Half the Blood of Brooklyn

by Charlie Huston

  He moves his eyes from mine.

  —After that, he gave me a little blood. Knew I couldn’t contain that shit. Vyrus settled. I mean, I am starving here, but it settled. Best thing? It worked.

  He inhales deep, lets it out.

  —Like, all my thinking about anathema, and how you hooked me on the bad dose, and the way that…man. The way that felt. Wanting to get out from under that more than anything. And the reading I was doing for Terry. Learning about regular viruses and shit. I knew there had to be a way to burn that shit out of your system. I knew it.

  He taps my chest.

  —And, Joe, I knew you were the guy to turn to.

  He starts back up the stairs.

  —Not that I thought you’d nurse me through if I asked or anything. I just figured me and my money are too valuable to lose. Which isn’t to say I wasn’t ready to die, man. Was I ever.

  We reach the top of the stairs and he puts a hand on the wall and closes his eyes.

  —Hang on a sec, man. Still rocked. You see things, Joe. When you dose like that, you see things. I’m not saying they’re real, but you see them.

  He opens his eyes.

  —I saw shit. All that stuff on the walls and the floor. I mean, that was no act. I started flippin’. I thought something was coming for me. Started reading Crowley and shit online. Wicca.com. I mean, lame. But I was scared. Once I stopped feeding. Once I poured out the last load of anathema Terry sent by, I went somewhere else. I was ready, man. I was ready to die.

  He takes his hand from the wall.

  —Then you came. Well, you had to. You and Phil are the only ones who ever came over. Phil to drop off blood and anathema. You to tell me how much money Terry wanted transferred into the Society account. Knew Phil would call you if he found me first. Only real risk far as that went was if I would drink him.

  He makes a face.

  —Still can’t believe you put some of his blood in me. Nasty.

  He bites his lip.

  —Anyway, thing is, none of it, none of it was an act. Want you to know that. I definitely made a play to put you in a position where you had to help me, but none of it was an act. So. Thank you, I guess.

  I don’t say anything.

  He nods.

  —Yeah, fuck me. I know.

  He starts down the hall that runs between the cubicles where the Enclave sleep.

  —Will say, I never figured I’d end up here. Heard about these guys. But never thought for a second you’d bring me here. Never had this in mind. Did you know?

  —What?

  —That they only allow Enclave inside?

  I put my hand to the wall, taking some weight off my knee as we go down toward the end of the hall.

  —Never thought about it.

  —Just brought me over here. Didn’t even know what it meant when they let me inside. Just random.

  —Or something.

  —Yeah, think about that. Or something. Like, is anything random, right?

  He stops again, turns and faces me, the last door beyond him.

  Her scent in the air.

  —Like, how about this? You dose me on anathema. I mean, hook me on the bad dose. And I see things. And I can’t take it. And I, just on instinct and whatever I’ve learned from what I’ve been reading, I try to burn it out by starving the Vyrus. And you bring me here. And I happen to be Enclave. Daniel looks at me and knows. Which is part of what being him was all about, I guess. And he lays the whammy on me. And I trance out. And he brings me back. And here I am. Up and about. And, like, I was up almost right away. And he was impressed. I mean, they were all impressed. The dose I was on, the way I went head-to-head with it, the way Daniel got me to do that dance with the Vyrus and then I just snapped to, turns out that’s some heavy shit. I mean, Joe, it’s not just that you brought me here. I got potential. Real potential. How’s that for or something?

  I push him to the side and walk.

  —Fuck do I care.

  I walk into the room and she’s there. On a mat on the floor, a thin blanket over her, face sweaty, shivering. An Enclave seated at her feet, one hand holding her toes, whispering.

  The Count comes in behind me.

  —Tell you, Joe, I can see it. Even all fucked up as she is, I can see what you got there.

  I walk over to her and kneel on the floor and run a hand over her head and come away with sweat and hair.

  I touch my pockets. I don’t have a blade. Only Rebbe Moishe’s Defender.

  The Count crouches at my back.

  —A girl like that, what’s a man to do? How can you have a girl like that and not try everything to save her?

  Her eyes open. She looks at me. She smiles. A hand comes out from under the blanket and touches the candy necklace and her lips move and she’s asking me a question but can’t speak past the hole in her throat.

  Am I pretty?

  I nod.

  Her eyes close again.

  I put my fingers at the clog of scab and new flesh that has grown over the wound in my neck.

  A girl like this, how can I not try everything to save her? How can I keep myself from trying every last cruel and desperate trick to keep her with me?

  Simple.

  I can’t.

  I tear open the wound in my neck and lean close and place it against her mouth and the Count grabs me and pulls me away and my hand goes to the Defender and the Enclave has it and I am across the room and more Enclave are there between me and Evie and I try to go through them and I cannot.

  The Count leans over her and mops at her mouth with the cuff of his white shirt.

  —Hey, man, what’s up, you trying to kill the girl? I mean, dude, imagine if her throat wasn’t swollen shut. She’d be spewing foam all over the place right now.

  I try to get to her.

  They stop me again.

  The Count stretches his arms, hands pushed out at me.

  —Joe, man, cool it. You’re gonna get all fucked up by these guys if you don’t cool it. I can only do so much here. Sure I got potential. But potential only gets you a little ways. You got to deliver if you want your shit to stick.

  He opens his shirt.

  —Now, I know Daniel told you the girl’s like you, but he just meant that she’s Enclave. Or Enclave potential, I guess. Enclave enough to get in here. That doesn’t mean you can infect her. That takes a special touch.

  He peels his shirt from his skinny torso.

  —Check it. The Vyrus changes when it comes into us. That’s what Daniel said. That’s common sense. That’s why one Vampyre’s blood can infect some people, but kills most others.

  An Enclave hands him a short silver tube, one end cut on a bias and honed to a point.

  —Thanks. But then, it reasons, some can’t infect anyone. And some, they can infect lots of others. Like carriers. Daniel, he was a carrier. Know what he did? Part of what made him who he was? This is so cool, he told me about this last night, right up here. He infected new Enclave.

  He sits down next to Evie.

  —Like, if they saw the potential in someone out there, they brought them here. No questions asked. No choice. And Daniel bled into them. And it didn’t always work. Mostly it didn’t, but it worked more than for most Vampyres. Or infecteds. Or whatever you like.

  He’s handed a small hammer.

  —So we’re talking, me and him. He’s impressed with the way I handled that shit last night. He’s also whacked as hell, you saw him at the end there. Who knows where he was on the inside? But he wanted to talk. Lots of things. Mostly Enclave, but wanted to talk about music too. All kinds of stuff. Women. Kept asking about how high the hemlines are this year. Trippy. And I told him about my girls. Remember my girls?

  He raps the hammer against the floor.

  —Sure you do. Three sweet little things, wanted nothing but to party, have a good time, give a man some comfort. Well, how could you forget, what with the way you shot them down?

  He puts one end of the tube at his e
ye and looks down it at me.

  —That was not cool.

  He takes the tube away.

  —But I’m off topic. Check it. Daniel was even more impressed that I’d infected all three on my own. Hey, granted I broke a few eggs before I had my girls. There were definitely some that didn’t make it on the way to that ideal three, but it was still pretty unusual. The fact that I could infect three out of a pretty small fucking sample was beating the hell out of the odds.

  He taps his temple with the tube.

  —And here I am, dropped on Daniel the night before he’s going to try and take the next big step in his evolution? Well, he was a man who believed in signs and that kind of shit.

  He looks at Evie.

  —And then there’s her.

  He holds up his index and middle fingers.

  —Two new Enclave. Coming in, just like that. Bang and bang. I don’t need Daniel to tell me that’s got to be some kind of record. That’s got to mean something. That’s got to be an opportunity for something. To learn something.

  He pulls Evie’s blanket down.

  —’Cause a man can have all the potential in the world.

  He places the pointed end of the tube at his heart.

  —But that’s just meaningless.

  He hefts the hammer.

  —Unless he does something with it.

  He strikes the end of the tube and it pierces his chest and blood shoots from the end and he bends and places it over Evie’s trache and the blood fills it and it spills over her neck and face and her heels bang against the floor and her arms tremor and her throat works.

  And she’s swallowing.

  And she doesn’t die.

  She doesn’t die.

  And I try to get past the Enclave to kill the man doing what only I ever should have done. But I can’t. I’m too weak.

  So I fail.

  —That was doing it old school.

  He’s balled his shirt and uses it to mop blood from his chest, carefully circling the hole he’s tucked a finger into.

  —Mean, you don’t have to do it that way, but from what I gather it’s something they respect around here.

  He drops the bloody shirt and puts his back against the wall and shakes his head.

  —Which stands to reason, right? I mean, if punching a hole in your own heart doesn’t say something about who you are, I don’t know what will. Shit hurts, I can tell you that.

  I sit across the room from him, watching the place on the floor where Evie was before they took her away.

  —Heart’s blood. No reason why it should make a difference, but Daniel mentioned it a few times. Said it made for a closer bond between whoever was spilling their blood and whoever was drinking it. What do you think? Me, I can’t see why that’d be. But who knows. Mothers say they can tell when their kids are in trouble and shit, even when they’re hundreds of miles away. Maybe it’ll be like that. Maybe I’ll know when she’s in trouble. Or happy. Or sad. Maybe I’ll just kind of always know what she’s feeling. What about that?

  I touch the finger I’ve stuck in the wound I reopened in my neck, the scabs have sealed tight against it. I ease it out and some blood leaks and then stops.

  The Count pokes at his own wound.

  —About that time, huh? Well, let’s see.

  He draws his finger free and the clean edges of his unscarred flesh suck closed.

  He looks around the empty room, hushes his voice.

  —Truth, I didn’t hit my heart. Fuck that. Sometimes a little medical training comes in handy, let me tell you. Hey, would I have been surprised if my aim was off and I stuck myself in the fucking aorta? No. But there was no way I wasn’t gonna try and miss. We can theorize all we want about what the Vyrus will heal and what it won’t, but that was a chance I wasn’t interested in taking.

  I put my hands on the floor and push myself up and work my back up the wall until I’m standing on my good leg.

  The Count gets himself up.

  —Yeah, getting late here, isn’t it? Probably time to call it a day. Things are gonna be plenty interesting for me. Should be getting my beauty sleep. Sure you don’t want to stay and see how this is all gonna work out?

  I head for the door.

  He walks behind me.

  —Yeah, kind of what I thought. You got places to go, things to do, people, no doubt, to fuck up. Too bad. Things are gonna be getting very interesting around here, Joe. I mean, they got no one. I mean, no one on deck to take Daniel’s place. And here am I. Just arrived out of the cold dark. Overcoming terrible struggles in my first night. Representing by sticking a fucking pipe in my heart and successfully bringing a new Enclave to the Vyrus. Got the inside track, man. Got influence already. Like, the king is dead, long live the king, right?

  At the landing we look down. The Enclave at meditation, arrayed on the floor below, seated and silent, the most withered at the front, the robust at the rear.

  The Count points.

  —I’ll have to start in the back with the guys who are still kind of getting the hang of fasting and all, but that won’t last. There’s no seniority here. Just willpower. Whoever can take the most, push the Vyrus the furthest, and live, they go to the front row. After that last year riding the bad dose, I can take a lot.

  He places a hand on my shoulder.

  —Thanks for that, Joe.

  I ignore his hand.

  I inhale. Smell her. Her new smell.

  Knocking his hand away, I go past him. I smell her again. There’s a door between us. I make it go away.

  She’s in there. Sitting, back against the wall, legs sprawled in front of her. She’s pulled the trache tube from her throat and holds it and stares at it, as she fingers the already healed incision just above the candy necklace that is speckled with blood. She looks up at me and shows me the tube.

  —It itched.

  —Sure it did.

  She drops it and touches her head.

  —My hair feels weird. It feels like it’s growing.

  The sores on her face have started to fade. Purple to pink.

  It hurts lowering myself to the floor, but I do it.

  She wrinkles her nose.

  —You smell funny, Joe.

  She sniffs.

  —Everything smells funny. It all smells bad here.

  I look at her neck.

  Thinking.

  You don’t change things by wanting them changed. You change them by knowing what to do and when to do it. And by doing it.

  I never seem to know what to do until it’s too fucking late.

  She pinches her nostrils closed.

  —I don’t like it here. I want to go home. Can you take me home?

  I nod. But I’m lying.

  I’ll never get her out of here. I’ll never get her past the maniacs down there. I’ll never get her away from the psycho setting up to take over this madhouse.

  I touch her neck.

  —Hey, baby, know what?

  She covers my hand with hers.

  —What?

  —I love you crazy.

  She smiles at me and opens her mouth to say something and I start to squeeze and this is what I know how to do and this is what I have to do and it is not too late to make this better and she looks at me like she suddenly doesn’t know who I am and grabs my fingers and I can do this I can do this and she looks at me and I can do this and Enclave come into the room and pull me from her and my fingers hook the strand of candies around her neck and it snaps and they scatter over the floor and she screams at me.

  And I’m gone.

  The Count looks down at me.

  —Know much history, Joe?

  I sit in two feet of dirty water at the bottom of the sewer shaft where they threw me and look up at him.

  He points at himself.

  —Not my best subject, but there’s stuff you connect with, right? Like even in the lamest class, there’s bound to be something you get a rise out of. History of Western Civilization was lik
e that for me. That class was like nap time.

  There is no ladder. No way back up.

  —Monday, Wednesday and Friday, one to two-fifty for an entire year, man. Professor Hocker would start droning and, like, fifty undergrads would simultaneously nod off. You could sell that guy’s lectures on CD and make a fortune from insomniacs.

  A feeder runs through here, washing the cold water around me, the occasional clump of waste getting lodged against my back.

  —Only time I perked up and took notice? When he started getting into the Roman emperors.

  I sit in the water, it soaks my clothes and makes my knee hurt worse.

  —Those guys, once they got rid of the senate, know how they ruled? They ruled by caveat. Know what that means? Means they ruled by fear. Means they did whatever the fuck they wanted to.

  The water is dirty. Does that mean it’s on its way to the river, or away from it? I don’t know.

  —Hey, you know that fear rules the brain? Seriously. Our brains, this is amazing, they devote more space to dealing with fear than to any other emotion. Because, hey, fear is what makes us learn shit and survive. It’s fucking key. Know where it lives? Fear lives in this little thing, ’bout the size of an almond, called the amygdala. Fear in the brain. Something bad happens to you, you got no choice but to be afraid of it happening again. Until it happens so many times that you get used to it.

  Iron grates on concrete as he drags the shaft cover to the edge of the hole.

  —So tell me, how many people who you love do you think you have to have taken away from you, before you stop being afraid that it’ll happen again?

  He looks over his shoulder, looks back down at me.

  —Oh, hey, and can you guess which of the emperors was my favorite? No? Give up? OK, I’ll tell you.

  He sticks his head into the shaft.

  —Caligula.

  He laughs through his nose and shakes his head.

  —Yeah, sick but true. I am so fucking predictable, right? But I tell ya, once I get my thing going up in here, that’s gonna be the scene. I’m gonna introduce a whole new way of doing things around here. I mean, everybody is scared shitless of these dudes, how can I not find a way to make use of that?