Tail of the Devil

by Danielle DeVor

“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” Mathias asked.

  “Nah, you need it more’n me. I can take care of me’self. Take care kid. Where you goin’, it ain’t easy.”

  Before he knew it, he was on the bus and leaving town. He wrapped his arms around his knees and leaned back into the bus seat.

  It felt good to be free.

  * * * * *

  In Cleveland, he grabbed a candy bar from a machine and ate. It wasn’t the best breakfast in the world, but it was something. The bus station was a lot more modern than the one he’d been in at Wheeling. He sat and waited. He kept to himself. It was hard not to be nervous, but at least he was out of West Virginia, and he had a few hours on them.

  When he arrived in New York, hours later, even though he was tired and hungry, he couldn’t help but be in awe of the city that stretched before him. It was early evening. Amidst all the flashing lights and souvenir sellers, there was a certain charm about the city. It felt dirty, and smelled kind of funny—like a combination of dirt, metal, and meat, but somehow, it all made it seem more real. The skyscrapers seemed to encase the city inside its own protective cover. And to think, he was really here, Broadway, the Rockettes, he was in a place that most of his family only dreamed about. He looked around, saw the crowds, and relaxed.

  The buildings were far bigger than anything Mathias had seen before. He saw no trees, nothing green, only the grey sky peeping over the tops of the tall buildings. Of all the things he knew, Mathias had one thought on his mind— that this would be a place where he could get lost, and that was just what he needed.

  He slung his bag over his shoulder and stepped out into the melee of the New York City sidewalk system. People came from all sides, and he allowed himself to be carried along with the tide.

  Eventually, he noticed that the tide was thinner. Looking around, the buildings weren’t as nice as those he’d first encountered. He was only a couple of blocks from the bus station, but the difference was startling. The buildings, at one time would have been kind of nice looking, now they were covered in graffiti and crumbling on top of themselves. They didn’t look safe.

  He looked around and found an old hotel. It was dirty looking with murky windows that you knew hadn’t been washed in decades. He walked in, and approached the counter.

  “Whatcha want, kid?” The man behind the counter was dirty. His black hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat, and sweat stains stained the armpits of his white t-shirt.

  Mathias adjusted his backpack. “I need a room for the night.”

  The man stared at him and sat back down on his chair behind the counter. “Get lost, kid.”

  “What? I have money.”

  The man rolled his eyes. “You got ID?”

  “No, I don’t need ID unless I want to get my learner’s permit.” Mathias stared at the man.

  “Exactly.”

  Mathias sighed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Kid, we don’t rent to no one under eighteen. No place in this city will give a room to somebody under eighteen without a guardian. Now, get outta here, I’m missing my soaps.”

  Mathias slunk out of the hotel. There was nothing to do now but get something to eat. He stepped into a diner a couple of blocks from the hotel. The diner looked just as shabby on the inside as it did on the outside, not that he could really tell because the windows were so dirty. They were so murky with grime that Mathias could barely see the “Pinky’s Place” sign painted on the window. He took a deep breath and entered the diner.

  The counter looked a bit less dirty than the booths, and Mathias sat down on a stool and waited. Not long after, an old waitress came over to get his order. Her hair was dyed clown red. She wore a pink uniform that had seen too many trips in the washer and her face was a mask of lines. Her blue eye shadow was so blue that Mathias thought he was looking at an alien for a moment.

  “Whatcha want?” she asked.

  Mathias looked at the menu on the wall. “A turkey club, some fries, and a coke.”

  The waitress turned to the open area to the kitchen. “Pinky! I need a turkey club and some frog sticks.”

  Mathias’ heart hammered in his chest. “I don’t want anything frog!”

  The waitress laughed. “Kid, you ain’t from around here are ya. ‘Frog sticks’ are French fries.”

  “Then why didn’t you just say French fries?”

  “Cause that’s the way it is at Pinky’s.”

  She walked away, filled a glass with ice and coke and set it down next to Mathias’ elbow. He took the glass and took a long drink. It had been a long day- too long almost. Not long after, the waitress set his food and front of him. He was so hungry that he choked on his sandwich trying to eat too fast. After embarrassing himself and holding his own arm in the air, he got the choking stopped. He finished his sandwich and fries.

  The waitress noticed and came over. “You want pie?”

  “No thanks, I’m good.” Mathias wiped his mouth with his napkin.

  The waitress reached into the pocket of her uniform, gave him the bill, and went to wait on other customers.

  Mathias looked down, eleven dollars and seventy cents. He was going to need to find a cheaper way to eat. He took his bill to the register.

  “You ain’t gonna leave a tip?” The waitress asked as she got to the register.

  “I need change first,” Mathias said.

  She rang him up and handed him his change. He gave her two dollars and left the diner. He had no idea where to go. He wandered around, and finally settled himself in the alley behind the diner. He curled up with some old newspapers from the trash and used his backpack as a pillow.

  He thought about his parents. He knew that they never expected Annette to act like she did, but it was still hard to think that his folks had wanted him to make something of himself, and here he was, living on the streets. But he was alive, and that was the important part.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, he dusted as much grime as he could from his pants and left the alley. A few blocks west, he found a small market with a display of fruit out front. He watched one of the employees talk to an old woman. She was small with gray hair that was cropped close to her head. The employee was an old Italian man who looked like he wanted to strangle the old woman.

  “I told you last week Mary, we don’t do credit. And we sure don’t do credit on oranges.”

  The old woman looked like she was about to cry. “But George, I’ve know you for forty years.”

  George looked like he wanted to slap himself in the face. “Yeah, and last time we gave you credit, you didn’t pay then, so no more Mary.”

  The old woman hit George with her purse.

  Mathias snatched an apple from one of the displays and ran off. It was the first time he’d stolen anything. It felt exhilarating. His heart beat fast and he felt like he could do anything. He sat down on a bus stop bench and ate his apple. After he was finished, he got up and began to walk. He knew he needed to find something better than an alley to sleep in if he could find it. Soon, he learned to watch where he walked, because of the broken sidewalks and after falling several times.

  “Hey, kid,” she said.

  Mathias looked around. Finally, he spotted a black girl wearing a shiny silver jacket, a pink sequined tube top, a black leather mini-skirt, fishnet stockings, and the highest heeled boots that Mathias had ever seen.

  “Get over here.” She motioned for him with her hands.

  Mathias straightened the strap on his backpack and wandered over. She seemed sort of normal.

  “Whatch you doin’, boy? You wanna get yo’self mugged?”

  Mathias looked at her and raised his left eyebrow. “I’m just walking.” What did she care anyway?

  She shook her head. “Boy, ‘less you stay wit me, you ain’t gonna survive da week.” She took Mathias by the arm. “Don’t you know you in hell, boy?”

  She’s crazy. Completely fucking crazy.

  “Hell, since I g
ot here yesterday, I seriously doubt if I’d know where I was,” Mathias said with a smirk.

  “Fuck boy, you crazy.” She sighed heavily. She took him by the arm and led him into the apartment building behind her. “You jus’ gonna haveta stay with Lucretia.” She shook herself. “Dequan jus’ gonna hafta deal.”

  “Who’s Lucretia?” Mathias asked. This girl was the weirdest girl he’d ever met. But, at least she was being nice.

  “Jesus Christ. Boy, you dumb. I’m Lucretia. You jus’ stay here til my shift be over. Then you and I’s gonna have us a long talk.”

  “I’m Mathias.”

  She nodded and then walked back out of the building.

  The least she could have done was showed him something to do. But, he didn’t know where else to go, so he sat down on the steps and waited.

  * * * * *

  After a while, Lucretia came back. She stepped into the dim hallway, carefully avoiding the broken tiles as if not to mess up her shoes. “Come on, kid. Let’s get home. It’s so hot, my titties are so wet they’s makin’ noise when I walk!”

  Mathias laughed. He followed her back out into the street. The sun was shining, and Mathias followed her and noticed her walk. She seemed proud and walked in what he would describe as a don’t-fuck-with-me sort of walk.

  She stopped at a rundown hotel. It was the type that at night had the neon Jesus Saves sign above the door.

  “Cree, what the hell you bring home now?” A man standing on the stoop asked. He was tall, with a bald head and broad shoulders. His white wife beater shirt was sweat stained which made an odd and ugly contrast next to his dark skin. While his clothing was dirty and gross, he wore several gold chains around his neck that glinted in the sunlight.

  “Dequan, this here’s Mathias. He gonna stay wif me for a while.”

  The man looked Mathias up and down. “Mebbe’ in a few years he can work.”

  Lucretia narrowed her eyes at him. “You listen to me Dequan Gregory; this here is a good kid. I ain’t gonna allow you to do him like dat.”

  Dequan raised his lips in a snarl. “Girl, I ain’t in no mood today to deal with your bullshit. Fine, kid stays, but you goin’ to pay for him. He ain’t no concern of mine.”

  Lucretia grabbed Mathias by the arm and led him into the hotel. The green paint was chipped from the walls exposing the old plaster underneath. The registration desk was a box with cast iron bars over the openings.

  “Hey Carl!” Lucretia tapped her fingernails on the counter.

  “Hold your horses, you mangy mutt.”

  There was an old and decrepit white man behind the desk. Tufts of white hair stood up from his head from where he’d been sleeping. Carl grabbed a key from the hook behind the desk and passed it through the slot underneath the counter top.

  “Dequan pay me up til next month?” Lucretia asked.

  Carl looked at some papers on the counter. “Yep, you ain’t due til the fifteenth.”

  Lucretia nodded. “Good. Oh, by the way. This here Mathias, he gonna be stayin wif me.”

  Carl looked at Mathias. “Where he gonna go when you got guests?”

  Lucretia sighed. “Didn’t think bout that. Shit.”

  Carl shook his head. “Eh, don’t worry. Kid can come down here and watch TV in the office with me.”

  “Damn Carl, what would I do without you?”

  “Prolly drop dead.”

  Lucretia laughed and led Mathias over to the elevator.

  The ride was slow, but Mathias wasn’t going to complain. This place had air conditioning.

  Lucretia got off on the sixth floor. She shook her head. “Boy, you gotta stop bein’ a scaredy cat. People ‘round here can smell it, and if you ain’t tough like me, they’ll eat you alive.”

  She unlocked a door and Mathias followed her into the room. The room was plastered in the same yucky green that was downstairs. The plaster wasn’t as chipped up here in the room. Lucretia had tried to make it look homey with posters on the walls and some multicolored fake flowers on the bedside table. The table was made of some sort of black plastic. The bedspread was old and looked like undulating ocean waves. It was probably the ugliest room Mathias had ever seen. It smelled musty.

  “Nice digs, ain’t they? I try to keep it like this so’s I can kill the bugs when I see ‘em.”

  “Bugs?” Mathias asked.

  “The biggest motherfuckin’ cockaroaches you ever seen. I found a platform shoe kills ‘em best.” She laughed manically.

  “Uh...o.k.” He didn’t like the idea of bugs, but bugs were better than sleeping outside.

  She laughed again. “Boy, you kill me.” She picked up a shoe with a tall heel and a really thick sole. “See this here’s a platform shoe. You whack the damn thing with this and his guts go flyin’”

  “You’re really weird, you know that?”

  She smiled. “That’s why we gets along. You weird too.”

  * * * * *

  That night, Lucretia pulled Mathias into bed with her.

  “Do you think this is o.k.?” Mathias asked.

  She swatted him across the head with a pillow. “We’s sharin a bed, doofus. Not screwin. Sides, you too young fo me anyway.”

  Mathias hunkered down under the covers and relaxed. Soon he was fast asleep.

  * * * * *

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Mathias opened his eyes. “What are you doing?”

  Lucretia was down on the floor, looking sweaty.

  “I gotta exercise. Gotta keep my body nice cause I get more work thatta way.”

  Mathias nodded and went into the bathroom taking his backpack with him. After he had showered and dressed, he came out and Lucretia was sitting on the bed watching TV.

  “Good, you done. I been thinking bout things. You better jus stay here while I work. If ya get bored, go see Carl, but don’t go outside witout me. You ain’t streetwise enough yet and las thing I wanna see is you get yoself killed over some stupid bullshit.”

  Mathias nodded.

  Lucretia pointed to a small refrigerator butted up against the wall. “Food in there. Take what ya want. I gotta get to work.”

  Mathias watched her leave the room. She locked the door behind her. Somehow, he felt protected. Why she cared, he didn’t know, but she did, and it felt nice.

  Chapter Four

  Tepes knew that he had really managed to botch things up. Mathias had always been willful, and this incarnation was no different. The boy needed to feel secure, Vlad knew that, but it was so difficult. But then, he could only imagine what Mathias had been like as a child originally. Something told Vlad that he should count himself lucky indeed.

  More than anything else, he needed to offer some sort of peace offering to Mathias. And hopefully, he could figure out one that would keep Mathias with them all.

  Vlad left his rooms and wandered through the maze of hallways into the highest and darkest section of the castle. There was very little light there. That was how Nosferatu liked it.

  * * * * *

  Mathias woke to voices. He could hear the other students at the school through the walls now and then. He would hear them moving around between classes. He didn’t really wish to join them, he had nothing in common with them, but it did get boring.

  He knew now just how far he could push Tepes. And instead of a little bit of yelling, he’d really seen what the legendary vampire was capable of. He tried to stop shaking, but it was hard. Soon though, he heard some students in the hallway, leaning against the other side of the wall that butted up against his bed.

  “You don’t want to go upstairs do you?” Mathias heard a nasty voice say.

  “No, “a shaky voice said. Whoever it was sounded scared as hell.

  “Upstairs is where Nosferatu lives,” the nasty voice said. There was kind of an attitude to it. This guy was a total dick.

  The nasty voice was starting to sound familiar. Like one of those two kids who’d given him a hard time his first day.

  �
�I don’t want to see Nosferatu,” the shaky one replied.

  “You know the story of Nosferatu don’t you?” the nasty voice asked.

  “No.”

  “He’s a freak, an abomination. True, he’s our queen’s son, but he was made before any humans were even here. Our queen had relations with a bat.”

  Do I even want to know why the Queen of the vampires did that? Uh, yuck.

  “Is that even possible?” the shaky voice asked.

  “If it wasn’t he wouldn’t exist, now would he?”

  “But how?”

  “According to my father, when the Queen first began to walk the earth, she was the only one of her kind that had made the trip. God himself had planned to send a pair of them, but that idea was changed by an uproar in Heaven caused by Adam.

  “So Lilith had been sent down alone. With none of her kind around, she spent much of her time shape-shifted in the form of a bat. When God had sent Adam to earth, instead of his chosen one, Lilith chose to steer clear of Adam and his petty politics. She left the area to find her own way about the world. But God had made an error, and had sent Adam to earth as a human rather than as a vampire. After Adam got himself kicked out of the Garden of Eden with Eve, he began populating the earth, and as a result, creating his own army to fight the “demon” Lilith.

  “Hunted and fearful, Lilith kept to bat form. It was during this time that she recognized the soul of one of her soul mates residing in a fruit bat. She mated with him and left. Several months later, she bore a son. And that was the beginning of Nosferatu,” the nasty voice said.

  Then, Mathias heard a thud and a yelp. Jesus Christ, doesn’t anyone watch for crap like this here?

  “So, lesser, Nosferatu isn’t like the rest of us. He’s insane. Who wouldn’t be with a story like that?”

  “I don’t know,” the shaky voice said.

  “Well, you do what I say, and you’ll never have to find out. You cross me again, and I’ll make sure you get a personal invitation.”

  Then, Mathias heard footsteps walking away from his wall. “What a fucking asshole.” He had to admit though that it was interesting to hear all that crap about the Queen. It was good to know what type of people he was dealing with. It wasn’t like he knew who all of his enemies were yet.