds on Peter, but he's no twinkie. I lifted him like he was just a kid. The air left his lungs as I slammed him into the wall and just started humping him right there.

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It felt so fucking good. His cock was hard and wet, leaking through those boxers. And my cock was ready, my balls full and needing to shoot, just like they always did with Peter. Peter made some kind of noise, I don't know if it was good or bad, because I pushed his boxers out of the way and dropped to my knees. Oh man, Peter's cock tasted great. He was screaming at me, pulling tufts of my hair out maybe, when he came. I licked my lips and looked up at him and when he swatted at me, he didn't look like he really meant it. “Stupid.” “Oh, right, Peter, because you are such a whore. Who have you had sex with besides me?” It was the wrong question. His orgasm smile froze and just deflated on his face. He jerked his boxers up. “You okay?” “I could use some help.” He helped me stand and gave me an appraising look. My dick was trying to pop through the denim of my jeans. A dark spot starting to appear there. Peter opened my jeans and proceeded to jerk me off, his expression exactly like a washerwoman scrubbing clothes in a tub. “Jesus, Peter, at least let me lie down.” “Come on.” He held out his hand and led me to the bedroom. Once there, I lay down on the bed, pushed my jeans off entirely and spread my legs. I was dark and wet and my dick stood up from my swollen balls. I could see Peter trying not to look like he was getting into it. “C'mon, man.” I started stroking myself, arching my hips a little. That's all it took. He slapped my hands away and slid a condom down over my dick. Sucked me deep and hard. Peter's the best cocksucker in Southern California. Based on my own personal and fairly extensive research.

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I saw stars, as they say. He didn't even stay to give me a kiss on the cheek, though. Just jumped up, went to the closet, and brought out a pair of slacks. “I've got to get in to work.” “What are you going to tell good old Stan?” The corners of his mouth turned down. “He's there trying to sort out your mess. Don't you think he has a right to know what's going on?” “We don't know it's my mess,” I protested. “And what exactly is going on?” He strung his belt through the loops, hard enough that the leather made a snapping noise as he did so. He was still mad. I wasn't sure exactly why at that point. “I'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that this isn't some elaborate plan on your part to fool the LAPD, Adam.” “I appreciate that.” “I'm going to go down there and find out what I can about what's going on. Then I'll come back here and we'll figure out the best way to handle this.” “Fair enough.” He looked at me, eyes narrowed. “You're being very agreeable.” “I can be agreeable.” He didn't even bother to argue with what he would undoubtedly assert was a ridiculous statement. I followed him down the hallway and watched as he brushed his teeth, spitting into the sink with what seemed unnecessary ferocity. Then he stomped to the front door, where he strapped on his gun, shoved his arms into his suit jacket, and opened the door. “Stay put,” he said. “We'll talk when I get back.” “See if you can get my cell phone?” I said. “And if my bike is in impound…” But Peter ignored me, grabbing up the keys to his Mustang and slamming the door behind him. Whatever he was mad about, I figured Peter wasn't forgiving me any time soon.

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Chapter Seven What followed was one helluva night. And this is coming from me, who's been through more bad nights than you can count. The minute I saw the lights of Peter's Mustang sweep over the buildings at the end of the block as the car turned onto Lincoln, headed toward the freeway, I ran back to the garage and popped the trunk on the Cadillac. I'm no doctor, but I figure blood can't sit in a hot car for too long, even in insulated containers. I crammed the two containers into a vegetable bin, under a head of lettuce. I was mildly tempted to open the sealed top on one of them, and drink a little, but that same urge that made me feel possessive and secretive about the blood cautioned me about overindulgence. So, I set the thirst aside for the moment. I had other things on my mind anyway. I'd left the gun in the car. I gave the alleyway a quick look-see before pulling the Caddy out of the garage. I know, I know, Peter told me to stay put. But I'm not the type who likes to be confined in a small space with only myself for company for very long. Myself being not one of my favorite persons. Especially when there's someone out there who thinks he got away with my murder. I take a thing like that personally. The Caddy's turning radius was so long I went up on sidewalks as I maneuvered it down the narrow alleyway known as “Speedway” and parked it in a red zone, finding Peter's LAPD visor card and popping it onto the front left windshield to dissuade towing.

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Venice at four a.m. is dead the way an empty house full of rats is dead. I could hear them in the walls. I could smell them. But the streetlights showed clear circles of damp on the asphalt and very few windows had lights on. Betsy's apartment was one of the old brick buildings about a block from the beach mostly held up by cockroaches and the creaking fire escape stairs at the back. There was no answer when I pounded on the main door and the box holding the residents' names was so dirty you couldn't see the names, so I just pressed buttons until some pissed-off asshole buzzed me in. Betsy ignored my knocking. Some creep down the hallway opened his door and stepped out onto the greasy threadbare carpet for a few minutes. “Betsy, we need to talk,” I said to the door. I gave the guy a smile. Then I heard her on the other side of the peephole. “I'm a friend of Freeway's,” I said to the peephole. “He needs your help.” I heard the chain moving on the door and it opened four inches. I could see one eye, outlined heavily with black, and a pierced eyebrow. “Something happened to him last night,” I said, low, so the neighbor wouldn't hear. “The same guys came after me. Maybe you know who they are. Maybe they'll come after you next.” “I don't make trouble for nobody,” said Betsy. “Why would they come after me?” “Maybe they think you know something,” I said. “Maybe you do. Let me in, Betsy.” The eye at the door sized me up and down. You know, there are criminals and there are victims. But mostly there's a combination of the two. I'd busted Betsy a couple times for possession, but let her talk her way out. Give me a name and you can go home, honey. She was always banged up and bruised. Betsy was maybe 10 percent criminal, and 90 percent victim. The kind of girl who lets big, ugly, messed-up Narcotics officers into her apartment, so I wasn't

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surprised when she let the door swing wide, then just went off to a chair in the corner and lit a cigarette. I closed the door behind me. The room was about ten by ten, with the bathroom showing through the only other doorway. A radiator spat in an uneven rhythm onto a patch of carpet, and the room was oppressively hot. It reeked of cheap perfume, cigarettes, and the bug spray with which they'd probably habitually sprayed the building since before Betsy was born. The room was taken up by a chair and table and a king-size futon with stained sheets. A smell of mold seemed to rise from it. Betsy had turned the door to the bathroom into a closet. A rod hung in the space, loaded with clothes. There was an unused-looking stove in one corner. Shelves on the walls above held a jar of instant coffee and a roach trap. Betsy exhaled smoke and picked at her spiked black hair. “What's Freeway done now?” she asked. “He's dead,” I told her. She didn't react much, but then Betsy probably didn't react much to anything anymore. It was a measure of her grief that she smoked in silence for a minute. Then she shook out a cigarette and offered it to me. She lit a match, and when she held it under the end of my cigarette, I could see her hand was shaking. But that could have been from speed. “Who?” she asked around a plume of smoke. “Don't know. Maybe the Mongols.” “Fuck,” she says. “I don't know nothing about that.” “He talked to me about the deal, so don't bother lying. Somebody had to have leaked to the Mongols that he was dealing on their turf. I figure his buyer set him up. You have his name?” I saw her gaze slide just over my left shoulder. Aha. “You know, I remember you,” she said, stalling. “You aren't bad for a cop.” “I'm glad I meet with your approval,” I said.

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“Freeway was good to me,” she said. “But I don't know nothing about him screwing the Mongols. I mean, that's stupid, right? Those guys'll kill you if you fuck with them, right?” She crossed one skinny white leg over the other. She wore a tight red knit skirt and thigh-high leather boots with about half a dozen buckles up the sides. The treads looked brand-new. “That's right.” She frowned and nodded and mashed out her cigarette. “Stupid,” she pronounced. She gave me a hard look. “You're not stupid,” I said. “I'd better not be,” she said. I looked around the tiny, one-room place. “Maybe you're dating one of them,” I said. “Maybe you've heard who killed Freeway.” I looked her up and down. “Nice boots,” I said. “They new?” She glanced at her boots, then licked her lips. “I liked Freeway. He was good to me.” I took a paper and pen out of my pocket and wrote down my prepaid cell number. “In case you think of anything,” I said. Smirking, she slipped it in the bodice covering her bony chest. I figured it probably slid straight to her navel. “Maybe I'll just call you because you're kinda cute.” “Yeah, you do that,” I said. She walked me to the door. The nosy neighbor was still standing there when I stepped into the hallway. “You making trouble, Betsy?” he said. “Fuck off, Barney,” said Betsy. And slammed the door. I heard the chain latch. “Hey, Barney,” I said. “You and Betsy been friends long?” He looked startled and retreated into his apartment, hurriedly latching the chain as I walked by.

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Outside I climbed a fence, jumped onto the roof of a bungalow next door, and sat and waited like a big Italian gargoyle on the roof until Betsy came down the fire escape, her heavy boots ringing out on the stairs as she descended. I followed her from a couple of blocks away down the seeping back alleys. It was fairly easy. Those boots made a racket, and I was hyperaware, it seemed, of the night sounds around me. She stopped in front of one of the old garages that had been converted to a studio. “Murch Galleries” was the name on the sign hanging out into the alleyway. Betsy took her cigarette out of her mouth and pounded on the door for several minutes. Finally I heard the screech and scrape of an old metal door being opened. Betsy was let in and the door slammed shut. I ducked down an alley and circled the building, looking for a way in. It seemed the door Betsy had entered through was the only one. A row of windows shone on the second floor though. There were no stairs or ladders, but I found a trellis on the back of a house next door. It was surprisingly easy to climb. I felt like a monkey moving through the trees, swinging myself up onto a wall and looking down at the roof of the building that Betsy had just entered. The perimeter was lined with barbed wire, and beyond that someone had strewed the flat roof with about a ton of shattered glass. More effective than a burglar alarm in an area where police are sometimes slow to arrive. I ran along the wall and could see no way over from here. So I slid down a fire escape, dropping off with ten feet of air beneath me and landing with all the grace and control of a gymnast off the uneven bars. My bad knee didn't even twinge. Then, I ran along the alley the next block over and came at the building from another direction. I faced a three-story sheer wall with an anime graphic painted over its entire face. No way up or through here, even in my miraculously altered state.

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Blood was hot in my face, my arms, and my legs. It felt like I'd put a gallon of high octane in my tank and I could hear my own breathing, long deep powerful breaths, none of that wheezing that came with the lifestyle I'd been living. I pulled out the cell and my thumb hovered over the buttons. I wanted to call Peter. Tell him the address; ask him to run it against any known meth labs or dealers. Or, maybe I just wanted to call him. Hear his voice. How fucked up was that? One thing I've learned is it's better to be addicted to things than people. You get hooked on a thing and if someone takes it from you, you can find another source. Only people can really hurt you. Only people can push you out into the cold permanently. So I didn't call Peter. Instead, I hunkered down in the seeping, stinking wet behind a trash container, waiting to see who might come out of the building. You know, I've spent most of my life in some pretty ugly places and after a while you get so you block out what you don't need to know about. But that dumpster stunk worse than any garbage I'd ever smelled. I didn't have to breathe the stink long. The screech of the metal door echoed down the alleyway. The triangle of yellow light shot across the cement. Betsy's silhouette appeared in the doorway, another silhouette merging with hers as their heads pressed together in, apparently, a kiss. A heavy slap of feet on pavement. I turned. The muzzle of a .45 was a foot from my face. “Hola, cop,” said a thickly accented voice. “He's blood,” called Betsy from the doorway. “Be careful.” “Blood or not, he's still a cop. I can smell it.” The gun didn't waver, so close I could smell the oil it had been cleaned with and the residue that was proof it had been fired recently. The man holding it didn't look like the type that would hang out with the likes of Betsy. Thickset, a little short, but massive

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in the shoulders. A round head covered with a mass of black curling hair. A thick spiderweb tat on his fat neck. He held the gun steady, looking me up and down, and I didn't need to see the teardrop tat at the corner of his eye to know this was a man who killed men. “We should pin him,” he said. “I never pinned no cop.” Betsy's new boots squeaked slightly as I heard her come closer to me and the man with the gun. A scuff of grit under another set of feet, and from the corner of my vision, most of which was totally dominated by the barrel of that gun, I saw another figure joining her over there on the sidewalk. “Pin?” I addressed the muzzle of the cannon he held. “Is that like going steady?” “He knew Freeway, Aybie,” said Betsy. “He did me a favor once or twice.” Whether I'm dead or alive, I figure a .45 millimeter bullet, at this distance, would make a pretty big mess of my brains. The man cocked the trigger and I heard a bullet enter the chamber. “So what?” asked Aybie. “I'm not a cop anymore, Aybie,” I told him. “They took my shield.” “Too bad for you,” said Aybie. “I'm just trying to find out what happened to my friend Freeway,” I said. “I heard some shitbag cop killed him,” said Aybie. “Let's wait for Ozone,” said Betsy. “He told us to wait.” “Who's Ozone?” I asked. “I heard this same shitbag stole something that weren't Freeway's,” said Aybie. I wondered how long his thumb could hold the trigger back without releasing the bullet, still trained on the middle of my skull. “Something that belonged to another friend of mine.” “What if that someone wanted to return your friend's property?” I said. Betsy sidled up to me. “People are going to notice if we stand in the street talking,” she said. Aybie's gaze darted toward her and back toward me. Then he waved the gun toward the open door in a way that made this less a request and

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more a command. I heard the soft click and glide as he gently uncocked the .45. I felt every muscle in my body relax a little. “Sure, I got time,” I said, and headed toward the door.

***** “Murch Galleries” did indeed seem to be a gallery. The room I entered was wide and low-ceilinged like many of these beach galleries. A poured concrete floor full of cracks, gleaming white metal posts rising from it to the ceiling,,Track lighting hung from the exposed metal beams and shone on three walls where large, unframed canvasses depicted screaming humans painted, it appeared, with a trowel. “Have a seat,” said Aybie, and he waved the gun toward a mismatched collection of molded plastic chairs in the corner. The paintings were all brown and green. The floors gray, the walls and ceiling white. The chairs the only smattering of color. I squeezed my ass into a tangerine-colored one and checked out the other party in this little trio. Skinny, dark-skinned, dark-haired. His jeans were denim and worn through use not design. He had no discernible piercings and his hair hung in glossy brown ringlets around a classically handsome face. Long, bulging thigh muscles. A high butt. Under normal circumstances, I'd be more worried about the .45 than whether or not one of my captors batted for the same team as I. But nothing in the past twenty-four hours had even approached normal circumstances, so there I was, letting my gaze travel up the kid's torso, licking my lips when our eyes met. “Who are you?” I asked. “Never mind.” I'd guess Midwest from the accent. I'd guess Crips from the matching tats on his wrists. From the looks he occasionally shot Aybie, I'd guess that his race and Aybie's affiliation with the black-hating Mexican Mafia was an issue. Truthfully, it was a miracle that Aybie hadn't already put one of those bullets into his apparent partner in crime. Who now went to a metal tool

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cabinet sitting against the wall and opened drawers. He brought out a pair of metal handcuffs—looked like LAPD issue—then came over and gestured for me to put my hands behind my back. When I hesitated, Aybie raised that .45 again. “It's messy but it gets the job done,” he said. I put my hands behind my back and the black kid latched and fitted them with expertise. “So where is this Ozone?” I asked the room. “I've got other meetings tonight, you know.” “No you don't,” said Aybie. “If you do, you're gonna have to cancel,” said Betsy. “Okay,” I said. “Give me a phone and I'll call him.” Aybie looked me up and down. There was something tactile about his gaze. And not in a sexual way. “Sure. And you can invite him here. That could be fun.” The black kid grabbed a chair and sat down across from me. His eyes roved from my toes to my face in a casually interested way. “You wanna fuck while we're waiting?” Betsy stopped plucking at her skirt, her head tilted toward us. “Maybe,” I said. “What's your name?” “The Mexican here calls me Caballo,” he said. And he grinned and spread his legs so that promising bulge in his crotch showed. “You guess why.” “Don't be a pig, Caballo,” said Aybie. “I thought you liked Betsy.” “I do,” said Caballo, and his eyes rolled toward her. “We can all do it together.” Betsy's pale face dimpled when she smiled, showing pointed, catlike canines. It was just a little disconcerting. “Okay.” “Jesus!” exclaimed Aybie, the gun waving around in a nerve-wracking manner. “You fucking niggers are disgusting.”

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“No, he's not,” said Betsy. She grinned at me, letting her tongue point out a little. “We just fed and we're horny.” “Fed?” I asked. Aybie laughed. His laugh had a little giggle at the end of it that made me think of Norman Bates. “Don't you know?” he said. “Know what?” “You're a vampire, man. Undead. Just like us.” Betsy came around the counter toward me, squatted before me on those platform boots. “He didn't know,” she said, tilting her head and looking up at me through her mascara-coated eyelashes. And then she did something that would flash into my mind's eye again and again over the coming days. Her face morphed, changed. Eyes like a wolf's with yellow irises, cheekbones sharper. Fangs. It was the face of the corpse I'd fought in the morgue. I didn't react outwardly. I guess on some level I already knew, didn't I? Betsy's face morphed back to the Goth chick I recognized. “Isn't it cool?” “Sure,” I said. “Really cool. So what are a bunch of vampires doing in Venice Beach? Shouldn't you be in Transylvania or something? Flying over some old castle?” I tested the handcuffs with a little jerk of my hands. Sometimes amateurs wouldn't make sure they were completely closed. The wrist bracelets didn't loosen, but I thought I felt a little give, as if a link were loose. “He's funny,” said Betsy. She let her tongue touch her lip. She looked at Caballo and they both smiled and looked back at me. “And he's hot.” “You ain't kidding,” said Caballo. “We can do it without releasing the handcuffs. Bring that mattress in here.” I gave him a smile like I liked what he was thinking. “Who did this to me?” Caballo stood. “Does it matter? Now you'll never die.” “What do you mean?” “You're immortal, man. An Evil Dead. You will live forever.”

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“'Less Ozone says I can dust him,” said Aybie from where he stood. “Evil Dead? Dust?” I said. My eyes were level with Caballo's crotch and that promising bulge just right of the zipper. I let my eyes travel up the expanse of his shirt until I was looking into wicked dark eyes. “You are a very stupid cop, aren't you?” said Caballo. He said it like he liked that about me. With a big white smile on those pretty lips. Okay, I'm handcuffed with a gun to my head and I'm seriously lusting after one of the guys holding me captive. What the fuck is wrong with me? I steeled myself to focus on the immediate problem. “Who is this Ozone again?” I asked Betsy. “I think I should talk to him.” The handcuffs gripped my wrists painfully but I jerked again and felt, surprisingly, something snap back there. My arms almost flew out to my sides as the cuffs separated. I was able to keep my arms in the same position, smiling up at Caballo, who seemed as distracted by me as I was by him. A digital tune played and Aybie flipped open a cell phone. “Yeah?” I saw his gaze slide toward me and then away. “Sure. I can talk.” He strolled across the room and into another room. “Watch him,” he said to Caballo and Betsy, and disappeared into the other room, speaking rapidly in a thickly accented Spanish. I strained to hear his words, but Caballo rocked his chair nosily on the floor and said, “He don't like you, man.” “He doesn't like you either,” I told him. “What are you guys doing working together?” “It's the New World Order,” said Betsy. She had a tiny tube in one hand and a tiny spoon in the other. She was either feeding soup to mice or snorting coke. Caballo rolled his eyes. “Sure, baby. It's all rainbows and butterflies. You”—he pointed one long, well-manicured index finger at me—“would be a shame to dust.”

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“You too, I think.” I licked my lips. It wasn't a ploy; I was thinking about sucking on that finger. “So what are you doing in SoCal, man? You're not from here.” “I was in Chicago,” said Caballo, rolling his shoulders in an elegant shrug. He stood, stretching long arms and cocking his head to one side with a funny smile. “The winters suck there, man. And the Bloods, they killed my bro. I decided to split.” “And then he met Ozone,” said Betsy. She stuck the spoon in her nose again and snorted hard. I was surprised to not feel a little tug of longing at the sight. “La Eme make the Bloods look like pussies,” I said. Aybie came back into the room then, pocketing his cell phone. “That was Ozone,” he said. “I told him what went down.” Caballo read something in Aybie's expression. And then he and Betsy exchanged looks. “Wait until later, Aybie.” “He said do it now,” said Aybie. The mood in the room changed, drifted from hot and horny to something cool and steely. Caballo's smile disappeared and Betsy stood. “He didn't even ask me.” “He's the boss.” Aybie shrugged, coming around the counter. He stood next to Caballo and regarded me with a little leer. “Was that Ozone?” I asked, stalling for time. I braced my feet on either side of the chair and leaned forward a little. I kept my hands pressed together behind me so that one of them would have to look closely to see that the handcuffs were broken. With a feral expression, Aybie lifted the .45. I didn't have time to think it through. The plastic chair hit the wall when I jumped, swung my metalencased wrist, and hit the .45 from Aybie's hand with one swing, then put my fist into his face with the other.

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Aybie went down like one of those inflatable punching dolls. Betsy screamed. And like one of those inflatable punching dolls, Aybie bounced back up. About the time I felt Caballo's weight full on my back. I spun, grabbing that thick hair with both hands and jerking my knee up into his face. He sprawled while I turned to deal with Aybie, whose face, beneath the blood I'd cause to spurt from his nose, was the fanged, yellow-eyed monster Betsy had shown me earlier. It must have been the blood, because I felt as if someone suddenly cranked my engine into a higher gear. I saw the flash of something metal in Aybie's hand. And then he moved in a blur. I felt a bright white fire in my arm and looked down to see that Aybie had shoved that knife in my arm up to the hilt so fast I hadn't even seen him coming. The night lit up with pain and a desperate, primal anger that seemed to give me the same intense clarity and drive of a chemical bump. I kicked Aybie in the chest so hard I heard bones crack. Then, I spun in time to plant a similar kick in Caballo's chest. The .45 had skittered into a near corner; I went for it, and Betsy, who weighed maybe eighty pounds, suddenly turned into some kind of wolverine, jumping on me as I bent down to pick up the gun, and biting down on my arm. Somebody kicked the gun out of my hands. I looked up and saw it was Aybie, but he was obviously unsure what to do, as at this point Betsy was draped over me, clawing my face. I jumped the indecisive Aybie, and we wrestled on the floor for the gun. I won. Betsy's claws were all over my face, so I grabbed her with one hand and thwapped her against the cement wall. Hey, a dog bites you, you react on instinct, right? She flopped to the ground, probably knocked out stone-cold. Simultaneously, Caballo jumped me, knocking me back. He sat astride me, poising a pointed stick just over my heart, but I heaved upward and managed to tip him off. Just barely.

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Aybie seemed actually knocked out for the moment, but Betsy was up again and on my back. She couldn't fight worth beans but what she could do was claw and yank at my hair. And she could do it like some kind of hellbitch. I grabbed her face and shoved her away while grabbing Caballo by the neck and throwing him through the air with such force he appeared to actually leave the ground for several feet before he slammed into the wall and slid, unconscious, to the floor, followed by the painting his body had knocked loose. I heard footsteps and turned to see Aybie coming at me with that wooden stick raised like he was going to stab me with it. I raised a booted foot and kicked him hard just before he made it to me. He staggered backward into one of the columns, the stick hanging from his hand. On the next attack, I used Caballo's momentum and speed to throw him past me and straight at Aybie, who took that wooden stick full in the leg. Then Aybie was busy screaming and writhing on the floor, blood pumping. The floor was covered with blood. It occurred to me that most of it was probably mine, but my full attention was on Caballo, grinning like some kind of lunatic, and circling. I held the .45 out in front of me with both hands. “Hold it right there,” I said. He stopped. Looked at the gun. Laughed. And jumped right at me. I fired. The bullet hit him square in the chest and knocked him down, but it seemed to do no more than that. It was like I'd thrown a pebble at the man. He regained his feet with a neat acrobatic kip-up and his expression changed from amusement to anger and then his face turned into the saber-toothed maw that I'd seen on Betsy and Aybie. I was a little more ready this time, so I met him midleap. We grabbed each other, did a double axel in midair, and then landed together on the concrete. I

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was lucky I landed on top. I didn't stay there. He tossed me off and I rolled as he leaped at me again. I stepped back and turned and he crashed into the wall. When he spun around, still trying to recover, I landed a drop kick into his chin then scissor kicked and put my heel into his chest. This usually will knock an opponent out by knocking the wind out of him. I felt his sternum compress. Even heard the snap of a rib. He didn't seem to feel anything, but grabbed my ankle and twisted it. It was either go with being twisted like a giant screw or let him break my leg, so I went with it. Used his hands as my base and somersaulted into his head, grabbing it and taking him with me, skull first, to the floor. Aybie was back, wooden stick in hand. I turned, backhanded him, then landed a double kick. It spun his body and when he fell, he seemed to take the stake in his hand to the floor first. His body jerked as the stick went into him. And then he exploded into dirt. I heard a scream come from my own mouth. Up until this moment I had been acting and reacting instinctively. My Marine training kicking in, I was all visceral reaction. In the zone like I'd never been before. All of that stopped as I processed what had just happened. Played it back mentally up to the moment when my adversary became a heap of something you expect to find in a crematorium urn. While I hesitated, Betsy leaped on my back again, yanked out chunks of hair. I swear I could hear it ripping from my scalp. Caballo staggered to his feet, staring at the heap of dust on the floor. “Let's get out of here, Betsy,” he said. I made a leap and grabbed at him but he tore out of my hands. Literally, his pants pocket tore away and a cell phone and an MP3 player clattered out onto the ground.

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I dived at him again, but he ducked, spinning, and grabbed Betsy's hand. Then the two of them turned, ran a few steps toward the wall, then ran straight up the wall and through an open window. I stared upward at the place they had disappeared, willing my brain to process what had just transpired. No, said my brain, this is too much. No more processing tonight. The kitchen is closed. I was left standing in a warehouse with bad art on the wall, blood everywhere, and a pile of dust drifting across the floor. I picked up the dropped cell phone. And got the hell out of there. The Caddy was exactly where I'd left it. I didn't even exercise due caution and wait to make sure it, too, wasn't being staked out. I jumped in and started the engine. And that's when I saw one slow loop of bright light in my rearview mirror. The lights and grille of Peter's Mustang grinned back at me. The temp police light he kept on his dash, circling. I rolled down the window and he walked up in that cautious way a cop approaches a stopped vehicle holding a passenger he knows nothing about. “Well, well, well,” he said.

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Chapter Eight Peter trusted me as far as he could spit, I guess. I didn't even ask him how he knew I'd go hunting despite what he'd said. He leaned on the car and looked up and down the street, then back at me. He didn't ask, he just looked at me. Damn, I hated that. “Freeway's dead,” I heard myself blurt. The barest flinch in his eyes registered that he'd heard me. “Did you kill him?” he asked. “No!” I managed to look outraged. “I came out here to talk to his girlfriend and then I trailed her to that gallery down the street.” Peter stepped away from the car and looked back down the alleyway from which I'd come. Then he looked back at me. The sleeve I'd taken the knife in was drenched in blood. Blood all over my pants and shirt. “I take it that didn't go well.” “Could have gone better.” “What will the unis find when they go in there?” he asked. I shook my head. “Nothing really. Blood but no bodies. There's a pile of ash back there that used to be some punk calls himself Aybie. Betsy, the girlfriend, and another dude have split. They seemed to have some kind of superhuman powers; I saw them run straight up a brick wall.” I heard myself and closed my lips together. Peter's expression had changed from one of caution to tired disappointment. “What are you on, Adam?”

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Peter had on what I call his “intervention” face. There's been a few times that I swear he's sitting on my shoulder like a cartoon angel. It's like he's my Jiminy Cricket or something. “Adam, you are an addict.” “No, man. I had to use or they would've known I was a cop.” “That's a lame excuse and you know it.” “Fuck, man, my knee was killing me and I thought what can it hurt? I can stop right now, if you want.” A brochure on the table. “Call them.” I got my NA one-year pin six months ago. Peter had treated me to a steak dinner to celebrate. And, you know, the after-party back at his place. There hadn't been a day, though, when I hadn't craved it. Until now. And if anything in the past wacky evening had made me seriously consider that I might still really truly be dead it was the lack of the craving. Because it never leaves you. “I'm clean,” I said. “But there's some things I have to tell you.” Peter's cell phone rang at that moment and he answered it, listening patiently for a while, answering with monosyllabic words and grunts. Then he flipped it closed and stepped back. “Get out of the car, Adam,” he said. I climbed out slowly. I was feeling pretty damned hollow and tired, I'm telling you. “Was that call about Freeway?” “A.k.a Leonard Chavez of Boyle Heights?” Peter stood with one hand on his hip, jacket pushed back so that the gun in his shoulder holster was visible. I wondered if he was thinking of pulling it on me. “I take it they've found him.” “They found evidence that someone broke into the equipment shed in Hollenbeck Park. Prior to killing Mr. Chavez. Signs of a struggle.” “He was my CI. The one who set me up with Armante. I had to talk to him.” “Coincidentally, a car registered to me might have been seen in the area.”

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“I…borrowed your car while you were sleeping. He was dead when I found him.” “When you say you 'borrowed' my car, that implies that you asked and received permission from me.” “You were drunk and I didn't want to wake you.” He made a noise that I had learned to interpret as “don't give me that shit” and walked over to the Mustang to open the passenger side door. “I'll have someone pick up the Cadillac in the morning.”

***** As we pulled into Peter's garage, dawn was oozing into the sky. Its light illuminated Peter's face. He looked drained and in desperate need of rest. I assumed my attitude of cowed bad puppy and slunk from the car to the garage door. And had a nasty shock when my hand on the knob caught a warm ray of sunshine and burst into flames. Yes, you read that correctly. I screamed and did what you should never do when your hand is on fire. I waved it around in the air. Peter appeared and wrapped something around my hand, yelling at me to calm down while he smothered my flaming hand in his jacket. Eventually the fire stopped. Then I crouched around my hand, whining and whimpering. It hurt like a motherfucker, as it should have, but then, very quickly it stopped hurting. I peeled off the partially burned coat and saw that my skin was only pink. More scalded than incinerated. And I could already flex my fingers. “What the hell just happened?” Peter asked me. He looked worse than I felt. Ash on his shirt and a smear of it on one cheek. His eyes wide and bloodshot. The pupils pinpricks. “I caught on fire.” “I noticed that. How did you catch on fire?”

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“The sun seems to have caused some sort of spontaneous combustion,” I said. He didn't like that. He got that grim don't-fuck-with-me-Adam face. “The sun.” “Fine, don't believe me,” I said. I picked up a box top that had been strewn on the floor and sidled out the door, using it as a shield. Happily, the garage was attached to the apartment by a covered walkway so I could keep the sun off me. Peter followed, wise enough to do so without comment. Peter made it as far as his living room couch and then hurled himself into it. He rubbed at his reddened eyes with the heel of one hand and I could see the recent grief he'd been feeling. The pain I'd caused him. Was still causing him. “So now what?” I asked him. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands over his face. “Now we call Stan.” “No, Peter…” “He's my partner.” “He's a motard.” I crouched at his knees, put a hand on his leg and said, “Don't you see, Peter, there's something wrong with all of this? The meet with Starz, the CI who set it up found dead? Me found dead? More or less. One of the kids at the gallery said…” “You really do need to tell me what happened back there.” “You won't believe me, anyway. Stan sure as hell wouldn't believe me. Heck, I was there, and I don't believe me. But now I'm thinking, maybe I really did die,” I said. “Maybe I'm dreaming this.” Peter rubbed his eyes again. “Shut the fuck up, Adam,” he said quietly. I squeezed his knee with one hand. I know it sounds kinky but I've always thought Peter's knees were kind of sexy. “One of the kids at the gallery said I'm a vampire. The living dead.”

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He looked at me. His hand closed over mine. “Maybe you are,” he said. Then we both cracked up. I straightened, still laughing, and said, “There's something else I need to show you.” Peter followed me dutifully out to the kitchen and when I brought the cartons of blood out of the refrigerator and put them both on the counter he blinked twice before he said, “Explain.” “I found these near Freeway's body tonight.” The way he looked at me, well, I'd say it broke my heart, except it was reasonable and I should expect that expression on Peter's face by now. “And you decided to bring it back here?” “This is the thing,” I said. “It's a carton of blood.” “Blood.” “It looked like Freeway was trying to hide it when he was murdered.” Peter stared at the cartons and very slowly his face went white. I knew what he was thinking because I'd been a homicide detective too, and it's what I would be thinking if I hadn't been busy thinking about how much I wanted to drink the blood. He was thinking we had some group of whacked-out serial killers here. And that I had something to do with it. “Tell me everything you know,” he said. “That's the thing. I don't know.” “Don't tell me what you don't know, Adam. Start at the beginning and tell me everything about your CI.” “You knew him, Peter. He was the Sergeant at Arms for the Boyle Heights Mongols. He fingered a homicide suspect for you guys last year when there was that DB found in the trash bin on Mount Washington.” “What else?”

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“What else?” Freeway and I had shared a very lucrative side business, but I was fairly certain this had nothing to do with that. “Was he your dealer?” I managed to look quietly offended. “I quit, Peter.” “Everything?” He held my gaze and I had to look away. “Jesus Christ.” “So now somebody's trafficking in blood,” I said. “At least that's how it looks to me.” “Why didn't you leave it on the scene, Adam? Christ, I don't know how I'm going to explain this.” “I had to,” I said. “I needed it.” “Needed it? For what?” “I drank it,” I said. “What did you say?” I repeated myself. Peter's eyes rolled and the whites showed. He seemed to suddenly need to sit down and I got a kitchen chair under him before he ended up on the floor. “It was good,” I said. Sometimes I can't help myself. I have to drive that nail into that proverbial coffin. Peter lifted his chin and looked up at me. He looked completely weirded out. Three deep lines etched across his brow as if his brain was hurting him. “I felt better after I drank it,” I explained. “So I knew I needed it.” No response. “Peter? You see, that's how I know something's wrong here. I mean, I've never needed to drink blood before. Actually, it's a disgusting thought. But then, Freeway and then those kids at the gallery with their Transylvanian bullshit…” “Adam, get away from me.” “What?”

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Peter covered his face. He repeated himself quietly. “I can't leave, Peter. You saw what the sun did to me.” “I didn't tell you to leave. Just…get away from me. I can't look at you right now.” This hurt. Really hurt. See what I mean about people? When was the last time a line of coke made you feel shitty? “Fine, I'll take a shower,” I said, and went to do so.

***** When I emerged from the shower, the entire condo smelled of cacciatore sauce. Peter's comfort food. I found him in the kitchen, standing over the pot with a wooden spoon. I watched him from the doorway. He'd untucked his work shirt and stood barefoot in his trousers, hair rumpled in the back from his tendency to scrub at it when he was tired. A very light furze of golden brown beard shaded his chin. His lower lip stuck out in that serious way it did when he was thinking and he looked pensive. Peter's one of those bouncy men who see the glass half-full, generally. I figured I could take credit for his current mood. “I might have used all the hot water again,” I said. He shook pepper into the pot. “At least you didn't try to shoot me this time.” He frowned and tasted his sauce. I looked around his kitchen. It looked like the sort of place an old grandma would have. With pot holders and decorative canisters and all sorts of cooking paraphernalia everywhere. I think I have a bottle opener and a microwave in my apartment. Once, a few years back, we'd had that big fight. When Peter had tried to talk me into moving in and I'd laughed at him and told him I didn't need a wife. I mean, the man's so fucking domestic, with his clean towels folded in his socalled linen closet. And his immaculate cupboards and shelves. I'd been joking,

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right? He took offense, though, and there'd been a long Peter-free period. You'd think I wouldn't care, but I'd gotten used to the guy and it irked me. I kind of hoped we weren't going to have another one of those fights. “Can you stand to look at me now?” I asked. “Because I need to know if my hair looks stupid or not…” “I didn't mean that before,” he said. “Okay.” “You should stay here until we get all this cleared up.” “I don't want to put you out.” He was silent, stirring. Then he asked, “You hungry?” “Food doesn't agree with me lately,” I reminded him. A flinch around the eyes, as if seeing something he didn't want to. He nodded. I decide to name the elephant in the room. “Wouldn't mind a pint of that blood.” He dropped the spoon in the pot and rested both his hands on the gleaming stove top. Leaning there, with his head down. “Right.” He glared at the pot of cacciatore. “Listen, this is way out there, even for me. I'll handle it. It's not your…” “We can explain the sunlight issue, I think. But the blood could be a problem,” he said. “A problem? Are you kidding?” “There must be legal sources.” And he straightened and lifted his spoon again. You see? He was already thinking how to manage this. How to take care of me. Damn it. Damn me and damn the situations I got the man into. “I'm sorry,” I told him.

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He looked surprised. Which was no wonder. This may have been the first time I'd ever apologized to him. “I believe you are,” he said. I noted he didn't say I forgive you. Not that I expected it. It's not that Peter's not a forgiving man. It's that the amount he has to forgive is pretty extensive. It'll take more than one sorry to clear it. Still, his mood had lifted a little and he bounced as he stirred. That's Peter. Buoyant. It's one of the things that I liked about him. I could use a hit of that juice, so I sidled up next to him and gave him a little hip bump. He threw an easy arm around me. It was a comforting feeling. Solid. In the midst of this weirdness, Peter's warmth steadied me. It seeped into me. Into my legs, my balls. And there it was again. I wanted him. I'd never been so horny in my life as I had been the past twenty-four hours. “So, what's next?” I asked, thinking if I played my cards right I might talk Peter into a blowjob before dinner. I watched him taste the sauce, and felt a tingle when I thought of those lips around my dick. Can you believe it? Over a decade and I still got turned on by this man's mouth. “It's time to call Stan,” said Peter, pouring beer into his sauce. Any thoughts of sex I was having moaned and covered their eyes. “God, no,” I protested. Peter's lower lip poked out and he dropped his arm from around my waist. “Stan has a right to know,” he said. “He's my partner.” “He's an uptight prick.” “So'm I, then,” said Peter. And his face got a hard look. Right. Because Peter and Stan were partners. Comrades-in-arms. All for one and one for… “Fine,” I said, stepping away from him and turning and opening the door that led to the garage. “I'll be out in the garage drinking blood. Call me when your boyfriend shows up.”

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Peter tsked. “Adam…” But I'd slammed the door behind myself.

***** Okay, you don't need to say it. I may not be introspective but even I'm sharp enough to know that I'm jealous of Stan. Not like that. Sheesh. You think the LAPD is a bunch of closeted middleaged men all lusting after each other? Man, you read too much gay porn. No, it was just that Peter and I were partners down in the Hollywood Division Homicide department. And then he got offered the position at Homicide Special. “You want to stop for a steak?” Peter said, drawing on his jacket. I shot him a surprised look. Peter had been moody and quiet all day. I'd figured I'd stepped in it again somehow. “Sure.” But at dinner, he was still moody and quiet. Poking his fork at the meat instead of shoveling into his mouth like he normally would. And he passed on the alcohol. “I've got something to tell you,” he said. “I've been promoted.” That feeling you get just before a life-altering experience set its spur in my gut. “A promotion.” He'd been studying his plate; now he looked up at me. “Homicide Special.” I managed to recover. “Congratulations.” “I wish we were going together.” I made the smile spread across my face. “Maybe if you tell them we're very, very best friends.” It didn't fool Peter. “This won't change anything.” No. Except who would work with me but Peter? No one, as it turned out. And I didn't have a taste for it anymore, anyway. Within six months I'd transferred to Vice. Much more my style.

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I met Stan about a month after Peter had transferred. Came cruising by Parker on some excuse and dropped by their combined desk, trying to look casual. “Hey, you the guy that stole my partner?” I stuck out my hand. Stan looked at my hand as if he doubted I washed in the men's room. One hard firm shake and then he let go, turning back to his work. “Peter, you see this evidence log?” he said. And Peter, after a quick smile at me, just picked up the report Stan was holding and sat down next to him on the edge of his desk. I don't know how long they continued that way, discussing their special little case, because after five minutes, I left. That night I showed up at Peter's place around midnight. He opened the door, smiling. “Adam. You left this afternoon without saying anything.” The last word was cut short as I'd grabbed him by both shoulders and shoved him against the wall. It was a possessive kiss, and I barely gave him time to breathe while I muscled him into the bedroom, stripping his sleep shirt from him. Pushing him onto his belly and holding him down while I bit at the back of his neck, rocking my hard dick against his backside. He moved uncomfortably, trying to free his arms which I held down by both wrists. “You're freaking me out,” he whispered. I could feel his hips twisting under me. His voice husky. “I like it.” “Shut up,” I whispered in his ear and nipped at the lobe for emphasis. “Lie here and let me fuck you.” He groaned softly and his legs moved farther apart. It was fast and hard and I said some pretty demanding and possessive things while I did it. Mine.

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That was one of the infrequent occasions when I spent the night. Hands and arms laced around Peter, lips pressed to the hickey I'd raised on his collarbone. The damned alarm went off at six a.m. “Christ.” I covered my head with a pillow. “Why do you need to go in so early?” Peter and I usually had worked the ten-to-six shift. But I'd heard that the Homicide Special guys worked their own hours. “Stan and I meet for breakfast.” He'd crawled over me and hopped out of bed, grabbing a towel and then heading down the hallway. That woke me up. Literally and metaphorically.

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Chapter Nine I was sitting in an easy chair, nursing a beer and my grievances, when the buzzer rang and Peter let Stan in. Stan had that cement face he got when he was really pissed off. Like all of his muscles were frozen into an expressionless mask and only his eyes and lips moved. “Adam, I'm so happy to see you still alive.” Stan didn't like me any more than I did him. I have to say that anyone who knew and liked Peter would probably not like me, but Stan was Peter's partner and so had a vested interest in Peter's mental health and physical wellbeing. So Stan really didn't like me. I'd guess that, in some dark recess of Stan's mind, he knew of Peter's and my more intimate relationship. And I'm fairly certain this was just another distasteful facet to the whole “unhealthful association” issue. But Stan didn't need to know that Peter and I were fucking to dislike me. I wasn't the kind of cop that good cops liked. We all sat at the dining table. Stan had brought the combined files regarding my homicide and that of Sergio Armante, the DEA agent. The “book” was already encyclopedic in its breadth. Peter brought coffee for Stan and a beer for me. I needed the beer. The blood I'd consumed in the garage had me as keen as a tuned Kawasaki, buzzing and horny and focused. So tight my edges showed. Stan gave me a narrow-eyed, discerning look, and I knew what he was thinking. I'd be thinking it too, if I were him. I surmised that telling him it was

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the blood that pumped me up, not drugs, was unwise, so I let him think his thoughts. “Evidence released your personal effects,” he said. He tipped a heavy manila folder and my wallet, keys, cell phone, watch, and shield spilled out. “Thanks, man.” But before I could snatch up the shield, Stan's hand landed on my wrist. “I don't think so.” I'd never shown a lot of respect for the job, so I was surprised by how much I ached to pick up that shield. “Right,” I said, trying to sound smart-ass and like I didn't care. “Don't want dead men busting bad guys.” I laced the watch on carefully. It was about five years old and had a message engraved on the back. From Peter. I wondered if good old Stan had read the message. “You've got some interesting numbers on your speed dial,” said Stan to me. “I ran a trace on one and had an FBI agent up my ass ten minutes later.” “There's a lot of cross-pollination these days,” I said calmly, wondering who the fuck of my “associates” was also working for the FBI. And how much they knew. “Which number was that?” “Hmm, I don't recall,” said Stan. “Four shots fired,” said Peter, neatly changing the subject. He spread out the crime scene sketch. I saw, uncomfortably, the outline that was supposed to be my body. “Two hit Armante. One was Stan's in Richie. We found a slug in the door frame near us. All the slugs were from a .38.” “Why do you think there was a second shooter?” I asked. “Richie was carrying a Glock, not a .38.” “You think it was the guy who punctured me in the throat?” I asked. Stan shook his head. “We found a door at the back open; there could have been even more than two.” “You hear any bikes? Cars? Anyone in the area see any vehicles leaving the scene?”

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“We canvassed the entire block. Hardly anybody's in that part of the Marina late at night.” At least, hardly anyone who had legal business there. I'd performed plenty of “transactions” in those alleys. “I didn't hear anything,” said Stan. “So they escaped on foot,” I said. “Hard to believe,” said Peter. “Stan called dispatch seconds later and it couldn't have been five minutes before the entire area was enclosed in a dragnet. The only way out would have been via water.” “Harbor patrol reported nothing,” said Stan. I thought of Betsy and Caballo running up that two-story wall. It was a trick I meant to try soon. “Tell me about this 'sting,'” I said. “My source in the DEA said Armante had a meet with a pilot that the Mongols recruited to traffic,” said Stan. He gave Peter a meaningful look from beneath those impressive eyebrows of his. Fucking hell. So an ex-Marine pilot, who had kept up his license, and who, by the way, had just spent two years infiltrating the infamous Mongols Motorcycle Club, the biggest meth distribution operation in Southern California, shows up at the meet with the undercover DEA agent. It's a sting custom-made for yours truly. Except I didn't do it. For once, but no one is going to believe me. Peter's got a look on his face like he's suffering some deep internal pain. He must have thought I'd finally blown it. And then, capper, he gets to watch me die. “Helluva coincidence Bertoni's CI was killed with the same MO,” Stan commented, his eyebrow raised and pointed straight at me. Homicide detectives don't believe in coincidences. “Obviously a hit,” I said. “Retaliation for the Mongol arrests last month.” “How do Paolo Spence and Richie Ortiz fit into that theory?”

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Good question. “I don't know,” I admitted. “But Freeway was scared shitless of somebody.” Stan's gaze focused on me with the steady intensity of a gem cutter on a raw diamond. “Really?” I felt Peter shoot me a glance from beneath his lashes. “We were both keeping a low profile,” I said. “He was too smart to do anything to bring attention to himself.” “And yet he wound up dead. Maybe you overestimated his intelligence.” Stan slid out a file with Freeway's name on it. “We spoke to his mother and she said—” “You've questioned her? You should have called me first. ” I snatched the file from Stan's fingers and saw that Freeway's mother had been called in to ID his body. Damn. “You hadn't yet told us your death was a ruse,” said Stan. I could hear my own teeth grinding. “It wasn't a ruse.” Stan ignored me, turning the pages of the interview report. “She said they were about to move to a new home. Apparently your CI had recently come into a lot of cash.” Goddamn you, Freeway. You were never smart enough to play double agent. “We've heard more than our usual share of rumors, lately, about an LAPD officer involved in the meth trade,” said Stan. “Add to that the fifty thousand missing last month from the Vice evidence log…” “That was some kind of clerical screw up,” I said immediately. “And LAPD conspiracy theories are as regular as the swallows at Capistrano. A new batch lands every spring.” “You always have a clever answer, don't you, Bertoni?” “There's a third party with an interest in both cases,” said Peter, hurriedly. “Adam and his CI may have just been caught in the crossfire.”

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“What third party? And what's their interest?” Peter tapped his fingers on the table. “Something was being trafficked besides Armante's meth.” He meant the blood, of course. “How do you know that?” asked Stan. “My CI was moving something when he was killed,” I told him. “Really? Were you there?” “Later,” I said quickly. “After he was killed.” “I'd sent Adam to question a man who'd worked with Armante. He took my Cadillac. Didn't the Boyle Heights men call it in?” Peter looked at Stan and then away. I had to struggle not to gape at him. Had Peter just lied for me? Stan's eyes narrowed a bit and he glanced from Peter to me and shifted uncomfortably. He took a breath. Let it out, and obviously decided to set it aside. Probably it was sidling up too close to the “relationship” issue that he always sought to avoid. “What kind of drug?” “We don't know. There's nothing on the street about it yet,” I said. “So we have a new substance,” Peter said. “Who's usually in at the ground floor of a new product?” “The Mexican Mafia,” said Stan. “I'd bet on it.” “Then you'd bet wrong,” I said. “Freeway would never trust those cholos. Never. He'd only trust another Mongol. Or someone associated with the Mongols.” “Then I have to ask you yet again,” said Stan, like I was stupid, “what about Paolo Spence? What about Richie? They were part of the ICE sweep last year. No OMG connections.” “Drugs connect them all,” I said. “They were part of the largest meth distribution ring outside the OMG's. They're rivals for any new business. Drugs are the connection. This stinks of some kind of territorial battle. The 'M' have

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been promising a war for a year. Now a new drug hits the streets and they are determined to take out the rival OMG's from day one.” Stan rubbed his lower lip with a callused thumb. “There are signs that something was stolen from the building where we found your CI's body.” “The drugs.” “Maybe. The CS techs are busting a vein analyzing every square inch of your friend's body. I've asked them to take a look at a workbench in the room too.” I thought of myself, backing up into that bench when I'd discovered the blood and didn't look at Peter, who, rather pointedly, avoided looking at me as well. I found myself holding my breath, waiting to see if he'd say anything. “We could hypothesize all night. Adam's the one in the pit. He's the one who can get us the answers we need,” he said. I could have kissed him. “So if you could get the DEA to at least confirm our suspicions, Stan?” Peter turned the page to the agent's bio. Starz, a.k.a Sergio Armante. Twice decorated, father of three. Damn, I think, reading his bio over Peter's shoulder. Why him and not me? Peter sighed. “We've been following this trail of bodies for months, Adam. La Eme has claimed a lot of cold-blooded murders. You heard about the boy shot down on Commerce Street? We had a tip that the same man offed Paolo Spence.” “I knew Paolo,” I said. “He got out just before ICE busted Viktor.” Viktor had been the leader of a huge meth distribution and weapons smuggling ring part of the Mexican Mafia. His nickname was El Diablo. You guess why. “But I thought the Mexican government got him in a sweep last month.” “So did we. Then his body falls out of a car trunk in the impound lot in San Diego. Dead of exsanguination via two puncture wounds in his neck. So, we figure this guy is the one we want for the kid's death and maybe a couple

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others. We think we've got a line on the M's through him and then we got a tip that he was holing up in that warehouse.” “Who phoned in the tip?” Neither of them answered me. I felt more than saw the quick exchange between them. “Our source is UA,” said Stan. “I…went by his place and it looks like he's been gone for a few days.” “Fifty bucks says he shows up exsanguinated with puncture wounds,” I said. “What a clusterfuck this is. Why didn't you call in Vice before now?” I saw a muscle clench in Peter's jaw. “We still haven't called in Vice,” said Stan. “You aren't working this case. You are a person of interest.” “What?” Peter stood up. “Another round?” he asked us both. While Peter was in the kitchen, Stan gave me one of his fierce looks. “I know you're in this up to your chin, Bertoni,” he said. “You watch too many old movies, Stan,” I told him. Peter came back in the room and plunked a bottle of Miller down in front of me and poured more coffee into Stan's cup. “Thanks for bringing the files,” said Peter. “Sure. We had FBI come in an hour ago,” said Stan to Peter. “A couple numbers on Leonard Chavez's phone are persons of interest to them too.” “Freeway's phone?” Damn, I wish I'd lifted it before CSI had gotten there. “What did you tell him?” “As little as possible.” Now, I should explain here that neither Stan nor Peter is being a bad cop or a bad American. It's just the FBI can be kind of self-centered about things. As in, they'd rather bust a terrorist than solve a homicide. Go figure. They're

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not big into sharing information with homicide detectives. And homicide detectives aren't big into giving out hard-won info without getting something in return. I mulled over my decision for a minute, but in the end I knew I had to hand over Caballo's cell phone. Stan looked down at the thing like it might give him a disease. “What is that?” “Dude dropped it when I was questioning him about Freeway,” I said. Stan's lip twisted. “Your prints are all over it, aren't they?” “At the time, I really couldn't stop and put on gloves, man. I'll bet the numbers are interesting.” Stan drew a pair of gloves out of his pocket. Of course he carried them everywhere with him. The man was a fucking Eagle Scout. He opened the phone and pressed the contacts list. The only name there was “Ozone.” Stan pressed the speed dial. The phone rang and on the fourth ring we had a message from AT&T telling us that that cell phone customer was no longer in service. “I've never heard the name 'Ozone' before,” said Peter. Stan had been a homicide detective since the silent film era. He fixed me with a suspicious glare. “You knew an Ozone, didn't you, Adam?” I answered Stan, because I'd never been able to lie to Peter with any success. “Name is new to me too.” Stan's expressionless gaze held mine. He pocketed the cell phone. “I'll have the service give us a complete list of calls.” Peter looked bored. “All prepaid toss aways, odds are.” I picked up my beer bottle and poked at the edge of the label with my thumbnail. “I'd like to talk to your DEA connection,” I said. “He and I can cross-reference a little, maybe find parallels.” “His identity is privileged,” said Stan.

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“Don't blame me if we're tripping over each other, then,” I said. “You won't be tripping over anything but your own feet, Bertoni,” said Stan. “Because you're not on this case. Not this one, or any other, for that matter.” He turned to Peter. “I'll leave these copies of the files.” He rose and lifted his suit jacket from the back of the chair where he'd hung it. “Do me a favor and take his statement. I'll contact our gang task force in the morning,” he said. “They'll want your report,” he told me. He went off to use the bathroom before leaving. I looked at Peter and when the bathroom door closed behind Stan I said, “You know I can't go into the station in the morning.” Peter frowned at his hands folded before him on the table. He had that mulish set to his chin. “Now you want Stan to lie?” “Christ, Peter…” A big sigh. “I'll talk to him.

***** Peter walked Stan to the door and in the hallway I saw them stop and have one of those “partner” moments. The intimacy of which put a twitch in my eye. Along with my other new attributes, I seemed to have bat's ears. I could clearly hear their conversation. “How're you holding up anyway?” Stan asked Peter. “Can't take it in,” said Peter. “You need to sleep. The staff psych man give you anything?” “Yeah. I hate to take that stuff.” “If you want to talk the chief into letting you back at your desk, you have to get some rest, man. You look half-dead.” “That's not from lack of sleep. I need to get this thing cleared up.”

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“Peter, do you even remember what you did? What you said? If they hadn't shot you full of tranqs…” Peter muttered something so low even I couldn't hear it, and they came farther down the hallway, so I could see them in the doorway. Stan had his hand on Peter's shoulder in a brotherly way. It made the blood pulse behind my eyeballs. From the hallway, Stan cast a black look in my direction. “You know, they found a kid in the river with a dime bag up his ass last week,” he said to Peter. Peter's head lifted and his gaze met Stan's. “You think he has junk in him somewhere?” “ME hadn't done a preliminary, but since he thought COD was pretty clear, he was leaving it until today.” He was talking about my autopsy. “Hey! I'm right here!” I yelled at them both. “And I think I'd know if I'd swallowed a balloon.” Stan looked at me like I was the lying scumbag I knew I was. “Did you?” “No! Jesus Christ. Somebody killed me, man.” One of Stan's thick gray eyebrows went up. Peter put out his peacemaking hand. “Okay, we'll look through all of this, prepare a statement, and when I come in in the morning it'll all be straightened out.” “What will our friend here be doing?” “Cooling my heels,” I said, sulking. “I can't go out in the sun.” “What?” said Stan. I turned away and opened the refrigerator, standing there looking at food I couldn't eat. “Hey, Peter,” I called out. “You're out of Tabasco sauce.” “Don't mind him,” I heard Peter say, low, to Stan. “The past twenty-four hours have been rough.” “What do you care?” said Stan. “That's what I don't get.” I slammed the refrigerator door as hard as I could.

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Stan still wanted to haul me in to explain my inconvenient survival to the chief of police, but Peter convinced him that me being dead might lull Armante's killers into a false sense of security. “And if someone has a death sentence on Adam or any of his informants, we need to buy time before they find out he's still alive. Give us a day,” he said. Stan finally left. Later, Peter was reading the files and he came across the thing I'd forgotten about. Trust me, if I'd remembered I would have dug it out of there and flushed it or something before he could see it. As it was I was completely unprepared, watching the sports highlights. Damned Lakers need a better defense and that's the truth. Peter made a noise and I looked over and he had a page from my personnel file in one hand and his other hand was covering his mouth. Oh. Yeah. He set down the paper. His eyes were tight at the corners and I half expected him to come across the footstool at me. “Hey,” I said. “It was either you or some cat hospital.” Who was I going to leave everything to? My second cousin I haven't seen since I was ten? Peter covered his eyes. God, I can't do anything right. I even fuck up being dead. “I'm sorry,” I said for the second time in my life. Afterlife. He shook his head. “Can I get you another beer?” I asked. “No,” he said, his voice kind of husky. I didn't know what the fuck to do. I finally opted for dealing with it here and now and I sat down next to him on the sofa. He dropped his hand and turned his head so that I couldn't see his face.

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“I should have left it all to the police benevolent fund,” I said. “Except I don't know what they'd do with my collection of porn.” He was silent. “There's that Colton Ford shower scene in there. I'd hate to see that wasted.” I heard something like a soft laugh and I dared to lay my arm over his shoulder. I knew it was okay when he eased himself into my embrace. We sat that way for awhile. The news was doing a recap, but they seemed to have already forgotten me. Thank Christ. I leaned over and smelled Peter's hair. His head turned slightly. “I don't think,” I said. “Sure you do. You just don't think straight.” He'd turned toward me. I touched his face with my hand. “Nobody else would give a shit if I died,” I said. His lashes flickered; eyelids lowered to hide whatever his eyes would have told me. “Not fair.” “No, it isn't. I haven't been. I fucked up. You should tell me off.” Peter's beard was showing and my thumb found the nap of it. I liked the prickly texture, on top of the soft skin at the nape of his neck. Little goose pimples rose on his skin as I stroked it. “Go ahead.” “You're a dick,” he said softly. “I am.” He was breathing harder. I could feel his skin warming under my fingers. I thought it was time to stop worrying about Freeway and Ozone and even Stan. “Let's go to bed,” I said.

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Chapter Ten The first time I had sex with Peter was a month into our stint as partners in Homicide. We'd just closed a case, had a light load pending, and decided to knock off early and share a couple drinks at a sports bar down on Main Street, in Venice Beach. “I live close to here,” he'd said. “Don't try to drive home.” So we'd walked back to his place. Now I figured at the time that my secret was pretty secure. You described your stereotypical fairy and I was not the one you pointed to as an example. So I was pretty damned surprised when he turned his deadbolt, hung up his jacket, threw down his keys, grabbed my chin, and planted a big, wet, slobbery kiss on my mouth. Surprised and pleased, I should say. We'd been having sex off and on for over a decade since. Not that I was counting. Peter's exactly what floats my boat. Hard and muscled and covered with golden hair. Like a tough teddy bear with dangerous blue eyes, and a tightlipped mouth, sure of what it wanted and how to get it. Right now that mouth was down around my navel, drawing up a mark on my belly. “Hey, can you slow down?” I asked him, and he looked up, surprised. See, something was different. Something had changed in the past twentyfour hours that I couldn't put my finger on. But I wanted to see his face. I wanted to hear him breathing in my ear while we did it.

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Now he crawled up next to me, a playful smile on his face. “You feeling okay?” “Yeah.” I let my fingers fall down the slope of muscle on his shoulder. I could hear his heart speeding up. Maybe that was part of it. I'd never before known that when I looked at Peter, his heart sped up. I'd never been able to feel his body heat up when I touched him. I'd had no fucking idea Peter was so affected by me and it was making me feel a little strange. Not bad strange, just strange strange. More aware. I touched his face and his eyes darkened. His lips parted and I planted a soft kiss on them. I encircled his wrist with my thumb and forefinger. His wrist was so thick, my fingertips couldn't quite touch each other. I remembered that on the shooting range, he could sometimes fire one-handed. Now he raised that hand and it really amazed me how a hand so strong could touch me so gently. His fingers traced my lip and I kissed them. His mouth followed. This tough little mouth that withheld so much from strangers, softened and pressed against mine. His tongue was hungry. We rolled. His hand was gentle on my cock, drawing it out of its shell, so to speak, until my hips followed his rhythm, trying to push into his touch. He laughed softly and said, “You want me, big boy?” “Oh yeah.” He was languid beneath me. We found a rhythm and it was slow and good until the end when I was suddenly desperate to get deeper inside him. Later, I got up and sat and watched him sleep. Peter always slept like an old dog by the fire. On his side, legs twitching as he moaned and whimpered in his sleep. Chasing those bad guys in his dreams, I guess. And I wondered, for the first time in all this time, if he ever dreamed of me?

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I slipped off the watch Stan had returned to me and turned it over. The engraved words were thin and spidery. “Always. Peter.” I remembered when he'd given it to me. It hadn't been a special occasion, or anything. Just a night when I stayed after sex and we were watching the news recap. “Hey.” He came back into the living room and set two beers on the table. Next to mine, an oblong jeweler's box. “I keep forgetting to give you this.” I picked it up. “What is it?” He'd strolled into the hallway and his voice came from near the bathroom. “Open it.” By the time he'd come back into the living room, I had it on my wrist. “So.” He looked worried. Rubbing at the back of his neck. “Is it okay?” “What? The watch? It's perfect, Peter. Thank you.” Still he remained standing. “Peter. I love it. Would you sit down?” A flush saturated his face and he nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He sat. After a minute I threw my arm over his shoulders and felt him ease himself into the embrace. I could feel the heat in my face as well. Later, I'd dragged him back in the bedroom for a second go-round. We lay in the tangle of sheets, his head resting on my chest. “You can stay if you want,” he said. I could feel my heart start beating hard, my respiration increase. His head moved as if he heard and felt the change in me. “Or not,” he said. “Yeah, I've got an early call in the Palisades,” I said, closing my eyes and trying to elicit my happy place. My nonsuffocating, nontrapped place. “It would be easier if I stayed here.” Peter's entire body relaxed again. “Okay.” That was about as romantic as we'd ever become, but I knew, didn't I? The only reason he'd never said anything was because we both knew I'd have a fucking heart attack if he did.

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So I could pretend that I'd been shocked when Peter had made that drunken statement the other night, but I'd be bullshitting myself. Peter moaned in his sleep and rolled to his stomach. He was still naked. Muscled shoulders, freckled back, the curve of that perfect ass. “You got something you need to talk out?” He'd just shown up that morning, something Peter never ever did. Even worse, I had the suspicion that he'd been watching my apartment for a few weeks. “Christ, no.” I put some distance between us, moving around my bike to check what looked like a new drop of oil there on the pavement. “Like I told you, I've been busy, Peter. Nothing's bothering me, nothing's wrong. I'm clean,” I said before he could even open his mouth to ask it. Seated on the lip of a brick wall outside my apartment complex. His arms folded and he's got that pout he gets when he's thinking hard. Gives me a glimpse of Peter as a kid. He can't put into words why he's bothered, but I know why. I have been avoiding him. Every time I see him my head's in a mess afterward. So I've just been staying away. He spoke something unintelligible in his sleep and his hand moved, fingers curving, as if reaching for something, his arm stretched upward, muscles flexing from biceps to shoulder and across his back. God, he's beautiful. I couldn't stand it anymore and I went into the kitchen and got myself a beer. In the refrigerator, the remaining container of blood peeked out from beneath the romaine, and I started thinking about it. About blood, and a distributor named Ozone, and Freeway. About the manner of Freeway's death. And mine. According to the clock on Peter's microwave, it was two p.m. The sun directly overhead in a cloudless sky intense enough to heat up Peter's shaded and air-conditioned apartment. The same bright sky would hang over the Los

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Angeles morgue, of course. I sat down on the kitchen chair and racked my memory for the layout of the morgue and what a reanimated corpse might do if he found himself trapped there during daylight hours. Assuming, of course, that I wasn't dreaming all of this. I nursed my beer and set that very real possibility aside for the moment and considered all of the facts that had been presented. It was a lot like when I was seventeen and I sat on the roof of my father's trailer and contemplated a series of facts leading to an obvious conclusion.

1) Every time Jackie Spence, the quarterback on our team, leaned over in the locker room I popped a boner. 2) Despite being first string on that team, I hadn't done anything with a girl but get blown. 3) I didn't WANT to do anything with a girl, though I wouldn't have minded getting blown by Jackie Spence. 4) And need we even mention what I fantasized about while jerking off?

Truthfully, the current series of facts was easier for me to swallow.

1) I'd bled to death in a warehouse. Peter had seen me bleed to death. 2) I'd woken in a morgue. 3) I craved blood. 4) I seemed able to perform athletically far beyond my previous capabilities. 5) I caught on fire in the sunlight and then I healed at breathtaking speed.

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We'd laughed about it, Peter and I, but what else do you do when your friend's a vampire? It was a fucking cliché, is what it was. Jeeves, bring me my cape. Shit. Now, I don't want you to think I'm saying that figuring out I'm queer was like discovering I'm the Evil Dead. Damn, I can imagine the letters already. From the politically correct and the religious right. Of course, if you're the religious right and you're reading this story, I have to wonder. But I digress, as they say. So, assuming I'm dead, but not dead. Assuming Freeway was dead, but not dead, same as me. He and I had some unfinished business to discuss and he might be, for all I know, naked and confused and running amok in a building full of Los Angeles PD officials. Fuck and fuck. If Freeway was still up and moving, I needed to talk to him before the LAPD got their hands on him. There were things that Freeway and I shared. Things he might believe were official and on the books but which weren't, exactly. And then there was the blood. I seemed to be able to cruise for about twenty-four hours on one quart. Of course, if it were anything like food, I should factor in unusual activity, or excessive strain. That gave me about a day to track down a source. I went out to the dining area and perused the files Stan had left. Noting every address and location on every sheet. Even the dead, because that seemed not a given of late. Then I used the prepaid cell again and called another number from memory. “Yeah?” The connection was choppy and full of wind. He was probably on his bike. “It's Adam.” “El Demonio!” Albert cried cheerily. The Fiend was Albert's pet name for me. Fuck knew why.

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“Albert, I need a ride.” A curse. Albert had a distinctive accent. A little Swiss, a lot Portuguese. His curses were almost sexy. “You've got shit timing, 'mano.” Sunset was around six p.m. of late. “At seven p.m. In front of the fish place at the pier.” Another curse. Then, “Got it.” He disconnected. I spent the next couple of hours taking notes from the murder book in tiny writing in my own little code that I kept on a folded-up paper in my wallet. By the time Peter woke up, it was late afternoon and I had a plan.

***** Peter woke up hard. This could have had something to do with the fact that I had my face in his crotch, where I was nuzzling and snorting like a big pig after truffles. His cock had been waking up for about five minutes and then I knew his head had woken because he muttered and shifted, spreading his legs wider, his hand landing on the back of my head, heavy and demanding. I was happy to oblige. I don't give head, generally, when I'm out cruising random tricks. Mostly because I don't have to and I'm a selfish prick. But Peter's cock was made for my mouth. Thick and warm and somehow singularly Peter. Its length pulsed against my tongue. I swallowed convulsively around the head and he made a helpless noise. God, I loved making him do that. I could feel the muscles in his thighs tighten against my ears, his fingers burying themselves in my hair. I sucked and swallowed and moved my head up and down, letting the head bump against the soft palate at the back of my throat a few times until he said my name. High-pitched, anxious. “Adam?” His balls tight when I touched them and then thick, salty cum at the back of my throat. I swallowed and swallowed while he shivered and shook, muscles clenching.

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I let him slide from my lips and rested my chin on his pelvis lightly, so he still had the warmth of my throat covering him. He smelled good. Spunky and familiar. I suppose the smell of Peter waking in the morning after sex was the closest thing to home I could imagine. The fact that, now, I could smell his blood, slightly tinny and bright and good, I ignored for the moment. He sighed and his hand softened in my hair, stroking. “God,” he said to the ceiling. “Not really,” I said. “But I'll take that as a compliment.” He petted me and I watched his chest rising and falling. Then his hand stilled. “I've been thinking,” he said. “Me too.” He didn't look down at me, but I felt the mood shift as if someone had actually tilted the room. I pretended I didn't notice, though, and raised myself onto my elbows, crawling up his body until my hard prick was nudging his belly. He raised himself on his elbows, the crucifix tumbling against his golden chest hair and the muscles over his belly tightening as he lifted his chin and kissed me. “Knock knock,” I whispered. The blood in the veins of his neck smelled different than near his cock. Cleaner, lighter. Maybe because there was more oxygen in it. Christ, now I was smelling the chemical components of Peter's blood. I kissed him and said into his ear. “Got wood?” A dimple appeared in his cheek when he grinned. “You took care of that.” I kissed the dimple, buried my head in his neck, and said, “Give me a minute here.” Poke poke. Slide. I was leaking like a son of a bitch. The little pool I'd made on Peter's belly was good enough for a comfortable friction and I basically started a rhythm of frottage that he barely participated in until the end when I was losing it and he wrapped his arms around me while I gasped into his ear, and he started saying things. Low and against my hair.

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I was too far gone to understand everything he whispered, but I heard him say “It's okay,” and then I came in long, painfully sweet shudders. His warmth under me. And even as his breathing slowed, I still held him. Listening to his breath, feeling his heat. Rubbing my cheek against the back of his neck, feeling how silky his hair was between my fingers. “Adam, can't breathe,” he said, before I realized I was clutching him tightly. I pushed myself away. “Sorry.” He rolled over and his expression held caution and concern. “What's wrong?” Peter is extremely schooled in the language of Adam body-speak. “Nothing.” “Adam…” “Just leave it.” I stood and grabbed my shorts from where they were flung over a chair. When I turned back his gaze was on me, eyes deep blue and serious. “It'll be dark soon,” he said. I nodded. I didn't think it was the time to tell him that I could feel the sun setting. “I need to go in to work,” said Peter. “I know.” I'm not the clinging sort. Truth is, there's been a few times I've been aware of Peter holding on a bit longer than necessary, but I've never been like that. Why? I told you already. I'm a prick. “I'll put on the coffee while you shower,” I said, turning my back so I didn't have to see him roll off the mattress and walk out of the room. I made coffee and sat at the table watching him eat. I followed him back into the bedroom and sat on the bed, watching him dress. He stood in the light coming through the bedroom window as he fastened on his clip-on tie, and I found myself eating up the sight of him. His muscled hands moving over the

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silk. The way his chin tilted up, his eyelashes lowered. The way he flicked at the corner of his mouth with his thumb as he remembered what to stuff into his pockets. Clipped the phone onto his belt. The gun into its shoulder holster. He picked up his shield. “Thanks, Peter,” I said. He stilled. The setting sunlight came across the shutters in the windows and painted a thick golden band of yellowish orange across the golden hairs of his head, down the tanned line of cheek. His eyelashes were golden, edged with black, in the light. “I won't be long,” he said. “Just have to sort out a few things and then I'll come back and we'll deal with everything.” “Yeah.” His shirt was crisp and starched and white. If I looked in his closet I'd see a row of those shirts, all with the cardboard collar holders still in place from the cleaners. If I walked up to him now and smelled him he'd be starch and fresh cotton, Irish Spring and Peter. Of course, since he was standing in light cast through the windows, I'd burst into flames and for some reason that made him seem distant. Unreal. So, as soon as he stepped into the shadows I grabbed him and kissed him. His skin was warm. He pulled back from my embrace and his eyes were full of questions. “You smell good,” I explained. This was not helpful. He watched me warily as he finished getting ready. “I'll be back in time for Sports Center,” he said. “So, don't tell me the score when I come in.” It was a command and a question. “I'll have the beer chilled and the shrimp on the barbie,” I said. Now he was seriously worried. He smoothed his tie, lips turned down in a pensive frown, and before he left he stopped in the doorway and stood there just looking at me. Like he was taking a photograph. Like he didn't want to forget.

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This was all a little too much drama for me. “So, I'll see you,” I said. “Later.” He looked like he might say something but then, as always, he kept his thoughts to himself. “Later,” he said, and closed the door behind himself. I waited until I heard the Mustang leave the garage. Then I went into the bedroom and found a small, old duffel on the top shelf. I stuffed the bits of clothing that were either mine or so old and beat I didn't think Peter would miss them, into the duffel. Wrapping a couple of T-shirts around the last carton of blood. Peter had put the Smith & Wesson back exactly where he always kept it. When I found the extra box of bullets and the wad of money in the box, though, I stopped and almost reconsidered my plan. The son of a bitch had left over five hundred dollars rolled up in a rubber band. It wasn't there the other day so he'd put it there sometime between tracking me down in Venice and Stan's visit. I can't explain, exactly, why this pissed me off so badly, but in the end reason prevailed. My plastic had all been frozen, on account of my death, so I took the money. I always end up taking the money. As soon as the sun set, I slung the duffel over my shoulder, locked the condo door behind myself, and trotted outside. I had plenty of time to get to the pier where my ride would meet me, so when I got there I went into a drugstore, added a few minutes to my prepaid cell phone, and while I was standing there I looked over and saw the Marlboros. “Give me two packs,” I said to the clerk. I was just outside the entrance to the pier, so I tapped the tobacco tight against my fist while strolling all the way to the end. Where there always seemed to be a nodding old man with leathern skin and a line reaching forty feet down into the rolling black water.

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I lit up. Dragged the evil smoke into my lungs. God, it felt good. I loved smoking, you know? I only quit to prolong my life. Seemed funny now. Except it didn't. I smoked a few cigarettes then walked back the length of the pier. I walked by kids throwing basketballs at hoops to win cheap stuffed animals. A churro standkeeper getting ready to go home. The smell of burned sugar saturated the air as he cleaned out his machine and the smell was bright and alive. I wasn't. At seven p.m. on the button, the distinct roar of double mufflers on an old Harley rose above the pier's hubbub, and I looked down Main and saw the remembered, chromed out, hard-tail Harley, Albert's bald pate, rebelliously sans helmet, shining almost as much as the polished chrome, under the Santa Monica city lights. Right on time. Just because a man's a criminal doesn't mean he isn't prompt. He pulled up and killed the engine. His mirrored sunglasses danced with a rainbow of colored merry-go-round lights on the pier behind me. “El Demonio! La caminata muerta,” he said cheerily. He grinned and the diamond-capped tooth flashed at me. “O es usted un fantasma?” “You always said I was a demon.” He spat a laugh. “Epa, that you are.” Albert removed his sunglasses. His black black eyes were heavily creased at the corners and a white scar raised one eyebrow in perpetual surprise. He managed to look amused and patrician. Like a svelte Sean Connery. No mean feat for a bald-headed, diamond-toothed, evil biker. “I'm surprised you'd heard,” I said. I wondered who had called him, and stored that question for later. “Mierda, everyone has heard.” He eyed my duffel. “Are you leaving town?” “Can't. My bike's in impound. On account of I'm dead.”

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“The lot up on Venice?” “Yeah.” “Epa, 'mano, it may as well be Alcatraz.” He kicked the clutch and the carburetor filled the night with sound. “It's my bike, man,” I shouted. “But I need to make a stop first.” “Do I look like the fucking RTD?” I looked him up and down. “You are getting a little big in the ass, 'mano.” He flipped me the bird. “Climb on. Where we going?” I yelled in his ear as he gunned his engine and slid into traffic. “The county morgue.”

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Chapter Eleven Okay, I know you're thinking Albert and I are friends. But remember when I was stuck naked in the basement of the LA morgue and I told you the only person I could call was Peter? Nothing's changed. I pay Albert to be my friend. So, you could say Peter was currently bankrolling our friendship. Albert and I had crossed paths, as they say, a few times already. He'd been part of the Bandidos, in Texas, when his fortune changed by way of a hit on his brother. Albert turned state's evidence against the Bandidos and had helped put a couple in prison. In return, Albert entered witness protection. Which is why Albert didn't ride with the Hispanic OMG in SoCal. Our federal marshals have a limited comfort zone about those things. But Alberto still rides, because you can change a man's social security number and last name. You can rewrite his personal history and give him a new life. But you can't peel a biker off his ride while his body lives. And it wasn't long before I recognized Albert's smiling face roaring by the Rock Store, thick hair shaved, newly capped teeth spread in a wide grin and tats lasered clean, cruising the back roads of Mulholland Highway. Poor guy was pulling into the bushes every time he saw a man wearing colors. I was looking for a knowledgeable source that maybe could function outside the gossipy, paranoid OMG. Albert was feeling the financial pinch of living an honest life. And he and I both saw the potential for a mutually satisfying relationship. The federal marshals would undoubtedly protest this little arrangement. Which is why you'd never see Alberto on my books.

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It's a twenty-minute ride from Santa Monica to East Los Angeles, even flogging it, and I had time to think about things. Unfortunately, I was distracted by the smell of Albert. He wore a beaten brown leather vest, no patches, no shirt beneath. I could smell the aged, soft leather, his clean sweat. His arms were like a hairless gorilla's, and I could still see the faintest bruise of ink where the lasers had scoured his past. The armpit hair slightly damp and curling where it disappeared into the loose armholes. Albert smelled a little like chicken mole and vanilla milk shakes. I was salivating heavily when he finally looped down the freeway off-ramp, hanging a slow left to cruise under the overpass, by the graffitied “Wall of Memories,” slowing as we drove by the morgue parking area. He cruised another half block down and slid his bike around the tire spikes set in the entryway to the Children's Hospital parking lot, then circled to the second level where we had a clear view of the morgue and the coroner's cars parked there. Albert ripped his engine a couple times and killed it. His scent seemed to gather and wash over me and I practically fell trying to get off the bike and away from him. From behind a concrete pylon I could survey the entire area. There was an unmarked car sitting behind a tree in the permit only parking lot. In over a decade of service to the LAPD, 90 percent of which had probably been spent numbing my ass cheeks in some car, I'd staked out the morgue myself a couple times. It's often interesting to see who, besides the next of kin, comes to identify a murder victim. I figured the dusty black TransAm sitting there was a stakeout. The morgue was open twenty-four seven, but I had to get inside without whoever that was seeing me. Albert perched his ass on his bike, watching me think and smoke. He dug a pipe out and lit it, inhaling fiercely. The sickly rich odor of marijuana mixed with a minty hint of heroin floated past my nostrils. “Albert, we are ten yards from an LAPD establishment.”

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Albert seemed unimpressed. He squinted at the building through the smoke curling from the bowl of his pipe. “Those are scientists, 'mano, sí? They can't hurt nobody.” “Not just scientists,” I told him. But I knew it was hopeless. If you're going to try to intervene with every drug user you encounter, you aren't going to be long in Vice. “Just keep it cool. I might need you to make a quick getaway later.” He seemed to think this very amusing and his black eyes danced as he relit his pipe. “What has happened to you, mi bueno, eh? I've never seen you like this.” I'm not what you'd call vain, but the lack of a reflection in the past twentyfour hours was fucking with my head. I made an attempt to smooth my perpetual cowlick and said, “What do you mean?” He shook his head, considering me, as he rose from the curb. “I don't know, 'mano. You walk, you look, like someone else. Like the lupi, you understand?” Like a wolf. “Like a hunter,” said Albert. “Hungry.” Albert looked surprised at himself. He wasn't a poetic man. “Never mind.” He chuckled. “Maybe I shouldn't have lit that last bowl after all.” Of course he'd put his proverbial thumb right on it, hadn't he? Hungry. That's how I felt. Ravenous. The gnawing ache that only subsided when I drank the blood, a constant spur. I'd seen men who looked like I felt and wolfish was a good description. I remembered at an NA meeting one of the members talking about reconciling himself to a life of longing for a fix he'd never have. Fuck. Who could live like this? “I haven't been myself lately,” I said. Albert pursed his lips and let his gaze drop briefly to my groin. Yeah, and then there was that. Like I was on a Viagra drip or something.

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“Sí, cuate." The scarred eyebrow dipped knowingly. “Cojale.” “Ah, no.” He was laughing. “Pero, sí, usted necesita culear.” Yeah. All the time, it seemed. “I'm going to try to climb the hill from Marengo street,” I told him. “Wait here for me.” I jogged down the stairs to the street, suddenly very aware of my loping stride, my “wolflike” movements. My senses were unnaturally tuned. Especially my sense of smell. I could smell the exhaust raining down from the freeway, the burning rubber scent from so many EMT vehicles. I slowed to a humpshouldered, shambling walk as I passed the unmarked vehicle. Hoping to look like just another random homeless man. Then I picked up speed, jogged left at the corner and climbed the Hurricane fence, jumping into the mass of fireretardant coated vines holding the slope in place. I could easily climb a fence and jump the ten feet to the ground with grace. Fact number three hundred and whatever the fuck. It was starting to seem almost natural. Well, not natural, but something I presumed upon. From there, I hopped up onto the cement overhang and swung open the glass doors leading to the front desk. About four security cameras swiveled to record my entry. Well, there was nothing I could do about those, I reasoned, but I could avoid the guard who seemed absorbed in the sports pages as I zipped by him and around the corner. Unnaturally fast and quiet. Adrenaline pumping, hearing and sight ramped up so that I could almost feel the click of digital clocks, the beep, beep of lab equipment, the slight crinkle of the guard's fingers as he held up the newspaper. I waited, heard nothing to indicate he'd noticed my passage, then slid down the first flight of stairs to the lower level. Security cameras noted my passage down the stairwell. From there, I entered the elevator, taking it straight down to the subbasement where the new intakes were held. It looked as it had the night I'd died, except the only corpse was Freeway's.

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And he looked exactly as he had on the floor of the shed in Hollenbeck. Right down to the big black holes in his neck. I shook him and whispered, “Freeway, 'mano. Wake up.” He didn't move. I wondered if there was some trick to this. Of course I'd been there when I'd woken, but I didn't know what had transpired beforehand. For lack of any better ideas, I tried a little CPR, pressing my mouth to Freeway's clammy cold lips and recoiling in disgust at the fetid air that exhaled from his mouth when I paused. Maybe he needed some blood? I found one of the slim metal tools the coroner used and pricked my thumb. Only one blob of blood fell out before the cut closed again, but I managed to get that blob to fall on Freeway's open mouth. It trickled over his lip and part of it slid down his chin but nothing happened. Repelled by the idea, but having none better, I pressed my mouth to Freeway's again. He stirred under my hand. His lips opened, his chest heaved upward. One of his hands moved. Then, all at once, he was awake, spitting and sputtering and shoving me away violently, yelling, “Puta, you fucking marcena, what the fuck you trying to fuck me?” He looked down at his naked body and cursed again, struggling to get off the table and away from me. “Freeway! Hold on, amigo. I brought you back from the dead.” That stopped him. He swayed, as if feeling that massive headache that I had also felt. Freeway's head swiveled slowly as he took in his surroundings. Then he sat his scrawny ass down on what must have been the freezing cold cement and covered his face. “Mi dios. Me maldicen al infierno.” He rubbed at his mouth and spat. “You took advantage of me, maldita puta, Goddamn you.” “No I didn't.” “It's a fucking sin. Swear you didn't fuck me,” he said. “Swear, Adam.”

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This from a man who I knew for a fact had killed at least one man in cold blood. “I'd rather fuck a pig,” I informed him curtly. “You kissed me.” “Trust me, 'mano. I did not kiss you.” He sighed miserably and, after a time, pulled himself up to standing again. “I'm fucking naked. Stop looking at me.” “I wish I could. There's clothes in the next room.” We found what we needed and suited him up. “Parezco un grifo.” “They probably came off a drug addict.” I shrugged. I handed him a pair of sneakers. “Here.” The hollow sound of steps in the hallway; Freeway and I both froze. Someone outside tried the handle of the room we were in, and Freeway and I both dived for cover. The door opened a crack. “I can't look at him.” I'd swear that whisper was Betsy's. “Go on.” A man's voice. Also whispering. Some hissed arguing and then the silhouettes of three figures entering the room. I glanced over at Freeway. I'd been able to get behind a heavy tall refrigerated unit, but he huddled under a table. If anyone came around the counters, they'd clearly see him. I held up both of my hands and pointed my thumbs in two opposite directions. East and west. He nodded and readied himself. I found a glass beaker and threw it to my left, away from Freeway's hiding spot. Betsy, Caballo, and a man I didn't recognize converged on the sound of the crash. Freeway ran to the right, around the counter from the other side and was at the doorway before they'd seen him. “Hey!” Caballo pointed.

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They ran back toward the door and gave chase, Betsy wailing “Freeeeeewayyy…” loud enough to wake the dead, or any bored security guards lounging about waiting for something living to chase. Dammit. I made it to the door and was three feet out when somebody tripped me. I literally flew through the air and crashed into the wall opposite. I kept my feet moving and came up from the fall, running full tilt. I didn't even take the time to look behind and see who might be chasing me, but reached the fire stairs in three long strides and almost knocked the door off its hinges bursting through it. Up the stairs, hand over hand and then leaping the corners. Feet barely touching the steps as I went, I kept going to the third floor, then came out a door onto the roof and ran for the northernmost corner. On the ground below I saw a black-and-white uni, its lights on and cycling. Damn, somebody must have heard something and tripped an alarm. I backpedaled and saw Caballo's head emerge through the roof door. So I ran for the opposite corner of the roof. Twenty yards away, across a six-foot-wide expanse of space dropping to sheer concrete, another building with fire escape stairs zigzagging down its sides. I barely considered the consequences of my instinct, but hit the asphalt harder, coiled all of my muscles, and sprang off the lip of the roof. I landed on a stair with such momentum I smashed into the brick surface of the building itself. Apparently my jump had contained an element of overkill. I'd barely regained my senses and started ascending the stairs, when Caballo landed nimbly on the stairs below as well. He was in full “monster” face. Green eyes like a wolf's. Pointed teeth and everything. He hissed. He pursued me the six stories to the roof, which I ran across, thinking I could reach the Children's Hospital parking garage, where Albert waited, from the roof. Unfortunately, that was when I heard his bike below. He'd pulled into the coroner's parking lot. His round bald head tipped back to gape at Caballo and me chasing across the rooftops.

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Fuck. I couldn't get back to the stairs, so when I reached the edge, I jumped for the nearest safe surface and landed on a building four stories lower. At one point in my descent I actually had the eerie sense of floating. Then my feet hit the tar paper roof and I rolled hard, only stopping when my body hit the concrete lip of the roof. Alarms were going off all around us now. A black-and-white and what looked like a white coroner's vehicle circled Albert who, as I watched, crashed his bike down a narrow sidewalk, hung a left, and went screaming past everyone, losing himself behind the thrift store in front of the main building and into the scant traffic on Mission Boulevard. Now that my ride was gone, I needed to find cover. Hanging from the lip of the building, I kicked and bashed window glass with a booted foot, then pitched myself in through the opening and ran across a dark office at full tilt. Running smack into a closed and locked door. A closed and locked metal door, as it happened, and I reeled back. I'd barely registered what was happening when a hard knee landed in my back and I did a belly flop onto linoleum. Unbelievably strong hands held my head by both ears. I grabbed the wrists attached to those hands and tried to break free. I bucked. I kicked with both feet. The man was immobile on top of me. Like a boulder. “Why shouldn't I kill you, cop?” Caballo's voice said. “Those bastards you're running with would sooner kill you than not. I know people. I can help you.” His hands tightened on my jaw. “Why would you do that?” “I need blood,” I said. “I think you know where I can get it.” I could hear us both, breathing hard from exertion, and maybe something else. His erection pushed into my vertebrae. I'd not noticed before, but I was hard too. “And you're kinda hot,” I said.

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A shaky laugh. Caballo's hands slid around to my face, his callused fingers touching my lips. I licked a finger. “Yeah,” he said. “I can think of a couple reasons.” Caballo let go of my head and jumped up, grabbing one of my hands and bringing me with him. We swayed there for a minute, staring at each other. From a distance we could hear Betsy screaming and a man's voice yelling. Then, unmistakably and deafening, an alarm. “Get the fuck out of here,” said Caballo. “What do you want with Freeway?” I asked him. “Where do you get your blood?” He grinned, shaking his head and covering his lips with one long finger. “You stay and they'll dust you,” he said. “Dust?” Caballo slid across the floor and kicked the knob on the metal door, hard. The knob flew off and across the floor like it had been shot, the door reverbed then, slowly, swung open. “Look it up, man,” said Caballo. And he ran. I don't know which way he went after that because in the two seconds it took me to get to the door, he had completely disappeared. The elevator door pinged, which meant this building's alarms were probably part of the din I was hearing, so I ran opposite their direction. At the end of the hall, though, instead of the stairs I saw that I was only two stories up and on a level with the parking garage in which I'd left Albert. So I kicked out the window and, a running jump and a leap, I was rolling across the cement garage. I leaped to my feet, running, coming around a corner in time to see someone beating the hell out of Albert. His Harley lay on its side and he was screaming. I ran up and grabbed the man who was attacking him, who, of course, was the unknown vampire that I'd seen with Caballo and Betsy. I pulled him

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back by the shoulder. He turned on me as fast as an animal might, but I was souped up and in the zone and fast also. I put my fist right in the middle of that ugly, evil dead visage and felt his teeth tear my knuckles as he went down. “C'mon.” Bloodied and terrified, Albert tried to lift his chopper. I helped him before the vamp had regained his feet. We sped down a level and through the “out” area, once again skirting the metal spikes, just in time to hear the squeal of wheels traveling at high speed and coming toward us. A black Hummer lurched and pitched and sped up onto the sidewalk on which we stood. Albert gunned his engine and I leaped aboard as he took off, wheels skating crazily on the pavement before he regained control. I looked back and saw them pick up their fallen comrade. “Albert, we have to follow them!” I screamed in his ear. He spewed forth a string of words in return. Luckily, all I could hear was “…loca…” but he made the wide arc in the middle of the four-lane road and headed back toward the Hummer, which had also turned and was heading straight toward the on-ramp. This would be easy, I figured. The maximum speed a Hummer can reach is around ninety mph. Albert could get his old chopper over a hundred easily. “Stay with them!” I yelled in his ear as he followed them onto the 110. It wasn't hard. Whoever was driving the Hummer decided to take it into the diamond lane, barely reaching speeds that would keep it ahead of the Mercedes Sportsters bearing down on it. I memorized the license plate number while Albert cruised in a spot near the rear fender where we could clearly see Betsy's face in the extended mirrors on the passenger side, watching us. And then the damned CHP's got us in their sights. Albert hunched over and went for it, and I grabbed him around the waist as we leaned into each long curve, leaving the Hummer far behind us. At the 101 interchange, Albert darted across sparse oncoming traffic, rode the

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shoulder for fifty feet, went down the on-ramp, crossed traffic illegally again, and lost us in the herd of empty buses in the immense Metro bus yard. We heard the sirens screaming as they passed our corner and went on. We'd lost the cops, but also the Hummer. Albert slid his bike in a space between two buses and killed the engine. “They got the blood,” I wailed. “Blood?” Albert kicked the stand down and pushed me off his bike. Searching his pockets with shaking hands and bringing out a fat splif. “Did you say blood?” “Fuck. Never mind.” I staggered a few feet and sat on the fat bumper of a double-deck bus. “No, 'mano, I think you need to explain.” Albert's hand was shaking too much to light his joint. He flipped the lighter closed and pocketed it. “I saw you jumping buildings, man. I saw your face and that other asshole like a monster's. I didn't even know you.” “Shit's been happening,” I said. “I don't know myself. But I thought Freeway could explain a few things.” “And which one was he?” “The dead guy.” I waved my hand. All I could think about was the lost blood. The cravings were already starting to burn. Like an incipient ulcer in the pit of my belly. Albert's expression was noteworthy, though, and I reconsidered my last statement. “The guy I was going to meet at the morgue,” I said. “Those bastards kidnapped him. Did you see anything?” “No, 'mano. I just saw you flying through the air like a squirrel. You looked like Rocky and Bullwinkle, man.” Not the most macho image I could think of. “I still need to find them,” I said. The craving in my belly was spreading through my body. It felt like low blood sugar, with a testosterone kick to it. Like, you ever feel willing to kill for chocolate? Like that. I held out my hand toward Albert. “Gimme your phone.”

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With a dark look, Albert dug out his cell phone and passed it over. I punched in the number for Peter's office line. “What?” Peter hasn't the most gracious phone manner. Comes from spending your life talking to shitbags. “I need you to run a set of plates for me,” I said. A pause. “Where'd you see these plates?” “On a fucking rerun of Miami Vice, Peter. Just take down the number?” I rattled it off. “Adam, you are still at the condo, right?” “I'll call you,” I said. And disconnected, tossed the phone back to Albert. “You'd better block that last number,” I told him. “Was that a cop? You asshole, did you just call a cop on my Blackberry?” “I'll buy you a new one,” I said. “Albert, had you heard what happened to Paolo Spence?” Albert was trying to light his spliff again. “I might have. He's in Mexican prison, sí?” “Somebody killed him, I heard.” Albert inhaled deeply. Exhaled, and around the smoke, said, “Bad for him.” “Well, and then I heard he might not be dead after all.” Albert raised his left eyebrow so that it matched his scarred right. “I'm looking for anybody who might have known him. Anybody who might be a friend who maybe Paolo would call.” Albert thought about this for a while, smoking. My little spate of activity and the smell of the weed made the hunger just that much worse. “You know that theory about the first forty-eight hours on a homicide? It's like that. I need to find this guy soon.”

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“I'll make some calls,” said Albert, squeezing his joint out with his thumb and forefinger and pocketing the roach. “Thanks, man.” “But I don't want you with your monster face pushing your crotch up against my ass no more, 'mano. Find your own ride.” “You aren't going to leave me here?” We were in a no-man's land. Auto glass factories, buses, and the prison towers. I watched him kick his bike into gear, the engine roaring like a lion with emphysema. “Albert, all I need is a ride to the Wilshire Impound.” Albert ripped his engine a couple times. It was his own special way of expressing emotion, I think. “You are a pain in the ass,” he pronounced. “Climb aboard.” And, as I did so, “Try not to rub off on me.”

***** The Wilshire District Impound yard looked like a military barracks, two rows of Hurricane fencing topped by barbed wire and 1930s-style LAPD bunker-style buildings on three sides. Albert parked his bike a block down La Brea and followed me up the street, chains ringing on his boots as he strolled. Two truly ugly pit bulls threw themselves at the back fence and caught the attention of an officer in a light blue shirt and shining new police cap who immediately started over toward where Albert and I loitered. He and I scooted back across the street and hopped over the low fence surrounding an outdoor bistro. I sat and lit a cigarette while Albert looked down at me, laughing. “No way you're getting in there, 'mano,” he said. “Shut up.” I flicked ash, studying the lot. Big stadium lights lit every nook and cranny. Cars were stacked on metal trestles and I couldn't even guess what they had done with the bikes. Getting in there would be only a tiny part of the battle. Getting the bike out would be the bigger problem. “I can get in, but we need someone to bring the bike out.”

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He straddled a chair. “Easy enough. Just ask them.” “Yeah, I think I will.” I hopped to my feet. “You keep an eye on that officer and see where he goes while I go into the office and talk up the desk clerk.” The desk clerk was one of those LAPD career paper jockeys. She wore the uniform and a little gold badge above her name tag and probably told her friends that she was a cop. She probably pulled in twice the salary I did, so who was I to judge her? “Excuse me, ma'am.” She stopped and managed a weak smile. Women always react with a kind of pleased surprise when they first see me. If they could read my mind they'd spit in my eye, I bet. I gave her a pained smile back. “I was told I'd find my car here?” “Yes, sir?” She started pulling out forms. “If you'll just fill out this…” “Uh, ma'am.” I lifted the forms in apparent helplessness. “Thing is, I don't know the VIN number and the registration is in my car.” “Were you issued a ticket?” “Ma'am?” I tried to look stupid. It didn't take much acting. “The information you need would be on the ticket you received when your car was impounded.” “Ma'am, I didn't get no ticket. I came out of the bar and my car was gone. I called the police and they said to come here and git it.” I tried to look both stupid and drunk. Once again, little acting required. She was getting pissed off but she still thought I was cute enough to bother with. “What is the make and model of your car?” “Um, well, that's the thing? It's not my car exactly. See, my girlfriend let me borrow it on account of my other car is in the shop and all's I remember is that it's green? But, ma'am, if I saw it I could tell you.”

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“I'm sorry, sir. If the car doesn't belong to you, we won't be able to release it to you anyway. You'll have to call your girlfriend and have her come here and—” “Oh no,” I said, in horror. “She'll kill me.” “I'm sorry, sir.” She'd had it. She was done. “I can't help you.” “Are you sure?” “I'm sorry, sir.” I pouted for a minute then said, “Do you know where there's a phone?” “No, sir.” She turned to the next person in line. I wandered, stupid, upset, and drunk, around the room and stood vaguely in the line. I tried a couple more times to get her attention and when I'd made her determined to ignore me, I sidled up to the side door and slipped through it. I was halfway across the lot when a security officer saw me. “Excuse me, sir?” “They told me you were getting my bike?” “Your bike?” “An '84 Silverado with extended fork and dual carbs,” I said, waving my arms. “It's taken me four hours to raise the cash to pay the fine, and I've been waiting for them to bring it out for me.” The officer looked toward a back corner of the lot. That must be where the bikes were kept. “I'm sorry, I haven't received a notice.” “Goddammit. I'm going crazy, man. I heard she was dinged by the tow. Did you see her when they brought her in?” “A Silverado Harley?” He looked back toward that back corner again. “I might have.” “Just let me look at her, will you, buddy? I just want to know she's all right.”

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“I can't, sir. I'm sorry.” He walked me back to the offices and left me by a soft drink dispenser then wandered back toward the back corner. When I came around the corner, Albert was smiling. “He went straight to it, 'mano. Your ride is right there behind that red Kawasaki.” I could see my baby's chrome from where I stood. “Okay, now I need you to go to the other side and try to climb the fence,” I said to Albert. “What? You pendejo, man.” “Don't get in, just make a lot of noise trying.” “Fuck.” But he did it. I waited until I heard the mild ruckus. Every bored man and dog on the lot running to join in on the action, then I took a few steps and, half expecting to fall and crack my head open, I ran up the wall of the bunker. And I was on the roof. I'd been thinking about this trick ever since I'd seen Caballo and Betsy pull it off at the gallery, sort of practicing it in my mind. It was a rush to actually have it work. I ran along the roof. Now I could hear and see the dogs and Albert begging the officers to not let the dogs kill him. I ran and then leaped, easily and lightly, right behind the space where my bike was stored. Happily, it had been rolled out for some reason recently. Probably the lab looking for evidence, and I was able to wheel it behind the other bikes and a row of cars three deep on racks. Fifty yards from the back gate, I just jumped on, pumped the clutch, and took her through the gate. I think one of the pits got out and tore down the street behind me for a few blocks, but I lost him on the 10. Twenty minutes later, I circled back and found Albert sitting calmly on his bike, tapping marijuana down in a pipe. A block from the police station. Arrogant SOB. “You owe me,” he said.

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“Yeah yeah yeah. I'm good for it.” He eyed me, inhaling deeply; the pot was thick in the air when he exhaled and offered me the pipe. I shook my head. “I got a call from a dude says he knew Paolo Spence,” he said. “What's his name?” He shook his head. “Said he'd meet with you. Discuss.” “Okay, where?” He nodded and straightened, threw one long leg over the bike, and gripped the choke. “Follow me, 'mano.”

***** The Tips Restaurant is just an all-night diner of the sort that college students and struggling actors will meet in, drinking coffee and ordering enough onion rings and fries to excuse their staying and chatting for hours at a time. This Tips had become something of a landmark though. Its age, impossibly bland Formica-covered interior, and location were still exactly the same as they had been twenty years earlier when Peter and I had used to stop for coffee during our breaks. “Why are you looking at me like that?” He keeps his hair cut very short, in the LAPD military tradition, but we've been putting in some long hours since the Prop 13 cutbacks and he's missed a trim. The hair at the temples and sideburns is white gold and curling. “Do you have to use that much ketchup?” I ask. He looks at his plate where a small mound of fries is dwarfed by the puddle of ketchup. “Yes?” “It's wasteful,” I say. He can't believe me. “You're worried about wasting ketchup?” I take the bottle from him and shake it over my hamburger.

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Peter's grinning. “You drive a car that gets about five miles to the gallon and you're worried about wasting ketchup?” “Those are two completely unrelated subjects,” I say. I pluck out the pickle and press the two sides of my burger together so that the juices ooze out onto the plate. “Yesterday, you told me you sat in line for an hour to get gas. When was the last time you sat in line to buy ketchup?” asked Peter. He's got me and I know it, but I hide my smile behind my burger. “Ketchup will be the next to go,” I say. “Mark my words.” The French fry he throws at me gets stuck in my hair. Albert surveyed the place, then led me to a booth near the windows. The man sitting in the booth wore a faded green John Deere Tractors cap and looked up at Albert with pale blue eyes, the whites red around the edges. “Mi dios,” he said. “What is wrong with him?” “What?” Albert grinned and put a placating hand on my arm. “My friend always looks like a fiend,” he said. A fiend? I held out my hand. “I'm called Sn—” “I don't need to know your name,” said the guy. His voice was low and he scanned the restaurant, furtive and wary, as he spoke. “I'm supposed to be working for the FBI but those bastards don't pay squat.” “Okay, but what do I call you?” “Call me Whitey.” He glared when I laughed and Albert gave me his charming, diamondflashing smile. Okay, whatever. I waved toward the back of the restaurant. “Let's get another booth. There's a draft here.” And less of a chance of someone noticing that yours truly not only looked like a fiend, but had no reflection.

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We found one in the back, against a wall, and ordered coffee. Tips doesn't serve espresso or double double caramel lattes. According to my watch, it was nearly three a.m. Sunrise was at six a.m. “I haven't got a lot of time,” I told them. “What do you know?” Whitey rested his hand against his face so that only Albert and I could see him when he spoke. Really, I figure all informants have reason to be paranoid, but this fucktard's been watching too much X-Files. “There's a rival gang in the Mongols' territory.” Great. Another bloodbath. “The Angels swore a truce,” I said. “What happened?” “Not the Angels. Not the Mexicans. Somebody new.” This was hardly newsworthy. Idiots get a few dozen other idiots together and think they are the kings of their patch of Compton. And then they are dead. “So?” “They are a death squad,” said Alberto. “Rumor has it they are up from Colombia. Nobody knows where they came from.” “And what has that to do with my friend with the holes in his neck?” The guy's eyes were such a pale blue, they almost looked white. He leaned across to whisper, “They say they are the Chupacabra.” “Right.” The mythological vampire dog of Mexican legend. “No, no, no, that is their gang name. They took credit for killing Richard Ortiz.” I leaned across the table and gazed into those almost white eyes. His pupils were like twin dots. Pinprick-sized holes. Crystal or some meth derivative, I guessed. Very expensive. “That was a good guess, Mr. FBI informant. So what do you know besides street rumors? You got anything worth paying for?” “Paolo Spence is their leader. He calls himself Ozone.”

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I sat back. Whitey knew he'd told me something significant by my silence. “You got any idea where I can find Ozone?” “They say he is like an evil spirit. They say he lives in Hell,” said my overly dramatic friend. “But I heard he has a house in Pasadena.” I pulled out the roll of money Peter gave me and started peeling off bills, tossing them across the table, where the guy snatched them up as fast as a starving dog snatching at scraps. “You got an address?” I asked him. He gazed longingly at the remaining money in my hand. “No.” “You've got another two hundred if you get me an address in the next four hours,” I said. “A hundred if I get it in the next eight. Fifty if you can come up with it by this time tomorrow.” By then I'd be a rampaging bloodsucking fiend, I figured. “After that, I'll have found someone else with the info and you don't get squat,” I said, pocketing the wad. I rattled off my prepaid cell number. He pulled his hat a little lower over his eyes, wet his lips, and nodded. “Yeah yeah. I'll call you soon,” he said. He slid out of the booth, looked around, and slunk out. “That was quite a performance,” I said to Albert after we'd watched our friend run into an old lady, recoil, and run into a bush before finally finding his way out to the parking lot and beyond. “Think any of it was true?” Albert raised his shoulder in an amused shrug and smoothed his hand over his pate. “What is truth?” “What the fuck kind of answer is that?” “It was a quote,” said Albert. He shook his head. “I didn't expect you to recognize it.” A bookish biker. Christ. I took out my pack of cigarettes and played with one. They'd outlawed smoking in public places since I'd quit. It sucked half the charm out of allnight restaurants.

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“If what Whitey says is true, these guys are planning to make a big statement.” “They all like you, 'mano?” He said it casually enough but I felt that he'd been holding back questions since the morgue. “Maybe.” His gaze went to my face, then away again. “Dangerous fuckers. There's a lot of money out there for dangerous fuckers who can fly over rooftops.” I could smell his blood. Rich, dark with the espresso he constantly drank. Alive with adrenaline. “There's a few details you don't need to know yet, but we don't want these guys running around, Albert. They won't stick to meth distribution.” “Ah.” “Everyone is in danger. Maybe you could be in danger too. Where are you staying?” He looked sideways at me. Dark eyes measuring, and then the skin crinkled at the edges as his lips spread in a smile. “I have a trailer up on Mulholland. I can take you there.” “You don't have to.” I buried my face in a coffee cup. “But I want to, friend. You will protect me from the Chupacabra, no?” I was going to have to find shelter before dawn and I was fairly certain I could trust Alberto, as long as I had the cash to pay him. I pulled out my wallet and threw enough money down on the table for the coffee, plus a couple of fifties. “Thanks, Alberto.” He slipped the money off the table with the expertise of a sleight of hand card shark. I slid out of the booth and picked up my helmet. “Let's roll.” The hunger had abated somewhat as I'd drunk the coffee, but it was starting to blaze high again. Albert, preceding me through the restaurant, smelled better than a raspberry torte. Walking out of Tips, I brushed by a

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couple of young men slouching by the glass doors and I could smell their blood. Young, bright, fiery. Their low burning lust like cayenne pepper. One of the boys lifted his gaze to meet mine. Dark blue eyes with dark lashes. The dual impulses to grab him and either fuck him or sink my teeth into him were strong and equally compelling. I was able to get myself across the lot to my bike and jam on my helmet before I gave in to that impulse. Alberto flashed me a smile as he passed and we pulled out of the lot, our long forks swinging right as we went. It felt good to have my bike between my legs. The vibrations up my spine, the ache in my kidneys as the entire body of the bike fought my control. It distracted me from the hunger, gave me focus. The road rolled with a definable texture under me and Albert and I sped up as we climbed onto the black velvet of the well-maintained stretch of Sunset. I followed him up the Crescent Heights mountain pass and Mulholland Highway as it wound upward toward the stars and the homes of other luminaries. We circled a home and dropped down a steep dirt track behind it where an old shed, a camper trailer, and what looked like a small speedboat circled a dried grass clearing. Albert led me behind the camper and to a house trailer up under an oak tree. I climbed off, trying to clear my head of the heady smell of Albert; I motioned toward a clump of bushes some fifty feet away. “Gonna take a leak.” Albert had sat on an aluminum folding beach chair and appeared to be rolling a joint on the threadbare knee of his black jeans. He waved me off. I took a piss, managed to pull my brain together. If I'm good at anything, it's dealing with cravings. Seems I've spent my whole life fighting one or another. I was practically celibate in the Marines, and then there were the drugs. I said a little serenity chant to myself, figuring it was probably the first

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time anyone had done that over a quart of blood, and found my way back to where Albert sat, smoking. He gestured toward another low beach chair and handed me the doobie, watching as I took a drag. He looked a little testy. “You took your time.” “Sorry.” He looked me up and down. “I was just thinking,” I said. “Man, you should know better,” he said.

***** Albert isn't gay. There are no gay bikers. At least no live ones, as he would often gladly remind me. But Albert doesn't mind getting wasted and mutually jerking off another guy. So we got high and did that a couple times. Lying on a ratty old blanket under the branches of the California oak, our jeans down around the tops of our boots, knees spread, Albert's ringed fingers flying up and down my dick. From where we lay, I could see the stars. They seemed to sort of sway in the breeze. Or maybe that was the effect of Albert. Humming some tune, occasionally throwing a few Spanish words in here and there. “Oh sí, Demonio…” Hey, you romantics are protesting. What about Peter? What, are you kidding? Have we met? I'm not a nice man. Excuse me if you thought otherwise. Well, okay, I'll admit that at one point, when Albert's thick thumb was painting circles around the head of my cock and he was whispering obscenities, his sweat and blood in my nose, there was a moment there when I wished it was Peter's hand on me. But, then, maybe that was just because Peter knows best how to touch me there.

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But it's just sex. Hell, it's not even that. It's release. And when it was over I just lay there feeling the drift of the marijuana and the smell of Albert, his sticky hand lying across my exposed lower belly, his dark cock limp and warm in my palm, and a slithering serpent of a thought surprised me. I mean nobody, absolutely nobody, was going to care if one less biker is on this earth come tomorrow morning. Right? Albert, who had undoubtedly raped, thieved, pillaged, and possibly killed his way through the world and had only achieved some sort of redemption through his work with the federal marshals was certainly not going to leave behind weeping widows and children. And his blood was as enticing as the smell of warm chocolate wafting from a Ghirardelli's. Nobody would care if he disappeared. Nobody but Peter. So I sat up, jerked my pants on, slicked my hair back with both hands, and said, “I need to sleep. Can I crash in the trailer?” He had out his papers and was busy rolling another spliff. He nodded. The back of the trailer was completely dark, enclosed with heavy curtains. I wouldn't even have to ask Albert to take care opening windows. I was just nodding off when the prepaid cell phone rang. Who had this number besides Whitey? I flicked it on without greeting. Just listened. “Adam?” Peter's voice. “You son of a bitch, I know you can hear me.” I told you he's like my Jiminy Cricket, right? I should have said he's like my fucking mother. “How the hell did you get this number?” “I found the phone while you were in the shower.” Sneaky bastard. Of course, if I'd known I would have tossed the phone, but now it was my one tie to Whitey and, possibly, Ozone and the blood. “Sometimes you really piss me off, Peter,” I said.

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“The feeling's mutual, asshole. Somebody stole your bike from impound, by the way.” “Did they?” “You should know the plates are in the system by now.” “Good. I hope you catch the goddamn bastard. Speaking of plates, you get a feed on those I gave you?” “Black Hummer was stolen from a valet parking lot at the Dorothy Chandler. We found it, on fire mind you, abandoned by the side of the 2.” Near Glendale, then. My memory began recovering the names and locations of every meth distributor I knew around that area. “And another body was snatched from the morgue.” “Wow, really?” On San Fernando road, near the railroad tracks, and just a block or so away from the 2 to 210 interchange, had been a house where Freeway and I had frequently partied with a former Mongol top gun, Eric Juarez. “Geez, Peter, they really should get better security on the morgue. Next thing you know the Times is going to be demanding an investigation.” Peter blew a fuse. “Adam, what the fuck are you doing? Stan expected you to come in tonight and I've had to hold him off.” “Thanks. I needed a little more time.” “Time for what?” “You know the minute I walk into the station I'm as good as dead.” A silence. I could feel him somehow at the other end of the line. I was surprised by a powerful tug of longing, like tendrils reaching from my gut and though the phone line toward him. I struggled not to disconnect and throw the phone out into the brush. “You coming back here once you've done whatever the fuck you think you're doing?” How could I go back? I was dead. “Sure,” I said.

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He heard the lie, of course. “You owe me. I have a right to know what's going on.” Damn him. He knew just when to play that card. “We were right. There's a new gang trying to establish themselves in the meth trade.” I searched my discarded shirt and found the pack of cigarettes. “I think my CI might have been working with them too, damn his sorry ass.” I lit the cigarette and found a dirty coffee cup to use as an ashtray. “ And…and maybe they're trafficking in stolen blood. We have any reports of blood banks being hit recently?” “I thought of that. Nothing has been reported.” I considered this bit of information. “They have to be getting it somewhere.” “You're assuming the donors are alive.” “The blood still is viable, Peter. The donor had to have been alive. At least when it was given.” His voice sounded thick when he said, “That doesn't paint a pretty picture.” He was right; the thought of some sicko draining people while they were still alive was pretty awful. The fact that it still sickened Peter was a measure of the man. “Do I want to know how you knew the blood was what you called 'viable,' Adam?” “Nope.” I exhaled and flicked ash into the coffee cup. “Are you smoking?” he asked. You see? Like my fucking mother. I handled him exactly as I had always handled her. I simply did not answer. “Adam…” Christ, how could Peter's voice speaking my name prick at me like it did? “I got the techs to clear your apartment. They let me have your clothes. So…I found room in my garage.” “You didn't have to.” “Your death certificate arrived this morning. And the disbursement papers. A pension comes to your next of kin. Since that was me…” Fuck.

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“I think I'll just keep depositing the checks in your account. I've got a power of attorney and I've gotten them to issue a new debit card. The pin is my birthday. I'll…send it to you when you tell me where you are.” Fuck fuck fuck. “Thanks. When I decide where I am I'll tell you.” “Or you could come by and pick it up,” he said. “I'm home now.” Breathing. His, I think. “Listen, Peter, I haven't slept in days, and I was about to crash.” “Right. So you've found a bed?” “A friend is putting me up.” “Oh.” Oh, Christ, I knew what he was thinking now. And he was right, in a fashion. It made me feel shitty all over again. “I'll call you,” I said, and hit the disconnect before I could stop myself. Then I turned the phone off and stuffed it under a pillow. I lay there, feeling the sun rising, but not feeling guilty. No way. Or lonely. I closed my eyes and the sex and the pot wrapped thick fingers around my brain and I passed out.

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Chapter Twelve The hunger woke me. Actually, a really fucked-up dream woke me. Full of coyotes talking like Carlos Castaneda, bloodied goats, and a border patrol guard smoking a thick, hand-rolled joint and telling me to bend over. No, wait, that had really happened. Anyway, I woke chewing my pillow, my hands like claws, raking at the mattress and absolutely no qualms about tearing Albert's head off and drinking directly from his gushing aorta. Thank God he wasn't in the camper. Though I didn't thank God at that moment. I ranted and pounded on the walls of the trailer and tore through the tiny refrigerator, finding nothing but making a helluva mess in the process. In a cupboard over the sink, I found Albert's supply of bourbon and hopelessly tried to numb myself with that until the sun set and the sides of the trailer cooled and I could put on some clothes and go out into the empty circle of earth where nothing but traces of oil marked the spot where Albert had had his bike. It was weirdly eerie that he shouldn't be there. At the time I couldn't exactly place why. Except my roll of money was untouched in my pocket and Albert was never one to walk away from wads of cash. My cell phone rang. “Peter, fuck off,” I said, before I heard Whitey's voice. “Uh, I know it's been more than eight hours, man, but I tried to call earlier.” “What do you have?”

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“I don't know who you are, and I don't want to, but this Ozone dude is bad news. I think I should get paid more. Just because of the risk factor if they find out I told you.” I'd show him a “risk factor,” I thought to myself. “Where are you?” “Th…the s-s-same place,” he said. “Are you okay, man? I mean, it's just business, right?” My voice sounded weirdly serpentine in my own ears. “Yess. In an hour, then.” I disconnected. The first star had appeared in the east when I pulled my bike back onto Mulholland and headed south again toward Los Angeles.

***** There was something eternally damned about the Tips, I thought. Unchanging and unchangeable despite the passage of time in the world around it. Eternally tacky, cheap, and tawdry. It was a bad advertisement for immortality, I thought, standing at the doors and looking around the restaurant for Whitey. The little shit wasn't there. I waited about thirty minutes, drinking coffee faster than the waitress could pour it, her arm extended fully as if keeping her distance as much as possible, eyes wide when she stared at me from the corners, then quickly looking away. I still needed to piss, it seemed, because my bladder became suddenly urgent. I went into the men's room and was standing at the urinal when I smelled the blood. Whitey was stuffed into a stall, his body curled up like a ball of pale, bloodless taffy. The holes, I found with my searching fingers, over his heart this time. I stuffed his wrist in my mouth, but the blood was cold and putrid. I spat it out and backed away from the body, only noticing as I exited the bathroom that I had blood on my hand where I'd wiped my mouth. Several faces gaped at me from surrounding booths as I bolted for the door and my bike.

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The smell of Whitey had only made it worse, and the hunger was a highpitched whine in my head. All I could think about was moving and getting. I toured the city, heading toward Hollywood and places I thought I might be able to find someone who wouldn't notice if I maybe sucked on their neck a little. Maybe somebody who would even take some money from me for the privilege. Okay, I wasn't thinking straight. It was like prickly heat under my skin, a taste of metal in my mouth. I passed strangers walking Sunset and it was like driving through a bakery. On Vine I veered right and saw the Dunkin' Donuts sign. It was a cop hangout, so I should have been watching out for cops, but I remembered how the sugar always helped the jones when I was hooked on coke and my wheels carried me there out of habit and hope. I chose the most ghastly, glazed, cholesterol-saturated doughnut in the case and a cup of coffee. It helped. It really did. I sat and waited for the ensuing drama in my belly but the doughnut didn't appear to have enough real food value to cause disruption. Guess sugar and fat were okay. I thought of Twinkies and my mouth watered. “Can I get you anything else?” asked the girl behind the counter. She was young, pink, and dusted with sugar. My mouth watered even more. I saw her respond to what was probably my ravenous look, with a little bounce and blush. That blood in her cheeks. Christ, I hadn't given a woman the once-over in years. “No,” I said, getting the hell out of there so quickly I almost tripped over the threshold going out. There was construction all the way down Fountain during the day, but at night only the orange cones, backhoes, and flatbeds loaded with pipe remained. I felt safer near the big machines than near pedestrians, and jogged west. On my right was the new Motion Picture Academy Archive building. I remembered when the AIDS Healthcare offices were set up here.

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As I rounded a barricaded gaping hole in the sidewalk, I suddenly came across a small group of men huddled in the shadows of a crane. They were up to something less than legal, because they scattered as soon as they saw me, like bugs when the light is switched on. All except one short dark Hispanic gentleman. He held his ground, stepping directly into my path in the road, actually, smoking his cigarette like a vaquero or something. Pinched between thumb and forefinger, hand masking part of his face. “You got a light, señor?” he said, doing his best Pancho Villa accent. I could smell him from ten feet away. It was like getting a whiff of a steak dinner. My mouth filled with saliva and I could feel something weird happening to my teeth, making my lips recede. “Your friends are calling you,” I told him. Except I kind of lisped on account of my teeth. “Your friendth…” He didn't notice anything about me. Probably because he was hopped up on something. I could see it in his eyes, the way he rolled on his feet, and one side of his mouth smiling higher than the other. Mostly I could tell because guys his size don't get in the way of guys my size. Sweaty, stinky, musky, and raw, his blood pumping with fear and whatever drug he was on. I heard and felt, rather than saw, his friends reappear around us. They're like packs of hyenas, these guys. None of 'em's a true predator but they're dangerous as a group. The man facing me down was head hyena, greasy ponytail down his back, and a Salvation Army khaki vest with pockets all over it. He started coming toward me. I backed away. “You don't want to do this, man,” I said. They're closing in around me and my man has got this grin. He took a few more steps toward me and I let him. His one hand waved back and forth, opening and closing in a fist. I couldn't see his other hand. He got a little closer and then the hidden hand came out sideways and fast, a flash of silver following its arc. I jumped and just avoid getting sliced.

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He was obviously surprised at how quickly I reacted, but he spun around and took another jab at me. I grabbed his arm and just jerked it and heard the bone crack. He screamed. I can't explain what happened next, exactly, but I threw him face forward into a wall and got the knife, held his wrists with one hand, jerked his head back with the other, and I think I planned to say “piss off” or something into his ear, but when I got into the proximity of his neck I bit him. You ever tried to fast with a chocolate cheesecake inches from your mouth? No? Then shut up. I bit him. Hard enough to puncture his skin and blood trickled across my tongue and for a few amazing seconds all I could think about was how good it was, how right, and it was awhile before I was in my right mind again and I heard men screaming. I dropped the Mexican's senseless body onto the ground. He had two big bloody holes in his neck and there was blood all down the front of my shirt. Goddamn, how do I go from bad to worse so fast? So I sprinted back down Fountain toward the main boulevard, in the opposite direction of the pack that was running away from me, leaping over fences and behind buildings. I looked back at my man. He was moving around on the ground. So, at least he wasn't dead yet. A part of me was urging my feet to turn around and go back. There's more blood where that came from. Another part was afraid of discovery. I'd like to say some moral code kicked in. Sorry to disappoint you. I was then, as I always have been, solely motivated by the preservation of yours truly. The delivery ramp to the Motion Picture Academy was on my left. Somebody had left the door ajar. I jumped the railing and ran inside. Down the stairs. They descended at least three levels. I could smell the rancid odor of decaying film and saw stacks of dustcovered white film storage boxes. The dull silver of old cans. I ran until I'd reached the bottom level.

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There were no lights but that weird capacity of my eyes to see in the dark kicked in. I looked around, and in the blueish glow I saw a large room with doorways to two other small rooms. No windows. No light seeping in at all. Some poor old bum had used a mattress in the corner. I could still smell his piss and sweat. I sat down. I dug out the prepaid cell phone and frantically dialed Peter's number. “'Lo?” I'd woken him. “Peter, it's Adam.” I heard him sit up, look around. When he came back on the line his voice had that clipped sound it got when I'd cheesed him off again. “Where are you?” “In the basement of the Motion Picture Academy Archives. Don't ask… just, Peter, I've got to get out of here.” Above me and outside, I could hear the climbing wail of sirens. Probably one of the Mexican's crew had called in the assault. “And, uh, Peter, there might be some black-and-whites on the street when you get here.” Peter didn't answer. After awhile I realized that the call had dropped. So I sat there in the dark with the smell of piss and thought about the taste of the Mexican's blood.

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Chapter Thirteen What do you see when you close your eyes? I mean, after those little silver fish and floating dots subside. And all you can hear is the surf in your skull and your own breathing? I'll bet here is where you expect me to reveal my tormented past. The rageaholic father and mousy mother, the best buddy killed in action in the Middle East. Even those soft dark bruises in the psyche. Questions about my own manhood, my own cowardice. Well, that ain't happening in this story. Maybe the next one. Working undercover is a lot like active duty in the corps. A constant state of awareness, readiness. Reading every scenario for how it might play out. I close my eyes, I see that look the kid in the corner gave the big goon by the door. I see little details I might not have recognized before and I see the actors in my own mind and figure out my next move. While I waited for Peter I saw the past few days playing out in my head again. As I thought, my fingers wandered to my neck where the puncture wounds still felt like deep bruises. When I pressed them, the hunger in my belly, temporarily quelled at least, growled a low warning. I wasn't the man I had been. That was clear. I wasn't sure what that meant. The man I had been was a sorry mess. My death in the warehouse had come as no surprise. The man I had been could not be a friend, could not be trusted. The man I had been had been loved by Peter. Ay, there's the rub, as that Danish guy said.

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Right on cue I heard voices, the metallic clang of booted feet on the stairs. Then a low rumbling voice that I could recognize three floors up, even without being able to distinguish the words, as Peter. Covering for me again. Now the slow tap tap of his feet on the concrete stairs. A shuffle and the pauses as he probably scanned every floor with a flashlight, looking for me. I could only imagine what he expected to find. My body bled out on the floor again? Maybe one of those piles of greasy ash that Aybie had become? He expected to find Adam. And I wasn't him anymore. Something weird, fluttery, and full of shadows took up residence in my belly and I got off the mattress and started wandering the doorless, windowless rooms. Like I would in a padded cell of a mental ward, probably. Like I was trying to find an exit. Tap. Tap. The white lantern beam flowed down the bottom of the concrete steps outside the door and slid up and around the frame. That seeking light found its way along the wall until finally it shone fully in my eyes. I heard Peter exhale, shakily. “Adam.” I shook my head in denial. The light still in my eyes, I heard his feet cross the floor, felt his hand on my arm. Warm. Alive. “Are you all right?” he asked. I shook my head and moved my arm away from him. The beam of the flashlight dropped so he could scan my body with the light, checking for wounds. His hand kept going to me. Stroking touches disguised as an inspection. Opening my jacket, straightening the collar of the T-shirt. “You son of a bitch,” he whispered now. His hand wandered up and gently cupped my chin. I saw his eyes flash in the dark. He probably thought I couldn't see him. Couldn't see the fear and longing there. Then he grabbed my chin and pressed a kiss against my lips. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into?” he said.

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His kiss had opened some door and I needed him. I grabbed his shoulders, turned him so his back hit the wall, and kissed him thoroughly. Hearing the moan of pleasure, feeling it vibrate between our shared mouths. His tongue pressing hungrily into mine. I found his shirt buttons, his belt buckle with my fingers, as my mouth kept up its assault. His hips rocked toward me, his skin shivering under my hands. I heard my buckle open and zipper go down. “Over here.” I broke the kiss long enough to grasp his hips and steer him toward the mattress. On his knees, slacks pushed down, shirt pushed up. He fumbled in a pocket and tossed a foil packet in my general direction. I was going to ignore it but then I thought about the new man I had become. And who knew how that had happened? What I might be carrying in my blood and semen? I might have escaped the HIV by the skin of my teeth, but any gambler knows not to push his odds. I slid the condom on and pushed myself into Peter hard and all at once. He groaned and went down onto his elbows, cheek on the mattress. My need for him was selfish and wild and I pounded away, reaching for release. At some point, Peter found himself and I could feel him tightening around me, as if egging me on. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and shoved hard. His torso twisted slightly. He gasped and a shivering climax worked its way down my spine and around my cock. The lights went off all around me like a proverbial fireworks display for some time. And then it was quiet except for the hard beat of Peter's heart against my chest. “Jesus Christ,” he breathed.

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“Yeah.” I withdrew and tied off the condom. Lay my hand on his ass, which still stuck up in the air. My cock gave a little twitch and I knew I'd be good to go again soon. Wow. Peter managed to get himself upright, dragging his slacks up and rubbing his hand across his hair. He seemed to actually realize where we had landed at that point and his face acquired a look of utter disgust. He sprang to his feet and I rose also. “Sorry about that,” I said. The flashlight had rolled off to a corner, its beam steady on a stack of document storage boxes. From where I stood I could see “1986” on one of them. Peter picked up the light and swept the beam around the room. Taking in every square inch. “I can see why you didn't bother to turn on the lights,” he said. “How long have you been down here?” “I can see in the dark,” I said. I saw his head lower at that. “I just ran down here. Is the sun up yet?” “Yeah.” “Well, then I guess I'm stuck here.” Peter's flashlight found a chair with the back broken off. He righted it and sat down, drawing a loop on the floor with a light for a minute until he clicked the thing off and just sat in the dark. “Can you see me?” he asked. “Yes.” He was silent, thinking. “What the hell happened tonight, Adam?” “I need more blood,” I said. “I'm going fucking crazy. Like worse than withdrawal.” “And, so…” He took a deep breath. “You…” He waved a hand toward the general vicinity of upstairs. “It was an accident. Is he…is he okay?”

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“He'll live.” Another of Peter's long pauses in which, I imagined, he weighed and tested what he was going to say. “But we found another one.” “Another one what?” “Up in the Tips on Overland. Another DB with huge holes in his body, exsanguinated.” Peter's voice was bleak, hopeless. “I didn't do that.” Did he think I could? “Christ, Peter.” “You were seen, Adam. Witnesses identified your bike.” “I was set to meet him, but he was dead when I got there.” “Like your CI.” “I didn't do it!” I screamed. My voice echoed, several throbs of the last word seeming to pulse in the air around us. “You have to believe me,” I added desperately. “He'd been dead for a while when I found him. When the ME gives you TOD, check it out. A waitress there will remember me. She had a tab that I didn't pay and there'll be a time on it.” Odds were good, of course, that the same check would prove that I had been in the vicinity in the correct time frame. TOD was a wacky thing to establish. Sometimes I'd swear the coroner did it with a divining rod and I Ching coins. Peter leaned over, elbows on knees, head down. He looked defeated and tired. “Okay,” he said. “He never gave me his name,” I said. “You find out who he was?” “No ID yet. But he had the Mongol tat on his forearm.” The Mongols would never let anyone but their own crew wear that tat. And no tattoo artist with half a brain would agree to ink one that wasn't earned and authorized. “That ass was a one percenter?” He looked utterly disgusted. “Not up to their high standards?” “You know what I mean. There'll be a war when they find out. First Freeway, then what's his name.”

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“And you.” “Yeah, and me.” He shook his head. There was four feet of space between us and it may as well have been four hundred feet. Four hundred thousand feet. “Adam, you have to turn yourself in.” “You know I can't.” “You're a murder suspect.” “I didn't do it, Peter. Listen, I've fucked around a lot but have I ever outand-out lied to you?” It took him longer than I would have liked to answer. “No,” he finally said. “I'm not lying now. I haven't killed anybody. I've thought about it. I'm going bats, but I haven't done it.” Peter stood, flicking on his flashlight. “I've got to go.” There was a finality to that statement. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I felt that he was taking leave, as they say. “See you later?” He shook his head. “Leave town, Adam. Just. Go.” Peter stood and placed something on the chair that I'd later discover was my new ATM card. His flashlight picked out the door and the path across the floor to it. “Peter?” I said when he had reached the doorway. He paused, back to me. “Yes?” “I didn't kill anyone,” I said. “I hope so,” he said. And left.

***** If I ever really die and get my just reward, it can't be worse than the next eight hours were. Sitting in a dark room with nothing but my own thoughts and impotent to do anything about it.

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I tried Albert's cell a couple more times. It still went straight to voice mail. God knew where the phone was or in whose possession, so I didn't leave a message. I'd worked homicide and gang task force and I'd worked undercover with OMG's for years. I knew how long it could take to get to the bottom of an operation like the one Whitey had hinted at. Years, maybe. It had taken us three years to make a case against El Diablo. Three years without Peter was a long time. Because I knew Peter and I knew that he might turn a blind eye to a lot of my shit. But he'd never have relations with a homicide suspect. Obviously it was up to me to find the bastard at the bottom of this. For Peter's sake. Because that poor guy? Would never have sex again if I didn't make him. Okay, I'm going to tell you that I felt the sun set and you're going to roll your eyes and think I went buggy down there in the dark. Fine. Think what you want. I felt the sun set. I pulled my shit together and I left. My bike was where I'd parked it. Knowing Peter, he'd probably cruised by a couple times to check on that. I thought it had a ticket, but when I opened the ticket envelope, there was another envelope and inside of that, a new debit card from my bank. Fuck. After everything that had happened, that fucking debit card was what brought a tear to my eye. So I had my maudlin moment there in the parking lot of the Dunkin' Donuts. Then I climbed on my bike and rode.

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Chapter Fourteen I think best when I'm cruising. You know, if my parents had been the kind who noticed, or cared, that their kid was having trouble in school, or that he got confused and frustrated with detailed tasks, I might have been diagnosed with ADD or something early on. As it was, I found my own way. And considering some of the side effects I've heard about from the drugs they gave kids back then, maybe I'm better off. On a bike, you have to focus or you'll wind up a smear on the asphalt. That same concentration kept my thoughts simple and linear. I had to find blood before I went amok again. Everything else was secondary to that. The issues with Peter couldn't get better if I was mowing a bloody row through the streets of Los Angeles. I tossed the cell, bought a new one. At the gas station I stopped and tried Alberto's number again. The call went straight to voice mail. Then I rode to the spot Peter had told me that they'd found the Hummer, just north of the 210 overpass on San Fernando. There's a stretch of empty gravel and scrub there. I got off my bike and looked around. Sure enough, near a property fence, melted rubber and blackened gravel, sagebrush, and mud all around, mixed with something that looked like fire retardant foam. Our anal crime scene people had removed the Hummer probably, because not a scrap of debris remained.

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The surrounding ground was a chaos of tire tracks and footprints. But this particular turnout was frequented by motorcyclists and pedestrians of all sorts, so the various tracks weren't of much use to me. I perched my ass on my bike, lit a cigarette, and contemplated my next move. I wanted to call Peter. I told myself I needed someone to bounce ideas off of, but I knew I was bullshitting myself. I actually had my phone out and my thumb hovering over the keypad when I heard the roar of drag pipes with nonstandard compression ratio and, looking up, could see the silhouette of Alberto's chromed-out monster cresting the hill like some medieval knight of old. The first sign that something was wrong was the three hogs running behind him. Albert didn't ride in packs. The second was the Bandido's patch on Albert's leathers. By the time they'd pulled into the turnout gravel, five yards away, I knew that Albert was dead. He climbed off his bike. He looked the same, glinting smile, shiny head, and everything. Maybe his eyes looked a little crazier. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I guess they followed me.” “Que será, amigo,” said Albert. “I hardly remember it.” The three Bandidos with him were dead as well, and I was encircled by the four of them. “You know, if you want me to follow you somewhere, I'm willing,” I said, hurriedly stuffing the cell phone in an inner pocket. But a couple of the bikers got hold of me and took the cell, my gun, the chain and knife hanging from my belt, and slipped a pair of plastic handcuffs on me deftly. “I can't ride like this.” “You don't need ta,” said one, lips moving somewhere under a thick, matted mustache. A pimped out Suburban, shocks riding the chassis so it

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looked like it was two stories high, roared around the corner and, while I sat in the passenger seat with a gun pointed at me, they loaded my bike into the back and off we went. “Aren't you going to blindfold me?” I asked the driver. “Nope,” he said. He spat out the window. I didn't want to ask why.

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Chapter Fifteen “You hold this against me, don't you?” I said to Albert. I sat in a small white room. From the size and the tile surrounding me on three sides, I'd guess I was in an old bathroom. There were a series of lights that shone beams in front of the chair where I'd been commanded to sit. From either side, their narrow white hot beams shot horizontally across the room to the other wall, like lasers, barring me from the doorway where Albert stood, arms folded, long, lean legs crossed casually at the knee. He'd assured me that the lights would function in a way very much like sunlight if I tried to cross them. “Meh, what's happened has happened,” he said. He held what looked like a soda can and sipped from it using a thick bendable straw. The smell of the blood he was drinking rolled over me like incoming fog. It was dense and rich and had me struggling with the urge to burst through the deadly bars of light and grab it from him. “Listen, bud, I'd be really, really grateful if you could just slide a little of that juice past the lights.” “The boss will be back and then we'll see, amigo.” “You taking orders from someone? That's not like you, Albert.” “We do what we have to, 'mano. You understand. Maybe the boss will like you and then we will be brothers again.” “Or maybe he'll just kill me?” A shrug of one shoulder, quirk of an eyebrow. “Perhaps.” I'd been walked through an enormous front room. The floor was covered with gleaming white ceramic tile. A tall central fireplace, with no fire in it but

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many twinkling white Christmas lights, surrounded by low, modern white couches on which sat any number of men and women. The women were typical biker chicks. Old and nasty or young and hot, they were all scantily clad. Most of them looked wasted. A lot of faces in the room were familiar to me and everyone was dressed to the nines. Diamonds sparkled off fingers, ears, and dangling chains. A couple of tall glass hookahs sat on glass-topped tables. Drug paraphernalia everywhere. It looked like a high-end gangsta party, except some of the guests had the demonic faces I'd come to associate with my blooddrinking state. Music thumped through the walls, the smell of blood making me halfinsane. And then they'd shoved me through a narrow doorway, down a long, white hallway, and into this prison. “What's going on in this place?” I asked Albert. “The boss will tell you,” he said. “If he wants you to know.” “Or else he'll just kill me.” This time Albert smiled. “That would be a shame.” A general hubbub erupted in another part of the building then, and he glanced down the hallway that led to the bathroom in which I'd been caged. “What is it?” I asked him, but he just headed off in the direction of the buzz without a backward glance. I could hear snatches of conversation, but the music was loud and thumping in the walls, efficiently masking even my sensitive hearing. It seemed a very, very long time before a man appeared in the doorway. Tall and heavyset, Paolo Spence had been described in the LAPD file as six-four, two-sixty. He had dark brown Hispanic skin, thick black eyebrows, and slightly Asian, narrow black eyes. His ears stuck out and he'd always worn his wavy hair long to cover them. “Ozone, I presume?” I said.

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I'd heard an urban legend once about Paolo being a flamenco dancer in his youth. It was hard to imagine, though he moved with a certain sly grace; a long black revolver hung from one hand, the other arm wrapped around a plump white girl who wore a skimpy red suit that allowed one to see the livid bite marks across her belly. Saliva filled my mouth. Ozone's eyes narrowed so he looked like a Chinatown tourist toy, round head tilted sideways, smile literally inscrutable. “How long since you've eaten?” “It's been a while.” The white girl undulated when she sat on Ozone's leg. I'd guess from the glaze in her eyes that she was stoned on heroin. Whatever it was it seemed to make her blood denser, more fragrant, as its scent washed over me. Half of Ozone's mouth turned up in a smile. The other half stayed stonecold serious. “I wish I could help you, but one must be careful. You understand.” “You can trust me, man.” I had to swallow before I could speak. “Seriously. Ask Alberto.” “He tells me you've been asking questions. Why is that?” “I'd heard you had blood,” I said. “I need blood. I don't know where you get it, but I'll do whatever you tell me if I can just…” “Of course you will. I made you.” “You made me? What does that mean?” “Or rather, I should say one of my soldiers made you.” He gestured with the gun. “The one who bit you and drained your blood. Tainted, by the way. We don't usually like to drink cop. Too many unnatural ingredients.” I can't really describe the emotions that played inside me at that moment. Later, I'd figured they all devolved to rage but at the moment, I merely said, “Whatever you say. Obviously you have something I need. My question is, what do you want in return?”

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Ozone frowned thoughtfully. The gun waved idly back and forth as he did so. “Loyalty is essential. I hear you aren't worth the trouble.” “I was LAPD. It was my job. Things have changed.” “Hmmmm.” He looked around the room. “We'll see, why don't we.” Meaning what? “I have a meeting in an hour with an associate,” said Ozone, raising his gun and sighting through the barrel. “One of my soldiers has offered to show you around. I apologize for what has to happen next. It really is just a formality.” And he smiled. Wide, white, slightly prominent front teeth. He waved a hand at someone I couldn't see and a couple of your typical thugs entered the room in which I sat. I braced myself, feeling my eyes get that oddly pressured feeling, my lips drawing back. One of the thugs laughed and looked at his friend and they both flashed their demon visages at me. Behind them Ozone laughed again. “Oh stop, please. So many peacocks. Just try to clean up when you're done this time.” And he swung his plump girlfriend out the door. The lights barring me went out; the two thugs stepped forward. I couldn't have struggled if I willed it. They outweighed me and were at least as fast as I. I don't know why I even bothered to fight back; it only extended the beating. But when I finally felt myself losing consciousness, what was left of my blood oozing from my mouth and nose onto the cold bathroom tile, it was with a sense of relief.

***** Consciousness was unwelcome and full of pain and hunger. The smell of blood nearby made my head ache and my eyeballs bulge, my teeth jabbing at my lower lip. One swollen eye could open enough to see a plump white thigh by my mouth. A number of bruised green and purple marks with neat holes at the center of them decorated it like a tattoo. I couldn't have resisted if I wanted to.

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She tasted sweet and sour. The blood, full of hormone, pumping weakly, and I had to manipulate her skin with my tongue, sucking, to bring enough into my mouth. “Fuck, man, you been starving yourself?” said a familiar voice. I raised my head. The woman I had been sucking on lay beside me, watching me through dulled, half-open eyes. Now that my first hunger was sated, she looked horribly unappealing. The marks pocking her pasty skin could have been either bites or needle marks. I pushed her away, disgusted. “My old man would say you're like a bad penny, man.” Caballo leaned against a wall opposite me, lean body in a white muscle shirt, cigarette dangling from one hand. He looked like a particularly sexy Gap commercial. “Time to leave,” he said to the woman who lay next to me. He helped her up and to the door of what appeared to be a very small white ten by ten room. Dominated by the wide bed on which I lay and a small chest of drawers. Caballo sat on the bed next to me. He took a drag on his cigarette and squinted at me through the smoke. The blood and smell of sex had gone straight to my cock. My face was out of control; I could feel my extended fangs, my eyes bulging and my chest and face full of heat. Caballo stroked my chest, making soothing noises until I stopped fighting my urges and started responding to his touch. He guided my hand to his cock. It was heavy and hot and leaking as I stroked it. Then his hand wrapped around my erection and the hunger for blood transmuted into a hunger for the inside of Caballo's mouth, the feel of his hand on me, his cock surging in my palm as he spewed cum across my belly. I lay on my back, breathing hard. Caballo chuckled. “That was a long time coming.” “In a manner of speaking. I heard you stood up for me with Ozone. Thanks.”

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“Sorry about the quality of the dinner, man. She's a whore,” said Caballo. “And already bled too much today, but Ozone, he said to do you a favor.” Caballo sat next to me companionably, legs spread to accommodate that gorgeous schlong, which now slept peacefully between his thighs. “I'm still hungry,” I said, sounding like a little kid. Caballo carded my hair fondly. “I know, bro, but you have to learn to stop. At first it's hard, but we don't want to kill our blood cows, right?” “Blood cows?” “Crazy junkies let us suck their blood. I guess in exchange the boss gives them their drugs.” Caballo sounded matter-of-fact. “I think some of the crazy bitches like it, though. Accidents happen, but you kill them all and we'd have to hunt all the time. No time for more important things.” “Such as?” “Never mind that. The boss said I should keep an eye out for you, show you around, while he decides what to do with you.” He rose to his feet gracefully and extended his hand to help me rise. “Why is he letting you show me around? What if I see something secret?” I asked him. Caballo had gone to the chest of drawers and brought out a T-shirt, which he tossed at me. I changed out of my bloodstained shirt gratefully. “It is a big secret. But you won't be telling nobody. You'll either be one of us or…” “Or?” “Or you'll be dust, bro.” Caballo swung open the door of his room, and gestured smoothly to the long white hallway. “Ready for the tour?”

***** Nobody paid much attention to us. At one end of the hallway in which Caballo's cubicle lay was the enormous front room I'd been brought through. It seemed to be filled continuously with bikers and their female companions.

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Sitting in front of the cold fireplace I saw a Latino with bad skin and “Respect Few Fear None” emblazoned in six-inch-high letters above his sternum, sitting with his arm draped companionably across the shoulders of a Caucasian red-haired man with long, scraggly white and blond whiskers draping to either side of his mouth. HA inked on his neck and the Angels' logo plastered across one pectoral muscle. They were sharing the plump, pale brunette who lay across both their laps. While puzzling over the enigma of a Mongol and a Hell's Angel sharing a woman, I saw two men coming through a door opposite, both of whom I knew as members of the Mexican Mafia. “La Eme,” the “M.” What was curious was I'd last seen them in photos of the dead after a bust in San Diego. The women with them hung on the men and stumbled a little as they were led to the seating area. When they passed, one of the women bumped against me and looked up, eyes a startling bright green and the smell of her blood a cloud around her. Almost sickening in its sweetness. Somebody slapped me, hard, upside the head. “Not for you, pup.” A big old Angel, braid down his back, worn leather vest covered with patches, with arms so thick and long he looked more like a gorilla than a man, grinned at me with yellowed teeth. “Prospects have to drink from the bottle.” I raised my eyebrows at Caballo. What? He grinned and the Angel jerked his chin toward the room from which the “M” boys had just emerged. “Time for your bottle, baby boy,” and he slapped my ass. Just when I'd thought life couldn't get more surreal. The last time I'd seen an HA in colors, he'd been sighting me down the barrel of his revolver. Now one was giving me buddy slaps. “He your new prospect?” said one of the Eme boys to Caballo.

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“Maybe.” Caballo accepted the fat doobie the man passed him, took a long drag, and passed it back. It was a Polaroid moment. The “M” sharing drugs with a Crip. “You train him good now, boy.” Caballo's eyes flashed, barely perceptible and quickly hidden by his eyelids. “C'mon, Adam,” he said. Caballo led me into what turned out to be a large kitchen. A long counter on one side, where a variety of men and women leaned and sat; across from that, five full-size stainless steel refrigerators. It was like a social hour, everyone drinking from milk cartons of blood. Nobody seemed to mind me reaching into a refrigerator and bringing out my own carton. It wasn't until I'd peeled off the seal on top and swallowed the first mouthful that I understood why. It looked like blood. It smelled like blood. It tasted like crap. “Newbie!” chortled a few old boys as I spat into the sink. “You'll get used to it.” The man who spoke was short and dark and the belly that overlapped his belt buckle was completely covered with an illustration of a graveyard. His eyes seemed nothing but small, round black circles in his hairless face. He looked like a brown smiley face. He tipped back his carton and the Adam's apple in his thick neck moved as he swallowed. It made me gag to watch. “I'd rather not.” “It's better than drying up.” I noticed that Caballo had instinctively moved to the side of the kitchen where the other black men stood. He and the speaker punched knuckles and the man said to me, “Until you're full patch this is all you get. Unless you pick up something on your own outside.” He leaned toward me and said, low, “Don't let Ozone know you're freelancing, though.” I sniffed at the carton again and my mouth filled with saliva. It smelled so much like blood. “Where do they get this stuff?”

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“Home grown,” said Smiley Face. He chucked his carton into what looked like a recycling bin. “It'll only hold you for twenty or thirty hours, but it's food.” “They make it from human bone marrow.” He seemed younger than the others, tall and impossibly skinny. Hair razored off, a big, baggy immaculate white T-shirt, and a thick golden chain with a dazzling two inch high “C” hanging from it. He looked nothing like a biker and I vaguely remembered the tat across his knuckles as one that belonged to a small Compton gang. “More efficient to harvest the bone marrow than the blood, I heard. Then they use stem cells to make hemoglobin.” “You seem to know a lot about it.” “Studied biology once,” said the man. “They call me Condor.” I held out my hand. “I'm Snake,” I said. “I—” “I know who you are,” said Condor. He seemed to hesitate before grasping my hand. “Adam Bertoni, right? You're the cop who busted those bikers.” I imagined that a hush settled over the kitchen for just a second. Just a ripple, like static electricity, it pricked up the hairs on my body and then was gone. “Caballo here told us all about you,” said Condor. Like seaweed lifted by an ocean swell, the men in the room seemed to shift uneasily. Caballo's hand pressed the center of my back, urging me to keep moving toward the door at the other end of the long galley. “Never mind, we're all brothers now.” That prickle of unease still seemed to float around me, but I nodded. “That's right.” Nobody said anything else and we passed through, entering another hallway very much like the one Caballo slept in. Long white walls, broken only by white doorways with bright brass knobs. The floor covered with that same white ceramic tile rang out under my booted feet. There were differences, though, between this hallway and Caballo's. The red light of surveillance cameras blinked at me from several elevated locations

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and smears of rusty brown stained the walls above the wainscoting. I inhaled deeply and could clearly smell blood. I heard loud voices through one of the closed doors. Men's voices. A voice protesting. That voice grew louder and louder and then one of the men shouted a curse and “Shut him up.” Whomever he spoke to must have, because the protests ceased. The door banged open and two big bikers appeared, dragging a skinny blond man between them. His feet barely touched the tile; he was clothed in a blue smock, tied in the back, like a hospital patient might wear. Ignoring Caballo and me, they dragged him down the hallway, opened a door at the end, and shoved him through. When the door slammed, the smell of urine and ammonia that billowed down the hallway was sickening. “Where are they taking him?” Caballo led me down the hallway. “You studied history, man?” “I slipped through school on a football scholarship,” I said. “Slept through most of my lecture halls.” “Idiot whitey,” said Caballo fondly. “The biggest trouble facing a general is feeding his troops. You lock a thousand hungry bloodsuckers up with nothin' to eat for too long, they'll be eating each other.” “That doesn't work,” I told him. “I had some blood from a dead guy and it made me feel like I'd taken speed.” Caballo raised his eyebrows. “You drink enough brother blood you'll go crazy, man. It's bad stuff. But Ozone, he thinks he has a solution.” “That fake blood is no solution, either.” “It will be. He has doctors and scientists working on artificial blood.” “So that man was…a test subject?” Add kidnapping to the probably methamphetamine production I was smelling. And the illegal arms. “Maybe. Maybe he's a donor. They donate blood, sometimes bone.”

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We'd reached the end of the hallway and the big door through which they'd dragged the man. Caballo had his own set of keys, and he fit one into the door. “Why bring me here, though? I got nothing to donate.” “You don't get it yet, do you? Ozone wants all you bikers on his team, man. I'm supposed to show you how good you're gonna have it once you join us.” We ascended a set of metal stairs to yet another door, which Caballo opened with yet another key. “I guess I should take that as a compliment,” I commented. Caballo shrugged. “If you want. You don't got much choice.” We'd entered a five by five space. A keypad on the wall beeped as Caballo typed a code into it. Seconds later, green lights skated across the top of the door frame and the door clicked open. We entered an empty room and the door swung shut behind us with a heavy, final click and the sound of lock tumblers turning over. “Did you just lock us in a vault?” I asked him. “More like a holding cell,” he said. “Someone will open the door soon.” “Why the security?” “You'll see.” It seemed that many minutes passed. Caballo stood, arms behind his back, staring patiently at a wall. I sensed that conversation was unwanted and maybe even unwise, so we waited in silence. The door finally slid open, allowing a thick warm cloud of odor to roll over us. Something redolent of chemicals and human waste so disgusting I had to pull my shirt up to cover my nose and mouth as Caballo preceded me into what looked like a meth lab.

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At the end of a long stainless steel counter on which glass beakers shared space with an array of computer monitors, sat Ozone. His bulk perched atop a narrow stool, that black gun still hanging from his hand. He turned from a conversation with someone in a white lab coat and gestured for Caballo and me to come toward him. “Adam Bertoni,” said Ozone. “Meet my doctor.” She was still human. Small, with strawberry blonde hair and tiny hands that clutched a clipboard. She looked at me with pursed lips, like she smelled a lemon. She didn't even acknowledge the hand I proffered and spoke only to Ozone. “I've told you I don't want them here.” Ozone grinned with those big prominent teeth. “Doc makes our blood.” “I don't make blood,” she said; she pushed bifocals up her nose, her movements tiny and nervous as a mouse. “I am only trying to find a feasible suspension medium for hemoglobin which is manufactured quite naturally and organically from stem cells in the bone marrow of living donors.” Ozone didn't know any more than Caballo or me what she was talking about, but he kept grinning, nodding away. “What do you think?” he asked me. “Impressive,” I said, carefully. “Where do I fit in?” Ozone rose and began strolling along the aisles of the lab. Beakers burbled and computer monitors flickered with numbers and images as we walked. It looked like a futuristic Frankenstein laboratory, if it smelled like a sewage treatment plant. “My bikers will be my front line. I imagine a cavalry of Harleys.” He held a hand aloft, fingers fanned as if envisioning what he described. “And the bangers are your infantry?” I guessed. “What are the odds they'll kill each other before the war even starts?”

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He brushed that aside with a fat hand that glittered with diamonds. “We are all brothers now.” At either end of the counter were four five-foot-high metal tanks, about the size and shape of a water heater, but with more dials, blinking lights, and tubes coming out of it. “What's in the tanks?” I asked the doctor. She ignored me so Ozone repeated my question to her. “Hemoglobin, currently.” The doctor pushed her glasses up her nose again. “But next week we hope to suspend stem cells successfully. Excuse me; you know I don't have time for this.” “We'll discuss our plans later,” said Ozone grandly. “Show him the vault,” he said to Caballo. Out of earshot, I said, “What's her deal?” “County cutbacks. They canned a lot of scientists last year and Ozone talked them into helping him. It all looked legit, I'll bet, and then they found they couldn't get out. There's a few computer geeks here and a lab technician. A couple Angels got back here once and scared the crap out of all of them, so now they have security.” “It stinks like a meth lab,” I said. “Ammonia and some other shit; I don't know the names. They use it to keep the blood alive. They don't cook drugs here; the doc won't allow it.” Caballo stepped through a narrow door into a freezing cold room. This room was full of refrigerators. Their doors were a clear glass, fogged with cold, but clearly holding bags of blood. “The vault,” said Caballo. “Doc has a way to keep the blood viable for almost a year. That's the other problem Ozone has to solve. We might have to have stored food supplies at some future date.” Images of Waco, Texas, were starting to flash in my head. Only multiply by one hundred and add bloodsucking fiends.

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“Is that what Freeway was doing? Experimenting with storage?” He seemed not to hear me. “We'd better get back.” “So,” I asked him as we walked back through the kitchen. Most of the crew had left. A couple of women made out with each other in a corner and the empty cartons filled the recycling container. The smell made me dizzy with hunger. “If they have so much blood, why are they feeding us this crap?” Caballo's gaze jerked to the two women, and he made a silencing motion with his hand. We moved into the living room. Music still thumping from every corner and masses of bodies writhing and heaving together on every available surface. “Feeding hour,” said Caballo. “Soon the sun will set and then we ride.” The smell of testosterone and blood was hypnotic. Caballo had to slap me upside the head again. “Shit, man, they'd kill your gay ass.” “Why?” “Prospects don't get nothin' man. No blood cows, no pussy.” Not what I'd been drooling over, but I got the gist. “High motivation for full patch status.” “You know it, bro.” Caballo had found a woman who seemed unattended at the moment. He gripped her chin, studying her face, then pulled her to her feet, dragged her down the hall behind him. I figured he was done with the tour, so I reconnoitered a bit and found myself just around the corner from the doors through which I had been initially dragged. There is never any reason not to try the obvious, so I walked up to the doors and reached for the handle. I saw the door handle. I reached for it. And then I was looking at the ceiling tiles, and a big demonic face with a bloody mouth scowling down at me. “Ola!” I said, as best I could with a swollen lip. I touched it gingerly with the back of my hand. “You could have just said 'stop.'”

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I rolled before his hand could contact my face again, but the boot of his friend caught me anyway. “Stay the fuck where you're told,” said one of them. I crawled to my feet and was about to make my way down the hallway to Caballo's room when there was another commotion at the door. A great deal of activity with walkie-talkies and cell phones ensued and then one of the bikers worked a series of locks (from where I crouched I could see that they were locked with individual keys and a fingerprint ID pad) and swung the doors wide. A cadre of heavily armed Bandidos and a couple of particularly rough Mongols carrying assault rifles preceded a small clot of men, one of whom, wearing a suit and tie and looking impatient, was Stan. Holy shit. I recovered so that by the time his room-scanning gaze caught on me, I was rubbing my face with my hand in a signal that was universal among the UC, meaning “I see you, don't give me away.” Stan either didn't know the signal or chose to ignore it, because he hailed me openly, big hand out. “Adam!” Holy shit to the tenth power. “Oh, mierda, you know this SOB, sí?” And behind Stan came Freeway, looking more like a Tijuana bandit than any of the rest of them. He even had found a big black sombrero someplace, with half dollar-sized round silver medallions decorating its band and long braided black horsehair chinstraps hanging down to either side of his broad tanned face. “You fucker, you still a homo?” he shouted across the room. “You still a two-faced lying bag of shit?” We indulged in a lot of backslapping and such until I grabbed Freeway by his collar and hissed against his ear. “They think I killed you, you son of a bitch. Where the hell have you been?”

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Freeway twisted and jerked and pried himself loose, looking a little peeved. “Ozone, he wanted a man in Tijuana. We have recruits down there. The cartels are forcing people to stand between them and the policia. Nobody's happy. It's easy to talk a man into it when his family is at risk.” “So you, what? Line 'em up, drain 'em, and hand 'em their leathers?” An easy shrug. “The ones that live. Sometimes it don't work.” Freeway wore the new leathers I'd seen on Caballo and Albert. Other than that and his new sombrero, he dressed as he always had. There were no logos on the shirt, but he still wore the black pants with white topstitching, the oversize shirt and shoes. The thick silver ring in his ear now had a large diamond swinging from it and his bad skin seemed to have cleared up somewhat. What was different about him was his attitude. Freeway was now what he had always dreamed of becoming. A truly evil motherfucker. “I saw Betsy around,” I told him. “'mano, you was right about that puta. She got all freaky on me. And not in a cool way.” He gestured at Stan. “You know this ugly old cop, sí?” I looked at Stan. I wondered if my eyes held the same shocky caution as did his. “I've seen him around the station, yeah. How you doing, man?” Stan wasn't dead. His blood smelled, surprisingly, just as stale and boring as I would have expected. But it was warm and healthy and he had to know that every undead soulless biker in the room was looking at him with lust. “I've got a lot to discuss with Ozone,” he said to Freeway. “Oh yeah, sure, man.” Freeway's cadre of bodyguards marched Stan forward; Freeway turned at the kitchen door to give me a one-fingered salute and a “See you later, homey. Glad to have you on board.” I made to follow them, but at that point one of the guards noticed me again and gave me another mind-bending punch to the head. “Go the fuck to your room, bitch,” he said, as I crawled slowly back up the wall.

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Yes, sir. Can I do anything else for you, sir? Present my hairy ass for your inspection, sir? A steel-toed boot connected with my behind and I realized that the best course of action was to go back to Caballo's room. I didn't bother to knock, but he didn't seem to care. He was deeply involved in something between a woman's legs there on the bed. I thought he was doing what men normally do there, but then I saw that his mouth was fastened to her inner thigh and his throat was moving rhythmically. My mouth watered at the smell, and my dick twitched at the sight of his tight heinie sticking up in the air. “Can I have some?” I asked. Caballo withdrew slowly, licking his lips. “It's against the rules, man.” “You shared last night.” “That was a special treat. Courtesy of Ozone.” “Talk about grabbing a man's short and curlies,” I said. “Ozone really has you whipped.” Caballo patted the woman's thigh. “Go on now,” he said. He helped her stand, and, bizarrely courteous, helped her put her long shirtwaist dress back on. He waited until she'd exited and he'd closed the door again before he said, “Where have you been?” “I thought I might take a walk, but the guards dissuaded me. And then I saw a cop I used to know.” “No shit?” Caballo reached for the table next to his bed and brought over a box with weed and a tiny pipe in it. “What's going on, man?” “You know all you need to know. You ask too many questions. You sound like a fed.” The OMG have been hit by UC agents too many times not to be paranoid. I'd had to take a lie detector before I'd patched into the Mongols, and the ATF

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crew who set up our identities had told me a PI had been hired by the Mongols to do a background check on me as well. “Well, if they haven't killed me for the busts last year, why would they kill me now?” “Ozone's first rule is this is the new brotherhood. Those old beefs, they went with the old life. Remember, most of those guys got killed by a brother in the end.” I hadn't thought of it that way. “You know who did me?” “Wouldn't tell you if I did. Ozone's second rule. You don't need to know who did you, you just need to know that now you belong to us. This is big, Adam. Good thing you're with us now. Ozone says we start with the one percenters and then we go for the cops.” “Another gang war? That's all this is? The Angels couldn't even take East Los from the Mongols,” I said. “The cops don't think so. That's why we've got LAPD on our side.” Clearly, I had to find a way to get Stan alone. And maybe get a message to Peter. Caballo gave me a discerning look. “Just relax, man. You're still on probation. And you got all eternity now to figure it out.” He lit his pipe, flame hovering over it as he sucked half the bowl in on one long inhale. He offered it to me, but I waved it off. “I think I'm going to go drink some more of that shitty blood,” I said, opening the door. “Catch you later.” “Watch who you talk to, bro, and watch what you ask,” called Caballo as I went. “Be a shame to have to dust your crazy ass.”

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Chapter Sixteen I found Condor and a few former Mexican Mafia in the kitchen, drinking the nasty blood. He'd been right; it didn't taste as bad the second time. The occasional blood cow wandered through, stoned and half-naked, bumping into counters and cabinet doors, all of them soft as melted cheese, with ghastly, mealy skin and slack mouths, but still they held the gaze of every prospect as they stumbled through the galley. “Soon, my God, I hope,” said Condor, watching a particularly obese woman, braless and scratching her armpits as she went. “Ozone said I ride tonight with the Chupacabra, maybe I'll be full patch by morning.” It had taken me a year to patch into the Mongols, and only because I'd flown a huge quantity of cash to a bank in Juatulco for them, breaking a number of national and international laws in the process. “How long you been here?” I asked him. He shook his head, tipping the carton of blood back to get the last pink rivulet into his throat. “Months. I don't know. They don't keep time here, and there's no way to go outside.” “How long has Ozone been setting this up?” I asked. Condor gave me a sharp look. “You ask a lot of questions.” “Hard habit to break, I guess.” I tossed my empty carton into the recycling bin. “You see those guys that came through?” “No. I was minding my own business.” He was not liking me at all now. He'd turned a shoulder to me, as if trying to avoid me. So I shut up and let an uncomfortable silence settle over us instead. Thank God, at that moment,

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Freeway came breezing back in from the long hallway that led to the doctor's labs. “Mijo, you old bastard!” He licked his teeth. The fangs were still extended and pink. They must be having a hell of a banquet somewhere in the bowels of the building. I wondered how Stan was faring. “Hey, Freeway, you have a phone I can use? My old lady is going to cut off my balls if I don't call her.” “That bitch with the tetorras,and nalga de angel?” Freeway wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Bet she ain't your bitch no more, 'mano. Woman like that you can't leave alone for long. But, sorry, I can't let you call anywhere.” “How about I mail her a letter?” “No way, man.” “You give me a pen and paper, then, and maybe Ozone will let me mail a letter later?” Freeway rolled his eyes, grinning. “What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” asked Condor. “He told you, it ain't allowed.” Freeway's eyes narrowed and a muscle jumped at his temple. “Shut up, nigga,” he said to Condor. Condor froze. Muscles tense, breathing though his nose, he glared at Freeway then, purposely, let it go. Merely shaking his head, as if at Freeway's foolishness. Freeway glowered. “Get him a pen and paper,” he snapped. Condor looked sideways at me. “You kidding.” “Gandul!” Freeway slapped Condor hard, upside the head and said, “You do what I tell you, bitch.” When the man had left the room I said to Freeway, “You're pushing it.”

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“Fuckers,” said Freeway. “Always thinking they know more than us. He's a prospect, he needs to learn.” When Condor came slinking back, I pocketed the items. “Thanks, man.” I took a bathroom break, scribbled a short note in my own code to Peter. I wrote another note to Alli, most of it bullshit with the word “dragon” worked in. Just in case she did receive the note she'd know she was in danger. I gave Freeway my missive to Alli, the woman who'd worked undercover as my 'girlfriend' when I was a Mongol. Freeway, took the pen and paper, and didn't seem to notice the torn edge at the bottom of the paper, and didn't ask about the missing scrap. I wasn't sure how I was going to get the note to Stan but, as it happened, he was looking for me. Caballo, with a somber expression, came and fetched me from the front room where I had been lounging about, pretending to be lusting after blood cows when I was really waiting for a chance to see Stan if and when he left by the front door. Caballo, with a stern, worried manner, led me back to his room and pretty much shoved me inside, closing me in. “Thank God,” said Stan. He stood in the corner, totally incongruous in his immaculate suit and tie. The man even had cuff links. Who the hell still has cuff links? He tugged at the cuffs they held and said, “I only have a minute, but I wanted to check in with you.” “This isn't what it seems, Stan. They're holding me hostage.” “Of course. I assumed you'd infiltrated them.” “I guess that was the plan, but I'm immobile. I can't get out of here. Give this to Peter.” And I passed him the note. With a carefully neutral look, Stan sequestered the note in an inner pocket. “Well, however you came here, it's important that you stay inside.” “Why?”

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“Just get as much information as you can. It's too bad we can't get a wire on you.” “Are you fucking nuts? You do know what kind of people we're dealing with here, don't you Stan?” His eyes were cool. “Like you?” “Let me ask you something. Did you know? That night you came over to Peter's?” “Of course not.” I believed him. The man was cool as they come, but he was a lousy liar. All honest men are. “Sorry, Stan, this whole thing makes me jumpier than hell.” “I've got to go, Adam. I only just slipped away. There's an ATF takedown in the works. Hang tight and be ready to break when they come. I'll let the senior agents know you're inside.” I nodded. I wanted out, is all, but he was right. “We won't need testimony anyway,” I told him. “There's only one way to deal with these guys.” When we shook hands I think we both were having the same grim thoughts. Stan looked grave. And then he left. Caballo shut the door behind himself and turned to me with spooked eyes. “You jackass, what are you doing?” “It's a former cop thing,” I said. “You know, bitching about the old boss…” “Shut up.” There was a tentative tapping at the door and Caballo jumped out of his skin. I went to the door and opened it cautiously. “Hola?” Freeway's eyes rolled back and forth, scanning the hallway. “You dudes let me score some weed, maybe?”

***** “I don't have nothin' 'gainst you niggers, I just think it's crazy to expect La Eme to work side by side with anybody. Those ese are loca, man.”

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“I don't want war,” said Caballo. “And if we had a vote, most the brothers would say the same. It's stupid. We can't fight in the sun and all they have to do is wait till daylight and set the place on fire.” “La Eme are getting tired of Ozone too.” Freeway offered the glowing doobie to me and when I declined, passed it to Caballo. “He has a plan for everything. He forgets to consult anyone else.” Caballo looked worried. He shook his head, inhaling deeply. Freeway had always been wise in his alliances, I thought. If he was worried and seeking to ally himself with Caballo and his friends, then things must be shakier than they appeared even to me. “How many soldiers are loyal to Ozone?” I asked him. “I don't know, 'mano. I only know there's more recruits every day. I brought fifty back from the border.” “Were they willing or drafted?” I asked him. His face acquired a sly expression. “They're willing now, mijo. And most those…they don't know shit but that they need blood. They'll do whatever Ozone tells them.” “Because he's the source of the blood,” I said, thoughtfully. “That's the way it is, 'mano,” said Freeway, philosophical. “Look at you.” Yes, I thought. Look at me. “Those men can't fight worth shit,” said Caballo. “I talked to one dude. He's a farmer, man. He don't understand nothing here.” “Put a gun in his hand he'll fight okay,” I said. Freeway squinted at me through marijuana smoke. “And Ozone has a shitload of guns, man. I should know, I ran them to him.” “This ain't good,” said Caballo. “This ain't good at all.”

*****

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As long as I didn't try to leave the “compound,” I seemed to have the run of the place. We fucked and drank blood and watched others fuck and drink blood. Time passed. Maybe two days, maybe more. I became lulled by the cessation of need. Happily cosseted, fat and numb. I hardly thought about Peter at all. Fuck, who am I kidding? Every time I drank a carton of blood I thought of him. Every time I shut my eyes. All I had to think about was an army of vampires getting set to take over the city and the fact that the last time I'd seen Peter he was ordering my ass to get out of town. I hadn't had much time to compose, and there hadn't been much room on the little scrap of paper I'd used, but I'd said what I could. Held captive in a vampire enclave. Stan will clarify. Miss you. Sorry. Love, A. As soon as Stan had pocketed the thing and disappeared out of the compound, I'd started to worry about that last word. Now all I could do was obsess over Peter's possible reaction. In one of the bathrooms, I did find temporary distraction: a collection of paperbacks, seeming all on the subject of vampires. I took a couple of them back to the cubicle I shared with Caballo one night and when he came in from wherever it was they went after sundown, he found me underlining and turning over corners in a well-thumbed copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. “Mmm.” First his hands, then his hardened cock, pressed into my backside. “What are you doing?” “Reading.” I shifted. Caballo was stimulating my hole through the boxers I wore and blood surged into my cock as he did so. His mouth was cold and dry against the back of my neck. The rest of his body gave off tremendous heat. I knew from experience, now, that we became as hot as furnaces directly after “feeding” so Caballo must have eaten recently. I hated to think where, or from whom.

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I also knew from experience that he wouldn't be able to think about anything but getting his rocks off for at least half an hour, so I slid the book under the pillow and rolled over, saving my questions until later. Caballo's hungry tongue filled my mouth.

***** Later, sluicing off in the shower, I said, “We can't eat but we still need to piss?” Caballo stood at the urinal doing exactly that. “Why is that?” I asked him. He shook his head. There was a full-length mirror above the urinals but neither of our reflections showed in them. I could see the soap I held floating around in the air and an occasional dollop of foam, seeming to manifest from the steam before it slid to the tiles and vanished down the drain. “The doctor might be able to tell you,” said Caballo, buttoning his 501's with agile fingers. “I've been trying to talk to her, but I can't leave the front building,” I said. “Right. You're still on probation.” Caballo stared into the empty mirror as he combed his hair with care. I'd noticed that I did the same thing. Even though I couldn't see myself, I'd face the mirror to shave, to primp. It seemed to be easier that way. It was as if I was seeing the memory of myself there. “That book I've been reading says we're demons,” I said. Caballo laughed. “Weren't we always, El Demonio?” He pocketed his comb. “What did you call me?” His syrupy brown eyes slid sideways. “Sorry, man, I'm just a dumb nigger from Chicago. How do they say it then? Diablo? Marcena del inferno? Except you don't eat babies, do you? You suck cock. Right?” “Shut the fuck up. And your accent stinks. Stick to American.” I turned off the shower and wrapped a towel around my hips. “That book said we can walk in the sun, but that's obviously bullshit. I just wondered if there is anything else I don't know.”

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“Too much curiosity will kill the cat,” said Caballo, touching his finger to his nose. “And I saw a vampire on some kid's show drinking cow's blood.” Caballo and I grimaced simultaneously. “That's disgusting,” he said. I found my jeans and pulled them on quickly. Caballo held the door open for me and slapped my ass as I passed. “I've got to go. Ozone's called another dumbass meeting. You read your book or whatever.” That night I started on a book by an Anne Rice. But her vampires were boring. Too given to self-examination and bemoaning their soulless existence. “Do you think we have souls?” I asked Caballo when he'd come back from his “meeting.” He'd been withdrawn and thoughtful since he'd gotten back. Bringing out a pipe and loading and smoking it. In his own little world. “What the fuck? How should I know?” he said irritably. “Listen, man, we have to talk.” “You breaking up with me, Caballo?” I asked. But he didn't even crack a smile. “Seriously, man, there's something big going down here. A lot of men— well, La Eme, they talk the 'brotherhood' and all that shit, but they don't like Ozone being in charge. They say it's only luck he was turned and he should have stayed dead. They hated the ese, you know?” “I heard they were the ones who did him.” “Nah, it was 'the One,' we call him. The one that started it all down here in SoCal. But Ozone had a death squad from La Eme looking for him and they was pissed off, man, that he got turned first. And they don't look happy at those meetings when he's strutting around with his fat cows and pointing those guns at dudes' balls and shit.” He inhaled from his pipe deeply and held the smoke for an impossibly long time before letting it drift slowly from his nostrils. “Shit, I'm just talking bull, man. Don't pay attention.” “What if something does go down? What do we do?”

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“We stay alive, man.” Caballo got up and went to the chest of drawers, which seemed to hold only endless supplies of white T-shirts and plaid boxer shorts. Under a pile of the latter, a long, worn leather case. I expected a rifle, and so I was surprised when he drew a gleaming sword from its sheath. It made a secretive whispering sound as he sliced it once through the air. “Dude,” I said, awed. “Yeah, it's a beautiful little fucker, ain't it?” Caballo twisted his wrist, bent his elbow just so and, with seeming expertise, sliced another lethal arc through the air. “Only way to dust a demon fast, you know.” “Your friend died when a stake went through his heart.” “Aybie wasn't nobody's friend,” said Caballo. “But a stake will do it. It's just too hard to hit it right, too risky. You slice off the head to kill the demon.” One more hissing arc through the air, and he sheathed it again. “Remember,” he said, and stuffed the sword back under his boxers in the drawer. “Now.” He stretched and his thick cock was straining his boxers out in front of him. “You ready for bed?”

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Chapter Seventeen They say it's only paranoia if it's invalid. And, as it turned out, Caballo's fears weren't crazy at all. It happened quickly and all at once. I was in the bathroom, just dressed from a shower, when I heard a rumbling noise, like an earthquake. Jogging out into the hallway, I could distinguish heavy boots running and the sound of gunfire and motorcycles. The main room looked like Vegas 2002 all over again. Men in colors stabbing and shooting at each other. Women crawling across the floor. Blood splatter on the pristine white lounge chairs and tile floors. Silvery arcs of swords in the air. A head with a long black and gray braid thumped a few feet from me, rolled, and then the head and the torso to which it had just been attached burst into dust. I spun around and ran back down the hallway, but had to fight the crowd of bikers, blood cows, and various hangers-on who were headed toward the fight, most of them fully armed. Caballo wasn't in his room, but I found his sword in the chest of drawers. There was only one way out of this compound that I knew of, so I headed back to the brawl in the front room. I had to hack my way through. I could hear guns going off, but nobody seemed to care. A burning hot fire shot through my leg and I looked down to see blood almost spurting from me. Since I was still on the short-term blood diet, I figured this would bode ill for my eventual survival, so I made my way toward the kitchen where an even thicker and more intense battle was waging.

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A refrigerator had been tipped onto the floor, effectively blocking the doorway. On the other side I could hear the imprisoned people screaming and I could see their hands clawing at the stainless steel sides, trying to move the heavy thing that blocked their way. I cut off the thick head of the man I remembered with the cemetery tattooed on his belly and slid in blood and ash down the galley. The refrigerator was too heavy to lift and then the weight shifted and eased up and I looked across to see Alberto helping me. “El Demonio,” he cried out. “Did you start this trouble?” “No sé. Did you?” We heaved the refrigerator past the halfway point; gravity took over and it slammed into the wall, wobbled, and remained standing. A mob of people in blue cotton tieback pajamas, all looking pale and gravely ill, pushed through the narrow doorway. And, horribly, were immediately picked off by the room of blood-hungry demons. I managed to rescue a man and saw Albert lift a plump woman onto his shoulder. Keeping them all behind me, brandishing the sword, which was now starting to really weigh heavily in my wrist and shoulder, we worked our way toward the front door. The greatest obstacle at this point seemed to be the ash and blood that made the area almost too slick to traverse. But the door was unguarded and hanging open. The yard we ran to, a sea of roaring Harleys, mounted by bloody-faced demons with guns. To the horrified residents of the surrounding homes it must have looked like a vision from Hell. Actually, it looked like that to me, as well. I turned to share my plan with Albert just in time to duck as he tried to take my head off with a sword. “What the fuck, Albert?”

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I raised my sword and parried sloppily. He attempted another blow, which I swiped away with the pommel, almost getting my hand cut off. He stumbled and the tip of his sword stuck into the ground. An Errol Flynn movie, we were not. But he seemed unable to control his violence; his eyes were red and he was in full demon visage. I felt a little of the bloodlust myself. A desire for mayhem just burbling under the surface. I backed away from him, looking around, trying to come up with an exit plan. Across the road, an elderly couple stood on their front porch in pastel flannel robes, watching slack-mouthed. I dragged the man I'd rescued across and almost hurled him down their sidewalk. “Call the police,” I yelled. Then I dived back into the melee because there was one thing I was not going to do. I was not leaving this place without my Beast. She was in a back shed. Miraculously, beautifully untouched, unsullied. Her dual carbs bellowed joyfully as I skated down the body- and ash-strewn driveway and took off downhill, full tilt. I could hear a few bikers in pursuit for a little while. But for all I knew, they were beating a retreat as well. The real battle was for supremacy of the compound and nobody really cared if a few prospects flew the coop.

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Chapter Eighteen I didn't slow down until I'd made it to the Coldwater exit off the 10. I pulled over to a remote corner of a service station and tried first to call Stan. The call went straight to voice mail. “Something's gone down,” I merely said. “Call me.” Starting at Twenty-sixth Street, I wove up and down the blocks, keeping an eye and an ear out for any bikers. When I was certain I hadn't been followed, I turned on to Peter's street. There's a narrow walkway beside his attached garage. Just wide enough for me to back in my bike and throw the tarp over it that Peter had always kept rolled up and sitting outside for that purpose. I pressed the buzzer and waited. “Yes?” Even distorted by the speaker box, I could tell the male voice that answered the call wasn't Peter's. “Where's Peter?” There was a hesitation and then I heard, “Babe, there's someone at the door.” Babe? The next voice was Peter's. “Who is this?” “Adam.” The buzzer immediately buzzed and unlatched the lock. Peter met me halfway down the stairs. He was in his jeans and barefoot, buttoning a shirt as he jogged toward me. “Christ, I thought you'd left town,” he said.

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I eyed the man who appeared just behind him. Youngish, slim. A good dress shirt that he wasn't even bothering to button. “Obviously,” I said. Peter gave me that “don't start” look. “Jonathan, this is Adam.” Jonathan? Jonathan? What kind of name was that for a grown man? He had his hand stuck out at me, so I had to take it. “Why are you still in town, Adam?” asked Peter. He looked me up and down. “What the hell has happened to you?” I must have looked like I'd just crawled out of a slasher movie. Blood on my shirt, my jeans. Blood on my muddy, shredded boots. “Didn't you get the note I gave Stan?” “Note? Stan's on leave for a week. Some kind of family emergency.” I couldn't believe the motard had neglected forwarding the note to Peter. “Jesus Christ, I've been held captive in a vampire enclave in Pasadena, Peter!” Jonathan cracked a big smile, which died when he saw Peter's face. Peter glanced around the courtyard in which we stood. Windows opened into it from every unit. “You may as well come in and tell me about it,” he said.

***** “So what do you do, Jonathan?” It came out like an accusation, but I didn't much care. I'd showered and Peter had produced one of the boxes of my clothes from the garage to change into, so I should have felt better. I didn't. “I'm a graduate student at UCLA,” said Jonathan. I shot Peter a look. Robbing the cradle? I tried to say with my eyes. He seemed deaf to my eyeballs' insinuations, however, and sat down again in the side chair, setting three bottles of beer down on the coffee table. “Do you have a glass, babe?” asked Jonathan. “In the kitchen,” said Peter.

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I watched Jonathan's tight flat butt sashay into Peter's kitchen. “Nice trophy wife. Babe.” “Fuck off,” he replied mildly. “When you said 'vampire enclave' was that one of your dramatic exaggerations?” “There were at least a hundred soldiers that I could count. Ozone is a risen Paolo Spence, and there are a few other OMG members who we all thought were dead and gone. My former CI Freeway? Was in Mexico, recruiting more soldiers for Ozone, before he was killed.” “Wait. Wait. Wait. The dead CI?” “Undead,” I said. “Try to keep up, Peter. Only now, he really is dead. Dusted. During the riot somebody cut off his head.” Peter guzzled beer until the bottle was empty and set it down hard. “Say that again? No, don't.” He held up his hand. “Just cut to the chase.” “They're declaring war on the Mongols, the HA, and La Eme,” I said. “Recruits are flooding in from every pissant wannabe gang in town. Per my CI, they're starting the war with the Angels. They recruit as they go. Peter, imagine every OMG in Southern California, and every gang, joining forces with the Mexican Mafia. And the whole lot of them super strong, super fast, bloodthirsty vampires. It'll take the US Army to stop them.” It has always seemed to me that the more serious the situation, the more calm and methodical Peter becomes. Now, he looked very, very calm. Jonathan came back into the room with a glass and paper napkins for us to put under our beer bottles. Peter accepted his with thanks. “You said you talked with Stan.” “Stan infiltrated Ozone's crew, Peter. We ran into each other there. Lemme tell you, it was a bit of a shock for both of us.” Peter nodded thoughtfully, then turned toward Jonathan. “I'm sorry to do this, but if you wouldn't mind…?”

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“Hey, no problem,” Jonathan said affably. “I've got to get back and get some work done tonight, anyway.” He stood and went into the hallway. I could hear him in Peter's bedroom. When he came out he was carrying a pullover sweater and a pair of shoes. The blood rushed into my head and for a second I literally saw red, but I managed not to demand he tell me what his clothes were doing in Peter's bedroom. When the red haze cleared, I saw Peter and Jonathan, who had apparently not noticed my murderous spell, or were choosing to ignore it, standing at the door saying their good nights. I almost burst controlling myself. If Jonathan had even given Peter a peck on the cheek, I don't know what I would have done, but instead he glanced over at me, smiled warmly at Peter, and merely said, “G'night, babe. I'll call.” I had Peter up against a wall and my tongue down his throat before the college kid's feet had hit the bottom step of the condominium complex. “Stop,” said Peter, once. But I knew he didn't mean it. Mostly because he was groping my nuts and trying to get his tongue down my throat too. We grappled and struggled, more like a wrestling match than lovemaking, until I had him on his knees on the front doormat, spit and my fingers working his hole. “Condom,” gasped Peter. “Fuck that,” I said. I wanted to come all over him. Come inside him. Bite my name into the skin of his back and, if necessary, drag him off to my cave and beat him over the head if he tried to escape. “Adam!” His voice cut through the insanity happening in my brain, and I realized I had him almost immobile, arm around his throat, other arm holding his hips, up to my balls in his hole and my fangs poised over his neck. It was like seeing yourself in a mirror. A particularly dark and disturbing mirror. I drew out, released him, sat back on my heels. I didn't know what to do.

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“There's a box of them by the bed,” said Peter. Right. Okay. I scrambled to my feet, found the box, ignored the state of the sheets and pillows on Peter's bed for the time being, ran back into the hallway where he still knelt, head on his arms, eyes closed and breathing through his mouth. He moaned when I reentered him, then whimpered a little. “God. God.” I grunted, pumping. “Why can't I stop this?” he said, almost to himself. I slowed. His hand came up and grabbed mine, wrapped my fingers around his stiff erection. “Touch me.” I did, and my momentum picked up again, trying to be gentle, his halfconscious question ringing in my ears. Peter rocked his hips as I worked him, head down. He got some leverage and started to really slam back against me. All I could do was hold on, our thighs slapping together, the burn of friction on my knees and somebody groaning, probably me. Then, Peter froze, shuddered and issued a kind of despairing moan as his cum coated my fingers. I'd been having sex regularly with Caballo, but when I came it felt like I'd been celibate for weeks. Then we breathed and eventually separated. Seated side by side on the rug with our pants around our ankles. I said, “So. Jonathan's cute.” “Don't start, Adam.” “I'm not. I'm just observing. He must be like a breath of fresh air.” “He is,” said Peter, lifting his pants so he could stand up, wander down the hallway to the bathroom. I could hear the water splashing in the sink as he cleaned up. By the time he joined me in the living room, he was thoughtful again. “You know, I'm surprised Stan didn't say anything to me about a special assignment.”

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“He probably couldn't,” I reasoned. “If another person or persons are involved, he might not be at liberty. Remember Alli?” Okay, reminding Peter of the one person he had been jealous of in our decade-and-a-half-long friendship was partially intentional. I admit it. Alli had been the undercover ATF agent who had posed as my old lady while we were infiltrating the Mongols. We lived together, rode together. Went to parties together. And there had been a couple of times when circumstances had demanded that we have sex together. I'd bet that she hated it more than I did, but I had had to keep her identity a secret from everyone. Even Peter, who got to find out by seeing us one night when he and Stan had been called to an Angels/Mongols homicide scene. “Her vest said 'Property of Snake,'” he said. I'd managed to meet him in a hole in the wall cop bar where we were unlikely to be seen by OMG. “It's part of the cover. After awhile they'd get suspicious if they didn't see me bringing a girl around. And if Alli and I didn't pretend we're married, they'd still expect me to go for the wings.” Different color wings on the Mongol vest denoted different sexual accomplishments. None of them pretty. “The wives wear the 'property of' patches so they won't get hit on by other bikers.” “You pretend you're married?” Peter's face was flushed. He was breathing through his nose. I didn't know what to think of his reaction. “Well, yes? We live together.” “You have sex?” I can't lie to Peter. Oh, believe me, if I could, I would. But there's no use in trying. “Yes.” I've never seen Peter so still. I don't think he's breathing. And then, suddenly, he's up and out of the booth, throwing money on the table and marching, with long strides, out of the bar. In the parking lot, I had to hammer on his closed car window for a while before he'd roll it down.

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“Peter, it's work.” “Nice work, if you can get it,” he said. “Banging a young brunette with big bazooms.” “Jesus Christ, she's a professional, Peter, Not just some broad with big tits.” “So, it's more than sex. You like her.” “No! I mean, it's not like I want to.” He's got his eyes shut and seems to be suffering from shooting pains in his head. “I can't handle this,” he said, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles are white. “What do you mean by that?” He shook his head. I had a very bad feeling I knew exactly what he meant and I started to panic. “How can I fix this?” He nodded. Licked his lips. “Don't do it again.” “The…the… you mean, don't have…” “Ever. Never again,” said Peter. “I can't handle it.” “Okay.” He looked up at me then, a little sheepish but a lot relieved. “Promise?” How does he still trust me? But the fact that he does is more compelling than any threats of punishment could be. “I promise,” I said. “Funny thing,” said Peter, looking angry. “Stan has never lied or kept secrets from me. Why is that, do you suppose?” “At least I wasn't using Alli to get back at someone.” “I'm not using Jonathan,” snapped Peter. “He's uncomplicated and forthright. He has no secrets. As you so aptly observed, he's a welcome relief.” “How can he have secrets? He's fucking twelve or thereabouts!” Peter's lower lip thrust out just like a pugnacious bulldog's. “If I was supposed to know about Stan's assignment, he would have told me. You may

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have compromised him by coming here. Why didn't you leave town when I told you to?” “I don't run away. And…and I was worried about you, Peter.” “I've been fine, obviously,” said Peter. “Don't put your selfish decisions off on me, Adam.” I stood, pissed off and hurting all over. “You're right. What was I thinking? Oh, right, that the whole city of Los Angeles might be in danger?” “And you're just an innocent bystander. Oh, wait, where have I heard that before?” “I haven't done anything, Peter. Why can't you believe me?” “Do you still eat blood?” And, at my expression, “Great. Terrific. Where are you getting it?” “Volunteers,” I said. “What do you mean, volunteers?” “Some people like being bitten. It's like kinky sex.” His eyes narrowed. “Good for you. I was afraid you were using people.” “Well, I've warned you. It's on your head now if the whole city winds up some kind of flesh-eating zombies, or vampires or whatever. I'll get out of your hair now. Sorry I interrupted your 'date.'” “We're seeing each other tomorrow, as it happens,” said Peter, and he had an unfamiliar, waspish tone to his voice. “So you don't need to worry about it.” I ran my hands through my hair, feeling old and fat and grubby. And a touch homicidal. “Fine.” Peter stood too. “Fine,” he said. “I know my way out,” I said. He crossed his arms. “Good.” “So I'll just be going.”

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“You do that.” He didn't seem about to cave. Why should he when the choice was yours truly or hot monkey sex with a kid half my age and with twice my IQ? Why could he possibly want me to stay? So I split. I was halfway up Wilshire Boulevard before it really started to burn. I should have been on the way to Parker Center, to warn the LAPD. I should have been ringing up Alli, and Bert, and the rest of my old ATF crew, to warn them. I should have been keeping my ass covered and my profile low, but all I could think about was Peter fucking some college boy and the way he'd looked at me when I'd walked out. Like he didn't give a damn.

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Chapter Nineteen I got an idea and turned on Eleventh heading to Saint Monica's. The chapel was almost always open for one reason or another. I could hear the choir practicing in there and I just stepped through the big carved double-wide doors. I fully expected to be thrown back. Nothing happened, not even a ripple. There was a holy water font in the wall. I touched it. Nothing. I went and sat down in a pew and listened to the choir practicing for a while. A priest went by. I assumed he was a priest, at least, because he had one of those priestly collars on. “Evening, Father,” I said. It came out a little snarly, I think. He hesitated. He probably had a duty roster for the week that'd choke a horse, but it was his job to minister to lost souls, right? And I can just imagine the expression I was wearing; I was so pissed off about so many things, I probably looked like the poster child for lost souls. “Just listening to the music,” I told him. “You should come on Sunday and hear them,” he said. I wanted to tell him that his holy water was broken, or fake, or something. I wanted to tell him that I suspected his church was no longer on holy ground. I wanted somebody else to feel disillusioned, like the only thing they counted on was gone. God damn it. Only, apparently, God wasn't interested. All of a sudden I was mad as hell and I had to get out of there before I broke something. Back on my bike, I cruised around the block, in low gear.

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Facing the church property was the park where the old men lawn bowl and the homeless and runaways sit at picnic tables until the LAPD come and make them move on. So the citizens will think the city is doing something about the “problem.” They think a few homeless guys are a problem? Wait until they see Ozone's army. And that's when I noticed one of the men who lay around the trees. Most of the homeless will spread a coat or a blanket of some sort out on the ground, their clothes stuffed with newspapers and their belongings under their heads. This guy lay on the ground next to another man. He wore a lightweight Tshirt, his weathered, bony arms sticking out, sandals on his feet. He seemed to be having an animated, cheerful conversation with the man who lay opposite him, and then he seemed to be making out with the man. You know, in all my years on the streets of Los Angeles, I've never seen two homeless guys making out in a park. I parked my bike and jogged across the grass. “Hey.” I grabbed the guy's shoulder and wasn't very surprised when he reared back and showed me a demon's face with wolf eyes and a fanged mouth covered with his buddy's blood. He hissed and howled as I dragged him to the men's room, into a stall, and shoved him up against the wall. “Who did this to you?” The transformation doesn't seem to really change people much, but my injured knee had healed. It stood to reason that a man whose mind had been damaged might be healed as well. Yellowed eyeballs, lower lids pinkish. Olive brown pupils rolled as he sought a means of escape from where I held him. He tried an ugly smile. “I dunno what you mean.” Maybe he was just stupid.

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“You can't eat people,” I told him, giving him a shake that knocked his head against the metal stall walls and made them rattle. “I can't let you go out there again and eat people, man.” He started to whimper and claw at my hand. He was pretty strong for a skeletal man, but I attributed that to the vampirism. It did seem that one brought one's relative strength to the transformation, though. So I would have been able to handle this piece of garbage before and was able to now. “I'm hungry,” he said. And he licked at the blood still left on his mouth. If I let him go he'd just continue munching on his fellows. Maybe even a few of those cute kids piling out of Saint Monica's after choir practice. I couldn't bring him with me. I put my hands on either side of his head and willed myself to break his neck. He looked at me with those cockeyed, reddened, liverish ugly eyes and I just couldn't do it. Instead I shoved him hard, one more time, against the wall, and said. “Don't, okay? Find another source. There's a blood bank down on Fourth Street, maybe they'll give you some HIV blood for free.” “Yeah?” Jesus. Even demonic possession couldn't cure stupidity. “Yeah, man. It's like a soup kitchen.” God knew if he believed me, understood, or even remembered a word of our conversation after I released him and he went stumbling out into the night. However, that little encounter brought me out of my post-Peter funk and set me back on the beam. How long until we had an entire population of vampire homeless people in our midst? It'd be like a bad old horror movie. I hopped on my bike and headed toward the local police station. I had to park it a couple blocks away because there were so many PD vehicles passing in and out, it figured a chromed, custom Harley would attract at least one check. And the bike was tagged as stolen currently.

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Every needle on the security guard's equipment redlined when I walked through the scan. There was the Smith & Wesson stuffed in the waistband of my jeans. The derringer in the ankle holster just above my boot. The big hunting knife on a chain that every Mongol soldier wore. He just stared at me. “Oops. Back in a second,” I said. I had to go out to my bike and sequester my arms away in the tiny little saddlebag then come back in. The security guard raised an eyebrow, but merely waved the wand around me and let me through. I had to stand in line for thirty minutes to get up to the window fronted with bulletproof glass and tell the primly uniformed plump woman sitting on the stool there that I had come to report a crime. She passed me a form. I tried to fill it out, but there were really no check boxes or spaces for “vampires,” “bloodsuckers,” or “take over the world.” I settled for “kidnapping and firearms.” And turned it back in. She looked at it. Pursed her lips. “Just a moment,” she said, and slid her plump butt off the stool. I left. As quickly as I could without attracting too much attention. As I passed the windowed wall of the station, heading east on Wilshire, I saw the old security guard pointing out at me, his arm following me as I drove by. Two uniformed officers' heads swiveled to follow my progress. I gunned the engine and switched lanes quickly, hoping they hadn't spotted my plates yet. Within minutes, I was back on the 405, up and under and roaring east on the 10. I didn't pull off again until I'd made the 5 interchange at the East Los Angeles triangle. There I pulled into a small fueling station and, while I pumped gas into my bike, I went off for a smoke and rang Alli. Truth be told, I hadn't given the woman a second thought after we'd said our piece in court during the Mongol trials. I'd seen her in her dress blues at

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the ceremony with the mayor. At the time she'd been on somebody's arm. I hadn't bothered to ask who he was. “You good?” I asked, after the hug. “A little wobbly,” she said, removing her hat and fluffing her bangs out. “You know, it sounds odd, but I almost miss it.” “Really?” Yeah, you miss those bastards. They care more about you than anyone ever has, don't they? But damned if I'd admit it. She looked suddenly wary. “Well, I suppose it's just that after three years, you get used to anything.” “Christ, I hope not,” I said. Then I saw Peter coming toward me. “Listen, I have to go. You take care.” “Sure. Stay in touch,” she said. “Absolutely.” We hadn't spoken since. I imagined she didn't want to be reminded of things any more than I did. “Yes?” She answered the “unknown caller ID” briskly. “Alli, it's Adam,” I said. A silence. Oh, fucking hell, she still thought I was dead. “They didn't tell you?” I said quickly. “It was all a ruse to take the heat off.” Another silence, and then, chilly. “Nobody said anything to me.” “Yeah. Well, that's why I'm calling,” I ad-libbed quickly. “So that you'd know and also, to warn you.” She was quiet long enough I thought the call might have dropped. “You haven't heard about Bert, have you?” My heart literally sank into my belly. I knew before I even asked her. “What happened?”

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“He was in San Antonio. You remember, he'd decided to move back in with his family? Walking home from the 7-Eleven.” I couldn't respond. My throat was closed and my mouth was dry. “I'm thinking of moving to Europe,” said Alli. “Some place north, maybe. But if you found a way to stage your own death—” “It wasn't exactly like that,” I interrupted her. “It was more an accident.” “Oh.” Alli had had a boyfriend when we'd first brought her into the operation. She had an impressive record with the ATF, but needed more field creds. Toward the end of the first year, she'd told me that the boyfriend had had enough. “He knew what it would be like, and he was all right with it?” I'd said, refilling her drink. “He knew everything I knew. He knew I'd be living with another agent. He knew I wouldn't be able to receive calls or see him as often as I'd like. That's not the problem. He says I've changed.” “What, it's about the clothes?” We both had adapted a little. I'd stopped cutting my hair and wore it in a ponytail. Peter hated the thick mustache that covered my upper lip. After I'd shown up at his complex in Mongol colors, a couple of his neighbors had complained about his visitors. Alli dressed, quite honestly, like a slut. Tight T-shirts, low jeans that exposed her rear. High-heeled boots and so much eyeliner she looked like a panda “I thought all men secretly wanted their girlfriends to dress like that.” “You don't know a lot of normal men, do you?” she'd said. “But it's not the clothes. He's right. I have changed.” She hadn't seemed too broken up about it. But, with a twinge, I knew that I should have checked up on her before this. I'd had Peter to talk to. Who had she had? “Listen, would you like to meet and talk?”

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“Adam, it's three o'clock in the morning.” “C'mon, Alli, no way you're asleep this early.” A sigh. It always amazed me how long it took for people to get fed up with me. Apparently Alli had not yet reached her limit because she said, “Where were you thinking? Our old place?” “Too risky,” I said. “We might be recognized. How about the Hollywood coffee shop. You remember? The one we met at the first time?” “I remember,” said Alli. “In, say, half an hour?” “We'll see,” she said. And hung up.

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Chapter Twenty An hour later I was watching the clock on the wall and starting to worry about where I'd spend the daylight hours. Alli had possibly decided not to show, after all, and dawn was approaching. I hadn't slept in a couple of days, either. So a dark, safe place with a bed and maybe some blood? Would have been heaven. While I was stirring my sixth cup of coffee and actually daydreaming about the open faucet of willing “blood cows” at Ozone's, a familiar young Goth chick came through the glass doors at the front of the restaurant. Rather, she banged against the door, causing it to open, and staggered through. A very young child followed, probably because she had hold of his upper arm. He was struggling. I was behind her in two seconds. “Let him go, Betsy.” She jumped and squeaked but did not release her apparent dinner. “If I do, he'll run away again.” I grabbed hold of her small hand and attempted to pry her fingers loose from the boy's arm. She resisted me. We struggled in the aisle of the restaurant while the surrounding patrons blithely continued eating. Good old Hollywood. Finally, I freed the boy's arm; he dashed for the doors. “No, stop him,” cried Betsy, taking off after him. I managed to hold onto her until we saw him outside, hanging a right and running, disappearing beyond the bushes bordering the restaurant parking lot. Betsy slumped against the tiled wall, looking like she might cry. I knew how she felt. I was pretty fucking hungry myself and the smell of the blood of

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all the humans in the restaurant was starting to gnaw at me inside. “It'll be okay,” I said. “You fucking jerk,” she said to me, slapping at my chest. “I know. I know.” “No, you don't know. He's running right back to the same son of a bitch, I bet.” A fat tear rolled down Betsy's face. She scrubbed at it angrily, leaving a black mascara smear across her cheek. “What?” “I'd finally gotten him away and…and now…” She sank into a booth. “Damn.” “Got him away?” “You stupid cop,” she wept. “Why are cops so stupid? Do they give a stupidity test before they let you join or something? And what are you doing here anyway? I thought they'd dusted your stupid cop ass ages ago.” She wiped at her face some more. Now the mascara streaks were an op artist painting across her cheeks. I dipped a napkin in water and clasped her chin. “Hold on.” While I scrubbed the makeup off Betsy's face, she said, “I thought I could do something, you know? Finally. I thought, well this is why this happened to me. Now I can do some good. But it doesn't matter. I can't help anyone.” I stopped my motions and looked hard at her. “Do some good?” She leaned across the table and said, “Look at us; we're like superheroes, aren't we? So, I figured I could save all of the other kids.” “We aren't superheroes,” I told her. “Don't you get it, cop? We're gonna live forever. Doesn't that mean anything to you?” Come to think of it, well, I hadn't thought of it. “No?”

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“We are as gods. I remember, Freeway used to tell me that to be a Mongol was to be special. Maybe he'd die but somehow he'd also live forever. And that meant everything to him. It gave him purpose. I felt a little jealous sometimes when he'd talk about it.” Belonging to the club could make you feel like that. It was dangerously seductive. “And now you've found your purpose?” “There's monsters and then there's monsters. I free the kids and…take care of their abusers.” “So, that's how you solve the blood issue. Clever.” She caught my sarcasm and her face changed just a little. Distant and careful. “What do you do?” “I don't know. I hooked up with Ozone for a while.” “Then you can't judge.” “No, you're right, I can't. Betsy, have you heard from Freeway recently?” The odor of Coco by Chanel and the click of high-heeled boots. “Christ, Bertoni, can't a girl be a few minutes late without you picking up some bitch off the street?” An arm draped around my shoulders; long, silky dark hair swept into my face as Alli's cool soft lips pressed against my cheek. “Hello, lover,” she said, dark eyes three inches from mine, mocking. She turned her head and said to Betsy, “Who's this?” “Alli, this is Betsy. She and I have been working together.” I watched them size each other up. “You called a cop?” said Betsy. “Alli's an old friend.” “Right.” Betsy popped out of the booth and started walking for the exit. “Wait a minute.” I intercepted her, but she slid under my arm like a greased pig.

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“Later,” she said, pushing her way through the glass doors. I followed. “Betsy, we aren't through talking.” “I am.” She turned around, walking backward, to say, “Caballo says hello.” “What? Hey, wait a minute.” But she had turned and was gone in a blur. I thought, for a second, of giving chase. But Alli was still waiting in the restaurant and, while Betsy's activities were of interest to me, they didn't seem immediately related to a pending gang war. “So it looks like you really are alive,” said Alli, chin lifted in a considering manner as I rejoined her at the table. “Though somewhat the worse for wear.” My hand went to my cowlick. “What do you mean?” “Jesus, Bertoni, sit down.” I sat and she reached across the table to do some collar straightening, hair pulling and, as I had with Betsy, she wetted a paper towel and dabbed at my face. “Looked in a mirror lately? You're a sight.” “No, actually, I haven't really had time—” “You said on the phone. Something going down?” “It sounds so cracked I have trouble believing it and I was there. I know there's at least one undercover agent, but I don't know who the agent in charge is, or even if he knows what just went down…” “Stop,” said Alli. “Start from the beginning.” “There's a new OMG in town,” I said. “Big as the Mongols. Maybe even bigger. And they are determined to start a war. Last night a fight erupted in the ranks and now the lot of them are scattered all over the LA basin.” “Christ. Did you call the gang unit?” “Well…” I hedged. “That's the thing. Legally I'm still dead.” This is too weird for the straightforward, pragmatic woman who partnered with me for three years. “What the hell are you up to, Bertoni?”

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I brought out my wallet and extracted the piece of paper with my notes on it. “Just get someone to check out this address. I don't think they've been there long. There must be something you can dig up to give reasonable cause for search and seizure.” I wrote out the address on a napkin and she took it from me. The waitress came by and refilled out coffees. “Are you ready to order?” The clock on the wall was approaching five a.m. “I can't, sorry. I've got to find someplace to crash and…and…” I had to find some blood soon. Alli was exuding a rich odor like Kahlúa and crème. Every time she shook that glossy hair behind her shoulders and licked her lips, I wanted to lunge across the table and sink my teeth into her throat. “I've got a bottle of Johnnie Walker and the latest Harley catalog back at my place.” “Oooh, biker porn,” I replied. “You temptress.” “I'll open up the sleeper sofa,” she said. “C'mon, it'll be like old times. We'll stay up all night talking guns and hogs and planning what to do next.” It was the best option, I thought. “Okay.” “You ride here?” she asked, standing. “Of course.” “I'm the black Sportster in the parking lot. My place isn't far from here. You can follow me.”

***** “Christ, you could always drink me under the table.” Alli wove across the floor, miraculously keeping her glass upright, and then surprised me by planting her well-shaped fanny on my knees. “Oops, am I too heavy for you?” she said. “Only your ass,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to move her off of me. “Freeway said you have nalga de angel.”

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She leaned back, batting thick black eyelashes up at me, her eyes sparkling. “You think he'd be my boyfriend, Snake? Because, damn, I could use one lately.” “C'mon Alli, slide over.” I pushed her off of me. Alli was just joking around, I hoped. But I was still relieved when my cell phone rang. “Yeah.” “Adam? Thank God,” said Albert. “Albert? Fuck. I thought you were done for. Where are you?” “The Flaming Tart on Vermont. It's an hour to sunrise,” said Albert. “Where are you?” The last time I'd seen Albert, he'd been trying to cut my head off with a sword. I wasn't giving him Alli's home address. “I'll meet you at the Tart,” I said. “Who was that?” asked Alli as I pocketed my cell phone, standing and picking up my jacket. I should have been warned by her expression, but I was too edgy from hunger and the impending sunrise. All of my nerves were jangling. “I've got to meet this guy.” The sparkle in her face immediately fell flat. “Of course.” “Alli, I meant to call you before this. And I'll call you again soon. We'll have a drink or something, I swear. But this connection might know something that could help me stop the war.” “Oh, right,” she said. “The supposed OMG war, which prompted you to call me at three a.m. And then, true to form, chicken out.” “Chicken out?” Alli followed me to the door. “Give me a call when you make up your mind, Adam.” And she shut it in my face.

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Chapter Twenty-one Okay, I know what she's talking about but that's not the issue here. I had had to come up with something when Alli and I were living in the same house. Our friends and family drifting away. A beautiful, sexy woman walking around in her Victoria's Secret underwear, giving me those looks. So I developed a crippling fear of commitment. Which also helped explain my infrequent but necessary forays over to Peter's. I was a real slut, is what I was. Horrible boyfriend material. I had thought that had cooled her ardor somewhat, but I guess not. But that's not the issue, as I said. What's at issue is I've been trying to ring the bell, sound the alarm, and rally the troops. And I'm left feeling like the proverbial twat that cried wolf. Nobody believes me. Wait, Adam, maybe that's because you've been lying to them for years? Self-examination was creeping around the corner and coming at me again. So I outran it. I climbed on my bike and peeled out down Sunset, hung a left and then another onto Santa Monica, so that I could approach the Flaming Tart from its back alleyway. Nothing looked amiss at first glance so I tried to enter through the back door. I was repelled by a man with shoulders broader than mine wearing high heels and a tight leather miniskirt who informed me that I had to pay at the front to get in. Albert was waiting for me at the door, though.

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He embraced me as if he hadn't tried to kill me and said, “This is the only bar I know we won't see any OMG.” The Flaming Tart was a drag bar during working hours. A cute little neighborhood drag bar where the “girls” put on a show that was more an homage to the concept of drag. Most of them barely concealed their masculinity and a few even brought girlfriends to see them perform. Albert was right about bikers. You'd have to dose them with GHB and hold a revolver to most of their heads to get them to even walk into a place like this. It was long after the bar must legally close, and the Tart had devolved to its other identity. An all-night diner. So Albert ordered some kiddy cocktail that was an unnatural shade of pink and I ordered a Coke. “Unopened,” I told the waitress. “Sure, honey,” she said, batting thick fake eyelashes at Albert; a luscious meal practically thrusting her silicone bosoms in his face. She was a temptation to me, hungry now to the point of near insanity, but Albert appeared calmly oblivious. Albert looked good. Plump, pink, and rested. “Where are you getting your blood?” I asked when the waitress had left. He looked mildly surprised. “Blood banks. Their security sucks, 'mano. Listen, I'm leaving town.” “Good idea.” The waitress returned and plunked a cold, wet can of diet Coke down in front of me. She placed a strong, brown hand on one narrow hip and said to Albert in a sultry falsetto, “My shift's over in five minutes. Can I get you anything else?” Albert looked her up and down. His expression was insulting. “No sé.” After our angry server had stomped off, I said, “Where are you staying?” “Anyplace I can find, 'mano. You?” “I might know a place,” I said. “You turn me on to blood, I'll share a mattress in the dark with you.”

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“Sounds sexy, you fucking marcena. Don't get ideas.” “In your dreams, asshole. It's almost sunrise; let's get out of here and you can tell me what you have planned.” “I'm thinking you might be up for it too.” He threw down a wad of money. Used-looking bills of small denominations. I wondered where he was getting it. “Well, cool then. Let's roll.”

***** “It stinks down here.” Albert toed the mattress in the corner. “It's completely dark and nobody comes down here,” I said. I'd stopped at the Seven-Eleven and picked up some supplies. We'd popped open Albert's supply of blood and guzzled it down as soon as we'd entered the room. The first rush had passed, and now I lit the thick votive candles and set them in a row against the far wall. St. Jude, St. Joseph, and the Virgin of Guadalupe leaped in shadows and light across the dirty floor. I threw the cheap sheets across the mattress and lay down fully clothed, folding my hands across my chest. My hard-on was raging, but I felt disinclined to do anything about it at the moment. Actually, just the thought of it made me think of Peter and that thought made me feel more sad than sexy. “You sleep much?” asked Albert, pulling one of the broken chairs over and sitting. “No. But I never did.” “I can't sleep at all, 'mano. I have crazy dreams.” Albert reached into his shirt pocket and drew forth a fat spliff. I eyed the thing as he lit it. “You still get high?” His scarred eyebrow rose in surprise. “Sí, why would I not?” “Just doesn't do it for me anymore,” I said, stretching my arms over my head. When I looked back at him he was eyeing my crotch. “You got it bad, 'mano.”

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“Don't you?” He shook his head, inhaling so deeply the joint burned almost to his fingertips. “Don't get me wrong. I'd never say no to a wet pussy, but I never craved it like you did.” “You calling me a whore, Albert?” He flicked the end of his joint on the floor and ground it with the toe of his tight black boots. “You, who will fuck anything? Sí, puta, and you love it.” I wondered if Peter thought this too. I'd never made much of a secret of my twenty-minute suck and fucks around town. I didn't regale him with tales of my exploits, of course, but I didn't exactly lie. Did I? “Tell me about your plan, Albert.” I shelved the Peter thoughts. Useless and painful as they were. “While I was in there, I met a doctor's assistant. He knows their computers. When the mutiny went down, I helped get him out of there. He owes me.” Albert rose from his chair and came over to the mattress, sitting down next to me. “So?” “So it takes a lot of money for Ozone to run something like that, 'mano. A lot of money. My friend, he says all of the money is in accounts that he can find with a computer. He can, how do they say it, ax in.” “He can hack into the accounts?” “Sí, and transfer funds to us. Then destroy the trail. We take some back pay, let's say. Go north. Canada, Northwest Territories, Alaska. You know, they have thirty days of night there, 'mano?” “Thirty days of sun too,” I reminded him. Albert unbuttoned his shirt and let it drop behind him. His shoulders were round and hard and gold in the candlelight.

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My erection was throbbing painfully and I let my hand drop, thumb caressing the hard ridge where it pressed against my zipper. “I could use that information too,” I told him. “Maybe it's all they need to bust Ozone.” “I hear maybe Ozone is dust.” I wish I'd been the one swinging that sword, I thought to myself. “Who's in charge then?” “You still playing cop?” asked Albert. He'd focused on the movements of my hand and his fingers were a play of shadows as he unbuttoned his jeans and drew out his cock. I couldn't see it clearly but the smell went straight to my head. I could barely unzip my jeans, but the moment my cock popped out and I wrapped my fingers around it, I felt that uncomfortable sorrow well up in me again. Breathing faster, supporting his weight with one arm, eyes closed, Albert jerked himself off. I watched him, painfully horny but unable to bear touching myself. When he'd finished, hips jerking and sexy little grunts as his cum dirtied my already filthy mattress, Albert's gaze took in my untouched penis and then traveled up to my face. “What are you waiting for?” “Nothing.” I tried cramming my cock in my pants. I squeezed it hard enough to deflate it a bit, zipped up, and rolled on my side to face the wall. “Just don't feel like it.” Albert made a surprised noise, but in a minute he was elbowing me sideways so that he could stretch out on the mattress next to me. “So, you want to run to Alaska with us, Adam? Pick up your sweetheart and ride with me again, man.” It was a tempting thought. Ride with my brothers again? Open road, nothing but me and the bike and the camaraderie? Fuck the LAPD. Fuck Peter. “I can't,” I said.

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“What the hell is wrong with you, Adam? You in love or something?” “Go the fuck to sleep,” I said. “I'll consider it, okay?” “Women,” snorted Albert. “It's that undercover cop you were fucking, isn't it?” I didn't need to be reminded of my guilt about Alli, on top of everything else. “Shut up.” “Not that I blame you, 'mano. She was hot. I would have gone for her myself but…” I rolled, grabbed him around the neck, and let my face slide into that other personality. The one that slithered and writhed seemingly just below the surface all the time these days. “Shut. The fuck. Up,” I growled. Albert was sufficiently intimidated. “Sorry,” he croaked. His diamond tooth flashed in the candlelight. “'Mano, you just need to get off. Let me help you.” “You touch me, I'll break your hand, 'mano,” I said, and rolled over, facing the wall again. A long silence. The undead can be very, very quiet. It still bothered me a bit. “Sorry, Albert.” I spoke to the darkened wall. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I just need to get the fuck out of Los Angeles.” “That's all I'm saying, 'mano,” said Albert. We were quiet then and eventually I slept. When I woke, Albert was not in the room. The halogen lights in the stairwell were on, their pale blue light illuminating the doorway and, after a minute, I heard steel-toed boots pounding down the staircase. “It's a beautiful night,” sang Albert, coming into the room with his jacket flung over his shoulder like some undead lothario. He was flushed and his black eyes glittered. I staggered to my feet, searching for the pack of cigarettes I kept by the mattress. “You killed somebody, didn't you Albert?” I lit my cigarette.

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Albert averted his gaze and said, “We should hurry; the nights are short this time of year.”

***** I'm a creature of expediency. In the Marines I'd done a few things I didn't enjoy thinking back on, and in Vice I'd bent the rules so far they'd resembled pretzels. With the Mongols, the line between undercover officer and full-out criminal had become progressively vague, but I'd never committed murder. Sure, I'd harbored murderers, broken bread with them. Colluded, supported, and protected them. But it was my line. Or, rather, it was Peter's line. I didn't want to become Albert. I followed him, now, into the downtown loft area. Twenty-three years earlier, artists had rented the old factories and bakery buildings for thirty cents a square foot. Now, those spaces had been partitioned into one thousandsquare-foot boxes and sold for half a million to well-heeled urban professionals with pretensions of artistry. A series of fresh red brick buildings came up on our left. We turned our bikes into an immaculate narrow parking area with a VISITORS ONLY sign that had been enthusiastically tagged and an old man with a shopping cart sitting on the curb in one space. Albert parked near a deck and stairs, designed to look like a loading dock. “Wait here,” he said. Shopping cart guy shambled over. “You got a cigarette?” I shook one out of my package for him. His fingers were red and yellow and chapped at the ends. He took a hardcover cigarette pack out of his many layers of coats and slid my ciggie into it, then sequestered it back among the folds. I had a thought. “You see anybody biting people or drinking blood around here?”

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“You kidding me? All the time,” he said. He was crazy, right? Suddenly I understood the expressions on the faces of the LAPD and ATF agents I'd spoken to in the past couple of days. Albert reappeared, followed by a svelte young Asian boy with gorgeous, salon-cut dark hair, a London Fog duster kicking out from his creased trousers as he walked. A slim black leather case hung over one shoulder. From the way he hefted it, I assumed it held some sort of equipment. Albert placed a hand on the back of the man's neck, which he immediately shook off. “Drew? This is Snake,” said Albert, grinning. Drew looked at my hand when I held it out, but instead of taking it he withdrew the unlit cigarette from his mouth and said, “Whose rod am I riding?” He wasn't a vampire, yet. I could smell him from three feet away. I glanced at Albert and surprised a ravenous expression on his face. “Hop on,” I said, scooting forward on my seat. Drew clung to me as we roared off. His body was lithe and fitted up tight against me and gave off the odor of mint. In my ear, he yelled, “I told Albert we only need to be within twenty yards of the main computer and I can do the rest.”

***** Drew appeared to be something of a vampire groupie. “So, have you noticed a change during full moons? New moons? I have a theory that the vampiric entity is more affected by the changes in the planetary motion than—” “Would you please shut up,” said Albert, pacing. Drew's mouth turned down at the corners. I shot Albert a glare. We needed this guy, right? “I haven't been this way for long,” I told Drew. “So I don't know.” “Interesting,” said Drew. He had wire clippers and cable and seemed to be making some kind of art across the open beams of the room we sat in.

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We'd parked our bikes at the bottom of the steep roads leading up to Ozone's building, threw tarps and then brush over them. I had an alarm on my bike that would wake the dead, or undead as the case may be, but we were more concerned about discovery than theft at the moment. We'd scaled the wall of a house behind Ozone's compound and lifted Drew through the window. We sat now in an unventilated attic. Drew kept complaining about the lack of air, but Albert and I were fine. “You don't need to breathe. I do,” said Drew. “I breathe,” I protested. “Wow, you really are a newbie. You don't need to breathe. You only do it out of habit. I bet when you sleep, you stop.” I figured I'd never sleep again after hearing that. “Who the fuck cares,” said Albert. “How much longer is this going to take?” “I need a tall antenna to use the WiFi at the compound,” said Drew patiently. He stapled another bit of wire to a beam. “You know, the whole subject of vampirism is fascinating. I've interviewed quite a few subjects and I've been thinking of writing a book. I've noticed that the demon, as I call it, enhances the host's, as I call the undead, former human, natural tendencies. Violent people become more violent. Angry people become angrier. Gluttonous people overindulge.” Albert laughed and leered at me, gaze going to my perpetual bulge. I ignored him. “So how dangerous is what you're doing here?” “Those bozos are nothing but tweaked-out users,” said Drew disdainfully. The keyboard on his laptop sounded like a machine gun as he typed. “I told them their firewall was inadequate and they had me plug the leaks, but I'll bet they never changed the password.” A few more clicks as his fingers moved in a blur and he said, “See? Idiots.” He turned the laptop so that Albert and I could

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see the page displayed on the monitor. It looked like a bank account statement. The bottom line was seven figures long. Albert swore. “I have to move quickly or they'll spot me,” said Drew, snapping his fingers at Albert. “Give me the bank account information you have.” Albert handed across a deposit slip and Drew's fingers flew across the keyboard again. “There,” he said. “They have several accounts like this, but I have to dive in, snatch, and run or they'll notice the breach.” “Wait,” I said before he could exit from whatever he was doing. “Can you print out a record of deposits or withdrawals?” “Um, duhh, no printer,” Drew replied in a weary voice. “I can forward a PDF to any e-mail address you want, though.” I gave him Alli's e-mail address. Then, as an afterthought, Peter and Stan's at the Parker Center. “Put in the subject line 're: Adam,'” I said. Drew typed like a fiend and then hit a few keys with finality and shut the laptop. “We should get out of here now,” he said. “Why? I mean, I thought you could hit all the accounts,” said Albert. “Listen, I set up the security on this place. We only have a few minutes and then the computer begins to report a breach. If there is anybody in there with any knowledge whatsoever, they can trace the breach back to our location.” “Fuck, you little shit, you didn't tell me that.” “Well, the odds of anyone there actually knowing how to do that is pretty slim. I'm telling you, Ozone hired meth heads who needed the extra cash, not technically experienced professionals.” Albert froze and held up a hand. “What was that?” “Don't be paranoid,” sneered Drew. “There's noth—” “Shut up,” I said. Sure enough, in the bowels of the house in which we were hidden, a door slammed and voices rose in alarm.

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“Damn,” said Albert, sprinting toward the dormer window and the only means of escape. But it was too late. Like something from a spy thriller, blackclothed men swarmed through the opening. Grabbed the three of us and Drew's laptop just before more of the same popped up through the attic door. The residents of the house, a man and woman and at least two kids that I could see, had been herded onto the living room couch where they huddled, terrified, staring up at the demonic faces. I felt a twinge of regret when the boy watched me being shepherded by. Worse, when we were herded through the back yard, I saw another human on the ground. Too familiar, even on his belly and wearing a dark jacket, for me not to know on sight. Fucking hell. I should have known Peter would be following me. His face pressed into the turf, his eyes rolled up and his gaze caught mine as I was muscled out of the yard and through the gate. “Who the hell was that?” I asked one of the lackeys who shoved me up the stairs to the compound. “Whoever they are, they'll be food soon enough.”

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Chapter Twenty-two “'mano, sit down,” said Albert. We had been placed in the same ceramictiled room with the high-powered vampire-torching beams of light imprisoning us. I had an urge to throw myself at the beams, equal parts desperation and self-loathing I guess, which I was quelling by pacing up and down the ten-foot space. Albert crouched on the floor, head on his arms, bemoaning his fate. “We will be pinned,” he moaned again. “We fucking deserve it,” I said. “Why are they taking so long?” “Probably interrogating the other prisoners,” said Albert. “Or eating them.” This was exactly what I feared and I almost exploded with impatience, hitting the wall, hard with both fists. “Fuck!” I yelled. “Calm down, for Christ's sake,” said a familiar voice. Stan came around the corner and leaned in the doorway, looking in at us with an amused expression. “Oh, thank God, Stan. They have Peter. I—” “You can take full blame for whatever happens to Peter, Bertoni,” Stan said. “You fucking idiot.” To say my heart sank is not to fully express the despair I felt. More like my heart was torpedoed and all men on board were lost. “You've got to do something, Stan.” The oddest expression crossed Stan's face. “You really are that stupid, aren't you?” he said. “What?”

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A big, ugly biker whom I recognized as Thug One appeared next to Stan, his inked arm flung over Stan's shoulder, his mouth bloody. “Hey, man, you sure you don't want a sip? You don't know what you're missing.” “No thank you, Charlie.” There was something wrong here. It only stood on end for a minute, though, before I saw it all clearly. “You son of a bitch,” I breathed. “Oh, please,” said Stan. “You can't talk.” And then we heard a woman scream. Stan looked uncomfortable. “I thought you told me that room was soundproofed,” he said to Charlie. It was completely unacceptable that the one man in the world that Peter trusted was dirty. It was even more unacceptable that I was trapped in a bathroom while just down the hall, people were being murdered. And worse, these weren't just people on the street, or semiwilling victims. These were people I knew. A young boy with wide eyes, a snarky computer nerd. Peter. “You fucking bastards,” I said. “Let me out of here. Let me talk to Ozone.” Charlie wiped his mouth lazily with the back of his arm. “Ozone isn't in charge anymore.” “Ozone lacked the necessary leadership skills,” said Stan. “He's been replaced.” “Bastard!” I hit the wall again. “Settle down,” said Stan. “You're not helping yourself with these theatrics.” “Fuck you!” I yelled, and I picked up the wooden stool and hurled it across the wall of lights. Stan and Charlie jumped back. Charlie seemed to think this very entertaining.

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Stan wiggled his eyebrows in a way that I supposed Peter would have been able to interpret but which only aggravated me further. “He'll calm down when he gets a little hungrier,” he said to Charlie. “Once a junkie, always a junkie. He'll do pretty much anything you want for some blood.” They retreated down the hall again. I found I was breathing hard and remembered Drew telling me it wasn't necessary. So I stopped. I shut my mouth and closed my eyes. Felt the hysteria back down a notch. Enough so I could sort my thoughts out a bit. As far as I knew, Peter and the other prisoners were still alive. Dead women can't scream and Stan had referred to Peter in the present tense. Backup wasn't coming, obviously. But there might still be time for an alternate plan. “Fuck, I'm hungry,” said Albert. “Ese was right about doing anything for a sip, man.” “You just ate last night.” “How long can you go without eating?” asked Albert, surprised. “I had a bad day when I went almost twenty-four hours,” I said. “I almost ate you.” He blinked up at me, and I saw the memory of that night at his trailer coming back to him. “I would have eaten you,” he said. “I think all this twelve-stepping has taught me how to resist temptation,” I said. I'd resumed pacing. Wall-to-wall. This side had the source of the lights, a series of holes that I'd already tried to block with a shoe. Apparently blocking the lights set off an alarm, because four big guys came into the room shortly afterward and forcibly removed our shoes from our feet. “Hey Albert, let's try something.” “Not again, Demonio. That cholo, he almost broke my neck, man.” “We don't get out of here, it's inevitable, right? I saw a dead man once; La Eme had cut off his cojones first.”

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Albert grimaced and, reluctantly, stood straight. “Now what?” “These things run on electrical power, right?” Albert frowned and shrugged. “Maybe.” I looked around the room. “This was a bathroom, once,” I said, running my hands along the tiles. Like everything else in the compound, they seemed to have been laid rather sloppily. Here and there I could feel an unevenness in the way they had been plastered in. “There must be pipes still.” In the position one might find a bathtub faucet, three tiles had been pressed into the plaster, not quite square to the others. I chipped at their edges with my fingernails. “Why you want to find pipes?” “Here, Albert, help me out. We have to knock these out.” We took turns kicking and hitting the wall. Yelling curse words and, when the occasional flunky came by to glare and tell us to shut the fuck up, we took turns standing between the doorway and the damage we were doing to the tiles. After a time, we were able to tear a hole and could see the pipe inside, a metal plug covering the place where the spigot had once been. “Help me knock this off,” I said to Albert, kicking it hard enough to leave a bruise on my bare foot. He pursed his lips and said, “The whole place will flood, man.” “We'll have to direct the water so it hits the lights,” I said. He sighed and moved his shoulders in an expressive gesture for “whatever” and kicked the spigot hard. “Fuck, that hurts,” he said, and did it again. Now when we screamed curses they were in earnest. Soon the water started to dribble out and then I shoved Albert out of the way as the water pressure shot the cap across the room, smack into the opposite tiles, which exploded in a puff of plaster and broken ceramic and spewed all over the room.

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Within seconds, we were two inches deep in water and it was running toward the hallway. Albert and I struggled to withstand the pressure, using our hands to redirect the water until we managed a steady fierce stream trickling down the wall where the lights were. Sure enough, one of the lights sputtered and went out. Then another. Then sparks flew from a couple and they spat glass as they went out. Flames came out of one light, then a flicker of all of the lights, and a moan from the very walls, as if some great beast were dying. Which was true, in a sense, because we'd just short-circuited the front of the compound. The place was suddenly pitched into darkness. Albert swore creatively as we slid and slopped across the wet glass and broken ceramic-strewn floor and skidded into the hallway. “Which way?” he whispered. I figured our odds of survival were about 20 percent to nil. “You go east, I'll go west,” I said. “I've got to get the survivors out.” “Suit yourself, crazy white man,” said Albert, and took off down the hallway. I went the opposite direction, coming out into the main room, where soldiers, brandishing their heavy swords, were mostly accusing each other of sabotage. The room was chaotic with big men shouting loudly in two languages, water pouring across the floor, occasional sparks shooting from outlets. Nobody seemed to notice another big guy sneaking around the edges. I followed my nose, finding Peter's scent in a small room near the kitchen. He had been tied up back-to-back with Drew, who was obviously terrified. I couldn't see the people whose home we had broken into. Perhaps because Peter and Drew were humans, and tied up, only one small thug had been left to guard them. He was easily knocked down. I stole

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his sword, decapitated him with it, and then decapitated another thug who came around the corner. I used the tip of the sword to cut through Peter's bindings. “Can you see at all?” I asked him. “Enough. Did you just cut off a man's head?” “You have to get out of here,” I told him. I'd released Drew, who was a blubbering, useless mess, clinging to me and sobbing. I transferred him into Peter's arms. “There's an exit they leave unlocked, over the kitchen door. To your left.” And when Peter seemed to hesitate, “Save the geek, Peter. He'll give you the evidence you need.” We'd been maybe two minutes and the chaos still raged outside, but somebody remembered the prisoners and came back to check. He managed to cry out an alarm and engage my sword in two swinging arcs, the metal screaming as we clashed. And then they were all on me. I was encircled completely by big ugly bikers waving swords with varying degrees of expertise. At the edge of my vision, I saw Peter and Drew disappear toward the kitchen. They'd need as much time as I could give them to get clear of the compound. I hunkered down in my spot and faced the room. Okay, I'd always known I'd go out in a blaze of glory. Truth be told, I'd kind of looked forward to it. A neat end to a messy life. I allowed my face to go into its “demon” mode, raised my sword. Bring it.

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Chapter Twenty-three Glory is overrated. What followed was mostly a lot of work. Blood and pain, as some bastard got in a lucky stroke and opened up my left biceps. Embarrassment when another son of a bitch clipped me in the head and I cried out like a kid. A few dumbass, and in other circumstances, really humorous moves as we all tried to handle the big, weirdly balanced swords. I planted mine accidentally in a door frame and that was that, I figured. I was a goner. Some Angel came at me, laughing. His mouth open so wide, I could see that the only teeth of his that weren't rotten were the biting ones. I couldn't help but throw my hands up before me, like that would do any good. Suddenly I saw a blade cut through his red neck and dirty yellow hair and he exploded into dust. Freeway stood behind him, looking disgusted. “Mierda, 'mano, why do they do like that?” “Freeway!” He ducked, just avoiding a swinging sword blade. His face was all broad smile and wild eyes. That stupid black sombrero pushed back on his head. “Get your sword, you pendejo bitch!” he yelled, hopping and swinging his sword in a wide arch as he yelled, taking a man in the belly. I planted a foot on the wall and managed to jerk my sword free. “What are you doing, Freeway?” I asked, jabbing at a biker's woman who had gotten hold of a sword and seemed to be doing a fairly good amount of damage with it. “Back off me,” I said, poking at her again.

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Freeway grabbed the woman around the waist and threw her across the room. She fell into a sofa covered with blood and ash. “I got your back, mi her'mano,” sang Freeway. He spun and caught a big black man in the ribs with his blade. It was the last thing I ever heard him say. Because at that moment, Hell happened. A wall of the compound lit up. As if a light had gone off inside it. Half a second later, every object in the room near the wall seemed to lift and float. The light grew larger. A dozen other smaller lights bloomed around it. And then the lights went out.

***** “You stupid fucking bastard,” said Peter. His face was white and smeared with ash. Starlight danced behind his head, the strobe of LAPD and EMT vehicles throbbing off every surface. I could feel his hand on my face. No pain, though. “Am I dead?” I asked him. “Jesus.” He looked up and away, blinking the shine from his eyes. I felt his fingers carding through the cowlick at the front of my hair, rhythmically. “What were you trying to do?” Had I, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, passed out at the Marina and, just now, come to? “I just had the strangest dream, Peter. You were there and…I…fuck, you wouldn't believe it anyway.” I tried to sit up, but a pain in my chest pressed me back to the ground. “Don't get up,” said Peter. Turned out the pain was his knee where he knelt on me to keep me supine. “The medics found you first and when they saw you weren't breathing they brought you out. I just managed to stop them carting you off to a hospital.” Oh. I hadn't dreamed any of it, then. I was lying on my back on the damp lawn of Ozone's compound. The entire LAPD, it seemed, was working purposefully around me.

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“What happened?” I asked him. His hand was still in my hair, petting. It was both unbelievably soothing and the most erotic thing I had ever felt. “Your Asian friend and I fell out the kitchen window right into the laps of a SWAT team. Seems your friend, Alli, called the troops.” He grimaced. “Topnotch cop, that woman. Read some file you sent her, did the math, and called my boss.” “Your boss?” “Stan set it up,” said Peter, his voice bleak. “This joker, Ozone, was paying him to tamper with the evidence. It could have been years before we connected the dots.” “And by then they would dominate SoCal,” I said. “Where's Stan?” His jaw clenched. “Dead. He… one of the others bit him.” Peter placed two fingers on his own neck, in the position of probable puncture wounds. “He was cold and drained when I found him. But SWAT hadn't secured the area, and I needed to help them press towards the rooms at the back.” He blinked. “I still can't believe what we found back there. When I came back to Stan, he was gone. There was ash everywhere…” “I'm sorry, Peter.” “You know, I knew. When you told me Stan was undercover, I knew. It didn't add up. But I couldn't let myself see it. Instead, well, I figured you were up to something and I tailed you.” He petted me, thoughtfully. “I saw you go home with Alli.” Fuck. “I needed a place to crash. Nothing happened.” “You don't need to explain to me.” “Yes I do.” He looked down at me and away. Sirens wailed and drifted into the night. “Stan's wife won't even have something to bury,” he said.

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***** They'd be sorting through the mess for days, but Peter managed to expedite my necessary involvement so that I could leave before the sun rose. We walked through the scene, examining what was left. The flood water had washed through the entire front of the compound. Swords and muddy, wet ash lay all over the gleaming white tile. There was a remarkable absence of blood, considering. A uniformed SWAT officer came into the room from one of the hallways, talking to someone. “…at least a hundred in these rooms. All showed signs of extreme blood loss.” He stepped into the room, followed by Alli. “Any IDs?” “None, and quite a few seemed incoherent.” “High-grade heroin,” said a familiar voice. Albert appeared behind Alli. She smiled at me. “Your friend secured the entire back of the compound and then just waited for us to move in,” she said. “It was very impressive.” “Can I talk to you a minute?” I said to Albert. He followed me into the kitchen while Peter chatted with the others. “What are you up to?” I asked him. “She's a beautiful woman and she thinks I'm machismo, 'mano. What can I do?” “Keep your bloodsucking hands off her, Albert.” He looked at me with wide, shocked eyes. “Or I'll march out there and explain why you were able to subdue a room full of terrified human males single-handedly.” “Can't a man fall in love?” “You can't.” “If you can, 'mano, anybody can. Relax. She saw me 'el diablo,' shall we say. In my other face. She didn't even flinch. What a woman.”

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“Just remember, anything happens to her and I'll hunt you down.” “I believe you.” We joined the others again. Albert showed them through the kitchen, explaining some of the apparatus there. Peter and I went down the long hallway, stopping when I indicated the cubby area I'd lived in for all those weeks. Not much had been touched since I'd dug through the chest of drawers for Caballo's sword. Peter's a detective. He looked down at the pile of clean boxer shorts still lying on the floor and asked, “What happened to your roommate?” “Last I heard he was somewhere on the streets of Los Angeles.” He absorbed this without comment. We moved on, through a door that had always been locked, to a wide lounge area. A blood cow… Christ, excuse me, a woman lay there, a thermal blanket covering her and an EMT in attendance. She was shaking violently with the cold, but alive, an IV dripping liquid into her arm. Her skin so pale it was almost blue. Well, we'd saved one of them, at least. “There was a family,” I said to Peter. “Mother and father and two kids.” “They were here in the back too. Multiple bite wounds, but alive.” I felt the relief wash through me and had to sit down. A tossed ottoman lay in a puddle of muddy water. I flipped it upright, thinking, as I sat, that I was going to have the stain on my slacks forever. The ash doesn't wash out. Maybe because it's evil. I don't know. “You feel okay?” His hand on my back. Thumb lightly stroking the nape of my neck. Peter had never been openly affectionate in public places, especially surrounded by his peers, but he didn't seem to even care about the EMT personnel or the smattering of officers stalking through the room. Maybe it was the warmth of his hand, maybe the fact that I'd been sure I'd never see him again. Maybe I'm just a horny old leatherneck and I'll never change.

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Chapter Twenty-four There's no excuse for what happened next. But there were circumstances, as they say. I followed Peter's Mustang to his house and went to park my bike where I always did. But there was a fucking beach cruiser there. “Peter! Some brat parked his bike in your yard.” He came around from where he'd locked the Mustang in the garage. “Oh, that's Jonathan's beach cruiser.” A lime green, fat-assed kiddy trike, with a handlebar basket, was parked in the spot reserved for my Harley. I mean, you understand, right? Because Peter didn't. “Don't start,” he said, and walked right past me to open the back door. I didn't even wait for him to lock the back door. “Mrmph,” he said, when my mouth covered his, door banging as I slammed him against it, trying to feel every inch of him at once. “Adam,” he gasped. “Stop.” Of course I ignored him. His buckle came loose in my hands, then the button at his waistband. The skin of his neck was salty and I could smell his cinnamony blood up under his left earlobe. His hands found mine and impeded me when I tried to pull down his zipper. “Stop,” he said again. “No,” I said, and stuck my tongue in his ear. He groaned; his hips moved toward my hand, and I pushed down the zipper, feeling one of his hands sliding up the back of my neck and into my hair.

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“Adam,” he moaned. “Please…” “God, yes,” and I dropped to my knees, drawing his thickening cock from his boxers. His hand covered himself, gasping for breath he said, “Adam. No. Stop.” The blood I'd drunk after the fight was pounding in my ears, my chest, my cock. I stared up at him, trying to understand what he was saying. He smelled like musk and something clean, and of the earth, and blood… “I need you,” I said. “No you don't.” He zipped up his pants. This was incredible. Beyond belief. It simply couldn't be happening. I rose and grabbed him with both hands and stuck my tongue down his throat. He responded. I could feel the groan, feel his tongue battling mine. I lifted him and carried him in a half circle into the hallway where I pressed him against a wall and humped myself against his stiff erection. “You want me,” I whispered in his ear. “Tell me you want me.” Before he could say anything, I covered his mouth with mine again. When I pulled my mouth away, now, he surged up to meet me, his hands grabbing my neck and turning my chin to give him greater access. I pulled off his slacks and dumped him on his bed, legs spread in only white socks and the partially opened dress shirt. I don't remember pulling off my clothes. I pressed the lube in and he opened up to me easily, almost sucking my fingers in, fucking himself on my hand while I fumbled with the condom. My cock felt like it would explode before I could even get myself inside him and then I was lost in the sensation of pushing myself into Peter over and over and over. I came and then rocked on the afterswell of the orgasm for a while. When I pulled out I could see that he hadn't come. He was still semierect, his balls swollen.

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I kissed the back of each thigh. “Roll over,” I said. He rolled onto his side, facing away from me. “No. I'd rather you didn't.” “You didn't come.” “I don't want to.” Okay, you're with me here, right? Because obviously Peter had lost his mind. “What do you mean, 'I don't want to'? Who doesn't want to come?” So I pushed him over and swallowed him in one gulp. Well, he pushed at my head a little but then he spread his legs and arched his hips and obviously he'd come back to his senses because his cock swelled in my mouth and pretty soon he was moaning and gasping and gripping my hair like the reins of a horse while riding my mouth to orgasm. I sat back feeling pretty damned pleased with myself. Peter looked properly fucked. His body was pink and glowing, his heart still thumping hard, his nipples little brown knots in the midst of his hairy chest. His eyes were dark and narrow and shining and he yanked the sheets up over his lower body and said, in a voice that sounded weird, “Leave me alone, Adam.” Am I nuts or did that not make any sense? “What?” “Go. Watch the game or something. The news. I'll bet the bust is all over Channel 4. Just leave me alone.” “What?” “Get out of my bedroom and shut the door behind you!” said Peter. He didn't shout, Peter seldom shouts, but he had a shouting attitude. And then he gathered up his sheet and rolled onto his side so that he was facing the wall. “Okay.” So I did what he asked. I found a beer in the refrigerator, I sat down on the sofa and channel surfed until the “Special Bulletins” started showing up on the news. Then I watched the sports recap and about twenty minutes into that,

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Peter's door buzzed. Peter was still sulking, I guess, in his bedroom, so I hopped up and said into the intercom, “Yeah?” “Um, it's Jonathan. Is Peter there?” I almost said no, but hey, I didn't, okay? I pressed the buzzer and when Mr. Lime Green Beach Cruiser showed up I let him in the door. Then I went back to my spot in front of the set with the remote. “Peter's in bed,” I said. Jonathan looked toward the bedroom door and then back at me. “Um,” he said. I flicked past a couple more channels. He was still looking at me. “What?” I asked him. “Um,” said Jonathan. Christ, for a college kid he didn't have much of a vocabulary, did he? “It's really none of my business, but…” Okay, I just have to say, when has anyone ever prefaced a statement with “it's really none of my business, but” and then said something nice? I mean, has it ever happened to you? No, I didn't think so. “What?” I snarled. The kid did a blinky thing like I had threatened him or something. Geez, if he only knew. “Um, I mean, seeing as we're both friends of Peter.” “Really? How long have you and Peter been fucking? Or, sorry, I mean, how long have you and Peter been friends?” Now he understood where I was going; his jaw got a hard look to it. “A month.” “Wow, well that definitely puts you and me in the same position as regards Peter. I've only known the guy for fifteen years.” “And what does he have to show for it?” asked Jonathan. “Except a lonely bed and a lot of heartache?”

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I flicked off the set. “What did you say?” I had to give the kid credit. Even not demonic, I outsized him by about fifty pounds and a good four inches. But when I stood up and towered over him, he planted his feet there and stretched out his skinny little neck, chin thrust up, and said, “What kind of a life do you think Peter would have liked to have? His sister and he are close. She's married, with a couple of kids. His parents are still together. He still corresponds with his tenth-grade English teacher. Would you expect a man like that to be living alone in a one-bedroom condo at this point in his life?” That set me back on my heels. I'd never thought about it. “I never thought about it,” I said. “Of course you didn't,” sneered Jonathan. “Peter deserves somebody to come home to. Somebody to share his life with. Instead he has…” “That's enough, Jonathan.” Peter stood in the entryway to the living room. He'd thrown on that shabby flannel robe of his and stood bare-legged, one white sock hanging a little too long in the toe. Jonathan took it in in a glance. “I can't believe it,” he said. I swear to God, the kid's lip actually trembled. “I can't believe you actually had sex with him again.” “It's not his fault,” I said without thinking. “He tried to stop me.” This didn't seem to make it better. On the contrary, Jonathan's eyes widened dramatically, his mouth dropped open, and he pointed like the proverbial accuser at a witch trial. “You let him force you?” Now you can do a lot to Peter, but he doesn't take well to humiliation. I could have told Jonathan that, but he was in full melodramatic song by then and could not be stopped. “Have you no self-respect?” he cried. “Now, hang on a minute,” said Peter. “It's like you welcome abuse!” said Jonathan. Peter's eyes got that glint. “Jonathan…”

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“Hey, this wasn't abuse. He enjoyed it,” I said. Peter's gaze snapped to me, dark and dangerous. “Shut up, Adam.” “Well, you did.” “I didn't want to enjoy it,” said Peter to Jonathan. “But you let him do it anyway. Oh my God! You let him fuck you, didn't you?” Peter was mad. I could tell by the way his mouth got small and tight. That tension just below his eyes. “I really don't think that's any of your business.” “Oh no? Because I think it is. You haven't allowed me to touch you like that, have you? But this bastard shows up after weeks away God knows where without a word—” “Hey, only saving the city from bloodsucking—” “Shut up,” they both said to me in unison. “And you let him fuck you,” Jonathan finished. His high cheekbones were flushed pink. “Really?” I said to Peter. “You haven't let him…?” “Shut up, Adam,” said Peter and Jonathan in unison. Peter faced Jonathan with an expression that made homicide suspects weep. “You think you've been cheated out of something?” Say no, I mentally counseled Jonathan. Stupid kid crossed his long bony arms across his chest. “Something like that.” Peter spoke, distinctly and slowly. “Maybe you just don't do it for me.” He jabbed his thumb toward the door. “Out.” Jonathan looked flummoxed for only a second. “Fine.” I swear to God he flounced as he exited the room. “Call me when you decide to kick your addiction, babe,” he called out, slamming the door behind himself.

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I was left alone in the room with the remote in my hand and a very, very angry Peter standing in his stocking feet with his arms crossed, glaring at me. “You really didn't let him fuck you?” I couldn't help it. I wanted to bounce and do a little dance. “You know what, Adam, Jonathan was right. You're selfish. You are a selfish son of a bitch. And I must not have any self-respect to let you keep coming back here again and again.” “You love me, Peter. You know you do.” Okay, I knew better than to say that, but the stupid territorial hyena in my soul was still doing that little dance. Yay yay, Peter fucks only me… His expression was as if I'd slapped him. “Peter, I'm sorry. I'm… I don't know why I say these things…” “Get out of here,” said Peter. “Get out of here, Adam, and this time, don't come back.” I heard him lock the door behind me.

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Chapter Twenty-five Not to belabor the obvious, but I'm not given to carefully considered introspection. On the contrary, what would pass as “thoughts” in my head would probably read as wildly bouncing Ping-Pong balls to most. Even the monster growl of dual carbs between my legs, working her through the traffic, couldn't calm the wildly careening thoughts; I think it's fair to say that my emotions, not my misfiring brain, drove us all the way up the 1 to the bluffs overlooking the Malibu surf. If I had died that night in the Marina warehouse, Peter would have been better off. I swear this had not occurred to me until that moment. Or, better, if I had died in Iraq. I think the only reason I didn't drive into the sea or just sit there waiting for sunrise was I wouldn't allow myself to damage my Harley. The old bitch didn't deserve me any more than did Peter. Instead I made my way back to Hollywood, parking in the spot I'd found and diving into the corner of the lower subbasement of the Motion Picture Academy Archive building like an animal going to ground. I was down there for a while. Okay, if there are any undead reading this, a word to the wise. Don't try to starve yourself to death. The survival instinct kicks in and your ability to discriminate erodes with every passing minute. Pretty soon you'd suck blood from a rat if you could catch one. So when I heard footsteps on the concrete stairs coming down to my level, I didn't even consider who it might be or why; I only considered how to immobilize them quickly enough to feed.

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Whatever he was carrying fell to the ground when I grabbed both his wrists and twisted them behind him, shoved him against the wall, and planted my fangs on his clean neck. Clean, cold neck. Clean, cold, undead neck. “What, no kiss hello?” rasped Caballo. I drew back. I could drink from him, but it wouldn't satisfy me for long. “I smell blood,” I said. “On the floor.” Caballo was able to work his way free. He pointed at the containers that had rolled over by the mattress. About fifteen minutes later, I swam up from the haze to find myself lying on the mattress, two empty blood containers and a smiling young man beside me. “Shit, man. When did you last eat?” “The night of the big bust.” Caballo made a face. “Idiot. You should have called me. I'd have hooked you up.” His skin was sleek and plump. He'd lit the candles that I still had standing along the wall and his round muscles shone like a young god's in the light. He lay a hand, experimentally, on my thigh, but I moved away. I might be ready to drink blood, but sex was still too remote and painful for me to think about. “Where have you been getting your blood?” I asked him. “Your computer geek,” said Caballo. “He's got some kind of medical license so he can buy it wholesale.” “Drew? Isn't he in jail?” “He cut a deal. We work together now. Betsy and him and me. We are the 'Righteous Ones.'” “Sounds like a comic book,” I observed dryly. “I came to ask you to help us. Those two, they can't fight worth shit, man.” “I'm really not interested in vigilante justice,” I said. “Thanks for the offer.”

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“It's not vigilante, we offer a service. For a fee. Drew figured it out. He has a whole sliding scale and everything. We are like bounty hunters, man.” “Skipping bail shouldn't result in having one's blood sucked,” I said. I rolled over on my stomach and said to the wall, “I just want to be left alone.” “Man, Betsy said you'd be a dick. What else you gonna do with eternity, man? Lay here in the dark feeling sorry for yourself?” “That was sort of the plan.” “Well, that plan sucks. Eternity is a long fucking time, and you got an obligation. You could be dead.” “I had kind of hoped to be.” I was surprised by a sudden hard slap on the back of my head. “Selfish prick,” said Caballo. He rose and walked off, flinging a couple of slim cardboard cards at me. They fluttered near my feet and I picked one up. It was a business card. White on black with a cell phone number. “Call me when you feel like being a man,” said Caballo. It seemed his ascending footsteps echoed in my little room for a very long time.

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Chapter Twenty-six Eternity is a very long time to sleep on a mattress that smells like a wino's urine. I hauled my sorry butt out into the night the next evening to find a new mattress. Or, at least one that didn't stink or have bugs. Since resale of used mattresses is illegal, it was an easy acquisition. The local junk yard wasn't open, but I heaved the thing easily over the fence, leaving the freaked and insane guard dogs frothing and yowling behind me. I found a wooden table in there too. And a couple of chairs. Then I slipped an envelope under the door with a decent amount of cash. I didn't give my actions much thought. I have found it easiest not to question myself, and so I didn't. I went to a surplus store and found a small, gas-powered generator for sale. A couple of khaki-colored wool blankets. A cup and a plate. The following night I went to a 7-Eleven and bought a magazine to read by my tiny lamplight. And an ashtray. You can make a huge pile of ashes in an eternity of smoking, you know. The third night I bought a broom. The fourth night, I bought a prepaid phone and called Caballo. “I've been thinking…”

***** “So how'd you get sucked into this?” I asked Caballo. He and I crouched on the rooftop of a Public Storage warehouse. The night was almost bright as day. Streetlights reflecting off the marine fog created an eerie illumination much like a black light.

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He'd changed from his ubiquitous white T-shirt into a black one and wore fingerless gloves. The scabbard of his sword slung over his back. I knew that somewhere on his person he'd sequestered other arms, as had I. But they were only backup. Our real weapons were ourselves. “Betsy,” said Caballo, and grinned. “That girl can't shut up, man. Pretty soon she's got me feeling every po' little black child in America needs my help. Crazy bitch.” Across from us, the door to another warehouse opened. A figure emerged. Stout and, from our angle, seeming very short. He was soon followed by a slim figure whose high heels clacked loudly on the concrete as they walked. “That's them,” said Caballo. Still in his crouch, he crept toward the lip of the roof. “How do you know?” I whispered. He grimaced. “I can smell it.” He ran a few short feet and, silent and swift, leaped over the side of the roof. I followed. It was so easy I was almost embarrassed. Caballo held the man while I forced his companion back into the warehouse where she seemed almost eager to show me the tapes and photos and computer equipment they'd been using to broadcast their garbage to the world. Flash a little demon visage at a pedophile and it's amazing what they'll tell you. Caballo enjoyed sucking the man's blood and spitting it out on the ground for a while, until the guy started to get dizzy and realize where this would end. The woman had fainted dead away a couple of times. Something about the way I smiled at her with all of my fangs seemed to do it. They were practically begging us to drive them over to the place where they'd hidden the boy. Caballo made a call then, and Betsy showed up. In a dark suit and prim little bun, carrying a handbag and looking just like an angel

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of mercy from social services. She took the boy's hand and led him to the nearest police station. Caballo turned his bloody smile back to the man. The woman fainted again. We chucked them in the back of the truck and I followed Caballo to Parker Center, where we left them tied up on the steps, a tidy box of evidence nearby. As we were leaving, I saw a small crowd of people swarming from the station, exclaiming at the delivery. A man in a suit with sandy hair looked up and over when I started my bike. Peter's gaze met mine. “Let's get out of here,” I said to Caballo.

***** “You okay, man?” Caballo sat at my wooden table, watching me pace. We hadn't bothered with the lights. “Yeah. Sure.” “You did a good thing tonight.” “If you say so.” I lit a cigarette and tossed the match three feet to land precisely in the center of the ashtray. I'd had time for a lot of practice lately. “So you wanna fuck?” he asked. “No, thanks.” “You're so hard you're gonna bust.” He indicated the thickness between my thighs. “I'm on the wagon,” I said. “My dick gets me in more trouble than it's worth.” Caballo gave me a wise look. “Eternity is a long time, man.” “Eternity is an illusion. I'm taking it one day at a time.”

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“Suit yourself.” He got up and went to the door. “So, about the gig with Betsy and the geek. You in?” “Sure,” I said. “What else do I have to not live for?”

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Chapter Twenty-seven You'd think I'd feel a little better about things after that, but the next night I woke in my familiar slump. I didn't rise off the mattress, turn on the lamp, or even light a cigarette. I just lay there in the dark and felt myself drift like a mote of dust. Immortality. It's like fog. Sometimes it's thick and sometimes it's thin but it never moves anywhere. It has no agenda, no definite goal. It just is. I was lying on the mattress, imagining I could hear the gaping maw of the giant, uncaring universe, when I did hear, very definitely and not my imagination at all, a man's footsteps on the stairs. A human man, or at least the smell of adrenalized blood, and the rapidly thumping heart would indicate that. By the time he'd reached the last riser and turned toward my room, I'd recognized Peter. He stopped in the doorway. His familiar silhouette. “Hello?” he said, scanning the room with his flashlight. The beam didn't find me as I was crouching in a corner. He stood there for a minute. Then I heard him sigh. He turned as if to go. “Wait,” I said. My voice sounded weirdly rough. “Adam?” “Hold on,” I said. And I went over and turned on the generator. It hummed for a minute and then the two lights switched on. Peter and I stared at each other. Fuck, he looked good. His expression was impossible for me to read. But then he blinked and looked around, swiveling on one heel. “You cleaned,” he said. “Sort of.”

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I hadn't made that much of an effort. There was that stack of boxes in one corner that might have been there since ABC studios kept their film vault here. I'd only shoved them to the side. I saw his gaze go from the boxes to the mattress to the table I'd found. “You don't have to live like this,” he said. “I'm not living,” I said. “I am maintaining my undead existence.” He gave me a quizzical look. I didn't want to explain my whole moral conundrum, the flat fog of immortality, to him because it was embarrassing and too melodramatic. I should have known that Peter would figure me out without me having to say a word, though. “Well, if you think you need to be miserable, I'm not going to argue with you,” he said. “But if you want me to come down here again, you'd better get a sofa. A radio, maybe. To listen to the game.” Something warm made itself known inside me. Something small and glowing and fragile. Like a tiny light. “Okay, well, I guess if you want to come down here.” “Figured since you've been kind of out of the loop, you wouldn't have heard. But we finally got the DNA back from your CI's wounds. And those other bodies we found.” “You ran DNA?” That was Peter for you. Thorough. “Yeah. It wasn't yours, of course. We still haven't got a match on it.” “You might try the Mexican database, I heard a few things.” “Thanks. I never thought it was you.” “I know.” “But I figured you'd like to know that nobody else has to wonder either. If you were worried. Oh, and I brought something for you. Hang on.” He sprinted out the door; I heard him as he climbed all three flights and then, after a few minute, came running back down. He jogged into the room carrying one of

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those coolers you'd take to a football game under one arm, an office file box under the other, and set them both down on the floor. “You'll have to supply your own ice, since you haven't got a refrigerator yet…” “Yet?” He dug around in the cooler and brought out a neat, labeled bag of blood. “Something good may have come out of all of this. That doctor of Ozone's really has come up with a viable artificial blood. According to the medical people I spoke to. They aren't ready to release it into the general population yet, but a friend on the inside is willing to supply me with a few bags every week if I want.” He handed it across to me. I held the cool, soft plastic in my hand and could smell the goodness of it. He watched me expectantly. “Aren't you going to try it?” “Peter, I can't… not in front of you.” “Oh right, suddenly you're concerned about my sensibilities? Adam, I've seen you sitting on the can.” “When I'm that sick, I'm past caring.” “Or that time you blew chunks all over the inside of my car…” “That wasn't intentional, for Christ's sake.” “Peed on my leg.” “I begged you to stop tickling me!” “Spit beer at my sister…” “She dared me…” “But you can't drink a little harmless artificial blood. Fine. Go off and do your thing. I'll just hang out here and wait.” So then I had to sit down right there in front of him and puncture the bottom of the bag with my special teeth.

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I don't know what I expected. It had been a while since I'd tapped straight from a vein. Fact was, Caballo had done most of the work the night before because I didn't trust myself that near a human. I expected the crappy stale artificial blood I'd grown used to. And I was going to be grateful for it. I was going to smile and say “yum-yum” at Peter no matter how hard that was. But this stuff was fantastic. It curled up around my brain just like buttercream frosting, and I didn't even notice anything else until the sound of someone sucking hard on an empty plastic bag brought me back to myself. Peter sat across from me with an impressed expression on his face. “You suck like a Hoover,” he said. I laughed, realizing belatedly that I probably had blood on my mouth. “Jesus, that was good.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand, feeling embarrassed. “Oh, and I brought you something else.” Peter pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table. It was one of the new ones. With the games and the e-mails in it. “I can't take that.” “I'm sorry, I insist. If you're going to work for me, I need to be able to get hold of you.” “Work for you?” “I need your help.” And he reached into the box he'd brought down with the cooler of blood, lifted up a file and set it on the table. “Bring your chair around and let me show you what I have.” So I dragged my chair around next to him, leaning on the table, our arms touching. He opened the file. “We had a rash of these murders in Long Beach. All outside clubs. Prelim hasn't found anything to relate them, and the victims don't seem to have anything in common, but I still wonder…”

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Peter's got the instincts of a bat. He can feel the cave walls. I took the files from him, that tiny warm glow growing just a little. Here I was thinking I was useless and Peter came along and just made it all go away. “I'll see what I can find out. I might know a guy who can help.” Peter chuckled. “You always know 'a guy,' Adam. I've never understood how you find these people.” “It's the charm,” I said. “Nobody can resist me.” “God knows I can't.” His eyes were dark blue. He had that little smile. He smelled so good. Fuck. Without even willing it, I leaned into his neck, smelling him. Then I jerked myself back. I was hard. Throbbing, panting, barely in control. The same stupid animal that Peter had kicked out of his condo that night. “Christ, I'm sorry, Peter.” He looked at me in a kind of surprised wonderment. “Sorry for what?” “For…” His lips were parted as he watched me struggle for words. “Can I kiss you?” “Since when do you have to ask?” Of course, never. Peter has never, ever denied me what I wanted from him. “I don't deserve it.” “You don't deserve it? What about me? What do I deserve?” Better than what I can give you. Better than a dead man who wasn't that great even before he was dead. That feeling of confusion, of needing to get away came over me. I got up and started moving around the room. I felt like mist, like smoke. Like I'd blow away. “Something better.” He watched me with that steady dark gaze. “Stop it, Adam.” I stopped pacing and stared at him. Fifteen years it had been. Peter watching me, waiting for me to stop. Waiting for me to…

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He got up from his chair, took my hand, and led me to the mattress. Sat down and brought me with him. “Kiss me.” Nobody's mouth tastes like Peter's. I pushed him back onto the mattress. Leaned over him and studied his face. The shadow of his beard coming in, the way that corner of his lip turns up more than the other. The lashes beneath his eyes are very short and reddish. He has three and a half freckles on his face. The half looks like a tiny smile. I know Peter's freckles so well I could name them, like stars. A little grin appeared on his mouth. “What are you doing?” I was generally the aggressive one. Dragging Peter into the bedroom. Or not even bothering with the bedroom, bending him over a bar stool. Dropping his pants as he tried to do the dishes and giving him a rim job. Laughing when he broke a plate. This time, I felt weirdly maudlin. I stripped him slowly, until he was down to his blue boxers, the little gold crucifix glinting in his chest hair. I touched it. “Shouldn't that burn me?” “Maybe it only works if you believe in it.” His hand caressed my hip. “I believe,” I protested. When Peter's really turned on, his eyes go so dark blue they're almost black. They were black just then. “Sure you do.” “Shut up.” I leaned down and covered his mouth with my own. We kissed, our tongues pressing against each other. He bit at my mouth, teasing, and I bit back. His hands slid beneath the elastic of my briefs and I helped him push them off. Then he rolled, so he lay across me, his cock jabbing at my belly. Wet trailing behind it. I grabbed his tight little butt. “Peter?”

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“Yeah.” He rocked on his toes, sliding back and forth, a kind of stupid grin on his face, eyelids half-shut. His cock bumped my balls on every other thrust or so and all I had to do was arch my back a little and I could feel him catch against my knob. Then he got his head down, in my neck, and the frottage was in earnest. He moaned my name. It sounded almost prayerful. I knew every square inch of this man, every erotic zone, every bruise. My fingers moved up his neck into the short hairs there and I knew this neck, these hairs, better than my own. “Peter,” I whispered. “Gonna come,” he said, into his rhythm now. The furze of curling hair and the wet hard flesh and his heat all rubbing up against me faster now until he shuddered and came in little frantic jerks against my belly. Then it was slick there and warm and smelled like spunk and I was gone too. “Hey,” he said and I felt his lips against my cheek, his hand. “Hey, there, what's this?” “Nothing. Dust from the ceiling fell in my eyes.” I rolled out from under him so I could wipe at the wet on my face with my arm. “God, I missed you,” I whispered. His hand on my shoulder. Peter knew better than to say anything, until I'd regained a little self-control and could sit up, light a cigarette. Casual as hell as if I hadn't just had a meltdown there. “How'd you know I'd be here?” I asked him. “I didn't. I've been all over town looking for you.” There was something about the way he said that. “What?” I asked him. He propped himself up on one elbow. “I talked to Alli.” Okay, I hadn't expected that. He rolled off the mattress and went to his coat, drawing out a letter-sized envelope and handing it to me. “I spoke to the

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ATF field agent in charge and he's agreed to relocate her to Toronto. New ID, full recommendations to the liaison up there. He says he'll make sure she's set up.” You see? Look at him, he's a saint. Then look at me. Not so much a saint. “Thanks, Peter.” He shook his head. “She deserves it. Hell of an agent. She asked me to give you this.” He handed me the envelope. Now, me? I would have opened it and read it first. But I knew Peter well enough to know he hadn't. Alli and I are alike in a lot of ways. Her letter was brief and to the point. Albert and I just couldn't make it. We had great fun trying, but sex isn't everything. Not like you and Peter. You asshole. Why didn't you tell me? I've decided to stick with men who still have a pulse. It's just simpler. You ever find yourself in Toronto, you might want to cruise around the embassy and see if a familiar hot brunette is there. Don't fuck it up, Snake. -AI folded the letter over and over. “You talked about me.” “It's what we had in common,” said Peter. “Don't worry, we didn't say anything nice.” “Oh, thank God.” “She did tender a little advice,” he said. “Advice about me?” My mind started spinning, trying to recall anything I might have said or done around Alli that would put that devious expression on Peter's face. “You know, I'd never put it in an official report or anything, but that woman is a psychopath, Peter. Who knows what goes through her head. Once, she—”

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He grabbed my chin and shut me up by means of his tongue in my mouth. When he released me he said, “You were saying?” “I don't remember.” His eyes were soft, sparkling, and two inches from mine. “Let's take all of our clothes off this time.” Later, he said, “You know what Alli said? That she'd always thought you were a cold bastard until she saw the way you looked at me.” God. The artificial blood was an adequate supplier of oxygen and when it rushed to my face it made my head pound. “Women romanticize everything. I was probably thinking about something else altogether.” “Yeah, that's what I told her. 'Don't read too much into that meathead's facial expressions,' I said.” He laid his cheek on my chest, rubbing his face against me the way he would sometimes before falling asleep. I combed his hair over and over with my fingers. “Peter?” “Yeah, buddy?” “Um, it's none of my business, but…how's Jonathan?” He was quiet for a second. “Oh,” he said. “Jonathan.” I can't tell you how it twisted inside me, but I managed to say, “He's not so bad.” “No. He isn't.” Peter pushed himself up and got hold of my chin with those strong fingers and looked me dead in the eyes. “But he's not you.” “I thought that was the point,” I protested. “Adam?” A glare that made bad guys squirm. The effect on me was similar. “Yeah?” I whispered.

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His mouth was warm and determined and knew exactly what it wanted. I couldn't have resisted him if I'd tried. But I didn't try.

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Glossary ¿Hermano, que onda?—Brother, what's happening? ¿Quién como es éste?—Who the hell is this? Snake es muerto—Snake is dead. Petiso de mierda—piece of shit Usted me hizo mear—You scared the crap out of me Pinche—Asshole Mi usted hizo palo—You're making me hard. No me importa dos cojones—I don’t give a rat’s ass. ¡El Demonio! La caminata muerta—Demon! The walking dead. ¿O es usted un fantasma?—Or are you a ghost? Mierda—Shit Sí, cuate—Yes, buddy Cojale—Fuck you. Pero, sí, usted necesita culear—But yes, you need to get laid Puta—Whore Marcena—Faggot Mi dios. Me maldicen al infierno—My God. I'm damned to Hell Maldita puta—Damned whore Parezco un grifo—I look like a junkie Tetorras—Big breasts Nalga de angel—Angel's butt

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Gandul—Lazy one Diablo—Devil Marcena del inferno—Faggot from hell

Other fun facts:

In Mexican mythology, vampires are female and rise from Hell to eat babies in their cribs.

“What is truth?” Albert is quoting the bible, John 18:38

Other Loose Id® Titles by A. M. Riley The Elegant Corpse INTERLUDES What to Buy for the Vamp Who Has Everything (featuring characters from Immortality is the Suck)

A. M. Riley A. M. Riley is a film editor and sometime poet, living and working in Los Angeles, with an interest in paranormal, erotica, and anything that tests established boundaries. Find out more about the author by visiting http://www.amriley.net/.