Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel (6 page)

Suze gave a long-suffering sigh. “Fort, you’re the king of the Fruit of the Loom boxer brief multipack.
Clearly
you’re not going to get this one.”

“I’m just saying that it’s kind of annoying that the ‘sexy’ underpants don’t have a fly. It’s kind of inconvenient.”

She snorted, very loudly, as we walked into the apartment stairwell and began climbing the three flights of stairs to my floor. “Yes, you have to drop trou to pee. How unspeakably difficult for you. I’ll cry you a river of sympathy after you spend one day in a thong, panty hose, pencil skirt, and heels, with only a public restroom to pee in.”

I dodged the suggestion. “Let me just point out that I very happily wear the sexy clothing you got me, whereas I have yet to see you in what I bought
you
for Christmas.”

“And you won’t,” she growled dangerously, “because I burned it in effigy and salted the earth where the ashes fell.”

For some reason she hadn’t appreciated getting a T-shirt with W
HAT
D
OES THE
F
OX
S
AY?
emblazoned across the chest, although her expression when she’d first seen it was priceless. While Suze normally enjoyed depictions of foxes in the media (and in fact still owned the Disney
Fox and the Hound
nightgown that she’d worn as a little girl), she had developed a particular loathing for the viral video that had spawned the catchphrase.

Entering the apartment, we greeted my roommate, Dan, and his boyfriend, Jaison, who were comfortably ensconced on the couch and watching a movie. I could tell at a glance that it was Dan’s pick of film—for one thing, Jaison looked mind-numbingly bored. For another, Benedict Cumberbatch (Dan’s not-so-secret star crush) was on the screen. And the movie wasn’t
Star Trek: Into Darkness
—that rare moment when Dan and Jaison’s interests had overlapped into a perfect Venn diagram.

“Taking a break from studying?” I asked Dan as I hung my jacket on the ancient coatrack that had mysteriously appeared in my apartment after Chivalry’s first visit several years ago, along with a set of matching dish towels (though the dish towels had long ago been stolen by one of my earlier, former, immensely shittier roommates).

“I’ll get another hour in after this is over,” Dan said. He was a second-year law student at Johnson & Wales University, and studied more than I had ever even dreamed possible. Of course, my highest academic accomplishment had been a bachelor’s degree in film studies, where apart from a few pretty decent film theory textbooks (most of which I’d actually even kept after graduation—one currently helped keep my desk level), most of my homework had involved watching movies—a high percentage of which had actually even been good. Being around Dan was a daily reinforcement of the many reasons why I wasn’t interested in getting a graduate degree.

Jaison gave a theatrically heavy sigh and stretched one long arm around Dan’s shoulders, a comical look of amusement stretching across his dark-skinned face. He was a general contractor, and while he managed to put more physical work into an eight-hour period than most people attempted in a week, he considered work done when he left the job site. He even held off on returning calls about bidding for jobs or client questions until he was back in his truck and heading to the site the next morning.

The two of them contrasted more than in just their work philosophies and film tastes (Dan tended toward moody dramas of the English variety, while Jaison had quickly become my go-to partner for dragging our respective dates to every geeky film there was—we’d managed to hit
Guardians of the Galaxy
twice before Suze and Dan brokered a rare mutual peace agreement for the sake of boycotting future viewings). Jaison was well over six feet tall and favored broken-in jeans, tees, and sweatshirts, while Dan was barely five-five and spent most of his life looking like he’d just wandered off the pages of
Esquire
. And, of course, there was the small detail that of the four people in the apartment at the moment, Jaison was the only human. And, coincidentally, the only one who was completely unaware that the supernatural actually existed.

Dan was a ghoul—and while he didn’t exactly feast on the flesh of humans, he did dine on human organs several nights out of the week. He didn’t kill people, of course—none of the ghouls who lived in the Providence community did that. Why go through all the fuss and possible exposure of killing people when people died every day? Ghouls owned local funeral homes and worked in medical pathology, just the kinds of places where they would have plenty of access to fresh human bodies that had no more need of any of their delicious, vitamin-heavy organs. Those were harvested and distributed to the rest of the ghouls—though apparently there were also at least two ghoul-owned butcher shops in the Providence area. If I’d still been eating meat, I admit that that would’ve given me pause.

Jaison craned his head back to look at me. “Hey, Fort. Did you see Ninja Kitty anywhere when you came in?”

Beside him, I could see Dan suppressing a sigh. When Suzume and I had started dating, I hadn’t quite realized how much time she’d be spending at the apartment in fox form. We’d been good friends for months, so she’d long been a regular fixture around the apartment, and she and Jaison got along well (Suze and Dan . . . that was a different story), but in the past she’d primarily kept to human form, particularly when we weren’t the only ones in the apartment. That had changed, slowly at first, then in a big way over the last two to three weeks. Dan and I had actually been worried enough to try to have a serious conversation together about how exactly we were going to explain to Jaison why there was a fox scampering around the apartment.

Our big mistake, of course, had been in asking Suze if she could try to avoid taking fox form when there was a chance that Jaison could spot her. Naturally the very next time the two of them had been in the apartment together, Suze excused herself on the pretext of being really tired, and a black fox had sauntered into the living room and jumped up on the sofa next to Jaison, tail wagging delightedly, ready for a belly rub. It was a good thing that Dan and I had healthy cholesterol levels, because the moment had nearly given both of us heart attacks.

Of course, with Suze’s ability to mess with perception, she’d had the situation completely under control. Jaison had been startled at the sudden appearance of a friendly black cat, but certainly not shocked the way he would’ve been by a fox. We watched as Jaison rubbed her long foxy face and called her a nice kitty, and that was our only hint about what he was seeing. Suze had deliberately not influenced the way that Dan and I were seeing her, which she later admitted to me had been partially because Dan and I both had at least some expectation of seeing a fox in the apartment, and it would’ve therefore been harder to trick our minds. But mostly because Suze had gotten substantial thrills out of fucking with the two of us.

Thus had been born the fiction of Ninja Kitty, the stray cat who was mysteriously able to enter and exit our apartment at will. And, in the classic tradition of Superman and Clark Kent, the possibility that Suzume and Ninja Kitty could be one and the same was so unbelievably far-fetched that it never even crossed Jaison’s mind. Not even Ninja Kitty’s noted habit of “accidentally” knocking over Dan’s stacks of study flash cards and how often she seemed to find herself sitting on his open textbooks tipped Jaison off. Of course, Dan knew that she was doing it deliberately—but couldn’t even hint about it when Jaison was around, marveling at Ninja Kitty’s consistency.

“No, haven’t spotted her tonight,” I answered Jaison.

“I hope she’s okay,” he worried. “The temperature is supposed to drop below zero tonight.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Poor Jaison. He was a devoted cat lover, but couldn’t have one himself because he lived with his grandmother, who was allergic. The more often Jaison spent time with Suze’s alter ego, the more I could see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to figure out a way to convince Dan to adopt Ninja Kitty full-time for him.

“She knows how to get in, Jaison,” Suze said, with a blandness utterly at odds with the glee in her eyes. “I’m sure if it’s too cold for her outside, she’ll show up.”

“Given her level of socialization, I bet that she has her own home,” Dan said, giving Suze an icy look. “Maybe she’s spending more time there.”

Before Dan and Suze could fully engage, I plopped down on the sofa and redirected things. “What are we watching?”

“Parade’s End,”
Jaison said. “The British World War One masterpiece about a man who never gets laid. Portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch.”

“Jeez, Fort. Before I broke your dry spell, that could’ve been the story of your life.” Suze grinned and settled herself down in the armchair. It was a recent addition to the living room, obtained after Dan and I agreed that a three-person sofa was not quite up to handling the seating demands of two couples. A few days spent cruising Craigslist, and the assistance of Jaison’s truck, and we had a new armchair, tastefully upholstered in acid green corduroy. We were even moderately confident that no one had died in it (the seller had sworn that the tenant whose apartment he was emptying had died in the bedroom, not the living room).

“You people have no appreciation of film,” Dan said. “Fort, support me.”

“The British cinematic tradition of people staring intently at each other in lieu of actually addressing story elements is a long and noble one, particularly in Masterpiece Theater,” I noted.

“Thank you.”

“Also, Dan is gay for Cumberbatch.”

That earned me a couch cushion thrown at my head by Dan while Jaison and Suzume hooted with laughter.

*   *   *

I woke up the next morning with a substantial crick in my neck, thanks to the black fox that was ensconced in the middle of my pillow. I rolled over to the side and began rubbing my abused neck, grumbling. I didn’t deny that my single-size mattress had been making for some tight quarters when Suze spent the night, and I had in fact been considering making the upgrade to a double or even a queen (plans that had now been firmly put on the back burner thanks to my financial support of the succubi), but we did have two pillows. It wasn’t exactly necessary for her to take hostile possession of my pillow every time she stayed over.

Also, the truth of the matter was that I’d gone to bed with a naked woman, and waking up next to a fluffy fox was not exactly how I liked to start the morning.

I said her name loudly. Then, with no response, I nudged her slightly. I was rewarded by the lazy opening of one amber eye.

“Suze, I’d like to do some early-morning postcoital cuddling,” I said.

Her luxuriously long tail wagged happily, and she rolled over so that she was regarding me upside down, her jaw open and her tongue lolling partially out.

“Rubbing your belly is not exactly what I had in mind.” My voice sounded about as dry as the Sahara.

She made a little disappointed sound in her throat; then with a huff she transformed. Between one breath and the next the winter-coated black fox on my pillow was replaced with a naked woman draped over the top of my bed.

Suze quirked an eyebrow. “Spoilsport.”

I hooked an arm around her hips and tugged her around and down. “Don’t worry,” I promised her with a grin. “You’ll still get plenty of rubbing.”

*   *   *

An hour later I was whistling while I put together a dual breakfast of English muffins, cereal, and orange juice. The stiffness in my neck was still present, but it now seemed like a decent tradeoff for the relaxation of every other part of me. Suze was in the shower, which thanks to our crummy pipes produced a rattling sound that was almost impossible to ignore, but I was determined to hold on to this good mood as long as possible, and I just whistled louder.

Dan came out of his room, slick and put together for another day spent studying the law and surviving the Socratic method of teaching. He shook his head at the sight of me.

“Fort, you need to work on getting more of a poker face. It’s a little too painfully obvious that you just got laid.”

“I’m just whistling,” I defended. “Besides, don’t pretend that you’re so good at keeping it hidden. You always look smug as shit after Jaison puts out.”

“You have no definitive proof of that,” Dan said as he pulled on his wool jacket and wrapped his scarf in a perfect just-so knot. Smugly. “Hey, I’m hitting the grocery store after classes. I’ve got the list, but can you think of anything else we need?”

“I’m out of tofu again.”

Dan made a face as he pulled the list out of his wallet and updated it. “You drink blood. I would think that that would make you comfortable with the consumption of meat.”

“Wow, that argument is so compelling, and one that I’ve never heard before. Let me forget the tofu and fry up some bacon.” Besides, I only drank my mother’s blood. For now.

“The bacon in the fridge is just waiting for you to backslide.”

I threw a balled-up paper towel at him, and he laughed as he headed out. My vegetarianism was definitely imperfect—I was never going to give up eggs or fish—and the truth that Dan was certainly aware of was that avoiding meat was an ongoing struggle for me. I’d made the switch to vegetarianism for the sake of a former girlfriend, but before my transition had begun in earnest it had helped suppress some of my more predatory instincts when I didn’t eat red meat. It was hard to tell whether it was still true—my instincts had taken control of me once, and I’d attacked one of my mother’s employees, James, before Thanksgiving, and had actually bitten him hard enough to draw blood. It had scared the shit out of me (it hadn’t done good things for James either, though thankfully he hadn’t been seriously hurt), and while I could’ve just thrown up my hands and assumed that if this was happening, then my meal plan was useless and I should just give in to my cravings (and believe me, my cravings for bacon were hard to ignore at times), but the truth was that it was possible that my vegetarian diet was actually helping me avoid causing more serious damage—and since none of my family members had been either willing or able to give me a definitive answer on that, I was sticking like glue to my no-meat approach.