Flying Solo, part 1 (of 3)
Title: Flying Solo
Rating: NC-17 for graphic sexual, vampiric feeding, and death scenes
Word Count: 3410
Disclaimer: Silver Pictures owns Moonlight. I just love it and play with the characters.
Author's Note: This story is a follow-on to "Turning Day" and "Mick's Education." It's set in early 1953, a few months after Mick's marriage to Coraline.
I warn you that Mick is not a nice person in this story. I see this stage in his vampire life as analogous to adolescence in humans: he's impatient, arrogant, stupid, and prone to disastrous mistakes. He's also self-centered, thoughtless, and pretty much unaware of the concept of responsibility. He learns some things in this story, but they're not really the kind of things I wanted him to learn. :(
Los Angeles, February 1953
Mick was working out a particularly tricky melody on his Gibson when Coraline finally came out of her bedroom, trailing a cloud of perfume. (She didn’t allow anyone, even Mick, to see her upon arising from her freezer until she had bathed, applied her makeup, and dressed. Some nights it was two hours past sunset before she emerged.) He didn’t raise his head when she opened the door of his studio. She stood there, poised in the doorway, waiting for him to acknowledge her; but he just kept looking at his hands on the strings, repeating the musical phrases over and over until each one was flawlessly smooth. He knew she was there; he just didn’t feel like jumping every time she snapped her fingers.
Finally, she grew tired of waiting for him to look up and said, “Good evening, baby.”
“Hi. Sleep well?” he said, not looking up.
“Yes, like the dead,” she said dryly. “What’s your problem?”
“Problem? No problem,” Mick said to his guitar. “I’m just…working on something.”
“Oh. Well, I thought we could go out.”
“Um. No, I’ve got plans,” Mick said, finally looking up at her. “Dinner plans.”
“Oh? And what might those be?” she said, with a touch of ice in her voice. Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m going hunting by myself tonight.” He turned back to his guitar and played the whole song from start to finish. It was perfect. He turned off the amp and put the guitar away.
Coraline looked at him assessingly. “And who says you’re ready to go hunting without your sire?”
Mick’s chin went up a fraction of an inch. “Me.”
“I see.” She crossed her arms and leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe, blocking his exit. “Somebody’s cranky…”
Mick’s chin went up a little more. “Not at all. I’ve just decided that I’m sick of always…being supervised. It’s time for me to test my wings.” He crossed his own arms and leaned against the inner edge of the doorway, his face inches from hers.
Coraline tilted her head to look up at his face. Her eyes were silver. “Huh.” She put her hand on his shoulder and slid it up to the back of his neck, smiling faintly at him. Her strong fingers massaged his neck muscles along the base of his skull, and Mick felt himself relaxing, head bowing in an automatic response to her touch. It was hypnotic, the sensation of her hands moving against his neck. He lost the impetus to move, to do anything but relax under her rhythmic, soothing hand.
After a minute, she pulled his head down for a kiss. Her carmine lips captured his, moving sensuously against his mouth. Mick stood with closed eyes, feeling the sensation of her smooth lipstick, the slight scratch of her fangs, the wet flexible strength of her tongue. She sucked his lower lip between her teeth and bit it-hard.
“Uh…baby…” he groaned. “Don’t…”
She chuckled, low in her throat, and licked the blood from his lip. After a moment she gave him a last, lingering kiss and stepped back, out of the doorway. “Well, my fledgling, you’re a big boy; maybe you should go.”
Swallowing a mouthful of his own blood, Mick walked through the door and stopped in the hall next to Coraline, his hands at his sides, his eyes looking down. “OK.” Then he took a breath and looked into her eyes, which were dark again. “So I’m going alone.”
She nodded. “OK, baby. Let’s see how you do.” She reached up and straightened his collar. “You know the ropes. Don’t do anything rash, and if you have any doubts, bail out and try someone else.” She shot him a pointed glance. “Right?” The word snapped like a whip.
“Right.” He turned and took a step toward the staircase at the end of the hall.
“Hey,” she said. Mick stopped and turned mutely to her. Yes, Coraline, you win. I’m your slave. My freedom goes only as far as the leash you dole out.
She rubbed the lipstick off his mouth with her thumb. “So what’s your plan, mighty hunter?”
“I don’t know; go out, find a victim, have some dinner, maybe go to a club, come home.”
“Hmm. Some plan. A club, huh? Call me if you get lonesome.” She gave him a little smile, then turned slightly away, releasing him.
Mick hurried to the stairs and descended to the front hall. He scooped up the keys to the coupe from the bowl on the entryway table and escaped into the night.
* * *
Once in the car, his sense of freedom returned. He’d been so sure of himself before she came into the studio. He’d been sure this was the right thing to do, that he was ready; god-he was so ready to hunt on his own! But then she’d looked at him with that mommy-vamp look, that calculating stare that said, are you really strong enough? And suddenly he hadn’t been so sure that he was.
The car sped down the winding road toward Hollywood. Coraline’s house-his and Coraline’s, legally speaking-was nestled in the Hollywood hills, and the city lights spun lazily below him as the car twisted down the hill toward the flat. This time of year, the Santa Anas blew all the smoke out of the air and the lights sparkled like gems. The city was beautiful, and it beckoned him. Come play, the lights shimmered.
So what the hell was he going to do? He hadn’t thought it out this far. He had been focused on getting out on his own, making the break. Now that he was out, he needed to figure out how to do the job right, do well enough that he could go again.
So. Find a victim, have some dinner, maybe go to a club. Where to find a victim? He wasn’t stupid; he knew he needed something relatively simple for his first. No elaborate setup, nobody who might scream and run, draw attention. Somebody who’d seen it all and was a little…inured to the vicissitudes of life. Somebody used to going with a strange guy on a dark night. Of course.
He drove south, toward a street his musician friends knew well. A street lined with little bars and smoky clubs, with lots of girls willing to give a guy a good time for a few bucks. The only problem was, he needed to be sure he didn’t see anybody he knew. He’d had a lot of friends who hung out here, before. When he was alive.
He drove slowly down a few blocks, scoping out the scene. It was early yet, only about ten, and the streets were still relatively busy. He turned the car onto a side street. Most of the hookers stuck to the busier street, but there were two girls on the corner. He could pick one up and drive a few blocks into the tree-shaded neighborhood to do the deed. Or maybe she’d have a room. Some of them did. Yeah, this was a good enough plan, it’d work.
He drove slowly around the block, pulled up next to the two girls on the corner, and rolled down the passenger window.
“Hi girls, know anyone who’s looking for a party?” The girls strolled over, putting on a show of hip-swaying to catch his eye. They both leaned into the open window. The shorter one smiled and squished her ample breasts together, accentuating her cleavage.
“Hi big boy, I’m always ready for a party. You buyin’?”
“Maybe. There’s just one of me though, so…” Mick raised an eyebrow and smiled at the hooker who’d been just a little too slow. “Sorry. Maybe another time.”
“You don’t know what you’re missin’, honey,” she said, and went back to her post on the sidewalk. The big-breasted girl opened his passenger door and hopped in.
“So what did you have in mind?”
“I dunno, do you have somewhere for us to go?” Mick looked over at her. He could take a couple of pints and she’d never miss ‘em. He fought the urge to change right there in the car.
“Sure, I got a room. It’ll cost you extra, though.”
“No problem,” Mick said, putting his arm along the back of the seat. The girl slid over next to him and put her hand on his thigh. Mick glanced down. He was staring right down her dress. He thought of biting those breasts and got a little hard. She slid her hand a little higher.
“Mmm, somebody’s gettin’ excited,” she said, rubbing up and down his leg, tantalizingly close to his crotch but not touching it.
“Somebody wants to know where this room is,” Mick growled, grabbing her hand and pushing it against his groin. She struggled for a second, then went with it, cupping him.
“Go down two blocks, then turn left.” She stroked him through his pants. “Now go up the block and park over there.”
Mick pulled the coupe into a space at the curb and cut the engine.
“OK, let’s go,” the girl said, opening the passenger door. Mick sat for a second, mastering the urge to vamp out, and then opened his own door. He got out and met the girl on the sidewalk. She led him through a doorway and up a couple flights of stairs to a little apartment on the third floor of the dingy building. Fumbling in her purse for her keys, she said, “My kid’s asleep, we have to be quiet, OK?”
Mick was a little taken aback. “You’ve got a kid?”
“Yeah, so? Ain’t no thing,” she said. She found her keys at last. Mick had to quell the urge to take them from her and open the door.
He followed her inside the little flat. It was surprisingly nice inside, not the flop he was expecting. She set her purse on the coffee table. “Want a beer or anything?”
“Is that extra too?” Mick didn’t know what to make of this apparent hospitality.
“Shit, honey, just being sociable is all,” the girl said disgustedly. “So you want one or not? I’m having one.”
“Uh…sure. I guess.” Mick suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands.
She walked over to the tiny kitchenette and pulled a couple of bottles out of the icebox. There was a blobby painting of Santa Claus on the icebox door, stuck there with magnets. The hooker took a bottle opener out of a drawer and uncapped both bottles, handing him one.
“Here’s looking up your old address,” she said, grinning and clinking her bottle against his. She took a long swig of beer and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Ah, that tastes good. Damn, my feet are killing me,” she said, and she sat down on a kitchen chair to take off her high heels.
Mick took a swig. He hadn’t tasted beer since before his wedding, and he was a little disappointed to find that it tasted like fizzy nothing, but it gave him something to do while he watched the girl rubbing her feet. He took another drink and stood holding the bottle, not saying anything.
The girl looked up. “So what did you have in mind, sugar? I ain’t got all night, you know. Unless you want all night. Then I got all the time in the world.” She looked at him, saw the wedding ring. “But I’m guessin’ you ain’t got all the time in the world either, do you?”
Mick took another drink. “No. I just want a quickie. Do you have a bedroom?”
Yeah, through there. Hey, take your shoes off, OK? I don’t want your big feet to wake up my kid.”
Mick heeled off his shoes and padded after the hooker in his sock feet. She turned on the overhead light and went quickly to the window to pull down the shade. Then she got a clean, folded sheet out of a little chest and spread it over the bed.
“Come on, don’t be shy,” she said, reaching for Mick’s shirt buttons. He put his beer on the bedside table and let her unbutton him, then shrugged off the shirt.
“Can you unzip me? This dress is too damn tight,” she said, turning around. Mick’s mind flashed back to his first night with Coraline, when she’d held her hair aside so he could unzip her red sequined dress by the pool. Shaking his head to dislodge the memory, he unzipped the girl. She quickly peeled the dress off her shoulders and down her hips. She unhooked her bra and draped it over the doorknob, and then took off her panties and hung them up as well.
“Come on, honey, get a move on,” she said, reaching for his belt. Mick put a hand on her breast, squeezing it gently while she efficiently removed his belt and undid his pants.
Mick suddenly wondered how far this thing was going to go. He was married-he didn’t actually want to fuck this girl. He wanted to bite her. Didn’t he? His cock was thinking his own thoughts, though. He stepped out of his pants.
“Come on,” he said, and pulled the hooker onto the sheet-covered bed. She grabbed his cock and squeezed, and Mick couldn’t stop himself-he vamped out and before he knew what he was doing, he had her pinned to the bed and he was fucking her and drinking from her neck. Oh my god, I am in so much trouble, he thought, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
He came with a shudder and realized she wasn’t moving.
“Shit, oh shit!” Mick frantically felt for a pulse, trying to use his medic’s training to disprove what his vampire senses had already told him. She was dead. He’d drained her without meaning to.
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” He was screaming in a whisper, knowing that he had to keep quiet or he’d wake the kid. The orphan he had just created.
Horrified, Mick withdrew from the corpse and scrambled off of the bed. What the hell was he going to do? What the hell had he done?
With shaking hands he grabbed his clothes and put them back on. He stared at the dead girl, sprawled on the bed. It looked like he’d broken her neck in addition to everything else. He swallowed hard, trying to fight back panic, trying to think. He had to think.
He tiptoed back into the kitchen and opened another beer. It didn’t taste like anything, but somehow the ritual of swigging the fizzy brew settled him a little, let him start to function again.
OK. The hooker was dead. There was a kid sleeping somewhere in the apartment-where, Mick did not want to know. He had to get the body outside, get it into his car, so that he could get it to the cleaning service. But he had probably left fingerprints all over. He had to wipe down every place he might have touched.
Quickly, working in a frenzy of efficiency, Mick worked his way through the apartment, imagining the places he must have touched. The front door? No, she’d opened the door. The refrigerator-yes. The light switch in the bedroom. The back of a chair. The beer bottles. Best to take them with him. The bedside table, the bedroom door. The clothes the hooker was wearing! He bundled everything together with shaking hands.
What the hell would he do with her body? The sheet-he would wrap it in the sheet. He put the bundle of her clothes and the bottles on top of her and straightened her arms and legs so that she was lying straight, then he wrapped the sheet around her. He’d had plenty of practice at wrapping bodies in the service, and he made a neat package.
Now to scope out the stairs and the street below. He looked carefully out her bedroom window. The street was deserted; being a few blocks off the main throughway, it got very little traffic this time of night. Then he stole outside the front door of the flat and listened with all of his enhanced senses. Nothing, no movement. He sniffed carefully. Nobody around.
Hurrying soft-footed inside the apartment, he scooped up the body and then stopped to step into his loafers by the front door. Hesitating for a second, he listened carefully for the kid’s breathing. It was a boy, and he was sound asleep. Mick carried the body out the door, turned the lock on the knob with his shirt pulled over his fingers, and pulled the door closed. The kid would wake up in the morning and mom wouldn’t be there. Well, a neighbor would help, probably. Hopefully.
He carried the body down the stairs, stashed it in the corner of the lobby, and went out to open the trunk of his car. Stood for several seconds, straining to hear, to smell, to sense any possible witness nearby. Nothing. He dashed into the lobby, grabbed his burden, and stuffed it into the trunk. Nobody around. He closed the trunk as quietly as he could, got in, and drove away, sweating.
* * *
Six blocks later, he pulled over and wiped his face. He put his face in his hands and tried to think. The other hooker knew his face, his car.
Jesus.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then put the car in gear and drove back toward the corner where he’d picked up the dead girl. Relief flooded over him-she was still there, standing on the sidewalk, looking bored.
Mick stopped the car and leaned over to roll down the passenger window, and the girl undulated over to the car.
“Hi, honey, are you-oh, it’s you again. Where’s Angie?” She dropped her cigarette on the sidewalk and crushed it out.
“She’s at her place. We got to talking, and I decided I wanted a bigger party after all. You wanna join us? She’s got a sixpack in the icebox,” Mick said, trying to keep his voice casual.
She hesitated. Come on come on come on. Finally, she looked both ways down the empty street and opened the door.
“OK, you want a party, you got a party.” She slid in next to him and pulled the door shut. Mick headed back into the dark, tree-shaded neighborhood streets.
“Where are we going? This ain’t the way to Angie’s,” the girl said uncertainly.
“I just thought you and me, we could have a little party of our own before we go back to Angie’s place,” Mick said, and he stopped the car halfway down a silent, empty block.
“Oh…well, OK, I guess…this is extra, though, OK?”
“Of course,” Mick said, sliding toward her on the seat and putting his arm around her.
“In advance,” she said firmly.
Mick reached impatiently for his wallet and fished out a couple of five-spots. “There, OK? So what do you say?”
The girl tucked the money into her purse and put it on the floor of the car. “I say, sure, honey, whatever you want.”
Mick put his arms around her and steeled himself to bite. He wasn’t even hungry for her.
“Hey, hey, no kiss-” she started to say, and then his teeth were in her throat. He drained her brutally, no time to be kinder. He had to get the hell out of there.
It was over in a couple of minutes. Mick raised his bloody face from her neck and listened for signs of life. Nothing.
There was a blanket folded in the back seat, left over from a midnight beach swim a few days ago. He reached for it, shook it open, and wiped his face on it before efficiently wrapping the whore in it. Once she was hidden in its folds, he felt a little better.
He rolled down the car window and listened. The street was silent. He got out and opened the trunk, then pulled the blanket-wrapped body out of the front seat and pushed it into the trunk with the other one. Shut the trunk, got back in the car, and drove toward home. It only took a few seconds.
He drove carefully, obeying all traffic laws. The worst thing would be to get pulled over now.
(To be continued)
Rating: NC-17 for graphic sexual, vampiric feeding, and death scenes
Word Count: 3410
Disclaimer: Silver Pictures owns Moonlight. I just love it and play with the characters.
Author's Note: This story is a follow-on to "Turning Day" and "Mick's Education." It's set in early 1953, a few months after Mick's marriage to Coraline.
I warn you that Mick is not a nice person in this story. I see this stage in his vampire life as analogous to adolescence in humans: he's impatient, arrogant, stupid, and prone to disastrous mistakes. He's also self-centered, thoughtless, and pretty much unaware of the concept of responsibility. He learns some things in this story, but they're not really the kind of things I wanted him to learn. :(
Los Angeles, February 1953
Mick was working out a particularly tricky melody on his Gibson when Coraline finally came out of her bedroom, trailing a cloud of perfume. (She didn’t allow anyone, even Mick, to see her upon arising from her freezer until she had bathed, applied her makeup, and dressed. Some nights it was two hours past sunset before she emerged.) He didn’t raise his head when she opened the door of his studio. She stood there, poised in the doorway, waiting for him to acknowledge her; but he just kept looking at his hands on the strings, repeating the musical phrases over and over until each one was flawlessly smooth. He knew she was there; he just didn’t feel like jumping every time she snapped her fingers.
Finally, she grew tired of waiting for him to look up and said, “Good evening, baby.”
“Hi. Sleep well?” he said, not looking up.
“Yes, like the dead,” she said dryly. “What’s your problem?”
“Problem? No problem,” Mick said to his guitar. “I’m just…working on something.”
“Oh. Well, I thought we could go out.”
“Um. No, I’ve got plans,” Mick said, finally looking up at her. “Dinner plans.”
“Oh? And what might those be?” she said, with a touch of ice in her voice. Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m going hunting by myself tonight.” He turned back to his guitar and played the whole song from start to finish. It was perfect. He turned off the amp and put the guitar away.
Coraline looked at him assessingly. “And who says you’re ready to go hunting without your sire?”
Mick’s chin went up a fraction of an inch. “Me.”
“I see.” She crossed her arms and leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe, blocking his exit. “Somebody’s cranky…”
Mick’s chin went up a little more. “Not at all. I’ve just decided that I’m sick of always…being supervised. It’s time for me to test my wings.” He crossed his own arms and leaned against the inner edge of the doorway, his face inches from hers.
Coraline tilted her head to look up at his face. Her eyes were silver. “Huh.” She put her hand on his shoulder and slid it up to the back of his neck, smiling faintly at him. Her strong fingers massaged his neck muscles along the base of his skull, and Mick felt himself relaxing, head bowing in an automatic response to her touch. It was hypnotic, the sensation of her hands moving against his neck. He lost the impetus to move, to do anything but relax under her rhythmic, soothing hand.
After a minute, she pulled his head down for a kiss. Her carmine lips captured his, moving sensuously against his mouth. Mick stood with closed eyes, feeling the sensation of her smooth lipstick, the slight scratch of her fangs, the wet flexible strength of her tongue. She sucked his lower lip between her teeth and bit it-hard.
“Uh…baby…” he groaned. “Don’t…”
She chuckled, low in her throat, and licked the blood from his lip. After a moment she gave him a last, lingering kiss and stepped back, out of the doorway. “Well, my fledgling, you’re a big boy; maybe you should go.”
Swallowing a mouthful of his own blood, Mick walked through the door and stopped in the hall next to Coraline, his hands at his sides, his eyes looking down. “OK.” Then he took a breath and looked into her eyes, which were dark again. “So I’m going alone.”
She nodded. “OK, baby. Let’s see how you do.” She reached up and straightened his collar. “You know the ropes. Don’t do anything rash, and if you have any doubts, bail out and try someone else.” She shot him a pointed glance. “Right?” The word snapped like a whip.
“Right.” He turned and took a step toward the staircase at the end of the hall.
“Hey,” she said. Mick stopped and turned mutely to her. Yes, Coraline, you win. I’m your slave. My freedom goes only as far as the leash you dole out.
She rubbed the lipstick off his mouth with her thumb. “So what’s your plan, mighty hunter?”
“I don’t know; go out, find a victim, have some dinner, maybe go to a club, come home.”
“Hmm. Some plan. A club, huh? Call me if you get lonesome.” She gave him a little smile, then turned slightly away, releasing him.
Mick hurried to the stairs and descended to the front hall. He scooped up the keys to the coupe from the bowl on the entryway table and escaped into the night.
* * *
Once in the car, his sense of freedom returned. He’d been so sure of himself before she came into the studio. He’d been sure this was the right thing to do, that he was ready; god-he was so ready to hunt on his own! But then she’d looked at him with that mommy-vamp look, that calculating stare that said, are you really strong enough? And suddenly he hadn’t been so sure that he was.
The car sped down the winding road toward Hollywood. Coraline’s house-his and Coraline’s, legally speaking-was nestled in the Hollywood hills, and the city lights spun lazily below him as the car twisted down the hill toward the flat. This time of year, the Santa Anas blew all the smoke out of the air and the lights sparkled like gems. The city was beautiful, and it beckoned him. Come play, the lights shimmered.
So what the hell was he going to do? He hadn’t thought it out this far. He had been focused on getting out on his own, making the break. Now that he was out, he needed to figure out how to do the job right, do well enough that he could go again.
So. Find a victim, have some dinner, maybe go to a club. Where to find a victim? He wasn’t stupid; he knew he needed something relatively simple for his first. No elaborate setup, nobody who might scream and run, draw attention. Somebody who’d seen it all and was a little…inured to the vicissitudes of life. Somebody used to going with a strange guy on a dark night. Of course.
He drove south, toward a street his musician friends knew well. A street lined with little bars and smoky clubs, with lots of girls willing to give a guy a good time for a few bucks. The only problem was, he needed to be sure he didn’t see anybody he knew. He’d had a lot of friends who hung out here, before. When he was alive.
He drove slowly down a few blocks, scoping out the scene. It was early yet, only about ten, and the streets were still relatively busy. He turned the car onto a side street. Most of the hookers stuck to the busier street, but there were two girls on the corner. He could pick one up and drive a few blocks into the tree-shaded neighborhood to do the deed. Or maybe she’d have a room. Some of them did. Yeah, this was a good enough plan, it’d work.
He drove slowly around the block, pulled up next to the two girls on the corner, and rolled down the passenger window.
“Hi girls, know anyone who’s looking for a party?” The girls strolled over, putting on a show of hip-swaying to catch his eye. They both leaned into the open window. The shorter one smiled and squished her ample breasts together, accentuating her cleavage.
“Hi big boy, I’m always ready for a party. You buyin’?”
“Maybe. There’s just one of me though, so…” Mick raised an eyebrow and smiled at the hooker who’d been just a little too slow. “Sorry. Maybe another time.”
“You don’t know what you’re missin’, honey,” she said, and went back to her post on the sidewalk. The big-breasted girl opened his passenger door and hopped in.
“So what did you have in mind?”
“I dunno, do you have somewhere for us to go?” Mick looked over at her. He could take a couple of pints and she’d never miss ‘em. He fought the urge to change right there in the car.
“Sure, I got a room. It’ll cost you extra, though.”
“No problem,” Mick said, putting his arm along the back of the seat. The girl slid over next to him and put her hand on his thigh. Mick glanced down. He was staring right down her dress. He thought of biting those breasts and got a little hard. She slid her hand a little higher.
“Mmm, somebody’s gettin’ excited,” she said, rubbing up and down his leg, tantalizingly close to his crotch but not touching it.
“Somebody wants to know where this room is,” Mick growled, grabbing her hand and pushing it against his groin. She struggled for a second, then went with it, cupping him.
“Go down two blocks, then turn left.” She stroked him through his pants. “Now go up the block and park over there.”
Mick pulled the coupe into a space at the curb and cut the engine.
“OK, let’s go,” the girl said, opening the passenger door. Mick sat for a second, mastering the urge to vamp out, and then opened his own door. He got out and met the girl on the sidewalk. She led him through a doorway and up a couple flights of stairs to a little apartment on the third floor of the dingy building. Fumbling in her purse for her keys, she said, “My kid’s asleep, we have to be quiet, OK?”
Mick was a little taken aback. “You’ve got a kid?”
“Yeah, so? Ain’t no thing,” she said. She found her keys at last. Mick had to quell the urge to take them from her and open the door.
He followed her inside the little flat. It was surprisingly nice inside, not the flop he was expecting. She set her purse on the coffee table. “Want a beer or anything?”
“Is that extra too?” Mick didn’t know what to make of this apparent hospitality.
“Shit, honey, just being sociable is all,” the girl said disgustedly. “So you want one or not? I’m having one.”
“Uh…sure. I guess.” Mick suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands.
She walked over to the tiny kitchenette and pulled a couple of bottles out of the icebox. There was a blobby painting of Santa Claus on the icebox door, stuck there with magnets. The hooker took a bottle opener out of a drawer and uncapped both bottles, handing him one.
“Here’s looking up your old address,” she said, grinning and clinking her bottle against his. She took a long swig of beer and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Ah, that tastes good. Damn, my feet are killing me,” she said, and she sat down on a kitchen chair to take off her high heels.
Mick took a swig. He hadn’t tasted beer since before his wedding, and he was a little disappointed to find that it tasted like fizzy nothing, but it gave him something to do while he watched the girl rubbing her feet. He took another drink and stood holding the bottle, not saying anything.
The girl looked up. “So what did you have in mind, sugar? I ain’t got all night, you know. Unless you want all night. Then I got all the time in the world.” She looked at him, saw the wedding ring. “But I’m guessin’ you ain’t got all the time in the world either, do you?”
Mick took another drink. “No. I just want a quickie. Do you have a bedroom?”
Yeah, through there. Hey, take your shoes off, OK? I don’t want your big feet to wake up my kid.”
Mick heeled off his shoes and padded after the hooker in his sock feet. She turned on the overhead light and went quickly to the window to pull down the shade. Then she got a clean, folded sheet out of a little chest and spread it over the bed.
“Come on, don’t be shy,” she said, reaching for Mick’s shirt buttons. He put his beer on the bedside table and let her unbutton him, then shrugged off the shirt.
“Can you unzip me? This dress is too damn tight,” she said, turning around. Mick’s mind flashed back to his first night with Coraline, when she’d held her hair aside so he could unzip her red sequined dress by the pool. Shaking his head to dislodge the memory, he unzipped the girl. She quickly peeled the dress off her shoulders and down her hips. She unhooked her bra and draped it over the doorknob, and then took off her panties and hung them up as well.
“Come on, honey, get a move on,” she said, reaching for his belt. Mick put a hand on her breast, squeezing it gently while she efficiently removed his belt and undid his pants.
Mick suddenly wondered how far this thing was going to go. He was married-he didn’t actually want to fuck this girl. He wanted to bite her. Didn’t he? His cock was thinking his own thoughts, though. He stepped out of his pants.
“Come on,” he said, and pulled the hooker onto the sheet-covered bed. She grabbed his cock and squeezed, and Mick couldn’t stop himself-he vamped out and before he knew what he was doing, he had her pinned to the bed and he was fucking her and drinking from her neck. Oh my god, I am in so much trouble, he thought, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
He came with a shudder and realized she wasn’t moving.
“Shit, oh shit!” Mick frantically felt for a pulse, trying to use his medic’s training to disprove what his vampire senses had already told him. She was dead. He’d drained her without meaning to.
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” He was screaming in a whisper, knowing that he had to keep quiet or he’d wake the kid. The orphan he had just created.
Horrified, Mick withdrew from the corpse and scrambled off of the bed. What the hell was he going to do? What the hell had he done?
With shaking hands he grabbed his clothes and put them back on. He stared at the dead girl, sprawled on the bed. It looked like he’d broken her neck in addition to everything else. He swallowed hard, trying to fight back panic, trying to think. He had to think.
He tiptoed back into the kitchen and opened another beer. It didn’t taste like anything, but somehow the ritual of swigging the fizzy brew settled him a little, let him start to function again.
OK. The hooker was dead. There was a kid sleeping somewhere in the apartment-where, Mick did not want to know. He had to get the body outside, get it into his car, so that he could get it to the cleaning service. But he had probably left fingerprints all over. He had to wipe down every place he might have touched.
Quickly, working in a frenzy of efficiency, Mick worked his way through the apartment, imagining the places he must have touched. The front door? No, she’d opened the door. The refrigerator-yes. The light switch in the bedroom. The back of a chair. The beer bottles. Best to take them with him. The bedside table, the bedroom door. The clothes the hooker was wearing! He bundled everything together with shaking hands.
What the hell would he do with her body? The sheet-he would wrap it in the sheet. He put the bundle of her clothes and the bottles on top of her and straightened her arms and legs so that she was lying straight, then he wrapped the sheet around her. He’d had plenty of practice at wrapping bodies in the service, and he made a neat package.
Now to scope out the stairs and the street below. He looked carefully out her bedroom window. The street was deserted; being a few blocks off the main throughway, it got very little traffic this time of night. Then he stole outside the front door of the flat and listened with all of his enhanced senses. Nothing, no movement. He sniffed carefully. Nobody around.
Hurrying soft-footed inside the apartment, he scooped up the body and then stopped to step into his loafers by the front door. Hesitating for a second, he listened carefully for the kid’s breathing. It was a boy, and he was sound asleep. Mick carried the body out the door, turned the lock on the knob with his shirt pulled over his fingers, and pulled the door closed. The kid would wake up in the morning and mom wouldn’t be there. Well, a neighbor would help, probably. Hopefully.
He carried the body down the stairs, stashed it in the corner of the lobby, and went out to open the trunk of his car. Stood for several seconds, straining to hear, to smell, to sense any possible witness nearby. Nothing. He dashed into the lobby, grabbed his burden, and stuffed it into the trunk. Nobody around. He closed the trunk as quietly as he could, got in, and drove away, sweating.
* * *
Six blocks later, he pulled over and wiped his face. He put his face in his hands and tried to think. The other hooker knew his face, his car.
Jesus.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then put the car in gear and drove back toward the corner where he’d picked up the dead girl. Relief flooded over him-she was still there, standing on the sidewalk, looking bored.
Mick stopped the car and leaned over to roll down the passenger window, and the girl undulated over to the car.
“Hi, honey, are you-oh, it’s you again. Where’s Angie?” She dropped her cigarette on the sidewalk and crushed it out.
“She’s at her place. We got to talking, and I decided I wanted a bigger party after all. You wanna join us? She’s got a sixpack in the icebox,” Mick said, trying to keep his voice casual.
She hesitated. Come on come on come on. Finally, she looked both ways down the empty street and opened the door.
“OK, you want a party, you got a party.” She slid in next to him and pulled the door shut. Mick headed back into the dark, tree-shaded neighborhood streets.
“Where are we going? This ain’t the way to Angie’s,” the girl said uncertainly.
“I just thought you and me, we could have a little party of our own before we go back to Angie’s place,” Mick said, and he stopped the car halfway down a silent, empty block.
“Oh…well, OK, I guess…this is extra, though, OK?”
“Of course,” Mick said, sliding toward her on the seat and putting his arm around her.
“In advance,” she said firmly.
Mick reached impatiently for his wallet and fished out a couple of five-spots. “There, OK? So what do you say?”
The girl tucked the money into her purse and put it on the floor of the car. “I say, sure, honey, whatever you want.”
Mick put his arms around her and steeled himself to bite. He wasn’t even hungry for her.
“Hey, hey, no kiss-” she started to say, and then his teeth were in her throat. He drained her brutally, no time to be kinder. He had to get the hell out of there.
It was over in a couple of minutes. Mick raised his bloody face from her neck and listened for signs of life. Nothing.
There was a blanket folded in the back seat, left over from a midnight beach swim a few days ago. He reached for it, shook it open, and wiped his face on it before efficiently wrapping the whore in it. Once she was hidden in its folds, he felt a little better.
He rolled down the car window and listened. The street was silent. He got out and opened the trunk, then pulled the blanket-wrapped body out of the front seat and pushed it into the trunk with the other one. Shut the trunk, got back in the car, and drove toward home. It only took a few seconds.
He drove carefully, obeying all traffic laws. The worst thing would be to get pulled over now.
(To be continued)