“Asshole, you broke my fucking front door!” I growled about half a second before he squeezed the triggers on both the bow and the shotgun. Made a shitload of noise, but, you’ll remember, the downstairs neighbors were out of down. A fact of which I’m sure Rizzo was more than well aware. They’d only left the day before. Still, folks probably heard that shit over in Olneyville.
The bolt caught me in the left shoulder, just south of the clavicle, but far enough north of my heart I was in the clear. I was only hit by a dozen or so pellets of buckshot, mostly in the right cheek. The rest took out the window behind the easy chair.
“And my goddamn window! They make me pay for this shit, you know?” By that point, I was operating on pure indignant adrenaline.
The buckshot stung like I’d stuck my face in a wasp’s nest. Still, I’d been in lots worse pain, so it wasn’t that much of a distraction. Before he could pull the second trigger on the gun or reload the bow, I’d already yanked the bolt (which had very briefly pinned me to the chair) from my shoulder. I hit the floor and rolled to the my right, towards the bedroom. I had no plan in mind. Who has time for making getaway plans when she’s just been caught off her guard by some crazy motherfucker crashing through the door, intent on doing her serious bodily harm all the way unto death?
I slammed into the wall beside the closed bedroom door, leaving a sizable dent in the sheetrock, and got a hand around the knob. I tore it free (well, half of it, the half facing the living room) and flung it straight at Rizzo. Maybe I didn’t have a plan, but I was still capable of thinking fast. Also, might I add, I had considerably better aim than he did, and it caught him square between the eyes. The thing was made of cut glass, and it should have killed the bastard right then and there. But you know what they say: Some people are just too mean to die. Or too dumb. Like me and Rizzo.
Instead off dropping dead, he dropped the crossbow—but not the gun—and stumbled backwards, out onto the narrow landing.
Among my tasty assortment of vamp superpowers is the ability to pounce good and proper and fierce as any old puma or jaguar. And pounce is what I did. I easily cleared the distance between the bedroom and the ruined front door, striking Rizzo in the solar plexus, hard enough that he took out the banister behind him and tumbled down the stairwell, ass over tits. He hit the bottom like the proverbial sack of potatoes. Bam! Made almost as much noise as his gun, Which, by the by, happened to fire that second barrel when he hit the foyer, taking out the lower half of the front door.
Asshole.
I stood there on the landing, glaring down at Rizzo, as he rolled over and began crawling desperately towards the hole he’d made in the antique wood. I knew B would be righteously pissed if I didn’t go after him and finish the job, if I let a second opportunity—its having knocked, so to speak—to conclude our Mickey Mouse holy warrior’s sorry existence right then and there. But, I thought, you know, fuck it. My face was on fire, my shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch, and I plain ol’ wasn’t in the mood. When I murder a motherfucker, that’s my prerogative, right? I could deal with Rizzo later, whenever I had a mind to do so. I promised myself that would be the very next time he got in my face.
“Cock stain!” I shouted down the stairs, and just before he slithered through the hole he’d blown in the door, he paused to give me the middle finger.
“Fuck you, too,” I muttered.
Yippee-ki-yay. Just another Saturday night in the unlife of Siobhan Quinn Twice-Damned, Twice-Dead. Quinn the werepire, vampwolf, “daughter” of the late Bride of Quiet and “bitch” whelp of an equally deceased werewolf named Jack Grumet.
I turned and went back inside, pausing to prop the sorry excuse that remained of my apartment door back in place as best I could. Then headed back to the bathroom, cursing every dick that had ever spurted cum in that long line culminating in Bertrand Rizzo. My wounds would heal by daylight, but in the meantime, I had a bottle of Vicodin. On the television, the hyenas played tug of war with a blue and pink tangle of wildebeest intestine. At least someone was having fun.
• • •
“Wake up, kitten,” Mean Mr. B whispered in my ear. “We’ve work to do, and I’ve begun to worry about you.” His voice was sticky as molasses, irrevocably insincere.
I can’t remember what exactly I was dreaming, not specifically, but I was back in those hardscrabble, smack-cushioned days with Lily and the others. I was back before. A shitty life that had come to seem like paradise. You never miss the water till the well runs dry.
I told the voice dragging me up from the dream to go fuck himself with an ice pick.
“I’m not paying you people to sleep,” admonished Berenice Maidstone, impatient, privileged, the voice of someone whose used to folks jumping when she snaps those long fingers of hers.
“Fuck you both,” I moaned, and opened my eyes to sunlight leaking in around the edges of the black drapes that only mostly covered my bedroom window. A while back, I’d duct-taped all the way around the curtain, but the tape had soon come loose and I’d never gotten around to sticking it down again. I squinted and rolled over, away from the sun, fumbling for the sunglasses on the small nightstand beside the bed. Vamps might not combust when exposed to sunlight, but it’s hell on my eyes. Otherwise, it just sort of prickles at the back of my neck, and then usually only around noon. I found the sunglasses and sat up. The merciful storm clouds of the day before had obviously moved on. The pain in my face and shoulder had gone, but I was still a little groggy from the three twenty-five milligrams of hydrocodone I’d taken after Rizzo came calling. And my mouth tasted like shit. Not literally, but goddamn close enough. I reached beneath the bed and groped around a moment or two until I located the bottle of Bacardi I kept there. There was a glass on the nightstand, and I filled it to the brim with rum. It would help scrub away the fuzz in my head—from the painkillers and the tatters of that dream—and it was always easiest to begin a day with a buzz.
The rum tasted sweet, scorching hot, and smooth—all three, all at once—and it wiped away the shitty taste. I drained the glass in one long swallow.
“Wakey, wakey. Eggs and ba-ky,” I grumbled, and filled the glass again, then returned the bottle to the shadows under the edge of the bed. I found my pack of Camels and lit one.
Not a pretty picture, I know, but I’ve never been a morning person. Going vamp only made matters worse.
I sat there, drinking and smoking, slowly waking up, and stared at my feet and the Play-Doh blue carpet. I struggled to take stock, as the events the night before gradually returned to me.
Kinsley Avenue.
The meeting with Berenice.
The call from B, and then the trip to the city morgue.
My index finger poking about inside the bullet hole someone had put in Shaker Lashly’s face.
That shitbird Rizzo.
I took a very deep drag on my cigarette, exhaled, and stared at my phone and Hello Kitty, perched on the edge of the table near an overflowing ashtray that should have been emptied weeks ago. I hadn’t checked in with B. I knew that I should, first thing, right then and there, but that was just about the very last thing I had any scrap of inclination to bother with.
Better to focus on getting the answers he wanted.
All I had was the one lead. Berenice had told me her sister sometimes frequented Drusneth’s brothel in the Armory. Likely, that would prove to be a dead end, but, weird as it might seem, few and far between are the times I’d rather parlay with Mean Mr. B than a ruthless succubus madam.
I finished the second glass of Bacardi and stubbed out my smoke, then staggered off to the bathroom for a hot shower. By the time I was done and had spackled on my human mask, it was almost noon. My stomach gurgled, reminding me the time to find my next meal was fast approaching. I could put it off another night, probably, but no longer.
“Creep,” I said to the creature in the mirror. “Someone finishes you off today, won’t no one cry. Not one single solitary soul.” The creature lip-s
ynced every word right back at me. We smiled for one another.
By that February, I’d long since had my revenge on the nasties who’d made me one of them and dumped me so rudely into their bullshit games and double dealings, and the anger had deserted me. I was also not the completely suicidal mess I had been back at the start. The desire for vengeance is a powerful motivator, and it helps if you’re mostly indifferent to your continued existence. One propels you forward, and the other makes sure you’re willing to do what needs to be done to accomplish that which propels you. That day, all those many months later, looking back at myself from the bathroom mirror, I wished I’d had both those things back: the drive and the furious recklessness.
Yeah, well. It is what it is.
I dressed quickly, checked the clip in the Glock, and strapped on the shoulder holster. I also grabbed the canvas bag with the other tools of my trade. After seeing Shaker’s corpse, I figured better safe than sorry, better to have all that shit and not need it, than to need all that shit and not have it. Fifteen minutes later, I was out the busted doors, out on the street. Oh, I made a mental note to call the handyman about the doors. I could always chalk it up to a break in while I’d been out. I could think of a decent enough excuse as to why I hadn’t called the cops.
It took me three tries to get the rattletrap gray Econoline van started. My POS Honda hadn’t survived Mercy Brown’s fiery end down in Exeter, and B, cheap bastard that he is, had replaced it with the equally POS van. It was missing the front fender, the passenger seat, and the roof was so rusted out there were spots where rain and snow got in. If B’s connections hadn’t kept me clear of the DMV inspections, no way the hulk would have been on the road.
Okay, let’s not get bogged down in the details. Who the hell gives a shit about that van? Jesus H, Quinn. Anyway, like I said, I had the one lead. The one flimsy-ass lead. And I followed it. I drove west across the Point Street Bridge and the frozen Providence River, down Westminster to the Armory District. There is just one thing I can clearly recall about that drive, even all these years later: There was a sun dog hanging in the sky above the city, a mock sun of muted, overlapping oranges, yellows, and blues. It felt like an omen.
• • •
It isn’t customary to show up unannounced at “Madam Calamity’s” house of ill repute and unearthly pleasures expecting an audience with Drusneth. It kinda falls into a category the nasties tend to consider ill-fucking advised. But, see, she and B, they go back a ways, and he’s often summoned to take care of nuisances, deceits, and miscellaneous headaches she either hasn’t got the patience to attend to herself or simply can’t be bothered with. More the latter. I’d say they’re friends, but that’s probably going on beyond too far. More like, they’re a pair of cats in a bag that, out of mutual necessity, have learned to tolerate one another’s company without all the hissing and spitting and bloodshed and flying fur. So, B gets special treatment, which means, by extension, his employees—and, what with the demise of Shaker Lashly, I’d become the only one of those—also get special treatment. Usually. It’s the sort of special treatment that can’t be counted on.
But you do what you gotta, misgivings or no misgivings, right?
Right.
Better to show up unannounced than be told she didn’t have time to see me.
That day, a couple of wealthy South Korean patrons were getting the red carpet, VIP, all the frills, bells, and whistles in exchange for whatever they’d decided they could live without. In this life and/or the next. I was ushered into Drusneth’s office by a surly pair of the se’irim bouncers she has on hand to be sure everyone stays in line. Then she kept me waiting for over an hour. I suppose I had that coming, not even having bothered to call ahead. Wasn’t the first time I’d been in the room—though it was the first time I’d been in the room alone—but I was still amazed by the organized clutter of the place. Sort of like the attic castoffs of an antique dealer obsessed with Late Baroque and Rococo furniture, paintings, mirrors, a chandelier, and tchotchkes (yep, I, the dropout, once read a book on art and architecture; believe it or not, I don’t care). An almost surreal jackstraw heap of chairs, tables, cabinets, cupboards, bookshelves, and footstools, that room, and I always got the feeling that it wouldn’t be hard to drown in all those gilded acanthus leaves and mahogany seashells. Her desk seemed to go on for-fucking-ever, side to side, front to back, adding to the dizzying impression the room was somehow bigger on the inside than on the outside, all Tardis-like. I sat and tried not to look at the portraits, because the faces in them always seemed to be peering warily back at me.
I wanted a cigarette, but I knew better.
I waited.
I waited.
I waited some more.
Finally, Drusneth swept into the room and slammed the door behind her. I’ve never seen her shut a door any other way. I think she just enjoys slamming doors. That day, she was wearing the body of a pale-skinned woman. There was a scatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose and beneath her beryl-green eyes. Her eyebrows and hair were honey blonde. Drusneth changes her skin just about as often as Mean Mr. B changes names. He’d told me one of the cabinets held a few hundred stoppered vials, each containing the likeness of a person she or one of her whores had stolen over the decades, pilfered from customers with more appetite than good sense. That day, she was decked out in a ball gown that would have been fashionable during the reign of Louis XIV and that couldn’t have done a better job of clashing with her office’s décor. The dress was a sickly yellow color, as though it were dying of hepatitis. She trailed the odor of rotting eggs—or, if you prefer, brimstone, but demons hate that word.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, taking her seat behind the gigantic desk. Her voice was simultaneously soothing and terrifying, a summer breeze and an earthquake scrambled into one incongruous omelette.
“No, no. I’m the one who should be apologizing, showing up out of the blue like this.”
She smiled at me. Ain’t no sort of shape-shifting in all the world can hide the wickedness of a smile like that, any more than it can hide the cruel glint in the eyes of a succubus. I couldn’t have stood up and left the room if I’d wanted to. Actually, I probably did want to. But she’d nailed me to the spot. I’d come of my own accord, and there I’d stay until she was done with me. It was all I could do to keep talking.
“And just what urgent wind has blown you my way, my dear Quinn?”
I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead and upper lip. “You might have heard,” I said, “that B’s taken on a job for Edgar Maidstone’s oldest daughter, trying to help her find her sister. Supposed to be a secret, but—”
“Yes, Quinn. The news has reached me. Only just this morning, as it happens. Though I’m not certain how this involves me.” Her eyes sparkled, and I wished that I could look away.
“It probably doesn’t.”
“And yet here you are,” she said, then made a steeple of her fingers and rested her chin on the tips.
I managed a deep breath and somehow managed to exhale. “Berenice—”
“Ever her sister’s keeper.”
“—said that Amity is a frequent customer of yours.”
“Which gives one or the both of you cause to suspect I know what’s become of Maidstone’s wee slut?” She paused a moment, then, before I had a chance to answer, added a second question. “Quinn, is B aware you’re here?”
“No,” I replied.
“I thought not. Because I know he’d have advised against it. More probably, he’d have wisely forbidden you to disturb me and waste my time with this poppycock.”
I nodded about as slowly as anyone can. I felt mired in hot tar. “No doubt,” I told her.
“Which is why you didn’t ask his permission.”
“B has a lot on his plate just now. He put Shaker Lashly on the case before me, and Lashly turned up dead last night.”
“How very unfortunate for him,” she said with not the smalle
st trace of sincerity. Drusneth leaned back in her chair, unsteepling her hands. She flared her nostrils.
“I should go,” I heard myself whisper. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
Drusneth tilted her head to one side, and her jaundiced dress rustled and twitched.
“Quinn, you are always welcome here,” she said, tossing out those six words so it was clear she meant just the opposite. “If only in memory of poor departed Clemency. But I’ve no idea whatsoever what has befallen Amity Maidstone. True, she has visited my parlor many times. She has a reputation for exceptionally unwonted cravings, which we have been happy to sate. Alas, she’s also a shrewd girl, and we’ve reaped far less from our transactions with her than this house would have hoped. We are unaccustomed to such acumen, but she is her father’s daughter.”
“Weird sisters,” I muttered, though I hadn’t meant to say anything at all. I realized the smell of sulfur was fading, and in its place I smelled lavender.
“Of a certain,” Drusneth said. Her human face had begun fading away to a see-through mask I absogoddamnlutely didn’t want to see through. “But I think it best, child, that you return to B and tell him to immediately desist from this imprudent search. He has better and more profitable avenues to travel, which, I would add, should prove less hazardous to his associates.”
I heard the threat, plain as day, but the odor of lavender had become intoxicating, and I was having trouble concentrating. Still, I knew I wouldn’t be exiting the place as easily as I’d come in.
“Yeah,” I slurred. “You bet.”
Drusneth’s mask was no longer merely transparent. It had begun to melt and drip. I’ll never know if that was only a hallucination; it didn’t much seem to matter.
“But first, I insist you partake,” said Drusneth. “I can’t send you back into the cold without first having indulged in the warmth of my hospitality. Something exquisite, at almost no charge . . .”
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