[CLICK]
She led me to my dorm room.
This time was my turn to deadpan, “What is this mysterious room you’ve led me to? I’ve never seen it before.”
She kept motioning for me to follow.
She walked into Ultra Class ‘09’s communal bedroom. This month would be the last time I used it. First day as Pents, we’d be assigned our own apartments on the upper floors. I’ve been in one before—the lady in question shall remain nameless—and they’re pretty small, but I was looking forward to having my own bathroom and my own kitchen.
I warily followed Ceinwyn. “If you wanted to finally give into your lusts for me we could’ve just banged nastys on the Mound, I’m not picky.”
I have no idea how she aimed it, given that we were in separate rooms and it was around a corner, but a slice of air cut across my right thumb like a piece of paper. I yelped in shock.
“You more than earned it,” she said.
“I was joking!” I mumbled around my thumb, trying to make the pain go away.
Damn aeromancers and hitting me with things I can’t see. At least Miranda only uses aero-cudgels. If Miranda didn’t use aero-cudgels I’d probably earn twenty to forty papercuts a week. Or I would’ve learned to be a lot nicer to her.
But probably not.
As long as Valentine Ward lived and breathed, the Foul Mouth and the Ginger Nemesis would forever be locked in eternal struggle over who Val’s boyfriend should be. Namely King Henry Price . . . or anyone but King Henry Price.
Ceinwyn stopped at my bed.
“I want to make another sex joke, but I’m scared,” I admitted to her.
“Finally, after four years, the lesson got through your thick geomancer head,” Ceinwyn mocked me, her blue eyes wide.
Menacing silence.
“What are we doing?” I asked, ready to run from invisible papers and swords and ninja stars.
Ceinwyn reached down, pulling a suitcase from behind my bed where I hadn’t been able to see it. “You’re packing. Anything you want to take but clothes, those are already in the car.”
I felt hope.
The slightest hope.
Me no be alone?
“Am I going to Pismo Beach after all?”
Ceinwyn gave a bark that very much told me this idea was a negative and I was stupid for thinking it was even a possibility. “The Lady has agreed to give you over into my care for the summer break.”
“Whaza what?”
She pulled out a set of clothes. Jeans and tennis shoes and a normal t-shirt. “You’ll need to change out of your colors as well. Hurry up. We have a schedule to keep.”
“Whaza what?”
“You’re going with me on a cross-country recruiting trip,” Ceinwyn filled in, using a voice you would on a nine-year-old who didn’t understand where babies came from.
“Will there be bikinis on this trip?” I eventually managed to ask.
“Our first stop is in Denver,” she told me, walking out of the room.
“That’s a ‘no,’ right?”
“Get changed!”
“That was a ‘no’ . . .”
“I’ll leave without you!”
Session 133
I felt like an alcoholic just waiting to go back to the bottle.
Four months.
Four whole months.
Four whole months without crazy shit happening to me. My life felt just a little good the last time around and then on came the Paine Train. How bad would the dam burst be after all this joy and bliss and normalcy in my life? Four whole months of bliss . . . ain’t never used that word to describe my existence on this shithole of a planet.
Even back during the just ‘fiery’ days before Mom went anima-mad. Even when Susan tucked me in at night. Even when JoJo wasn’t sneaking boys into her bedroom. Even when I came home from school without bloody knuckles or a cut on my bottom lip.
Not even at the Asylum. Can call that shit eventful, can’t call it blissful. Winning Winter War? Nah. Nights with I-Thought-Was-Val-Was-Actually-Stalker-Isabel? Talk about ruined memories. Learning from Plutarch? Hah . . . never blissful, never quiet, always arguments about every little thing. Eva? Well, that was a nice year. But we both knew it was just something to make the nights go by quicker. Nothing blissful in that, just an attempt to not be bored.
Four months.
July, August, September, October.
Hot months mostly. Smog, heat, the usual shithole. Rain didn’t show up until a couple weeks ago. Busy hot months filled with cogs working in their air conditioned buildings, me right along with them. Busy workers, toiling away. Readying for winter. Or in my case: readying for blissful to end. Alcoholic, looking at that bottle, just thinking . . .
Shit gonna hit the fan bad this time around.
The center cannot hold.
Anarchy just waiting for the curtain to pull on back and reveal the players.
Me, I’m just waiting for that bottle. Biting the meat of my thumb to curb my appetite for destruction, blood flowing down my chin.
Four months.
With a girlfriend. Not just a girlfriend. A hot girlfriend. An awesome girlfriend.
Valentine Ward.
Boomworm.
The star. The girl of my dreams turned into the woman of my reality.
Things haven’t moved perfectly between us. Never see each other but once every couple weeks. Means a whole lot of masturbation for good ol’ Prince Henry and a whole lot of punching bags for King Henry.
Work out that tension.
Keep ignoring that bottle.
Keep ignoring the wait.
Long distance relationship . . . not fun shit. Be bad enough if Val was just in one place and I was in one place and we could at least manage being awake at the same time. But she’s never in one place. Romania, Iceland, Panama, Austria, Japan . . . I lost count a long time ago of all the countries she’s been to in these four months. Know it’s too many. About ready to complain to Ceinwyn about it.
Sometimes I think she don’t want Val and me together.
Giving Val all the hard assignments one after another, lined up like dominos bolted to the floor, won’t move without a stiff kick from Ceinwyn’s favorite student.
Giving Val all the assignments that take an eighteen hour flight to reach.
Probably worried I’ll hurt Val. Been good for four months, ain’t I? Haven’t cheated on her, haven’t even thought of cheating on her. Okay, one time I thought about it . . . there were twins. But it was only for like ten seconds tops . . . twins! I turned them down!
I should get a cookie!
Things have been perfect between us when we’re together . . . just hasn’t been enough togethering between us. When it’s just me and Val, then I can forget the bottle, forget the monster inside of me thinking about all the enemies it wants to ruin, don’t matter who gets caught in the carnage. Can forget about the lies told to me and the lies I told in turn to cover it all up, keep Meteyos buried good and deep, keep Obadiah Paine buried at least six feet deep. To Ceinwyn, to the Lady, to the whole Learning Council.
Still don’t know if it was the right move. Still don’t know if it means that Paine Train will be bigger or smaller when it comes. Still don’t know. Four months . . . still waiting. Why can’t Val wait with me? She keeps the monster inside me in check. She’s made me feel normal for the first time in my entire life these four months.
Made me feel . . . human.
Ain’t fair to blame our separation all on her job as a Recruiter. I’ve been busy too. Shop to run. Finishing off Vega’s floro-seeder contract, keeping up with the ESLED orders for SDRs, improving what designs I’ve already figured out. Busy little worker cog, all alone against the world. Scio Anima Disperser. GOB Mark 2. Few other magic tricks to keep a fellow alive.
Then . . . there’s the Paine Experiments. Trying to figure out all the artifacts he flashed in front of me.
Thought I worked hard before that night in Seattle, b
ut now I’m lucky if I get a couple hours sleep. All I saw that day . . . put the fire under me, opened up my eyes. Whole life I thought I could protect myself from those bigger and badder than me; yet here I am, finding myself unprepared for the world as it truly is.
Twenty years of experiments to catch up on if I’m going to be strong enough to fight off Paine a second time . . . and there will be a second time. Won’t be no surprising him in Round Two.
Four months.
Bliss.
Bottle.
The center cannot hold.
I hear that train a comin’ . . .
I hear that beast a slouching . . .
Cold War for now. Building up that arsenal. Really takes away from everything else . . . like girlfriend time. So yeah, not all Val’s fault that we’re only at blissful and not some unprecedented state of elation.
Val. Experiments.
Damn is it a blissful life for King Henry Price.
Four months of bliss.
They say ignorance is bliss. Maybe . . . but ignorance will get you dead quicker than all the bliss in the world is worth.
What will end it?
The Paine Train?
Something else?
Someone else?
[CLICK]
November 2018
“I’m always amazed at the places you take me for dinner,” Val teased as the waiter sat us down at a wobbly table that had seen better days . . . ten or twenty years ago.
“This is the best Mexican place in Fresno,” I said, but then corrected myself, “well, the best Mexican place in Fresno that’s not on wheels.”
The waiter put down a huge bowl of fresh tortilla chips and three smaller bowls filled with different kinds of salsa. Val immediately went for the dip that looked the hottest, such a deep red it could’ve been spiced blood. Pyromancers, how their stomachs survive their taste-buds I’ll never know.
The things I’ve seen that woman eat in the last four months.
The things I’ve smelled coming out of her ass.
. . . What?
I said she was awesome. Not perfect.
Farts so spicy they burn the side of your leg, man.
Leave a hole in your bed sheets.
Relationships, man . . . even the one-day-in-a-couple-weeks kind opens up all the doors, don’t they? Puts a whole new spin on Boomworm.
“I’m not complaining,” Val said after trying out each bowl of salsa. When she was done taste-testing, she slid the mildest across the table to me and kept the other two for herself.
“It’s Fresno,” I pointed out, “this is as high class and romantic as this city gets.” I tasted the salsa. It had tomatoes and onions and was . . . salsa-y. Geomancer in me don’t really dig spicy stuff outside of black pepper.
But for Val . . .
“I’m sure there’s some place you’d at least need to wear a suit to.”
“Why would you want to torture yourself by having to spend a whole night watching me in a suit?”
“Because it would torture you even more.”
“Har, har.”
Jeans, geomancer coat. We’ve covered this plenty of times. Don’t even change it for dates, though I did make sure to shave and put on some deodorant.
See, I’m trying hard here!
Besides the usual clothes, I was loaded up with artifacts too. SEM-DEW, PAD, both SADs, SDR, Cold Cuffs, Anti-Vamp Hot Cuffs. Some new additions . . . a monocle about two inches thick and rimmed in a quarter-inch of steel. I’d tried keeping it on a chain around my neck, but the thing weighed a ton and instead I put it in the coat pouch with the dispensers. Also a rod about a foot long and then tied to it, a black silk pouch filled with tiny silver discs about the size of a dime. A single overlarge brass knuckle with an elaborately detailed surface made for something other than punching, stuffed up my coat sleeve.
I told you: I’ve been a busy little cog.
No Shaky Stick.
Kept it hidden now.
More hidden than even the ‘hidden’ safe in my shop floor. I’d booby-trapped that thing . . . anyone tried to break into it to steal the Shaky Stick and they’d be in for a surprise. They got lucky and they might even live through it.
Did have Poug’s weird, oversized, pencil-like knife in my pocket though. I’d taken that thing out and studied it more than even the Shaky Stick. Tried to throw anima at it, tried to smash it with a hammer, even drove out into the farmlands surrounding Fresno and tried to blow it up with a stick of dynamite. T-Bone came along for that one, was a fun day despite the knife still not showing a bit of damage. Whatever the glass-metal was . . . it was more unbreakable than Bruce Willis.
We ordered our food.
She went for some ginormous, extra-spicy burrito thing about the size of a dog. Me, I went for mole enchiladas. This place almost made them as good as my dad used to. Suppose Dad still does make them. With Val and the shop I haven’t had much time for the guy . . . or his girlfriend . . . Marge . . . who’s living with him now . . . in my dead mother’s bedroom . . .
Nope, still not ready to deal with that emotional shit.
I try to call the guy once a week, but not much to talk about. Sports. Football. MMA. Boxing. The last resort for fathers and sons with a shit-ton of baggage between them. Told him about Val, but . . . wasn’t ready for her to enter into all that emotional shit either. Maybe it wasn’t fair. I mean . . . Ronnie and Peter Ward bug me all the time. Christmas even wrote me from the Asylum to thank me for convincing her to go to school there.
The Wards had accepted me in a way my family never had.
But let them into the Price side of my life?
Show Val where I grew up?
Have her meet Dad or JoJo?
Double still not ready to deal with that.
One day though . . . she’s gonna want to, Price.
One day . . . bliss wouldn’t just end from the bottle of crazy crashing upon us, but from one of us deciding one-day-in-a-couple-weeks ain’t enough. Then . . .
“All this talk is coming from you being in Paris for the last week, ain’t it?”
Val sighed. “La Ville-Lumiére.”
“Think I could split the Eiffel Tower in half?”
She glared mockingly at me. “Stay away from my tower, King Henry.”
“You can have it.”
“It could have been our tower.”
“Ceinwyn wouldn’t allow it.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you.”
“And you well know I can’t travel with artifacts . . . it’s bad enough when I pick you up at the airport, I keep expecting one of those TSA guys to tackle me. Having to pass through the metal detectors? Forget it.”
“You could leave them behind for once.”
“And give the Curator the opening?”
“Excuses . . . besides, I’ll protect you just like last time.”
“Suppose you could put in a transfer to national recruiting instead of international recruiting . . . then I could just drive to be with you.”
We stared at each other, not giving an inch, waiting for food.
Like I said: one day, blissful ain’t gonna be enough.
It was building up. Same as that Paine Train kept getting louder. Same as that beast’s growl kept getting deeper.
But for now . . . four months and counting.
[CLICK]
Mole enchiladas weren’t quite as good as Dad’s, but damn . . . brought back the memories. Across from me, Val attacked pieces of meat so spiced they dissolved the tortilla holding them. “I take back everything I said,” she mumbled through a full mouth in quite an unladylike way, “this is amazing.”
“See . . . décor and eveningwear ain’t everything.”
Val swallowed her mouthful and then gave me a huge grin. “But did you ever bother to consider what kind of eveningwear I would be in if we went somewhere upscale?”
She had on the same clothes she’d travelled to Fresno in. Bit of makeup, but not much. She’d grown her b
lond hair out some, but not nearly as long as it had once been. She had it in a simple ponytail and was still styling and profiling. I’ve been there when she wakes up in the morning, she’s human, trust me . . . but . . . damn if the woman can’t pull off hot girl-next-door without it seeming forced.
“Can’t imagine it would improve much on perfect, would it?”
Val winked. “Charmer.”
“I never thought so,” a sultry voice said at my back. “But then I bring out the worst in him, don’t I?”
Every hair on my body had a shit-fit from shock, even my pubes . . . especially my pubes.
Out of nowhere, a waiter appeared to put down a third wobbly chair. Into the chair . . . slid Annie B.
Fuck me.
Just . . .
Fuck me with a shovel.
Sideways.
Just . . .
God damn, fucking son-of-a-bitch!
Four months.
Officially over.
Roll that clock back to zero.
Annie B gazed seductively at me, not giving a single shit that my girlfriend glared her down from across the table . . . or that my girlfriend happened to be a badass pyromancer. Annie looked the same as she had last time I’d seen her too . . . shit, almost a year now. Close enough. But then vampires don’t age, it’s kind of the only plus to the whole being-a-blood-parasite-living-in-a-human-shell thing.
Body made to perfection, crafted to be a weapon and a tool and a trap, all three. Silkiest black hair you ever seen, big velvet eyes so ready to suck you into a slice of forever, milky white skin saying come for a taste and I’ll taste you back, big boy. Ta-tas. Hips don’t lie. Badonkadonk. Choker on her neck glinting B. November or not, Annie had on jean shorts and a strapless top under a leather jacket that had every guy in the Mexican joint drooling over her.
Except for me.
I grabbed the waiter by the arm as he passed by. “Get me an XL margarita with double tequila in the next couple minutes and there’s a twenty dollar tip in it for you.”
“Si, senor!”
I studied Annie B some more, then stopped when I realized: girlfriend present. I was only sizing up a vampire as a threat but I didn’t want Val to get the wrong idea. Val’s never shown the least bit of jealousy before.
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 4