The Nightlife: Las Vegas (The Nightlife Series) (18 page)

Michelle’s sing song voice and loving affection seemed to
help, the meaning of love conveyed.  Ana relaxed, fully sated on sex, venom and
way too much liquor.

She worried about her new pet.  Poor Anastasia had been
neglected, abandoned, and obviously in painful withdrawals.  With Aaron gone,
she would be so very lonely without Ana. 
Must take better care of her in
the future.

“Demarco!  She needs food and drink!  Now!”  She growled at
him through the open sliding glass door.

“Fuck!  What the fuck now?”

“
Morceau de merde, va te faire enculer!
”  
She cursed him.

Her patience with their antics evaporated as she started
coming down off the heroin for the first time in many hours.

* * * *

Though he didn’t understand her words, Demarco caught the
menace in her voice. 
Better get my sorry ass movin if I want to keep it in
one piece
.  He hopped to and took off down the hallway back towards the
kitchen yelling, “I got it coming.  I got it.”

He brought soup and a sandwich for Ana and set it up on the
back patio dinette table.  Michelle carried Ana out of the water, stripped her
ruined dress off and wrapped her in one of his white terry cloth bathrobes. 
Ana ate her fill like a good little drunken pet.

Oso had recovered enough to get up out of his lawn chair and
fix himself a sandwich, opting to sit with Michelle and Ana at the table.

He shot Oso a
what-the-fuck-are-you-doin
look, as if
he were a traitor who had joined the rival gang.  Oso shrugged his massive
bruised shoulders, “Que paso?  Tengo hambre guey.  I’m hungry.  Leave me
alone!”

Michelle glanced at the both of them staring each other down
and snapped at Demarco. “Go cover the windows in your bedroom.  No light.  Not one
sliver of sunlight. 
Maintenant
!
”
Now!

Shaking his head at Oso, he jumped up and did as ordered.

Michelle carried her half asleep pet into his bedroom, laid
her gently on the bed, and turned on him.  “Tomorrow we find Aaron!  Go to my
room at the Caesar’s Palace and gather all the luggage.  Bring it here.”  She
handed him a room key from the hotel.  “Have this ready by sunset.”

With this she crawled under the covers next to her pet and cuddled
up, ignoring him completely.  He considered himself lucky to be rid of her
attentions.  If he ever let her sober up, he’d be in for it big time. 
I’m
gonna have to maintain this psycho bitch on a perma-high.

He joined Oso out in the hot tub, relaxing away his aches
and pains.  Oso shook his head.  “She ain’t been gone ten minutes, and I wish
she was here right now, suckin on my neck.  Me estas chingando Essay.  She got
me hooked.  I know she got you too.  What the fuck we gonna do?”

“I don’t know.”  He ran his fingers through his hair,
thinking.  “We gotta keep her high.  As long as she’s busy fuckin and suckin,
she ain’t trying to drag us off to look for the punk.  And who knows what she’s
gonna be like when she’s sober.”

“She’s gonna kill us if she finds out what we did to the
punk.”  Oso shook his head again.

“You think I don’t know that?  We oughta just kill her right
now!”

“Fuck you Essay.  I need what she’s got.  You ain’t touching
Michelle!  You hear me?”  Oso splashed water at him as he pointed his finger,
dead serious.  He’d never seen Oso so vehement about anything, or anyone.

“Well aren’t you the big man?  You think you can tell me
what to do because you got her suckin on yo neck?”

“You in the same way as me.  Don’t tell me you ain’t thinkin
bout goin back in that room right now to wake her up so she can bite your ass
all day long.  Don’t lie to me Essay!  I know you in this shit same as me.”

“We should get rid of her.”  Demarco tried staring him down.

“Look at it this way.  If we keep her around, imagine how
much money we can make off her ass.  She fucks all night long Essay.  And they
all gonna want another taste of what she’s got.  We find us some rich gringos
and we milk those putos for everything they own.”

“Yeah I been thinkin about that too.  You think we can
control her if we keep her high?  I think she’s already got a tolerance to the
china white.”

“So give her more.”  Oso shrugged his massive bruised
shoulders.  “I’m tellin you, a couple rich high rollers get hooked on her, we
gonna have all kindsa money.”

“I think you’re right.  That’s exactly how we do it.” 
Demarco nodded his agreement.  He didn’t feel anywhere near as confident as he
sounded.

“What we gonna do when Juan Carlos gets here tomorrow
night?”

“Shit!”  He’d conveniently forgotten about all the other
responsibilities in his life. 
What the fuck am I gonna do?
  He tried to
project a semblance of self-possession to Oso.

“We gotta find a way to make it happen.  I’m sending Miguel
back out to the desert to get rid of Camacho.  We’re gonna have to shoot her up
real good before she wakes up.  Maybe take her with us.  She can wait in the
car with the other puta.”  He spoke with a conviction he did not feel.

Oso shook his head again, not falling for the bravado.

* * * *

Chapter 18

Aaron awoke with a heavy, drowsy feeling and a horribly dry
itchy thirst.  His mind was clouded and groggy.  He couldn’t think past the
overpowering instinctive drive of the predator pushing him to get up and go. 
He lay in the dirt near a patch of dry brush, a hillside a few feet away.  He smelled
the arid aromas of cactus and weeds.  The mineral tang of dust floating on the
desert breeze coated his tongue.

He heard rustling nearby in the bushes.  A rabbit took off
running at the sound of a coyote’s yipping and barking.  The predator’s
unshakeable will and instinct goaded him to rise to his feet. 
I’m sooo
tired.  Let me go back to sleep
.  The predator would not let him be.

He arose looking around him.  His vision wouldn’t focus
properly.  He kept going blurry, tracers of color following every movement.  He
couldn’t see a single building or sign of civilization.  Nothing but desert and
scrub brush.  A set of tire tracks leading off into the distance provided the
only clue as to how he had come to this place.  The predator seized on the
tracks as a pathway out and kicked Aaron into action.  Groaning with the lazy
effort his lethargic limbs put forward, the predator forced him to jog through
the desert following the tracks.

As he ran an intense anxiety overtook him.  The predator
knew the sunrise was coming, he had a powerful compulsion to run and hide.

He ran dirt, rocks and brush sliding past in a blur.  He ran
faster, losing sight of the tracks as they twisted around the hills and washes. 
He spun and backtracked.  Dirt and more dirt swirled in his vision as he fought
to focus on the tracks.  The predator urged him on. 
Faster, faster, we can
go much faster than this.  Go now
.  He finally reached a low rise where he
saw the blurry black line of the highway several miles away in the distance.  He
also saw the light in the sky signaling the impending sunrise.

His body screamed with tension and fatigue.  He needed to
find a place to rest – a sanctuary – but there was nothing.  No immediate
shelter to be found.  He looked about frantically, trying to find something,
anything to hide from the sun.  He spotted a sliver of shade at the lowest
point of a water drainage washout at the bottom of the hill.  The coming light
would not reach those shadows.  Yet.

His exposed face and hands burned in the UV of the
twilight.  The rest of his body covered by clothing itched as though the dim
light penetrated right through the fabric.  He raced downhill and dived into
the shaded wash, terrified of what would happen in a few minutes when the sun
came up.  He suddenly recalled something Michelle had once told him of her days
in France during WWII.  She mentioned she’d been forced to hide in ‘holes in
the ground’.

He realized what he must do and began digging frantically into
the side of the dry creek bed.  He dug with both clawed hands, flinging dirt
out behind him.  As the sun breached the horizon, the line of shade receded. 
He had tunneled four feet into the sidewall of the creek bed when the sun ignited
the back of his legs, blazing in ultraviolet glory.  He screamed in agony as his
legs blistered and smoked. The stench of his own burnt flesh invaded his
nostrils.

The predator’s primal survival instinct took over, punching
a massive surge of raw power through his body.  His pain lessened to a degree
from the intense adrenaline rush that was the predator in full control.  He
rocketed into high speed boring into the earth at super human velocity.  The
thick cloud of dust and sand flowing out behind him helped to obscure the sun
as he dug in deeper and deeper.  When the dust finally settled, he’d burrowed
fifteen feet in with several inches of loose dirt covering his entire body.  He
lie submerged in the darkness, his only exposure to the air being his mouth and
nose for breathing.  He passed into the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness to
sleep like the dead in the bottom of his hidey hole.

* * * *

Demarco began to feel withdrawal effects at around 11:00
a.m. as he unrolled the door to his storage unit where he kept several kilos of
heroin and cocaine within a safe.  In another safe he held over $150,000 cash
used for
transactions
or emergencies.  He considered pulling the $50,000
now for his half of the deal with Juan Carlos, but he hated carrying that kind
of cash around.  He decided it best to return later in the evening.

“Cash later, but these babies are goin with me right now.” 
He grabbed both of his matching Desert Eagle .44 magnums, setting them aside.

He had expected to feel some kind of hangover as a result of
last night’s excesses, but he hoped it would be mitigated by the Oxycontin he
brought along. 
Two 40 mg pills should do the trick
.

As his hand shook and his head pounded, he complained aloud,
“Oh shit.  That woman is somethin else.  She’s got me strung out like a god-damn
hype.”

Headache, nausea, cold sweats. 
Yep, I’m a damn hype for
her bite
.  “Shit!”

He sat down for a few minutes trying to relax and give the
Oxy’s a chance to kick in.  Soon enough the opiate buzz began to chase away his
aches and pains. 
I need a nap
.  He wanted to catch a good six hours of
sleep.  Not happening.  Michelle’s “TO DO” list had to be met.

He weighed out a kilo of the china white Michelle had become
so fond of and wrapped it up in wax paper.  Working the scales, he toyed with
the idea of giving her a killer dose of a whole gram or more in hopes she’d hit
the floor doin’ the funky chicken like anyone else. 
Probably wouldn’t work
. 
Not only would she survive, she’d probably castrate him for trying it.  Even
worse, she might actually like that large of a dose.  Then he’d really have a
psycho bitch on his hands. 
Better to take my chances with the evil I know
rather than risk the unknown.  That creature is way too volatile.  Don’t wanna
end up like Camacho.

Besides, if she died, how would they get what they needed? 
That wonderful little bite of hers, he wanted it right now.  “Oso wasn’t lyin. 
That bitch got me hooked.”  He wanted to rush back home to her right this
minute. 
It’s a ‘catch-22’.  Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Feeling nice and fuzzy on the oxy’s, he lay down for a quick
cat nap on the futon in the storage unit.  He had a little home away from home
setup.  He figured he could shake off enough fatigue to get through the day.

He awoke to the buzz of his cell phone.  
Kramer––Shit!
 
Ignoring the call, he checked the time.  
Shit––2:30! 
He rushed off to
meet Oso at the hotel.

* * * *

Oso avoided Kramer as he packed up Michelle and Ana’s stuff
in the hotel room.  He packed all of Aaron’s things as well.  He didn’t want to
disappoint Michelle, and she didn’t know he wouldn’t come back.  He had a
healthy fear of incurring Michelle’s wrath.  He did his best to anticipate her
wishes ahead of time.  She had him hooked hardcore.  Hard to believe how drastically
his life had changed in one night.

The Oxycontin he took earlier started to wear off.  His bruised
and beaten body let him know just how much it hurt.  He popped the last two 40
mg pills Demarco had given him and sat down at the wet bar in an effort to calm
the panic attack brought on by withdrawals.  He felt a sickening need to bolt
for the door and get back to Michelle.  A wholly irrational need.  He downed
two shots of rum from the mini-fridge and snorted a fat line of coke for good
measure. 
That’s better
.

As he sat there in chemically induced happiness, it hit him
like a smack to the face. 
Aaron moved really fast, just like Michelle.  He’s
the same thing as Michelle! 
He’d seen Kramer’s video footage with Demarco
yesterday afternoon.  Aaron was one wicked son of a bitch in a fight.  It all
started to make sense how Aaron tossed Miguel around like a lightweight. 
He’s
a fuckin bloodsucker!  I gotta tell Demarco!  Holy shit, is he even dead?  The
‘Special K’ and the blowfish toxin probably didn’t kill him!

Oso almost fell off his barstool with the realization.  Just
when he thought he was completely fucked, imagining Aaron barging through the
hotel door to tear him a new asshole, he recalled Michelle’s thing about
daylight. 
She can’t handle the sun.  She’s dead asleep right now, and so is
he!

Oso leapt out of the barstool with a yell of triumph,
throwing his fist in the air.  “Yeah motherfucker!  Eat sun!”