Chapter Thirty-six

We were sitting outside a strip club. A filthy, disgusting, vomitous, vile strip club.

We had followed Danny down the 57 Freeway, and then east along the 91 Freeway. He had gotten off in the city of Colton, a tough little area in Riverside County. We were about 60 miles east of Orange County. Here, they did not make reality shows about super-enhanced married women. Here, there was crime and gangs and a sense that something, somewhere had gone very wrong with this city. So wrong that it was beyond hope to fix.

Danny had worked his shiny Mustang along the dark and dirty streets, far removed from our cute little neighborhood, and had ended up at a small strip joint at the far edge of the city.

By the time we had pulled up to the club, Danny was already inside. I circled the packed parking lot, found his car, and then parked as far away from it as I could, all while keeping an eye on the club's front door.

We parked and cracked our windows. Music thumped through the club's open door. Two rather large black men stood on either side of the door. In a raised truck about five cars away, I was pretty sure two people were having sex. Already I felt I needed to shower.

Monica had seemingly shrunk in on herself. She pulled her feet up on the passenger seat and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees.

I was, admittedly, confused as hell. I had never known Danny to be the type to go to strip clubs. Of course, I had never known Danny to be a cheater and a liar and royal piece of shit, either, until recently.

I was tempted to look inside the club, but I wasn't going to bring Monica with me, and I sure as hell wasn't leaving her alone.

And so we sat, staring at the entrance to the strip club. Amazingly, I still felt a pang of jealousy that Danny would find pleasure in looking at other women. That is, until I reminded myself that he had been sleeping with another woman for the past few months.

I felt sick. I felt disgusted. I felt a massive wave of revulsion.

Monica was rocking now. The thumping music and the trashy cars and the trashy guys were all too much for her. She reminded me of a child sitting in her bedroom and listening to her parents fighting downstairs. Listening and rocking and suffering.

I waited another half hour, watching Monica, watching the door, watching the waves of men coming and going. Danny remained inside.

I was having a hard time believing Danny had come all this way to a strip club. There were clubs a lot closer than this. Not as sleazy, certainly, but a lot closer. So why had Danny driven nearly an hour to go to this shit hole? I didn't know, but I was going to find out.

I started the car and left.

Monica rocked in her seat nearly the entire way home.

Chapter Thirty-seven

I comforted Monica with hugs and hot tea.

When she seemed stable again, I called my ex-partner. He was more than up to the challenge of watching over Monica again. In fact, I suspected he might have been waiting eagerly by his phone, since he had snatched it up on the first ring.

Thirty minutes later, with Monica in good (if not adoring) hands, I made my way over to Kingsley's massive estate. Franklin the Butler did not seem pleased to see me this late, and I once again followed his slightly off-kilter, loping gait. This time to the kitchen, where I found Kingsley sitting at a round corner table, working on a double-stuffed ham sandwich. Sitting across from him was a glass of red wine. Mine, I assumed, although I rarely drank red wine since it gave me stomach cramps. Too many impurities.

Kingsley thanked the butler, who expressed his love of servitude with words dripping with sarcasm, and disappeared down a side hallway. To where, I had no clue. No doubt a servant's quarter.

Or perhaps a stone slab with straps and thick cables attached to some sort of medieval antennae on the roof.

Or not.

As I stepped into the kitchen, Kingsley set aside the heavy-looking sandwich and got up and gave me a hug and a light kiss on the lips. The light kiss was my idea. I turned my head, since I wasn't in much of a kissing mood. Kingsley indicated the chair across from him, and as I sat, I realized the glass wasn't full of wine, it was full of something else.

It was full of blood.

Saliva burst instantly from under my tongue. I might have even licked my lips. Might have.

Kingsley was watching me. "You don't have fangs."

"What an odd thing to say to a girl," I said, keeping my eyes on the hemoglobin-filled goblet. Say that three times in a row.

"I noticed it the other night, in bed, when we were kissing. Your teeth are normal."

"Gee, thanks."

"But I thought vampires had fangs," he pushed.

"And I thought vampires existed only in teen romance novels."

He chuckled lightly and let it go. I noticed the blood in the goblet was beginning to congeal a little along the surface, sticking to the inside of the thick glass. It was just blood. Disgusting blood. But it was the only thing I could consume comfortably. It was the only thing that gave me nourishment. And now, over the course of six years, blood had become my comfort food. Hell, it had become my only food, My everything. My stomach was doing back flips.

God, I was such a fucking ghoul.

"Drink, honey," he said. As he spoke, he used some strange German accent. Oh?

"Who's blood is it?" I asked.

"Does it matter?" His voice was back to normal.

He was right, of course. I had discovered that the source of the blood mattered not at all. Human, animal, warm, cold. It all had the same effect on me: it nourished me deeply.

I picked up the glass and drank deeply. The blood was warm. It was fresh, too. Something had recently died. Blood has a unique texture and I have grown to both love and loathe it. Good blood, fresh blood, is heavenly. The blood I normally drank, blood provided to me from a local butchery, was filled with all sorts of disgusting "extras", which I constantly found myself spitting out.

Yum.

My account with the butchery was more or less a secret account. The butchery was in Chino Hills, and six years ago, I had convinced the owner I was a vet assistant and that I was involved with animal blood research. He hadn't asked questions, and I hadn't provided any more info other than that. The blood arrived monthly and I paid the exorbitant bill. Meals on wheels.

With that said, this blood was flawless, minus one or two coagulated lumps. I drank from the goblet steadily, briefly unable to pull away from it. Salty and metallic, it coated the inside of my mouth, filling the spaces between my teeth. I didn't need to come up for air because I really didn't breathe.

I drank steadily, greedily, happily.

When the goblet had been half-drained, I forced myself to set it down in front of me, and burped.

"Hungry?" asked Kingsley.

"Usually," I said.

"So how often do you eat?" asked Kingsley, and I silently thanked him for not using the word "feed". The word rubbed me the wrong way. Animals feed. Monsters feed. Ladies with degrees in criminal justice, who had two wonderful children and a successful private eye firm didn't feed. We drank, even if our food was liquified.

A smoothie from hell.

"I'm hungry every night," I said, shrugging. "Like most people."

"Most people eat during the day."

"You know what I mean," I said, picking up the glass again. "Asshole."

He grinned. "Do you eat every day?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because the packets of animal blood disgust me."

"I've seen your packets," he said, shuddering. "Revolting." He looked at me some more, his sandwich looking miniscule in his oversized hands. "So, then, is it safe to say that you go as long as you can without eating?"

"Yes."

"And how long can you go without eating?"

"Three or four days."

"And then you have to eat."

I nodded, tilting the glass up to my lips, reveling in the purity of the blood, letting it coat my tongue, the roof of my mouth.

"Do you ever worry that you will go too long between meals, and find yourself so hungry that you might do something stupid?"

"Like kill someone?" I asked.

"That would be something stupid, yes."

"I'm not worried," I said. "Not really. I'm generally always close to a source of blood. When I'm hungry enough, I just pop open a packet."

"There might come a day when you don't have such a ready source of blood."

"Maybe," I said. "But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

And with that, I finished the glass of blood. I brought it over to the sink and immediately washed it out. When I wasn't hungry, the site of blood made me want to vomit.

About that time, Kingsley stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth, chewed a half dozen times - surely not enough to fully masticate such a large section of sandwich - and then swallowed it down like a whooping crane, tossing back his head.

We both sat back, looking at each other.

"We have a problem," I said.

Kingsley nodded. "Is it that I'm too sexy?"

I didn't feel like smiling. I felt like clawing his eyes out, if you wanted to know the truth. "You got Ira Lang out of jail the first time around," I said.

"Sure," said Kingsley, shrugging. "And he didn't even have to pay me."

"What do you mean?"

"I was his court-appointed attorney."

"But I thought you were one of the most expensive defense attorneys around."

"I am. But sometimes when there are emergencies or the other attorneys are swamped, a judge will ask me to take over a case."

"So you took over the case."

He winked. "Of course. You don't say no to a judge."

"But Ira tried to kill his wife," I said. "And not just tried. The piece of shit did everything within his power to kill her."

"Right. And I got him out of jail," said Kingsley evenly. "It's what I do best."

I searched for words, fought to control myself.

As I did so, Kingsley continued, "Look, Sam. Don't take this so personally, okay? If it wasn't me getting him out of jail, any other defense attorney worth his salt would have done the same. Ira had no previous record. He was a first time offender. He was ordered to stay away from his wife - "

"And I am sure you are proud of yourself for getting him out."

"I did my job well."

"And how did you feel when you heard the news that he had gone after her again, but this time killing her father, who fought to protect her?"

"It was unfortunate."

"And you couldn't have seen that coming?"

"I saw it coming."

"But you did nothing to stop it."

"It's not my job to stop it, Sam. It was my job to get him out of jail."

"You're an animal," I said.

He folded his arms over his great chest. His black tee shirt was stretched to the max over his biceps and shoulders and pectorals and even his slightly-too-big gut. His deep voice remained calm; he never once took his eyes off me.

He said, "You are emotional because you have grown close to the victim."

"I am emotional because I let an animal put his hands on me."

"I seem to recall that you liked my hands on you."

I stood abruptly. "I can't talk to you right now."

He stood, too, and grabbed hold of both my shoulders. He towered over me. His shaggy black hair hung down over over his face. He smelled of pastrami and good cologne. He had put the cologne on for me, I realized. He had wanted more tonight, perhaps to sleep with me. I shuddered at the thought.

"Don't go," he said. "I'm not the enemy."

"No," I said. "But you might as well be."

He tightened his grip on my shoulders, but with one swipe of my hand, I easily knocked them off. Shaking, I turned and walked out of the kitchen.

"Don't go," he said after me.

I didn't look back.