Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (31 page)

I backed off and wiped at my eyes. When I opened them, I had only a second before the boy was on me, pummeling me with his fist before stabbing me with a hypodermic needle.

Silly kid.

He screamed. I grabbed his throat, shutting him up. He kept plunging the needle in pricking at my flesh over and over.

“Those veins don’t really work anymore.” My face shook as I spread my jaws.

“No!” Another voice screamed. His father.

I had no sympathy or nostalgia for family, not while my friend was watching his sister bleed into a machine in a secret cave lair. I dropped the boy with one swift bite to the head. He fell to the ground with a thud and half his brain rolled from his skull, tracking black and wet across the ground.

Mr. Cleaver dropped to his knees, his head thrown back and howling as though tortured.

“Do you expect us to feel sorry for you, man?” I walked toward him. Wendy flanked me. “With what you’ve been doing to these people?”

“It was for the good of mankind.”

“What? You gotta be kidding me, right? It was for the good of your bank account.”

“No.” His voice was soft now, measured. “That was strategic.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We were hunters. Slayers. Vampire killers. The taps were our bait. The best blood around and once the vampires got a taste, were they ever willing to pay for it. We knew they couldn’t afford our prices unless they went in together on the bill. It was always going to be a
large coven that kept a tap. After the deal went through we’d stake out their spots and take ’em out one by one. Made it look like werewolves were doing it, had to keep up the stereotype that those fuckers were uncontrollable.”

“Well that’s just sick,” Wendy said. “A bunch of crazy-ass Buffys probably killing just as many people as they did vampires and calling it noble. I’ve seen it all now.” She walked over to the table and started checking out the machine.

I pointed at Honey’s body. “What do I need to do to let the girl go?”

He looked up from the floor then, sneering. “Perhaps you could eat shit.”

“Uh … only as part of the whole package, but not separately, that’s just gross.” I kicked him in the head and he fell back, scuttling off into the dark like a crab. When he reemerged he brandished werewolf claws in each hand and a triangular bruise from my shoe on his forehead. He snarled, as if he were an actual werewolf. The effect would have been laughable—particularly in the light of his olive sweater vest and dress shirt— had the light not glinted off those terrible nails.

He lunged and I fell back, turning, readying myself to run.

A shot.

And then Ward’s body hit the ground next to mine, blood and gray matter pouring from a tennis ball-sized hole in his forehead.

Fishhook emerged from the darkness, Honey’s gun in his hand. “You ruined my plans, you know?”

“No we didn’t,” I said. “We just changed the buyers. Seattle has plenty of lowlifes that will be clamoring for that stuff. You could probably cut a deal to keep a supply coming from Madame Gloria’s place.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

I half expected some sort of attack, but the man just spun the gun around and handed it to me.

Fishhook took Honey’s pulse, as neither Wendy nor my fingers were sensitive enough. “It’s there, but fading.”

Wendy had disconnected the girl from the machine during the final showdown with the insane dad. Blood still dripped from the various tubes into little puddles around the cart. Honey was pale as death and Mr. Kim wailed in pain.

It was too much.

I seriously liked Honey, the girl was tough, didn’t take shit from anyone. And we all know I love her brother. But could
I
do it to
her?

It.

Could I force this undead afterlife on a nineteen-year-old girl? Might she not be better off passing on to wherever it is dead people normally go? Mr. Kim’s eyes suggested that was the right course of action. He met my gaze and darted away, only to come floating back.

Just let her go, I thought.

“She fit in so well,” Wendy whispered.

“She did.”

Before I’d even made up my mind that I was going to give her the breath, my hand was moving to her face. For the second time this trip, I was asphyxiating someone, this time someone I’d grown legitimately close to.
¹⁶⁰
Her body began to convulse, her throat constricted.

I leaned down and let my lips hover over my hand
and let go. Honey gasped with every bit of strength and will to live that was left in her.

I exhaled.

The tentacles of white smoke filled the space between our lips, lapping at her cheeks like tongues before forcing their way down her throat. I clutched my sides and squeezed pushing every ounce out of me with such force that another rib cracked, or simply moved— the bone was probably already broken in the fall.

When it was over, Honey lay there still. Fishhook checked her pulse again, but this time there was nothing.

I was beginning to think I was too late when …

Honey’s eyes snapped open and a pink flush burnished her skin, probably for the last time. She sat bolt upright on the slab and stared into the dark.

“Dae-Jung?” A tear rolled down her cheek.
¹⁶¹

“Hyon Hui? You can see me.” Mr. Kim’s eyes darted toward me, but did not meet my gaze. Ashamed that he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

I suspect.

“I can see you. I can totally see you.” Honey beamed.

Fishhook climbed up the rocks toward the cave to the surface.

Wendy and I hung back, opting for a view of the reunion.

“If my damned tear ducts worked I might actually be crying right now,” I said.

She scowled at me. “Well you are weeping from all those needle jabs, that’s gotta count for something.”

“Totally.”

“You
were
pretty bad-ass,” she said, brushing my now shoulder-length hair away from my, apparently, injured face.

“Self-defense is for pussies. I prefer a good old fashioned offense.”

“Mmm hmm, girl.”

“Hey, no one cuts my hair, without giving me a mani/pedi first. It’s just not right.”

“Amen.”

So, you’re probably looking at that chapter title and thinking—or possibly even saying aloud
¹⁶²
—“Epilogue? But they’re still in South Da-fucking-kota. What happens? What kind of crazy antics do the girls get into on
the way home?” And … oh yeah, you’re totally including Gil in that, when you ask it.

Well the truth is a whole lot of stuff went down on the way back and since then. Some of it’s for other books and some of it’s for right now. So here are some postcards from the road trip back, just so you’ll feel special.
¹⁶³

1.
Rapid City, South Dakota to Cody, Wyoming (of all places)

• We packed Scott, Randy and Darryl (yes, all three alive and healing) into the camper and made the decision to drive only at night. That way Ethel and Gil could actually do something other than congratulate each other on being the most fabulous creatures ever. Gag.
  
• Our first stop was Devil’s Tower, which looks like absolutely fucking nothing in the middle of the night, and certainly not the hotbed of alien light shows, as I’d been led to believe by an overzeal-ous Wendy in full-on tourist/U.F.O. geek mode.
  
• In Sheridan, we stopped for a bite to eat and to gawk at the world’s largest spool of human intestines. Quite an achievement for the elderly curators of the attraction, Roberta and Gregory Walthers, who were so damn cute I would have eaten them had they not been a couple of rotting corpses. Still, I highly recommend the joint. That bobbin was totally huge and Roberta made us some bomb-ass meat margaritas.
  
• Somewhere atop the Big Horn Mountains, west of that big Indian tourist attraction named after a wheel, Gil nearly tore the car apart trying to get out and pee. I know what you’re thinking: vam pires don’t pee, right? Well get some bad blood in ’em and watch ’em go. He screamed through out the entire thing and the steaming puddle looked like autopsy run off, swear to God. There’s a lesson for ya. He never did figure out where he got the bug, but I suspect it was that creepy hitchhiker back near Sheridan.
  

2.
Cody, Wyoming to Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park

• Were you aware that Wyoming has drive-through liquor stores and cocktail lounges? Well they do. It’s the weirdest thing, but so convenient, particularly when you’re driving cross-country three vehicles deep. So. We were at this one in some town that could barely support a grocery store— but sure enough the liquor store was open
  ¹⁶⁴
  — when a car pulled up behind us. Gil and I were in the Volvo, while the rest were sorted between the RV and the Mustang. Well, we have a big order, obviously, and the guy behind us starts honking. I mean crazy honking like he’s got somewhere to be. When Gil got out to confront him he pulled away. He was driving a blue Dodge Dart. Keep that in mind, it’s important, later.
  
• Yellowstone was magical, the scenery is amazing and we did run into a pack of werebison that
  were hospitable and worked as seasonal help for the lodges. Nice kids.
  

3.
Old Faithful to Jackson Hole, Wyoming

• Gil let me in on the Oatmeal Scotchie incident while we watched a predawn geyser explosion at Old Faithful, said it reminded him of the experi ence, which—you’d be proud—only made me gag a little. It seems Markham played a trust game with his associates. Scott denied it, but I suspect he might be covering up. Apparently, Markham was an enema freak, but rather than water or something equally hygienic he used oat meal—something about the way it “squished”.
  ¹⁶⁵
  Well, if he was dealing out millions, he’d demand that his business associate play a game of “hold the oatmeal” (the “scotchie” came about as a re sult of the massive amounts of single malt the Beaver King consumed and always seemed to be toggling in a lowball). They’d stand over metal tubs and hold that breakfast food inside as long as they could, before finally … well, you know. Can you believe Gil told me? It’s like he wanted Oatmeal Scotchie as a nickname.
  

4.
Jackson Hole, Wyoming to Boise, Idaho

• Thank God for Jackson Hole, it was the first real shopping of the trip, though unfortunately for Wendy, they had a Häagen-Dazs. I kept my promise and my mouth shut. But most of that
  day Honey and I were alone, if you know what I mean.
  
• The town was important for two reasons. Honey had her first solo meal there and I bought the cutest dangly silver earrings. We were watching an antler auction—which I’d never even heard of—and this guy plunked down a ton of money for a stack of antlers. While I watched that, Honey ran into this weird guy, who tried to talk her into getting into his BLUE DODGE DART. Well, I’m not one to hold a kid back from her life lessons so I egged her on. The fucker thought he had us, too. Probably was planning to kidnap her or something. Instead, two got into the car, one got out. You know the story.
  

5.
Boise, Idaho back to Seattle

• Boise had a Macy’s. Do I need to go on?
  

So there you are, just a few snapshots. Now we’ll move on to a proper epilogue. I was getting tired of remembering the trip anyway.

Scenery. Scenery. Food. Scenery.

The Pretty Princess Party Palace appeared to be a fairy tale, complete with streaming pink pennants and the ability to stimulate my gag reflex. Coming into view from the bottom of Queen Anne Hill, its flesh-tone spires poked from the trees like erections from a thatch of wild pubic hair, appropriate considering the Starbucks across the street was filled to capacity with foggy bespectacled child molesters when we arrived, each drooling into his cold drip coffee, while rows of little girls filed across the Palace drawbridge, giggling. Some skipping.

Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead near such a theme park atrocity, but with the holes in my cheeks gaping like hungry mouths and the cave in Wendy’s gut whistling with every step of her spiked heels—not to mention the pungent aroma of garbage scow wafting off her—I didn’t have a choice. Scott and his boys were good as new by the time we rolled back in to town. Some of us weren’t so lucky.