by Joey W. Hill
She took a breath. “I convinced myself what he had that still belonged to me didn’t really matter. That I took what was important with me. My true self. And that’s not wrong. But nearly dying made me realize there is one item that does matter, and I want it back. He's going to give it back.”
She looked toward the house. “If he tries to stop me, I'm going to rip down the goddamn door. He's going to have to kill me to stop me from getting it.”
It startled him, the sudden vehemence in her tone. She closed her eyes, and he saw her press the tips of her fingers together in her lap, her shoulders rising in a quick breath. Up, down. Once, twice. He didn’t say anything, just watched. It was as if a blanket settled on her shoulders, the way they eased. Her head came up and she looked toward him. “Sorry about that. I have a temper sometimes.”
“So I see.” He gave her back the picture. “How about I go in as your backup? Then you won’t have to push Lonnie to such extremes.” And he could have the pleasure of dismembering him if he tried.
“Can I just call you if I need you? I really want to handle this one-on-one if I can.”
He didn’t like it. “First sign of trouble, I’m at your back. Non-negotiable. Even the police don’t go into a domestic disturbance without backup.”
“Okay, yes. That would be nice.” Her smile was tentative, slightly surprised, as if a sexual partner had never tried to champion her. “Just keep in mind he’s better if he’s not dealing with anything that gets his hackles up.”
“I’m far better dealing with something that does,” Wolf said pleasantly. “So we’ll see if he and I can meet in the middle. If he does anything toward you I don’t like, I'm going to tear him to pieces. Keep that in mind, if you think his welfare is worth anything.”
She didn’t seem to know what to do with that, but from her flush, Wolf expected she knew he meant what he said. She put her hand on the door latch. “Unh-uh,” he told her. “Stay put. I’m coming around.”
“I thought you said—”
“I am going to let you go in on your own as you requested. But I’m handing you out of the car. Because I want everyone watching to know that you’re not here alone. There has to be some benefit to being a big, badass-looking guy like myself.”
Her grin, slightly less wan, made him feel better about her state of mind. As he exited the car, he scoped the area. In a neighborhood like this, they would be measured by the porch audience, or from behind drawn curtains. Several houses down, he saw a cluster of young males studying them and their intentions. From their clothing and markings, he identified them as gang members.
As he circled to the other side of the truck and opened the door, he glanced their way. Not a “come over here and try to kick my ass” look; he was savvy enough with testosterone dynamics not to go that route. Instead his even and steady look said, “you do your thing, I’ll do mine, and we’ll be fine,” an expression less likely to encourage a pissing contest. He didn’t have an aversion to a good brawl, but he didn’t want Ella caught in the middle. Or anyone else in this neighborhood who’d be an innocent bystander.
He took her hand. When she stepped onto the running board, it put them a little closer eye-to-eye. She braced herself on his shoulder. “Okay?” he said.
“Yeah. I’m wanting to do this, so there’s anticipation, while at the same time I feel like I want to throw up and be anywhere else. Know what I mean?”
“Perfectly. Maybe he’s not home.”
She gestured toward the left side of the house. He noted a window open and what looked like cigarette smoke curling out of it. “He’s here. He got into drug dealing after I left, so I heard, which means he keeps an eye out for customers or cops.”
Okay, he’d changed his mind about thinking this was a good idea. He was about to push her back into the truck, but she was staring at the house as if her eyes could shoot laser beams through it.
“Let’s do ice cream after this,” she said abruptly. Her jaw was tight, so he caressed it, made it soften as she looked up at him.
“If you’re good,” he said.
She dimpled, and then her chin set and she stepped down, giving his hand a light squeeze before she marched toward the house. He leaned against the truck, watching her and keeping an eye on anyone who might look ready to move off their porch toward her. So far, so good.
He didn’t want her doing this, but she was determined, and if she was going to do it, she was safer with him. So that was that.
She went up the stairs, automatically moving left to avoid the sagging center of the middle one. He noticed a child’s toy underneath the stairs. It looked like a bright red donut, one of the plastic ones that toddlers stacked on a stick. He wondered where the rest of the donuts had gone, or if it had belonged to the child of an earlier tenant. There was no other sign of the house being inhabited by children, thank God.
The door opened as she reached it. In a stroke of irony, the man who opened the door was a scrawny shadow of the robust image in her picture. He’d obviously graduated from alcohol into using way too much of his own product. His eyes were dark and a little too wild, the hands too twitchy for Wolf’s peace of mind. He was still big enough to do damage to a woman Ella’s size, no matter that she looked far healthier. Plus Wolf had never met a dealer who didn’t keep a gun close to hand. Unless he’d pawned it off to buy more drugs, at which point he was likely no longer a dealer, because he’d lost the self-control to successfully pursue that career choice.
“Ella,” Lonnie said in a rough voice, as if he’d just woken up. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
His voice held more curiosity than malevolence. He rubbed at his eyes as if to bring her into better focus.
“I left something here, and I came back to get it.” Her voice was hard. A tense stillness had descended upon her from the time she walked from the truck to the front door.
Picking up on it, Lonnie woke up a little more. Bracing his foot in the bottom corner of the door, he situated his shoulder on the other side of the frame, forming a blockade as he crossed his arms. “Ain’t shit here that belongs to you.”
“Stop dicking me around.” She stepped forward and, in one swift move, ducked into the opening he’d left between foot and upper arm, and elbowed him out of her way.
“Hey, what the fuck…” He spun around after her. In the same motion he slammed the door behind him.
Or would have, except it hit the flat of Wolf’s palm. Lonnie stopped mid-lunge after Ella, who’d already slipped down the hallway. As he pivoted back toward the door, his gaze went straight out, then up, to meet Wolf’s expression.
“We’ll keep this open,” Wolf said mildly. “I think it’s best if you let her get what she wants.”
“Fuck you,” Lonnie sneered, already fumbling at his waistband. “I’m gonna—”
A blink later, he was up against the faded wallpaper of his front hallway. The gun he’d been reaching for was pointed at his nose, held in Wolf’s steady hand.
“You’re ‘gonna’ what?”
Lonnie whimpered, his eyes wide as dinner plates, an inch from the yawning barrel. Wolf cocked his head. “I have a steady finger. But struggle, and I might start squeezing.”
“Who the hell are you, man? Get that the fuck out of my face.”
“I’m her friend, and this is her show. I’m here to make sure you mind your manners.”
Every vampire learned to avoid anger, particularly in the first century when bloodlust rode close to the surface and could break through with little provocation. He had better control than most, thanks to his military training and Nolan’s reinforcement of that, but he couldn’t stop himself from recalling Ella’s sleepy, casual comment when she lay in his arms several days ago.
“You used to smack her around, did you?” he asked pleasantly.
“Bitches sometimes need to be taught their place, man. It didn’t mean nothing.”
“There’s only one thing I see here that means nothing.”
/> Lonnie flinched, biting back a yelp as Wolf de-cocked the gun, dropped out the magazine and racked it back, so the chambered bullet pinged to the floor. He tossed the gun, letting it bounce onto the ratty cushions of the couch. In the same motion, he swung Lonnie toward a distasteful-looking easy chair and shoved him into it.
“We’ll hang out here and wait on her.”
Lonnie opened his mouth, but Wolf shook his head, putting a finger to his lips. “It’s far better for you to say nothing. Trust me.”
Whatever he saw in Wolf’s expression convinced him of the wisdom of that. Lonnie subsided into sullen, frightened silence, his leg jiggling fast, his eyes still darting around, marking the gun on one side of the room, the magazine on the other. The bullet had disappeared, likely underneath a piece of furniture. Wolf knew Lonnie wasn’t likely to go for it, recognizing that whatever Ella was seeking wasn’t worth the point of pride that might cost him his life. He was far more likely focused on the hit he was going to need as soon as they left and he cleaned his shorts.
As he thought of Lonnie’s rough, large fists hitting Ella’s delicate features, he wanted to turn the man’s face into meat. Leave his body for the gang down the street to clean up. They’d toss him in a hole in back and take over the house as their second base of operations. The satisfaction he’d feel from that was enough to have his fangs pricking at his bottom lip, a warning sign. So he turned his attention to other things.
The interior of the house was worse than the exterior, every surface piled with trash. The floors and walls were covered with a layer of filth, exacerbating the smell of stale cigarettes and unwashed male. He hoped it hadn’t been like this when Ella lived here, and assumed not, especially when he noted a framed print tacked up on the wall in the living room. It was one of those paintings with lots of soft, muted colors, showing a girl in a bonnet reading under a tree. It was possible another conquest of Lonnie’s had put it up, but thinking of the photo Ella had shown him, Wolf knew it wasn’t. The picture on the wall had been a cry in the dark, that strangled personality like a baby in the crib, begging to be noticed so she could become who she’d meant to be.
Wolf looked toward Lonnie, who’d been watching him. “She left it here,” he said accusingly. “It’s not like it’s hers anymore.”
“Do you like looking at it?” Wolf said.
Lonnie blinked. “Uh, yeah. Well, sometimes.”
Wolf stepped closer to him. From the paling of Lonnie’s features, he knew what his own looked like. “Would it have hurt you, to care about her even a little?” he growled.
“Hell, I was good to her,” Lonnie whined. “She was the one who screwed me. She used to make me a lot of money, and then she just bailed.”
“Pardon me?”
“She worked a corner up at Fulton. I didn’t let her look slutty at home, cause I didn’t want her whoring herself out to my friends, but it was different when she was working. She’s a looker, pulled in good cash. Agreed to give me fifty percent when I said she could live here.”
Wolf imagined breaking his neck. The effort it would take would be less than snapping a pretzel stick. A quiver went through his arms. He could leave him here, lolling forward in the chair. Ella would think he’d nodded off.
Lonnie had lost his color, realizing he was once again staring looming death in the face. And he was.
“I got it,” Ella crowed. She appeared at the opening to the living room, and was moving at a near skip. Seeing the two of them there, Wolf standing in such a forbidding pose over the cringing Lonnie, brought her to a halt. Whatever she’d come to get, she had it in a little velvet bag, cupped against her bosom.
As she took in the scene, she gave Wolf a censorious look that said, I had this.
His expression remained congenial, but he straightened, crossed his arms over his chest. She sighed.
“Men,” she muttered.
Normally, he could have smiled. Not at the moment. He wanted her out of this place.
“Everything okay?” she ventured as he continued to look at her.
“No,” Wolf said. “But I suspect that’s the norm here.”
She turned her attention to Lonnie. Apparently, it was the first time she’d really looked at him, because her brow creased. She went straight to the man. Though Wolf tensed in anticipation, Lonnie surprisingly stayed still when Ella leaned over him, tipped his face up, her hand gentle. “Oh, Lonnie,” she murmured. “You got yourself hooked on that shit. I told you that you needed to kick the booze, or it would get so much worse.”
He stared up at her, then grimaced uncertainly, an expression that made him look far younger. With some shock, Wolf realized he likely wasn’t more than a year or two older than Ella. “Yeah, well. Shit happens. Money was good, and then it felt good, too.”
“Get out of it,” she told him. “There’s the shelter on 5th. Go there, ask for Watt. He’ll help you. Don’t let this kill you. And for Heaven’s sake, use some of that drug money and pay a couple ladies on the street to come shovel this place out. It’s not a bad place to live when it’s cleaned up.”
“It needs a woman’s touch,” he grunted, pushing himself up, giving her a hopeful look. Wolf cleared his throat. Lonnie shot him a glance and hunched down again.
“Yes, it probably does,” Ella said. “Clean up, and you might attract one that’s worth something.”
She straightened to put her hands on her hips, look at him with that same even stare. “You won’t see me again, Lonnie. So I want to tell you something, and I mean it. If you’re ever in the right place in your head, it will mean something. If it doesn’t, well…it means something to me.”
She leaned forward once more. Lonnie tipped his head up, an act of wild idealism or a death wish, but she forestalled both by laying her hand on the side of his face, bringing his chin down so she could press a kiss to his forehead instead of his thin lips. She eased back, so they were eye-to-eye.
“I forgive you,” she said simply. “And thanks for giving me a place to stay.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Wolf’s parents had kept him out of trouble as a teenager, but he’d grown up a short step above poor. Many of their immediate neighbors weren’t as fortunate.
Two doors up, the family that lived in a house as shoddily maintained as Lonnie’s had a dog they kept chained out. The pit bull was a gentle creature one of the kids had found. She wasn’t vaccinated or spayed, so she was impregnated by stray males almost every heat cycle. They didn’t feed her enough to keep up with the demands on her breeding body, so she was always scrawny looking. The puppies were given away or left loose to run off or be hit by cars.
One day, Wolf’s mother had him accompany her up the road. She took the neighbors a pie and told them she had an elderly relative who needed a friendly, big dog as a pet and deterrent to troublemakers. She sweetened the deal with twenty-five dollars. Which explained to Wolf why she’d recently taken a couple extra shifts at the grocery store where she worked.
The family consisted of two parents, a daughter—the child who’d brought the dog home and now seemed indifferent to her fate—and a son. The adults had had their discussion on the porch, while Wolf and the two kids built highways in the dirt, around the roots of the big live oak in the front yard. Once the agreement was made, the tall, thin father had taken Wolf’s mom inside to give her an open bag of greasy, cheap dog food.
Wolf had gone with his mother. He remembered the garbage was ankle deep in the five-room home. It smelled like a moldy, rancid dump. He didn’t draw a deep breath until they were almost back home, his mother with the timid underfed dog on a leash and Wolf carrying the dog food. That night, Wolf overheard his father talking. His mother had settled the shivering dog in a corner, on a bed of blankets near the heater.
“People ought to be horse-whipped for treating an animal like that.”
His mother’s voice was quiet. “They didn’t know any better, Craig. You should have seen the inside of the house. I’ve contacte
d the church to see if the pastor and outreach folks can stop by, see what they might need. People who don’t treat themselves with kindness and respect have no idea how to treat an animal any better. That’s the world they live in. Ours is just as alien to them as theirs is to us.”
Lonnie had pimped Ella out, knocked her around. In return, she handled him like an exasperated big sister and offered him forgiveness. Ella’s world had been far different from Wolf’s. Almost as alien.
He thought of what Lonnie had let slip. His Ella, turning tricks on a street corner. A prostitute before she came to work at Club Atlantis.
He reminded himself there was nothing he could change about her life in the past. But he could affect her present. He wasn’t going to think about the future, since he knew he likely could be no more useful to her there than the hapless Lonnie. That dug into his gut more than he wanted to admit.
She hadn’t said much when he held the door, helped her in the truck. Once he sat in the driver’s seat, he nodded to the velvet bag in her lap. “Care to show me?”
She seemed to pull herself out of a deep place in her head. “What? Oh, sure.”
She offered a sheepish smile and handed it over, her fingers small against his large ones. The contrast never failed to give him pause, or make him remember the night on the loading dock. Black and white. Contrasts are best.
He opened the velvet bag and shook out the contents carefully, a small square box. It was plastic, but made to look like wood, with a face picture of two children under an umbrella. There was a wooden ball at the bottom of the box. As he studied it, Ella reached under his arm, pulling on the ball. It was attached to a string, and after she pulled it to its full length, music began to play, the string slowly retracting.