Cherry Bomb: A Siobhan Quinn Novel (13 page)

No, I admit it wasn’t very funny.

She just tapped her nose and soldiered on.

“The abbot, he realized that the monk—and no one knows his name, or the abbot’s—had discovered a subhuman race, and, what’s more, a pagan subhuman race that had yet to be converted to Christianity. So, that’s exactly what the abbot set out to do. He evangelized to the Ghul,” she said. “The abbot had the brothers lock the ghoul in a cell, so it was a sort of captive-audience situation. But they fed it, not cadavers or anything, but they fed it all the same, and they made it comfortable, and, in return, it told them stories of the Sunless Lands, of Thok and the Vale of Pnath, of the war with the Djinn.”

Selwyn was now spouting stuff even the nasties take with a grain of salt. But I didn’t interrupt her again. I was hoping we were coming up fast on the next station. I wanted off the train in the worst fucking sort of way. I needed not to be shut up in that claustrophobic metal tube with Professor Indiana Throckmorton’s own beyond creepy Madonna of the Damned.

“Knowing ghouls,” she continued, “the fucker was probably getting his rocks off horrifying them, shocking their monastic sensibilities. You can imagine those pious, ascetic men making the
signum crucis
and whispering prayers while the ghoul rattled off descriptions of the
necropolises and the bone plains, while it introduced them to the likes of Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth. Hell, some of them probably pissed themselves. Every now and then, the ghoul would lapse into its own language, and the monks slowly began to decipher some of it. Anyway, after a few months, they sent their pet off to spread the gospel to its fellows.”

I snorted. “I bet
that
went well.”

“I suppose it might have gone worse. The Hounds of Cain did listen, but you know how it often goes when the Church starts trying to fob its beliefs on other cultures. The ghouls picked and chose. Classic case of religious syncretism. They took what suited them. Invented new quasi-Christian deities and fused them with their existing pantheon. You know about the
Qqi
?”

I’d heard the word.

“Their word for god,” I told her. “But that’s all I know. I’m not exactly a goddamn Ghul scholar, Annie Smithfield.”

“Quinn, I wish you’d stop calling me that. I really, truly do.”

Okay, by this time, we definitely should have reached the next station. Seriously. But between Selwyn’s tale and getting a gander at her treasure, I’d been distracted.

“I’m still not sure it isn’t your real name. Also, what with all those fake IDs of yours, I’m not so sure you could ever prove it isn’t.”

She sighed, and she let go of the pole and sat down next to me. She held the bundle in her lap.

“Fine, Quinn. Have it your way.”

“I usually do.”

She tapped the end of her nose and sighed again.

“The
Qqi
,” she said, “which, in ghoulish, is the number Fifty, is their ancient pantheon. Their
prehistoric
pantheon, their version of the Elder Gods, Outer Gods, Great Old Ones, Nodens, whatever. When the australopithecines were still busy avoiding lions and leopards and hyenas, oh my, the Ghul had already been worshipping the
Qqi
for a twenty thousand centuries. The
Qqi
, the Fifty, the Ten Hands, Fifty Fingers, that menagerie fitting together like a Russian nesting doll.”

“
Matryoshkas
,” I said, “Russian nesting dolls,” because it was something to say, and I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t really following her little history lesson. I was beginning to worry more about why the train was still zooming merrily along as if the next stop wasn’t until fucking Boston.

“Right. Like a
matryoshka
. Anyways, the ghouls latched onto this brand-new theology, incorporated it with their own cosmogony, and out popped a host of
new
gods and goddesses. A freshly reconsolidated pantheon. Not that the Ghul gave up worshipping Claviceps, Amylostereum, or Paecilomyces, mind you.”

Fairy tales for the eaters of the dead. The profane names rolled off her tongue like a rotten, off-key tune.

“But,” she said, “they invented. They invented with a passion.”

“I get the idea,” I told her. “Archetypes, cultural contamination, corn kings.” I was squinting at the doors to the car, squinting because the fluorescent lights were starting to hurt my eyes. I hate goddamn fluorescent
lights. Forget what you hear about vamps and the sun. I’ll take a sunny day over fluorescent bulbs every time.

“Have you read
The Golden Bough
?”

“No.”

“Joseph Campbell?”

“No.”

“Is something wrong?” Selwyn asked.

“Probably not,” I replied. “Go on. Where does
that . . . 
?” I waved a hand at the thing in her lap. “Where does it fit into all this nonsense?”

“Well, you see, the ghouls didn’t junk their many gods for monotheism, but they
did
take to the idea of a savior. They remade the Virgin and the Christ Child to fit their needs. Ever since they’d lost the war with the Djinn and been banished to the Dream Lands they’d prayed for deliverance. For a messiah who’d lead them back to the World Above. And that’s where the Basalt Madonna comes in.”

I got to my feet. Unlike Selwyn, I didn’t
need
the pole for balance, but I sure as shit felt better hanging on to it with my good arm. I said, “Fascinating as all this is, you’re going to have to save the rest for later.”

She frowned and glanced up at me. She looked just the tiniest bit worried.

“
Is
something wrong?” she asked again, with a bit more oomph than before.

“I’m gonna err on the side of caution and say yes.”

“But you just said ‘probably not.’”

“I lied.”

I drew the Glock and checked the clip, which is when
the doors separating the cars opened and four ghouls lumbered in, two from each end. They were big damn bastards, stinking of mold and shit and rotting meat, all four crusty with wicked cases of scabies. To my knowledge, no ghoul yet has ever been accused of good hygiene. Their hooves thumped loud against the floor, and they snarled and bared their yellowed fangs. That abbot in Byzantium shoulda spent his spare time proselytizing to the hounds about toothbrushes, not forgiveness and hellfire.

If anyone back then
had
toothbrushes.

Never mind.

Their manes bristled. Their rheumy yellow eyes were chock-full of a serious desire to dole out mutilation and death. Near as I could see, no one was holding their leashes. One of the sons of bitches jabbed a crooked finger at me.

“This does not concern you, Twice-Damned,” it snarled. “Step aside, Siobhan Quinn.”

“Make me,” I said.

“Step aside,” it repeated and took a step towards me.

“Selwyn, you might wanna cover your ears.”

Which she did.

I squeezed the trigger and put a bullet through the nut sack’s skull, right between the eyes, and it went down like a bag of rocks. I pulled back on the slide and chambered another round, wishing I could have covered my own ears.

“Who’s next?” I asked, hardly able to hear myself. None of them volunteered. All three were busy staring at their fallen comrade.

“She shot Bustard,” said a ghoul with a jagged scar across its short muzzle. It had been standing directly behind the one I’d killed, and now it was hunched over the bloody, lifeless body.

“Look at that. She
shot
him,” said the hound. It didn’t sound so much upset as surprised. “He’s dead.”

“What the
fuck
did you expect?” I asked, taking aim at Scar’s face. To Selwyn, I said, “You watch those two behind me. Watch them close. If one of them so much as fucking twitches an ear, you tell me.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“He only wants the Throckmorton,” one of the ghouls behind me grunted. “Not you, vampire. We were not told to harm
you.
This is not your fight. You are not the one who has betrayed him.”

It sort of had a point.

“He,” I said. “That he would be Isaac Snow?”

“The
Qqi d’Tashiva
,” it replied.

“You wanna translate that for me, Annie Smithfield?”

“The God-King of Rags and Bones,” she answered. “Hand of the Fifty.”

“Filthy vampire scum does not utter the name of the
Qqi d’Tashiva
,” Scar said, looking up from the dead ghoul. Its eyes had gone more muddy orange than yellow. “Your foul phantom’s tongue is not
fit
to—”

I shot it. Two down. The odds were looking better. I turned my attention to the remaining pair; they were clearly dumbfounded.

“You shot Chester,” one of them said and scratched the tuft of coarse hair on its scabby chin.

“Guys, c’mon,” I said. “You are seriously starting to
bore the shit out of me. Did you honestly believe you were gonna just waltz in here, pretty as you please, and take her without getting a fight?”

“Siobhan
Quinn
,” growled the ghoul who’d scratched its chin at the death of poor deceased Chester.

“Right. You know my name, but you obviously don’t have a clue what happens to weasely douche bag shitcicles without the good sense to stay out of my face.”

I was standing there talking smack like I was the baddest of the bad, but to tell you the truth, I was amazed through and through that I hadn’t yet found a way to fuck up and get me and Selwyn both killed.

“Quinn,” whispered Selwyn.

“What?”

“The train’s slowing down,” she said.

Which is when both the surviving ghouls dropped down onto all fours and charged me. I had time to get off one more shot, but it went wild and punched a hole in the ceiling of the train. To her credit, Selwyn didn’t scream. She was fast and got clear before four hundred or so pounds of stinking flesh and bone slammed into me. My gun went skittering away, and I heard bones snapping, all of them mine, natch, and the ache in my shoulder was drowned in a shimmering wall of fresh hell.

Their breath was almost as bad as the pain.

“Kill you,”
growled one of my attackers, just before I drove a knee into its crotch and pushed my thumbs into its eyes. The left eye popped, and the ghoul howled and stumbled to its feet. But the other ghoul pinned me, good and proper, and wrapped a hand tight around my throat, those talons digging into my skin. I knew it could
yank my head off easy as brushing away a fly. And there we were, nose to nose. It grinned, as ugly a grin as any nasty ever grinned. A grin to impress a true demon. It’s face lit up, and I knew the ghoul knew it had won.

“Finish you now, vampire,” it said. “But finish you slow and hard. Make you beg and scream for the delight of the King of Bones.”

I heard Selwyn racking back the Glock’s slide. The ghoul, it was too busy savoring the thought of picking me apart limb by limb, flaying and disemboweling me, to notice shit. She blew the top of its head off, spraying me with brains and gore and specks of skull in the process. Small price to pay, right?

“More are coming,” she said, not sounding half as scared as she had a right to be, and then I caught the tattoo of many pairs of hooves pounding steel. Yeah, ghouls also have hooves where their feet should be. The floor beneath me vibrated with the weight and force of them.

“They’re
close
, Quinn.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I mumbled.

I blinked and wiped at my face, trying to get dead ghoul out of my eyes. In a second or two, I could see well enough to see Selwyn was squatting next to me, still holding on to the Basalt Madonna. In the chaos, part of the T-shirt had slipped enough that one corner of the stone plaque was visible.

I told her to run.

And deep down inside me, the Beast opened her eyes.

Yeah,
I said to her.
Sure thing, puppy. Let’s party. Let’s rock out with our cocks out.

But it wasn’t like it had been on wolfsbane. There was
the old fade-to-black routine. And, frankly, I was then and still am grateful for that. Sure, I’d have loved to feel what it was like, ripping apart the hounds who flooded into that subway car. I wish I could claim I have no idea what magical, mystical cosmic agency decides if I’ll retain consciousness whenever the Beast arrives to paint the town red. If it’s all up to me, that child and her wolf at the edge of the field, the forest at their backs, or if it falls to some secret sliver of my brain making nanosecond decisions. Or both. I don’t really care.

I awoke on cold stone, and at least half the pain I’d felt in the instant before I’d blacked out was still right with me. Hell, the transformation into Beast would have seen to a sackful of ouch, without having first been shot in the shoulder and then pummeled by fuck knows how many of the Ghul who’d jumped us.

I’d been dreaming of long-lost Lily—murdered by a ghoul, the first nasty I killed, even if it was an accident, beginner’s fucking luck. Pretty, pretty Lily, my compatriot in Needle Park, Lily and the streets.

Not kind dreams.

I opened my eyes and lay still on my back a long time. Fifteen, twenty minutes. Half an hour. I don’t know. I was disoriented, and I was trying to get
re
oriented. There was a growing urgency as the attack on the train came back to me, and as I realized Selwyn wasn’t there with me. I called out her name a couple of times, but got nothing except my own voice echoing back to me. I was naked, and if I’d been alive, I’d likely have been freezing to death. Wherever I was, it was cold and dank and stank of mildew and ages of accumulated dust. Wherever I was, was dark.
Not that it much mattered to my built-in vamp night-vision goggles. It was just a matter of convincing the three of everything to get together and be the one of everything.

There was a tremendous whoosh of warm air and then the cacophony of a train rattling past. So, I knew I was still in the subway. But I was alone. Alone and naked. I rolled over onto my left side and there was my duster, neatly folded, and there were my pants, also neatly folded. A great what-the-fuck moment. No shoes, though. No shirt. And, I’d see soon enough, no gun. What kinda half-assed mercy was that?