Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 Read Online Free PDF Page B

the umbrellas from the backseat.
    And Gil—well, he was meeting us, said he wanted a second escape vehicle on the scene in case Markham showed up. His need for attention was going to get him killed one day, but he did look hot in formal wear and if anything’s worth the risk of death and dismemberment, it was a photo-op.
    We were just about to cross the street when Wendy stopped me. She was gawping at the entrance of Goblin Bar, eyes wide in horror.
    “Oh my God. Is it ugly day?”
    There was a frightening scene unfolding in the club’s queue. Fashion victims, at least fifty of them. I’m talking bad weaves, atop poorly conceived cosmetic palettes, propped on cheap clothes, and in some cases flats, a parade of the grotesque, each one more hideous than the next. 22 Dare I say, an average evening in Seattle? The fashion quotient had taken a real nosedive since the ′90s. Grunge may have been
très important
as a musical statement, but it really did a number on the whole aesthetic around these parts.
    “Something,” I agreed, as we crossed the damp road arm in arm our umbrellas battling above.
    “I mean, honestly, have you ever seen this many—” she stalled on the word.
    “Skanks?”
    “Yeah. It’s like a convention.”
    A particularly scary and hirsute woman with the pointy face of a rodent curled her nose at us, whispering something to her friend, who sneered.
    “Yeah, you.” Wendy pointed back at the woman, chuckling under her breath.
    “Wendy, stop. Let’s just go in.”
    “Oh shit. Look at that one!”
    I followed her startled gaze to a woman picking at her hair with what looked like a chopstick. She was really digging in there, too. Chasing something. She had the pale-as-death skin of a vampire and arms striped in so many different colored pastes that it was obvious she was a cloudhead—a real frequent flyer from the look of it. She looked familiar, though.
    “Hold up, that’s Giallo.”
    “Who’s that?”
    I pulled Wendy in close. “Giallo was that model. You know. The one that was famous for killing her photographer during a
Vogue
cover shoot. I thought she was dead, but didn’t realize she was … actively so.”
    “From the looks of her she’s a little cloudy, just now.”
    Giallo withdrew the chopstick from her ratted hair. She’d caught whatever it was she was hunting. The bug was still wiggling. She plopped it in her mouth.
    “No kidding,” I said, pointing her toward the gauntlet of photographers at the front of the line. Her expressionbrightened at the sight of flashbulbs. It shouldn’t have considering the outfit. I could see the headline in
ZWD
23 now …
    Undead Socialite Spotted in Mu-Mu, Moo. Moo.
    She’d be devastated. But I can’t save my friends from everything, least of all negative media attention.
    We stood for a few carefully posed shots and then approached the gigantic trannie with the clipboard. She was seven foot if she was an inch, and the curly blonde weave added at least half a foot. She was a werewolf for sure and had her claws out to prove it. They would have been much more threatening, though, had they not been airbrushed pink and polka-dotted.
    Wendy marched straight up to the beast. “Wendy Miller and Amanda Feral.”
    A single pastel claw scraped through the names, up one column, down the next, slowing near the bottom of the third page. Her face scrunched at something she saw there. She snickered. “Sorry. Not on the list.” She craned her neck to look behind us. Her lupine face brightened. “Oh hey, girl. Long time no see. You go right on in.”
    Two zombies in cheerleader outfits and pigtails bounded past, asses hanging out from under the too-short skirts.
    “Are you serious with this shit?” Wendy tried to grab the list, but the werewolf snatched it away.
    “Oh yeah. I’m serious, bitch. You better back off and head to the back of the line.”
    Wendy’s face was contorted in a glower, the bonesin her jaw clicked and popped, moving, reshaping her