P Deutermann - Darkside

Julie didn’t say anything. Ev gave her a full minute. He heard another car go by over the cell phone. “So call me if your grand plan doesn’t work out,” he said finally. “In the meantime, I think you’re out of your depth.” Then he hung up before she could reply.

Man, what a great night. Perfect night. Caught those two cops down in my tunnels, snooping around. They just happened to come past while I was on my way to see the girls. That security officer and some black guy. Waited for them to get far enough away, then retrieved one of my toys, a game victory rocket. I keep some shit like that down there, hidden in my stash. Set it on the deck plates, ignited the fuse, and watched her go, down that tunnel at the speed of fucking heat. And smoke? Man, was there smoke. Then I had to boogie because the fire trucks came to see what set off the smoke detectors. Taught those two who owns those tunnels, and it’s not the Dark Side, not by a long shot.

Better than that, I scored another vampire strike out in town. Had to use Krill, and you know she’s not much in the bait department, except for those amazing breasts. Hope that doesn’t offend you. But I needed to do it again. Hell, even vampires have needs, right? Better yet, I got the same black guy who’d been fucking around in my tunnels earlier. He thought he was chasing skirt. He ended up chasing me. Big fucking mistake. You’ll hear all about it-soon. Or maybe you won’t.

Dark Side’s gonna be really pissed about this one, and you know how they get when there’s a really big fuckup, right? They get real quiet, don’t they? No foursquare ethics for them, are there? As if we won’t find out. We always find out. They’re so pathetic with all that morality and ethics shit. I guess it’s just for the classroom, right? They’re running scared about lots of shit just now, so close to hat day. Problem is, I’m really liking this shit, you know? They’re so helpless, especially if they think those two clowns they sent down last night are going to catch up with my ass. Never happen, baby, not down there. And, actually, now there’s only one, isn’t there? But you haven’t heard about it yet. Let’s see if you even do.

Krill was perfect. Got the dude to trail her out of the bar, just like before. I’m slinking along in the shadows, across the street. Eased into Penfold Lane, where there’re no streetlights, only those fake gas lights every fifty feet. Nice and dark. Then she slows down, backs up against a building wall, and then-this was so cool!-She lifts the top half of all that black bag fabric, and suddenly she’s bare from the waist up. I mean, this is a great scene. The black dude, he is focused, man. Hell, gotta admit, I was focused. Krill is a regular Humpty-Dumpty, but she is something up top. She lets him look, and then, when he gets close, she squats down, starts undoing his belt, rubbing the side of her face up and down against the front of his pants, and he gets all groany and moany. While the vampire Dyle approaches from behind. Dude’s so hot by now, I thought I was gonna have to say something, but then, just as she’s tugging his zipper down with her teeth, he detects me. Turns his head, but his body doesn’t follow, ’cause Krill’s still working him up. I do my thing-the big hiss, the roar, the whole bit. Guy freezes, mouth open wide, dinner-plate eyes, total shock. I can smell the booze on him. Then Krill jerks his knees forward and he goes down backward like a ton of bricks, cracks his head on the concrete before I can do a thing. Starts to bleed, man. It looks bad, but then I remember head cuts bleed a lot. Anyway, we book. Get back to her pad for some afterglow. Krill’s so excited, she-well, I guess I don’t have to describe it in detail. Let me just say it was worth the trip, all around, even with Krill. Especially if that guy was some kind of cop, which I think he was, going down in the tunnels with that security dude. I’ve never done a cop, but he was scared shitless, just like all the rest. Something about the brain seeing something it fears and freezing up the part that thinks. Something to remember when I get to do this shit for a living. Minus the cape and the makeup, of course. I really love this Jekyll-Hyde shit. Superstraight by day; Dyle the cop-banger by night. It’s dangerous, it’s exciting, and the girls get so hot, I can’t believe the things they want to do afterward. You know. And nobody around me suspects a thing-not my classmates, not my company officer, not the faculty dweebs, nobody. Only you know the truth, and you have no reason to tell anyone, do you? Because then I’d stop telling you these things. Admit it, now, you’d miss that. I know you’d miss that. I know you better than you think.

Jim rolled over and pushed the light button on his Timex. It was 5:45. Saturday morning, if he remembered correctly. He groaned and rolled back over. He could hear the wind rising outside and the first patter of rain on the deck above the master’s cabin. The boat was beginning to move around a little, and he could hear the rubber fenders compressing and then exhaling against the hull. He mentally reviewed the mooring lines, then decided to go back to sleep. At which point he heard the railing gate open and then slam back into place as someone very definitely stepped on deck from the pier. He remembered he hadn’t reset the alarm. He tried to listen harder, but a blast of rain swept across the harbor and drowned out the sounds from above. He had a bedside light on and was reaching for his bathrobe when the door to his cabin swung open and Special Agent Branner was swiping her hand along the bulkhead, looking for the overhead light switch, which she found much too quickly.

“What did you do with Bagger Thompson?” she demanded.

“And a brilliant good morning to you, too, Special Agent. What are you doing aboard my boat and in my bedroom at this ungodly hour?”

He could focus his eyes now, and he saw that she was soaking wet, her normally perfect hair bedraggled and her skirt plastered to her thighs. She saw him looking at her body and swore impatiently. “Get your ass out of that bed, Hall. I want to know what you and Thompson were up to last night.”

Jim, who slept naked, sighed audibly and obliged her. He walked over to the head without looking at her and went in and closed the door behind him. When he came out, she wasn’t there and the lights were on in the main lounge. He put on his bathrobe, grabbed a dry towel, and went through to the lounge. She was sitting in his favorite chair, looking like an angry wet hen. He tossed her the towel and walked through to the galley to fire up the coffeemaker.

She’d made some superficial repairs when he came back out into the lounge and handed her a mug of coffee. She’d taken her soaked suit jacket off, and he manfully tried not to stare at her very wet blouse. Jupiter started bitching under his cage cover.

“Sorry,” she muttered into her coffee mug, not looking at him.

“Start at the beginning,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Bagger turned up at Anne Arundel General this morning at around zero two hundred,” she said. “Someone cracked his skull. He’d been drinking, apparently, which, I can tell you from personal experience, he should not do. He’d told me earlier that he was going out with you on some kind of ‘recon mission,’ as he put it. Your turn.”

“Shit,” Jim said, and then gave her an abbreviated summary of the night before. He left out the part about the Goth girls.

“Guinness? You fed him Guinness?”

“He fed himself Guinness. Hey, he’s an adult, okay? He’d had two and was talking about a third as I was leaving. I actually warned him about that stuff. How bad’s he hurt?”

“Bad enough that he hasn’t surfaced yet. Thanks to you.”