I looked back toward May’s. The paper bag tucked up under my arm got heavy. “Why do you care?”
“Because I’m not them, upstairs or down,” the man in black said. “I don’t have a dog in their fight. But there’s bad blood coming down the road. Real bad blood.” He turned on his heel. “Can you taste it?”
I turned my face into the wind, same as him. “That’s not me any more.”
“No.” The man in black lit a fresh cigarette. “Suppose not.” He came back, passed me, and stopped. His thumb ran down my jawbone. “Last chance, kid. Walk away.”
I met those eyes, the black eyes that were older than any of the stars in the sky. “I’ve gone far enough.”
The snow was already around my ankles, but I lifted up my feet and walked. Death stayed at the crossroads, watching me go.
5.
Betty smoked like she fucked—hard and straight ahead. “Shit. We aren’t gonna get a single paying gentleman caller tonight.”
“Do you have to talk like a sailor?” Doris sighed. She sighed like a schoolteacher. Probably had been one. She hated the rest of us enough to have had a better life a while back, and to still resent it being gone.
“I don’t know. You have to be a dumb twat all the time?” Betty asked her.
I had the window seat. The girl in the window seat watched for cars and customers. I’d prettied up, put on a merry widow a traveling garment salesman had given me on his way through from Detroit to Fort Worth. He’d wanted me to lie still and pretend I was a virgin. Cry a little when he was done. I bit the inside of my own cheek to coax some tears.
Done my hair, painted up my lips red like flowers that wouldn’t come until spring, made sure my seams were razor-straight, but I’d never been gladder for a dead night.
I didn’t owe May any loyalty. She was a madam and she took her cut. She had a straight razor to make sure the girls didn’t hold out.
I didn’t owe Betty, even though she’d always treated me like her own. I should have walked.
Why the hell didn’t I walk like the man in black said?
I still don’t know the answer to that one. Another tip: angels don’t have all the answers. Not even close.
6.
None of us saw the car pull up. The yard was empty and then it was there, in the dark, a darker spot of fenders and chrome and reflective glass against the twilight blue snow. An old Cadillac—rounded top, gleaming clean, long black hood shaped like a coffin.
Hands beat on the door, and Frankie stirred himself from the armchair by the fireplace. “All right, all right,” he said. “Hold your horses.”
All around the parlor, we fluttered and settled, smoothing down skirts, adjusting bosoms, straightening hair and seams. Customers were customers, and to come out in this weather they must be extra special grade-A horny. Some of us were making money tonight. Doris smirked at me while she pulled her robe further up her thighs. Betty stubbed out her cigarette, so the men coming in would have to light one for her.
Frankie’s voice rose in the front hall, just a word or two. No, wait.
A wet snap echoed off May’s high cobwebbed ceilings, like someone had stepped on a green sapling branch. A heavier, messier sound followed, the sound of two hundred and thirty pounds of ex-prizefighter limply hitting the front hall floor. The door slammed. May got out of her chair at the same time. Footsteps thudded toward the drawing room. I said, “May, don’t,” because I may just be a shadow-body now, but I still knew killing when I heard it. All four things happened at once.
Then, three men were in the drawing room, making the space too tight and hot and close. The one in front, the tallest but also the thinnest, held a big silver automatic down at his side. He told May, “Don’t scream.”
“Oh, my God,” Betty said, matter of factly. The man’s gun flew up like a dart. It was nickel-plated, a Colt army officer model.
“Shut your mouth, whore,” he said. He put his eyes back on May. “This everyone in the house?”
“Yeah,” said May without missing a beat. “You already met Frankie.”
Doris let out a sob, hands over her mouth. The Colt came up again. “I said shut up!”
“There’s no need for all this.” May was talking low and fast, soothing as the carney fortune-teller she’d been in her young, pretty days. Bought the house with the profits. Opened a business for herself. “We’re all friends here. Why don’t you fellas sit down, have a few drinks? Everything on the house. You boys look like you need some R and R . . .”
The man turned the gun grip first and hit May across the mouth. She fell, on her side, hand on her jaw. Her teeth were dark and bloody as her lip peeled back. Fat tears grouped in her eyes but she didn’t make a sound. The bruise was fat and square and it would linger for weeks. If they shot her, she’d be buried with it.
Everything went nuts then. Girls screamed, hands flying up like a cluster of doves to clasp mouths and eyes. The only one who didn’t lose her wig was Betty, and she just sat like a stone, lips parted and eyes all pupil.
“Now let’s try this again,” the man said. “My name is Gil. This here is Buzz and Eddie. We’re going to be waiting out the blizzard with you lovely ladies, and the lovelier you are, the less I’ll have to do things like this.”
His foot, black-booted, still wet with melted snow, went into May’s gut. She let out a billowy wheeze, and curled into a ball. Still not a sound. May was tough as they came.
“You with me, ladies?” Gil asked the room at large. His eyes settled on Betty, the only one who hadn’t fled to the far sofa, under the portrait of May’s great-great-grandmother. “How about you, gorgeous?” He went to her and put the Colt under her chin, lifting her face until she couldn’t help but look at him. “You want to love me?” Gil asked. The barrel traveled up, down, across her lips. “You want to suck on it?”
Betty started an allover tremble. Her eyes didn’t blink. The pulse in her neck stuttered.
“Stop it.” I didn’t move, just let out two words. Not even strong words. I couldn’t tell you where they came from, just that I’d had my fill of men bossing whores for the day.
Gil turned. He came to me. The barrel of the Colt was still warm from Betty’s skin. “Why, darlin’? You want to suck it instead?”
He didn’t have to force me to look up. I stared into his eyes. This close they were pale as driven snow, rimmed in red. Dead man’s eyes, filmed over and days gone.
“How about it?” Gil pressed the barrel against my lips. My teeth scraped. I tasted blood.
I drew back. “Fuck you.”
Gil grinned. “That’s the idea.” He backhanded me in the mouth, and the world went sideways.
His touch ignited something. It finished a circuit that I thought had died when I left the City. Like the big metal teeth that closed the circle on the electric chair up at Joliet. The cops who came in, the local boys from Eden, called it riding the lightning.
It was in me, under my skin. Making my muscles twitch, my tongue swell. I was on the floor, staring up at Gil. My eyes were the eyes I’d possessed in the City. The switch had been flipped.
I saw what he was.
Here’s the thing about demons—they were like us, once. The horns and the cloven feet of beasts, tails and claws, fire and brimstone . . . it’s a bit of Church propaganda. Trust the Catholics to have that dramatic flair.
Real truth: demons look like you. They talk like you. They can steal into a dead body or a sinful one and make their hearts beat like yours.
But they aren’t you. They’re hollow, and inside is what crawls up out of Hell. They have black eyes and dead skin and teeth that can break your bones. And wings. Wings of smoke and hellfire, skeletons of what they lost in the City.
Gil jerked his head at Buzz. “Get her up.”
I blinked as Buzz grabbed me. Gil and him both—the dead, mummified faces, the scent of smoke and the dry taste of ash in my mouth. Eddie, the quiet one, stayed the same.
I hadn’t been ab
le to see the demons among us since I fell, never mind mouth off to a pair of them. There wasn’t time to celebrate now, either. Gil was pointing that Colt at each of us in turn.
“Anyone else feel like being chatty?”
Nobody did.
Gil came at me again. This time, he leaned down and put his lips against my ear. I smelled the heavy, almost floral scent of rotting skin and bone. Demon smell. All brimstone and death. “Now let’s try this again. You know what I am?”
I nodded. Seemed stupid to do anything else.
“And I know what you are. You’re a fly without wings.” He turned away from me, to Eddie and Buzz. “Bring him in. Make it fast.”
They disappeared, and Gil stuck close to me. “Haven’t seen one of you in a while. Naples, 1893. You want to know what I did to her?”
Another fallen woman like me. I’d be surprised, except the night had pretty much killed my capacity to be shocked.
Hell, who was I kidding? My time on Earth had killed that, deader than Frankie’s corpse in the hallway.
The door swung, letting in a little snow, and then Eddie and Buzz reappeared, holding a fourth man between them.
He was in a bad way, and from the noises the rest of the girls made I wasn’t the only one who noticed. He wore a vest and a French linen shirt, a good-looking, square-jawed boy. The stain spreading across his midsection was black, shaped like a birthmark.
“Lay him down,” Gil said. He leaned close again. “Now, little wingless girl . . . you’re going to perform a laying on of hands. Fix up my boy here right as rain.”
I met his eyes again, even though it hurt my head. I hadn’t been able to see for so long that it was like a spotlight in my eyes. “I can’t do that.”
Gil pressed the Colt between my breasts. His other hand traveled up my thigh, thumb bearing down hard enough to bruise. “And why is that, little one?” His thumb brushed against the silk at the junction of my thigh.
I caught his wrist. “I’m not that kind of seraph.” I couldn’t heal and bring people into the light, even in the City. I was made for other things. Bloody things.
Gil tsked. “Too bad. You could have saved yourself.”
I shook my head. “Nobody can. Not from something like you.”
Gil winked at me. “A smart whore. Now I’ve seen everything.” He turned his back on me. The gun was down. He had what he wanted—we were well and truly scared. Not liable to do anything rash, like save our lives.
Gil clapped his hands at May. “Bring us a bottle of something. We’ve had a long night.”
He settled into a chair, as did Buzz. Eddie stayed against the wall, fingers tapping the faded paper in no particular rhythm.
I looked at the fourth man. He wasn’t doing so hot. Pale, blue around the edges, and the blood at least a day old. Gut wounds bleed slowly, and give the bullet time to poison your insides. Even if I could do the trick Gil wanted, the wound wasn’t his biggest problem. I’d seen the infection that raged like a fever through the trenches in France, and in every war before that. The fourth man was already dead, he just hadn’t caught on yet.
If he died here, who knew what Gil would do?
It wasn’t my place, I realized. Not my place at all. I didn’t owe May and the girls anything. I should go before Gil decided to take me apart piece by piece, for fun.
Soon as I got the chance, I’d be gone.
And I wouldn’t be feeling bad about it.
7.
After he’d drunk his way through two bottles of May’s best whiskey, and grinned at us all the while, Gil parceled us out—he grabbed up Betty and Doris, and he shoved Eddie at me. Buzz got to watch the rest of us and the fourth man, who’d slipped into the kind of sleep that made his skin prickle with fever dreams.
Betty brushed the back of my hand while Gil herded us up the stairs. I caught her fingers in mine, twined them up and squeezed.
“Are we gonna be all right?” Betty whispered.
I couldn’t lie to her, not right to her face, so I just made a nondescript noise.
“I’ll fuck him,” Betty whispered. “But I’m not gonna like it.”
Eddie pulled me away and I went, even though my head was still swimmy from Gil’s tap. I used to be a lot tougher. Time was, Gil would have burned up from touching me.
Eddie was hesitant, his hand barely circling my arm. I took him into my room. He stood with his arms loose, in the center of the carpet, staring at me. I sat on the bed, and didn’t give him the luxury of turning my eyes toward my lap like a lady. “We might as well get this over with.”
Eddie shoved a hand through his hair. “Christ,” he said. “I don’t want to force it.” He was like me—dark hair and pale skin. Nothing like the big, barrel-chested, corn-fed body Gil was riding. Eddie wasn’t from this flat frozen place. Just like me.
“You’re not forcing it,” I said. “You and your buddies have got guns. I don’t.”
“I don’t kill women, miss,” Eddie said, his brows drawing together, a narrow borderline of anger. “I don’t hurt them, either.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Never?”
Eddie sighed, and sat down next to me. “Not unless I have to.” The bed sagged under him. He was heavier than he looked.
“We’d better do something,” I said. “Unless you want that ape Gil to beat the tar out of both of us.”
“Fuck him,” Eddie said darkly. “I told him I didn’t want no part of this mess.”
I shrugged out of my robe. “Where are you from? You sound . . . different.”
“Chicago,” Eddie said. “South side, born and raised.”
“Irish boy?” I pushed out my chest a little. His eyes drifted down, and darkened. That was good. I needed him distracted. I tried not to think about downstairs, or next door, where Gil was with Betty. I needed to be gone by the time he finished.
Betty would be all right. I would be all right.
We were never meant to stay together. I didn’t get friends and blood sisters. I got a gun shoved in my face and a quick rabbit before a demon ate me down to the bone.
“Eddie McHone.” He stuck out his hand. I took it, and put it on my clavicle, over my heartbeat.
“Eddie, do you not like me?”
“It’s not that . . .” Eddie said. Hand not moving, he leaned in. “I just signed on for one job, all right? I’m not a trigger man.”
I put my hand on his cheek. “What are you, then?”
“I’m a wheelman,” Eddie said. “I . . . there was trouble, back home. I came out to this backwater, and then Gil . . . it was only supposed to be one bank.” His hand slipped down, squeezing my breast. He had rough hands, strong mechanic’s hands. “You’re really pretty,” Eddie whispered.
“Tell me more,” I whispered back, my hands finding his belt buckle while he sucked on my neck. “Tell me what a bad man you are.”
Eddie drew back like I tasted rotten. “I didn’t do nothing to those people. That was all Gil and Buzz. I told them that family wouldn’t call the cops. I told them . . .” He drew back his lip. “You don’t care, do you? You’re just stringing me along so I won’t try nothing.”
“I’m trying not to get killed, Eddie,” I said. “I imagine you’re trying the same thing, and have been ever since things went south with your little crew.”
He sighed and let go of me. “You seem like an all-right girl. I mean, I’ve fucked a lot of whores—no offense. Most of ’em are cold. But Gil ain’t gonna leave no witnesses. We’re headed for Texas, then Mexico. Until then . . .” He made his finger into a gun and pointed it at me. His mouth made a little puff of air when he pulled the trigger.
“We don’t matter,” I said, pulling him close again. Taking his mind away from the blood place, the death place. “We’re just whores. Who’d believe us?”
“Right . . .” Eddie’s hands drifted south of my tits, down my waist and over my thighs. Stress and sleeplessness make some people crazy and some people horny. Some people both. Luckily, it was wo
rking on Eddie.
“You got anything to drink?” he mumbled, his lips and tongue grazing over the tops of my breasts.
“Sure, baby,” I said. May didn’t allow liquor in the rooms, but I had a bottle. We all had hidden things. Dope, booze, photographs of other lives. I reached into the bedside table, and handed it to him. Eddie took a long pull, another, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Fucking farmer over in Lawrence shot Jake,” he said. “The guy downstairs.”
“I figured,” I said.
“We weren’t even doing anything. Just swapping out cars behind his barn. Unloaded buckshot all over creation. Jake . . .” Eddie sighed, drank again. “He ain’t gonna make it. Gil won’t find a doctor. Not even a vet to give him some dope for the pain.”
“Don’t think about that,” I whispered. Eddie wasn’t the kind of hard case Gil was—and human, besides, but he still wasn’t going to let me waltz off. Not unless he got what he wanted.
I reached for the buttons on Eddie’s fly. “What do you like?” I asked. He gave a little groan when my knuckles grazed him. He was hard already—Eddie might be all right. If he learned to keep his cool and give up feeling sorry for the folks that got in the way. He might live to be a real bastard, not just a pretend one.
“Just . . . your hand,” he mumbled. His voice was thickening up from the cheap liquor. That was good. He closed his hand over mine, up and down, eyes closing and head falling back. I kept mine open.
After thirty seconds or so, Eddie gasped, and his eyes came open. “Your mouth,” he slurred. “On your knees.”
“Sure, baby,” I said. I slid down to the floor, knobby old rug digging into my legs. Eddie grabbed me by the hair and put me where he wanted me. I started sucking him off, keeping my ears turned to the next room. Betty and Gil were in there. I could hear muffled cries, the steady, rhythmic thump of Betty’s mattress. I tried not to imagine what was going on. What I couldn’t do any more, but wanted to do very badly, to the demon in Gil’s body. That would just get me shot and dying once had been enough.
The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge Page 28