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Come to My Window
by Aadler
Copyright July 1999
Part III
I had expected it would take us a few days to track down where Kyle lived, but Tana had the address when we met just after sundown the next evening. “He was in the phone book,” she explained. “I got Willow to run a computer check to be sure it was current, and she said he had sent in a payment for cable less than a week ago, so I guess this is the real thing.”
“Willow Rosenberg?” I hoped my face didn’t show the jolt I had just taken. “I didn’t know you hung with her.”
“No, she was just doing me a favor. She’s actually kinda nice, if you can overlook that dead spot in her brain where fashion sense ought to be.” Tana shook her head in wonder. “I ask you, really, orange tennis shoes?”
“Yeah, total dweeb, yadda-yadda.” I hadn’t mixed with Willow for years, but I knew who she hung with now, and this was closer than I’d ever wanted to get. “Look, we got the plan and we got the location, we might as well jump to it. You drive.”
Oh yeah, great idea, I’d have known better if I had ever ridden with her before. The Barbies tend to little sports cars; for Cordettes, size doesn’t matter as long as it’s a convertible. Tana had a canary yellow 1971 Triumph Spitfire, gleaming with chrome and carnauba wax, and she drove like a candy-assed ape. I’m no gear-head, but to see a magnificent piece of machinery abused that way made me want to squeeze her tiny brain out of her ears. I entertained myself with that and similar fantasies (or plans, who knows?) while we hurtled through town.
Tana hadn’t told me the address, just that she had it, and when we arrived I got another surprise. It was one of those new apartment complexes, central community pool, tennis courts off to the side, and from the cars in the lot it was populated mostly by UC/ Sunnydale students. I would have expected different from Kyle, either a falling-down dump with maybe $30,000 of stereo equipment inside, or something expensive and tacky. What the hell, maybe he dropped an old girlfriend down the trash chute and took over her lease.
At least Tana and me wouldn’t stick out. We headed upstairs, looking for the unit number and ignoring a pool party going on in the courtyard. (Lots of music, lots of young flesh. Prime grazing ground, and I noted that down for the future.) We stopped in front of a door just out of view of the parking lot. “Here we are,” she announced.
“Okay, then.” I pressed up against the door and closed my eyes, letting my senses drift inside, feeling for movement, life, the faint thrum of blood. Nothing. “All clear,” I told her. I took solid hold of the doorknob and twisted steadily, and after a second something snapped inside the mechanism.
I stepped back so Tana could get past me, and she pushed open the door and walked to the center of the main room. “Come on in,” she said, and that was that, I was inside. “We’d better set up quick,” she went on, looking around. “There’s no telling when Kyle might come back.”
“Right, right. When you make the call, though, be sure and use a pay phone, we don’t want the cops doing a caller ID on your cellular —”
He loomed up out of the shadows like a Tim Burton scarecrow, and Tana let out a squeak of surprise as he caught her by the back of the neck. I can move that quiet, but I forgot others could, too. “Hey, now, this is service,” he said happily. “Somebody order up you two pretty little things just for me?”
It was Nostril Ring, Kyle’s scuzbuddy from the other night. Tana tried to pull free, but his grip was too tight. She gave me a look that was part fear and part accusation. “You said there wasn’t anybody …”
“Shut up, Tana.” I took a casual step forward. “You wanta loosen the clutch there, greasewad? You’ll bruise my honey.”
It didn’t faze him. “Like that, huh? ’S’okay, I’m broad-minded.” He turned Tana a little to get a look at her face, and chuckled. “Whoa, Chinese. So the two of you together are, like, sweet’n’sour?” His eyes fixed on me suddenly, and the careless smile hardened. “Or more hot-and-cold, looks like.”
Tana’s eyes widened. Maybe she caught the reference, or maybe she had just noticed the temperature of the hand on her neck. “You didn’t hear him because he wasn’t breathing,” she whispered.
He raised his eyebrows, and sneered at me. “She knows?”
“Yeah, comes in handy, we’re a team.”
He snorted. “Me and Kyle, too, but I’m not about to tell him.” He moved Tana a little to keep her between us; damn it, I’d almost gotten close enough. “ ’Course, even if I don’t trust him that far, I don’t think I oughtta let you ladies run whatever scam you were planning.”
“Hey, no prob.” I gave him an easy shrug. “I didn’t know I was poaching, we’ll just take our routine elsewhere.”
“You can go if you want.” He bent Tana’s head to expose her throat. “But this one looks too luscious to turn loose.”
“Don’t do that,” I said sharply.
His eyes were little cold dots of glass. “Getting sentimental about the kibble?”
“Practical. You have any idea how long it takes to train one of these things?” This was bad, this was serious stink. So far our verbal sparring had kept him too busy to chow down on her, but he’d crack her neck in an instant if I went for him. I know, I shouldn’t care, but Tana was part of the structure I’d set for myself; she was somebody to talk to, strut in front of, sip and savor. Without her, my life would be …
Not lonely. I won’t say lonely. But it wouldn’t be the same.
I was still talking. “You heard her invite me in. That’s a valuable tool. I use her, same way you use Kyle —”
“Are you kidding me?” he scoffed. “That is so bogus.”
I didn’t understand, but any delay was good. “What? You didn’t hear her say ‘come in’? Hey, I’m here, right?” Shift from one foot to the other, toss in a little hip-twitch to draw his eye and maybe keep him from noticing that the shift put me a few inches nearer …
It’s not easy to grin knowingly and curl your lip at the same time — I know, I’ve tried — but he managed to pull it off. “What part of the hick-sticks was your sire from? Everybody knows an invite’s no good unless it comes from somebody who, you know, actually lives there.”
Huh? Then how was I able to get in? Had Kyle done some kind of come-one-come-all welcome that turned this into an open house? or did this heartbeat-challenged yahoo live here, too, and that made the place non-exclusive? Now wasn’t the time to ask, I made an impatient hand-flip that covered another couple inches’ edge forward, and said, “Same diff. Even if that won’t work, there’s still all kinds of things she can do for me in daylight that I could never cover for myself. She’s an investment, and I don’t want to start over with a new one. Come on, call truce.”
He wasn’t buying it, his face started the change and it was now or never. In the moment before I would have sprung (too late), Tana yanked at the cross she wore, snapping the chain, and reached up to jam it into the meat of his hand. He screeched, flesh sizzling, and as he let go she simply dropped, and I flew over her in a long leap to slam into him. We went backward in a slashing, clawing tangle, and now it was Sheila’s World.
I knew in seconds that this chump hadn’t been out of the grave a month. You see it all the time in the new risers, they get drunk on the speed and power of their transformed bodies, and start breaking out in all the chop-socky stuff because all of a sudden they can. Well, ability isn’t the same as experience, and I was duking it out with street corner toughs before I hit puberty. I tore into him like he was a Christmas package, and we smashed through an end table and bounced off the wall, he couldn’t go ninja on me because I was in too close, kneeing and hammering at crotch and face and ribs. He shoved me back desperately and made a break for the door, and damned if Tana wasn’t blocking him with the cross thrust out in front of her, and before he could shift into reverse I jammed a leg from the broken table into his back and out through his chest.
Whuff, dust bomb! I thought I’d never stop sneezing. “Push that door shut,” I gasped to Tana, and she did. Good girl. “Okay, we have to hurry, somebody may have heard that ruckus and call the cops before you can. Come on.”
She followed me until we found the bedroom I figured was Kyle’s, there was a Sex Pistols poster on the wall and he used to go on all the time about how punk rock had slid downhill since Sid Vicious bit the big one. I ripped my blouse down the front, spraying buttons everywhere, and kicked out of my skirt and shoes while Tana was pulling nylon rope out of the tote bag she’d brought. With me helping, it took thirty seconds for her to tie me spread-eagled onto the bed. Good so far, but when she took out the little bottle of holy water she stopped, looking from it to me.
We didn’t have time for this. “Clock’s tickin’, girl. Put on the finishing touches and boost your little butt outta here.”
She gulped, and said querulously, “How do you expect me … you just saved my life.”
“I saved your blood,” I snarled at her. “I don’t share with anybody. Get on with it, you silly bitch!”
She bit her lip and stuck a medicine dropper into the bottle, filling it with a quick squeeze. Then she held the dropper over me and forced a droplet out the end, to fall on my chest just above the cheap bra.
It was all I could do to keep from ripping the bed apart. God, that burned! “More,” I gritted out. “Another there, a couple on my belly, maybe some on my arms. And get closer, don’t let it splash, it has to look like cigarette burns.”
She followed orders, tears streaking her face, and when I said enough she asked, “Are you sure they won’t heal before the police get here?”
“Yeah. Real cigarette burns would have, and I want this to have the right look.” Truth to tell, they might not heal at all, holy water was wicked nasty to me and mine. But it was worth every scar, damn it. Nobody owned any piece of me: not Spike, not Kyle, not anybody. “Scene’s set, take off. Walk, don’t run. Make the call, then wait for me to call you.”
She tried to answer, couldn’t find her voice, finally just nodded and left. Amazing; she stands off a vampire in his own lair, and then chokes up over a little torture. Some people you just can’t figure out.
So here’s what the cops find when (finally) they answer the anonymous call. The lock on the front door is broken, but no telling how long it’s been that way. Smashed furniture in the living room, signs of a struggle. (And lots of dust, did the guy break a vacuum cleaner bag?) In the bedroom there’s a girl, stripped to her underwear, tied to the bed, burns on her arms and torso. No breathing, no pulse, body temperature about 75°. Call the coroner, boys, and then get a forensics unit in here. And, yeah, put out an APB on the guy who lives here.
I had to lie there while they measured and photographed and put down the outlining tape, but I was ready for that. The hard part was keeping my eyes still; ever try not looking at something passing by in front of you? The whole business took longer than I had expected, and I started to worry a little about the sunrise, but they were considerate enough to cover me with several layers of sheeting before they wheeled me out of the apartment and to the coroner’s wagon. From the sound of things they had quite an audience for that part, but I didn’t get to see any of it.
They’d find Kyle easy, because he didn’t know they were looking for him. He would have all kinds of fun trying to explain the dead girl in his bedroom; and the funny thing was, he’d sound guilty as hell telling the truth, which was he didn’t have the vaguest idea how I got there. He could have come up with a better story if he had killed me.
And let’s not forget the best part: with me already in the morgue, how was he going to sell me out? Why should he even try?
Smile for the camera, meatpie!
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