Blood Oranges (9781101594858) (6 page)

“You're the sweetest guy I ever did meet,” I whispered in the quiet that followed the belch. “You're one delightful dude.”

“That's better. Now, first things first. I assume you're starving. Am I right?”

I nodded without sitting up, so I smacked my forehead against the wood several times and the table shook like it wasn't bolted to the floor (though I knew it was).

“Then I imagine you're going to have to find something to eat. And soon. That part's not optional. Anyway, even living people tend to think more clearly after a square meal. There you go. Step number one, advice for the asking, free of fucking charge.”

“I'm not going to kill anyone. I'm not going to eat anyone.”

“Sure you will, Quinn. Not that I don't respect your reverence for the sanctity of human life and whatever other high-minded morals you may yet harbor. I do, cross my heart. But you are going to kill, and I'd wager you'll do it before sunrise. Then, once that's out of the way, we may proceed to step number two.”

“I'm
not
going to kill anyone.”

“I'll put down green folding money to the contrary.”

“I'll find a rat,” I said. “Or a cat, or a stray dog.”

He was silent for a moment, sipping his red drink. Then Mr. Barlow laughed and said, “Kiddo, you know as well as I do that won't work.”

He was right, of course. It's not like Louis de Pointe du Lac or Angelus or one of those guys. Vampires can't get by on rodents, pigs, poodles, and such. Not even monkeys will do. Vampires need human blood. Accept no substitute. It's the real McCoy, actual and factual hemoglobin from some unfortunate Homo sapiens, or it might as well be nothing at all. Might as well be a mouthful of air.

“Fuck me.”

“If you can stomach it, I suggest one of our local homeless denizens,” Mean Mr. B(arlow) suggested with utmost seriousness. “Or you could try Brown, but college kids go missing, it never fails to attract attention. There are tourists, of course, but the Chamber of Commerce frowns on that sort of shit. Go for the homeless. A transient if possible. Fortune might even smile on you, and you'll find someone who's bathed this year.”

“I'm not going to kill anyone,
Barlow
,” I told him, trying hard as I could to make the name sound like the bad joke it was. Guess it's safe to assume he'd read
'Salem's Lot
, or at least seen the movie. But maybe not, which makes it even funnier.

“You keep saying that. I might as well say I'm a lace doily, or pinch of lint. It's just about that ridiculous, you know.”

“You could always kill me,” I mumbled, my words muffled by all the slobber and the wood I was speaking into. The ground glass had spread from my joints to my guts and throat.

“I could,” he said in a thoughtful, contemplative sort of way. “I considered that, because I can be merciful when the mood strikes me. But I'm not going to. Better for my health if I don't start crossing the Bride. Isn't she a pip, by the way?”

“The Bride?” I asked.

“Well, you don't truly think she's Mercy Brown,” he said. “Perfectly fucking ridiculous, the way she goes about calling herself that.”

“I told her that.”

“Good for you. Best we stick to calling her the Bride of Quiet. I think she acquired that nom de guerre in the winter of '42 and '43, during the Battle of Stalingrad. Must have been a feast. Oh, she's Russian, as it happens, from some horrid village on the banks of the Volga. Anyway, I've always thought it had a nice ring to it—Bride of Quiet. The German soldiers started calling her that,
Braut der Stille
, and they got in their heads she was some sort of angel or—”

“I'm
not
killing anyone,” I said again (for—what?—the half-dozenth time?). I said that, then gagged on hunger pangs and at the cloying smell of the air trapped inside Babe's. It stank of my sweat, of Budweiser and Jäger shots, of the ghost of cigarettes, from back when smoking was still legal in Rhode Island bars. It stank of piss from the toilets and the cakes of deodorant that are supposed to cover up the stink of piss. Unless you're a vampire. A vampire who's also a werewolf.

“As you wish,” he sighed. “Either way, I'll be here until last call. Try not to do anything else outrageously stupid.”

I have no idea how I got to my feet again and made it back to the front door of Babe's, but I did. And, one teensy-weensy step at a goddamn time, I made it to the other side of I-95 and found a woman sleeping off a quart bottle of Thunderbird. She was my first. When it was over, I dumped the husk of her into the Providence River, and made my way back to Wickenden Street. As they used to say (and maybe some people still do), I felt like a million bucks.

* * *

I
was back at Babe's on the Sunnyside half an hour before closing. You live in Providence, you know that's one a.m., as mandated by state law. Mr. B—Bayard, Baptiste, Barlow, whoever—was still in his booth at the back, finishing off what would be his last Cape Cod of the evening. He saw me coming in, and the motherfucker totally looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. He knew right off what I'd done, though I'd washed in the river. Washed as best I could. I knew there were still bloodstains on my jeans and T-shirt, but I was trying to pretend there weren't. No one at the bar seemed to notice. Anyway, there he sat, all smug and pleased with himself. Probably, I hated him more then than I ever had or ever would (which is saying quite a lot).

“Brava,” he said, and slowly clapped his hands. “The gourmand returns victorious from her banquet, cherry popped.”

I sat down, and ran my fingers through my wet hair. I realized there was still blood caked under my nails and wondered if I was going to have to get used to that sort of thing. Speaking generally, you see two sorts of vampires in novels and the movies. You see clean, fastidious vampires, and you see filthy wretches that can't be bothered with the likes of hygiene. In the real world, they come in both those varieties, though it's been my experience most are perfectly content with the “can't be bothered” category. Truth is, all the primping and perfume in the world only does a half-assed job of covering up the facts. There's only so many ways you can beautify a corpse.

“I trust your repast won't be missed? I trust it certainly won't be found?”

I didn't answer either question. I said, “You trust an awful lot, Mr. B.” Then, well, I just sat there staring at the blood under my nails. I realized there was a Patti Smith song playing on the bar's stereo. Not just any Patti Smith song, but “Land.” I closed my eyes and listened. See, there's a story here. That song's not just any song. There was this game me and Lily used to play, when we were too cold or hungry or strung out to sleep. At some point, she started calling it Songs for My Funeral, and that's all we ever called it. She'd say, “At my funeral, I want them to play ‘Black Star' by Radiohead.” Then it would be my turn, okay, so I'd say something like, “At my funeral, I want them (
them
, whoever
them
was gonna be) to play ‘Hate My Way' by Throwing Muses.” Or, instead, I'd say I wanted the song to be something by Tom Waits, or the Rolling Stones, or Elvis Costello. See, it didn't matter what the song was, only that there
were
songs. But the song I named more times than any other was “Land” by Patti Smith, and I sat there with my eyes shut, the lyrics and drums and guitar chords spilling over me, mocking me, reminding me of shit I didn't want to be reminded of. But also washing me lots cleaner than the river ever could. Back then, fuck, we'd both been so innocent, and here I was never gonna be innocent again.

Songs for my funeral.

And I opened my eyes and stared into the steely eyes of Mean Mr. B in his razor-sharp pinstripes, wondering if any vampire had ever gotten a funeral. I wondered that, and Patti Smith sang about rape and horses and dances from the 1950s and
la mer
.

“Step number two,” I said.

“I always appreciate an eager student. Now, what shall step number two be?”

I thought about it a minute before answering him. “Mercy, she believes I killed her lover. Her daughter. Some bitch named Alice. I've been assuming she was talking about another vamp, one she made.”

“Good call. That would be one Alice Cregan, who was, as it happens, a young lady our Miss Brown dragged out of her mortal coil about four decades back. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess that name doesn't ring a bell?”

“Alice Cregan?”

“Yes. That very name.”

“Doesn't mean a goddamn thing to me,” I replied, wishing the song would end and another would come along to take its place, one that had never been part of me and Lily's stupid, fucking, morbid game.

“Well, it ought to,” said Mean Mr. B, Mr. Barlow, Mr. Whatever He Pleases, Mr. Whim. “Not too long after we met, you and her tangled one night amid the gravestones and mausoleums of—”

“—Swan Point,” I interrupted, finishing his sentence, knowing how much he hates being interrupted. So, my second vampire, whom I had indeed offed at Swan Point Cemetery, now I knew her name.

He sipped his drink and nodded coolly, like someone who didn't mind being interrupted. “That's her. Seems like the Bride took it personally. Also, seems like she's the sort holds a grudge. Not that you can necessarily blame her.”

“Yeah, okay. But . . . that was like six months ago.”

Mr. B, he leaned back in the booth and grinned. “The undead, they don't think of time the way you and I think of time. Six months. Six weeks. Not much difference to them. But then, you'll eventually figure that out for yourself. Hell, might be the old lady didn't even miss Alice Cregan until a few days ago. But when she finally
did
miss her . . . daughter . . . she found you and delivered unto our fair maiden her proper comeuppance.” He raised his glass, which was mostly empty, like I had a drink of my own and we were supposed to toast.

“You must put a lot of effort into being an asshole,” I said.

“No I do not. I assure you, it just comes naturally.”

“It's not that simple. There was more. I mean, she talked about more than me having killed this Alice Cregan.”

“Ah, so the plot thickens.”

“She said what she did to me, before she did it, she said she was paying off a debt, something about a bet she lost a long time ago. And she went on about me being something she was forbidden to create. Taboo, she said.”

“Obviously. A vampire that's also werewolf, or, conversely, vice versa,” he said and thumped the rim of his cocktail glass. It emitted a painful, high-pitched ring I felt in my teeth.

“Jesus,” I hissed. “Don't you fucking do that again.”

“Je suis désolée,”
he smiled, without so much as half a scrap of contrition in his voice. “All apologies.”

I rubbed at my temples and gritted my sharp teeth.

“But yes, that's a no-no from the long ago, bygone days. As for the debt, that's between her and her creditor. Unless, of course, she was speaking metaphorically.”

“She called me her pet.”

“How very fucking sweet of her. She should know you're not exactly housebroken.”

I ignored him. Finally, the music wasn't Patti Smith anymore. It was another song. I don't remember what. And just now I almost wrote “but at least it was easier to breathe” again. Only it wasn't, but I hadn't noticed until “Land” ended that I wasn't breathing, that I hadn't
been
breathing since I woke up in the ditch by the railroad tracks. I put my right hand over my chest. Nope, nothing there, either. No reassuring cardiovascular thump, thump, thump. Not a peep. Naturally, Mr. B was watching me like a hawk.

“Do you know, Quinn, the meaning of the word
apocalypse
?”

“End of the world.”

“Wrong. It's from the Greek
apokalypsis
, and it means a revelation, a disclosure. Hence, the Book of Revelation of Saint John the Divine, or, alternately and more concisely, the Apocalypse of John. The book isn't named that because it talks about the end times—if you approach it as a futurist and not a symbolist—but because of the revelatory visions experienced by John while on the isle of Patmos.”

I think it fair to say I glared at him. I think I was wishing becoming a vampire had given me the power to make people's heads explode just by
thinking
about their heads exploding, like in that old movie,
Scanners
.

“Are we done with the fucking history lesson now?” I asked him, and Mean Mr. B shrugged.

“If you wish. Still, I believe you've just had your own personal apocalypse.”

I rubbed at my face and ran my hands through my hair again. It was sticky, my hair, so I knew I probably hadn't gotten all the blood out.

“That shit at Swan Point, I didn't even start that. It was that fuckwit Bobby Ng.”

“But, dear, it was
you
who finished it, and that's all that really matters to the Bride.”

“I should have let the son of a bitch die. I should have let her eat him.”

“I do believe that's exactly what I said at the time.”

“Don't do that.”

“Don't do what?” he asked and straightened his lapels.

“Don't fucking say I fucking told you so.”

“I didn't.”

“Yes you did.”

“Not in so many words. Anyway, we're in agreement, kitten. You should have left that fuckwit Bobby Ng to his fate, the one he'd brought upon himself. Let's not argue, not when we so obviously agree.”

By now, I was trying so hard to make Mr. B's head split open in a steaming burst of brains and bone and gore, my own head was beginning to ache. Maybe I did have skull-rupturing superpowers, but they were about to backfire.