by Drew Stepek
I clutched his dick. “You wormy little fucker.”
“Let go!” he squeaked.
“You piece of shit.” I pointed the gun at his head. “This is the second time you set me up.”
He slipped his hand under my palm removing it from his crotch. “I said stop!”
I pressed the gun against his temple. “Linnwood, I’m going to blow your head off.”
“They were going to kill me, too.” He looked into the rearview again.
A sickness came over my body as I pulled the gun away and rested it in my lap. The taste of the withdrawal started climbing back up my throat, only to freeze midway, choking me. The Gooch was making his move again. If I had felt empty, useless, disgusting, or evil before that moment, those feelings and thoughts were merely the self-loathing whimpers of a narcissist. I held both my hands over my stomach. It compressed like it was shrinking around a bunch of thumbtacks and razor blades. My heart thumped through my right ear, making me dizzy and drunk. The bitter cold that engulfed me and lumped in my throat made me want to shove the pistol in my mouth and end the trail of torture that followed me around.
The car stammered and backfired as the leaking engine seized up. Linnwood turned the wheel and sailed onto the shoulder. I looked behind us. It seemed as if we had managed to shake the Skulls as I couldn’t hear the music or see the bus anywhere. About three hundred yards up the road from us, I saw the familiar blinking sign for the Golden Aces Hotel.
Gagging, I opened the door and fell out of the car. Not being a real human didn’t make anything better. My legs weren’t working with my brain and I had a hard time getting back to my feet. I dragged myself in the direction of the hotel.
“Do you need help?” Linnwood asked as he quickly gathered all his shit from the car, knowing he had no choice but to ditch it.
“Get the fuck away from me,” I slurred as I pointed the gun at him again.
“Why are you fucking pointing that at me? I didn’t do it.”
I rolled sideways into a bush beyond the shoulder.
Linnwood got out of the car and shoved his other gun into the back of his pants. He walked over to me and extended his hand.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I cried. “You were trying to set me up. You always try to set me up.” I rocketed out of the bush and began limp-running toward the Golden Aces. “Get the fuck out of here. Go save yourself. It’s what you do best.”
“This isn’t over, Reynolds,” he yelled out after me. “You fucking junkie! Rodderick is never going to let us live now. Just give me the little girl. If that’s really his thing, he might forgive me.”
I turned around to see Linnwood keeping up with me. My legs throbbed and I started feeling like I hadn’t slept in weeks. “I knew you were trying to fuck me,” I yelled back again. “You can kill me, but there is no way you can get by Eldritch.”
He stopped responding.
When I reached the head shop plaza, I picked up the pace. I rounded the corner into the Golden Aces parking lot and flattened my body into the door as I rattled the doorknob.
No one came to answer. Eldritch must have been in the shitter again. I looked behind me. I didn’t see Linnwood.
The Gooch, who was lodged in my throat, started to move to my brain. I started thumping on the door.
Still, no one answered.
I kicked the door open and stepped into the hotel room. No Eldritch. I only saw the Rasta wig peaking up behind Pinball’s bed.
And then, I heard a hollowed-out bottle crush me over the head. Blood started to trickle into my eyes and I turned around to see Linnwood standing behind me with his arm cocked back with a second champagne bottle left in front of the hooker’s door next to us. He smashed it into my face and everything went black.
I was only out for a second or two. I felt one of Eldritch’s creepers smash in my back as he ran toward the door. “Little One?” he screamed.
I heard car tires squeal from the parking lot outside. I opened my eyes and blurrily saw Eldritch unsheathe his sword. “Paulina!”
I pressed my hand into a pile of broken glass and then used the bed to pick myself up. I headed outside to see Eldritch’s rental car swerving away from us down the street. Eldritch reached the middle of the road as he watched the car escape. He looked back, but before he could take flight to chase the car, he jumped out of the way and rolled back into the parking lot. The distorted sounds of the tin can speaker of the Sixth Street Skulls blew past the hotel as the bus nearly ran him down. Gun fire zipped out of the windows. Eldritch spun under a car to avoid getting picked off.
“Who is in the car?” he sputtered as he appeared on the other side of his shield.
TAKE A BREATH, RJ!
I felt blood run from the back of my head onto my spine, and fear crept through my body. Not wanting to relive a situation like Bait’s death, I went after the bus. “It’s Linnwood,” I said as I ran past him. There were no more wiseass comments. The only thing left to do was fight.
I felt like I was running in mud. My body wasn’t healing as fast as I would have liked it to, but I punched it into overdrive rather than fall back and accept defeat. Thankfully, the Skulls’s ancient bus was weighed down by the gang inside. As I got close, I looked for something to grab onto. Eldritch sped past me and jumped onto the back. His arms smashed through one of the rear windows and used the opening to lift himself up. He quickly scaled up the back like a salamander on a wall and rolled onto the top. Gunfire erupted through both back windows, barely missing him.
There was only a small bumper on the back of the bus. Somehow, I managed to jump high enough to secure my hands on the jagged edges of both of the broken windows, and I shifted my feet outward to stabilized myself. I ducked down but the gunfire was no longer coming out toward me. The Skulls were aiming for Eldritch by shooting their guns through the roof.
I peered inside to see several painted and tatted bangers slithering on their backs out of the side windows. The center of the bus’s left wall was packed with a full arsenal of weapons from the floor to the roof.
The gunfire aimed at the roof ceased and it was time for me to make my move to the top and help Eldritch. I hopped onto one of the black covers on top of the left side taillight and stepped onto the backdoor latch. To my surprise, it wasn’t locked and it sprung open, throwing me off balance and leaving me dangling off the back of the bus like a fishing lure.
One of the Skulls near the backseat ran toward me with a meat cleaver. He took a swing, slicing off a thin layer of skin where the Pit Bull had taken a bite out of me. One of his cohorts inched up behind him and stretched out a few feet of razor wire. The bus driver slammed on the brakes, most likely trying to jolt Eldritch from the top. I swung outward and the back door crashed shut beside me, knocking the meat cleaver Skull back into the razor wire and on top of his buddy.
“Cabrón,” the one on the bottom yelled.
Without warning, the bus driver hit the gas and both of the them rolled around and got tangled up in the razor wire. Accidentally, the meat cleaver sunk into the chest of the dumb fucker who took a sliver of flesh out of the side of my stomach. I heard a bunch of grenades roll toward the back.
The sides of the top of the bus were rounded down. While I desperately felt around for something to grip, two Skulls flew over my head and smacked face first onto the street behind us. Eldritch wasn’t taking any prisoners. Although the Skulls were packing a full arsenal, no gun, knife, hatchet, machete, or man was a match for Eldritch’s frenzy. He became a deranged wrecking ball when he wanted to and unlike me or any other vampire I had ever met, he could turn his maniacal carnage on and off like a shark smelling blood in the water.
I tried to pierce the metal on top with my fingers so I could pull myself up when the bus hit a bump. I held onto the taillight cover and looked back inside the bus. Many of the Skulls had exited through the windows to join Eldritch on top, but one near the middle lifted his gun and started firing it at me. I swung to the side a
gain as my hands started to slip. Two more of members of the gang rolled off of the top. One screamed as he splatted on the pavement. The other didn’t have a head.
The Skull inside didn’t let up. He walked toward the rear and continued to try and mow me down with his gun. My right bicep took a few bullets and flopped to my side. When that didn’t work, he hurled a grenade through the back window, hoping it would make contact with my chest. In the heat of battle, he forgot to pull the pin. I managed to catch it with my throbbing free arm and I locked my thumb inside the pin.
“Goddammit!” Blood streamed from my arm in the wind gusting from the back of the bus. I tried to lift it back up to the top off the bus but it twitched and shivered like it was out of juice.
When I was about to give up and join the growing number of Skulls as roadkill, Eldritch’s taloned hand grabbed my wrist. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to save me from falling off. He snapped me over his head like a dodgeball, dislocating the shoulder attached to my bullet-filled arm and launched me into three Skulls who had made their way to the top. Somehow, I managed to hold onto the grenade.
My body spun sideways as I collided with them, knocking them over the front. As two of them spun under the front of the bus, one of them grabbed onto my boot as I slipped down the hood and snagged my crotch onto a metal stand that supported two round mirrors on top of the wheel well. Tears burst out of my eyes. I spit up a mouthful of bloody barf at the Skull who became hysterical as he seized handfuls of my calves and thighs like he was climbing rungs on a ladder. I pulled my right leg loose, retracted it back and mashed it into his skull-tattooed face. He turned his face sideways as he managed to snag the one of the mirror frames.
I hammered away at his nose with the heel of my boot. “Get off, bitch!” I yelled. “Get the fuck off me.” A burning pain ran from my dead arm into my chest and pushed needles into my heart. As I looked for something to cling to, screws from the frame started popping out and I slid further down the front of the wheel well. I caught the inside of the Skull’s chin on the metal six emblem on the grill.
“No me mates! No me mates,” he begged as his voice became garbled from blood filling his mouth.
I pulled my boot back on and stamped the tread into his chin, ripping his bottom jaw off his face. His tongue dangled as he looked down in horror at what remained above his neck. The mirror frame came loose and he spiraled over the front of the grill, ending up pressed under the tires of the bus.
I pushed myself up to the hood before I slipped to my death as well and hooked my limp arm around the side mirror. Before I had the opportunity to try and rejoin Eldritch on top, the bus door flung open and the same gunman who filled my arm with bullets clicked a magazine into his gun and started firing aimlessly around the corner of the door.
I kicked my feet up and let go of the mirror. I started slithering on my stomach across the hood. He rolled around the outside of the door. He smiled as he pointed the barrel directly between my eyes. The bus hit another bump and his aim was thrown off. He shot right through the front of the windshield. Bullets chopped through the driver’s forehead, exposing his brain. His head slumped onto the steering wheel.
“Eldritch, jump off,” I shouted over the music. “We’re gonna crash.”
The Skull tried to get back inside the bus to take the wheel, but he was thrown to the side and onto the road. The bus jerked left and started heading for the other side of the street. I shook my arm as I slid back down the opposite side. I flipped the pin out of the grenade and chucked it through the window. Without waiting another second, I bounced my feet on top of the wheel well again and launched myself off. I rolled onto the cement, further crunching my disabled arm. Bullets kicked up gravel into my face, and I rushed to the side of the street, looking for cover anywhere. The bus skidded into oncoming traffic and flipped onto the side of the road. It toppled over and immediately exploded.
Deaf to the wailing of the powder keg death trap that charred the rest of his gang, one of the lucky Skulls who managed to jump out of a window before the crash walked toward me. “Queremos comer usted, RJ Reynolds.”
I hadn’t realized it before, but he was the leader who sang to me from my first encounter with the Skulls under the freeway pass.
He pressed the gun against his hip and finger fucked the trigger hole. “And now, you die,” he snorted.
Just when I was expecting to be filled with lead, Eldritch flew down from above, lifted his sword and bisected the leader from the top of his head all the way down to his pelvis. Eldritch landed on the ground behind him and opened him up like a door. As he walked through the remains and the two sides of the Skull’s body timbered sideways, organs and guts sagged and squirted to the ground.
A car spun to a stop behind him. Not realizing what exactly was going down, the driver got out. “Are you okay, man?” he yelled.
Not speaking, Eldritch turned around and stepped through the leftovers of the Skull’s leader. He put his sword back into its sheath. Still silent, he grabbed the bystander by the throat and tossed him away from his car like a dishrag. I propped myself up and ran to the car as Eldritch got in. I knew he wasn’t going to wait for me so I jumped into the car and slammed the door, hoping that he wasn’t going to assassinate me the second he knew I was going with him.
He pulled the seat back, making room for his long legs. “Get the fuck out, RJ.”
He didn’t speak in his normal flowery language. At that point, I imagined that he only cared about one thing: saving Paulina.
“You can’t do this alone, Eldritch,” I said. “I didn’t get high. I swear.”
Without continuing the conversation, he threw the car in drive and put the pedal to the metal.
The owner of the car yelled, apparently after he landed next to the remains of the Skull leader. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Eldritch handed me his sword. “Do you know how to get to his house?”
“I… ummmm…”
A text popped up on his phone. He grabbed it quickly, read it and turned it off. “It does not matter.” He accelerated and pointed in front of us down the road. A car took a right onto the freeway ramp. “There is my rental car.”
I put the sword in my lap. “He lives in West Lake Hills.”
He nodded and followed Linnwood Perry onto the highway.
I rubbed my throbbing arm and started picking bullets out of my skin. “I deserved that.”
He refused to look at me. “You deserved what?”
“I deserved being thrown on top of the bus.” I pulled a bullet out and flicked it out the window.
“You deserve death, RJ.”
“I didn’t know he was going to take the girl. I didn’t know any of this until minutes before I got back to the room. Rodderick beat the shit out of me. He’s a child molester, Eldritch. Did you know that?”
He clinched his fist. “That is not true.”
I leaned toward him and showed him the healing scar on the side of my face. “Oh, really? He took me into his kiddie dungeon and I got pissed off at him. So, he kicked the shit out of me. I’m not sure, but I think that he only gets high with kid’s blood.”
His phone buzzed again. He ignored it. “Outrageous. Why would someone in his position do such a thing?”
“Like I know. He’s a fucking twisted asshole. He wanted to meet with me to thank me.”
“Thank you? Thank you for what?”
And then it hit me. “I think you know, Eldritch.”
“I do not.”
“You’re like him, aren’t you? You aren’t like me or Linnwod or Dez or Cobra. You’re some rich prick who got a second chance at life.”
“I still do not know what you are referring to. I have told you several times that I’m not like you.”
“I wasn’t an abortion brought to life by the church. I was an abortion brought to life as an organ donor. All of us were. We’re not vampires. We’re not fiends. Were the product of some pharmaceutical company. Fat Mac freed us when he was
supposed to destroy us.”
“I honestly do not know what you are speaking about.”
I rolled my fingers around the handle of the sword.
He looked at my hand and shook his head. “Not a good idea.”
I let go.
“Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe your tales. You have not been reliable and you have chosen to use drugs when our mission has been clear since we got here. That is why I had my friends checking up on you.”
“Friends? What are you talking about?” I grabbed my shoulder and massaged it carefully before quickly snapping it back into place. Even though I wanted to cry out, I grinded my teeth and closed my eyes instead.
He grabbed the sword off my lap and threw it into the backseat. “The Chaplins and Ride the Lightning. I sent them to look for you on the streets of Austin and at the garage.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? They almost killed me.”
“That was not the intention. They were sent to look for you. I warned you in the desert. No more drugs. You attacked the Chaplins and I had no idea that the Perrys took the RTL’s cocaine. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks. The pain spread to the entire right side of my body and cramped my toes. “You piece of shit.”
He tapped his talons on the wheel.
I sneezed into my hand and then lifted my finger, asking for a second. I sneezed again. “I was your dog this whole time. You know why you didn’t know any of this shit about Rodderick? Because you’ve got your head so far up his ass that you can’t see anything. It turns out that you are the one who put Pinball in danger.”
“Paulina!” he exploded. “The little girl’s name is Paulina. I did everything that I did because I was concerned about you. Do you understand that? I—”
“You asshole. What? Did you think that Rodderick was going to give you a role in his next movie if you helped him get his career back on track? Big hero you are, Eldritch.”
“Evidentially, you do not know me. I wanted to help the girl. You chose to play.”