by Varian Wolf
“Yeah, come on,” said Yoki. “This is the sort of lunacy that smart people do in college between research and projects and homework.”
“And how long have you been in school without graduating?” I asked her.
“My parents promised to support me as long as I stay in school.”
“Oh, you are smart.”
“Come on, Quail. Come on, come on, come on…” Jeanne egged.
“You sound like you want him, Jeegee,” Yoki said.
“I do if he can run a Grand Prix –all the way through without ducking out and without falling. I’ll give him a kiss.”
Bobby White’s face lit up like a Christmas tree behind his glasses. It was clear we were headed for the French Quarter.
“So what’s a Grand Prix?” I asked as we wandered down to the river, my familiar stomping grounds. The area was busier for this time of night than I had yet seen it.
“Only the most thrilling experience a person can have –after vampire sex, of course.”
“Second Saturday of the month,” said Bobby, “They have an all-night festival at the flea market…”
“Dancing, music, libation…” helped Yoki.
“…We run the market from end to end…”
“No slowing down and no cutting out until you reach the street,” said Jeanne.
“…And we try not to kill anybody or get caught before we make it out the other side.”
“And how often do you make it?”
“Well,” said Yoki, “I usually make it, and Jeanne’s made it a couple of times. It’s easier being big.”
“It’s easier being small,” Jeanne amended.
“And Bobby hasn’t made it yet, but he’s going to tonight because he has a kiss from the sweet lips of a French damsel waiting for him, right Jeanne?”
“The offer is for one night only,” said she.
“Plus if anyone gets caught this time, he might find himself tucked neatly away in jail for the remainder of the evening.”
“Part of the new crackdown,” said Bobby. “They watch the place like hawks now,” he pushed his glasses up on his nose nervously.
“Any of you kids ever been to jail?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Yoki, “But we haven’t tried it yet this semester. Things weren’t as rough last spring. Oh, and stop calling me a kid.”
“Stop looking like one. So who goes first?”
“Well, it’s harder to get through after someone else has already run it. People are watching. So we send people in reverse order to who made it through first last time. So last time, I made was first, so I’ll go last,” said Yoki, “And Jeanne was second, so she’s before me.”
“So it’s the Quail in the lead,” said Jeanne, tapping him in the shoulder with her fist.
“What about Dru?”
“Oh, Dru we just prop up against something until we’re done.”
“What about Annie?” asked Jeanne.
“I’ll take up the rear,” I said, “Give me a chance to watch how the pros do it.”
“You’ll be asking for heat,” warned Yoki.
I shrugged.
“Suit yourself.”
We propped Dru up against something, set Yoki’s gift to me in his/her lap for safe keeping, and headed for the starting line. We all lined up at one end of the enclosed market space and peered into the mouth of doom. The French Market was a pair of long buildings aligned end to end. A narrow walkway ran their length flanked by vendor stalls on either side. The tables were piled high with trinkets and wares of every sort, from collectible toys to Christmas ornaments to tools to tie-dyed clothing. The smell of hot food issued forth, telling that somewhere down that chute, as everywhere else in New Orleans, something savory was being offered for sale. Everywhere there were people, browsing the tables, clogging the doorway as those going in got in the way of those coming out. We were about to willingly go in against those currents, and I didn’t even have Short John on my tail.
“I don’t see any security,” said Jeanne, looking around from her vantage above all our heads.
Yoki stood with her hands on Bob White’s shoulders.
“It’s not too busy,” she encouraged like a squeaky hamster ready to bolt herself, “Not like daytime. Go on, lad. Down the rabbit hole.”
Bobby White took a deep breath and ran for it.
Then, one by one, but fast upon each other’s heels, Jeanne, Yoki, and I went after him.
A few people immediately scooted for cover, but most people didn’t see the stampede headed straight for them. They were a barrier of flesh, the biggest impediment to our progress. Once I got inside behind Yoki, I couldn’t see how this could even be possible in the daytime crowds. I was dodging limbs and torsos like I was ducking punches. I caught glimpses of surprised faces and flashes of color, but I kept my eye on that ever-shifting mass in front of me, searching for that one fissure that I could wedge myself into.
Yoki was gone from view almost immediately. A compact package, she slipped into the tiniest crack, ducked under elbows and purses and vanished. I was like a charging bull, hurtling down a Spanish street, hurling people out of my way with my horns. I stepped on a hundred feet, swept a hundred doodads off tables, took a hundred elbows in the side. I bounced off glass cases filled with antique jewelry, jumped over the arms of a couple holding hands, dodged a man pushing a double baby stroller with its double-screaming contents, and hot-footed it across a table covered with Avon curios. I heard a dozen different kinds of music and smelled sugary baked goods, Indian spices, and good fried stuff as I bulled past the counters where they were sold. I heard shouts of, “It’s the runners!” cries of, “If you break that, you bought it!” and just cries in general, some in languages I didn’t understand. I did not slow to heed them. I had been given a challenge, and if there was ever one thing that heated my blood, it was a challenge.
We bolted out of the covered flea market, weaving between the columns flanking the Gazebo and Market Cafes, jumping iron chairs and tripping over the feet of seated patrons. I nearly collided with the extended trombone slide of one of the live band members, and I caused the total loss of someone’s iced café-au-lait.
I never thought this marathon tour of the Small World would end, but all of a sudden, the crowd opened up, and I collided headlong into the gaggle of my coconspirators. Yoki, Bobby, and Jeanne all went down in a heap with me on top of them.
“I made it!” gasped Bobby. “I made it!”
“We all made it,” Jeanne said breathlessly.
She smiled at Bobby White, whose face was right by hers where they had been pinned. Then she kissed him.
Yoki was remarkably silent.
“Yoki?” I said.
There came a small voice from somewhere beneath the pile.
“Please…get…off…of…me…you…huge…American.”
“Oh,” I said, and rolled off, “That’s what you get for finishing first.”
“You’re a pretty good kisser,” said Jeanne.
“I am?” he said.
She laughed. “No.”
“Annie, I do believe it is time to christen you an honorary Gay Hippie,” said Yoki.
“Is that a good thing?” I asked.
“Of course it is, dear.”
“Yeah, ‘cause we ROCK!” said Jeanne.
We didn’t get a chance to revel in our victory. I felt a hard hand on my arm, and a second later a judo move had me pinned face-down on the pavement.
“Fun’s over,” said a man’s voice behind my head, “You kids shouldn’t have tried this again.”
“You’re going in this time,” said his backup.
“God damn it!” I shouted, “Piece of shit fuckin’ shakedown again! Stinkin’, cocksuckin’, crooked arm of the shit-suckin’ law…”
“You better behave yourself, ma’am. You better…”
“Derek, man,” said the other cop, “Hey, man, you gotta look at this...Man, you gotta.”
“What, Mike? Wha
t…Sweet Jesus.”
Suddenly, the police officer let me go. I rolled to the side and looked back at them, wondering what had happened and ready to fight. But nobody was looking at me or the Gay Hippies. I looked where everyone else was looking, and found out why they had suddenly decided I wasn’t worth arresting. Something had happened across the street that made our little stunt as forgettable as the name of the fat Baldwin brother.
It was something horrible.
“What? What’s going on?” asked Yoki, using my arm to help herself stand up.
Then, she saw too.
“Shittin’ kittens,” was all she said.
8
Shittin’ Kittens
We all headed toward the crowd that was gathering to get a better look. What we saw was something none of us would ever forget, though most of us would want to.
Across the street in the Place de France, sprawled across the withers of the Maid of Orleans’ gilded horse, was the body of a woman. She lay, or rather drooped, with arms hanging down like overcooked linguini above her head, with hair hanging down in a stringy, wet mass like seaweed. Her skin was colorless, ashen, and she was completely naked, pale breasts laid bare, nipples with no color. Her eyes stared glassily, so clear, so fresh. She must have died less than an hour ago, I thought, though I knew nothing of the progression of decomposition of flesh. But the oddest thing, the thing most difficult for the brain to make sense of, was the wrongness of her head position, the way it fell back and twisted as the head of no living person could do, for her throat had been cut nearly to her spine. She was two inches from having been beheaded.
I had seen corpses before. I had witnessed a gang hit, where one kid shot another kid because he was wearing the wrong colors on the wrong street corner. I had watched that kid gasp for air and bleed out until he stopped moving. I had seen the corpse of a homeless man, frozen by the cruel winter, or maybe poisoned to death by one too many swigs on the bottle still in his hand. But there was something different about this one. Those corpses had still been people. They had still been clothed, still in the trappings of life. They had still looked whole. But this corpse looked like just that: a corpse, a hunk of debris, a rag hung loosely over a statue more lifelike than it was. It looked like the bodies thrown into the mass graves of the German death camps, rendered in black and white, floppy, falling into any tangled position; like the bodies of Africans massacred by machete and left by the roadside; or like a thousand other images of humanity rendered to nothing, rendered to meat, like sides of beef hung on hooks in a slaughterhouse, like the impala dragged into the tree by the leopard and wedged in a crook of the branches. This was not a person. This was leftovers.
“Shittin’ kittens,” said Yoki, “What…What is that…”
I felt her small hands clinging tightly to my arm.
“How did she get here?” I heard someone ask, as if anybody knew, “I walked right past here just a couple minutes ago…”
“Oh, god, oh, god, oh god…”
“Somebody, get her down from there!”
“No, we better not do that, Ma’am. This is a crime scene. I need everyone to keep their distance…”
Jeanne was vomiting. Bobby stood stricken. A man beside me covered his eyes and averted his gaze, his hand clutching at some reassuring object on a chain about his neck as he retreated from the grisly scene. The cops were starting to push people back, waving their arms and saying words no one could hear. Beside me a camera flashed, and when I turned to see what kind of sick person would want to take a picture of this, I saw others with camera phones, all aglow as their owners worked quickly to capture the image before the authorities shooed them away. Sirens were approaching, and a blue-and-white rolled up on the sidewalk, lights flashing. The officer got out and immediately went to work on herding us all away.
“Come on. Let’s go,” I said to the others, taking hold of Jeanne’s arm and hauling her up.
They didn’t argue. I moved away from the crowd, Yoki still firmly attached to my arm.
More emergency people were showing up. A fire truck rolled in through the crowd, lights flashing in a blinding show of urgency. I had never been so close to so many emergency vehicles all at once, and being this close to the growing number of cops made me extremely uncomfortable.
We found Dru and hurried out of the trouble area, cut through a side street to the next main thoroughfare as fast as we could go. I flagged down a cab and helped them all pile inside, Jeanne in the front seat, the others in the back.
“Annie!” said Yoki, starting to get back out of the car. “What about you?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her back inside.
“I live here,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Oh, god,” Jeanne was sobbing, “It’s so horrible. Horrible…”
“Come on!” Bobby said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“There somethin’ funny going on around here?” asked the cabbie.
Yoki’s eyes were huge with fear, her skin pale, but she still clung to my hand.
“Go,” I told her. I disentangled my hand and shut the door on her. Then I looked at the cabbie, “Drive.”
I stepped away, and the cab pulled off into the traffic. As soon as it was out of sight, I turned and ran as fast as I could go.
The Banana Boys were up when I charged through the front door, drenched with sweat. They’d been having a midnight cap or two or six or however many it took them to wear out their conversation. Hector and Lucas started up out of their chairs at the sight of me, concern instantly on their faces.
“Are you all right?” asked Lucas, drink still in hand.
“Somebody chasing you?” asked Hector, looking out the door after me for someone to beat up.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine. Just been running.”
“You haven’t been running, honey. You’ve been tearing up the pavement. What’s bothering you?”
“Is it anything a martini will fix?” asked Jonathon from the living room, holding up his glass and swishing the olive around.
“There isn’t a thing a martini won’t fix, dear,” said the old southern lady guest who spent most of her vacation hanging with the boys.
“No, it’s –I’m fine. Just working the cardio. Building wind…No martini, please.”
“How about a margarita?”
“A Bloody Mary?”
“No –no. Just –I need to take a shower. Right now.”
I pushed past all the concerned faces and helping hands offering alcohol. I took the creaky old wooden stairs two at a time to the second floor, passed another guest, a sixtyish woman from Raleigh, on her way to the bathroom in her nightgown, without a word, and got out the door into the courtyard as fast as I could. There was no one in the Jacuzzi in the garden, so there was no one else to waylay me on the way to the room. I slipped inside and shut the door behind me.
But there was someone to waylay me inside.
A cool hand seized my arm, and a voice said, “Drink.”
“Goddamn it, Miguel. Now is not the fuckin’ time.”
He immediately released me –smart of him.
“We’ve got problems.”
“Not any longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“The exchange is done. The spell is broken, with happy timing. They will not try for me again. I sent them a message they will not be able to ignore.”
“Sent them a message –what are you talking about?”
Before he said a word, I realized.
“That was you.”
That was why she was so pale, why her throat was cut, but there was not a drop of blood on her. She had been drained dry. I had guessed as much before, but I had thought the killer the Louisiana Werewolf, someone else, some monster…and so it was.
I suddenly felt deeply, profoundly uncomfortable in a tiny room in the dark with a vampire.
“Annie…”
“Miguel, don’t.”
“I will
explain.”
“Oh, you’ll explain, will you? You’ll explain why you stripped her naked? Why you nearly cut her head off? Why you hung her up there. It looked like something one of those shits I ran with up north would do. Why?”
“You already know why.”
He was right, of course. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to run. I wanted to –I don’t know what, but he was right. I had been there when they broke into his hotel room –three of them, when they tried to kill him in his sleep, or worse. I had been the one to stop them. I had killed them instead. How was what Miguel had done so different?
But somehow, it was.
“I killed her the way I did to warn them that the game is finished. I left her where I did to ridicule her power. I cut her throat with a blade to disguise the entry of my fangs from the human authorities. I cut deep to tell my hunters how deeply I would wound them should they dare to try again, and I left her naked because that was how I felt while they hunted me, when they could take me lying in state at any time, and I could not lift a finger to stop them. They must be made to feel as I felt. They must remember what kind of being they hunt. They must be made to fear.”
Miguel’s voice was cold, as often it was. But I could feel a fierce tenacity in it, a monumental strength, and a pokerfaced rationality. If it was the voice of a monster, it was that of a brilliant one.
“Annie, violence is part of my world, as it was of yours. What is this change in you? Have you forgotten yourself?”
I sat down on the bed and invited my vampire to sit beside me. I sought his hand with mine.
“I could never forget. I was scared tonight –scared for you, and I was scared for us. I thought there was some monster out there, maybe those witches. They are witches, right?”
“Yes.”
“I know. You don’t have to tell me. But all these things you don’t tell me add up, and I know there’s a lot going on I know nothing about except that they’re really dangerous. I get freaked out, all psyched up that there’s some seriously bad shit going down, and then I find out it was actually you…Miguel, I was with people tonight when I saw that body. People. I saw what they saw.”