Blood Oranges Read online

  “No freebies,” he said a third time.

  And that’s when it occurred to me, something that a troll might count as a gift, and I said, “Okay. How about Mr. B’s phone number? And I mean his top-secret, utterly confidential, private fucking cell phone number. Sure. That’s gotta be worth at least one of your riddles.”

  Aloysius made a sort of confused face. “Ain’t never used no telephone,” he said.

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Hell, next time I make it down this way, I’ll bring you a fucking phone, okay?”

  “Irregular,” he said and scratched his chin. “Prodigiously irregular, at that.”

  “Come on, dude. You can have a blast with prank calls, right? Better than a whole stack of nudie mags. I know you hate the cocksucker, and this would piss him off on beyond royally.”

  “Prank calls?”

  “Yeah, you know. Call him up and . . . well, you’d think of something, I’m sure.” Right about here, I was starting to believe this was actually going to work. Aloysius was getting that gleam in his eye, the one he had whenever his curiosity got the better of him.

  “Might be,” he said to himself. “Might be at that.”

  “And look, let’s say it doesn’t work out for you, fine. I’ll owe you a whole box of 3 Musketeers.”

  Still scratching at his chin, the bridge troll narrowed his eyes at me again. “King size,” he said. “Big on Chocolate, not on Fat.”

  “Right. Whole damn box.”

  “How many is that?” he asked and cocked an eyebrow.

  Hell if I knew, so I said the first thing popped into my mind. “Two dozen, twenty-four.”

  “Deal,” said Aloysius, so I told him Mr. B’s phone number. I didn’t have anything to write it on, but I figured Aloysius would remember. And if he didn’t, well, I could worry about that later, when I came back to the underpass with a stolen cell phone and twenty-four candy bars (and yes, there’s iron in chocolate, I know; don’t ask). I looked at the troll’s fingers, big around as sausages, and wondered how in hell he’d manage the buttons on a phone. Something else I could worry about later. Maybe I could snag a stylus somewhere. Or just a pencil. Maybe that would work for him. Anyway, Aloysius repeated the number back to me several times, and each time I told him, yep, that’s precisely what I said. The seventh or eighth time through, I asked him if he was stalling, trying to welch. He looked hurt, and I apologized.

  “Always so impatient, so hasty, always so hurry-me-up, Quinn girl. What’s your question?”

  I chewed my lip and drew circles in the dust with the toe of my tennis shoe. “Is there any way to control lycanthropy? I mean, to keep myself from changing?”

  “Ahhhhhh, now that ain’t no easy query. Riddle might take me a while, you know.”

  “Just spit it out, Aloysius. You ever stop to think I might not have all day to stand around here shooting the shit with you?”

  “Gets fair lonely here under my bridge,” he sighed, all but moping now. “Not even a proper bridge, at that. Now, if I had a proper bridge, ah. If I had a proper bridge—”

  “The riddle, please,” I interrupted, and Aloysius sighed again. (Oh, that’s the catch with trolls—and all fairies, for that matter—they’ll only answer a question with a riddle. They swear it’s the best they can do; I have my doubts.)

  “You know the rules,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know the goddamn rules. Just one riddle, that’s all I get, and I can’t ask for another for a fortnight, and blah blah fuckity blah. But, I also know you can’t cheat. No riddles that don’t have answers. No ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk’ nonsense.”

  “Ain’t nonsense,” he said. “Has an answer, it does, so can’t be nonsense. A raven is like a writing desk because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat. And it is never put with the wrong end in front.”

  I stopped drawing circles in the dust and seriously considered kicking him in the ankle again.

  “I gave you B’s number, now I want my riddle. Pretty please. With whipped cream and sprinkles and a cherry on top.”

  “Oh, and what’s moreover,” he continued, “a raven’s like a writing desk since they both come with quills.”

  “Aloysius . . .”

  “Likewise, Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both,” he said, and I was silent a moment, making sure he had nothing further whatsoever to add on the similarities of ravens and writing desks.

  Then I said, “That’s another thing. The riddle has to have a single answer, right? And it has to be the answer that I need, the answer to the question I ask. See? I know the rules. Now, ask me the goddamn riddle.”

  He made a harrumphing sound and took a magnificently exasperated breath, a magnificently deep exasperated breath, and then let it out all at once. Standing there, it was briefly like being in a wind tunnel with something that had been decayed a long time. In fact, it might have smelled worse than my apartment.

  “You ready?” he asked. “I only put forth the riddle once, and not twice, or thrice.”

  “I know that, and I’m ready.”

  “Fine,” he said, and I realized I was going to have to memorize this, because, as I mentioned already, I didn’t have anything to write on.

  “A child of woman newly forged,

  The pump what drives the rosies.

  Round about, round about,

  So Bloody Breast flies home again.

  Soldiers come in single file,

  Aphrodite’s child tills loam.”

  When he was done, I don’t think I stared. I think I gawked in utter indignation.

  “What the hell sort of riddle is that? It doesn’t even rhyme!”

  “Rules don’t say no-how that my riddles have to rhyme, now do they, Quinn lass?”

  “No . . . but . . .” And then I reminded myself I needed to remember every single word. So, I stopped arguing with Aloysius and began repeating the six lines back to myself again and again and again. I’ve always been pretty good with rote memorization. In third grade, I was the first kid in my class who could recite the multiplication tables. For all the good it’s ever done me.

  “Okay . . . wait . . . so ‘A child of woman freshly forged,’ that’s easy. A baby. It’s a baby, isn’t it?”

  “Perchance.”

  “Oh, no. None of that perchance rubbish. You have to tell me if I’m right,” I reminded the troll.

  “I prefer suckling, is all,” he said more than a little defensively.

  “I’m sure you do. Turning on a spit, with an apple in its mouth.”

  Aloysius just grinned and gazed up at the roadway far overhead.

  “So, the answer to the first line is ‘an infant.’ And the second line, a pump that drives roses.”

  “I said rosies.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Perchance.”

  I raised my voice and repeated the second line, “A pump that drives the roses. What’s that supposed to be?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “I was asking myself, not you.”

  “Gotta go now, Quinn girl. Got to see a man about a horse. Gotta get a wiggle on.”

  I rubbed at my head, which was starting to ache, and I wondered if that was something to do with being a vampire, or with being a werewolf, or both, or if it was Aloysius’ fault.

  “You just claimed you were lonely.”

  “Was then, that was. Now I gotta go.”

  “Dude, was then was like thirty seconds ago.”

  “3 Musketeers,” he said, almost growling. “That’s what you promised, and that’s what I get, elsewise . . .”

  Those special shadows were beginning to slink back from wherever they hid when I couldn’t see them. They began to creep over Aloysius’ shoulders like a cloak.

  “Jesus, I thought we were friends, and here you are threatening me.”

  “Not a threat,” he said, his voice already beginning to sound distant. “Loves you dear as peaches, does I. Even now. But our rules are rules, and Good L
ady Underhill, queen of us all, she don’t suffer them what breaks ’em.”

  “Just give me five more minutes,” I pleaded.

  “Creamy nougat,” he said. “Delicious milk chocolate. Five grams of saturated fat.”

  “I know what a 3 Musketeers bar is, you idiot!” I shouted at the vanishing troll.

  And then he was gone. He was gone, and I was left there alone beneath the I-195 overpass, alone in my bloodstained jeans and T-shirt, with nothing much to my name but my unanswered questions, a filthy apartment, and the riddle. I sat down in a patch of ragweed, and began working at the five lines I’d not yet solved. I decided I might as well sit there until dark. I certainly had no desire to return to my apartment, and nowhere else to be.

  * * *

  Now, there are two versions of what happened that night in Swan Point Cemetery, the night I killed the vampire named Alice Cregan. There’s the way I still thought it had come about and gone down, and then there’s the second version, which is the truth. However, sitting there beneath the overpass, I didn’t yet know the truth. I only knew that first version, what Mean Mr. B had a stake in me believing was the truth. So, for now, that’s the version that I’m going to relate here. Just seems more honest that way. I’ll get around to the facts a little later on. They can wait.

  Swan Point Cemetery is the most stately and well-manicured boneyard in the city. Pretty much anyone who has any cause to think about Rhode Island cemeteries knows this. There are graves there dating back to 1732, I think (but don’t quote me on that). Lots of famous folks got themselves buried out there: Revolutionary War soldiers, Civil War generals, congressmen, ambassadors, poets, political bosses, governors, painters, prominent industrialists, the man who invented the Corliss steam engine, and even the author H. P. Lovecraft. Some idiots actually tried to dig Lovecraft back up on October 13th, 1997. They only made it a few inches before giving up. Exhuming a corpse isn’t anywhere as easy as people tend to think. Not unless you have a backhoe. But, for a time, it did lead to security getting very paranoid and viciously obnoxious about certain sorts of visitors showing up to pay their respects to the Old Gent, which led to ugly altercations with fans, a local writer, and even filmmakers. Fortunately, the whole brouhaha eventually quieted down. I think some of the pushier guards were sacked. You ask me, it was a case of security getting their panties in a twist over a whole lot of nothing. Lovecraft isn’t even buried beneath his headstone, but, I think, below the adjacent Phillips family obelisk. Anyway . . .

  Back in the day, Lily and me, along with a constantly revolving cast of other sleepwalkers and homeless ne’er-do-wells would show up at the cemetery after hours, scale the stone walls, and shoot up among the narrow houses. It was a peaceful place, as long as we avoided the zealous security guards, which, somehow, we always managed to do. Frankly, we worried a lot more about the quality of the smack, getting a ten-cent pistol, for instance, which would have been all she wrote. Hell, back then, I thought there was no safer place to be than a graveyard. Bill Burroughs once said, “Dead people are less frightening than live ones,” and that was pretty much our reasoning. As for the zealous, lurking guards with their pickup trucks and spotlights and sidearms, that just added an edginess, though not one I think any of us took very seriously. Heroin addicts don’t tend to make a whole lot of noise once they’ve fixed.

  I’d lie there in the grass with Lily, spread out among the slate and marble headstones. Sometimes, we’d neck or sloppily, halfheartedly play at heavy petting. Other times, we’d just stare up through the tree limbs, at the light-polluted sky, wishing we could see the stars. We rode the dragon hard, and it rode us right back, and Swan Point was pretty close to Heaven in those not-so-long-lost days. Sometimes, two years and change seems like forever to me; other times, it’s not much more than yesterday.

  Now and then, one of us would pretend to spot a falling star or Venus or whatever. One night, Lily swore she saw a flying saucer, but we both knew it was only an airplane heading into T. F. Green International down in Warwick (by the way, that’s War-ick, not War-wick, just like Greenwich is Gren-itch, not Green-witch, and so forth, unless you want to sound like a tourist. Maybe you do. None of my business, either way).

  I’ve strayed a long way from what went down that night Alice Cregan bit the dust, chasing all these bittersweet reminiscences. It’s hard not to linger on those happier days. And they were happier days, whatever the clean and sober might think, those self-righteous assholes who’ve never been out on the street, who’ve never fixed, and who think anyone who has is surely bound for that oft-rumored Lake of Fire and Brimstone. Well, fuck them. Ignorance ain’t bliss, theirs or anyone else’s; it’s nothing but ignorance, plain and simple, and it rarely leads to anything good.

  But I’ll set those memories aside. Worrying at them doesn’t do me any good, change public opinion, nor does it get this story told.

  It was a night in February. There’d been a heavy snowfall a couple of days before, nine or ten inches, and Swan Point is always beautiful in the snow. The moon was a few nights before full, and everything was bright and glorious. I’d scored my Baggie from Mr. B, and decided to head out to the cemetery, despite the cold, just for old times’ sake, right? That night in February—I remember it was a Sunday night, not long after sunset, so maybe sometime around six or six thirty. I stuck to familiar paths, and finally huddled in the lee of a mausoleum. I had my army-surplus messenger bag I’d taken to carrying, and my kit was tucked safe inside. I wrestled with the bag’s buckles and snaps, dug about inside, and finally opened up the leather case that held all the precious accoutrements of my addiction. I cinched the rubber tubing around my left bicep, and started cooking with my spoon and Zippo lighter (the latter was a gift from B). I was just about to do the deed—I mean, the needle was loaded up and maybe a millimeter from piercing a bulging vein—when I heard someone talking, talking loudly and not very far away from the place I was crouched. First thought, fucking security, and I was getting ready to pack up and scoot. But then, a second or two later, I recognized that voice.

  Bobby fucking Ng.

  I cursed and slumped back against the wall of the crypt, then slipped the full needle into my kit again. I sat still and listened. Near as I could tell, he was tromping around helter-skelter, making about as much noise as you might expect from a rampaging bull moose. The snow did nothing whatsoever to stifle the commotion. I couldn’t begin to guess what the hell he was up to out there, and, frankly, I didn’t care. I was just pissed at having been interrupted in that split second before the junk flooded my veins and let me forget for a few hours everything I wanted or needed to forget. Right about then is when he started hollering at the top of his lungs.

  “I know you’re here, foul daughter of Lilith! Show yourself, you unholy strigoi fiend! Rise from the putridity and foul matter of your undead sleep and face your final earthly judgment!”

  Now, this probably isn’t exactly what he said, but you get the gist. It was pure and classic Bobby Ng, and I giggled quietly to myself and figured I’d at least have a funny story to relate to Mr. B and Aloysius and whoever else wanted to hear it. Bobby continued shouting.

  “Wamphyri! You hear me? I know you hear me! I also know you’ve already feasted on the sanguine juices of some innocent soul this very night! And now I mean to put an end to your depredations, once and for all!”

  Right about here, I was in danger of giggling so loudly he’d hear me. He actually fucking said “sanguine juices,” with dog as my witness. Oh, and later on I’d find out he’d snagged “wamphyri” from a series of books by some hack of an English writer whose name I can’t presently recall. Probably, that’s for the best.

  “Show yourself, Alice Cregan!” he screamed, and by now, I’m just waiting for the guards to show up and haul him away. No such luck. Maybe it was too damn cold that night for them to give a shit about some loon calling out a vamp in their cemetery. Maybe they all had something better to do. Whatever. Bobby Ng continued to
stomp about, making such a ruckus I was sure he had to be doing it on purpose. Clearly, stealth was the last thing on his mind.

  “Show yourself, you coward of Hell! Suffer the wrath of Bobby Ng, Demon Slayer!”

  Okay, so this is when I cracked up, and clearly he heard me, because he stopped stomping about. All at once, the cemetery was quiet, except for my laughter, and I clamped my hand over my mouth. The last thing I wanted was a face-to-face with Infamous Ng.

  And right then, that’s when I heard another sound. It was a sound I’d never heard before, but straightaway I knew what it was, and I reached for my bag. My kit wasn’t the only thing in there. There was the self-cocking, pistol-grip mini-crossbow Mr. B had given me. Lightweight aluminum frame, a 50-pound draw, and it was loaded with silver-tipped bolts carved from an ash tree, supposedly blessed by some priest or another. B had assured me there wasn’t a vamp or loup in all the world those bolts wouldn’t bring down. I pulled it from the bag and stood, my cheek pressed to the freezing stone of the mausoleum, my ears trained on that awful sound, familiar as waves against the shore or wind in the trees . . . or the opening guitar riff of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It was a leathery sort of sound, the flutter of enormous wings. Bobby Ng had come looking for a nasty, and this time he’d found one.

  There was a woman’s voice then, colder than the snow and ice, colder than any February’s ever been. Sharp as a goddamn machete.

  “You woke me,” she said, that keen and icy voice choked with a mixture of disbelief and pique. I think she was near to sputtering. “I was sleeping, and you dare to come here and wake me?”

  “I dare more than that, succubus,” Bobby said, though he didn’t sound so much a quarter full of himself as he had only a few moments before. “I dare to send you back to the pits of Hell!”

  The vampire started laughing at him then, just like I’d been laughing at him. And I knew how this was going to turn out. Any second now, Bobby Ng would be dead as a doorknob, and sure, I hated the ridiculous little weasel. But, I remember standing there thinking how our lives would be a lot less interesting without the continuing antics of Bobby Ng. Still, that was hardly cause to do what I did next. I stepped out from behind the cover of the mausoleum.