by Angela Allen
At first Lou feels only the warmth of her mouth. But then intermingled with that comes an icy trickle that starts in his shaft and spreads down his legs. The room takes on a wild, fun house–mirror view. The walls spin like a carousel. Colors collide and mix, while strange animalistic sounds roar through his ears.
Lou has the most explosive orgasm of his life. He comes so hard that if he weren’t already dead it would kill him.
“Oh, shit! What the…?” Lou gasps as he drifts back. Malika is wiping her mouth. She pops in a mint, runs her tongue across her fangs and blows him a wet kiss.
“The bones of a virgin werewolf,” she says, putting on a fresh coat of lipstick. “Ground into powder. The best high on the planet. And the one drug vampires can take direct. Very rare. And very, very expensive.”
Lou reaches for the powder but Malika snatches it up in a move so quick his eyes blur.
“I’m working with some scientists to make a synthetic version of it,” she continues. “But I need more of the real thing in order to run a few more tests.
“Tell me, how do you feel about your son?”
“Ricky? That punk ain’t no werewolf,” Lou scoffs. Down below he notices Mace and Ugly Nikki staring hungrily at a sumo wrestler wearing more rolls of fat than the Michelin Man. Ugly Nikki is making a beeline toward those fat rolls.
“Don’t be so sure,” Malika says, a twisted smile on her face. “Even if he hasn’t had his first transformation, he’s still got the gene. Activate the gene and you’ve got yourself a werewolf. All you have to do is bite him. His body will treat the vampire bite as a toxin and voilà—instant virgin werewolf.”
Lou flashes back to the ass-whooping that landed him in hell. One thing he knows for sure: werewolves are no joke. Again, Malika picks up on his thoughts. “My associates and I have already designed werewolf-proof cages,” she says. “Once the transformation is complete, we’ll flood the room with a nerve gas that’ll kill him almost instantly. Then we just skin him, debone him and grind the bones to dust.”
Lou looks at Malika and sees she’s ice cold and dead serious. He promises himself to tap that ice-cold ass. Soon. But first I have to get paid.
“So how much does a virgin werewolf sell for these days?” he asks, his mind on a new Ferrari. “Ain’t no love lost between me and that little nigga. But he is my son. I owe it to that nigga to at least get a good price for his ass.”
Malika reaches between Lou’s legs and strokes with the touch of an expert. “I don’t think you want money,” she says, sliding her tongue in his mouth.
“No, you got that wrong,” Lou says, pulling away. “I definitely wants my money.”
“Then how about a trade?” Malika says. “You give me Ricky and I give you what you want most. I’ll help you kill Nate, Quick and Smokey. I’ll even deliver wifey to you still breathing so you can have a little fun.”
Before Lou can answer, Mace and Ugly Nikki open the door, coming into the room with the sumo wrestler hanging drunkenly between them.
“Malika, you want some of this? The Boss says this one is due for a little extra punishment,” Ugly Nikki says, still looking like a crazed Diana Ross in drag.
Mace glares at Lou. “Don’t let me catch you by yourself,” he growls.
Malika rises to leave, but pauses to grab Lou’s penis and whisper in his ear: “Well, do we have a deal?”
Lou pulls out his wallet. Inside is a picture of his wife and son. If even half the shit Malika is saying about Ricky is true, he can definitely cut himself a better deal. Getting payback or getting paid?
He rips the photo in half. Half he hands to Malika. Half he keeps. “Deal,” says the monster.
It’s one month later. The screams are gone but not forgotten. The sun is shining on the Belmont Plateau, the city’s most popular park, but Shelly is restless.
The violent dreams come more and more frequently. She doesn’t know what they mean. Either she’s becoming an insomniac or she’s losing her mind. It might be the latter, because lately she can’t shake the feeling she’s being watched. Late at night. Every night. By Lou.
When he was alive he used to play head games by having his boys spy on her, secretly following her around the city. Lou got a sick thrill from telling her stuff she’d done while she’d thought she was alone.
She needs to talk to someone. Get her head straight. But who? Her brother Nate stays up all night watching ESPN. Her brother Quick stays out all night getting his freak on. Both still treat her like their baby sister instead of a grown woman who’d been married and has a kid. And that’s what she craves most after years of abuse. To be treated like an adult. Like an equal.
She is left with only one choice: Smokey. He always makes her fears go away. Maybe because he doesn’t have any. His faith in God keeps his world and his choices simple: you are either living right or living wrong. How he reconciles serving a God of love with his nightly role of supernatural vigilante was a puzzle she’d danced around but never tackled head-on. But she has the feeling that something bad is coming, something none of them will be able to dance around. And it just won’t go away.
Smokey spots his daughter making her way through the park. It is summer and the place is packed with families, splitting their attention between southern barbecue and summer league basketball. But Smokey’s keen nose can smell the fear on his baby girl.
He doesn’t look at her as she cuts through the picnic tables to where he’s manning a grill. The constant line at his grill makes getting Smokey’s attention a little difficult. He cooks to please the nose as much as the mouth, and once those peppers and onions hitch a ride on a summer breeze, even vegetarians reach for a hamburger bun.
When Smokey tells the hungry crowd he needs a few minutes alone with his daughter, it is as if he has read her mind. Father and daughter walk off to a stand of trees, far enough to talk privately but close enough to keep track of the basketball game. A still-healing Ricky is playing point guard.
For a few moments, Shelly doesn’t say anything and neither does Smokey. The music is loud in the park and seems to come at them from all directions, gulping down the silence. He knows what is riding her. But she has to say it out loud. It has to be her decision to talk. His baby girl is all grown up. He has to treat her like an adult.
“You sleeping okay?” Smokey asks. “You sounded kinda rough last night.”
“How’d you—” Shelly starts to say and then stops.
Smokey softly taps the wolf’s head brand on his arm. “I could hear your heart pounding,” he says. “Smell the fear. You wanna talk about it?”
“You’ll probably think I’m crazy,” mumbles Shelly.
A few yards away, a young white man playfully tosses a Frisbee to his dog. The dog chases the spinning Frisbee over to where Smokey stands with Shelly. The animal stops in mid-stride, snapping his head around to gaze at Smokey. Smokey winks. The dog barks and winks back.
Shelly takes a swig of her soda and begins: “Last night, I dreamed that I was talking with this guy with a wolf’s head. He was dressed like an African prince or something. He was real muscular. Had to be at least seven foot. Crazy, right?”
“I know exactly who you mean. That’s Yusef. Yusef the Destroyer. The first werewolf,” says Smokey.
“Hey, put some of these burgers on a plate for me,” he yells to the guy now at the grill. About two hundred yards away on the basketball court, the crowd roars as Nate slams home a quick pass from Ricky.
“Your son had the same dream,” Smokey adds. “He joked about it with Nate. Of course, he don’t know what you know.”
“Thanks,” Smokey tells the young boy who brings over the plate of burgers and hot dogs. Shelly uses her fork to spear a hot dog. “Okay, back to the dream. You want to know what it means?”
Shelly isn’t sure now she really wants to know but she nods anyway. Smokey leans in, lowers his voice to a raspy whisper: “It means that someone in our family is gonna die.”
A Jeep, recen
tly reborn as a rolling boombox, vibrates past, blasting a reggae tune and shattering what’s left of Shelly’s nerves. She can barely get the question out: “Do you…do you know who’s going to die?” I hope it’s me and, please God, not Ricky.
“It’s me,” Smokey says calmly. “I have a brain tumor.”
“Shelly! I’ve missed you, young lady,” yells a woman’s voice. Her thick accent screams Eastern Europe despite living through five American presidents.
This is Sylvia. She and her husband, Milton “Doc” Goldberg, an aging, short, bald-headed Jewish man with Coke bottle–thick glasses and a large belly, are longtime family friends. No, more than family friends. They are like blood. When Shelly’s mom died while her daughter was still sleeping in a crib, Sylvia became the closest thing to a mother Shelly had.
“When are you going to come over and visit me?” Sylvia says. She is wearing a low-cut top in a loud color. This is her style. She calls it “Gypsy” and likes to joke that the clothes she wears show off her “womanhood.” She looks silly. But nobody ever laughs.
Sylvia has a miniature Doberman pinscher on a leash. He’s jumping all over Shelly, panting and begging to be petted. Shelly laughs and scoops him into her arms. In minutes, she’s feeding him one of Smokey’s famous hot dogs. “Soon, Miss Sylvia, I promise. I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately,” she says.
“This is Mr. Big, my neighbor’s dog,” says Doc, watching the little dog take turns licking Shelly’s face and eating the hot dog.
“He’s sure likes you.” Doc laughs. “He doesn’t even like me that much! That’s what I get for breaking my poor mother’s heart and going to veterinary school instead of law school!”
Smokey laughs and passes Doc a hot dog. “Well, let’s hope you’re better at that than you are at being a vet,” he teases.
“It’s the big dogs that give me the most problems,” Doc retorts. He and Smokey exchange a wink.
“Here. Go make yourself useful and flip a few burgers,” says Smokey. He hands Doc his apron. “I’ma go grab the boys.” Smokey nods for Shelly to follow him. They snatch an empty picnic table a few yards away from the basketball court and sit down.
“Doc did a few X-rays,” Smokey begins. “Said I got something on my brain stem. According to him the brain stem controls all the basic life functions. Blood pressure. Heartbeat. Breathing. And I’m guessing it may also control the Wolf.” He says it calmly, with neither fear nor remorse.
“How much time do you have?” Shelly asks. Her eyes are moist and she’s trying not to cry.
Smokey looks out at the basketball court. His son and grandson are so good they could start for the Sixers. The other players don’t have a chance.
“Doc’s not sure. I’m not all man and I’m not all wolf, so it’s hard to read my test results. One thing’s for certain, though, it hurts like hell every time I change.” Shelly starts to cry, but Smokey hands her a napkin. “Stop that,” he whispers. “The boys don’t know. And I don’t want them to know. You’re the only one I’ve told.”
Shouts and yells fill the air. The basketball game is over. Nate scored the winning shot. Smokey grins and waves. “I want you to run my business when I’m gone,” he tells Shelly. “Not the barbershop. The other one. The real family business.
“Listen, I know what you’re thinking. Why me? Why not Quick? Or Nate?” says Smokey. “I love my boys but neither one’s right for the job. Look at that,” he says, pointing toward the edge of the park.
His son Quick is leaning against his patrol car. In front of him, and swinging her ass in his face, is a well-endowed sista in a halter top. And booty shorts. And long blond hair. This is Tasty Boom-Boom, a stripper who can work the pole in more than one way.
Smokey continues, “Quick’s the best fighter. But that boy’s only interested in one thing…” As if on cue, Tasty walks over to Quick, turns her ample backside to him and bends over, pretending to tie her thigh-high boots. Her size 44-double-D breasts are a triumph of plastic surgery.
Smokey nudges Shelly to look over at the basketball court. “Then you got Nate. If Quick’s Batman, then Nate’s The Joker.” The game is over but Nate is still holding court. His boys are laughing so hard they’re in tears. “One day he might make a decent second-in-command.” Smokey shrugs. “But he’s got too much light in him to take the lead. To really lead, you gotta know darkness. It helps you live with the choices you have to make.
“You know darkness,” he says, laying his hand on top of hers.
Shelly runs her finger along the brand on her arm. Even in daylight the wolf’s eyes seem to look right through her. Smokey had told her, “I didn’t burn it on you; it burned its way out of you.” Her brothers both had the same identical brand. So did every man who shared Smokey’s bloodline. Few women had worn the brand. Only the unlucky few who had known darkness. The unlucky ones who had faced monsters.
Shelly had faced a monster. But what had happened to Lou in their apartment had scared her more because every night she went to sleep hungry for more. Hungry to kill.
As Nate, Ricky and Quick walk over to the table, Shelly quickly whispers, “What makes you think they’ll listen to me?”
Smokey leans in and kisses her on the cheek. “Because Yusef believes in you. And so do I.”
Lou loves being a vampire. His sadistic ass gets a kick out of having teeth sharp enough to open cans. Or rip through flesh. Satan had been right: he was a natural monster. From her penthouse apartment in Society Hill, Malika had used a combination of musty old books on black magic and the Internet to give Lou a crash course in life as a member of the undead. He’d learned about vampires from around the globe: the Obayifo witches of the Ashanti, the Loogaroo of the West Indies, the Aswang manananggal of the Philippines, the Xiang-shi of China and the mullos of the Gypsies.
She also taught him how to hustle drugs to the undead. If he was going to be a successful pusher, he had to know which drugs were like crack for vampires and which ones were a waste of time. Take marijuana, for example. Weed was cheap and relatively plentiful, but you had too many players already in the game, so margins were low. Same thing with regular crack. And wasn’t nothing harder to get rid of than a vampire crack ho.
That’s why Malika only worked synthetic drugs, like Ecstasy. Vampires’ senses were already fine-tuned. Ecstasy enhanced that. And made them horny as hell. Most vampires would fuck anything that moved because it made their victims’ blood run hot. And anything that made the blood hot made a vampire horny. Most vampires spent their nights having sex with humans and their days having sex with other vampires.
Lou shared a coffin with Malika. They had sex. Often. But he still wanted something she didn’t have. So he went back to old habits. He went back to meeting Ugly Nikki. Nikki was a man. But Nikki knew what he liked. When he was alive, Lou and Nikki would hook up while Shelly was at work and the kid was in school. That worked fine. Lou got what he wanted and no one ever knew. At least until the one day the kid decided to cut class and come home early. Ricky had caught Nikki and Lou buck naked, the neighborhood fairy on top of the thug gangster, and the thug gangster moaning with delight. Ricky had pulled a gun out of his book bag and threatened to shoot Lou, but as the father and son argued, Nikki was able to get to his own gun. Nikki was the one that shot Ricky, but Lou took the blame. Somehow word still got out, and Lou had decided to put a bullet in the heads of the two people doing the most talking: Nikki and Mace. Finding Mace had been easy. That new Navigator had stood out like a cat at a dog show. Tracking down Nikki had been harder. Now Lou knew why. He’d been turned into a vampire by Malika.
Now both Mace and Lou were dead. But Mace still wanted payback. Malika had slept with Mace a few times, using that tight ass to negotiate peace. But she couldn’t guarantee how long it would last. Her advice to Lou: kill Mace before he kills you. Lou took that to heart, but Mace was number two on Lou’s to-do list.
Number one was his wife.
It’s sundown. Night is coming. O
ne of the local radio stations is hosting a charity All-Star basketball game. Nate and Ricky have been invited to play with the radio station team. They are up against a collection of civic-minded pro football players. The recreation center where the game is being held has a near sell-out crowd lined up, waiting to get inside. Eager to see some b-ball.
“Being near all this food is making me hungry,” Mace says. Lou had hoped to get someone else as backup, but everyone who had said yes had dropped out to raid a Baptist convention happening over in Camden. Greedy motherfuckers! Malika had promised to drop by after she finished going shopping with Nikki.
Mace makes eye contact with a full-figured sista with a Pocahontas-style weave dangling down to her waist, spandex skirt and fishnet stockings. He blows her a kiss, keeping his lips over his fangs. No use scaring off dinner. She blows him one back.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Mace says. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t like women. My bad.”
Lou’s face tightens but he ignores him. In Lou’s pocket are silver-coated bullets. Folklore has it that silver can kill a werewolf and a vampire. For a split second Lou weighs the pros and cons of pumping a silver bullet into Mace’s big ass. Damn that nigga was hard to kill!
“Whatever,” says Lou. “I’m going to wait by the concession stand. Check the bleachers. Ricky’s playing tonight and Shelly never misses watching him play, so if you see her, grab her.”
Lou tosses Mace a dog whistle. “If you see her brothers or her father, blow that whistle as hard as you can. It’ll slow them down long enough for me to come over and give you a hand.”
Mace looks at the dog whistle as if it were a warm turd. “Nigga, please,” Mace says, “like I’m gonna need your ass to help me.” He throws it back to Lou. “I can handle mine. You worry about you.” And on that happy note, the two enter the building, heading in two different directions.