The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  T-Bone seemed to realize something. “Did you sleep with . . . it?”

  “No . . . but we fucked.”

  He sighed. “I just . . . why are we friends?”

  My turn to frown. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend again?”

  If the Gates of Hell had opened, T-Bone’s face couldn’t have been more stricken with horror. “I . . . I . . . vampire . . .”

  “I’m serious, you keep dodging me. I can help if you want. King Henry Price ain’t awesome at everything, but he’s an awesome fucking wingman.”

  “I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

  “Didn’t say you were . . .”

  “I like women . . . they just . . . I . . .”

  “I mean . . . you’re a huge black guy. Odds are if your head and feet and hands are that big, then the rest of you is big too. Ladies that go for that perk aren’t exactly ones you want to date but, shit . . . that’s some great clubbing material to be working with. Can’t go wrong with huge black wang.”

  “How many times do I have to ask for you to not be racist about my wang size?”

  “You got the money, so that ain’t it. All that new equipment, brand new car . . . have your own house too. You should have a chick . . . it would be really easy. It’s decided! We survive this and I’m taking you out for a night on the town and we’re getting you laid, T-Bone.”

  “Don’t call me that! And what type of name is Annie B anyway?”

  “It’s my nickname for her. She’s really Baroness Anne Boleyn, but like I’m going to be bringing up that absurdity every time I want to get her attention?”

  “Anne Boleyn . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re King Henry.”

  “Right!”

  “You’re both named after historical figures?”

  “No . . . she is a historical figure.”

  T-Bone was having a very bad day. Can’t blame the guy, I had three months to get used to the vampire thing and I sprung it on him the exact same time that the Coyote thing happened to us. “Anne Boleyn is a vampire?”

  “You’re back on track.”

  “And you . . . made love to her?”

  “Made love . . . really?”

  “Slept with her . . .”

  “No. There was no love and ain’t no sleeping either. Don’t blush. She thought she was dying. I thought there was a good chance I might go down with the ship too. We fucked our brains out, got it?”

  Silence for a straight minute.

  Curiosity got the better of T-Bone, “What was it like?”

  “Normal. Like with a normal beautiful woman who’s hurting . . . that’s the shit that haunts me at night when I think about her,” I remembered aloud. “Not the vampire of her, not thinking that she’s some blood creature, not that I saw her kill or that she ate on me once . . . but that face of hers . . . her velvet eyes as we finished. Nothing not human has the right to be so vulnerably human like that . . .”

  Second minute of straight silence.

  “Every time I think I have you figured out, King Henry,” T-Bone said, shaking his head and not meeting my eyes, “you punch me in the face.”

  [CLICK]

  All that talking wasn’t wasting time.

  One plus to the Mancy is you have lots of downtime while working up a pool. Ain’t no fastbreaks, least not that I’ve figured out yet . . . but commercials? We got plenty of commercial time. Mancy is the football of magic. One play . . . wait . . . replay . . . wait some more . . . play again. Gets annoying if you’re in a gun fight, but you learn a thing or two about killing time.

  My pool was just over five minutes when I exited the car and crossed the street, doing my best to smile and not seem like some criminal to the passing traffic. Rich people probably master many a skill, but this one they all got down pat: if you’re going to have a big fucking mansion, ain’t no better pep-me-up than showing that big fucking mansion to jealous pedestrians driving down one of the busier streets in the city.

  Two cars zipped behind me as I turned back to T-Bone, giving him a big thumbs-up. He started dialing his phone, calling in our distraction. I’d wanted a pizza guy, but being as it’s the morning and even pizza places have standards, the only place we could find willing to deliver was a twenty-four hour Vietnamese place called Lon Ga.

  Yeah, it doesn’t exactly fill a man with hope that his plan is going to work, but odds were one of the Coyotes trying to tell off a delivery boy who doesn’t speak much English would be damned hilarious to watch.

  Three more cars went by, an old SUV with gas bills that must have been legendary, one of those new Smart two-person cars that look like they’re going to fall apart, and a hybrid truck pretending to get good mileage. Someone would wonder what I was doing if I just stood there, so I kept going, walking down the wall before taking a corner, following it down someone else’s property.

  Seven’s good enough.

  Seven minutes. Split it twice, leave some leakage, and I should have enough left over. Seven minutes . . . I couldn’t be sure, but since I started practicing with oversized pools I think my pooling came faster too. I’d have to get out a stop-watch to make sure, since we’re talking seconds on the minute here, but . . . it seemed faster. How much you hiding, Ceinwyn? How deep does the Asylum’s bullshit go?

  My hand ran over the stone of the wall. Stone, I can’t stand stone. Love me metal, metal hard or metal liquid. Glass too, though it’s very complex and fragile stuff. Dirt . . . can’t do much with dirt, but it’s flexible. Gems . . . do I look that rich? Stone . . . stone wants to be stone. You can’t mold stone.

  They say Michelangelo was an Artificer just like me, they say he’s the greatest stoneworker ever. Well . . . he can have it. Can’t mold stone . . . can’t make stone flow or form. You try it and the stone just snaps on you, crumbles away. The way to work stone is to take away from it. As Plutarch told me once, ‘creation through subtraction.’

  My hand ran over the stone of the wall. Rough stuff. Thick all the way through. No tootsie-roll center here. This wall wanted to take on a tank, win, and teabag the tank’s corpse.

  I tapped at it with a finger. Stone connected to the earth still has geo-anima running through it, especially if you’re talking mountain connected, but here there was only dead silence. Don’t tell the hippies, they’ll get upset that man is ‘killing’ something else.

  “Why couldn’t you be steel reinforced?” I muttered, tapping a second time. Steel bars, those would’ve made for some nice handholds. I could work with steel bars . . .

  “Going to try to fuck me over?” I asked the wall. “Or you going to be a good boy? Let me shave out some footholds without cracking on me? Who’s going to be a good boy? Yes you are . . .”

  Yes, I doggy-talked a stone wall.

  Mostly to calm my nerves, but some just because it never hurts to suck up to your inanimate materials. You never know where you’re going to find an anima concentration closing in on corporeal.

  “You want those holes, don’t you?” I moved a hand low and another high, about as far apart as I could get them. “Want them right here. Got holes in you and maybe some nice bird will come along and keep you company with a nest. Maybe it will peck off some of that nasty ivy trying to break you down.”

  I released my pool, breaking the anima in half and channeling it out my hands. It didn’t break clean, more like a wishbone with one side bigger than the other. There was leakage, always leakage. This time it came at my feet, throwing up dirt into the air around me. But I had my two pieces and I pushed against the wall, anima bubbling out and grinding away at the stone.

  Fine bits of stone dust poured out, anima dissipating as I pushed inward. I ignored an urge to cough as the dust from my top hand poured on top of me. I kept pushing, moving my hand back and forth, layer by layer. Might not be a mountain, but I did cut down that wall with the edge of my hand.

  With almost no geo-anima left, I pulled my hands back, leaving a
pair of wide, four-inch deep grooves where they’d been. “Now that is some nice bit of Mancy-work, King Henry Price, you badass motherfucker . . .”

  There was gray dust all over the place and over me as well. I smacked it off my mancer coat and my jeans, tried to smack it out of my hair and wipe it from my face as well. Probably had it in my lungs, only my lungs if I’m lucky. More likely I’d be shitting stone dust for a week.

  Gray shit . . . that’s my future.

  T-Bone joined me a couple minutes later, looking nervous enough for the pair of us. “If anyone is watching us we’re so screwed!”

  “Black guy and a white guy in a wealthy neighborhood hanging out by a wall? What’s suspicious about that?” I went rhetorical on him.

  “Right . . . that and it being broad daylight and my car just sitting there by itself.”

  “I wouldn’t worry; no one would want to actually steal a Nissan Leaf.”

  T-Bone ignored the jab at his ride, reaching out to study my work on the wall. He touched the bottom step, then pushed up on his toes to take in the second with his eyes. “How did you do this?” he asked.

  “There’s some technical term for it, but I’ve always called it geo-grinder. Works on rock and hard dirts.”

  “Yeah . . .” He shaded his eyes like that would change the view, then let his hand slide back down. “But how did you manage two?”

  Right. I guessed I should start teaching some of my hard earned tricks to him. “I split the pool.”

  T-Bone shifted to study my face instead. “That’s impossible.”

  “Ever tried it?”

  “No . . .” he realized, “You did it with the guns at your shop, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. “The Asylum lies about a ton of shit. You can split pools . . . hurts like a sore tooth and the leakage is some messy shit, but you can do it. You can pool for longer than five minutes too . . .”

  T-Bone kept up the nervous act, checking to make sure no nosy neighbor had spotted us. A pair of trees blocked the house behind us, in front was the wall, and to our right was the road. Leaning in the shade, we weren’t obvious. I wasn’t worried much, it being morning, and most people driving being half asleep at the wheel.

  “That sounds dangerous,” he said about large pools.

  “Could be.” I shrugged. “Not saying I do it all the time, but . . . it’s possible. Asylum might never say it’s impossible, but the teachers sure as shit encouraged us to think so. That, splitting pools, few comments Ceinwyn has made . . . I’m beginning to be doubtful as to the breadth of our education curriculum.”

  “Maybe it’s just an Artificer thing.”

  “You’d have to try it,” I pointed out. “Stormcaller can do it . . . then we can all do it . . . then, guess we got to figure out why we’re being lied to, and what else we’re being lied to about.”

  T-Bone thought for a bit. He’s a man with a face fitting for such things. Me . . . me and my dirty eyes and dirty hair and dirty clothes waited in silence for a deliveryman.

  [CLICK]

  “This has to be him,” T-Bone said.

  I didn’t even have to get vocal with my agreement. Not many vans labeled Lon Ga out at that time in the morning. Especially on Van Ness I’m guessing. But what do I know? Maybe some rich man likes him some Vietnamese food for breakfast and can’t do without some Lon Ga.

  “You have a pool, right?”

  “Five-minute.”

  “Aww.”

  T-Bone grimaced. “Not the time for experimentation.”

  “Why not?” I glanced around us, at the houses, at me, at him, and the wall. Absurdity on high display. “This kind of situation is always when I figure something out.”

  “I’m not you,” T-Bone reminded me.

  There’s some truth. Probably good he wasn’t me too. Google maps, I’d have never thought of that. On my own I would have wasted a pool on the gates and waited to see what came out of the mansion to get me. There’d have been a brawl in the yard for all the richies to see. Detective Ribera would have been pleased to have me back for another chat so soon. Ceinwyn would have worked overtime . . .

  Good thing to have a partner of sorts around. T-Bone might not have Annie B’s spectacular tits, or her conversational skills, but he was a much more calming influence. Some Yin and Yang thing between us. Me and Annie B had been all Yang . . . or Yin . . . whichever one is the black-going-to-blow-shit-up-and-punch-faces one.

  “There he goes.”

  “At the gate?”

  I listened, heard an Asian accent on some English and knew our time had arrived. “You first in case I need to push your fat ass up.”

  “Insulting,” T-Bone mumbled as he put his foot in the first step. “Little punk isn’t even going to reach this.”

  Two steps where none had been, but that didn’t make it easy. T-Bone found that out quick when he pushed up and had nothing to hold. I’d have laughed but from where he waited at the front door the Lon Ga guy might have heard.

  “Need instructions?” I whispered.

  “Touch my fat ass and I’ll shock yours,” T-Bone warned, trying to hang on for dear life to smooth stone and only managing to drop back to the ground.

  “Foot in hole one,” I pointed out, still at a whisper. He glowered but followed directions. “Push up and arms all the way extended so you grab the edge of the wall.” Some grunting as he barely managed. T-Bone was right, my little punk ass would be doing some ninja jumping to reach step two. “Pull with your arms and bring up your next foot.” How he didn’t fall backwards, I don’t know, but he managed it. “Swing the other leg over and drop to the other side.”

  A soft thud as he hit the ground.

  But no screaming women or gunshots, so . . . victory.

  I went over the wall myself, minus the ninja moves, but I did have to drop my pooling. Which is a shame. Large pools: possible. Splitting a pool: possible. But once you stop . . . you can’t start adding to it again. You can hold on, waiting for the right moment to release and this takes its own bit of skill, but you can’t build.

  I went over the wall and into the unknown of Casa de Vega with a ten-minute-pool. Ten-minute-pool, SDR times two, a SEM-DEW, barely charged aero-fan, cold cuffs times two, and my fists. Versus the Mancy knows how many werecoyotes. You always get the best odds, you pugnacious bastard.

  T-Bone was right on with his Google-fu. We dropped down into a small space between the wall and the guesthouse. Wasn’t no one to see us but the bushes and they weren’t talking without a floromancer present.

  “What are we destroying anyway?” T-Bone asked, again at a whisper. “You never said.”

  Best to assume unless told otherwise that this whole bit of sneaking around was done in whispers. Trust me, it wasn’t professional at all. It’s a miracle we weren’t found out and shot. If the Coyotes in Casa de Vega hadn’t been so distracted we probably would have been . . . but they had other shit to deal with, Lon Ga the least of it.

  “Huh?”

  “We’re supposed to crack some pipes or something, remember?”

  “Oh . . .”

  That’s probably when T-Bone started to get suspicious about my motives. “What about the basketball court? You can snap the poles and I’ll sizzle the nets.”

  No punching in this plan, so it was a very bad plan. “Let’s look around a bit first.”

  The guesthouse was unoccupied, by people or mangy canines, even by drugs or sex slaves. I didn’t actually know what shady shit Vega was involved in, but drugs were a good bet. Protection, racketeering, gun running . . . all likely.

  There are tons of normal gangs in Fresno, plenty for the police and reporters to focus on, but no one ever thought there could actually be a kingpin type running it all. Only it didn’t stop at Fresno . . . the Coyote Nation had sway over ninety-nine percent of California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico . . . that’s a lot of fucking territory. It stopped at the border; Jaguar Nation had held Mexico since before there was a Mexico . .
. since before Columbus.

  How much did Vega control? What’s he worth? How many werecoyotes could he call upon?

  Looking around that mansion’s backyard I realized really quick that this wasn’t the home of a king. Lawyer or doctor? Sure. But a king? Probably worth a few million. Any woman would have given oral sex for life and anal on weekends if their husband bought it . . . but basketball courts? A dinky regular swimming pool? No security cameras. No armed guards. No Totem. No sign of a coyote at all.

  We were in the wrong place for finding Horatio Vega.

  Shit.

  “Basketball court is still the best target,” T-Bone said, nodding at one of the metal poles.

  What would Horatio Vega do when he saw we’d broken the basketball court at one of his houses? Bet he’d laugh. I’d laugh too. Want to laugh about it right now. Some pathetic shit. Not that I’d ever planned on breaking a piece of property as my actual move . . . but not having Vega here, that was a disappointment.

  So who was here?

  Maybe I’d get lucky and it would be JoJo.

  I shook my head at T-Bone. “Not enough.”

  “What else are we going to do? You said you weren’t going to do anything serious!” he hissed at me, gesturing with both arms and shoulders to make up for his lack of volume.

  We stood next to the pool, against a wall by a ground floor window. Dumbasses maybe, but smart enough not to be arguing in the middle of the yard. “I’m going to see if anyone is in the house.”

  “King Henry! Don’t be stupid!”

  “You don’t have to follow me,” I said, giving him one of my special I-don’t-give-a-shit shrugs. “But if you don’t follow me . . . you’re going to have to explain to Ceinwyn why.”

  “I should call her right now and have her talk some sense into you.”

  “She already tried . . .” My next shrug gave a tiny shit. “He has my sister. Maybe she’s in there. Maybe not. Got to see though.”

  “And if they have guns?”

  “I can break them.”

  “How many?”

  “Enough.”

  I didn’t bother keeping up with convincing him. He could come, he could not come. I was beyond the point of caring. It showed how much I liked T-Bone that I even bothered to give him a moment. A few yards away from someone who knew Horatio Vega and . . . stop at a basketball court?