Kitty's Mix-Tape

by Carrie Vaughn

  Rick smiled, knowing it would make him crazy. Blake scowled and walked out.

  Rick had the rest of the night mapped out. He knew what would happen next, how it would all play, a bit of urban theater, predictable yet somehow satisfying. Last call came and went; he offered to close up. After locking the doors, he set chairs upside down on tables, gave the floor a quick sweeping and the bar a wipe-down, turned off all the lights, and went out the back, where Blake was waiting for him.

  Blake lunged from the shadows with a right hook, obviously intending to take Rick out in a second and keep him from gaining his bearings.

  Rick sidestepped out of the way. Blake stumbled, and Rick pivoted, grabbing Blake’s shirt, yanking him further off balance, then swinging him headfirst into the wall. The man slid to the ground, limbs flailing for purchase, scrabbling at Rick, the wall, anything. The sequence took less than a second—Blake wouldn’t have had a chance to realize his right hook had missed. He must have thought the world turned upside down.

  Wrenching Blake’s arm back, Rick dragged him a dozen feet along the pavement in the back alley. The shoulder joint popped; Blake hollered. With a flick of the same injured arm, Rick flipped Blake faceup—bloody scrapes covered his cheek and jaw. Jumping on him, Rick pinned him, holding him with strength rather than weight—Blake was the larger man. He brought his face close to smell the rich, sweet fluid leaking from him. Rick could drain the man dead.

  A floodlight filled the alley, blinding even Rick, who shaded his eyes with a raised arm. Squinting, he needed a moment to make out the scene: a police car had pulled into the alley.

  “You two! Break it up!” a man shouted from the driver’s-side window.

  Climbing to his feet, Rick held up his hands. Next to him, Blake was still scrambling to recover, scratching at the cut on his face, shaking his head like a cave creature emerging into the open.

  The cop had a partner, who stormed out of the passenger side and came at them, nightstick in hand. He shoved Rick face first to the brick wall and patted him down. “What’s this? A couple of drunks duking it out?”

  Rick didn’t speak and didn’t react. He could have fought free, stunned the officer, and disappeared into the shadows. But he waited, curious.

  “What have you got there?” the driver asked.

  “A couple of drunks. Should we bring ’em in?”

  “Wait a minute—that guy on the ground. Is that Charles Blake?”

  The cop grabbed Blake by the collar and dragged him into the light.

  “That’s it, bring ’em both in.”

  Rick rode in the back of the squad car next to Blake, trying to decide if he should be amused or concerned. Dawn was still a few hours away. He had time to watch this play out. Blake was hunched over, breathing wetly, glancing at Rick every now and then to glare at him.

  Within the hour, Rick was sitting in a bare, dank interrogation room, talking to a plainclothes detective, a guy named Simpson. He lit a cigarette and offered one to Rick, who declined.

  He said, “You were picked up fighting with Charles Blake behind Murray’s.”

  “That’s right,” Rick answered.

  “You want to tell me why?”

  Rick leaned back and crossed his arms. “I expected to be thrown in the drunk tank when I got here, but you’re interested in Blake. Can I ask why?”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “He’s been bothering a girl I know.”

  “Your girl?” Rick shrugged, and the detective flicked ashes on the floor. “That’s why you were beating on him? I don’t suppose I can blame you for that.”

  “Is Blake dangerous?”

  “Do you think he is?”

  “Yes,” Rick said.

  The detective studied him, but Rick didn’t give much away. If he needed to, he could catch the man’s eye and talk him into letting Rick go. It would certainly come to that if he was still here close to dawn.

  Finally, the detective said, “You’re right. He’s the primary suspect in a murder case. You have anything else about him you want to share?”

  This gave Rick an idea. “I might know someone who can help you.”

  “If I let you go—I know how that works.”

  “I’m the bartender at Murray’s—I won’t disappear on you.”

  “And how good is this information of yours?”

  “Worth the wait, I think.”

  “You know what? You’re a little too cagey for a bartender. Is that all you do?”

  Rick chuckled. “Right now it is.”

  “I need evidence to lay on Blake if we’re going to keep him locked up—and keep him away from your girlfriend. Can you help me out?”

  “Stop by Murray’s tomorrow night and I’ll have an answer.”

  The detective let him go.

  Rick knew he’d be followed—for a time, at least. He returned to Arturo’s by a roundabout route and managed to vanish, at least from his tail’s point of view.

  Helen was waiting for him in the parlor, sitting with Arturo on a burgundy velvet settee. Rick calmed himself a moment and didn’t instantly leap forward to put himself between them. She was smiling, and Arturo wasn’t doing anything but talking.

  “Ricardo! I was hoping you wouldn’t return, and that you’d left Helen here with us.”

  Helen giggled—she held an empty tumbler. They’d probably been at this for hours.

  “Thanks for entertaining her for me,” Rick said. “My pleasure. Really.”

  “Helen, we need to talk,” Rick said, gesturing to the doorway.

  “Your friend’s a charmer, Rick,” she said.

  “Yes, he is. Let’s go.”

  She pushed herself from the seat. Glancing over her shoulder, she waved fingers at him, and Arturo answered with an indulgent smile. Rick put an arm over her shoulder and guided her into the safe room.

  “Don’t be angry,” she said. “I needed to ask him if there was a phone.”

  “Who did you need to call?”

  “The police,” she said, and ducked her gaze. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, so I called the police and told them there might be trouble at Murray’s.”

  And there was trouble, and the police had shown up.

  “I’d almost taken care of Blake when the police arrived,” he said.

  He didn’t say, You should have trusted me.

  She paled. “What happened?”

  “He’s in jail now, but he’s not going to stay there unless they get some proof that he committed those murders. They know he did it, they just don’t have evidence.”

  She paced back and forth along the foot of the bed. Her shoulders tightened, and she hugged herself.

  “I think you should go talk to them, Helen. You can testify, Blake will go to prison, and he won’t bother you again. You’ll be safe.”

  “I can’t do that, Rick. I can’t say anything. He’ll kill me, he’ll—”

  “Not if he’s in prison.”

  “But what if he gets out? The first thing he’ll do is come after me.”

  “I’ll kill him first,” Rick said.

  “Rick, no. I don’t want you to get in trouble over me. I don’t even know why you’re looking out for me, you barely know me—”

  “I’m doing it because I can,” he said. “But if you go to the police, they’ll take care of Blake.”

  She moved close, pressing herself to him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. This again. She was so close, he could hear blood pouring through her veins, near the surface. She was flushed and so warm. He rubbed his face along her hair, gathering that warmth to him.

  “Helen,” he said with something like despair.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “I’m not . . . right for you. This is dangerous—”

  “Why?” She stepped away. “What’s up with you? You’re so nice, but you’re not afraid of Blake, and you keep talking like I ought to be afraid of you. What aren’t you tellin
g me?”

  Such a large answer to that question. He shifted her, so that he could see her face, trace the soft skin of her jaw, then drop to trace the pulse on her neck. He should send her to sleep and make her forget all this. He never should have taken her on that first date. And life was too long for that kind of regret. It didn’t matter how immortal you were, you still needed friends.

  “Have you ever read Dracula?” he said. “

  What, like Bela Lugosi?”

  “Not quite like. But yes.”

  “Yeah, ages ago. I like the movie better.”

  “Vampires exist. They’re real.”

  She chuckled. “Sorry?”

  He took her hand and placed it on his chest, where his dead heart lay still. “What do you feel?”

  Her smile fell. She moved her hand, pressing it flat to his chest, his ribs digging into her palm. She stared at him. “What am I supposed to say? Tell you you’re crazy?”

  “Lie still,” he said.

  “What?”

  He sat her on the bed, stacked up the pillows, and forced her back so that she reclined against them. He kissed her, and she kissed back, enthusiastic if confused. Taking in her scent, her warmth, and the feel of her blood, he let the appetite grow in him.

  Planting a final kiss on her neck, he held her hand and drew her arm straight before him. No hypnotism this time, no shrouding her memory. Let her see what he was. He put his lips to her elbow—more kisses, slow and tender, tracing her veins with his tongue. She let out a moan.

  He sucked on her wrist, drawing blood to the surface.

  “Rick? What are you doing? Rick?”

  “I said lie still.” He pushed her back to the pillow and returned his attention to her wrist.

  Finally, he bit, and she gasped. But she lay still.

  Her blood was not as sweet as it might have been—she was too wary. But it was still sweet, and she didn’t panic, and when he licked the wound closed and glanced at her, her gaze was clear. Uncertain, but clear. He was relieved. He folded her arms across her belly, wrapping her in an embrace, her head pillowed on his shoulder. She melted against him.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “I don’t expect you to. But do you trust me to look after you if Blake goes free?”

  She nodded. He kissed her hair and waited for her to fall asleep.

  Rick brought her to Murray’s the next night, and Detective Simpson was waiting for them. Her hands were trembling, but Rick stayed close to her, and she stood tall and spoke clearly. Simpson promised she wouldn’t be charged with any of the petty crimes she’d committed, in exchange for her testimony. The case against Blake went to trial, and Helen was the prosecution’s star witness. Blake was convicted and sent away for a long, long time. Rick was sure he’d never see the guy again.

  He only needed a little digging—a visit to a parole office, some obfuscation and inveigling, a deep look into an informant’s eyes—to learn which halfway house Blake was staying at, east of downtown. He drove there with a single-minded intensity. He wasn’t often wrong these days, but he’d been wrong about Blake, and he’d failed Helen. Petty revenge wouldn’t make that right. But it might help tip the scales back in the right direction.

  The house was back from the street, run-down and lit up, and gave no outward sign of what it was. Rick wondered if the neighbors knew. He parked his car on the curb, stuck his hands in his pockets, and headed to the front door.

  The house pressed outward against him; his steps slowed. The place was protected—he wasn’t sure it would be, given its nature, and the fact that people were always moving in and out. Did that make it a public institution, or a home? But here was his answer—this was a home. He couldn’t enter without invitation. By the time he reached the front door, the force was a wall, invisible; he could almost press his hands against it—but not through it.

  Well. He’d have to try normal, mundane bluffing, wouldn’t he?

  He knocked on the door. A shadow passed over the peephole, and a voice called, “Who is it? What do you want?”

  “My name is Rick. I’m an old friend of Charles Blake, and I heard he was here. Can I see him?”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yes—sorry about that. I just got off work. Bartender.”

  “Just a minute. I’ll get him.”

  “Mind if I wait inside?”

  After a brief, wary moment of waiting, the deadbolt clicked back, and the door opened. A gruff man in his forties stood aside and held the door. “Come on in.”

  Rick did.

  The living room was worn and sad, with threadbare furniture and carpets, stained walls, a musty air. A bulletin board listed rules, notices, want ads, warnings. The atmosphere was institutional, but this might have been the first real home some of these men had known. Halfway house, indeed.

  “Stay right here,” the man said, and walked to a back hallway.

  Rick waited, hands in pockets.

  The doorman returned after a long wait, what would have been many beats of his heart, if it still beat. Behind him came a very old man, pulling a small oxygen tank on a cart behind him. Tubes led from it to his nose, and his every breath wheezed. Other than that, he had faded. He was smaller than the last time Rick had seen him, withered and sunken, skin like putty hanging off a stooped frame. Wearing a T-shirt and ratty, faded jeans, he looked sad, beaten. The scowl remained—Rick recognized that part of him.

  The old man saw him and stopped. They were two ghosts staring at each other across the room.

  “Hello, Blake,” Rick said.

  “Who are you? You his grandson?”

  Rick turned to the middle-aged doorman and stared until he caught the man’s gaze. “Would you mind leaving us alone for a minute?” He put quiet force into the suggestion. The man walked back into the hallway.

  “Bill—Bill! Come back!” Blake’s sandpaper voice broke into coughing.

  “I’m not his grandson,” Rick said.

  “What is this?”

  “Tell me about Helen, Blake.”

  He coughed a laugh, as if he thought this was a joke. Rick just stared at him. He didn’t have to put any power in it. His standing there was enough. Blake’s jaw trembled.

  “What about her? Huh? What about her!”

  Rick grabbed the tube hanging at Blake’s chest and yanked, pulling it off his face. Blake stumbled back, his mouth open to show badly fitted dentures coming loose. Wrapping both hands in Blake’s shirt, Rick marched him into the wall, slamming him, slamming again, listening for the crack of breaking bone.

  “You thought no one would know,” Rick whispered at him, face to face. “You thought no one would remember.” Blake sputtered, flailing weakly, ineffectually.

  The front door crashed open. “Stop!”

  Rick recognized the footfalls, voices, and the sounds of their breathing. Detective Hardin pounded in, flanked by two uniformed officers. Rick glanced over his shoulder—she was pointing a gun at him. Not that it mattered. He shoved his fists against Blake’s throat.

  Blake was dying under his grip. Rick wouldn’t have to flex a muscle to kill him. He didn’t even feel an urge to take the man’s blood—it would be cool, sluggish, unappetizing. Rick would spit it back out in the man’s face. He could do it all with Hardin watching, because what could the detective really do in the end?

  “Rick! Back away from him!”

  Hardin fumbled in her jacket pocket and drew out a cross, a simple version, two bars of unadorned silver soldered together. Proof against vampires. Rick smiled.

  Blake had to have known he wouldn’t get away with murdering Helen. What had he been thinking? What had he wanted, really? Rick looked at him: the wide, yellowing eyes, the sagging face, pockmarked and splashed with broken capillaries. He expected to see a death wish there, a determined fatalism. But Blake was afraid. Rick terrified him. The man, his body failing around him, didn’t want to die.

  This made Rick want to strangle
him even more. To justify the man’s terror. But he let Blake go and backed away, leaving him to Hardin’s care.

  The old man sank to his knees, knocking over the oxygen canister. He held his hands before him, clawed and trembling.

  “He’s dead! Dead! He has to be dead! He has to be!” He was sobbing.

  Maybe leaving him on his knees and crying before the police was revenge enough.

  Rick, hands raised, backed out of the line of fire. “I could have saved you some paperwork, Detective.”

  “You’d just have forced me into a whole other set of paperwork. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  The uniforms had to pick up Blake and practically drag him away. They didn’t bother with cuffs. Blake didn’t seem to know what was happening. His mouth worked, his breaths wheezed, his legs stumbled.

  “I take it you got your evidence,” Rick said.

  “We found the shooter, and he talked. Blake hired him.”

  He certainly didn’t look like he’d pulled any triggers in a good long time.

  “So that’s it?”

  “What else do you want?”

  “I wanted to get here five minutes earlier,” he said. Not that any of it really mattered. It all faded from the memories around him.

  “I need to ask you to depart the premises,” she said. She wasn’t aiming the gun at him, but she hadn’t put it away. “Don’t think I won’t arrest you for something, because I will. I’ll come up with something.”

  Rick nodded. “Have a good night, Detective.”

  He returned to his car and left the scene, marking the end of yet another chapter.

  Rick hadn’t been able to attend the trial, but he’d met with Helen every night to discuss the proceedings. She came to Murray’s, tearing up with relief and rubbing her eyes with her handkerchief, to report the guilty verdict. He quit his shift early and took her back to his place, a basement apartment on Capitol Hill. With Blake locked up, he felt safe bringing her there. He owned the building, rented out the upper portion through an agency, and could block off the windows in the basement without drawing attention. The décor was simple—a bed, an armchair, a chest of drawers, a radio, and a kitchen that went unused.