Blood Oranges Read online

  But then he got a look at one of the girls, and to hear Drusneth tell it, no demoness was ever possessed of a better rack. Of horns, I mean. Nothing was said of her tits. Not that I recall. So, Bobby Ng falls for her—or at least he fell for her pointy parts. Which leads to him trying to sneak in and buy an hour of her time, only nobody south of Boston or north of Brooklyn hasn’t heard about the jerk. His face is pretty much seared into the minds (or analogous organs) of everyone in the lower half of New England. At least, anyone who runs in these particular circles.

  So, the guys at the door, they make him right off, but Drusneth, she wants to see how this scene’s gonna play out. The goat-headed kid (sorry, pun unintended) named Agoston, he’s told to go ahead and lead Bobby upstairs same as any other trick. Ng gets naked, and the whore lets him feel her horns up for ten or fifteen minutes, then they get around to the fucking part and hilarity ensues when he discovers what she has between her legs. I’m not gonna go there. No need for the gory details. But, by the time all was said and done, he needed twenty fucking stitches. Madam Calamity said one of the bouncers drove him to the emergency room, after she placed a geas on him, preventing Bobby from ever telling a living soul what had happened. She said “living soul,” so I’m guessing he was free to tell all the vampires and ghosts he wanted, fat lot of good that would do him.

  Back to Babe’s on the Sunnyside and Mr. B.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I spent some time in Cranston.”

  “You have my sympathies,” he replied and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a blood orange and began peeling it. Anytime he was drinking—and that was almost every time I saw him—he’d finish up with citrus. Claimed it protected him from hangovers, the big dose of vitamin C and all. Might be a tangerine or a lime or, if he’d really tied one on, even a whole pink grapefruit. But that night in the bar it was a blood orange.

  “Very fucking funny,” I said.

  “What?” he asked, trying to sound innocent and probably failing on purpose. He continued to peel the fruit, exposing the wet crimson flesh.

  “The orange, that’s what.”

  “You want half?” he asked, tearing it in two. “I’ll share, if you do.”

  “Creep.”

  “One day, Miss Quinn, we’re going to have a talk about your manners. A polite ‘No thank you, Barlow. I’m not in the mood for half of your delicious orange’ would have sufficed.”

  “Never saw you eating a blood orange before,” I said, and glanced back at the bar. The place was emptying out.

  “There was a special at Whole Foods. The world doesn’t revolve around you, dear, not even after the Bride’s spot of mischief at your expense.”

  I tried not to watch as he ate the orange, and I tried even harder not to think how much the juice reminded me of the woman’s throat I’d torn open a couple of hours earlier.

  “Okay, so I save Bobby Ng’s ass six months ago by killing Mercy Brown’s special lady friend. Only Mercy can’t tell time, what with being dead and all, so out of the blue she saves me from a werewolf—sort of, but not really—and then, exacting her revenge, she turns me. But it’s not only about vengeance. It also has something to do with a debt she owes—fuck only knows to who or to what—and by making me a vampire—”

  “—who’s also a werewolf—” Mr. B interjected, then popped another section of orange into his mouth.

  “Yeah—fuck you—who’s also a werewolf, by doing that, she’s breaking some unspeakable bloodsucker taboo, and this matters how?”

  “Oh. I haven’t a goddamn clue. Not the foggiest. But don’t forget she also called you her pet.”

  “When she said that, I half expected I was about to wind up in a cage or boarded at a kennel or something.”

  “She didn’t even have the decency to give you a collar and tags, or see to it you were vaccinated for rabies.”

  “You are so not funny,” I said, picked up a strip of orange peel, and threw it at him. He didn’t even flinch, just brushed it off his right shoulder.

  “Really? I think I’m a scream,” he said and bit off the last bloodred section.

  Not much else to say about that night at the bar. He finished his orange right as Jack the Bartender was shooing people out the front door. The bartenders, they never shoo Mean Mr. B. But he never keeps them waiting, either. So, a minute past two a.m., we’re standing on the sidewalk outside Babe’s on the Sunnyside. I’m watching Jack wipe down the bar and tables with a soppy gray rag. Mr. B, he lights a cigarette, the Nat Shermans he smokes, cigarettes in all the colors of the rainbow. He offers me one, and then lights it for me. There’s a chill in the air, and I wonder for the first time if vampires are supposed to feel the cold.

  “So, dear,” he says, smoke leaking from his nostrils, “here’s where we part company for the evening.”

  “Wait. There’s something else she told me.”

  “Who?”

  “Mercy Brown. The goddamn Bride. Who do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous.” Mr. B takes another drag off his cigarette; then he asks me, “So, what, pray tell, was this something else she said, this something else that has me standing on the sidewalk outside a closed bar instead of walking home to the comfort of my bed?”

  “Can you stop being a jerk for like two minutes?”

  “Not bloody likely.”

  I tapped ash onto the cement at my feet and watched Jack, still busy with his bar rag.

  “She said I was a weapon. That she was making me to be a weapon.”

  Mr. B seemed to consider this a moment. I only say considered, because who the hell ever knows what’s going through his head. But he chewed at his lip in a thoughtful way, so I figured it was a safe enough bet that he was considering what I’d said.

  “So, you’re her vengeance for the death of Cregan, and also you’re the breaking of a taboo, and you’re her pet, but you’re also a weapon that she’s fashioning. That’s quite a bit of multitasking, wouldn’t you say? The all-purpose werepire.”

  “Werepire?”

  “Would you prefer vampwolf, dear? By the way, there’s blood in your hair. You should really do something about that.”

  “You’re not even going to try to give me advice?”

  He chewed his lip some more, smoked his Nat Sherman, and finally said, “Lay low. Keep your head down. You’ll need to feed every couple of nights, but, of course, you already know that. Don’t make messes you can’t clean up. I’ll ask around, hit up the usual suspects, see if I can find out what machinations the Bride might recently have set in motion. How’s that?”

  “Shitty,” I muttered.

  “Best I can do, kiddo. At least for the time being.”

  “And the loup thing?”

  “I have heard it said that a devotion to Saint Hubertus has been known to keep the symptoms in check. Patron saint of hunters or some such. Did you know . . . no, I bet you don’t . . . did you know that the Jägermeister logo—the stag with the cross above its antlers—is a reference to Saint Hubertus? Also, don’t eat the neighbors’ cat, or any of the neighbors, for that matter. Draws attention.”

  I sighed, dropped the rest of my cigarette to the sidewalk, and ground it out beneath the heel of my sneaker.

  “I’m going home,” I said, with as much disgust as I could muster.

  “As well you should. Ta. I’ll be in touch.”

  So, he left me standing there, and I watched Jack until he noticed me watching him, then headed back to my own place. Which, by the way, was an apartment down on the south end of Gano Street (coincidentally, not too far from the rusty bridge and the ditch I woke up in that night). First floor of an old house, and it must have been nice once upon a time, before the fifty years of frat boys and other assorted college students. It had shag carpet the color of vomit, and the paint was peeling off the walls like scaly patches off a shedding reptile. Still, better than abandoned warehouses and couch-surfing, right? Sometimes, the hot water was even hot. And it was easy eno
ugh to avoid the hole in the kitchen floor. The rats, I just thought of them as roommates.

  It occurs to me I haven’t explained why Mr. B showed up that day, bearing gifts of heroin and a free apartment. It’s not all that complicated, but it did take me about a month to get him to confess his motives. You live on the streets a few years, you learn to be suspicious of any act of goodwill. There are almost always strings attached, so it’s a question of weighing the pros against the cons. Just how badly are those strings gonna cut you? Actually, sometimes the strings, they’re more like piano wire than strings, if we’re talking string in the twine sense. Anyway, I’d had my fingers sliced enough times that I was wary, but not so wary that I was about to turn down free smack and a cleanish place to live. So, dude sets me up, assures me he’s on the level, and no, he’s not looking for sex, not unless I decide to grow a dick.

  But I knew there was more to it than a random act of kindness (to quote the bumper stickers), and one night at Babe’s I popped the question. I’d already taken to meeting him there. It seemed to make him happy, and he’d buy me beer and talk about vamps and loups and ghouls and shit. And things I’d never even heard of. I learned there was this whole fucking underworld, and I don’t mean the Mafia. I mean the things that hide beneath the Mafia, and would have the La Cosa Nostra bosses quaking in their shiny Italian croc-skin shoes. Where was I? Oh, right. Popping the question. So, what’s in this for you? Or something of the sort.

  Mean Mr. B, he stirred his Cape Cod and smiled, and at first I figured he’d find a perfectly good reason not to answer the question. Or maybe he’d act offended, knowing I’d apologize and drop it for fear of losing such a sacchariferous deal. But that’s not how it went. He had one of his boys that night, a cross-dressing piece of arm candy whose name I’ve long since forgotten. Also, I should note, the aforementioned burly blue-collar types, who were Babe’s bread and butter, never even blinked an eye at his boys. Not even at the drag queens and transvestites. Working guys, they drank their beers and watched the ballgames playing on the widescreen TV behind the bar and minded their own business. But, I was saying, I was thinking Mr. B’s not about to come clean, when he sends the pretty boy off to powder his nose.

  “You keep secrets from them?” I asked.

  “Only the secrets that might get them hurt,” he replied. “The sorts of secrets with which your query is concerned.”

  “Then maybe I’m better off not knowing, either.”

  “Possibly. Probably. Then again, not knowing, sooner or later, that might also mean your arse, yeah? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, getting yourself hemmed in between mademoiselles Scylla and Charybdis, eh?”

  By this time, I’ll admit, I’m sweating, and the bastard’s starting to scare the hell out of me. I’m thinking, what in the devil’s pajamas have I gotten myself into? Going back to the streets and whoring for dope was starting to seem like a good idea.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. My mouth had gone bone dry, and I’m sure he could tell.

  “Man like me, man in the sort of trade I’m in, he needs himself a spot of insurance now and again. And you surely don’t think I’m going to that cocksucker Bobby Ng? Certainly not.”

  (I’d already been regaled with a few of Ng’s misadventures and exploits.)

  I managed to nod my head.

  “See, that lot you call the nasties, time to time they need a job done that’s best handled by us quotidian and mortal sorts. So as not to draw an undue degree of cognizance from the mundanes. Makes good business sense, yeah? Sure it does.”

  I nodded my head again and stared at my bottle of PBR.

  “Right, so, returning to the matter of insurance, which is where you come in. I hear about this girl killing off a ghoul and a vamp. Bang, bang. Just like that. Nobody has any idea who she is or where she’s come from, but everyone’s talking about her. Suddenly, she’s the it girl, if you know what I mean. Me, I know it’s only a matter of time until the monsters take this girl out. They can’t have that shit. Makes them look bad. But I’m thinking, knowing them like I do, they’re at least a tad bit afraid of this chickadee. And, with a little PR, the right management, they could be a whole lot more scared of her. But, first, I gotta keep her alive and well.”

  “Insurance,” I whispered.

  “That’s just what I said, isn’t it? Insurance. Now and then, a deal goes south. I find myself in a tight squeeze, and I turn this over and over in my head, cogitate on it a while, and it seems worth a try. Small investment, potential for substantial returns.”

  “But you know they were both accidents.”

  “Didn’t know that when I picked you up that day, and, what matters, Miss Quinn, no one else out there knows it. We play it smart and keep things that way, sure. And we build you up a bit more, arrange for another accident or two, and people won’t be so quick to do me mischief if a transaction goes bad.”

  “I ain’t no bodyguard,” I told him. My heart was racing by then, pounding, and all I’m wondering is how I get out of this mess without getting myself killed. Or worse.

  “Never said you were. But they don’t know that.”

  “Jesus fuck.”

  “You’re always free to return to your previous lifestyle, dear.” And right then he takes a Baggie from a pocket of his blazer and lays it on the table between us.

  “Is this blackmail?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  I started to reach for the heroin, then pulled my hand back.

  “Whether it is or whether it isn’t,” he said, smiling that Cheshire Cat smile of his, “you best work through all the angles and consequences. For example, the nasties, they might not be too keen on the idea of me having backup, but they also know that if they clip you, I might not be so eager to run their little errands. You try going it on your own again, I fear for the duration of your life expectancy.”

  “Asshole,” I said, and that was the first time I ever said a word against the bastard. It was the beginning of our long and tumultuous love-hate relationship.

  He leaned back and held both his hands palms out. “You’re a free agent, precious. Free to get up and walk out that door, return to the everlasting glamour of your previous existence, and never will we meet again. Just you remember, odds are good you had a price on your pretty head before I found you, and maybe the only thing keeping the wolves at bay—so to speak—is your affiliation with me. I’d bet my bottom dollar you’d be dead by now if I hadn’t come along. Best the devil you know, isn’t that the expression?”

  Of course, Mr. B ain’t no devil. He’s just a two-bit lowlife ballsy enough to have cornered a niche market no other lowlife would go near. But what the fuck was I supposed to do? I knew he was right. I knew I’d been played, and there was no going back. Some vamp comes looking for me, was I really gonna say, “Oh, so sorry. Please excuse me. It was a terrible, terrible accident, really it was.” Yeah, that would’ve saved my narrow white keister. A few seconds later, Mr. B’s boy came back, all lipstick and purple patent-leather pumps, and I picked up the dope and slipped it into my jeans pocket. And the rest, as all the cold-blooded motherfuckers of the world are forever reminding us, is history.

  But here’s the kicker. No sooner had I pocketed the heroin, Patti Smith was singing “Land” through the speakers mounted on the walls. And all I could see was that beast crouching over Lily, and her blood spreading across a dusty warehouse floor. Songs for my funeral? You bet your life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BOBBY NG, ALICE CREGAN, AND THE TROLL WHO LIVES UNDER THE BRIDGE

  Okay, so somewhere back there I know I mentioned the apartment Mean Mr. B rented for me, down at the sketchy post-apocalyptic end of Gano Street. Just a block or two over from my place, you segue back to those spiffy Victorians with their tidy front yards and lawn gnomes. But my building, it’s seen better days. Maybe back in the 1940s. The tendrils of gentrification haven’t reached the corner of Gano and East Transit, and the way the economy’s hea
ded, it probably never will. I don’t even know what he pays every month. Maybe he doesn’t pay anything. Maybe he owns the place, and twenty bodies are buried in the basement.

  That night—my first as a full-fledged lupine bloodsucking abomination in the eyes of all vampkind—I walked from Babe’s on the Sunnyside back to the apartment. There were the usual guys on the sidewalk outside my place playing dominoes on a folding card table. Sometimes, they played all night long, dusk till dawn. Which was fine by me, just so long as they kept the Mexpop blaring from the stereos of their parked cars down low enough I couldn’t feel the bass pulsing behind my eyes like a migraine. And as long as nobody got shot. Not that I much cared what people did with their firearms, but I hardly needed the police hanging about. Because, remember, this was after Bobby Ng and Swan Point, so, technically, I was already a bona-fide killer. Not sure whether or not it would have mattered to the cops that my victims had been dead a spell before I killed them, but I didn’t want to go there.

  That night, it was after my first human kill, so all the more reason to be cautious.

  As I was unlocking the door, one of the domino players noticed the dried blood on my T-shirt and jeans. Maybe he saw it in my hair, too. I suppose there was enough illumination from the streetlights, it was probably hard to miss.

  “Hey, chica. You been in a fight?” he shouted. I think that one’s name was Hector. Or Hugo. Or . . . okay, so I don’t remember. I do remember he had something Catholic tattooed on his left bicep, Mother Mary and a heart wrapped in thorns. Something generic, something cliché.

  “You could say that,” I replied.

  “Hope you gave good as you got.”

  “Better,” I replied, turning the key, hearing the tumblers roll loud as thunder. Since I’d awakened by the tracks, the whole damn world was loud—sound, sight, smell, touch—all of it LOUD.

  “Your blood or theirs,” he asked, and the others laughed. I almost told him to mind his own business.