Read Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 for Free Online Page A

going in?” Giggles.
    “What’s the story?” Sarcastic tone.
    I gave them a publicity grin. “No news here, boys, just forgot something in the car.” The stalkerazzi were unconvinced. We posed for a couple of mercy shots and then took measured steps past the line of photographers. Too much speed would seem urgent and call for a chase, and I didn’t intend to end up like Princess Diana, no matter how much publicity it’d get me.
    “Jesus, those pictures are going to be everywhere, tomorrow,” Wendy said, as we moved out of earshot. She’d sucked her lips inside and nibbled, a nervous tick that made the pretty blonde look toothless.
    “Stop sucking your lips and don’t worry, I’ll figure out some kind of spin and have Marithé leak it. It’ll be fine.” I had to be strong, Wendy could freak out at any second and draw more attention. It’s not like my heart wouldn’t have been beating out of my chest. 24 So humiliating, right? But, like I said, I had to be strong. “Let’s go eat a wino. You know how that always cheers you up.”
    “Okay.” She stretched the word out, as though unconvinced.
    “C’mon, girl. We’ll go down to Pioneer Square and make it a smorgasbord!”
    She giggled. I linked on at her elbow and we Blah-niked toward the car, hips bumping.
    “What the hell do you think happened back there?” she asked. We stopped at the car. Since, at some point during the horror show, Seattle had decided to stop the rain, we tossed our umbrellas in the back.
    “Oh … I think it has a little something to do with our buddy, Gil. Where is he?” I looked at my watch. He was twenty minutes late, not that that wasn’t just like him—or any of us. I usually followed strict “fashionably late” guidelines, myself. But, to keep us waiting twenty minutes when something as catastrophic as a velvet rope denial had happened? Unacceptable.
    I didn’t have to wonder for long.
    A blood-curdling scream split the night into before and after, 25 a scream that blended the feminine quality of a horror movie starlet with all the masculine panic of a proctology patient.
    Gil burst from around the corner of the next street,feet pounding the wet pavement and arms waving. He wore his trim Gucci suit in monochrome, making his hysteria all the more comic in its formality. “Car!” he yelled. “Car! Car! Car!”
    Two massive dogs emerged behind him, snapping, snarling, and scrabbling at the cement. They were held back from a full charge by leashes that ended in a familiar, yet horrifying presence.
    Markham howled more than his dogs, deep, guttural and menacing. Blood from his cheeks vaporized with each yell, filling the air between him and Gil in curling tentacles of vampiric spray. Between screams, his face was wild and his lips curled back from a pair of particularly nasty looking fangs dripping red condensation down his face and onto a white dress shirt, already striped with gore.
    Sloppy fucker.
    Wendy and I split off, leaving the SUV’s hatch open, and darting around opposite sides of the car. 26 We were in and cranked before Gil hit our side of the sidewalk. Wendy screamed from a barely cracked window, “Hurry! He’s almost on you!”
    “No shit!” Gil dove between two Japanese imports, forcing the dogs to scrabble up and over the hood of one, crushing and dimpling it, and slowing them down only slightly. From this proximity, it was clear they weren’t dogs at all, but fully shifted werewolves. Slobber flung from snapping maws in large enough globs to splat on the sidewalk like water balloons.
    I put the car in drive and as Gil dove into the trunk space, floored the accelerator, careening between two cars in the rear of the lot. Markham’s blood screams spattered the windows in flecks of crimson. I hit thewipers and cranked the wheel right, pointing us at a nearby alley. Gil swatted at the swinging pull of the rear lid, and closed it just as the werewolves reached the car. Their claws scraped across the