He looked at Taff for reassurance, but none was forthcoming.
“Fine,” Julie said, walking down the stairs to the front. The old man, Gideon Lockwood, hadn’t said a word. There was obviously a shift in power happening, Gideon handing his corrupt little empire over to the latest bastard spawn of his loins. “Okay, I’m all ears,” he said, taking a chair.
“When you have a meeting like this I think it’s important to know what you want out of it before you say a word, that way, when tempers fray you’ve just got to think: ‘What’s my motivation here? What do I want? What do I stand to gain? What could I lose?’ Of course, that’s difficult from your side, as you had no idea this was going to happen, but from my side, well, I’ll admit I’ve got a very clear endgame in mind. We have a situation developing, Julie—can I call you Julie?” Julie didn’t answer him, so Seth took his silence as tacit acceptance and carried on, “Huw speaks very highly of you, Julie, and as you can see, Huw and I have a rather special relationship—”
“You mean you bought him.”
“I appreciate a man who speaks his mind. Yes, my family have paid good hard cash for young Huw’s loyalty over the years. It was a smart investment for people in our line of work. With someone like Huw, you’re buying a bit of insurance. But as you say, things are changing. For one, I don’t intend to run the family the way old Gideon here has,” he dug his fingers deep into the old man’s shoulders. That was when Julie noticed his hands; they weren’t the smooth powerfully masculine hands of a young man in his prime. They were liver-spotted and deeply lined. They were the hands of an old man who had spent his entire life grafting with them.
He looked up at Seth’s face, trying to decide if it really was the face of the man in the film, or just some familial similarity. He didn’t really grasp the complexities of genetics, but it didn’t seem unreasonable that men born a century apart could bear more than just passing similarity if they came from the same stock.
Seth put up with his obvious scrutiny with no obvious objection, but Julie noticed the way his fingers dug deeper into Gideon’s shoulders. The old man didn’t so much as flinch beneath his touch.
“I need someone I can trust,” Seth said. “An honest man. Not a bent bastard like Huw here.”
“And you want to buy me to be your ‘good man’? Seems to be counterintuitive to me.”
“Not a good man, Julie, an honest one. There’s a difference. I’ve got no interest in whether you’re good or not, that’s between you and your maker. But to answer your question, it’s all about love.”
“I’m sorry, despite the nickname, I don’t swing that way,” Julie said.
“Ha! A wise guy. Excellent. Look,” his fingernails dug deeper into Gideon’s shoulder. “I know you saw my cousin. I saw your little accident. I have no idea what stories he has filled your head with, but he’s not to be trusted that one.”
“And you are?”
“I’ll never lie to you, Julie, which is more than can be said for a lot of people. Honesty is very important to me. There’s a history between our families, the Lockwoods and the Raineses. It goes back to Gideon here’s father, and Josh’s great-grandfather, Isaiah. See, his real name was Isaiah Lockwood. He was Gideon’s uncle.”
“Okay, so assuming that’s not a lie, why should I get involved in a domestic dispute, especially one that goes back a long time?”
“I could say something melodramatic, like lives are at stake.”
“You could, but that would make you a liar after all, considering one of the first things out of your mouth after we walked through the door was that you don’t intend to run the family business the same way as your grandfather. I have to take you at your word that you’re cleaning up your act.”
Seth smiled. As smiles went it was about as warm and friendly as a forest fire. “I think I like you, Julie.”
“Great,” Julie said with little enthusiasm.
“So, to business, besides your honesty, I want your help.”
“Of course you do.”
“Nothing sinister. Nothing illegal. I want you to watch out for young Josh. He’s meddling in things that are going to get him hurt. I don’t want that, he’s family after all.”
“And who’s going to hurt him?”
“Who? Why me, of course. Just because I don’t intend to run the family like Gideon here doesn’t mean I’m not capable of some very nasty things. I think you need a little demonstration, it’s important that you understand who I am. Huw, take off your glasses, let’s get a look at that ugly mug of yours,” Seth told the Welshman.
Taff did as he was told, leaving Julie to stare at the mess of scars where his eyes had been.
Julie pushed himself up out of his chair, backing away. “What the fuck?” He was shaking. “Taff? What have they done to you?”
“I can see,” Taff said, his smile utterly beatific. He reached out for Shepherd’s hand. “For the first time I can really see.”
“They’ve taken your eyes.”
“No, she’s opened them, Julie. That’s different.” Taff argued.
“Fuck me. Fuck. Oh, fucking no. Just no. Jesus fuck.” Julie couldn’t seem to wrap his tongue around any other words. He was caught looking from Taff to Seth to the hideously radiant Myrna Shepherd and back again. “So … if I don’t do what you want, you’ll do this to me?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Seth said reasonably. “Huw asked for this. It was his choice. Huw’s happy—aren’t you, Huw?” Seth asked. “He’s the hero of his own life. He got the girl. And what a girl she is. Look at her, Julie. Take a good look. Wouldn’t you say she was worth any price?”
Julie shook his head. He had no words.
Seth smiled that damned smile of his. “Good. I’m glad you’re not like your partner. You see, Huw here is a bitter disappointment to me. I gave him everything he asked for. More. And in return I asked for so little. Now I’m out of patience. Myrna, dearest,” he turned to the woman who was tenderly stroking the stubble of Taff’s gaunt cheek. “You have my permission to feed.”
Without a word, the woman in white leaned in to kiss her beau, and as her bluish lips touched his, reached up around the back of his head and tangled her fingers in his hair. It might have been the most tender of kisses, but for the fact that her face bled into his, losing all semblance of individuality as the two became one. Lost in the ecstasy of it, Taff reached up for her hair, trying to reciprocate even as she sucked the life out of him.
34
LOVE BITES
It began with a twitch. The twitch grew into a tremor. The tremor in turn became a shiver, the shiver intensified into a convulsion as their lips touched. There was nothing intimate about the contact. Electric, yes, but not intimate. Her fingers moved up around the side of his face to cup it in her hands. They left a glossy trail that puckered his skin as it quickly dried. The track glittered silver in the old cinema’s low light.
A soft sigh escaped Taff’s lips and for just a second, the flicker between frames, Julie could almost believe it was bliss.
It really did look like he was enjoying it.
He mirrored her movements, reaching up to cup her face in his hands, trying to pull her so close it was impossible to tell where she ended and he began. He met her kiss with desperate lips. Julie could hear his partner’s breath coming in ragged gasps as he was forced to choose between breaking contact and breathing.
The woman was the embodiment of the old Hollywood hedonism, right out of the Garden of Allah and its legendary sewing circles along the dirt track that was still to become the real Sunset Boulevard. Tallulah Bankhead, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, Jayne Mansfield, all names to conjure with, all linked to the excesses of that famous villa in its heyday. And Myrna Shepherd stood side by side with every one of them, a classical beauty so far out of the league of mortal men as to be up among the pantheon of the immortals and here she was, on the verge of devouring
Taff Carter in front of his eyes. Even in the grim ruin of the old movie theater, the light—what little there was of it—loved her, but then, like all true beauty she carried it within her.
Taff was exactly where he wanted to be, a willing victim.
His hand moved up the curve of her spine, fingers pushing against fabric that didn’t move. It was the second hint at her impossible nature.
“I suppose there are worse ways to die,” Seth remarked, happily providing his own soundtrack to the murder playing out before them.
“I don’t know what sick game you are playing here, but I don’t want any part of it,” Julie said.
“You can’t walk out, you’re the guest of honor. This whole piece of theater is just for you. Ever heard that phrase damned if you do, damned if you don’t?”
Julie turned his back on the stage and managed three steps back toward the aisle before Taff cried out. There was a world of hurt in the sound.
Against the backdrop of Hitchcock’s lost film, his partner and the movie siren worked their bodies against each other, each movement frantic, hungry, desperate, as the pleasure quickly faded, born again as pain.
She moved sinuously against him, never breaking contact with his temples even as his bliss was transformed into whimpers and his whimpers became moans.
There was no mistaking the agony in the sounds gurgling deep in his throat now.
Behind Taff the images on the big screen flickered by disjointedly, remembering a London long since lost. The film provided a curious backdrop to his torture.
The woman’s teeth drew Taff’s tongue tip slowly out of his mouth, into hers. It wasn’t erotic in any way. It was like watching a black widow’s sexual cannibalism.
She bit down on it, tearing into his gums with her teeth with shocking ferocity. Now there was blood; a single track of it down the stubble of Taff’s chin and more of it frothing around his teeth. She bit him again, harder this time, pulling and pulling as if his face might peel away beneath her teeth to expose the bones beneath. She tangled her fingers in his hair and yanked his head back. Taff gasped and opened his mouth wider. The blood spilled down his neck. Drawn to it, she leaned in, tasting his stale sweat on her tongue, and then she bit down again, around his Adam’s apple.
“Please,” Taff begged, the muscles of his neck corded against the pain. For a moment Julie actually thought he was so far gone he was begging for more. But the second “Please,” banished any misconceptions. He saw the panic in his partner’s face as the woman tore free another mouthful of meat and gristle.
Seth placed a comforting hand on Julie’s shoulder. “It really is a tragedy. Well, actually no it isn’t. He deserves everything that’s coming to him. He was willing to give you up to save his own skin. That’s our Huw. Like I said, in a meeting like this you need a clear idea of what you hope to achieve. I know what I want out of this.”
“What?” Julie said.
Seth had something in his hand.
A Browning Hi Power, 9mm with thumb safety. It was the weapon of choice for the armed response units of police marksmen. Julie knew it well. It was the only gun he’d ever fired. The Browning had a thirteen-shot clip.
“You. My honest man.”
Seth offered him the gun.
“There’s one bullet in the chamber,” Seth said. “You’ve got a choice. You can put it in my head, then the delightful Myrna here will turn on you and we’ll all end up pushing up daisies, side by side for all eternity, or you can put it in your partner’s head and end his suffering. Mercy or murder? That’s why we’re here, to see if you are the kind of man I think you are.”
Julie didn’t even think about it, he raised the gun, leveling it so the black eye aimed squarely at the bridge of Seth Lockwood’s nose. “I think I’ll take option three, this ends here, Seth Lockwood. You’re under arrest.”
Lockwood just laughed. “You see that, Gideon? I was right, the boy has got some brass balls on him.” The old man didn’t say a word. “I like a fearless man, don’t I, son?” Still the old man kept his silence. “So, Julie, cards on the table, no lies or pretty promises, I could use a guy like you now that Huw’s on the outs. I’m a good friend to have, believe me, but I make a lousy enemy.”
“I get the picture,” Julie said, not lowering the gun.
“Do you? You’re still thinking of me as the villain of the peace. I’m really not. I might not be the victim, but I’m far from the villain.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re the hero here?”
“Aren’t we all the heroes of our own lives, Julie? The only thing you need to remember is that Huw brought this on himself. I liked having my own pet pig. I didn’t ask much of him, one thing in fact, and in return I gave him exactly what his heart desired. I even warned him before I gave him the monster, but he was adamant that she was all he had ever dreamed of, so we sealed the deal. What am I supposed to do? It’s out of my hands, Julie. I didn’t make the rules. Here’s the only thing you need to know: I don’t want to be here any more than you do. So, let’s just get this over with, either kill me or kill him, but for fuck’s sake kill one of us. All you’ve got to do is pull the trigger. You can do that, can’t you?”
Taff echoed Seth’s “Please.”
It was the last coherent thing he ever said.
The woman’s thumbs pulled his mouth open wider and wider until the skin was stretched taut, and then she pulled it open farther still; Taff’s pleas became gurgles as his tongue bloated. It took Julius a moment to realize what she was doing—folding Taff’s tongue back on itself so it filled his throat, and she then kept pressing it back as he gagged on it, but she wouldn’t let him choke. She was tender with her torture.
She lingered a moment to marvel at her handiwork, tracing a finger from his lips to his belt before she reached down, unzipping him as Taff stood helplessly by. There was nothing erotic in the move, and yet Taff ground his hips against her as she slipped her hand inside his pants.
Her grip tightened.
A desperate moan escaped Taff’s lips.
“You might want to do something,” Seth said, quite matter-of-factly. “It’s all about the nasty from here on in. He’s a dead man. It’s just how much he suffers before the end, and that’s in your hands.”
“I can’t—” Julie said, shaking his head. His hand was shaking, too. The gun felt impossibly heavy in it, as if the entire weight of his partner’s life had been conferred onto the cold metal.
He thought seriously about pulling the trigger—the gun aimed squarely at the woman. He thought about putting the bullet in her head, but doubted it would stop her. Whatever she was, she wasn’t flesh and blood. Was he going to need a silver bullet to put her down? How did you stop a silver screen siren from devouring your partner? The world had stopped making sense. Suddenly he was in a city of movie stars and monsters where the movie stars were the monsters and all he could think, staring at Myrna Shepherd as she drained the life out of his partner was: If he was right about something as insane as this, what else was Josh Raines right about?
Stage magicians, gangland thugs, kidnapped actresses, all of it?
As his eyes were drawn once more to the image outside The Peabody and the look that passed across that black-and-white Seth Lockwood’s face he actually started to believe it could be.
Saliva and blood dribbled from Taff’s chin as he started to come undone.
“She’s going to feed on him now. It won’t be pretty,” Seth said. “To all intents and purposes, she’s a succubus, a sexual demon,” Seth was quite matter-of-fact about it, as if sexual demons were commonplace in his world. “It’s how she sustains herself. You’re doing your friend no favors by prolonging his demise.”
It was a miracle Taff was still standing.
“It’ll be a long time before she lets him go, Julie. A lot of suffering can be packed into very few seconds when you know what you are doing. Pull the trigger. We’ve got stuff we need to talk about.”
“No,”
Julie said. “I’m not going to do anything you want me to.”
“That’s a shame. I was hoping we could work together like grown-ups. Maybe you’ll change your mind after a few more minutes watching poor old Huw suffer?”
“I won’t,” Julie said. This was his line in the sand, the point he couldn’t cross. Not by choice. Not willingly.
The woman reached out, pawing at the bloody mess around Taff’s crotch as his legs finally buckled. Still she wouldn’t let him fall. His breath came fast, hitching in his throat as he struggled to suck air in around his bloated tongue. The tears she’d ripped into his gums and cheeks were the only reason he wasn’t suffocating on his own blood and bile.
The stink was overpowering. Raw. Wet. Meaty.
There was so much blood.
But that wasn’t the worst of it; it was the sound: the suckling.
It was all over Myrna Shepherd’s face as she pressed her mouth to his wounds, sucking at his cock and balls with all the tenderness of a piranha.
“Hel,” Taff begged, as much of the words help me as he could manage, his empty eye sockets staring blinding at Julie. “Puh eez.”
And there ended Julie’s resistance, in the face of his partner’s agony.
Julie pulled the trigger.
He hadn’t even realized he’d been pointing the gun at Taff until the blood-red rose flowered in the center of his face and the meat punched out through the back. It was a bloody mess.
Taff collapsed in a whorish sprawl, more blood than a single shot could ever have caused pooling around his corpse as the woman crawled her way up his belly, blood-slick hands up to her mouth as she scooped up his innards hungrily.
“We’ll just hang on to this for safe keeping, I think,” Seth said, prying the Browning from his fingers.
Julie was shaking.
This wasn’t happening.
It couldn’t be.
He hadn’t just killed his partner.
This was some alternate reality where everything he held dear had gone with that bullet. In this place he wasn’t his own man anymore. He was Lockwood’s bitch, body if not soul.
Glass Town Page 22