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[IC] ♡♢ 𝚅𝙰𝙼𝙿𝙸𝚁𝙴: 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙼𝙰𝚂𝚀𝚄𝙴𝚁𝙰𝙳𝙴 — 𝕯𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝕸𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖞 ♤♧
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STORY ONE: "Four of a Kind"
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STORY ONE: "Four of a Kind"
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A breeze the temperature of blushing skin blustered down South 1st Street, churning up tufts of the dust stuck to the sidewalk, stuck to the stucco, stuck to cowboy boot and to pantleg and to everything; the dust which powdered all that it touched that same anemic hue of beige. Across the asphalt and the concrete, and tapping the cold, dark glass of unlit windows, grains of sand skittered the way beetles do. Chasing the lukewarm whistle as it slithered down the brutalist granite colonnades. Through ungreased chainlink.
To the southwest, amidst the dim, orange-gray glow of a skyline obscured, only the blinking of Strat Tower insinuated revelry and motion somewhere beyond the derelict avenue and its many stillnesses. Here the county clerk offices had shuttered for the evening; multi-use office complexes had already ejected the last burners of the midnight oil; city hall sat dingy and lifeless like the moulted shell of some bygone cicada, clutching the dirt in travesty of its recent clamor. A parking garage, recently patronized by tourist, conference attendee, and hotel-goer—already abandoned for the evening on this, a night of revelry—which in this particular town is every night. It is at one such parking garage where our story begins. The kind of place where the silence skulks every wall, and the shadows roost in every corner. The kind of place where one's penance does not wait until morning with the politeness of a hangover.
A skin-warm breeze blustered down South 1st Street, same as every summer night under moon and neon and a single, ember-red star (the one our most superstitious have dubbed Wormwood). And on this particular night, at this particular hour, there were exactly three around to hear its song.
The first: kicked up against one of the parking garage's outer walls. Waifish and blond, and covering his eyes with the brim of a baseball cap, he busied his hands flipping a coin; smoking a cigarette; checking the price bars on the Robinhood app or some-such idleness. He didn't budge for groups of drunk, cackling tourists stumbling back to their hotel. Not for the methhead (too unpredictable, and what if his blood was laced?). Not the late-night dog walker, whose pooch could smell the predator on him, whose yappy little animal was yowling and bottoming out its leash in terror from well across the street. He was looking for a specific and nonnegotiable set of traits: working-class. Poor. "Ethnic." The kind of person who two or three fat women would wail for on the evening news before the whole city promptly forgot his name, forgot his face, forgot the look of his mother's house bathed in the flashing blue and red behind the newscaster. And alone. Always and most importantly alone. At roughly 11:12 that person rolled past on an electric scooter, ears buried in headphones, music turned up too loud, dreadlocks and baggy cargo pants flapping on the wind as he picked up speed on the down-slope. The figure in the baseball cap pocketed his phone (or his coin, or snubbed his cigarette butt); he stepped out from between the decorative philodendrons and began to follow. His slender hand drifted toward his handwarmer pocket, settling on the .32. The nerves tightened him up in the shoulders; the nerves and the anticipation, raw like an avulsion, feral like rattlesnake venom.
The third figure waited around the bottom corner, watching through the slats until the timing was just so. Bursting from behind it, she made a startlingly convincing display of flailing to a halt, of skidding just too far to avoid contact. The victim, launched from his scooter, ran down the street a pace or two before the rest of him overtook his legs, and he, too, scraped to a stop.
The two of them spent a moment writhing on the ground—one sincere, the other feigning—then hobbling to their feet. Ooh, winced the man as the pain throbbed through the side of his knee, through his abraded left hand, ooh—shit—shit—but when he'd flexed and rotated every bone that stung, and he was sure he hadn't broke something, he dragged himself off the street, toward the white bitch. The fuck you was running from? he snarled through his grimace, the fuck you ain't look where you going?—damn! But she was moving three fingers from a tooth up to her eye back to her tooth, and rolling her tongue around in her mouth, in what must have been a thorough inspection of a new crack, chip, or gap. Shit, the man sighed, still limping her way, you a'ight, at least? He made eye contact with the blond boy in the cap and the vest, but paid him no mind; mistook the terror in his face for a Good Samaritan's concern. Didn't realize his mistake until he'd already turned his back; until the hammer clicked back and the icy barrel was pressed to his nape.
"It just don't make a damn lick of sense."
Austin McGlinn, badge number 3196, threw an irritated glance over his shoulder; back toward his partner, crouched by the corpse. "What's that?"
"Some of these wounds look......different."
"Alright? Different how?" But McGlinn was already losing interest mere moments after asking. He peered back up the concrete ramp, pressed in by concrete walls, where another figure had set up shop: that bug-eyed fellow with the wrists like stickbugs and the mousy brown hair. The sleeves rolled up on his black turtleneck, each hand scratching, pecking, gouging at the opposite arm like the greedy beaks of so many vultures, stripping the bones of the dead. He looked meek enough, the stranger, all gaunt and girlish, but something about him—his soft, inquisitive gawking—the way his watery, fog-gray eyes seemed to boast that they knew something McGlinn didn't—the way the stranger's fingernails, varnished black, shredded his own skin, translucent, ashy-pale tatters of it drifting to his feet—damn unnerving is what he was. All ninety-something pounds of him.
Behind him a reply had started waterfalling from his partner's tireless gob. "I dunno, they just do. Look, look, here's where he hit the pavement, right?—the blood outside, the rips in his pants, the pebbles in his knee. But up here, by the neck—first of all, how would he even hit himself in the crook of the neck like this?" The cop rolled his shoulder, rolled his head to and fro, trying to picture the angle of impact, the feat of contortionism it took for the victim to the the ground in just that a way. "And the way it's bruised, but not bleeding. And don't these look too clean to you to be real abrasions?"
"So he hit the corner of the sidewalk on his way down," McGlinn dismissed.
"Huh. You think?"
"Hey. Hey!" He waved his flashlight beam in those aggravatingly curious eyes, flashing down at him with a catlike wariness. "This is an active crime scene. Unless you're here to take down a statement, get lost."
The stranger quirked his head; said something much too gently to be discerned amidst the chatter of their shoulder mics, the idling of their engines up on street-level.
"What?"
"Leave him alone, McGlinn. He's allowed to be there."
"And you save it for the M.E. Hey, you. What'd you say?"
The stranger moved to cup his tattered hands over his mouth, but this suddenly seeming blasphemous—filthy, somehow—they recoiled. Curled, repulsed, like a slug writhing in a bowl of salt. He fidgeted as he decided, backpedaled, decided again what to do with them; eventually, contented to step closer—right up against the threshold of the tape, in fact—cover his ears, and call back, "If you didn't want people standing up there, why draw the tape down here?"
McGlinn's teeth sounded like gravel rolling around inside a cement mixer. Before his partner or anyone else on the force could stop him he'd muttered something to himself, stampeded under the yellow tape, and stormed his way under the fluttering yellow-black barrier. "Alright, pal, how do you want it?" he said. "Obstruction of justice? Interference with an officer? Trespassing, tampering? Pick a flavor, smartass."
"I didn't—I don't—" quivered the onlooker's voice.
" 'I didn't, I don't,' " the cop mocked. "Well, guess what? 'You didn't' listen, so now 'you don't' get to leave. How's that sound?" And before the onlooker could protest in his mewling, whimpering way, already the first cuff had clicked around his wrist. Delicate as a baby bird, and sucking air between his teeth in helpless, wincing protest, he seemed about ready to snap in half when McGlinn wrenched both arms behind his back, and finished the deed, and threw the creature into the back of the cruiser.
"It won't stick, you know," said his partner.
"It doesn't have to stick. Asshole just has to not piss me the hell off for the rest of the night."
"Whatever."
With a defeated sigh the other cop stood up, dusted his knees. Until the medical examiner showed up ain't no one was snipping the clothes or frisking the pockets so it was the most he could do: sigh; and stare, and conjecture. He was about to say so what now?—when the distant roar of a 426 Hemi captured his attention; a roar which grew only louder the more corners it rounded, until it couldn't have been but a little ways up the street. Soon enough a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T—bloody-piss-orange, with black racing stripes—came lurching to a halt just beside the cruiser, and threw on its hazards. The driver flipped off the radio, though not before a few trashy lyrics had already belted down the corridor (and echoed off the high-rises, and woken half the town en route to the crime scene), barely coherent amidst the buzzsaw distortion.
"Aw, shit," McGlinn growled.
"Speaking of assholes..." the other cop agreed.
To the southwest, amidst the dim, orange-gray glow of a skyline obscured, only the blinking of Strat Tower insinuated revelry and motion somewhere beyond the derelict avenue and its many stillnesses. Here the county clerk offices had shuttered for the evening; multi-use office complexes had already ejected the last burners of the midnight oil; city hall sat dingy and lifeless like the moulted shell of some bygone cicada, clutching the dirt in travesty of its recent clamor. A parking garage, recently patronized by tourist, conference attendee, and hotel-goer—already abandoned for the evening on this, a night of revelry—which in this particular town is every night. It is at one such parking garage where our story begins. The kind of place where the silence skulks every wall, and the shadows roost in every corner. The kind of place where one's penance does not wait until morning with the politeness of a hangover.
A skin-warm breeze blustered down South 1st Street, same as every summer night under moon and neon and a single, ember-red star (the one our most superstitious have dubbed Wormwood). And on this particular night, at this particular hour, there were exactly three around to hear its song.
The first: kicked up against one of the parking garage's outer walls. Waifish and blond, and covering his eyes with the brim of a baseball cap, he busied his hands flipping a coin; smoking a cigarette; checking the price bars on the Robinhood app or some-such idleness. He didn't budge for groups of drunk, cackling tourists stumbling back to their hotel. Not for the methhead (too unpredictable, and what if his blood was laced?). Not the late-night dog walker, whose pooch could smell the predator on him, whose yappy little animal was yowling and bottoming out its leash in terror from well across the street. He was looking for a specific and nonnegotiable set of traits: working-class. Poor. "Ethnic." The kind of person who two or three fat women would wail for on the evening news before the whole city promptly forgot his name, forgot his face, forgot the look of his mother's house bathed in the flashing blue and red behind the newscaster. And alone. Always and most importantly alone. At roughly 11:12 that person rolled past on an electric scooter, ears buried in headphones, music turned up too loud, dreadlocks and baggy cargo pants flapping on the wind as he picked up speed on the down-slope. The figure in the baseball cap pocketed his phone (or his coin, or snubbed his cigarette butt); he stepped out from between the decorative philodendrons and began to follow. His slender hand drifted toward his handwarmer pocket, settling on the .32. The nerves tightened him up in the shoulders; the nerves and the anticipation, raw like an avulsion, feral like rattlesnake venom.
The third figure waited around the bottom corner, watching through the slats until the timing was just so. Bursting from behind it, she made a startlingly convincing display of flailing to a halt, of skidding just too far to avoid contact. The victim, launched from his scooter, ran down the street a pace or two before the rest of him overtook his legs, and he, too, scraped to a stop.
The two of them spent a moment writhing on the ground—one sincere, the other feigning—then hobbling to their feet. Ooh, winced the man as the pain throbbed through the side of his knee, through his abraded left hand, ooh—shit—shit—but when he'd flexed and rotated every bone that stung, and he was sure he hadn't broke something, he dragged himself off the street, toward the white bitch. The fuck you was running from? he snarled through his grimace, the fuck you ain't look where you going?—damn! But she was moving three fingers from a tooth up to her eye back to her tooth, and rolling her tongue around in her mouth, in what must have been a thorough inspection of a new crack, chip, or gap. Shit, the man sighed, still limping her way, you a'ight, at least? He made eye contact with the blond boy in the cap and the vest, but paid him no mind; mistook the terror in his face for a Good Samaritan's concern. Didn't realize his mistake until he'd already turned his back; until the hammer clicked back and the icy barrel was pressed to his nape.
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"It just don't make a damn lick of sense."
Austin McGlinn, badge number 3196, threw an irritated glance over his shoulder; back toward his partner, crouched by the corpse. "What's that?"
"Some of these wounds look......different."
"Alright? Different how?" But McGlinn was already losing interest mere moments after asking. He peered back up the concrete ramp, pressed in by concrete walls, where another figure had set up shop: that bug-eyed fellow with the wrists like stickbugs and the mousy brown hair. The sleeves rolled up on his black turtleneck, each hand scratching, pecking, gouging at the opposite arm like the greedy beaks of so many vultures, stripping the bones of the dead. He looked meek enough, the stranger, all gaunt and girlish, but something about him—his soft, inquisitive gawking—the way his watery, fog-gray eyes seemed to boast that they knew something McGlinn didn't—the way the stranger's fingernails, varnished black, shredded his own skin, translucent, ashy-pale tatters of it drifting to his feet—damn unnerving is what he was. All ninety-something pounds of him.
Behind him a reply had started waterfalling from his partner's tireless gob. "I dunno, they just do. Look, look, here's where he hit the pavement, right?—the blood outside, the rips in his pants, the pebbles in his knee. But up here, by the neck—first of all, how would he even hit himself in the crook of the neck like this?" The cop rolled his shoulder, rolled his head to and fro, trying to picture the angle of impact, the feat of contortionism it took for the victim to the the ground in just that a way. "And the way it's bruised, but not bleeding. And don't these look too clean to you to be real abrasions?"
"So he hit the corner of the sidewalk on his way down," McGlinn dismissed.
"Huh. You think?"
"Hey. Hey!" He waved his flashlight beam in those aggravatingly curious eyes, flashing down at him with a catlike wariness. "This is an active crime scene. Unless you're here to take down a statement, get lost."
The stranger quirked his head; said something much too gently to be discerned amidst the chatter of their shoulder mics, the idling of their engines up on street-level.
"What?"
"Leave him alone, McGlinn. He's allowed to be there."
"And you save it for the M.E. Hey, you. What'd you say?"
The stranger moved to cup his tattered hands over his mouth, but this suddenly seeming blasphemous—filthy, somehow—they recoiled. Curled, repulsed, like a slug writhing in a bowl of salt. He fidgeted as he decided, backpedaled, decided again what to do with them; eventually, contented to step closer—right up against the threshold of the tape, in fact—cover his ears, and call back, "If you didn't want people standing up there, why draw the tape down here?"
McGlinn's teeth sounded like gravel rolling around inside a cement mixer. Before his partner or anyone else on the force could stop him he'd muttered something to himself, stampeded under the yellow tape, and stormed his way under the fluttering yellow-black barrier. "Alright, pal, how do you want it?" he said. "Obstruction of justice? Interference with an officer? Trespassing, tampering? Pick a flavor, smartass."
"I didn't—I don't—" quivered the onlooker's voice.
" 'I didn't, I don't,' " the cop mocked. "Well, guess what? 'You didn't' listen, so now 'you don't' get to leave. How's that sound?" And before the onlooker could protest in his mewling, whimpering way, already the first cuff had clicked around his wrist. Delicate as a baby bird, and sucking air between his teeth in helpless, wincing protest, he seemed about ready to snap in half when McGlinn wrenched both arms behind his back, and finished the deed, and threw the creature into the back of the cruiser.
"It won't stick, you know," said his partner.
"It doesn't have to stick. Asshole just has to not piss me the hell off for the rest of the night."
"Whatever."
With a defeated sigh the other cop stood up, dusted his knees. Until the medical examiner showed up ain't no one was snipping the clothes or frisking the pockets so it was the most he could do: sigh; and stare, and conjecture. He was about to say so what now?—when the distant roar of a 426 Hemi captured his attention; a roar which grew only louder the more corners it rounded, until it couldn't have been but a little ways up the street. Soon enough a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T—bloody-piss-orange, with black racing stripes—came lurching to a halt just beside the cruiser, and threw on its hazards. The driver flipped off the radio, though not before a few trashy lyrics had already belted down the corridor (and echoed off the high-rises, and woken half the town en route to the crime scene), barely coherent amidst the buzzsaw distortion.
"Aw, shit," McGlinn growled.
"Speaking of assholes..." the other cop agreed.
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Austin McGlinn, badge number 3196, never could decide for long which of the two skiptracers he detested more.
Some days it was Conrad Olivier Beauclerc, a nose-picking, heel-wiping, titty-ogling cretin if ever he'd met one: five feet and eight inches of greasy scalp, hairy belly, and unwashed asshole. The kind of man who was in his line of work to kick doors and break thumbs, not to uphold any semblance of "law and order" in this town. The kind of man whose fistfight-swollen fingers grubbed everything they touched. And the body, the CCTV tapes, the witnesses—like a toddler sticking G.I. Joes in his mouth, Connie intended to grub them all.
As for all the other days, there was always his partner—García—a pile of shit stacked only a few inches shorter than Beauclerc. She ducked her way out of the pony car's passenger-side door and strode onto the scene with her usual aloofness, that infuriating kind of practiced indifference which said she thought herself the most mysterious, most dangerous person on the block, if not the whole of Vegas. That and the trench coat; the Clint Eastwood "intense, silent stare" thing she was always putting on; the scattergun "concealed" on her left leg (but who knew?—for how badly their pieces printed onto their coats, they must have wanted people to see them). And the sunglasses-at-night routine the two never quite let down...
Pricks.
García, circling around the rear bumper of the squad car, noticed its passenger, still curled up inside the cage, and seeming no more regretful than when McGlinn had tossed him in there just a few minutes past. García nudged Connie by the elbow, directed his attention over to the window. The loiterer smiled sheepishly and waved with both hands, shackled as they were, giving them a cheeky rattle; the bounty hunters, looking bemused, waved back. It just about figured, didn't it?—the three freaks all knew each other from somewhere. Crawled out of the same sewer, maybe.
Hands stashed in roomy outerwear pockets, collars popped, the two sidled past the boom gates, plodded down the access ramp. If they didn't notice McGlinn's soured expression, then they most assuredly noticed his stepping forward-and-aside to obstruct them at the yellow tape. Connie's smile, as false as his one gold tooth, glittered the color of twenty-year-old newspaper, spit-slick and tobacco-yellowed. "Good to see you, too, Oz," he said.
"Double-parked within thirty feet of a crosswalk and in front of a public driveway. And that shitty music is a noise complaint waiting to happen if ever I’ve heard one."
"Aw, gee, mister. Please, please don't tell my ma. She'll kill me for sure."
"And you know what, Beauclerc?—if I'm not in the mood for your jokes, then I'm sure as shit not in the damn mood for another tampering report."
"You're right. We should just skip the paperwork."
For every step Connie took to the right, McGlinn took one to the left; inverse, ditto.
"The fuck you doing here, anyway?"
The bounty hunter tilted to one side; looked past the crook of the cop's shoulder—at the body, barely cooled in the hour or two since its evisceration; straightened out, looked him dead in the eye again. "Your job, by the looks of it. Excuse us."
But every pace he took McGlinn countered. Every nudge he attempted, McGlinn shoved back. Connie's every slip, step, and sidle—foiled.
His head tilted; his lips popped open. "Can't help but notice you're still in our way."
"You can finger all the corpses you want, after the examiner's through with this one."
"I don't like sloppy seconds."
"I mean it. Maybe if it was your ass who had to explain to the chief why you ruined another crime scene, maybe if you had to fill out the reports, deal with the claims adjusters for hours—hours!—but no. No, you think you're riding out of here high and pretty like always, don't you?"
"...Yeah?"
"No. Fuck you. Not this time. This time you—"
Julian Price smiled when he peered out the squad car's passenger-side window; when he peered down at the officers on the crime scene, and observed with no small amusement that they had busied themselves bickering with the two interlopers. But he could not savor the diversion for long; not when seconds mattered.
First was the matter of his hands. Easy enough. Threading them between two bars of the cage, Julian threw himself to one side, hurled all his weight and all his leverage against the thinnest, weakest bones, their snaps and pops delighting him, off-key yet played in time, like a music of the body, a chord of the innards. That done, with only the faintest wince he squeezed the flopping, jellylike appendages; wriggled them, in their crushed, compact state, from between the ratchets of the handcuffs. With a quick rouse—a stirring, silent yet unignorable—he made short work of mending them anew, for he soon had need of them to set to work on the partition. For that, he put his purplish wrist to his mouth, and slit it open with a tooth. As the precious ichor dribbled from the wound, drop by drop, little polished rubies, he smeared them into the laminated metal, which began to steam, and smoke, and hiss.
One rivet at a time, one bar, one weld seam, the Malkavian had spewed from his noxious vein enough corrosive blood to free a section of the partition, whereupon he set it gently (almost affectionately) aside. Then, neck twisting, shoulders contorting, ribcage sprawling, he began to twist and slither himself through the squeeze of the resulting gap: over the center console and—plop—right into the driver's seat.
"—Is that clear enough for you? Let me know, knucklefuck. Just let me know that I’ve finally, finally gotten it through your thick, knucklefuck skull. You in there, Beauclerc? It finally break through to you that you’re not getting past the wire, or what?"
Though his hands sat glued to his hips, Connie's eyes rolled, they wandered; his head lolled side-aside as his attentions meandered the ceiling. Only his little chuckles and grins let McGlinn know that he was trying damn hard not to let this diatribe—these allegations—itch at him; only emboldening the cop, of course, to keep on digging. That is until something shifted. Something in the air. Seething, all the sudden, with intent. It began with the bounty hunter's weight shifting from one foot to the other; his hip cocking; one of his swollen, ruddy hands drifting toward the small of his back, where McGlinn knew him to keep his five-inch Bowie. But by the time that cauliflower-knuckled hand had found its purchase around the coffin handle, the cop had already muttered, "Nice try, smartass," and grabbed Beauclerc by the shoulder, and pressed the muzzle of his Glock 19 deep against the man's belly and pressed the man flush against the muzzle.
"Whoa!" McGlinn's partner guffawed, reaching for his own station-issued weapon, but Teresa García only shot him a glare, and clicked her tongue into a tut, and tapped her coat where it draped over her left leg.
For several long moments there was only the ambience of traffic U-turning at the blockade up on street level; of a desert wind billowing stale and tepid down the avenue; of fluorescent bulbs buzzing and wheezing their last. Let's not do anything stupid, McGlinn was beginning to say, c'mon Connie this ain't funny anymore, when the sound of steel dragged from leather rasped down his spine. Mottled and gray was the blade, the bone scales smooth and worn; but god how the whetted edge glittered like moonlight trapped in water.
McGlinn didn't know what stayed his finger; what kept it one click, just one sorry click, away from sending the hammer slamming down onto the firing pin into the primer into the powder straight into Beauclerc's guts all hot and tunneling. Beauclerc's friends-in-high-places—his inroads with the chief, the commission board, hell, maybe even the mayor himself, that assured he'd always walk out of shitstorms like this one with nary a scratch? That he had a gun to his stomach and he didn't care? Or the stories—the ones told in creepy whispers back at the precinct—the ones you had to know where to press your ear what to hear them—that he leapt from three-story windows and kept on rolling—like a rhino—that he'd take four, five slugs in a Code 36 and not go down?
The knife's point, curved like a toenail clipping and narrow as a fishbone, teased its way past McGlinn's breastbone, past his throat, past his ear. Connie wavered it menacingly. But after a second which felt like a year, the only thing he plunged the blade through was the yellow tape, which fluttered noiselessly to the grimy concrete floor.
As the two bounty hunters walked past the petrified McGlinn, as the knife's edge shhfk!—back into its scabbard, he released a breath which singed the insides of his lungs. He looked down at his hand, the one clasped white around the molded polymer grips of the Glock—shaking, he realized—and pawed the handgun clumsily back into its holster.
Some days it was Conrad Olivier Beauclerc, a nose-picking, heel-wiping, titty-ogling cretin if ever he'd met one: five feet and eight inches of greasy scalp, hairy belly, and unwashed asshole. The kind of man who was in his line of work to kick doors and break thumbs, not to uphold any semblance of "law and order" in this town. The kind of man whose fistfight-swollen fingers grubbed everything they touched. And the body, the CCTV tapes, the witnesses—like a toddler sticking G.I. Joes in his mouth, Connie intended to grub them all.
As for all the other days, there was always his partner—García—a pile of shit stacked only a few inches shorter than Beauclerc. She ducked her way out of the pony car's passenger-side door and strode onto the scene with her usual aloofness, that infuriating kind of practiced indifference which said she thought herself the most mysterious, most dangerous person on the block, if not the whole of Vegas. That and the trench coat; the Clint Eastwood "intense, silent stare" thing she was always putting on; the scattergun "concealed" on her left leg (but who knew?—for how badly their pieces printed onto their coats, they must have wanted people to see them). And the sunglasses-at-night routine the two never quite let down...
Pricks.
García, circling around the rear bumper of the squad car, noticed its passenger, still curled up inside the cage, and seeming no more regretful than when McGlinn had tossed him in there just a few minutes past. García nudged Connie by the elbow, directed his attention over to the window. The loiterer smiled sheepishly and waved with both hands, shackled as they were, giving them a cheeky rattle; the bounty hunters, looking bemused, waved back. It just about figured, didn't it?—the three freaks all knew each other from somewhere. Crawled out of the same sewer, maybe.
Hands stashed in roomy outerwear pockets, collars popped, the two sidled past the boom gates, plodded down the access ramp. If they didn't notice McGlinn's soured expression, then they most assuredly noticed his stepping forward-and-aside to obstruct them at the yellow tape. Connie's smile, as false as his one gold tooth, glittered the color of twenty-year-old newspaper, spit-slick and tobacco-yellowed. "Good to see you, too, Oz," he said.
"Double-parked within thirty feet of a crosswalk and in front of a public driveway. And that shitty music is a noise complaint waiting to happen if ever I’ve heard one."
"Aw, gee, mister. Please, please don't tell my ma. She'll kill me for sure."
"And you know what, Beauclerc?—if I'm not in the mood for your jokes, then I'm sure as shit not in the damn mood for another tampering report."
"You're right. We should just skip the paperwork."
For every step Connie took to the right, McGlinn took one to the left; inverse, ditto.
"The fuck you doing here, anyway?"
The bounty hunter tilted to one side; looked past the crook of the cop's shoulder—at the body, barely cooled in the hour or two since its evisceration; straightened out, looked him dead in the eye again. "Your job, by the looks of it. Excuse us."
But every pace he took McGlinn countered. Every nudge he attempted, McGlinn shoved back. Connie's every slip, step, and sidle—foiled.
His head tilted; his lips popped open. "Can't help but notice you're still in our way."
"You can finger all the corpses you want, after the examiner's through with this one."
"I don't like sloppy seconds."
"I mean it. Maybe if it was your ass who had to explain to the chief why you ruined another crime scene, maybe if you had to fill out the reports, deal with the claims adjusters for hours—hours!—but no. No, you think you're riding out of here high and pretty like always, don't you?"
"...Yeah?"
"No. Fuck you. Not this time. This time you—"
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Julian Price smiled when he peered out the squad car's passenger-side window; when he peered down at the officers on the crime scene, and observed with no small amusement that they had busied themselves bickering with the two interlopers. But he could not savor the diversion for long; not when seconds mattered.
First was the matter of his hands. Easy enough. Threading them between two bars of the cage, Julian threw himself to one side, hurled all his weight and all his leverage against the thinnest, weakest bones, their snaps and pops delighting him, off-key yet played in time, like a music of the body, a chord of the innards. That done, with only the faintest wince he squeezed the flopping, jellylike appendages; wriggled them, in their crushed, compact state, from between the ratchets of the handcuffs. With a quick rouse—a stirring, silent yet unignorable—he made short work of mending them anew, for he soon had need of them to set to work on the partition. For that, he put his purplish wrist to his mouth, and slit it open with a tooth. As the precious ichor dribbled from the wound, drop by drop, little polished rubies, he smeared them into the laminated metal, which began to steam, and smoke, and hiss.
One rivet at a time, one bar, one weld seam, the Malkavian had spewed from his noxious vein enough corrosive blood to free a section of the partition, whereupon he set it gently (almost affectionately) aside. Then, neck twisting, shoulders contorting, ribcage sprawling, he began to twist and slither himself through the squeeze of the resulting gap: over the center console and—plop—right into the driver's seat.
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"—Is that clear enough for you? Let me know, knucklefuck. Just let me know that I’ve finally, finally gotten it through your thick, knucklefuck skull. You in there, Beauclerc? It finally break through to you that you’re not getting past the wire, or what?"
Though his hands sat glued to his hips, Connie's eyes rolled, they wandered; his head lolled side-aside as his attentions meandered the ceiling. Only his little chuckles and grins let McGlinn know that he was trying damn hard not to let this diatribe—these allegations—itch at him; only emboldening the cop, of course, to keep on digging. That is until something shifted. Something in the air. Seething, all the sudden, with intent. It began with the bounty hunter's weight shifting from one foot to the other; his hip cocking; one of his swollen, ruddy hands drifting toward the small of his back, where McGlinn knew him to keep his five-inch Bowie. But by the time that cauliflower-knuckled hand had found its purchase around the coffin handle, the cop had already muttered, "Nice try, smartass," and grabbed Beauclerc by the shoulder, and pressed the muzzle of his Glock 19 deep against the man's belly and pressed the man flush against the muzzle.
"Whoa!" McGlinn's partner guffawed, reaching for his own station-issued weapon, but Teresa García only shot him a glare, and clicked her tongue into a tut, and tapped her coat where it draped over her left leg.
For several long moments there was only the ambience of traffic U-turning at the blockade up on street level; of a desert wind billowing stale and tepid down the avenue; of fluorescent bulbs buzzing and wheezing their last. Let's not do anything stupid, McGlinn was beginning to say, c'mon Connie this ain't funny anymore, when the sound of steel dragged from leather rasped down his spine. Mottled and gray was the blade, the bone scales smooth and worn; but god how the whetted edge glittered like moonlight trapped in water.
McGlinn didn't know what stayed his finger; what kept it one click, just one sorry click, away from sending the hammer slamming down onto the firing pin into the primer into the powder straight into Beauclerc's guts all hot and tunneling. Beauclerc's friends-in-high-places—his inroads with the chief, the commission board, hell, maybe even the mayor himself, that assured he'd always walk out of shitstorms like this one with nary a scratch? That he had a gun to his stomach and he didn't care? Or the stories—the ones told in creepy whispers back at the precinct—the ones you had to know where to press your ear what to hear them—that he leapt from three-story windows and kept on rolling—like a rhino—that he'd take four, five slugs in a Code 36 and not go down?
The knife's point, curved like a toenail clipping and narrow as a fishbone, teased its way past McGlinn's breastbone, past his throat, past his ear. Connie wavered it menacingly. But after a second which felt like a year, the only thing he plunged the blade through was the yellow tape, which fluttered noiselessly to the grimy concrete floor.
As the two bounty hunters walked past the petrified McGlinn, as the knife's edge shhfk!—back into its scabbard, he released a breath which singed the insides of his lungs. He looked down at his hand, the one clasped white around the molded polymer grips of the Glock—shaking, he realized—and pawed the handgun clumsily back into its holster.
3x Like
The last shards of daylight retreated behind the curtains, replaced by the lights of man. Little manicured fingers crept past the duvet. When no sizzle came, they grasped the edge and pulled the duvet down. Her hands dragged her body upright. Her hand darted for her phone. The screen flashed alive from the movement of the device.
7:55 pm
She pulled the plug from the phone and crawled from the bed. She stumbled to the bathroom, only to stand idly in front of the mirror for a time. She looked to the toilet expectantly, then back to her mirror. Leaning over the sink, her fingers pulled and prodded at the corners of her eyes, searching for dried sleep. There still wasn’t any. Her hand darted for the faucet. Her other found its way to a bottle of facial scrub.
The halting, hesitant movements accelerated as they settled into motions of stiff automation. Then, they ground to a halt once more. Concealer could find no targets. She squinted as she applied her foundation, and scowled at the growing gap between its color and hers. A newly soiled makeup wipe joined the others in the trash, bringing with it foundation soaked in lotion the skin had failed to absorb.
Her hands hovered around her toiletries bag in search of a target. She plucked mascara and lip gloss from their resting places. Both were applied. Both were approved. Both found stations in her purse. Hair rollers took their place in the toiletries bag. She stared at her face, inspecting its gloss as her knuckles tensed from their grip on the counter. Her eyes scanned every detail. One hand moved, to prod hair into place.
She broke from the sink.
She returned to her phone. She flicked her wrist several times, until her touch could provoke a response from the screen. After a look at the weather, she went for her suitcase. The outfit fell together. A navy blue wrap dress. Pulled-up socks and black ankle boots with heels to conceal her feet-turned-hooves as well as she could. It wasn’t perfect, but it had to do.
She tottered from her room across the hall and delivered three firm raps to the door. “Sham?” she lisped, “I’m ready to go. Are we shtill doing breakpasht your way?”
Sam opened the door. His hair was a mess, pushing against his cap like it was in revolt. His mouth followed the motion of a yawn, though no air or sound accompanied it. “I would prefer it that way. Look-” He peeked out from his room. Like a meerkat, he scanned the hallway for any potential listeners. Satisfied by the emptiness, he beckoned Caroline in.
His dirty clothes speckled the room, joined by a variety of tech paraphernalia only he could have known the purpose of. His laptop lay open, its screen shining like a beacon. The webcam was covered with a piece of tape. Its fans filled the room with a dull hum as it strained against the many tabs inflicted on it. No sooner had Caroline closed the door behind her than Sam continued, anxiously pacing as he spoke.
“Look I did some more reading and I-, I think I already mentioned this in the past but do you know how much information we knew that the government has on us? The Patriot act, Snowden—this shit never disappeared…” He closed the gap between them, glancing from wall to wall in search of anything confirming his suspicions. “And that’s only the stuff we know about! These last nights, I’ve seen some weird stuff in the city, figures that seem hidden to most, beings and traces that should not exist.” He began to speak faster right in front of her, his own words whipping him up.
“So surely if we have our ‘special diets,’ there might be others like us out there trying to keep this grand fucking conspiracy silent, and I mean if this is real what more is real? Imagine it: witches, warlocks, the illuminati, stonemasons, all of that might actually exist.” Caroline reeled as his gesticulation reached a crescendo. Then he paused. Sam let out a sigh. His arms drifted down. “All I ask for is that we go for breakfast secretly: in an alley, garage, maybe we go for a homeless person, some moronic gambler or an addict, you know, scum. The type of people that the cops won't report missing.”
He paused again. The calm set in.
“That is if we need to ‘leave leftovers’, I am pretty sure I can make people forget things, so maybe we can dine and dash?”
His consolation was an offer of preserved conscience. An offer that seemed to fall on indifferent ears. Caroline rubbed the bridge of her nose and drew a breath. Her lips tensed. “I...get your point.” Her hands formed fists as she began her frustrated concession. “We don’t know who’sh watching. Or lishtening. I jusht—. Do we habe to—? Can we at leasht—?”
She forced out a frustrated sigh. “I jusht...I jusht...I can’t...I worry it ishn’t...” She growled and shook her hands. Her speech grew halting and strained. “It ishn’t enoup. I can’t rishk changing again. I can’t. I jusht can’t. Who knowsh what could come neksht? It might not eben matter how carepul we are. Sho ip we do it your way, can I at leasht...eat a whole meal? People go misshing all’a time. And ip we...you know...nobody will care ip it’sh...” She spun her wrist, beckoning the right word. Her mouth tensed into an awkward, tight-lipped smile. “Ip you really want to go for shome’in’a copsh won’t care about? We could...try and get all’a dat...in shomeone who ishn’t...you know...white?”
She said it like it was a dirty word. Like she was afraid of it. As if she were worried that God would draw the line at the mere suggestion of using systemic racism to one’s advantage, after looking clean past murder and a half-dozen other things. Sam stared back at her for a moment. Confusion turned to realization. A hesitant laugh escaped him as it did.
“Well that might be best I guess...”
It had not taken long to find a better place to hunt. The taxi ride there was even shorter. Caroline made polite small talk with the driver. They got out at the corner of South Casino Center Boulevard and East Carson Avenue. It was a short walk to the grounds of the night; it was the wait that took forever.
Sam stood watch along the wall. Caroline sat in the stairwell. Nobody ever took the stairs if they could help it.
Sam was meticulous. Caroline, less so. For him, the phone was a prop. For her, a distraction. Still, she didn’t regret badgering him into accepting their use for coordination. How else could they have gotten the scheme to work? Perhaps it was a disguised blessing for him, too. His impatient partner could be sated by idle scrolling. She wouldn’t have been much help anyway. Her way was finding good enough and slamming it into the pavement. Being a predator who survived needed more work than that. More care. More attention to detail.
Most potential targets bristled with risk. Of course, “tough guys” knew how they looked—they were insisting upon it by their very choice to dress as such. And anyone with a purse could clutch it tightly to signal alertness. But others had converged on different techniques without even knowing it. The laughing groups of friends and the smiling couples were protected by numbers, as prey—however wrong it still felt to call them that—found safety in herds the world over. Anyone with a dog had a little mutualistic creature on guard, ready to alert them and everyone else of a threat, real or imagined, well before it could close in. Well-dressed folks advertised a social toxin. Their plumage—their clothes and hair—said they had money, importance, and that to trouble them was to invite the attention of something more dangerous, be it their next of kin or the police at their beck and call. Addicts had actual poison coursing through their veins, and some were looking rough enough to make it obvious. Sketchy figures in drawn hoodies despite the heat suggested a fellow predator of some kind, be they mugger or monster.
Ambush tactics didn’t make for a glorious hunt. It wasn’t exciting. It was mostly shaping up to be boring, really. But it was still dangerous. Still stressful. Just hopefully less so than Caroline’s cavalier go-to-them-and-jump approach.
The crowds thinned out as the night went on. A thousand faces passed, and Sam still hadn’t found just what he was looking for. Caroline had already interrupted his search twice, each time on the hour, wondering when they’d “be done.”
It had to be foolproof. Something she wouldn’t screw up. She had her instructions. She knew what her part was. Hopefully she was paying more attention than the one time he’d checked in on her. All she needed to do was feign a collision with the target, and he’d take care of the rest. He checked his phone. The time read 23:12. He texted the agreed-upon message. Something that could be a part of an excuse, rather than something needing to be explained. ‘Coming?’
Their chosen target? An African-American guy who looked about their age, maybe thirty-something at most. He didn’t seem to be a tourist; what tourist would be using one of those rent-a-scooters to go seemingly nowhere in particular at night? And neither his clothes nor the fact that he was riding a scooter suggested wealth, at least as far as Sam knew.
Their target started picking up speed again as he passed Sam, now that the sidewalk seemed clear up ahead. Sam started walking. The moment of truth came as the target neared the Golden Nugget arch.
Caroline darted out and feigned trying to stop. He tried to stop and swerve—really, it was more of a surprised flinch. He stumbled forward. His legs couldn’t keep up. He made contact with the pavement. His knees scraped and his hands tore. Caroline ate her part up. She groaned, whimpered, and hissed on the ground. She kept her eyes on him as she made a show. He stopped sputtering out confused curses when he saw that she seemed more hurt than him. He stumbled to his feet, surprise and anger melting into genuine concern. Was she really that hurt?
Sam closed in. The man gave him one look before returning his attention to Caroline. She brought her hand to her mouth, rubbed her face, then brought it back again to broadcast she’d hurt her face. He barely had a chance to ask her what was wrong.
The click of Sam’s gun told the target the only one with a problem was him. But what sent him into stunned silence was the fact that the little white girl he’d just crashed into stood up, dusted herself off, and flipped like a switch. Like she wasn’t even hurt.
Caroline helped him up, one hand on his mouth, while Sam hid his weapon again. Then, they walked. Caroline led, while Sam followed behind their guy, gun still pressed to his back through his jacket pocket. Caroline positioned herself to obscure the security guard’s line of sight and their bruised target as they entered the parking garage. Not that it mattered. He didn’t even bother looking up from his crossword.
They found a nice, quiet space Sam insisted was out of any camera’s lines of sight on the second floor from the top, avoiding the roof lest any cameras or eyes from above look down and catch them in the act instead. Caroline was far past arguing. Her excited, impatient bouncing had nearly gotten a comment out of the target, until an insistent nudge from Sam shut him up again.
Sam drew first blood. The very second their target slumped into his arms, Caroline darted to the ground. He got the carotid; she held her nose and made do with the femoral, as far down the thigh as she could manage. It was his plan, after all. The only sound for several minutes was of gulping. Of Sam’s careful sips, and of Caroline’s breathless chugging. Sam broke first. He handed her a knife, told her to cover up the wounds when she was done.
There was no use trying to stop her; he’d probably already lost too much blood. Not that she cared either way. Nonlethal feedings were something she’d only tried a few times. She was convinced there was no other way to feed but to kill. So it seemed, she was more concerned with what happened if she didn’t feed enough than what happened if she fed too much.
Sam took the stairs and headed to their meeting place: the nearby bus stop on South Main Street. A few tense minutes later, Caroline followed, bearing a contented little smile that suggested everything else had gone smoothly.
With food handled, it was time to start hitting up ATMs.
7:55 pm
She pulled the plug from the phone and crawled from the bed. She stumbled to the bathroom, only to stand idly in front of the mirror for a time. She looked to the toilet expectantly, then back to her mirror. Leaning over the sink, her fingers pulled and prodded at the corners of her eyes, searching for dried sleep. There still wasn’t any. Her hand darted for the faucet. Her other found its way to a bottle of facial scrub.
The halting, hesitant movements accelerated as they settled into motions of stiff automation. Then, they ground to a halt once more. Concealer could find no targets. She squinted as she applied her foundation, and scowled at the growing gap between its color and hers. A newly soiled makeup wipe joined the others in the trash, bringing with it foundation soaked in lotion the skin had failed to absorb.
Her hands hovered around her toiletries bag in search of a target. She plucked mascara and lip gloss from their resting places. Both were applied. Both were approved. Both found stations in her purse. Hair rollers took their place in the toiletries bag. She stared at her face, inspecting its gloss as her knuckles tensed from their grip on the counter. Her eyes scanned every detail. One hand moved, to prod hair into place.
She broke from the sink.
She returned to her phone. She flicked her wrist several times, until her touch could provoke a response from the screen. After a look at the weather, she went for her suitcase. The outfit fell together. A navy blue wrap dress. Pulled-up socks and black ankle boots with heels to conceal her feet-turned-hooves as well as she could. It wasn’t perfect, but it had to do.
She tottered from her room across the hall and delivered three firm raps to the door. “Sham?” she lisped, “I’m ready to go. Are we shtill doing breakpasht your way?”
Sam opened the door. His hair was a mess, pushing against his cap like it was in revolt. His mouth followed the motion of a yawn, though no air or sound accompanied it. “I would prefer it that way. Look-” He peeked out from his room. Like a meerkat, he scanned the hallway for any potential listeners. Satisfied by the emptiness, he beckoned Caroline in.
His dirty clothes speckled the room, joined by a variety of tech paraphernalia only he could have known the purpose of. His laptop lay open, its screen shining like a beacon. The webcam was covered with a piece of tape. Its fans filled the room with a dull hum as it strained against the many tabs inflicted on it. No sooner had Caroline closed the door behind her than Sam continued, anxiously pacing as he spoke.
“Look I did some more reading and I-, I think I already mentioned this in the past but do you know how much information we knew that the government has on us? The Patriot act, Snowden—this shit never disappeared…” He closed the gap between them, glancing from wall to wall in search of anything confirming his suspicions. “And that’s only the stuff we know about! These last nights, I’ve seen some weird stuff in the city, figures that seem hidden to most, beings and traces that should not exist.” He began to speak faster right in front of her, his own words whipping him up.
“So surely if we have our ‘special diets,’ there might be others like us out there trying to keep this grand fucking conspiracy silent, and I mean if this is real what more is real? Imagine it: witches, warlocks, the illuminati, stonemasons, all of that might actually exist.” Caroline reeled as his gesticulation reached a crescendo. Then he paused. Sam let out a sigh. His arms drifted down. “All I ask for is that we go for breakfast secretly: in an alley, garage, maybe we go for a homeless person, some moronic gambler or an addict, you know, scum. The type of people that the cops won't report missing.”
He paused again. The calm set in.
“That is if we need to ‘leave leftovers’, I am pretty sure I can make people forget things, so maybe we can dine and dash?”
His consolation was an offer of preserved conscience. An offer that seemed to fall on indifferent ears. Caroline rubbed the bridge of her nose and drew a breath. Her lips tensed. “I...get your point.” Her hands formed fists as she began her frustrated concession. “We don’t know who’sh watching. Or lishtening. I jusht—. Do we habe to—? Can we at leasht—?”
She forced out a frustrated sigh. “I jusht...I jusht...I can’t...I worry it ishn’t...” She growled and shook her hands. Her speech grew halting and strained. “It ishn’t enoup. I can’t rishk changing again. I can’t. I jusht can’t. Who knowsh what could come neksht? It might not eben matter how carepul we are. Sho ip we do it your way, can I at leasht...eat a whole meal? People go misshing all’a time. And ip we...you know...nobody will care ip it’sh...” She spun her wrist, beckoning the right word. Her mouth tensed into an awkward, tight-lipped smile. “Ip you really want to go for shome’in’a copsh won’t care about? We could...try and get all’a dat...in shomeone who ishn’t...you know...white?”
She said it like it was a dirty word. Like she was afraid of it. As if she were worried that God would draw the line at the mere suggestion of using systemic racism to one’s advantage, after looking clean past murder and a half-dozen other things. Sam stared back at her for a moment. Confusion turned to realization. A hesitant laugh escaped him as it did.
“Well that might be best I guess...”
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It had not taken long to find a better place to hunt. The taxi ride there was even shorter. Caroline made polite small talk with the driver. They got out at the corner of South Casino Center Boulevard and East Carson Avenue. It was a short walk to the grounds of the night; it was the wait that took forever.
Sam stood watch along the wall. Caroline sat in the stairwell. Nobody ever took the stairs if they could help it.
Sam was meticulous. Caroline, less so. For him, the phone was a prop. For her, a distraction. Still, she didn’t regret badgering him into accepting their use for coordination. How else could they have gotten the scheme to work? Perhaps it was a disguised blessing for him, too. His impatient partner could be sated by idle scrolling. She wouldn’t have been much help anyway. Her way was finding good enough and slamming it into the pavement. Being a predator who survived needed more work than that. More care. More attention to detail.
Most potential targets bristled with risk. Of course, “tough guys” knew how they looked—they were insisting upon it by their very choice to dress as such. And anyone with a purse could clutch it tightly to signal alertness. But others had converged on different techniques without even knowing it. The laughing groups of friends and the smiling couples were protected by numbers, as prey—however wrong it still felt to call them that—found safety in herds the world over. Anyone with a dog had a little mutualistic creature on guard, ready to alert them and everyone else of a threat, real or imagined, well before it could close in. Well-dressed folks advertised a social toxin. Their plumage—their clothes and hair—said they had money, importance, and that to trouble them was to invite the attention of something more dangerous, be it their next of kin or the police at their beck and call. Addicts had actual poison coursing through their veins, and some were looking rough enough to make it obvious. Sketchy figures in drawn hoodies despite the heat suggested a fellow predator of some kind, be they mugger or monster.
Ambush tactics didn’t make for a glorious hunt. It wasn’t exciting. It was mostly shaping up to be boring, really. But it was still dangerous. Still stressful. Just hopefully less so than Caroline’s cavalier go-to-them-and-jump approach.
The crowds thinned out as the night went on. A thousand faces passed, and Sam still hadn’t found just what he was looking for. Caroline had already interrupted his search twice, each time on the hour, wondering when they’d “be done.”
It had to be foolproof. Something she wouldn’t screw up. She had her instructions. She knew what her part was. Hopefully she was paying more attention than the one time he’d checked in on her. All she needed to do was feign a collision with the target, and he’d take care of the rest. He checked his phone. The time read 23:12. He texted the agreed-upon message. Something that could be a part of an excuse, rather than something needing to be explained. ‘Coming?’
Their chosen target? An African-American guy who looked about their age, maybe thirty-something at most. He didn’t seem to be a tourist; what tourist would be using one of those rent-a-scooters to go seemingly nowhere in particular at night? And neither his clothes nor the fact that he was riding a scooter suggested wealth, at least as far as Sam knew.
Their target started picking up speed again as he passed Sam, now that the sidewalk seemed clear up ahead. Sam started walking. The moment of truth came as the target neared the Golden Nugget arch.
Caroline darted out and feigned trying to stop. He tried to stop and swerve—really, it was more of a surprised flinch. He stumbled forward. His legs couldn’t keep up. He made contact with the pavement. His knees scraped and his hands tore. Caroline ate her part up. She groaned, whimpered, and hissed on the ground. She kept her eyes on him as she made a show. He stopped sputtering out confused curses when he saw that she seemed more hurt than him. He stumbled to his feet, surprise and anger melting into genuine concern. Was she really that hurt?
Sam closed in. The man gave him one look before returning his attention to Caroline. She brought her hand to her mouth, rubbed her face, then brought it back again to broadcast she’d hurt her face. He barely had a chance to ask her what was wrong.
The click of Sam’s gun told the target the only one with a problem was him. But what sent him into stunned silence was the fact that the little white girl he’d just crashed into stood up, dusted herself off, and flipped like a switch. Like she wasn’t even hurt.
Caroline helped him up, one hand on his mouth, while Sam hid his weapon again. Then, they walked. Caroline led, while Sam followed behind their guy, gun still pressed to his back through his jacket pocket. Caroline positioned herself to obscure the security guard’s line of sight and their bruised target as they entered the parking garage. Not that it mattered. He didn’t even bother looking up from his crossword.
They found a nice, quiet space Sam insisted was out of any camera’s lines of sight on the second floor from the top, avoiding the roof lest any cameras or eyes from above look down and catch them in the act instead. Caroline was far past arguing. Her excited, impatient bouncing had nearly gotten a comment out of the target, until an insistent nudge from Sam shut him up again.
Sam drew first blood. The very second their target slumped into his arms, Caroline darted to the ground. He got the carotid; she held her nose and made do with the femoral, as far down the thigh as she could manage. It was his plan, after all. The only sound for several minutes was of gulping. Of Sam’s careful sips, and of Caroline’s breathless chugging. Sam broke first. He handed her a knife, told her to cover up the wounds when she was done.
There was no use trying to stop her; he’d probably already lost too much blood. Not that she cared either way. Nonlethal feedings were something she’d only tried a few times. She was convinced there was no other way to feed but to kill. So it seemed, she was more concerned with what happened if she didn’t feed enough than what happened if she fed too much.
Sam took the stairs and headed to their meeting place: the nearby bus stop on South Main Street. A few tense minutes later, Caroline followed, bearing a contented little smile that suggested everything else had gone smoothly.
With food handled, it was time to start hitting up ATMs.
3x Like
Heat, and the sun beating against her brow.
She doesn’t feel the ache of the bones, no leather in the skin, no tremor in the hands, and she sees. She does not question why she sees, and there it is all the same. An old, sick pack to the oasis, manged and broken and led by a lioness. Who are they? The answer does not come immediately to her mind. She knows that the water is good, though, calming, peaceful.
The perspective shifts; a male wanders off into the grasses, and a whoop of laughter comes up against her. Blood, red, hot, and the smell of flesh into the air. Her eyes follow to the ground, to shadows shifting here and there without any meaning, red lines in the sand tracing rivers down, down into the oasis waters. Lines spread out into the water, spiderwebs of veins before muddling into into a red mist. It stays.
Laughter grows. It sounds like they’re inside her ears, they’re so loud. Red eyes watch from the grasses, between the shadows cast in the tall yellow, as she hears the whines of the pack, fearful, clamoring together. Then the pair emerge, mottled tortoiseshell-brown and tarnished-gold, snouts still red, eyes still hungry. They circle about, and the pack treads back, and back, and back…
Then the sights stop pounding against her skull, and Martha woke up.
Her head hurt, all the way in the back of it, and she could feel hot breath against her face. Someone close by. The smell of cheap cigarettes and an old surplus jacket that still smelled a tint of mothballs. Arnold? The shuffle of feet was nearby, too. She must have fallen…yes, yes, must have fallen…and that did somewhat explain why her head hurt, why her arms ached more than normal, why her legs felt as though she’d been running. When was the last time the old woman could remember running? She felt tired.
A pause, the smell and shuffling fabric of the jacket moving away.
“She’s awake!”
“Are you a-a-alright, Martha?”
“Hell was that?”
Was there a point in that long breath out? That exhale that meant absolutely nothing because Martha hadn’t breathed for a decade? She wasn’t certain, if any time had ever been given to the activity of thinking about all the different things one that didn’t ultimately matter. If for her own sake or for the sake of those who watched, whichever which, Martha gave out a long exhale. She was alright. She knew what it had meant. She was alright and the universe had just knocked in against her skull, like it did every now and again. Taking a moment, Martha creaked out her own words. “I’m alright, I’m alright. Just a fit. Where’s my cane?”
A pause, another shuffle of feet. Coldness touched against the palm of her hand, one that she grasped onto tight and sure. There was the cane. “Here ya go. Jay, grab her other…yeah, yeah, you won’t break her, man. O-Kay, Martha, you ready? Up on three?”
Hands grabbed either of her arms, up from the elbow, fingers bony, palms clammy. “Up on three.”
“A-one, A-two, A-three.”
A perspective shift. Up from the horizon to the vertical, along with the inhale and holding of one throat on either side of her. Feet scrambled for a moment before they found the ground, the old woman leaning down on her cane. She could feel eyes still against her, the others still waiting and watching to make sure that ol Martha wouldn’t keel over the moment they turned away. There were other signs of that too, though, like hands fidgeting in pockets to scratch against the fabric, or the playing with of buttons, or the pursed-lips whistle exhales of Clyde. He spoke, too, lower while the wind played between the missing teeth.
“You’re facing the main tent. Do you need a doctor or…or…?”
“I’ll be fine, just need to make myself some tea and…go pet some cats or something. Calm my nerves. You all get to sleep.”
Another pause. Feet didn’t move. Another exhale as Martha shook her head. They wanted to see if she actually would make it to the tent…and yet, there was some other idea in mind, along with the tea. She needed to sit down first. Cane tapped against concrete as she hobbled over, still feeling the eyes against her, step after step after step…then cloth caught on the tip of the cane. There was the door. Her free hand reached out for a moment, finding the flap of cloth. Step up high…joints groaned with the effort of moving feet up higher than she was used to…and there she was.
A few steps to the right…there was the chair. It was cheap, the kind of white plastic one might expect to be left outside for years for a patio, and felt flimsy even under her little weight as Martha settled down. She could even feel the legs splay out a little bit, setting the cane to lean against one armrest.
The pack. The pack was hers. When she thought of the male, she felt sad…he had been one of the camp, but had been killed and eaten by predators…by other, new kindred. They were still hungry, they would still hunt, and none of hers were necessarily safe as long as they roved free. There would be more deaths, more murders, and even if Martha didn’t want some form of justice…whatever authority would exist looked down on such familiarity, such sentimentality…in a sense, it was best that the pair were caught before they did something immensely stupid. That they were hunting and killing so freely, so often from the last to the next, that meant they had no self control. That meant someone would have to get talked to in order to find them.
Who would be best? The answer was fairly simple in her eyes. There weren’t too many enforcers of law, not as far as the kindred in Las Vegas. Of course, that assumed that the killing had been done by a vampire, but if it wasn’t…then it indicated some other killing force. Something else that could do with investigation and, if it was something simpler, something smaller, then maybe it was something that could serve as payment in flesh for those enforcers. A pair were already in mind; Beauclerc, García. They’d been by the camp, too, which gave some good enough benefits.
Of course, neither of them were especially ideal. Martha knew that. Beauclerc wasn’t a kind man, nor an amazingly compassionate man, but he was a man of business and on that at least the two found a degree of trust. García always seemed like she came from the trades of death, but…had always been respectful, to one degree or another. They’d come by before, asking questions about this person or that person, tracking down the various members of the city’s less glamorous citizens. They’d never stayed especially long. She almost wished they did. Almost.
A hand reached out to the nearby table, a bell that was…well, Martha had been told it was never-shined silver, a tinny little sound that probably meant it wasn’t even silver. Dinner bell for the little ones, that’s what it was, for the cats and fluffy friends and all the rest. They wouldn’t be happy about the idea of coming forth to get food, at an unscheduled time no less, and not receiving it, but that would be a placation for when they arrived, not a worry beforehand. Besides, Martha needed them and she needed them yesterday. She rang it.
“Mau, mau, mau, mau, mau, mau…” came one, constant in the volume as he came closer. It wasn’t especially loud, though, close-in to the ground as he padded through the camp before arriving at the little door. The whish of thin, clear plastic as he jumped through. The meowing continued even as he drew about the chair’s legs, weaving back and forth to pass between outstretched fingers. She could feel his fur like bristles on a brush.
Another, an irregular little purr that sounded like a lawnmower. She weaved here and there on the route before following him in, then stopping where the bowls normally would be filled. The lawnmower revved, quiet, then revved again. Another, and another, and another. She waited patiently for each to file in, swallowing at the prospect that they would find who she needed. It was a shot, sure, but not a particularly good one. At least, there wasn’t anything that was shifting the scales to Martha’s favor. She waited still. It was, at the very least, better than nothing…especially when nothing entailed another loss with no great progress. No, she needed someone to fix the problem and that pair would likely do just fine.
A breath in, tapping into that power in the blood, before she spoke to them. “Two have come here before, a man and a woman smelling of death. Beauclerc. García. I need them here again. Find them, and lead them back. The winner will be given twice the normal amount. Go. Go, find them, and bring them back.”
Feet padded out of the room, leaving Martha alone to her thoughts.
She doesn’t feel the ache of the bones, no leather in the skin, no tremor in the hands, and she sees. She does not question why she sees, and there it is all the same. An old, sick pack to the oasis, manged and broken and led by a lioness. Who are they? The answer does not come immediately to her mind. She knows that the water is good, though, calming, peaceful.
The perspective shifts; a male wanders off into the grasses, and a whoop of laughter comes up against her. Blood, red, hot, and the smell of flesh into the air. Her eyes follow to the ground, to shadows shifting here and there without any meaning, red lines in the sand tracing rivers down, down into the oasis waters. Lines spread out into the water, spiderwebs of veins before muddling into into a red mist. It stays.
Laughter grows. It sounds like they’re inside her ears, they’re so loud. Red eyes watch from the grasses, between the shadows cast in the tall yellow, as she hears the whines of the pack, fearful, clamoring together. Then the pair emerge, mottled tortoiseshell-brown and tarnished-gold, snouts still red, eyes still hungry. They circle about, and the pack treads back, and back, and back…
Then the sights stop pounding against her skull, and Martha woke up.
Her head hurt, all the way in the back of it, and she could feel hot breath against her face. Someone close by. The smell of cheap cigarettes and an old surplus jacket that still smelled a tint of mothballs. Arnold? The shuffle of feet was nearby, too. She must have fallen…yes, yes, must have fallen…and that did somewhat explain why her head hurt, why her arms ached more than normal, why her legs felt as though she’d been running. When was the last time the old woman could remember running? She felt tired.
A pause, the smell and shuffling fabric of the jacket moving away.
“She’s awake!”
“Are you a-a-alright, Martha?”
“Hell was that?”
Was there a point in that long breath out? That exhale that meant absolutely nothing because Martha hadn’t breathed for a decade? She wasn’t certain, if any time had ever been given to the activity of thinking about all the different things one that didn’t ultimately matter. If for her own sake or for the sake of those who watched, whichever which, Martha gave out a long exhale. She was alright. She knew what it had meant. She was alright and the universe had just knocked in against her skull, like it did every now and again. Taking a moment, Martha creaked out her own words. “I’m alright, I’m alright. Just a fit. Where’s my cane?”
A pause, another shuffle of feet. Coldness touched against the palm of her hand, one that she grasped onto tight and sure. There was the cane. “Here ya go. Jay, grab her other…yeah, yeah, you won’t break her, man. O-Kay, Martha, you ready? Up on three?”
Hands grabbed either of her arms, up from the elbow, fingers bony, palms clammy. “Up on three.”
“A-one, A-two, A-three.”
A perspective shift. Up from the horizon to the vertical, along with the inhale and holding of one throat on either side of her. Feet scrambled for a moment before they found the ground, the old woman leaning down on her cane. She could feel eyes still against her, the others still waiting and watching to make sure that ol Martha wouldn’t keel over the moment they turned away. There were other signs of that too, though, like hands fidgeting in pockets to scratch against the fabric, or the playing with of buttons, or the pursed-lips whistle exhales of Clyde. He spoke, too, lower while the wind played between the missing teeth.
“You’re facing the main tent. Do you need a doctor or…or…?”
“I’ll be fine, just need to make myself some tea and…go pet some cats or something. Calm my nerves. You all get to sleep.”
Another pause. Feet didn’t move. Another exhale as Martha shook her head. They wanted to see if she actually would make it to the tent…and yet, there was some other idea in mind, along with the tea. She needed to sit down first. Cane tapped against concrete as she hobbled over, still feeling the eyes against her, step after step after step…then cloth caught on the tip of the cane. There was the door. Her free hand reached out for a moment, finding the flap of cloth. Step up high…joints groaned with the effort of moving feet up higher than she was used to…and there she was.
A few steps to the right…there was the chair. It was cheap, the kind of white plastic one might expect to be left outside for years for a patio, and felt flimsy even under her little weight as Martha settled down. She could even feel the legs splay out a little bit, setting the cane to lean against one armrest.
The pack. The pack was hers. When she thought of the male, she felt sad…he had been one of the camp, but had been killed and eaten by predators…by other, new kindred. They were still hungry, they would still hunt, and none of hers were necessarily safe as long as they roved free. There would be more deaths, more murders, and even if Martha didn’t want some form of justice…whatever authority would exist looked down on such familiarity, such sentimentality…in a sense, it was best that the pair were caught before they did something immensely stupid. That they were hunting and killing so freely, so often from the last to the next, that meant they had no self control. That meant someone would have to get talked to in order to find them.
Who would be best? The answer was fairly simple in her eyes. There weren’t too many enforcers of law, not as far as the kindred in Las Vegas. Of course, that assumed that the killing had been done by a vampire, but if it wasn’t…then it indicated some other killing force. Something else that could do with investigation and, if it was something simpler, something smaller, then maybe it was something that could serve as payment in flesh for those enforcers. A pair were already in mind; Beauclerc, García. They’d been by the camp, too, which gave some good enough benefits.
Of course, neither of them were especially ideal. Martha knew that. Beauclerc wasn’t a kind man, nor an amazingly compassionate man, but he was a man of business and on that at least the two found a degree of trust. García always seemed like she came from the trades of death, but…had always been respectful, to one degree or another. They’d come by before, asking questions about this person or that person, tracking down the various members of the city’s less glamorous citizens. They’d never stayed especially long. She almost wished they did. Almost.
A hand reached out to the nearby table, a bell that was…well, Martha had been told it was never-shined silver, a tinny little sound that probably meant it wasn’t even silver. Dinner bell for the little ones, that’s what it was, for the cats and fluffy friends and all the rest. They wouldn’t be happy about the idea of coming forth to get food, at an unscheduled time no less, and not receiving it, but that would be a placation for when they arrived, not a worry beforehand. Besides, Martha needed them and she needed them yesterday. She rang it.
“Mau, mau, mau, mau, mau, mau…” came one, constant in the volume as he came closer. It wasn’t especially loud, though, close-in to the ground as he padded through the camp before arriving at the little door. The whish of thin, clear plastic as he jumped through. The meowing continued even as he drew about the chair’s legs, weaving back and forth to pass between outstretched fingers. She could feel his fur like bristles on a brush.
Another, an irregular little purr that sounded like a lawnmower. She weaved here and there on the route before following him in, then stopping where the bowls normally would be filled. The lawnmower revved, quiet, then revved again. Another, and another, and another. She waited patiently for each to file in, swallowing at the prospect that they would find who she needed. It was a shot, sure, but not a particularly good one. At least, there wasn’t anything that was shifting the scales to Martha’s favor. She waited still. It was, at the very least, better than nothing…especially when nothing entailed another loss with no great progress. No, she needed someone to fix the problem and that pair would likely do just fine.
A breath in, tapping into that power in the blood, before she spoke to them. “Two have come here before, a man and a woman smelling of death. Beauclerc. García. I need them here again. Find them, and lead them back. The winner will be given twice the normal amount. Go. Go, find them, and bring them back.”
Feet padded out of the room, leaving Martha alone to her thoughts.
4x Like
Vincenzo sat at his desk in his study, the weak amber glow of his desk lamp giving the stacked mahogany shelves a sepia tone. Their old-timey charm was broken somewhat by the cleanliness: this room was well travelled, and the books on them were not just for show like so many others in the highlands of Las Vegas.
Shadows danced on the walls, and that desk lamp felt woefully inadequate for the openness of the room, its lone source a bold defiance of the sinister darkness pooling in the corners and edges of the room. The light’s struggle before Vince amused him, it was at his mercy, yet still it stood. It was a good distraction from his reading; ritual proceedings from centuries before even his time were dense at the best of times.
As he considered the lamp’s position, the door to the hall of his mansion was opened, letting in more unnatural light from beyond to relieve the beleaguered prey. Tim Keene stood in the doorway, his wide frame rectangular glasses and the brown eyes behind them focusing quickly through the wire frames of his own reading glasses.
He spoke quickly to pre-empt his long-time associate, ever earnest in his tone “Yes?” he regarded his greasy-haired attendant.
“Letter for you, Vince.” He held up the envelope, carrying a similar coloration to the shelves, its contents sealed in red wax. Both parties knew who it was from, and both knew what it meant.
Only the master of the house felt the need to speculate. “Bishop Krause finally decided to grace me with his words?” he says, his voice gaining a sharp sarcasm “How kind.” a thin smile growing under his thin moustache.
The ghoul was much less cavalier, carrying that even-keeled steel in the face of his master’s amusement. He would need to learn to be so forced in his unbotheredness someday, but that lesson would come in time. He entered the sanctum, looking down at Vince with a certain sense that the Ghoul was above him. A firmer hand would have risen against him for his demeanor alone, but he bore good news.
The letter felt old, its construction brittle and yellowed. The wax bore the personal seal of his once-friend and once-mentor: the bar of a not-so-long forgotten empire quartered with a cross engrailed, a billeted field, and an eagle. Vince always felt that the ornateness of the design was insulted by the monochrome color of fresh blood.
Vince drew his stiletto, flicking open the blackwood switchblade adorned with a silver cross. It was freshly sharpened, and rent the seal open, his eyes trailing back up to his far-too-imperious subordinate. “Take a seat, mister Keene.”
He sat into the leather upholstery, wearing a knowing smile all the while he sinks to eye level, the hide creaking in the silence all too loudly. Eventually he extracts the parchment from the envelope, and opens the trifold. His eyes go over the contents quickly, then all too slowly.
Shadows danced on the walls, and that desk lamp felt woefully inadequate for the openness of the room, its lone source a bold defiance of the sinister darkness pooling in the corners and edges of the room. The light’s struggle before Vince amused him, it was at his mercy, yet still it stood. It was a good distraction from his reading; ritual proceedings from centuries before even his time were dense at the best of times.
As he considered the lamp’s position, the door to the hall of his mansion was opened, letting in more unnatural light from beyond to relieve the beleaguered prey. Tim Keene stood in the doorway, his wide frame rectangular glasses and the brown eyes behind them focusing quickly through the wire frames of his own reading glasses.
He spoke quickly to pre-empt his long-time associate, ever earnest in his tone “Yes?” he regarded his greasy-haired attendant.
“Letter for you, Vince.” He held up the envelope, carrying a similar coloration to the shelves, its contents sealed in red wax. Both parties knew who it was from, and both knew what it meant.
Only the master of the house felt the need to speculate. “Bishop Krause finally decided to grace me with his words?” he says, his voice gaining a sharp sarcasm “How kind.” a thin smile growing under his thin moustache.
The ghoul was much less cavalier, carrying that even-keeled steel in the face of his master’s amusement. He would need to learn to be so forced in his unbotheredness someday, but that lesson would come in time. He entered the sanctum, looking down at Vince with a certain sense that the Ghoul was above him. A firmer hand would have risen against him for his demeanor alone, but he bore good news.
The letter felt old, its construction brittle and yellowed. The wax bore the personal seal of his once-friend and once-mentor: the bar of a not-so-long forgotten empire quartered with a cross engrailed, a billeted field, and an eagle. Vince always felt that the ornateness of the design was insulted by the monochrome color of fresh blood.
Vince drew his stiletto, flicking open the blackwood switchblade adorned with a silver cross. It was freshly sharpened, and rent the seal open, his eyes trailing back up to his far-too-imperious subordinate. “Take a seat, mister Keene.”
He sat into the leather upholstery, wearing a knowing smile all the while he sinks to eye level, the hide creaking in the silence all too loudly. Eventually he extracts the parchment from the envelope, and opens the trifold. His eyes go over the contents quickly, then all too slowly.
For the Eyes of Lord Pagani, Friend of the Night, Vincenzo
It has come to my attention that you intend to follow the traitors of your home city against the Sword of Caine, and I must plead with you to reconsider your decision. You have enjoyed over a century of good graces and fellowship from myself and countless others, and you have been honored as a neutral hand which brought ease to the most incendiary feuds.
Those you seek the protection and comradery of now will not welcome you. They do not trust us, nor would they tolerate your ambitions. Without the protection of the Amici you will be at the mercy of their predations. I do not understand why you of all people would abandon security without the promise of something greater.
I appeal to our long-standing friendship, and an understanding that transcends life and death. Do not abandon me to the ire of our fellows, and rededicate yourself to the cause.
Your Eternal Friend,
Bishop Josef Krause
It has come to my attention that you intend to follow the traitors of your home city against the Sword of Caine, and I must plead with you to reconsider your decision. You have enjoyed over a century of good graces and fellowship from myself and countless others, and you have been honored as a neutral hand which brought ease to the most incendiary feuds.
Those you seek the protection and comradery of now will not welcome you. They do not trust us, nor would they tolerate your ambitions. Without the protection of the Amici you will be at the mercy of their predations. I do not understand why you of all people would abandon security without the promise of something greater.
I appeal to our long-standing friendship, and an understanding that transcends life and death. Do not abandon me to the ire of our fellows, and rededicate yourself to the cause.
Your Eternal Friend,
Bishop Josef Krause
Vince purses his lips and closes his eyes for a moment with a short, sharp sigh. Placing the letter flat on his desk, he reopens them and regards his loyal servant, whose eyes were wandering over that portentous parchment. He could likely read faster upside down than his master could read straight.
“A shame he can only see things from his point of view.” Vince would lament, opening a drawer and drawing his own paper, not burdened by poor construction or faux-age pretense.
“He does have a point, they aren’t going to trust you, even if we expose ourselves at their mercy.” Vince’s expression evens with his companion’s words while he draws his fountain pen from its holder.
“Sometimes life is about taking risks, Tim. And they will not pass up what we can offer, if we are able to offer it in the right way.” he spoke with a confidence that he normally reserved for Order meetings. That pen would begin scrawling with a grace to its movements, a century and a half of penmanship honed.
“A shame he can only see things from his point of view.” Vince would lament, opening a drawer and drawing his own paper, not burdened by poor construction or faux-age pretense.
“He does have a point, they aren’t going to trust you, even if we expose ourselves at their mercy.” Vince’s expression evens with his companion’s words while he draws his fountain pen from its holder.
“Sometimes life is about taking risks, Tim. And they will not pass up what we can offer, if we are able to offer it in the right way.” he spoke with a confidence that he normally reserved for Order meetings. That pen would begin scrawling with a grace to its movements, a century and a half of penmanship honed.
To my Dear Friend Josef,
I am glad to hear from you, and your counsel is taken into consideration. I too value our friendship, and it is for that reason among others that I have made my decision to abandon the cause we have shared for so long. I have disappointed you in my lack of drive, and I have rarely been suited for the cutthroat work expected of me. I do not view this as a betrayal, for I have never been true in my service.
I always took great pains to distance myself from the bloodsport that I watched consume the lives of others, and take my time to enjoy my life with the wealth and relationships I have built. As I see it, the violence that surrounded me was going to eventually consume me and those I care for, including you.
So I will not be rescinding my decision, nor will I accept this as a parting of ways. We have fought and worked together for too long, and I believe that we do not need to abandon such things on the altar of ideology. You know as well as I do that I will adapt as well as I always have, I just hope that this change will not affect us.
I look forward to your reply,
Vincenzo
I am glad to hear from you, and your counsel is taken into consideration. I too value our friendship, and it is for that reason among others that I have made my decision to abandon the cause we have shared for so long. I have disappointed you in my lack of drive, and I have rarely been suited for the cutthroat work expected of me. I do not view this as a betrayal, for I have never been true in my service.
I always took great pains to distance myself from the bloodsport that I watched consume the lives of others, and take my time to enjoy my life with the wealth and relationships I have built. As I see it, the violence that surrounded me was going to eventually consume me and those I care for, including you.
So I will not be rescinding my decision, nor will I accept this as a parting of ways. We have fought and worked together for too long, and I believe that we do not need to abandon such things on the altar of ideology. You know as well as I do that I will adapt as well as I always have, I just hope that this change will not affect us.
I look forward to your reply,
Vincenzo
4x Like
KittenLord Lord Meowrius III of the house of Nyans
Member
Seen
4 mos ago
He sighed and slammed his laptop shut a bit too hard. For just a second, he worried if he had been too forceful with it, if he might have damaged the expensive piece of technology, but his frustration was restless and it swiftly moved on to the next thing on his list. He clicked his tongue as he scanned his room, his head turning slowly but steadily like one of those older security cameras that he had seen in movies. The room was messy. Clothes were scattered around and thrown everywhere. There were countless pieces of paper with some short pieces of writing on them—mindmaps and fleeting ideas everywhere. Worse of all was the pile of cigarette stubs. They did little for him now, yet still he couldn’t stop.
“This shit ain’t like you Samuel…”
He snapped quietly at himself. His voice was angrier than he ever liked to come across. The frustration had taken over—another sign of his fading control. Control—that was what caused him the most frustration these nights, what caused the utter helplessness that he felt. Yes, he was officially dead. Yes, he had lost almost all his material possessions. But he would have been fine with all of that if at least he knew something of what he had been dragged into—if he had a little guidebook or some tips laid out for him on his hotel bed about what was going on. But he was clueless.
Two weeks ago, everything had been different. He had been Sam Davidsen, the kid who had sold a three year old startup to the value of several million dollars. He had gained a comfortable employment as a senior tech consultant and while the work itself had been merely tolerable, it had come with several perks. It was gainful enough that it could cover his cost of living and quite a lot more, and both influential enough that he could enjoy some control while anonymous enough to be free of that annoying spotlight. But now he, his boss, and his boss’ friend were dead, but unlike them he could not rest, instead he needed to rise every night to hunt for blood. A few times he tried to restrain himself from that hunger, to tell himself that he did not need it. After all, he had never had a voracious appetite alive. Why would it change now?
Then, he had felt it growing. That scratching in his head had grown so loud. What at first had simply told him to eat had grown frustrated. It told him to strike down anything he saw, to drop the facade, these fake niceties of civilization, and to see the world for what it was. A field full of rivers of blood from which all was free to drink from and use to slake his never ending thirst. Once, that thing had taken full control from him. It had left him bloody, messy, and dazed in an alley that he did not recognise. After that, he never dared to challenge it directly again. The bloodlust had proven that it was in charge.
So he did not judge his companion’s hunger in this nightmare trip; he knew that she must feel the same as he did, having had the same experiences or maybe worse. At least, he liked to tell himself that it was sympathy. The truth was a lot more complicated. On one hand, he could feel like he was good in comparison to her. Like he still had enough self-control to keep himself just satiated, teasing the hunger -that new enemy of his- and proving he still had some control over his own body, of his own mind. On the other hand was the much simpler fact, she had a pretty face and was his only companion in this darkness. Both factors made it hard to argue with her, and the risk of a fight was one he did not wish to take.
He gazed back at the computer and again clicked his tongue in frustration at the sight of it. He pushed his mind to work as he began to slowly but steadily clean up his hotel room. He had hoped that his computer would help him; he had searched both The Grapevine and various other forums for dirt on people. He had hoped he could use it to trap someone, instead of wasting his time on the streets. In the long run, it would be easier. But there had been no bite on the line; all the traps were empty. In hindsight he knew it was a hopeless pursuit. These kinds of things took weeks or months, especially if he wanted to be discreet. But in that time, his companion would want to be out. She spoke of Mexico as some haven where all their worries would be gone, but he knew it was a fairy tale. After all, what kind of shadow government would not control Mexico? What more knowledge would they gain about their condition from them fleeing from one city to another? He folded the last piece of paper, putting it into his bag and gazed out over his room. He was a bit more satisfied with how it looked now. Nobody would have hired him as a maid for the job he’d done, but it had been enough to leave him feeling a bit better. His worries mellowed from frustration to annoyance and annoyance, he could address.
He took out his phone and messaged his companion in the room across the hall, on a line he knew was secure: “Going for a walk and maybe a drink.” He threw on a sweater and his trademark cap and set off for the nearest dispensary. He had not really felt the last joint, but surely he just needed something stronger. Surely it could still have an effect. Surely.
“This shit ain’t like you Samuel…”
He snapped quietly at himself. His voice was angrier than he ever liked to come across. The frustration had taken over—another sign of his fading control. Control—that was what caused him the most frustration these nights, what caused the utter helplessness that he felt. Yes, he was officially dead. Yes, he had lost almost all his material possessions. But he would have been fine with all of that if at least he knew something of what he had been dragged into—if he had a little guidebook or some tips laid out for him on his hotel bed about what was going on. But he was clueless.
Two weeks ago, everything had been different. He had been Sam Davidsen, the kid who had sold a three year old startup to the value of several million dollars. He had gained a comfortable employment as a senior tech consultant and while the work itself had been merely tolerable, it had come with several perks. It was gainful enough that it could cover his cost of living and quite a lot more, and both influential enough that he could enjoy some control while anonymous enough to be free of that annoying spotlight. But now he, his boss, and his boss’ friend were dead, but unlike them he could not rest, instead he needed to rise every night to hunt for blood. A few times he tried to restrain himself from that hunger, to tell himself that he did not need it. After all, he had never had a voracious appetite alive. Why would it change now?
Then, he had felt it growing. That scratching in his head had grown so loud. What at first had simply told him to eat had grown frustrated. It told him to strike down anything he saw, to drop the facade, these fake niceties of civilization, and to see the world for what it was. A field full of rivers of blood from which all was free to drink from and use to slake his never ending thirst. Once, that thing had taken full control from him. It had left him bloody, messy, and dazed in an alley that he did not recognise. After that, he never dared to challenge it directly again. The bloodlust had proven that it was in charge.
So he did not judge his companion’s hunger in this nightmare trip; he knew that she must feel the same as he did, having had the same experiences or maybe worse. At least, he liked to tell himself that it was sympathy. The truth was a lot more complicated. On one hand, he could feel like he was good in comparison to her. Like he still had enough self-control to keep himself just satiated, teasing the hunger -that new enemy of his- and proving he still had some control over his own body, of his own mind. On the other hand was the much simpler fact, she had a pretty face and was his only companion in this darkness. Both factors made it hard to argue with her, and the risk of a fight was one he did not wish to take.
He gazed back at the computer and again clicked his tongue in frustration at the sight of it. He pushed his mind to work as he began to slowly but steadily clean up his hotel room. He had hoped that his computer would help him; he had searched both The Grapevine and various other forums for dirt on people. He had hoped he could use it to trap someone, instead of wasting his time on the streets. In the long run, it would be easier. But there had been no bite on the line; all the traps were empty. In hindsight he knew it was a hopeless pursuit. These kinds of things took weeks or months, especially if he wanted to be discreet. But in that time, his companion would want to be out. She spoke of Mexico as some haven where all their worries would be gone, but he knew it was a fairy tale. After all, what kind of shadow government would not control Mexico? What more knowledge would they gain about their condition from them fleeing from one city to another? He folded the last piece of paper, putting it into his bag and gazed out over his room. He was a bit more satisfied with how it looked now. Nobody would have hired him as a maid for the job he’d done, but it had been enough to leave him feeling a bit better. His worries mellowed from frustration to annoyance and annoyance, he could address.
He took out his phone and messaged his companion in the room across the hall, on a line he knew was secure: “Going for a walk and maybe a drink.” He threw on a sweater and his trademark cap and set off for the nearest dispensary. He had not really felt the last joint, but surely he just needed something stronger. Surely it could still have an effect. Surely.
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6 mos ago
They walked in sudden silence. Stepping across small ponds of light that emerged from the concrete floor beneath them. Darkness veiled the edges of the parking garage, masking the decay that she tasted in the air. Flickering canopy lights shrouded the paltry tomb that drew her closer. The empty spots stacked like crumbled tombstones. Connie was quiet. His usual sauntering, swaggering bravado had faded, replaced by a stiffness she might have once attributed to shame in the big man.
“Sheesh. For a second there I thought he might actually do it this time,” he said, breaking the silence, voice laced with a humor she knew was supposed to disarm her.
Teresa shot him a sideways glance, letting the words shatter, her eyes narrowing into slits.
“What?”
“Isn’t this the part where you apologize?” she said—”pretend like you don’t do this every god damn time?”
He hesitated like he knew he was kicking a beehive. “... Gets us past the tape, don’t it?”
“God, you’re such a fucking prick,” she snarled, gesturing at him, the creases tightening around her eyes. She kicked a discarded can in his direction, willing him to flinch. “Why am I even surprised anymore?”
Connie threw up his hands; hiss-whispering so the cops didn’t overhear. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I have a hammer and every problem named McGlinn around here is a damn nail.”
“Look,” she said, leaning, leering, matching his contemptible tone, ”see if I care when you go and get yourself ashed. Whatever bakes your cake, right? Just do it far away from me.”
“Yeah, sure, because you’re Ms. Strictly Business, right? Bitching at me is getting this case solved faster, right, T? Jesus.” Connie reached into his jacket; buried whatever insult he’d lined up next; must’ve decided better of it, but Teresa saw it there, primed upon his tongue, loaded like a shell into a torpedo tube. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Placing one in his mouth and lighting it with what resembled a miniature gold bar, the butane flame hissing sharp and see-through-blue. He stopped some three feet away from the body, letting out a puff of acrid smoke. He only smoked the cheap shit. Lucky Strikes, on a good day. “So. Another one already.”
“Five bodies in five days. Not very careful. Not very smart. Almost reminds me of someone.” Teresa held out her hand expectantly.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said, obliging anyway: clicking the flame back to life, kissing it to the other end of the cigarette as she slotted the filter between her lips. “They’re icing guys almost faster than we can mop ‘em up. Addicted to the hunt?”
“Or they’re burning through vitae like hummingbirds with sugar-water.”
Connie shrugged. Taking out a battered flip-phone, he snapped a few shots of the body. Tiny and grainy but indispensable. Then he began to frisk. A wallet first, dredged from cargo short pockets; unfolding it, a driver’s license.
“Curtis Prince DeWayne. Twentyyyyyyyy—” a moment’s mental math—”nine years old. Washington Square, no endorsements, blah, blah, blah, yadda yadda. No cash, no......hmm.”
“Cards?”
“Debit. And an EBT.”
“Food Stamps,” Teresa exclaimed.
“Yeah. Hardly the Strip’s favorite whale.” Connie had restored the wallet’s contents to its folds and tossed it aside; was examining the hands then, pale and tepid. The exsanguination couldn’t hide it: there were tan lines where the man had habitually worn a large ring; maybe a class or community college football memento. The wrist, likewise, had once hosted a large, gaudy watch. “But by the looks of it, neither are they.”
“Yeah,” she huffed, the exhale visible: milky with smoke. “So, they only took cash and pawnables.”
“They couldn’t take the cards because they can’t get past the PINs.”
“Yes, none of this screams a well-thought-out plan. What else?“
“Dunno,” Connie said. “The question is whether they’re out to make this look like a robbery, or actually need the dough.”
“Strip ain’t cheap. Assuming that’s where they’ve holed up.”
“So far I’d bet on it.”
She let the silence settle, waited until it grew heavy. “Yeah?”
Connie sighed. “First they were attacking randoms, right? White, black, female, shemale. Anyone they could get their claws in. But enough incidents like that, safety alerts start going out; tourists stay in their hotel rooms after dark; it’s bad for business, and what’s bad for business gets handled, yeah? So they’re starting to figure it out: keep it on the D.L. Hunt away from the nest, especially north, toward Sunset Manor and downtown. Don’t shit where they eat. Profile the kinds of people who like to go missing anyway. Overdosers. Bums freezing to death beneath the overpass. Gangbangers.”
He looked over his shoulder, clocking where the cops were standing; where their attention lied. His voice dropped. “He’s also, you know, not a pile of tatters like the last one. There’s some of him left. They’re Frenzying less than before. I know you hate giving credit where it’s due—least of all to anyone who’s not you—but they are getting smarter.”
“Barely,” Teresa retorted. She prodded the body with the toe of a boot, permitting herself a faint smile. “At this rate they might even last the week.”
“Alright, Columbo, why haven’t you caught ‘em, then?”
“I told you already, tarado: you can’t rush these things. Maybe if you weren’t so busy rolling in the mud with the local pigs we’d have more bodies to examine.”
“I’ll rush my foot in your ass if you don’t can it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s see the map, vato. Where does this one fit into your little doodles?”
“What, you forgot already?” he replied, unfolding a map from his suit jacket’s Napoleon. Gesturing to each circle or X, penned in thick marker, as he rambled it off. “Look, every attack is further than the last. John Doe, Naked City. Breanna Webb, Maryland and Laguna. Graciela Gomez, the Walmart by the airport. Here’s Glen Bell. Oh, and just so it’s on the record, here’s—” he pointed to an unmarked spot, way out in the tan elevation lines of the Mojave Desert—”where I’m going to bury the next beaner bitch who tries to nag me to death.”
She laughed, placing a hand on her hip, and shaking her head, “Someone has to keep an idiot like you on task.”
“If you’re nice to me I’ll even bury a few more assholes on top of you. Should keep you good and cozy, you corpse-licker.”
“Always the charmer, aren’t you, Connie? How many of your ex-wives did you bury out there first?”
“Wanna find out? There’s plenty of room in that grave for the lot of you.”
“Might as well. Those girls and I all have something in common: we’ve all dealt with your bullshit.“
“Good, good. Plenty to talk about.”
“Hey, assholes,” McGlinn interjected, his outcry bouncing off the bare concrete walls of the parking garage. “Is this a crime scene or a teenaged sleepover? Cut the chitchat.”
Connie shot him a scowl. “We’re working on it.”
“Psssh. Go work the damn poles if this is the best you can manage.”
Connie didn’t budge. He wasn’t rattled. He seemed, all said, just about ready to let it go. Still knelt beside the body, returning his attention to it, he didn’t rise to the provocations, drowning them out with some other internal noise. (A cuckoo clock. A jack-in-the-box. Circus music. She had all kinds of theories.) He was so close. Teresa was almost proud.
Then Austin McGlinn, determined to tempt fate, resolved to tease the caged tiger, stuck his hand one inch too far between the bars.
“Hey,” he oozed, “Beauclerc family trade, am I right? Maybe your sister can give you some pointers.”
Teresa froze in place, willing stiff blood to her muscles. Too far. McGlinn had gone too far. He’d crossed an invisible line. A line that had always been there whether he knew it or not. Connie’s chest rumbled with the kind of groan that could only mean calamity. A cauldron boiling over and wildfire licking up between the trees. The last of his patience curling and blackening. Fists balled together. He burst to his feet, turned towards the beat cop.
Springing from her crouch, Teresa swung without waiting. Her knuckles smashed into Connie’s flank, driving upwards into his kidney. He stumbled forward from the blow, taking a single heavy step, stale air shoved from his lungs.
In the time he realized he’d been struck she’d placed the same hand—gentler then—to his shoulder. His face was contorted with fury. No more jokes. No more laughs. Just rage. She didn’t bother to look at the cops. They weren’t important. Weren’t the danger. She mouthed a single breathless word to him: don’t.
And then she let go. She didn’t wait for the reply; didn’t need it. Instead she turned her attention back to the body. Kneeling down to resume her investigation. Acting as if she hadn’t just assaulted him. Ignoring that they had almost ended up in another gunfight. Death had called for her. That was what intrigued her.
She pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves from inside her trenchcoat. Connie didn’t move. But she knew he was staring. Eyes searing into McGlinn. Hatred still pumping to fists which could hit like buckshot.
“I’m gonna go...... uh, terrorize the parking attendant or something,” he finally said.
“Shit, he even listens to the pants in the relationship? I should upgrade; put a ring on it; eh, Cole?” McGlinn quipped.
“Shut the fuck up, Oz,” his partner snarled.
“Sheesh. For a second there I thought he might actually do it this time,” he said, breaking the silence, voice laced with a humor she knew was supposed to disarm her.
Teresa shot him a sideways glance, letting the words shatter, her eyes narrowing into slits.
“What?”
“Isn’t this the part where you apologize?” she said—”pretend like you don’t do this every god damn time?”
He hesitated like he knew he was kicking a beehive. “... Gets us past the tape, don’t it?”
“God, you’re such a fucking prick,” she snarled, gesturing at him, the creases tightening around her eyes. She kicked a discarded can in his direction, willing him to flinch. “Why am I even surprised anymore?”
Connie threw up his hands; hiss-whispering so the cops didn’t overhear. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I have a hammer and every problem named McGlinn around here is a damn nail.”
“Look,” she said, leaning, leering, matching his contemptible tone, ”see if I care when you go and get yourself ashed. Whatever bakes your cake, right? Just do it far away from me.”
“Yeah, sure, because you’re Ms. Strictly Business, right? Bitching at me is getting this case solved faster, right, T? Jesus.” Connie reached into his jacket; buried whatever insult he’d lined up next; must’ve decided better of it, but Teresa saw it there, primed upon his tongue, loaded like a shell into a torpedo tube. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Placing one in his mouth and lighting it with what resembled a miniature gold bar, the butane flame hissing sharp and see-through-blue. He stopped some three feet away from the body, letting out a puff of acrid smoke. He only smoked the cheap shit. Lucky Strikes, on a good day. “So. Another one already.”
“Five bodies in five days. Not very careful. Not very smart. Almost reminds me of someone.” Teresa held out her hand expectantly.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said, obliging anyway: clicking the flame back to life, kissing it to the other end of the cigarette as she slotted the filter between her lips. “They’re icing guys almost faster than we can mop ‘em up. Addicted to the hunt?”
“Or they’re burning through vitae like hummingbirds with sugar-water.”
Connie shrugged. Taking out a battered flip-phone, he snapped a few shots of the body. Tiny and grainy but indispensable. Then he began to frisk. A wallet first, dredged from cargo short pockets; unfolding it, a driver’s license.
“Curtis Prince DeWayne. Twentyyyyyyyy—” a moment’s mental math—”nine years old. Washington Square, no endorsements, blah, blah, blah, yadda yadda. No cash, no......hmm.”
“Cards?”
“Debit. And an EBT.”
“Food Stamps,” Teresa exclaimed.
“Yeah. Hardly the Strip’s favorite whale.” Connie had restored the wallet’s contents to its folds and tossed it aside; was examining the hands then, pale and tepid. The exsanguination couldn’t hide it: there were tan lines where the man had habitually worn a large ring; maybe a class or community college football memento. The wrist, likewise, had once hosted a large, gaudy watch. “But by the looks of it, neither are they.”
“Yeah,” she huffed, the exhale visible: milky with smoke. “So, they only took cash and pawnables.”
“They couldn’t take the cards because they can’t get past the PINs.”
“Yes, none of this screams a well-thought-out plan. What else?“
“Dunno,” Connie said. “The question is whether they’re out to make this look like a robbery, or actually need the dough.”
“Strip ain’t cheap. Assuming that’s where they’ve holed up.”
“So far I’d bet on it.”
She let the silence settle, waited until it grew heavy. “Yeah?”
Connie sighed. “First they were attacking randoms, right? White, black, female, shemale. Anyone they could get their claws in. But enough incidents like that, safety alerts start going out; tourists stay in their hotel rooms after dark; it’s bad for business, and what’s bad for business gets handled, yeah? So they’re starting to figure it out: keep it on the D.L. Hunt away from the nest, especially north, toward Sunset Manor and downtown. Don’t shit where they eat. Profile the kinds of people who like to go missing anyway. Overdosers. Bums freezing to death beneath the overpass. Gangbangers.”
He looked over his shoulder, clocking where the cops were standing; where their attention lied. His voice dropped. “He’s also, you know, not a pile of tatters like the last one. There’s some of him left. They’re Frenzying less than before. I know you hate giving credit where it’s due—least of all to anyone who’s not you—but they are getting smarter.”
“Barely,” Teresa retorted. She prodded the body with the toe of a boot, permitting herself a faint smile. “At this rate they might even last the week.”
“Alright, Columbo, why haven’t you caught ‘em, then?”
“I told you already, tarado: you can’t rush these things. Maybe if you weren’t so busy rolling in the mud with the local pigs we’d have more bodies to examine.”
“I’ll rush my foot in your ass if you don’t can it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s see the map, vato. Where does this one fit into your little doodles?”
“What, you forgot already?” he replied, unfolding a map from his suit jacket’s Napoleon. Gesturing to each circle or X, penned in thick marker, as he rambled it off. “Look, every attack is further than the last. John Doe, Naked City. Breanna Webb, Maryland and Laguna. Graciela Gomez, the Walmart by the airport. Here’s Glen Bell. Oh, and just so it’s on the record, here’s—” he pointed to an unmarked spot, way out in the tan elevation lines of the Mojave Desert—”where I’m going to bury the next beaner bitch who tries to nag me to death.”
She laughed, placing a hand on her hip, and shaking her head, “Someone has to keep an idiot like you on task.”
“If you’re nice to me I’ll even bury a few more assholes on top of you. Should keep you good and cozy, you corpse-licker.”
“Always the charmer, aren’t you, Connie? How many of your ex-wives did you bury out there first?”
“Wanna find out? There’s plenty of room in that grave for the lot of you.”
“Might as well. Those girls and I all have something in common: we’ve all dealt with your bullshit.“
“Good, good. Plenty to talk about.”
“Hey, assholes,” McGlinn interjected, his outcry bouncing off the bare concrete walls of the parking garage. “Is this a crime scene or a teenaged sleepover? Cut the chitchat.”
Connie shot him a scowl. “We’re working on it.”
“Psssh. Go work the damn poles if this is the best you can manage.”
Connie didn’t budge. He wasn’t rattled. He seemed, all said, just about ready to let it go. Still knelt beside the body, returning his attention to it, he didn’t rise to the provocations, drowning them out with some other internal noise. (A cuckoo clock. A jack-in-the-box. Circus music. She had all kinds of theories.) He was so close. Teresa was almost proud.
Then Austin McGlinn, determined to tempt fate, resolved to tease the caged tiger, stuck his hand one inch too far between the bars.
“Hey,” he oozed, “Beauclerc family trade, am I right? Maybe your sister can give you some pointers.”
Teresa froze in place, willing stiff blood to her muscles. Too far. McGlinn had gone too far. He’d crossed an invisible line. A line that had always been there whether he knew it or not. Connie’s chest rumbled with the kind of groan that could only mean calamity. A cauldron boiling over and wildfire licking up between the trees. The last of his patience curling and blackening. Fists balled together. He burst to his feet, turned towards the beat cop.
Springing from her crouch, Teresa swung without waiting. Her knuckles smashed into Connie’s flank, driving upwards into his kidney. He stumbled forward from the blow, taking a single heavy step, stale air shoved from his lungs.
In the time he realized he’d been struck she’d placed the same hand—gentler then—to his shoulder. His face was contorted with fury. No more jokes. No more laughs. Just rage. She didn’t bother to look at the cops. They weren’t important. Weren’t the danger. She mouthed a single breathless word to him: don’t.
And then she let go. She didn’t wait for the reply; didn’t need it. Instead she turned her attention back to the body. Kneeling down to resume her investigation. Acting as if she hadn’t just assaulted him. Ignoring that they had almost ended up in another gunfight. Death had called for her. That was what intrigued her.
She pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves from inside her trenchcoat. Connie didn’t move. But she knew he was staring. Eyes searing into McGlinn. Hatred still pumping to fists which could hit like buckshot.
“I’m gonna go...... uh, terrorize the parking attendant or something,” he finally said.
“Shit, he even listens to the pants in the relationship? I should upgrade; put a ring on it; eh, Cole?” McGlinn quipped.
“Shut the fuck up, Oz,” his partner snarled.
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10 hrs ago
Like owl chicks peering warily from a tree cavity—like feral cats crouched in a junkyard, dinnerplate eyes all aglow with unease—like skittish children clutched to their mothers' legs—all of MacDonald Highlands paused, and listened, and tensed as a solitary V-twin rumbled past. On any other road this would have been nothing unusual; every night they ran 93 and the Blue Diamond in packs, Hell's Angels and Sisters of Perdition, Mongols and Charons, whooping, carousing, patrolling, chasing each other across their "turfs." And every week, one or two brain-painted the Beltway, crayoned the asphalt with their back tattoos. And once or twice a month page ten of the Sun or the Optic or the Review-Journal regaled the sleepy suburbs with the legend of the latest knife brawl: denim-clad road cretins stomping into battle, smashing up some dive bar. Being dragged away by their feet from puddles of their own leakage and dying in the ambulance. And the people would scowl, and the people would shake their heads, tutting, and they would say they feel sorry for the mothers and the sisters but at least there's one less rabid animal in the world needs putting out of its misery. Then they would go back to their golfing.
Not tonight, however. Tonight the lone biker turned off the Horizon Ridge Parkway and into the neighborhood; their neighborhood. Past their combed pebble lawns and aloe vera hedges. Past their community clubhouse and their community swimming pool. Past their craft beer gastropubs with $21 dollar truffle aioli cheeseburgers (fries not included). Past their country club. And that would have been bad enough even if he was the tidy, respectable kind of outlaw: the kind who only rode to work and back and maybe on Sunday afternoons when the heat wasn't so bad, the kind who'd bought his Marlon Brando jacket and Kevlar jeans from the same dealership as where he'd got the bike, the kind named Harvey or Stan who owned a dental practice and went to brunch in boating shorts, the familiar kind, respectable, safe to gossip about over the phone. But he wasn't. This was one of those engine-oil-under-the-fingernails, dust-in-his-teeth kinds of brigands. His leathers chapped and his denim matted and the folds of his ears all black with road soot. A knotted, lousy, uniquely pungent freak-breed, streaking down their boulevards like a comet, his tail an oil slick of unwashed hair and hot exhaust. With the sort of indignation only the upper-middle-class can muster, they stirred from their queen-sized microfiber sheets, flicked on their porch lights, curdled behind their shuttered windows and deadbolted front doors; made sure the creature didn't stop for water on its way to anywhere else but there. They wondered, some of them aloud, whether it was even legal to have pipes that loud at hours this late; they wondered, some of them aloud, why they even paid their H.O.A. dues if it wasn't going to keep out "those sorts of people."
All the trendiest bars hadn't shuttered yet for the night so they were still out there—out on the balmy sidewalks—the ones slurping down smoked salmon pizza under fancy umbrellas; busking out two-bit Simon & Garfunkel renditions on buzzy instruments in front of lacy shop windows, for dollars pity-thrown into the propped-open guitar case. Some plugged their ears as he passed, the scoundrel, his tailpipes snarling, engine crooning. Some traced him with leery, narrowed gazes, wrung like dry sponges over their hazy citrus IPAs and spiced chai martinis. But for the crime of popping their little bubble—of reminding them that crime exists in the world and cruelty and bombs and most wretchedly of all, poor people—unanimously they recoiled, and glowered—the revs shivering in the waters of their spines. A few moments passed. Down the street, past the golf course, up into the hills until his clamor had drowned in the rest of the evening ambiance. And so grateful were the MacDonalds Highlanders to once more hear their companions' blithe, gormless chatter, and the mediocre cover bands, and even the other (ordinary) traffic, they didn't stop to wonder what kind of business could have brought one of the SCYTHIANS all the way out to the mansions. That's what the back of his jacket had said, all thick Tuscan lettering scrolled above the gang's center patch: a horse archer in profile, full nock, full draw, clenching a Harley instead of a stallion between his pajamaed thighs. He was still riding long after they'd forgotten about him. Still riding when adobe walls and decorative cacti gave way to lank roots clutched to tawny shards of rock; saltbush and globemallow and blots of swaying goldenheads. When he'd put Henderson so far behind him that it resembled a lichen more than a town, warm bioluminescence mottled across the ink-blue skin of the night. Frenchman Mountain, usually looming Acquiline noselike over the sagebrushed upper lip of the valley, now barely a freckle against the light-polluted sky.
Mercifully the dirt road congealed into one final stripe of asphalt, dying in the curl of a cul-de-sac. A single villa jutted there, moonlight glistening off the mission tiles, the aquamarine backglow of a swimming pool shimmering along its north wall. A small fleet of luxury towncars, black and silent and glinting like beetles. Mr. Keene already guarded the front step; had already heard the ascent; already affected in his demeanor that the lone rider was expected—though not exactly welcomed.
A gentleman never shouted so he waited until the biker had pawed the killswitch, until the engine had lumbered to a halt, hiss-ticking as it cooled. Until one boot had shoved the kickstand and the other had swayed up and over the saddle and there stood the intruder in all his ramshackle glory, leering up at him. "Yes. Can I help you?" dribbled the majordomo's question from mustachioed, sneering lip, wary and contemptuous. The biker took his first step.
"If you are not expected then you will have to wait," Keene continued, seeing that. "Mr. Pagani is a very busy man and there are proper channels for—and there are—look, you, all the doors are Warded. No one gets in without our wanting it—or without burning."
That warning—that word and that word alone—Warded—gave pause to the Scythian; who all the while had been approaching the granite-flagstoned stoop. Only with one boot already planted upon the very bottom step did he hesitate. Chuckling.
"Last I checked I don't need your permission, thrall," he rasped, more inconvenienced than angered, "not when your hand will open that door just fine. Still attached to the rest a you or no it makes no difference to me."
The Scythian smiled a coffee and cigarette-yellowed smile, gleaming with more than one black-tarnished silver tooth. Keene was beginning to squirm, the jellying of his bowels threatening to erode at his practiced, urbane exterior. Seemed the ghoul of a deadly and powerful ancillae was still only a ghoul. But with the night whiling, the visitor rolled his eyes, and feigned some newfound interest away in the hedgerows. Feigned something bored and nonchalant, entirely unconcerned with this little standoff in which they'd found themselves. Even as the manservant's scrawny neck tantalized him. Even as he made himself seem the juiciest little morsel, ripe for the plucking.
"Whatever. Just make sure he gets this and we're square." He reached into the Napoleon of his leather jacket; unrolled what looked like a magazine, its covers all glossed and anchovy-crammed with banners, with insets, with QR codes. With a toss it fluttered from his iron eagle-bedecked fingers to Keene's feet, clumsy as a half-burned moth escaping the candle, flapping stiff like a housefly drunk on bug spray. Keene, with his bad knees and bad lower back, struggled down into a crouch. It was one of those casino brochures: coupons and calendars, celeb sightings and stand-up comedy promos. Peeling through the contents, he noticed the first of several circlings made in permanent marker: the word "Blackjack," appearing in a full two-page spread for a high-stakes tournament two weeks away. Eight pages later, the name of Caligula's Hotel & Casino (running a variety of dinner specials at its Mediterranean-themed wine-bar-buffet). A $53,425 dollar slots jackpot not yet won at the El Dorado: of five digits, only one underlined (the first five). Finally, a cabaret schedule, wherein was circled one date of many: tonight's date.
The message was quickly revealing itself to the majordomo, still shrewd despite his years.
"And assuming this drivel even means anything," he called back to the Scythian, the latter already saddling up, straightening the handlebars, nudging the kickstand back up against the frame, "who is this 'we' to whom he should make out his reply?"
Just before a chirp from his starter button and the engine's ensuing grunt, the biker warned, "He knows who it's from." Then, squealing the bike into a tailspin, and speeding away back down the hill, he left the ghoul unscathed; to inhale the bitter smoke from his rear tire, and wonder, and clutch his heart as sheer relief flooded his arteries.
Not tonight, however. Tonight the lone biker turned off the Horizon Ridge Parkway and into the neighborhood; their neighborhood. Past their combed pebble lawns and aloe vera hedges. Past their community clubhouse and their community swimming pool. Past their craft beer gastropubs with $21 dollar truffle aioli cheeseburgers (fries not included). Past their country club. And that would have been bad enough even if he was the tidy, respectable kind of outlaw: the kind who only rode to work and back and maybe on Sunday afternoons when the heat wasn't so bad, the kind who'd bought his Marlon Brando jacket and Kevlar jeans from the same dealership as where he'd got the bike, the kind named Harvey or Stan who owned a dental practice and went to brunch in boating shorts, the familiar kind, respectable, safe to gossip about over the phone. But he wasn't. This was one of those engine-oil-under-the-fingernails, dust-in-his-teeth kinds of brigands. His leathers chapped and his denim matted and the folds of his ears all black with road soot. A knotted, lousy, uniquely pungent freak-breed, streaking down their boulevards like a comet, his tail an oil slick of unwashed hair and hot exhaust. With the sort of indignation only the upper-middle-class can muster, they stirred from their queen-sized microfiber sheets, flicked on their porch lights, curdled behind their shuttered windows and deadbolted front doors; made sure the creature didn't stop for water on its way to anywhere else but there. They wondered, some of them aloud, whether it was even legal to have pipes that loud at hours this late; they wondered, some of them aloud, why they even paid their H.O.A. dues if it wasn't going to keep out "those sorts of people."
All the trendiest bars hadn't shuttered yet for the night so they were still out there—out on the balmy sidewalks—the ones slurping down smoked salmon pizza under fancy umbrellas; busking out two-bit Simon & Garfunkel renditions on buzzy instruments in front of lacy shop windows, for dollars pity-thrown into the propped-open guitar case. Some plugged their ears as he passed, the scoundrel, his tailpipes snarling, engine crooning. Some traced him with leery, narrowed gazes, wrung like dry sponges over their hazy citrus IPAs and spiced chai martinis. But for the crime of popping their little bubble—of reminding them that crime exists in the world and cruelty and bombs and most wretchedly of all, poor people—unanimously they recoiled, and glowered—the revs shivering in the waters of their spines. A few moments passed. Down the street, past the golf course, up into the hills until his clamor had drowned in the rest of the evening ambiance. And so grateful were the MacDonalds Highlanders to once more hear their companions' blithe, gormless chatter, and the mediocre cover bands, and even the other (ordinary) traffic, they didn't stop to wonder what kind of business could have brought one of the SCYTHIANS all the way out to the mansions. That's what the back of his jacket had said, all thick Tuscan lettering scrolled above the gang's center patch: a horse archer in profile, full nock, full draw, clenching a Harley instead of a stallion between his pajamaed thighs. He was still riding long after they'd forgotten about him. Still riding when adobe walls and decorative cacti gave way to lank roots clutched to tawny shards of rock; saltbush and globemallow and blots of swaying goldenheads. When he'd put Henderson so far behind him that it resembled a lichen more than a town, warm bioluminescence mottled across the ink-blue skin of the night. Frenchman Mountain, usually looming Acquiline noselike over the sagebrushed upper lip of the valley, now barely a freckle against the light-polluted sky.
Mercifully the dirt road congealed into one final stripe of asphalt, dying in the curl of a cul-de-sac. A single villa jutted there, moonlight glistening off the mission tiles, the aquamarine backglow of a swimming pool shimmering along its north wall. A small fleet of luxury towncars, black and silent and glinting like beetles. Mr. Keene already guarded the front step; had already heard the ascent; already affected in his demeanor that the lone rider was expected—though not exactly welcomed.
A gentleman never shouted so he waited until the biker had pawed the killswitch, until the engine had lumbered to a halt, hiss-ticking as it cooled. Until one boot had shoved the kickstand and the other had swayed up and over the saddle and there stood the intruder in all his ramshackle glory, leering up at him. "Yes. Can I help you?" dribbled the majordomo's question from mustachioed, sneering lip, wary and contemptuous. The biker took his first step.
"If you are not expected then you will have to wait," Keene continued, seeing that. "Mr. Pagani is a very busy man and there are proper channels for—and there are—look, you, all the doors are Warded. No one gets in without our wanting it—or without burning."
That warning—that word and that word alone—Warded—gave pause to the Scythian; who all the while had been approaching the granite-flagstoned stoop. Only with one boot already planted upon the very bottom step did he hesitate. Chuckling.
"Last I checked I don't need your permission, thrall," he rasped, more inconvenienced than angered, "not when your hand will open that door just fine. Still attached to the rest a you or no it makes no difference to me."
The Scythian smiled a coffee and cigarette-yellowed smile, gleaming with more than one black-tarnished silver tooth. Keene was beginning to squirm, the jellying of his bowels threatening to erode at his practiced, urbane exterior. Seemed the ghoul of a deadly and powerful ancillae was still only a ghoul. But with the night whiling, the visitor rolled his eyes, and feigned some newfound interest away in the hedgerows. Feigned something bored and nonchalant, entirely unconcerned with this little standoff in which they'd found themselves. Even as the manservant's scrawny neck tantalized him. Even as he made himself seem the juiciest little morsel, ripe for the plucking.
"Whatever. Just make sure he gets this and we're square." He reached into the Napoleon of his leather jacket; unrolled what looked like a magazine, its covers all glossed and anchovy-crammed with banners, with insets, with QR codes. With a toss it fluttered from his iron eagle-bedecked fingers to Keene's feet, clumsy as a half-burned moth escaping the candle, flapping stiff like a housefly drunk on bug spray. Keene, with his bad knees and bad lower back, struggled down into a crouch. It was one of those casino brochures: coupons and calendars, celeb sightings and stand-up comedy promos. Peeling through the contents, he noticed the first of several circlings made in permanent marker: the word "Blackjack," appearing in a full two-page spread for a high-stakes tournament two weeks away. Eight pages later, the name of Caligula's Hotel & Casino (running a variety of dinner specials at its Mediterranean-themed wine-bar-buffet). A $53,425 dollar slots jackpot not yet won at the El Dorado: of five digits, only one underlined (the first five). Finally, a cabaret schedule, wherein was circled one date of many: tonight's date.
The message was quickly revealing itself to the majordomo, still shrewd despite his years.
"And assuming this drivel even means anything," he called back to the Scythian, the latter already saddling up, straightening the handlebars, nudging the kickstand back up against the frame, "who is this 'we' to whom he should make out his reply?"
Just before a chirp from his starter button and the engine's ensuing grunt, the biker warned, "He knows who it's from." Then, squealing the bike into a tailspin, and speeding away back down the hill, he left the ghoul unscathed; to inhale the bitter smoke from his rear tire, and wonder, and clutch his heart as sheer relief flooded his arteries.
3x Like
This trip was meant to be a celebration. This was the first summer that felt free from COVID. This was the first summer she and her friends could legally drink. They’d pulled out all the stops. They were supposed to be crowded together here, getting ready for another night out, chatting about plans, people, and everything else. It should have stayed that way. It was going so well. Things were looking bright. Now, everything felt wrong. Now, everything looked wrong. Now, there was no sound except for those vanity lights. Their hum was getting maddening.
She had to try again. She wiped her face clean. The deathly reflection glared back at her again the moment she looked back at the mirror. Her phone was propped up on the counter. The zoomed-in screenshot of her driver’s license picture on LA Wallet felt like it was mocking her. She felt more like a mosquito trapped in a bug zapper than the twenty-one-year-old version of that girl there.
There was no fixing this. No amount of contour would do the job. Whatever was wrong with her, it had destroyed years of dental work. She dragged her hands down her face. Ugly wasn’t good enough. It just looked so stupid. It was an unfixable overbite. Sam wasn’t stuck with his fangs, but Caroline? The oversized fangs that practically jabbed her lower gums weren’t even the worst part. Between them, she had these oversized incisors. And they were orange. It was like someone had jammed nutria teeth in her mouth. It was freakish. They forced her lips forward. It looked like she was holding an orange slice in her mouth. It was hard to even speak properly.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to scream, cry, or slam her head into the mirror.
This was a waste of time. She was already an hour behind, with nothing to show for it. But if her plan was going to work, she needed to find a way to compensate for the deformities. The security at a few casinos had done double-takes. They weren’t even giving her money. Whoever at the check cashing place would be checking her ID needed to be damn certain she was who she said she was.
The mirror gave her an answer. COVID. She looked sick. If she just stopped by the CVS on the way, got a mask, and made a little show of acting and sounding as sick as she looked, they just might buy it...
For her entire walk to Moneytree, Caroline went over the plan with herself. Greet the clerk. Play meek about it. Use hand sanitizer liberally. Apologize and chatter about being “Not shure what I’be got, but I’m being ekshtra cautioush.” Offer the check, wait for them to check her identity. Ask for twenties. Only remove the mask if asked. Only give a reason for the $9,000 check if asked. Keep it short. Keep it sweet. Look sick, exhausted—just not nervous. Remember: You want to get this over with. They just don’t need to know why.
She grasped at memories of sickliness to keep her motions delicate and shaky as she pushed the office’s door open. The clerk greeted her warmly. Caroline nodded and gave a languid little wave in return. Looking around, there were no people ahead of her. The clerk invited her forward just as it registered.
“How can I help you today, ma’am?”
For a moment, Caroline could almost believe her own act. Sam’s paranoid ramblings crashed about in her head, bringing a disoriented haze about her not unlike that of illness. It felt like she was staring. She jolted herself into action. She approached the counter properly.
“I’d like to cash a check, pleashe.”
The clerk cocked her head. Caroline quickly repeated herself more loudly to compensate for the mask. She fumbled around in her purse for some hand sanitizer as the clerk requested the check. Caroline delivered the cautionary song and dance about “not knowing what she had,” and then delivered the check once the clerk reassured her. The clerk requested ID. Caroline apologized again, offering her LA Wallet.
“Any other ID, ma’am?” the clerk drawled. Caroline hesitated, fumbled around in her purse, and then told the clerk she “just had the one.” She apologized again. The clerk eyed her, looking between the mobile ID and Caroline. She was quiet for a moment, then prompted Caroline to step back and take off her mask. When Caroline did so, the clerk nodded, sucked her teeth, dropped a little “Mmhmm,” then told Caroline she could put her mask back on. The clerk started typing, and started making small talk with Caroline as she did. Caroline murmured out minimal answers. Caroline could swear the clerk kept shooting glances at her as they chatted. It was wrong. It was all wrong. She was taking too long on that computer. Why was she squinting like that at the screen? What did she see? She got up. Why was she getting up?
Caroline felt her gut retreat in on itself. It felt like her insides were collapsing. Should she run? No, that would only look more suspicious. But what if the clerk came back with cops? What if she’d already called them and was buying time? What if that was why she’d taken so long on the computer? She wanted to book it. It was like that time she’d seen that street performer breathe fire. She’d seen the flambeaux plenty of times. She hadn’t flinched at the heat since she was a kid. And yet that time? She wasn’t even that close, and she wanted to jump into the nearest fountain. She had to force herself not to break into a sprint. She caught something in the corner of her eye. She snapped her head to look at a corner of the ceiling. Was this how Sam felt? Had that camera caught something? Was she screwed? She needed to get out. This was a terrible idea. She’d ruined everything with this stupid move. She needed to grab her phone and go. But she had to do it slowly. Carefully. Like she wasn’t fleeing.
Caroline’s hand crept forward along the counter. She grasped her phone and withdrew slowly. She turned and began to walk away, playing as calm as she could.
“Ma’am?”
Caroline froze. She turned slowly.
“Is everything alright?”
Caroline let out a nervous chuckle and began to fumble for an excuse—anything to pretend she wasn’t just about to run. As she laid eyes on the clerk, she saw no police. No gun. The clerk had an envelope. Caroline stopped stammering on the spot.
“Did you get your phone, ma’am?”
Caroline nodded. The clerk continued. Everything was in order. The clerk apologized for the wait, claiming she’d needed to go in the back to access the safe due to the amount Caroline had requested. Caroline stared at her blankly. The clerk delivered an expectant nod and shook the envelope.
“This is your withdrawal.”
Caroline approached hesitantly. The clerk gave her a confused squint. She set the envelope on the counter and slid in forward. Caroline pulled it towards her suspiciously, gave it a look, then looked again at the clerk. She muttered a sheepish thanks, and hurried off.
She darted off in an awkward half-gallop—the closest imitation of a jog she could muster with her cloven feet and digitigrade ankles. She kept on for several blocks, only stopping at the light. She kept wanting to breathe heavily, yet she felt neither the need to do so nor the relief of air when she did. She ran her hand through her hair. She needed to find somewhere private to check the envelope. They had to have known. They must have put one of those paint bombs inside or something similar—something to catch her red-handed as the undead, money-laundering freak of nature she was. No, that wasn’t right. They probably thought she was her own murderer, now masquerading as their victim to wring more money from her account. She looked in every direction, certain one of the cars would reveal police lights, a siren, and she’d be charged as her own murderer. Her entire family would be there. Her friends would be there. The image came together so easily. Everyone still living crowded the courtroom. All their eyes—their judgemental eyes staring at her. Picking her apart. Putting everything on her. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fucking fault. She hadn’t wanted to go to that shady private casino and get scammed. She’d told her friends as much. Her friends. Their ghosts were judging her instead of judging with her. She wanted to go home to her car and her family and everything else. She wanted to deposit everything and go home. But she’d get caught and arrested and charged and probably blamed for her friends being dead, like they weren’t her only real friends in the world. And then everyone would hate her. Like that was even the worst of her worries. They’d take her outside and make her look at the sun, and they’d laugh as she bubbled and burned and turned into cinders instead of getting a loving burial from her great-grandkids in seventy years. She didn’t even get to be a ghost with her—
Walgreens. It was right there. It probably had a bathroom. A single room, hopefully no cameras. She could wash the money. Make sure the paint, dye thingie—whatever!—wouldn’t get everywhere. Then she might not get caught. She forced herself back into a walk. It was still just as awkward as her run; it all looked sort of like she was unfamiliar with heels. She did two laps around the inside of the store before confirming that the bathroom was locked. Of course it was. They probably thought she was an addict, just like all the other vagrants who used the bathroom for God-knows-what. She had to prove she was normal—that she was a normal woman making normal purchases who used bathrooms for normal reasons. Her eyes went to a bottle of Coke. She could pour it out in the dirt and throw away the bottle afterwards. She could get it with a plastic bag so she could put her envelope of cash in there while she washed away the ink. Perfect.
She went to the register to check out. She requested a bag, then hesitated to leave after she’d gotten her habitual $100 of cash-back with her purchase. She asked for the bathroom key; the cashier then led her back and let her in. Caroline felt like she should have seen Sam in the mirror by the way she looked at every corner, in every nook, and in every cranny for hidden cameras. There were none that she could see. It was Walgreens. It was a bathroom. She hit herself in the forehead to try to get it through. Surely there wouldn’t be any cameras. Why was she looking! There wouldn’t be any cameras; that would be such an invasion of privacy!
Her attention returned to the sink. She stopped the drain with paper towels, then started filling the sink with hot water. While she waited, she poured the Coke out in the toilet and flushed it. When the sink was full, she shut the tap off, then put the envelope in the plastic bag and plunged it all under the water. Treating the bag as a shield, Caroline opened the envelope as if she were defusing a bomb.
Nothing went off. Bill by bill, she fished out her cash. $20, $40, $60... A stack she balanced on the edge of the sink. She felt her shoulders twitch with tension every few bills. How long was she taking? She tried to rush herself. But she needed to be careful, or she’d end up with a bunch of unusable bills. But she needed to hurry or the staff would come knocking, thinking she was doing drugs. Why hadn’t the dye pack gone off?
$9000. She recounted three times. How tiny could the dye pack be? She couldn’t have just gotten away with this, could she?
Caroline doused the money several times before an employee knocking at the door finally snapped her out of it. She stuffed the shredded remnants of the envelope and the plastic bag into the trash, washed her hands, then wrapped her money in paper towels and stuffed the wad into her purse. She opened the door and saw the employee who’d knocked looking like she had been bracing for something. When Caroline muttered out an apology for taking so long, the employee let out a relieved sigh, then asked her if there was anything else she could help her with. The bathroom wasn’t trashed; Caroline didn’t need anything. They parted ways.
This had to be a trap. The cops hadn’t come because they must have been trying to get her to let her guard down. Previous murders flashed through her mind. Many were fairly close to ATMs. Had she been caught on camera? Was she a suspect in a bigger case? Standing at the stoplight, Caroline’s mind raced with explanations for the calm. It had to be a trick. It had to be. They were gathering evidence, preparing their case. Her body was gone. She was stealing evidence from a murder case by walking around! She’d get charged for killing everything. She’d probably get nailed for Sam too. But then they’d try to bring her into the sun and she’d burn. On camera, she’d burn in the sunlight and people would call it CGI while the feds would douse her and bring her inside, never to be seen again. Could she die? Could she even escape it? She’d be an experiment erased from everything. Nobody would remember her name. Nobody would pray for her, not even her mother. Did they even know what had happened to her now? Did anyone even know she was dead? Did they mourn her? When was her funeral going to be? Did she even get to have one, or was she just some terrible cold case slated to get rehashed on some television show or another, her only sympathisers relegated to some losers in sweatpants listening to podcasts and really, probably wanting to be her so they could live out some stupid fantasy of getting murdered by the maladjusted freaks that did this type of thing to people. Like Jeffrey what’s-his-fucking-name. The only people who’d know her story would be the audiences of true crime podcasts. Caroline wanted to retch.
She needed to get somewhere to check her social media, Sam’s advice be damned. If anyone knew anything, surely they’d have at least sent out feelers on some site or another. She’d resisted the temptation many times before. She’d deleted Facebook, Instagram, and anything else that she could log-in to from her phone. Checking what other people had to say about her death was vain and stupid. She knew that, even if it really did feel important. But this? This was different. This was fact-finding. This was finding out what people even knew about what had happened to her. And the perfect place to do it? It was tantalizingly close.
Clark County Library was literally across the street. She’d considered going there many times before. Now she was looking right at it, with all the reason in the world—in her mind—to take a look. Sam did online investigations on his personal laptop. Wasn’t she being more careful by using a library computer? If only she could speak as fast as the excuses came to her. She needed to know.
She had to try again. She wiped her face clean. The deathly reflection glared back at her again the moment she looked back at the mirror. Her phone was propped up on the counter. The zoomed-in screenshot of her driver’s license picture on LA Wallet felt like it was mocking her. She felt more like a mosquito trapped in a bug zapper than the twenty-one-year-old version of that girl there.
There was no fixing this. No amount of contour would do the job. Whatever was wrong with her, it had destroyed years of dental work. She dragged her hands down her face. Ugly wasn’t good enough. It just looked so stupid. It was an unfixable overbite. Sam wasn’t stuck with his fangs, but Caroline? The oversized fangs that practically jabbed her lower gums weren’t even the worst part. Between them, she had these oversized incisors. And they were orange. It was like someone had jammed nutria teeth in her mouth. It was freakish. They forced her lips forward. It looked like she was holding an orange slice in her mouth. It was hard to even speak properly.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to scream, cry, or slam her head into the mirror.
This was a waste of time. She was already an hour behind, with nothing to show for it. But if her plan was going to work, she needed to find a way to compensate for the deformities. The security at a few casinos had done double-takes. They weren’t even giving her money. Whoever at the check cashing place would be checking her ID needed to be damn certain she was who she said she was.
The mirror gave her an answer. COVID. She looked sick. If she just stopped by the CVS on the way, got a mask, and made a little show of acting and sounding as sick as she looked, they just might buy it...
╠══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══ ◇ ⯁ ◇ ═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩══╣
For her entire walk to Moneytree, Caroline went over the plan with herself. Greet the clerk. Play meek about it. Use hand sanitizer liberally. Apologize and chatter about being “Not shure what I’be got, but I’m being ekshtra cautioush.” Offer the check, wait for them to check her identity. Ask for twenties. Only remove the mask if asked. Only give a reason for the $9,000 check if asked. Keep it short. Keep it sweet. Look sick, exhausted—just not nervous. Remember: You want to get this over with. They just don’t need to know why.
She grasped at memories of sickliness to keep her motions delicate and shaky as she pushed the office’s door open. The clerk greeted her warmly. Caroline nodded and gave a languid little wave in return. Looking around, there were no people ahead of her. The clerk invited her forward just as it registered.
“How can I help you today, ma’am?”
For a moment, Caroline could almost believe her own act. Sam’s paranoid ramblings crashed about in her head, bringing a disoriented haze about her not unlike that of illness. It felt like she was staring. She jolted herself into action. She approached the counter properly.
“I’d like to cash a check, pleashe.”
The clerk cocked her head. Caroline quickly repeated herself more loudly to compensate for the mask. She fumbled around in her purse for some hand sanitizer as the clerk requested the check. Caroline delivered the cautionary song and dance about “not knowing what she had,” and then delivered the check once the clerk reassured her. The clerk requested ID. Caroline apologized again, offering her LA Wallet.
“Any other ID, ma’am?” the clerk drawled. Caroline hesitated, fumbled around in her purse, and then told the clerk she “just had the one.” She apologized again. The clerk eyed her, looking between the mobile ID and Caroline. She was quiet for a moment, then prompted Caroline to step back and take off her mask. When Caroline did so, the clerk nodded, sucked her teeth, dropped a little “Mmhmm,” then told Caroline she could put her mask back on. The clerk started typing, and started making small talk with Caroline as she did. Caroline murmured out minimal answers. Caroline could swear the clerk kept shooting glances at her as they chatted. It was wrong. It was all wrong. She was taking too long on that computer. Why was she squinting like that at the screen? What did she see? She got up. Why was she getting up?
Caroline felt her gut retreat in on itself. It felt like her insides were collapsing. Should she run? No, that would only look more suspicious. But what if the clerk came back with cops? What if she’d already called them and was buying time? What if that was why she’d taken so long on the computer? She wanted to book it. It was like that time she’d seen that street performer breathe fire. She’d seen the flambeaux plenty of times. She hadn’t flinched at the heat since she was a kid. And yet that time? She wasn’t even that close, and she wanted to jump into the nearest fountain. She had to force herself not to break into a sprint. She caught something in the corner of her eye. She snapped her head to look at a corner of the ceiling. Was this how Sam felt? Had that camera caught something? Was she screwed? She needed to get out. This was a terrible idea. She’d ruined everything with this stupid move. She needed to grab her phone and go. But she had to do it slowly. Carefully. Like she wasn’t fleeing.
Caroline’s hand crept forward along the counter. She grasped her phone and withdrew slowly. She turned and began to walk away, playing as calm as she could.
“Ma’am?”
Caroline froze. She turned slowly.
“Is everything alright?”
Caroline let out a nervous chuckle and began to fumble for an excuse—anything to pretend she wasn’t just about to run. As she laid eyes on the clerk, she saw no police. No gun. The clerk had an envelope. Caroline stopped stammering on the spot.
“Did you get your phone, ma’am?”
Caroline nodded. The clerk continued. Everything was in order. The clerk apologized for the wait, claiming she’d needed to go in the back to access the safe due to the amount Caroline had requested. Caroline stared at her blankly. The clerk delivered an expectant nod and shook the envelope.
“This is your withdrawal.”
Caroline approached hesitantly. The clerk gave her a confused squint. She set the envelope on the counter and slid in forward. Caroline pulled it towards her suspiciously, gave it a look, then looked again at the clerk. She muttered a sheepish thanks, and hurried off.
She darted off in an awkward half-gallop—the closest imitation of a jog she could muster with her cloven feet and digitigrade ankles. She kept on for several blocks, only stopping at the light. She kept wanting to breathe heavily, yet she felt neither the need to do so nor the relief of air when she did. She ran her hand through her hair. She needed to find somewhere private to check the envelope. They had to have known. They must have put one of those paint bombs inside or something similar—something to catch her red-handed as the undead, money-laundering freak of nature she was. No, that wasn’t right. They probably thought she was her own murderer, now masquerading as their victim to wring more money from her account. She looked in every direction, certain one of the cars would reveal police lights, a siren, and she’d be charged as her own murderer. Her entire family would be there. Her friends would be there. The image came together so easily. Everyone still living crowded the courtroom. All their eyes—their judgemental eyes staring at her. Picking her apart. Putting everything on her. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fucking fault. She hadn’t wanted to go to that shady private casino and get scammed. She’d told her friends as much. Her friends. Their ghosts were judging her instead of judging with her. She wanted to go home to her car and her family and everything else. She wanted to deposit everything and go home. But she’d get caught and arrested and charged and probably blamed for her friends being dead, like they weren’t her only real friends in the world. And then everyone would hate her. Like that was even the worst of her worries. They’d take her outside and make her look at the sun, and they’d laugh as she bubbled and burned and turned into cinders instead of getting a loving burial from her great-grandkids in seventy years. She didn’t even get to be a ghost with her—
Walgreens. It was right there. It probably had a bathroom. A single room, hopefully no cameras. She could wash the money. Make sure the paint, dye thingie—whatever!—wouldn’t get everywhere. Then she might not get caught. She forced herself back into a walk. It was still just as awkward as her run; it all looked sort of like she was unfamiliar with heels. She did two laps around the inside of the store before confirming that the bathroom was locked. Of course it was. They probably thought she was an addict, just like all the other vagrants who used the bathroom for God-knows-what. She had to prove she was normal—that she was a normal woman making normal purchases who used bathrooms for normal reasons. Her eyes went to a bottle of Coke. She could pour it out in the dirt and throw away the bottle afterwards. She could get it with a plastic bag so she could put her envelope of cash in there while she washed away the ink. Perfect.
She went to the register to check out. She requested a bag, then hesitated to leave after she’d gotten her habitual $100 of cash-back with her purchase. She asked for the bathroom key; the cashier then led her back and let her in. Caroline felt like she should have seen Sam in the mirror by the way she looked at every corner, in every nook, and in every cranny for hidden cameras. There were none that she could see. It was Walgreens. It was a bathroom. She hit herself in the forehead to try to get it through. Surely there wouldn’t be any cameras. Why was she looking! There wouldn’t be any cameras; that would be such an invasion of privacy!
Her attention returned to the sink. She stopped the drain with paper towels, then started filling the sink with hot water. While she waited, she poured the Coke out in the toilet and flushed it. When the sink was full, she shut the tap off, then put the envelope in the plastic bag and plunged it all under the water. Treating the bag as a shield, Caroline opened the envelope as if she were defusing a bomb.
Nothing went off. Bill by bill, she fished out her cash. $20, $40, $60... A stack she balanced on the edge of the sink. She felt her shoulders twitch with tension every few bills. How long was she taking? She tried to rush herself. But she needed to be careful, or she’d end up with a bunch of unusable bills. But she needed to hurry or the staff would come knocking, thinking she was doing drugs. Why hadn’t the dye pack gone off?
$9000. She recounted three times. How tiny could the dye pack be? She couldn’t have just gotten away with this, could she?
Caroline doused the money several times before an employee knocking at the door finally snapped her out of it. She stuffed the shredded remnants of the envelope and the plastic bag into the trash, washed her hands, then wrapped her money in paper towels and stuffed the wad into her purse. She opened the door and saw the employee who’d knocked looking like she had been bracing for something. When Caroline muttered out an apology for taking so long, the employee let out a relieved sigh, then asked her if there was anything else she could help her with. The bathroom wasn’t trashed; Caroline didn’t need anything. They parted ways.
This had to be a trap. The cops hadn’t come because they must have been trying to get her to let her guard down. Previous murders flashed through her mind. Many were fairly close to ATMs. Had she been caught on camera? Was she a suspect in a bigger case? Standing at the stoplight, Caroline’s mind raced with explanations for the calm. It had to be a trick. It had to be. They were gathering evidence, preparing their case. Her body was gone. She was stealing evidence from a murder case by walking around! She’d get charged for killing everything. She’d probably get nailed for Sam too. But then they’d try to bring her into the sun and she’d burn. On camera, she’d burn in the sunlight and people would call it CGI while the feds would douse her and bring her inside, never to be seen again. Could she die? Could she even escape it? She’d be an experiment erased from everything. Nobody would remember her name. Nobody would pray for her, not even her mother. Did they even know what had happened to her now? Did anyone even know she was dead? Did they mourn her? When was her funeral going to be? Did she even get to have one, or was she just some terrible cold case slated to get rehashed on some television show or another, her only sympathisers relegated to some losers in sweatpants listening to podcasts and really, probably wanting to be her so they could live out some stupid fantasy of getting murdered by the maladjusted freaks that did this type of thing to people. Like Jeffrey what’s-his-fucking-name. The only people who’d know her story would be the audiences of true crime podcasts. Caroline wanted to retch.
She needed to get somewhere to check her social media, Sam’s advice be damned. If anyone knew anything, surely they’d have at least sent out feelers on some site or another. She’d resisted the temptation many times before. She’d deleted Facebook, Instagram, and anything else that she could log-in to from her phone. Checking what other people had to say about her death was vain and stupid. She knew that, even if it really did feel important. But this? This was different. This was fact-finding. This was finding out what people even knew about what had happened to her. And the perfect place to do it? It was tantalizingly close.
Clark County Library was literally across the street. She’d considered going there many times before. Now she was looking right at it, with all the reason in the world—in her mind—to take a look. Sam did online investigations on his personal laptop. Wasn’t she being more careful by using a library computer? If only she could speak as fast as the excuses came to her. She needed to know.
3x Like
Caroline had to stop herself from staring daggers at the librarian. He was just trying to help her, she told herself. He was just getting things together for the guest card. Doing that required typing things and clicking around. He wasn’t reporting; he was priming the printer. The sounds he made didn’t really mean anything. It was weird for someone from out of town to go to the library in Vegas. Her arm hurt. Stop gripping so hard. She released her grasp on her other arm and started flicking her wrist. Had to get the blood flowing so the mark goes away, or the librarian might catch on that there was something wrong.
But there was no mark. She kept flicking her wrist while staring at where it should have been. Did she even still have blood there? The hum of a nearby printer snapped her attention away. Her head jerked around as she searched for the sound. It was behind the desk. The librarian had turned around to fetch the card. He was just getting the card. Had the police not been alerted yet? Were libraries that slow on the news? The librarian turned around. She stared him in the eye, forgetting to blink as her mind continued buzzing. He sighed and gave her the card. She seized it, half-expecting him to yank it back.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” The librarian’s delivery was flat. He raised his eyebrows expectantly when Caroline failed to respond. He cleared his throat when she began inspecting the card. Her head jerked back up to look at him. He repeated himself. She shook her head. She gave him a thumbs-up, and bounded towards the computers before he could respond.
She looked up to the ceiling, searching for any sign of cameras. She reviewed it twice over before darting for what she felt to be the most private seat in the room. She slapped the library card next to the keyboard and got to work. She typed in her ID incorrectly twice, let out an infuriated wheeze, then succeeded on her third try. She tapped her toe-finger impatiently on the side of the keyboard as it loaded. She clicked and typed at the feverish pace of a movie hacker. Her phone buzzed. She got her authenticator code, entered it, stared as the screen slowly brought her that precious water of knowledge and connection.
She drank in the bright glow of her Facebook home page for a moment. Then her attention shot to the messages. She had 67 of them, unread. She slid the mouse across the desk and clicked. Messenger beckoned. Her heart should have skipped a beat as the urge to find out was teased by the painful speed of the library’s old hardware. She caught glimpses of several messages as she rushed to find what she’d first missed when Sam had her delete her social media apps. There were mundane things at first, nothing out of the ordinary. Some nonsense her grandmother had found funny. A “wish you were here” selfie on the Gulf Coast from a member of one of her backup friend groups. Caroline clicked onwards. A “How’s Vegas?” from an aunt. A scheduling query from a subordinate at one of her social clubs. Then she hit her first bump.
David Li had reached out. ‘If this is a joke it isn't funny. If it's a cry for help, you already know how many people are here for you if you need it. I don't care anymore how poorly things ended between us. I promise I won't be angry - even if you're doing this for attention - but on the condition that you have to say something when you see this message. Anything. Please.’ Caroline rattled with disgust as she reread the message. She broke things off with him. And he, in all his insufferable insecurity, somehow had thought he was the cause of it? Caroline scowled at the screen, then let out a small growl.
She scooted back from the computer as she felt the urge to type clawing at her. She wanted so badly to be honest with him. To tell him she’d snapped at him and told him they were done because she had wanted it for months. To tell him that it was always supposed to be a little seasonal romance, not something serious. He’d long outlived his welcome—what he’d had in the first place, anyway. Even if she had liked him once, he was never in the running. There was too much difference. Exoticism was for fun, nothing more. He had to have understood that. She was so happy when she met his parents and they shot looks between one another. She didn’t know what they were saying afterwards, but she understood the tone. They didn’t know it, but they and their son’s “girlfriend” were on the same page. She had weaseled out of introducing him to her parents and even her siblings for months. And David? David took her excuses and avoidance and everything else to be about him! When he started yelling at his parents over the phone, it was finally the perfect opportunity.
He had apologized for weeks about that dinner. She’d laughed it off. Did everything to make distance. And yet he still felt guilty. He was probably out there right now leaking guilt all over her murder, like she’d gone and gotten herself killed over him. Caroline looked up at the ceiling. Great! What little of a legacy she had, tainted by the gross misunderstanding that she’d gotten that flustered over some parents. Some parents and a boy who’d have gotten the door to Comus slammed in her face. She wanted to scream, puke, and cry all at once. She didn’t have time for this.
Now, did Facebook have any useful information?
After the social club thing was a panicked message from Pearl Scarcello. ‘Look im sorry ok? im sorry what i said to sandra about you really i am. but dont you thinkn this is overeacting a bit?!?! now their getting the cops involved, their putting your face on the news!1 CAROLINE THIS ISNT FUNNY ANYMORE!!!’ Caroline groaned and planted her face in her hands. She wanted to sob. Two people! Two people had already decided that she had gone and got herself killed over them! As she contemplated the horrifying thought that any number of people could be blaming themselves and all but taking credit over something they had nothing to do with, Caroline’s dread was interrupted by confusion. What had Pearl even said? She racked her brain for the answer. Fuck. Pearl thought that an accusation of racism was something she’d kill herself over? What, just because the Comus Ball had an unspoken whites-only policy, that she and her folks did too? It was so easily resolved—it had taken maybe a day to shut down that notion. And here she was, in her pitiful social justice-obsessed arrogance assuming that just because she was a guilt-addled little piece of white-savior porcelain shit, mentally ill enough to off herself over the mere insinuation of her being racist, that Caroline was somehow anywhere near that pathetic? And the thought that she was getting her back for that “slight” was even worse. She wasn’t even worth it. Just because Madison occasionally brought her along on outings like a little queer accessory didn’t make any of them friends.
Caroline stared at the message for a time, trapped in a spiral of bile as she contemplated the increasingly dire-seeming state of her image postmortem. Yet nothing could have prepared her for what was soon to follow.
Her eyes widened. As she read the message from her older brother, she began to shake. ‘If you're doing this because of something we did—or something we didn't do—then enough. We get the message. Do you hear me, Caroline? You can stop punishing us now; you win. Whatever it is that you want, it's yours. Just please, please come home. I promise we can talk about whatever is bothering you peacefully. No yelling.’
She stared at the screen. Her lip quivered. How could her own brother—Did he really think so little of her? She wanted to puke. Her hands drifted towards the keyboard. She jerked back, nearly falling out of the chair. She looked at the ceiling, blinking as fast as she could. She couldn’t cry. She had to keep it in. She’d lose so much blood if she broke now. She ripped off her mask and tried to breathe to stabilize herself.
Why, Paul? Why? Why did he think this? Who had given him this idea? He—he had to have been mistaken! He’d never think so low of her, right? There had to be a reason. There had to be. Why was everyone talking like she was alive? She’d woken up in a morgue. Didn’t they know? Didn’t anyone mourn?
Caroline gripped the armrests. She tensed her neck, trying to prevent any whimpers from breaking her into tears.
She sat in place, mouthing silently to herself.
“He’s just worried. He must not know.”
She needed a distraction. She quickly clicked out of Paul’s DMs. The remainder of the notifications came from two chats. First was Jerry Lucas. Caroline’s state was interrupted not by the message itself, but well before it. Who was this guy?
Jerry Lucas, Jerry Lucas, Jerry Lucas... It just wasn’t ringing a bell. It should have. How many Jerrys in her age bracket even were there?
She clicked on the profile before opening the message. As she scrolled through his profile, she searched for details that might ring a bell. Huh. He had been a grade below her in high school. She scratched her chin as she tried to match the name and face to any memories from those days.
Nothing.
So what did he send? ‘Ms. Capdevielle, rotting in a ditch.
Pompous, spoiled, nasty bitch.
Rape gone wrong? Vengeance well planned?
Just wish I could shake his hand.’ She wrinkled her nose as she read it. She shook her head. Awful. Just awful. He wasn’t even good at it. She looked back at his picture.
Oh! It was all starting to click. His girlfriend was...what was her name? It was an M name. Maria? Melanie? Caroline tapped her finger idly on the keyboard. Melissa! Yes, that was his, well, formerly his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.
Caroline smiled halfheartedly. That’s why he was so happy about her being dead! Oh, that was great. He’d nearly gotten expelled for that little party trick. A little something in Melissa’s food and Julia Nuñez’ sweet sixteen got a show to liven it up! All she had to do to get away with it was say she saw Jerry messing with Melissa’s drink.
Fun times.
So what was left?
The main group chat. It was so sparse without Madison and Haley. But there was still activity. Caroline hesitated to check for a moment. Given everything else she’d seen, she almost didn’t want to know. What would Mallory and Reagan have to say? Did they feel the same as her brother? Even worse? Were they blaming themselves?
Caroline couldn’t help herself. She had to know. Disappointment. If only she could have seen her friends’ DMs and known what their conclusions were. Madison and Hailey both had memorials and events for their funerals. She only had a memorial. Her friends’ pages had a diverse array of responses. Plenty of the people had kind things to say and memories and love to share. There were lukewarm condolences from acquaintances. And, to Caroline’s disgust, there were pockets of hatred. The ensuing dogpile was formidable, thankfully, but it was still just awful to see. Didn’t they know it was rude to speak ill of the dead?
Her own page was so much worse. Her entire social network was eating itself alive. Where Madison and Haley’s pages were posted by their families, her page was Mallory’s doing. Caroline’s parents and siblings were conspicuously silent as even her cousins joined in the free-for-all of comments. Pulled along by morbid curiosity, Caroline trawled through a massive line of replies where Reagan duked it out with several of Caroline’s cousins over whether it was in good taste to even have the page up, since they didn’t have an autopsy. It ended with them all threatening to report one another. Similar stories played out elsewhere, with an array of friends and acquaintances all throwing opinions around. The arguments grew nastier by the hour. Condolences and expressions of concern devolved into name-calling and finger-pointing. Kelsey Garnier threw fuel on the fire by commenting ‘I don’t know which would be worse: If y’all are all just pretending to love her bc she’s dead, or if y’all really do care this much about someone who was so damn vile in life.’
If nothing else, all of her friends could mostly unite behind the common cause of outrage. That was something. But the comment gnawed at Caroline all the same. Paul’s message came back to the forefront. She couldn’t shake it. Even though he unequivocally cared, he—her own brother—still thought so lowly of her as to think her disappearance was some slight or stunt. She could easily cast aside acquaintances. Jerry’s sorry attempt at gloating poetry was ultimately more entertaining than hurtful. But family, but blood—Did Mother and Father, did Mattie and Charlie think this way too? Did they only love her in spite of her?
Were they happier without her?
She couldn’t stop it. She returned to Paul’s message, scraping for any meaning between the lines. Meaning that she couldn’t seem to find. Were they better off without her? Had she never even been good enough? Was every hug a little white lie? Were they all just appeasing her, happy she wasn’t doing coke in the bathroom or otherwise making a mess of everything? Was she, after all this, just some unstable middle child who was just a bomb to keep defused?
What was so wrong with her? What had she ever done that had hurt the family? She’d hurt others, yes, but Paul? Her parents?
She logged out and shut down the computer. She gazed into the black screen, blinking rapidly. Why? What had she even done to him? She couldn’t follow any explanation she grasped for. Her thoughts melted into a nonsensical daze of shock and grief. She whimpered. Her efforts weren’t enough. She was trapped, crying, alone, and detestable. She was increasingly ugly on the outside, and apparently, it was an open question whether she had any inner beauty to compensate for it. She wasn’t enough.
There was no solving it. There was no recourse. She was stuck here, like this, and worse still, she was privy to how everyone saw fit to speak about her when they thought she wasn’t there. She could see her identity being steered into the mud, and yet couldn’t take control and assert it. She wanted to so badly. It was right there. The keyboard was begging her to claw back the narrative, to take the mess and spin it into something tolerable, to fix things. It was as hurtful as it was maddening. She could feel tepid droplets streaming down her face. She needed to leave. She needed to walk away, to not touch the computer again. She just couldn’t bring herself to.
She logged in again. She trawled through her Facebook twice over. She reread Paul’s message. She couldn’t tear herself from the screen. It should have all been a nightmare. She needed to wake up. She clamped a hand over her mouth to smother the sound. She curled back into her seat as Paul’s words sunk in. She wanted desperately to tell him he was wrong. To call him, then her mother, then her father. To apologize a thousand times for something she hadn’t really done, to tell them to bury her in dignity with her friends with a closed casket, and yet what could she say? How could they believe without seeing? And to show them what she had become?
“God.”
She choked out an exclamation as she returned to the same painful conclusion she’d grappled with when she first felt a man’s blood pass her lips, when she felt the primal fear of the sun and the flames it bore, and when she first twisted out of shape. They were better off without her. If not before then now, surely now. She should have done the right thing in the first place and given them a pretty body. She should have played her part correctly, been a good corpse, and gone to Purgatory away from Earth. She should have stayed away from Las Vegas and gotten drunk on the Gulf Coast by the sunset instead, and all this never would have happened.
Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.
She wanted to punch herself. As she looked down at her hand, she felt a self-directed rage flare. She’d covered herself in blood. She’d made a mess. She was the mess. She turned off the computer, then snarled as she saw the blood smeared on the power button.
A murderer, a deformity, a monster, a depreciated monster of a mess. That’s all she was, logging into the Facebook of someone so much better. She licked her finger and rubbed the blood from the power button. She stumbled up and lurched for the bathroom.
She made eye contact with a janitor. The two gazed at one another for a moment as the door slammed behind Caroline. Her fingers tensed. Her eyes darted between her bloodied reflection and the unexpected company in the ladies’ room. She felt vile. She felt monstrous. And she was looking at her as if she knew she was a monster. A part of her wanted to ask the janitor what about her looked the worst. Was it the blood? Or was it her posture, her shaky stance, the tension in her every muscle? Was it her clothes?
A different part of her knew none of it mattered. She’d been seen for the disaster she was. She needed to fix herself. The woman standing before her was the answer to both problems. She’d feel better. So much better. And she needed to eat before she was inevitably caught anyway. Killing this witness would forestall changes, hunger, and destroy someone who’d seen her monstrous self.
She sprung forward. The two hit the floor. The janitor’s shoes squeaked. This was a terrible place to be doing this. Caroline squeezed the janitor’s throat with one hand as she fished out her phone and then her stylus from her purse. She set the phone on the floor and opened it while sitting on the janitor’s chest. She typed feverishly.
‘Feeding not going well. Can’t talk. Get my stuff & run’
She should have given more details. He needed to know how fucked they were. But the life was slowly leaving her feast’s eyes. She needed it now. She clicked send and plunged her fangs into the janitor’s neck. As she began to drink, the janitor stopped struggling. She released her grip and embraced the moment.
She could never have explained this feeling to her brother.
But there was no mark. She kept flicking her wrist while staring at where it should have been. Did she even still have blood there? The hum of a nearby printer snapped her attention away. Her head jerked around as she searched for the sound. It was behind the desk. The librarian had turned around to fetch the card. He was just getting the card. Had the police not been alerted yet? Were libraries that slow on the news? The librarian turned around. She stared him in the eye, forgetting to blink as her mind continued buzzing. He sighed and gave her the card. She seized it, half-expecting him to yank it back.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” The librarian’s delivery was flat. He raised his eyebrows expectantly when Caroline failed to respond. He cleared his throat when she began inspecting the card. Her head jerked back up to look at him. He repeated himself. She shook her head. She gave him a thumbs-up, and bounded towards the computers before he could respond.
She looked up to the ceiling, searching for any sign of cameras. She reviewed it twice over before darting for what she felt to be the most private seat in the room. She slapped the library card next to the keyboard and got to work. She typed in her ID incorrectly twice, let out an infuriated wheeze, then succeeded on her third try. She tapped her toe-finger impatiently on the side of the keyboard as it loaded. She clicked and typed at the feverish pace of a movie hacker. Her phone buzzed. She got her authenticator code, entered it, stared as the screen slowly brought her that precious water of knowledge and connection.
She drank in the bright glow of her Facebook home page for a moment. Then her attention shot to the messages. She had 67 of them, unread. She slid the mouse across the desk and clicked. Messenger beckoned. Her heart should have skipped a beat as the urge to find out was teased by the painful speed of the library’s old hardware. She caught glimpses of several messages as she rushed to find what she’d first missed when Sam had her delete her social media apps. There were mundane things at first, nothing out of the ordinary. Some nonsense her grandmother had found funny. A “wish you were here” selfie on the Gulf Coast from a member of one of her backup friend groups. Caroline clicked onwards. A “How’s Vegas?” from an aunt. A scheduling query from a subordinate at one of her social clubs. Then she hit her first bump.
David Li had reached out. ‘If this is a joke it isn't funny. If it's a cry for help, you already know how many people are here for you if you need it. I don't care anymore how poorly things ended between us. I promise I won't be angry - even if you're doing this for attention - but on the condition that you have to say something when you see this message. Anything. Please.’ Caroline rattled with disgust as she reread the message. She broke things off with him. And he, in all his insufferable insecurity, somehow had thought he was the cause of it? Caroline scowled at the screen, then let out a small growl.
She scooted back from the computer as she felt the urge to type clawing at her. She wanted so badly to be honest with him. To tell him she’d snapped at him and told him they were done because she had wanted it for months. To tell him that it was always supposed to be a little seasonal romance, not something serious. He’d long outlived his welcome—what he’d had in the first place, anyway. Even if she had liked him once, he was never in the running. There was too much difference. Exoticism was for fun, nothing more. He had to have understood that. She was so happy when she met his parents and they shot looks between one another. She didn’t know what they were saying afterwards, but she understood the tone. They didn’t know it, but they and their son’s “girlfriend” were on the same page. She had weaseled out of introducing him to her parents and even her siblings for months. And David? David took her excuses and avoidance and everything else to be about him! When he started yelling at his parents over the phone, it was finally the perfect opportunity.
He had apologized for weeks about that dinner. She’d laughed it off. Did everything to make distance. And yet he still felt guilty. He was probably out there right now leaking guilt all over her murder, like she’d gone and gotten herself killed over him. Caroline looked up at the ceiling. Great! What little of a legacy she had, tainted by the gross misunderstanding that she’d gotten that flustered over some parents. Some parents and a boy who’d have gotten the door to Comus slammed in her face. She wanted to scream, puke, and cry all at once. She didn’t have time for this.
Now, did Facebook have any useful information?
After the social club thing was a panicked message from Pearl Scarcello. ‘Look im sorry ok? im sorry what i said to sandra about you really i am. but dont you thinkn this is overeacting a bit?!?! now their getting the cops involved, their putting your face on the news!1 CAROLINE THIS ISNT FUNNY ANYMORE!!!’ Caroline groaned and planted her face in her hands. She wanted to sob. Two people! Two people had already decided that she had gone and got herself killed over them! As she contemplated the horrifying thought that any number of people could be blaming themselves and all but taking credit over something they had nothing to do with, Caroline’s dread was interrupted by confusion. What had Pearl even said? She racked her brain for the answer. Fuck. Pearl thought that an accusation of racism was something she’d kill herself over? What, just because the Comus Ball had an unspoken whites-only policy, that she and her folks did too? It was so easily resolved—it had taken maybe a day to shut down that notion. And here she was, in her pitiful social justice-obsessed arrogance assuming that just because she was a guilt-addled little piece of white-savior porcelain shit, mentally ill enough to off herself over the mere insinuation of her being racist, that Caroline was somehow anywhere near that pathetic? And the thought that she was getting her back for that “slight” was even worse. She wasn’t even worth it. Just because Madison occasionally brought her along on outings like a little queer accessory didn’t make any of them friends.
Caroline stared at the message for a time, trapped in a spiral of bile as she contemplated the increasingly dire-seeming state of her image postmortem. Yet nothing could have prepared her for what was soon to follow.
Her eyes widened. As she read the message from her older brother, she began to shake. ‘If you're doing this because of something we did—or something we didn't do—then enough. We get the message. Do you hear me, Caroline? You can stop punishing us now; you win. Whatever it is that you want, it's yours. Just please, please come home. I promise we can talk about whatever is bothering you peacefully. No yelling.’
She stared at the screen. Her lip quivered. How could her own brother—Did he really think so little of her? She wanted to puke. Her hands drifted towards the keyboard. She jerked back, nearly falling out of the chair. She looked at the ceiling, blinking as fast as she could. She couldn’t cry. She had to keep it in. She’d lose so much blood if she broke now. She ripped off her mask and tried to breathe to stabilize herself.
Why, Paul? Why? Why did he think this? Who had given him this idea? He—he had to have been mistaken! He’d never think so low of her, right? There had to be a reason. There had to be. Why was everyone talking like she was alive? She’d woken up in a morgue. Didn’t they know? Didn’t anyone mourn?
Caroline gripped the armrests. She tensed her neck, trying to prevent any whimpers from breaking her into tears.
She sat in place, mouthing silently to herself.
“He’s just worried. He must not know.”
She needed a distraction. She quickly clicked out of Paul’s DMs. The remainder of the notifications came from two chats. First was Jerry Lucas. Caroline’s state was interrupted not by the message itself, but well before it. Who was this guy?
Jerry Lucas, Jerry Lucas, Jerry Lucas... It just wasn’t ringing a bell. It should have. How many Jerrys in her age bracket even were there?
She clicked on the profile before opening the message. As she scrolled through his profile, she searched for details that might ring a bell. Huh. He had been a grade below her in high school. She scratched her chin as she tried to match the name and face to any memories from those days.
Nothing.
So what did he send? ‘Ms. Capdevielle, rotting in a ditch.
Pompous, spoiled, nasty bitch.
Rape gone wrong? Vengeance well planned?
Just wish I could shake his hand.’ She wrinkled her nose as she read it. She shook her head. Awful. Just awful. He wasn’t even good at it. She looked back at his picture.
Oh! It was all starting to click. His girlfriend was...what was her name? It was an M name. Maria? Melanie? Caroline tapped her finger idly on the keyboard. Melissa! Yes, that was his, well, formerly his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.
Caroline smiled halfheartedly. That’s why he was so happy about her being dead! Oh, that was great. He’d nearly gotten expelled for that little party trick. A little something in Melissa’s food and Julia Nuñez’ sweet sixteen got a show to liven it up! All she had to do to get away with it was say she saw Jerry messing with Melissa’s drink.
Fun times.
So what was left?
The main group chat. It was so sparse without Madison and Haley. But there was still activity. Caroline hesitated to check for a moment. Given everything else she’d seen, she almost didn’t want to know. What would Mallory and Reagan have to say? Did they feel the same as her brother? Even worse? Were they blaming themselves?
Caroline couldn’t help herself. She had to know. Disappointment. If only she could have seen her friends’ DMs and known what their conclusions were. Madison and Hailey both had memorials and events for their funerals. She only had a memorial. Her friends’ pages had a diverse array of responses. Plenty of the people had kind things to say and memories and love to share. There were lukewarm condolences from acquaintances. And, to Caroline’s disgust, there were pockets of hatred. The ensuing dogpile was formidable, thankfully, but it was still just awful to see. Didn’t they know it was rude to speak ill of the dead?
Her own page was so much worse. Her entire social network was eating itself alive. Where Madison and Haley’s pages were posted by their families, her page was Mallory’s doing. Caroline’s parents and siblings were conspicuously silent as even her cousins joined in the free-for-all of comments. Pulled along by morbid curiosity, Caroline trawled through a massive line of replies where Reagan duked it out with several of Caroline’s cousins over whether it was in good taste to even have the page up, since they didn’t have an autopsy. It ended with them all threatening to report one another. Similar stories played out elsewhere, with an array of friends and acquaintances all throwing opinions around. The arguments grew nastier by the hour. Condolences and expressions of concern devolved into name-calling and finger-pointing. Kelsey Garnier threw fuel on the fire by commenting ‘I don’t know which would be worse: If y’all are all just pretending to love her bc she’s dead, or if y’all really do care this much about someone who was so damn vile in life.’
If nothing else, all of her friends could mostly unite behind the common cause of outrage. That was something. But the comment gnawed at Caroline all the same. Paul’s message came back to the forefront. She couldn’t shake it. Even though he unequivocally cared, he—her own brother—still thought so lowly of her as to think her disappearance was some slight or stunt. She could easily cast aside acquaintances. Jerry’s sorry attempt at gloating poetry was ultimately more entertaining than hurtful. But family, but blood—Did Mother and Father, did Mattie and Charlie think this way too? Did they only love her in spite of her?
Were they happier without her?
She couldn’t stop it. She returned to Paul’s message, scraping for any meaning between the lines. Meaning that she couldn’t seem to find. Were they better off without her? Had she never even been good enough? Was every hug a little white lie? Were they all just appeasing her, happy she wasn’t doing coke in the bathroom or otherwise making a mess of everything? Was she, after all this, just some unstable middle child who was just a bomb to keep defused?
What was so wrong with her? What had she ever done that had hurt the family? She’d hurt others, yes, but Paul? Her parents?
She logged out and shut down the computer. She gazed into the black screen, blinking rapidly. Why? What had she even done to him? She couldn’t follow any explanation she grasped for. Her thoughts melted into a nonsensical daze of shock and grief. She whimpered. Her efforts weren’t enough. She was trapped, crying, alone, and detestable. She was increasingly ugly on the outside, and apparently, it was an open question whether she had any inner beauty to compensate for it. She wasn’t enough.
There was no solving it. There was no recourse. She was stuck here, like this, and worse still, she was privy to how everyone saw fit to speak about her when they thought she wasn’t there. She could see her identity being steered into the mud, and yet couldn’t take control and assert it. She wanted to so badly. It was right there. The keyboard was begging her to claw back the narrative, to take the mess and spin it into something tolerable, to fix things. It was as hurtful as it was maddening. She could feel tepid droplets streaming down her face. She needed to leave. She needed to walk away, to not touch the computer again. She just couldn’t bring herself to.
She logged in again. She trawled through her Facebook twice over. She reread Paul’s message. She couldn’t tear herself from the screen. It should have all been a nightmare. She needed to wake up. She clamped a hand over her mouth to smother the sound. She curled back into her seat as Paul’s words sunk in. She wanted desperately to tell him he was wrong. To call him, then her mother, then her father. To apologize a thousand times for something she hadn’t really done, to tell them to bury her in dignity with her friends with a closed casket, and yet what could she say? How could they believe without seeing? And to show them what she had become?
“God.”
She choked out an exclamation as she returned to the same painful conclusion she’d grappled with when she first felt a man’s blood pass her lips, when she felt the primal fear of the sun and the flames it bore, and when she first twisted out of shape. They were better off without her. If not before then now, surely now. She should have done the right thing in the first place and given them a pretty body. She should have played her part correctly, been a good corpse, and gone to Purgatory away from Earth. She should have stayed away from Las Vegas and gotten drunk on the Gulf Coast by the sunset instead, and all this never would have happened.
Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.
She wanted to punch herself. As she looked down at her hand, she felt a self-directed rage flare. She’d covered herself in blood. She’d made a mess. She was the mess. She turned off the computer, then snarled as she saw the blood smeared on the power button.
A murderer, a deformity, a monster, a depreciated monster of a mess. That’s all she was, logging into the Facebook of someone so much better. She licked her finger and rubbed the blood from the power button. She stumbled up and lurched for the bathroom.
She made eye contact with a janitor. The two gazed at one another for a moment as the door slammed behind Caroline. Her fingers tensed. Her eyes darted between her bloodied reflection and the unexpected company in the ladies’ room. She felt vile. She felt monstrous. And she was looking at her as if she knew she was a monster. A part of her wanted to ask the janitor what about her looked the worst. Was it the blood? Or was it her posture, her shaky stance, the tension in her every muscle? Was it her clothes?
A different part of her knew none of it mattered. She’d been seen for the disaster she was. She needed to fix herself. The woman standing before her was the answer to both problems. She’d feel better. So much better. And she needed to eat before she was inevitably caught anyway. Killing this witness would forestall changes, hunger, and destroy someone who’d seen her monstrous self.
She sprung forward. The two hit the floor. The janitor’s shoes squeaked. This was a terrible place to be doing this. Caroline squeezed the janitor’s throat with one hand as she fished out her phone and then her stylus from her purse. She set the phone on the floor and opened it while sitting on the janitor’s chest. She typed feverishly.
‘Feeding not going well. Can’t talk. Get my stuff & run’
She should have given more details. He needed to know how fucked they were. But the life was slowly leaving her feast’s eyes. She needed it now. She clicked send and plunged her fangs into the janitor’s neck. As she began to drink, the janitor stopped struggling. She released her grip and embraced the moment.
She could never have explained this feeling to her brother.
3x Like
coGM
TokyoPewPew rpguilder (derogatory)
Member
Seen
10 hrs ago
He should have been calmer stepping out from the parking garage; stepping away from the body and all its vultures circling and squawking and pecking. Tranquil, even, there beneath the stars smothered behind the light pollution. Each backlit window and every streetlight a kilowatt of the apathy of God. Denying Connie that peace however was something he couldn't flee, couldn't crumple up and litter with all the inconvenienced scorn one musters for a sandwich wrapper. Something internal and ill-mannered, none so polite or patient as the human bacon pestled across the concrete. Latched to his viscera like a hookworm: rasping, writhing, its every enunciation a protest, every word barbwired.
How it coaxed and cooed, that voice. Insinuated. With an eerie rationalism how it provoked him to wonder who would even miss someone like Austin McGlinn, twitchy narcissist with a gun #3,196: the other buzzcut bullies on the force? Some poor woman he bludgeoned black and blue after a few beers too many, after his team had fumbled a crucial touchdown in the fourth, or fuck, for no other reason at all than he needed the rush, needed to feel in control and there she was in the master bedroom all porcelain and dried oregano leaves and the bones of baby birds? All the dogs and the wellness checks he hadn't gotten to view down the tritium sights of his Glock for his nightly dose of masculinity? You'd be doing them a favor, wouldn't you, Conrad darling? fluttered its lips, nuzzled its tongue, nibbled its teeth smooth and humid past his ear, though it always flinched just out of view, always dwelling there in his peripherals. Every protester who wouldn't be teargassed every mental health crisis not neck-stomped to the pavement, swatted to it like mosquitoes swatted to shirtsleeves, exterminated there on the black skin of the streets, every late-night reckless driver not dragged into the back of the cruiser at gunpoint not forced to suck his cock wouldn't they owe you?—thank you, in the strange and cosmic ways that strangers do? And how often do opportunities like this come along, anyway, how often do you get to feed and be the better person, how often does it not have to feel like brood parasitism, like vein-rape, like all you do is violate, is defile, how many mornings the cactus needles all beaded and dewy and the sky the color of tangerine sherbet how often do you go to bed and not have to perform the arithmetic, not have to wonder if you locked away enough scumbags, hunted down enough runaway monsters to pay your spiritual dues?
But that singular word jutted out at him from amongst the diatribe. Feed. Of course. That's what it always was; what it always came down to, wasn't it, stripped right down to the copper wiring of it all. He was just hungry. Just hungry. It didn't matter the images turkey-bastered into his cerebral cortex: a jerk shop from his childhood knocked over and rebuilt (a general store, a bank, a Dunkin Donuts); people he used to know, used to recognize, slouching and withering and moldering all in seconds, termite mounds of dust, puddles of flesh; wallpaper yellowing and peeling in an instant, the air blackening with flies; corrupted old home movies in vignette, memoirs in synopsis. Just more shitty memories churned out of their graves to taunt him. Didn't matter the sound of his wife's voice yodeling around in his skull, rich and lively first, dulcet, then brittling, breaking, wasting, like the sidewalks of Chernobyl crumbling in fast-forward, weeds twitching up between the cracks, a hundred fifty seasons compressed into an afternoon, nuclear fallout swallowed like a diamond. Just another ghost.
Do it, she—it tantalized. Do it. Drag him between the white Cutlass Ciera and the red Jetta. (Fourteen years old. A small, weedy wildflower bouquet discovered in a trash can just outside the school.) That's right—there—where the cameras can't see. Bite him in the thigh first, then in the throat. Hors-d'œuvre and entrée, you see? Do it. You could frame these two fledglings. It would be so easy. Teresa can have the fat one. (Razor-thin wrinkles stenciling themselves around his mother's eyes. A drizzly, Novemberish tint to her hair. Trying to remember if that tooth was blue and loose and dead before. More bruises. The warmth of her smile despite it all.) Take them both, all of them, every sip, every drop. Say they were like this when you got here, must've been an ambush, a getaway gone wrong. (A shovel. A hole. Hands callused and filthy and burning beneath the fathomlessness of a sky fading from purple to green to cuttlefish-ink-blue. Tears fiercer and hotter than when his wife had left. Wondering whether that means he's broken. Tiny foamy waves tapping out their rhythms upon the lake shore.) Who are they going to believe, you or a couple of orphaned shovelheads who don't know their own assholes from an anthill, who are going to get quashed like roaches anyway? Do it. Then the fledglings will die the bodies will burn the late-night news footage will be scrubbed or doctored and no one will know and no one will think to question. Do it, Conrad. Take the blood he's been wasting on annual cancer checkups and twice-a-week half-chubs. Use it well. Burn it better than he ever could. (A bighorn ram laying upon a scrubby hill its wool matted its tongue and eyeballs eaten its black belly hollowed out and crawling with worms the points of its ribs flapping with scraps of fat as yellow as saltwater taffy. Why didn't God stop this, mama, why would he let this happen to something so beautiful?) Let it fuel you. Use it to show him how a true predator hunts. Do it. (Standing outside on the porch mustering the courage to tell his father he'd wrecked the car. Anticipating the most horrific sound in some fifteen year old boys' whole world: leather cracking on leather.) Take his sorry excuse for a life and finally imbue it with its first iota of purpose, a seed of meaning. (Trying to go a whole month without whiskey. Succeeding.) Do it, Conrad. (Trying to go a whole month without whiskey. Failing.) You know you want it. You know you must. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it...
How it coaxed and cooed, that voice. Insinuated. With an eerie rationalism how it provoked him to wonder who would even miss someone like Austin McGlinn, twitchy narcissist with a gun #3,196: the other buzzcut bullies on the force? Some poor woman he bludgeoned black and blue after a few beers too many, after his team had fumbled a crucial touchdown in the fourth, or fuck, for no other reason at all than he needed the rush, needed to feel in control and there she was in the master bedroom all porcelain and dried oregano leaves and the bones of baby birds? All the dogs and the wellness checks he hadn't gotten to view down the tritium sights of his Glock for his nightly dose of masculinity? You'd be doing them a favor, wouldn't you, Conrad darling? fluttered its lips, nuzzled its tongue, nibbled its teeth smooth and humid past his ear, though it always flinched just out of view, always dwelling there in his peripherals. Every protester who wouldn't be teargassed every mental health crisis not neck-stomped to the pavement, swatted to it like mosquitoes swatted to shirtsleeves, exterminated there on the black skin of the streets, every late-night reckless driver not dragged into the back of the cruiser at gunpoint not forced to suck his cock wouldn't they owe you?—thank you, in the strange and cosmic ways that strangers do? And how often do opportunities like this come along, anyway, how often do you get to feed and be the better person, how often does it not have to feel like brood parasitism, like vein-rape, like all you do is violate, is defile, how many mornings the cactus needles all beaded and dewy and the sky the color of tangerine sherbet how often do you go to bed and not have to perform the arithmetic, not have to wonder if you locked away enough scumbags, hunted down enough runaway monsters to pay your spiritual dues?
But that singular word jutted out at him from amongst the diatribe. Feed. Of course. That's what it always was; what it always came down to, wasn't it, stripped right down to the copper wiring of it all. He was just hungry. Just hungry. It didn't matter the images turkey-bastered into his cerebral cortex: a jerk shop from his childhood knocked over and rebuilt (a general store, a bank, a Dunkin Donuts); people he used to know, used to recognize, slouching and withering and moldering all in seconds, termite mounds of dust, puddles of flesh; wallpaper yellowing and peeling in an instant, the air blackening with flies; corrupted old home movies in vignette, memoirs in synopsis. Just more shitty memories churned out of their graves to taunt him. Didn't matter the sound of his wife's voice yodeling around in his skull, rich and lively first, dulcet, then brittling, breaking, wasting, like the sidewalks of Chernobyl crumbling in fast-forward, weeds twitching up between the cracks, a hundred fifty seasons compressed into an afternoon, nuclear fallout swallowed like a diamond. Just another ghost.
Do it, she—it tantalized. Do it. Drag him between the white Cutlass Ciera and the red Jetta. (Fourteen years old. A small, weedy wildflower bouquet discovered in a trash can just outside the school.) That's right—there—where the cameras can't see. Bite him in the thigh first, then in the throat. Hors-d'œuvre and entrée, you see? Do it. You could frame these two fledglings. It would be so easy. Teresa can have the fat one. (Razor-thin wrinkles stenciling themselves around his mother's eyes. A drizzly, Novemberish tint to her hair. Trying to remember if that tooth was blue and loose and dead before. More bruises. The warmth of her smile despite it all.) Take them both, all of them, every sip, every drop. Say they were like this when you got here, must've been an ambush, a getaway gone wrong. (A shovel. A hole. Hands callused and filthy and burning beneath the fathomlessness of a sky fading from purple to green to cuttlefish-ink-blue. Tears fiercer and hotter than when his wife had left. Wondering whether that means he's broken. Tiny foamy waves tapping out their rhythms upon the lake shore.) Who are they going to believe, you or a couple of orphaned shovelheads who don't know their own assholes from an anthill, who are going to get quashed like roaches anyway? Do it. Then the fledglings will die the bodies will burn the late-night news footage will be scrubbed or doctored and no one will know and no one will think to question. Do it, Conrad. Take the blood he's been wasting on annual cancer checkups and twice-a-week half-chubs. Use it well. Burn it better than he ever could. (A bighorn ram laying upon a scrubby hill its wool matted its tongue and eyeballs eaten its black belly hollowed out and crawling with worms the points of its ribs flapping with scraps of fat as yellow as saltwater taffy. Why didn't God stop this, mama, why would he let this happen to something so beautiful?) Let it fuel you. Use it to show him how a true predator hunts. Do it. (Standing outside on the porch mustering the courage to tell his father he'd wrecked the car. Anticipating the most horrific sound in some fifteen year old boys' whole world: leather cracking on leather.) Take his sorry excuse for a life and finally imbue it with its first iota of purpose, a seed of meaning. (Trying to go a whole month without whiskey. Succeeding.) Do it, Conrad. (Trying to go a whole month without whiskey. Failing.) You know you want it. You know you must. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it...
I̷̴̸̴̢̨̧̡̡̛̒̆ͣ̑̀̓ͬ̐́ͧ̎̑͛̏̅͋̀͑̏́̂ͧ̀͊͛̅͐͌͆͂̽̋̽̅͊ͤͧ̓ͥ͐̓͂̋̐͐̽ͩͨ̐̂̑͗ͭ̾̅̏͑͌́ͣ͋̓͐̈ͪ̚̕̕͘͟͜͠͠͝͠͠͠ S̵̷̵̵̨̧̨̛ͣ̃̈́͊͋͊͒́̂͗͛̿̓́̃͑ͣ͋ͮͯ̌ͦͪ̆̓ͮͨ̍́̚̕͠͝͝͠͝͠͝͞͞Ą̷̷̏͋̉̆͗ͦ̄̈ͪ̉ͨ̑͊͐ͬ̿ͩ̂̊ͯͧ̑̍͒͋̈́ͬ͊̌̓͗̓ͨ͑͋̽ͮ̄ͦͩ̅̔̄́͢͠͠͝͏̢͟I̷̴̡̓͒͑ͦ̈ͯ͌ͭͬ̒̏̉ͫ̆ͨ̒̉ͫ͆ͩ̐̀̔̊̂͒ͭ́͜D̽ͫͯ̐ͤ̂ͯ̄̑ͭ̿ͤͥͬ̃̆̃͑ͫ͒̾̈́͐̒ͯ̆̿ͪ̂ͫ͑̔ͧ̈̒̀ͣͣ̂̈͌ͮͭͦͤ̑̚҉̸̶̵̴̶̴̧̨̡̧̧́́͞͝ F̷̊̒̂͊͋̓ͨͥͭͨ̐̋͌̐̎̈́ͯ̒̂ͦ̓ͫͥͥ̿̚͜U͊̂̄͛̏͋̋͐ͭ̒̌͆ͧ̿ͨ̌̐̽̏̐ͧ͊ͦ͊ͪ͛̒ͯ͂ͮͬ̒̄ͧ̎̎̔̂͆ͪ̇̔ͤ͆ͤ̈̾ͦ̽̊ͣ̈ͧͯ͆͂̏ͩ̅̍̋ͤ́ͧ̈́ͪ͆͑ͯ̏̚͜͟͠C̡̛͆͐ͪ̓ͥ̾̍ͥ̋ͩ̔ͨͩ͆̓ͣ̇̈́̊̔̄̈́͆͒͛ͬ̈́͒̈́ͤ͗ͧ̔͑̐̊̈̂̂͆̍͛̆͆͗ͩͣ͌̄ͯ̓̎̏ͯ̀ͤ̔̈́̈́̓ͨ͐̃́̎ͣ͘͠͡҉̷̀͜͠Ǩ̶̴̵̨̢̢̡̛ͯ̏ͪ̇ͮͪ͒̿͋ͧ̑̍̋ͯ͛͑̄͆ͩͩ͋̉͐͋ͧ̽̚̕͘͜͢͢͞͡͞͡I̴̐̊͒̎ͣ̄̎̌̒͗͊̾ͥ̉̈ͮ̈̐̐͆̽͊ͧͬ̂ͤ̾͢͏̸̷̴̴̸̧́́͢͜͠҉͜Ň̸͌̈́͛̿̉̈ͨ͛͒̄͊̎͛̃̂ͥ̔̃̍͆͆̎̽ͤ̇̏̐̚G̵̢̨̛̋͗̈́̂̋ͥͪ̔ͧ̂̌͛ͬ̎ͤ̾̋̓̾ͨ͒͊ͦ̎͛̀̓ͧ̄ͧ̓ͧ̓̀ͤͤͥ̈́ͧͮ̔̉͊̃ͫ̇͒̒̑͗ͪ̈͌̔́́̚̕͞ D̷̷̸̴̶̴̡̧̨̛̛ͨͥ̈́ͭ̐ͨ̑ͨ͋̑́̓̆̑ͬ̉̌͊͐ͭ͋͊͒ͪ͋́́ͣ͂̾̽̏̆̏̅̍̃ͭ̍̉ͦ̏ͬͣͦ̎̃́̈ͯ̔̃̉͒̈̌͌ͦ̍ͤ̽̉ͫͫͣ̀ͫ̈́͋̑͂͐ͨ̾͌ͦ̒̽͊̊̌͋̽͌̓̏̓͐ͭ͑ͮ̏̀̚͘͘͘͟͢͢͞͞͡O̓̋̑ͥͭͪ̄͞͏̀̕͜ I̚҉̴̶̴̶̢̢̡̛̀͘͝͡͝͏̡̛͢͡͠Tͨ̿͂ͨͮ̑̃ͤ̓̐̓̊̋ͩ͋̐̓͌̈́ͮͩ̾͊̊̿̾̓͌͑́̐̄ͦͮ͐͆ͬ͑͗̀͋ͫ͒͆̐͋̏͌ͫ̚҉̸͠
3x Like
coGM
TokyoPewPew rpguilder (derogatory)
Member
Seen
10 hrs ago
Connie spun and lunged and grasped before he even knew something (some-one) had touched him. But his fist closed around empty air; he stared only at a crumbling concrete wall, naked but for black-and-yellow guide stripes, a film of dust and greyish road soot. He stood there petrified a moment, dazed, knowing where he was but not how he had got there. Curling the fist in toward his chest, he peered down the ramp; saw McGlinn glaring up at him, radio unlatched from his chest rig, mealwormy lips muttering this or that request for backup to some other unit elsewhere in the city. McGlinn had the nerve to be shaking his head, acting like Connie was the stupid one in all this, like he was the one to be jeered at and pitied, some kind of escaped circus act. But the voice for the time had gone still, banishing itself back into the dusty attics of his mind. He did not dare to think it dead—never dead—but maybe dormant for a little while, leaving him to steep in the relative silence of the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs, the whistle of a cool desert wind between the alleys and the colonnades. Mocking him with that silence: needling him with the question of when it might see fit again to break it. To wrest away from him all that fragile control, all that delicately balanced, teetering peace. To remind him whose urges mattered here. Whose lusts.
The Brujah tried to leave but found himself transfixed to the spot via his left hand; jerked it free and as cold night air stung its way into fresh open wounds the nerves began to sing. He looked down at the crumbs of concrete, the flecks of yellow paint worked down into the abrasions, the scratches, the gashes. The skin of his fingertips sheared away, most of the nails broken off, some debrided entirely. Then he noticed the crater left behind in the nearby bollard, the chunk ripped away from it in a five-fingered, distinctly human pattern.
Fuck.
"Hey."
Again it had come from behind him—a tap to his shoulder and a whisper low and sultry—but Connie reeled again, and again he clutched at a fistful of empty air and again he'd given McGlinn cause to gawk up at street level and wonder what that bullheaded, unwashed moron was doing now.
"Whoa, whoa," cooed the disembodied voice, "it's just me. It's me. You alright? You cool?"
Only then did Connie think to look back toward the police cruiser and its partition. Its empty partition. He sighed a raggèd sigh; cupped his tattered fingers, shoved the ruin of his fist down into his moleskin jacket's flap pocket. He could deal with it later, when knitting it up again would not risk the knives in his stomach growing even sharper, even more insatiable. Knee bouncing, his more intact hand fidgeting, clenching. "Just jumpy. Not fucking helping, by the way."
"Then how about some good news?" said the Malkavian, his tones boyish and full of vocal fry, especially at that pressed, urgent volume which said he wanted no one else to hear him, wanted not to break Obfuscate. "The parking attendant didn't know anything useful, which means he didn't see them. But just in case, I already, uh—sent him home for you."
And Connie had just been thinking to track that attendant down and lead him away to a stairwell for a 'private interview.' Blunt the edges a bit. "Right. Thanks, Jules. Couldn't do it without you."
He could practically hear Julian Prince's self-satisfied, gormless smile, even without Auspex. "I also went ahead and liberated him of the CCTV footage," beamed the Malkavian, his timbres quivering somewhat as he struggled to contain his excitement. "I've already uploaded it to your MDT."
"Where do you find the time?"
A giggle. "I had a very good distraction."
"Oh. You're welcome, I guess."
"Don't take too long browsing through it," Prince warned. "Chief Esparza is on his way. Oh, and Connie?"
But the Brujah, unsure of where to nod, where to halfheartedly salute, where to gesture his thanks, had simply dipped his head in something of an acknowledgement, and burrowed the second hand into its corresponding pocket, and started edging away toward his vehicle.
The Brujah tried to leave but found himself transfixed to the spot via his left hand; jerked it free and as cold night air stung its way into fresh open wounds the nerves began to sing. He looked down at the crumbs of concrete, the flecks of yellow paint worked down into the abrasions, the scratches, the gashes. The skin of his fingertips sheared away, most of the nails broken off, some debrided entirely. Then he noticed the crater left behind in the nearby bollard, the chunk ripped away from it in a five-fingered, distinctly human pattern.
Fuck.
"Hey."
Again it had come from behind him—a tap to his shoulder and a whisper low and sultry—but Connie reeled again, and again he clutched at a fistful of empty air and again he'd given McGlinn cause to gawk up at street level and wonder what that bullheaded, unwashed moron was doing now.
"Whoa, whoa," cooed the disembodied voice, "it's just me. It's me. You alright? You cool?"
Only then did Connie think to look back toward the police cruiser and its partition. Its empty partition. He sighed a raggèd sigh; cupped his tattered fingers, shoved the ruin of his fist down into his moleskin jacket's flap pocket. He could deal with it later, when knitting it up again would not risk the knives in his stomach growing even sharper, even more insatiable. Knee bouncing, his more intact hand fidgeting, clenching. "Just jumpy. Not fucking helping, by the way."
"Then how about some good news?" said the Malkavian, his tones boyish and full of vocal fry, especially at that pressed, urgent volume which said he wanted no one else to hear him, wanted not to break Obfuscate. "The parking attendant didn't know anything useful, which means he didn't see them. But just in case, I already, uh—sent him home for you."
And Connie had just been thinking to track that attendant down and lead him away to a stairwell for a 'private interview.' Blunt the edges a bit. "Right. Thanks, Jules. Couldn't do it without you."
He could practically hear Julian Prince's self-satisfied, gormless smile, even without Auspex. "I also went ahead and liberated him of the CCTV footage," beamed the Malkavian, his timbres quivering somewhat as he struggled to contain his excitement. "I've already uploaded it to your MDT."
"Where do you find the time?"
A giggle. "I had a very good distraction."
"Oh. You're welcome, I guess."
"Don't take too long browsing through it," Prince warned. "Chief Esparza is on his way. Oh, and Connie?"
But the Brujah, unsure of where to nod, where to halfheartedly salute, where to gesture his thanks, had simply dipped his head in something of an acknowledgement, and burrowed the second hand into its corresponding pocket, and started edging away toward his vehicle.
3x Like
Vincenzo emerged from the back seat of his Mercedes with a bow of his head to Mister Keene to idle. He was wearing a charcoal vest over a well-worn pleated maroon shirt, his eyes were obfuscated by rimless brown-orange tinted glasses.
He carried himself past the flourishes of the decorative backlit fountain, past the rows of acacia trees swaying in a balmy breeze, past the faux-Corinthian pillars which line Caligula’s Palace’s valet roundabout. Ugly SUVs changed hands, with schlubby tourists passing their keys to the bowtied, waistcoated servants and vice-versa.
Those same tourists posed for picture after picture on the marbled front step, in front of gold-glassed doors and stiff, tasseled carpet, cut and dyed as if from the cloaks of five hundred dead patricians. The ancillae held some contempt for the kitsch of the Strip’s casinos, but often it was the behavior of the customers that truly soured his mood.
Through the golden gate and past the lobby, with its little-penised marble statue (arms tastefully hacked just beneath the shoulders) beneath a vaulted, frescoed dome ceiling. Past faux-gold elevator doors, its luster dulled with countless fingerprints left uncleaned. Past half a dozen celebrity-chef eateries with trendy names in trendy lowercase typesets: sizzle. the croft. fig & olive.] his shadow loomed, slaking across the glamour all too eager to be out of the even golden light as he entered the honored arena of the casino floor, whose lights raged with a far more aggressive character.
Across the pit, even amidst the overstimulation of malfunctioning slot machines, of dancing recessed lights, Vince recognized the figure. He had met Elijah Ezekiel Brace briefly at his own Elysial induction: A wispy man in a loud velvet suit, with a silver shock of hair, his fingers as heavy with rings as an ox’s neck. Jewel-eyed and handsome, squaring up with him even though he was facing away.
Screens flickering with the hectic roller coaster of wins and losses, slot arms jammed and rollers whirring as Vince walked past. The blackjack tables sat nestled between the roulette tables and the baccarat lounge, the latter dim and smoky. Vince’s nose raised into a sneer briefly at the mix of tobacco and incense, the Chinamen within wearing sweaty polo shirts and cheap sunglasses. Table five, exactly as the message had promised.
Brace was the third of three at his table: he sat beside 160 pounds of woman stuffed into a 130-pound leopard-print sausage casing, her silky hair and indigenous skin both darker than the brass-and-chocolate tones of the cocktail dress. To her right sat another man—her “date,” presumably—a fat Texan type with a bushy Sam Elliott mustache, a white ten-gallon boss-of-the-plains, a cheap bluish-silvery suit that felt distasteful even to the tasteless dilettante.
The Italian approached the table confidently, those eyes hidden behind tinted lenses, hovering over each of them as he took a seat opposite the aged man, bowing his head to the pair between them. He kept his arms off the table, letting the round play out with an almost disinterested following of the game, its minutiae amusing, but hardly interesting compared to its players.
Brace took note of the new arrival with an eyeroll, letting his own rest back on the larger man. They chitchatted over the minutiae of the game, but his patience was running low. The Texan alternated between teaching his date how to play the game, and rattling out some advice for the aged Brujah as if he, too, was erring at every opportunity.
Brace feigned a moment’s recognition, his glass-blue eyes widening, his wrinkles deepening with glee. “Giorgiadis? Shit, that really is you! How you doing, man?! Fred, Agustina, this is Stefanos. We go back.”
Fred veered his eyes away from Agustina with the hint of a scowl towards Vince, as if more players would ruin his luck. He offered only a “Howdy” before his eyes returned to the table.
“So what’s up? You hanging around tonight?” Brace was quick to keep the mood of the room up past the bullheadedness of the other patron.
Vince, for his part, bowed his head to Fred, thankful that he was far enough away for it to be acceptable not to kiss the lady’s hand. “It’s been too long, Henry. Joe sends his regards.” He let that hang in the air for a moment. “Mind if I watch for a round or two?”
“Take your time. We got a few hands to go until Afaaf here—” he gestured briefly to the croupier—a withered old Arab lady with skin the same shade of tawny brown as her short, fluffy hair and a long, dignified nose—”refreshes the shoe.”
Vince returned a brief nod of his own, finishing his introductions. “Have you been having a good night so far?”
“Ups and downs. Ups and downs. Ain’t no way to win every night but to love the game.”
“There’s truth in that. Shame I can’t end up on the Strip every night.”
“Busy man. Well, track down a waitress, why don’t you? Grab a drink. Get settled. I can hold the fort.”
Vince gave a small chuckle and rose, a small bob of his head to the Texan and his ornament before putting his back to the table. He returned to the circle of light and sound to seek out the bar. The ancillae carried himself casually, his eyes wandering where they had at first been direct, regarding the lights and symphony of electronic sound with a hint of unease.
Finally making it to the counter of the bar past a series of orange columns, he rested his hands on the vinyl top, his hands a half inch of plastic away from snaking obsidian patterns in the marble below. Flagging one of the attendants with one hand, he ordered a Vesper martini. It was quickly prepared by hands that could claw away thousands in tips on a single night, and had a presentation to match in a sharp crystal bowl, with a tied lemon skin being the only thing breaking the perfect clarity in the glass.
While making his return to the lounge he felt the hairs on his arms rise under fabric. The storm of flashing lights dampened for a moment few could even notice, but the Lasombra kept as clear as his drink. Presence. A perfectly mundane weapon, wielded haphazardly by even the youngest hunters, but still sharp, still potent, drawing even the glassy, witless eyes of the slot addicts, standing even the neck hairs of the limp-skinned pensioners on end. Now, he needed to get to the business he had come here for.
Elijah was alone then, the Brujah leaning forward over the table. Afaaf was still going through the shoe, much more slowly without the presence of the charming couple. Her eyes carried a stale fear, reserved and concealed enough to impress the Lasombra.
Vincenzo was quick enough to speak. “Ah, I had wished Fred could stay around.” A flick of a finger towards Afaaf “And her?”
“She’s on the level. As for Fred, said he’s got a long drive ahead of him. Hmph. Heavy eyelids and light pockets, I suppose.”
Vinc, with nary a gesture, nary a word, bought into the next hand; placed his chips in a tidy pile. “All the same, we can enjoy some rounds. Must admit your envoy was quite the character.”
Nervous hands dealt cards deftly, and Brace picked back up. “Spooked your ghouls, did he?”
“Timothy has learned well to roll with the punches. Doesn’t mean he’s looking to get punched.” Vince paused to consider himself for a moment. “Am I supposed to take something so explicit as a test?”
“Nothing so uncouth. Besides, someone your age?—you’ve been tested aplenty.”
With the air broken some, Vince slacked in the shoulders. “I consider working with violent men a matter of course, but I had been led to believe that we deal more in implicits here.”
“Vegas is a different city than you’re used to. We can talk freely for the same reason someone like her—” he gave a nod to Afaaf—“is strictly off-limits. Caligula’s is Cassandra turf, and Dearborn vets his people closely.”
Vince nodded, those shaded glasses dipping some on his nose. “Suppose so. Then with that, I will be explicit with you. I am looking for protection, and my sire is displeased with my recent decision.”
Brace seemed unbothered by the assertion, smiling somberly when Vince lost out on the hand. “I’m sorry to hear that. But it’s funny you mention it, actually.”
“Oh? I’m not the only one making questionable decisions of late?”
“Does the name ‘Dandy’ Johnny Shea mean anything to you?”
Vince placed his next bet. “An old name, that. Heard about him secondhand some time ago. Has a ghost reappeared?”
“Another apostate hopeful. But unlike you, he has regrettably chosen to curry favor with another party. The wrong party.”
“That so? May I ask which?”
“You may. Not that it isn’t obvious.” He won again, raking in the cash nonchalantly. The moving of hundreds of dollars was inconsequential, deft hands moving cards as if he didn’t have seven, eight rocks on his fingers.
“Those roughneck types—the likes of whom paid your dear old Timothy a visit—dealing with them affords me a certain number of inroads. I’m not ash-on-sight at their Rants, for instance. That’s how I have it that the venerable Mr. Shea is trying to make a deal of his own. Protection—just enough Status that old grudges can’t catch up to him—in exchange for information."
Vince bobbed his head, thinking he had put two and two together. “And so you want me to try and sway a fellow errant brother?” he offered. “I have no entanglements with them, but I doubt they’d take too kindly to me.”
“I doubt there’s any convincing him.” A beat. “Best we can hope for is to make sure Baron Childers cannot benefit from what he knows. About us, sure—but also rituals. Local cults. Menhirs and altars. Any source of hard power she could use against us—against you, now that you’ve cast your lot.”
“I can take him out, though I must admit it's not my usual practice. Don’t suppose you have any hatchetmen lying around?”
A hand raised in calm. “All he has to do is not talk. Doesn’t matter to me what because he won’t or because he can’t.”
“Appreciate the leeway,” Vince said, ”though I doubt someone like that has much left material to work with.” A smile. “Consider it done regardless.”
A slim, approving smile shifted across Brace’s lips. “You’ll learn soon enough, ‘Stefanos,’ that I take care of the people who make my nights easier instead of harder. You do this for me, the Prince will be hearing some very good things at our next brouhaha. So what do you think? You still want those phone numbers?”
“Yes, that would be good. I have made nights easier for far less pleasant company.” A raise of his glass. “To easier nights, then.”
The Primogen drew a business card from the Napoleon of his velvet jacket. It read simply: Henry Karnes, Managing Director, Crusoe’s Casino & Hotel.
On the back he scrawled a name, and a ten-digit that he knew by heart. He cut into the card with his pen knife, twirled it, balanced it on the lip of Vince’s glass beside the lemon twist, their tips almost kissing. He raised his whiskey, the ice cubes long melted, the fine spirit lukewarm and untouched.
He carried himself past the flourishes of the decorative backlit fountain, past the rows of acacia trees swaying in a balmy breeze, past the faux-Corinthian pillars which line Caligula’s Palace’s valet roundabout. Ugly SUVs changed hands, with schlubby tourists passing their keys to the bowtied, waistcoated servants and vice-versa.
Those same tourists posed for picture after picture on the marbled front step, in front of gold-glassed doors and stiff, tasseled carpet, cut and dyed as if from the cloaks of five hundred dead patricians. The ancillae held some contempt for the kitsch of the Strip’s casinos, but often it was the behavior of the customers that truly soured his mood.
Through the golden gate and past the lobby, with its little-penised marble statue (arms tastefully hacked just beneath the shoulders) beneath a vaulted, frescoed dome ceiling. Past faux-gold elevator doors, its luster dulled with countless fingerprints left uncleaned. Past half a dozen celebrity-chef eateries with trendy names in trendy lowercase typesets: sizzle. the croft. fig & olive.] his shadow loomed, slaking across the glamour all too eager to be out of the even golden light as he entered the honored arena of the casino floor, whose lights raged with a far more aggressive character.
Across the pit, even amidst the overstimulation of malfunctioning slot machines, of dancing recessed lights, Vince recognized the figure. He had met Elijah Ezekiel Brace briefly at his own Elysial induction: A wispy man in a loud velvet suit, with a silver shock of hair, his fingers as heavy with rings as an ox’s neck. Jewel-eyed and handsome, squaring up with him even though he was facing away.
Screens flickering with the hectic roller coaster of wins and losses, slot arms jammed and rollers whirring as Vince walked past. The blackjack tables sat nestled between the roulette tables and the baccarat lounge, the latter dim and smoky. Vince’s nose raised into a sneer briefly at the mix of tobacco and incense, the Chinamen within wearing sweaty polo shirts and cheap sunglasses. Table five, exactly as the message had promised.
Brace was the third of three at his table: he sat beside 160 pounds of woman stuffed into a 130-pound leopard-print sausage casing, her silky hair and indigenous skin both darker than the brass-and-chocolate tones of the cocktail dress. To her right sat another man—her “date,” presumably—a fat Texan type with a bushy Sam Elliott mustache, a white ten-gallon boss-of-the-plains, a cheap bluish-silvery suit that felt distasteful even to the tasteless dilettante.
The Italian approached the table confidently, those eyes hidden behind tinted lenses, hovering over each of them as he took a seat opposite the aged man, bowing his head to the pair between them. He kept his arms off the table, letting the round play out with an almost disinterested following of the game, its minutiae amusing, but hardly interesting compared to its players.
Brace took note of the new arrival with an eyeroll, letting his own rest back on the larger man. They chitchatted over the minutiae of the game, but his patience was running low. The Texan alternated between teaching his date how to play the game, and rattling out some advice for the aged Brujah as if he, too, was erring at every opportunity.
Brace feigned a moment’s recognition, his glass-blue eyes widening, his wrinkles deepening with glee. “Giorgiadis? Shit, that really is you! How you doing, man?! Fred, Agustina, this is Stefanos. We go back.”
Fred veered his eyes away from Agustina with the hint of a scowl towards Vince, as if more players would ruin his luck. He offered only a “Howdy” before his eyes returned to the table.
“So what’s up? You hanging around tonight?” Brace was quick to keep the mood of the room up past the bullheadedness of the other patron.
Vince, for his part, bowed his head to Fred, thankful that he was far enough away for it to be acceptable not to kiss the lady’s hand. “It’s been too long, Henry. Joe sends his regards.” He let that hang in the air for a moment. “Mind if I watch for a round or two?”
“Take your time. We got a few hands to go until Afaaf here—” he gestured briefly to the croupier—a withered old Arab lady with skin the same shade of tawny brown as her short, fluffy hair and a long, dignified nose—”refreshes the shoe.”
Vince returned a brief nod of his own, finishing his introductions. “Have you been having a good night so far?”
“Ups and downs. Ups and downs. Ain’t no way to win every night but to love the game.”
“There’s truth in that. Shame I can’t end up on the Strip every night.”
“Busy man. Well, track down a waitress, why don’t you? Grab a drink. Get settled. I can hold the fort.”
Vince gave a small chuckle and rose, a small bob of his head to the Texan and his ornament before putting his back to the table. He returned to the circle of light and sound to seek out the bar. The ancillae carried himself casually, his eyes wandering where they had at first been direct, regarding the lights and symphony of electronic sound with a hint of unease.
Finally making it to the counter of the bar past a series of orange columns, he rested his hands on the vinyl top, his hands a half inch of plastic away from snaking obsidian patterns in the marble below. Flagging one of the attendants with one hand, he ordered a Vesper martini. It was quickly prepared by hands that could claw away thousands in tips on a single night, and had a presentation to match in a sharp crystal bowl, with a tied lemon skin being the only thing breaking the perfect clarity in the glass.
While making his return to the lounge he felt the hairs on his arms rise under fabric. The storm of flashing lights dampened for a moment few could even notice, but the Lasombra kept as clear as his drink. Presence. A perfectly mundane weapon, wielded haphazardly by even the youngest hunters, but still sharp, still potent, drawing even the glassy, witless eyes of the slot addicts, standing even the neck hairs of the limp-skinned pensioners on end. Now, he needed to get to the business he had come here for.
Elijah was alone then, the Brujah leaning forward over the table. Afaaf was still going through the shoe, much more slowly without the presence of the charming couple. Her eyes carried a stale fear, reserved and concealed enough to impress the Lasombra.
Vincenzo was quick enough to speak. “Ah, I had wished Fred could stay around.” A flick of a finger towards Afaaf “And her?”
“She’s on the level. As for Fred, said he’s got a long drive ahead of him. Hmph. Heavy eyelids and light pockets, I suppose.”
Vinc, with nary a gesture, nary a word, bought into the next hand; placed his chips in a tidy pile. “All the same, we can enjoy some rounds. Must admit your envoy was quite the character.”
Nervous hands dealt cards deftly, and Brace picked back up. “Spooked your ghouls, did he?”
“Timothy has learned well to roll with the punches. Doesn’t mean he’s looking to get punched.” Vince paused to consider himself for a moment. “Am I supposed to take something so explicit as a test?”
“Nothing so uncouth. Besides, someone your age?—you’ve been tested aplenty.”
With the air broken some, Vince slacked in the shoulders. “I consider working with violent men a matter of course, but I had been led to believe that we deal more in implicits here.”
“Vegas is a different city than you’re used to. We can talk freely for the same reason someone like her—” he gave a nod to Afaaf—“is strictly off-limits. Caligula’s is Cassandra turf, and Dearborn vets his people closely.”
Vince nodded, those shaded glasses dipping some on his nose. “Suppose so. Then with that, I will be explicit with you. I am looking for protection, and my sire is displeased with my recent decision.”
Brace seemed unbothered by the assertion, smiling somberly when Vince lost out on the hand. “I’m sorry to hear that. But it’s funny you mention it, actually.”
“Oh? I’m not the only one making questionable decisions of late?”
“Does the name ‘Dandy’ Johnny Shea mean anything to you?”
Vince placed his next bet. “An old name, that. Heard about him secondhand some time ago. Has a ghost reappeared?”
“Another apostate hopeful. But unlike you, he has regrettably chosen to curry favor with another party. The wrong party.”
“That so? May I ask which?”
“You may. Not that it isn’t obvious.” He won again, raking in the cash nonchalantly. The moving of hundreds of dollars was inconsequential, deft hands moving cards as if he didn’t have seven, eight rocks on his fingers.
“Those roughneck types—the likes of whom paid your dear old Timothy a visit—dealing with them affords me a certain number of inroads. I’m not ash-on-sight at their Rants, for instance. That’s how I have it that the venerable Mr. Shea is trying to make a deal of his own. Protection—just enough Status that old grudges can’t catch up to him—in exchange for information."
Vince bobbed his head, thinking he had put two and two together. “And so you want me to try and sway a fellow errant brother?” he offered. “I have no entanglements with them, but I doubt they’d take too kindly to me.”
“I doubt there’s any convincing him.” A beat. “Best we can hope for is to make sure Baron Childers cannot benefit from what he knows. About us, sure—but also rituals. Local cults. Menhirs and altars. Any source of hard power she could use against us—against you, now that you’ve cast your lot.”
“I can take him out, though I must admit it's not my usual practice. Don’t suppose you have any hatchetmen lying around?”
A hand raised in calm. “All he has to do is not talk. Doesn’t matter to me what because he won’t or because he can’t.”
“Appreciate the leeway,” Vince said, ”though I doubt someone like that has much left material to work with.” A smile. “Consider it done regardless.”
A slim, approving smile shifted across Brace’s lips. “You’ll learn soon enough, ‘Stefanos,’ that I take care of the people who make my nights easier instead of harder. You do this for me, the Prince will be hearing some very good things at our next brouhaha. So what do you think? You still want those phone numbers?”
“Yes, that would be good. I have made nights easier for far less pleasant company.” A raise of his glass. “To easier nights, then.”
The Primogen drew a business card from the Napoleon of his velvet jacket. It read simply: Henry Karnes, Managing Director, Crusoe’s Casino & Hotel.
On the back he scrawled a name, and a ten-digit that he knew by heart. He cut into the card with his pen knife, twirled it, balanced it on the lip of Vince’s glass beside the lemon twist, their tips almost kissing. He raised his whiskey, the ice cubes long melted, the fine spirit lukewarm and untouched.
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Leaving the body behind, Teresa stripped the nitrate gloves from her hands, stuffing the wads in her pockets corpse-dew and all. The less they left behind, the better. Disciplines and ghouls only went so far when it came to obscuring the nature of an event. Her thoughts moved quickly. Pleasure lurked at the edges of her cognition. Dulled by unlife, but there, still there all those years later. Humming faintly into her ear, reminding her of living. She had sensed nothing. She had heard nothing. But oh, the wonders she had seen. The hidden truths that clumsy hands had tried to scratch away.
Unhurried, she walked back towards the car, her eyes lingering on the two cops. They weren’t relaxed. They weren’t distracted by their smartphones. A poor omen, she considered, knowing what she knew about the local cops. Attention was always the first sign of trouble. Music blared from Connie’s car, bad music. The same terrible shit he blasted everywhere. Teresa frowned. He annoyed her. His car annoyed her. Always had. Hardly better than a beater, it looked like the sort of thing her father would have driven. If he’d had the money. If he hadn’t lost it gambling. If he hadn’t spent it all on booze. If he hadn’t been…
The traffic post nearby was all kinds of fucked up. The hand-shaped crater and scattered paint chips inspired nothing in the way of confidence. Knocking softly on the car roof, she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. A metallic smell greeted her, a familiar scent that sent a pang of desire coursing down her neck to the pit of her stomach. Fresh vitae, rising above the chemical-ey, waxy smell of leather polish. The lingering odor created by decomposing morsels, moldy crumbs, melted scraps of cheese that languished between the seat cushions. She adjusted the rear view mirror, all casual-like, as if she wasn’t keeping an eye on the two knockos. Drawing the sawn-off from her leg holster, she stuck it between the center console and the seat.
“You have a run in with our friend the parking bollard?”
Connie’s gaze avoided hers, his knee bouncing like a piston at a putter, the fingers on one hand (the one not stowed in jacket pocket to hide the avulsions) rapping the steering wheel. "Better than Oz's jaw," he murmured. Not one of his usual shitty jokes, despite its trappings. More deflective than that. Avoidant.
They were running out of time. They needed answers. Before more bodies brought more attention to the Strip, the real strip. Brace wasn’t going to let them play detective forever. She could see the sword in the sky above them, dangling by its horsehair thread. The doom promised to those who failed the princeling. She’d drag Connie with her, kicking and screaming if she had to. His talents were as important as hers. The fledglings were unlikely to come easy, and less likely still to accept their Final Death. They’d left a giant fucking mess to clean up. And Connie was busy worrying about a fucking cop. Teresa tsked into the inside of her mouth, resisting the urge to scowl. She waited, but her partner didn’t respond. He didn’t take the bait. Shocking. He didn’t want to pick a fight? Not over a scornful look? Not over the apathy that laced her voice?
“What’d Mr. DeWayne have to say?” he said, curtly cutting in before she could say anything more about the subject. Not that she wanted to. She could see the look in the corner of his eyes. The thing grasping for control behind his slouched form. Violence looming. Not the usual sort of petty violence that Connie peddled in. Something worse. Something more immediate, more urgent.
“The short version, then,” Teresa said, waving a hand in the direction of the body. “There’s asphalt pebbles stuck in his knees, and superficial abrasions, and a normal body response—swelling, clotting. He was pushed. Maybe tripped. No more struggle after that; just the bites. The usual exsanguination on the thigh, two channels with a lot of bruising. It’s the neck that killed him. Strange teeth, though. More of a gnawing mechanism than a piercing one. Less—...proboscular. Nagaraja? Nosferatu, maybe.“
“Gangrel.”
Teresa snapped from her soliloquy, distracted from the circular trough she’d been walking like a donkey lashed to a millstone. “Yeah?”
Connie pressed a button, rewinding the footage until just before the two fledglings entered the parking lot. He zoomed in on the woman, and there she was all ringleted hair and prim, practiced bearing. A surgical mask for the teeth. Those hideous, furry, legwarmer things for whatever was going on with her legs. Sure enough. He teased the footage back and forth—playing and rewinding—and the girl had a prominent limp. Worse than a limp.
Teresa couldn’t help but marvel. “Digitigrade legs,” she guffawed, but she began to lose her steam as Connie glowered, the contempt legible in his face as he sensed another diatribe. “That’s…what they’re called…”
He chose not to interrogate; not to tease or incite. Like he was the exhausted one. “Whatever,” he said. “Point is that’s one sire down. There’s a Feral in town making strays.”
“And the other one? Mr. Skin-and-Bones?”
“How calmly the victim went along with them he could be using Dominate. But his hands don’t leave his pockets either. So he might be packing too.”
“Ugh. Goddammit, Connie, this isn’t the best you can do.”
“Not in the fucking mood, T.”
“Neither am I but here you are, still offering nothing but baseless speculation. Where’s your lead? Your M.O.? Isn’t this supposed to be what you’re good at?”
“I mean it. Are we fucking married now? Do you see a ring?” He finally showed his hand—literally—pulled it from the pocket, the skin avulsed at the fingertips, most of the nails broken clean off in spots, but brutalized in others. Bones and ligature glistening, gaping, and stuck through with concrete pebbles like a Thanksgiving onion studded with cloves, or the asphalt crumbs stuck in Curtis DeWayne’s knees. On a living creature with a beating heart the nerves would have been screaming. “No? Then go nag someone else for once.”
Teresa laughed. A practiced and purposeful reaction. “Just saying, ‘partner’: I’m upholding my end just fine. It’s you who isn’t making yourself very useful right now.”
“Oh, man, what am I gonna do?” he snarled. “What am I gonna do if I can’t meet Teresa Martinez-Hernandez-Ramirez-Lopez’s fucking deadlines? I guess I’ll just roll over and die! It’s the end of the fucking world, after all!”
“Fuck you.”
“No. ‘Oh, Connie, you didn’t walk down to the Evidence Store and load up a cart like me? What are you, dumb?’ No, fuck you, T.“
“It’s not my fault you can’t track down two fledgling as they thrill-kill along the Strip.”
“You think my job is easy? Let’s switch places then if it’s so easy. I’ll poke dead people with a stick for an hour while you do all the—”
A blur streaked past the passenger side window. Reacting to the movement, Teresa reached for the shotgun she had stashed within easy reach. A loud thump echoed as something, small and light, landed on the hood of Connie’s car. Standing uneasily, a cat looked at them through the windshield glass. Body shaking as it drew heavy breaths that began with a rasping, wheezing noise. She could see it was in pain. Its tongue curled and lolling as it panted, gulped at tepid air. Purpose burned in maddened eyes, gold orbs scorched with desperation. Exhausted, the cat lowered itself shakily to the simmering metal, wary of the two monsters. It could sense their purpose, their unholy lusts; and its fear of them coiled between its shoulders. Studying the pitiful creature, Teresa noticed no collar around its neck, no spay scars or tattoos, no clipped ears, but the matted fur, and its healthy body weight, obviously well-fed by someone... Martha. It was one of Martha’s strays. A message then. Or a warning. Maybe both.
She caught Connie’s stare. He had to be really desperate if he was eyeing up animal blood like a fine-dining hors d'oeuvre. Martha wasn’t likely to approve of the Brujah snacking on one of her pets. And whatever Martha had to tell them was probably important. Always was. The old crone didn’t reach out to dither and blather about just anything. She knew better than to waste their time.
“We’ll find you something near the camp,” Teresa said. “Right now she needs our help.” Didn’t have to speculate. No need to mention who or how or why. They were on the same page already.
So Connie frowned, but didn’t argue. The car lurched forward as he shifted gears, wheels squealing, rubber burning into the concrete as they sped out of the parking lot. The cat, in its panic, sprung down from the hood and disappeared into the side-view mirrors, abandoned to its fate on the warm midnight street. As they turned the corner Teresa saw the first predator step out from the shadows. Then another. One by one they appeared, Julian Prince’s cronies, dropping Obfuscate and converging on Austin McGlinn and his partner. Teresa exhaled; everyone had gotten lucky. Connie for managing to hold it together. The cops for the same reason. And her, for not having another mess to clean up.
Merging into traffic, the Brujah ripped down Sahara Road, rivuleting from lane to lane, between traffic and sidewalk, anywhere there was a gap. His frenetic and impatient driving—the least of law enforcement’s problems when it came to Conrad Olivier Beauclerc—but with the Hunger strumming his nerves, pinpricking his vision, all his veers and twists were even more jittery than usual. Leaning against the window, Teresa kept an eye on the rearviews all the same, trying to make sense of the streaks and blurs and kicked-up dust. Street signs and stop lights passed behind them, but no one followed. Teresa had a joke on the tip of her tongue, something to smooth over the night, just the sort that Connie liked to hear. But then the police scanner, stuffed into the dashboard in front of them, crackled to life with a woman’s cool, clinical voice.
“Fuck,” Teresa said.
The car began to slow.
“Really? Really. Hey, come on. I didn’t mean all that about how useless you are,” Teresa pleaded. “C’mon Connie, I was kidding. You don’t have to take it so…”
But the car coasted to a stop. Nowhere, just some random sidewalk, suspension jostling as he threw the transmission into park. Heedless, it seemed, to the urgency that had overtaken them mere moments before.
“Out.”
“I can’t believe it. You’re serious about this.“
“You said it yourself. Martha still needs you.“
“Oh, a fine excuse indeed! And what about you? Suppose you even get there before LV’s Finest—which you won’t—you wanna get ambushed two-on-one? Ashed by a newborn baby Gangrel and her Ventrue-or-whatever friend?“
“Won’t happen.”
“You’re hungry, Connie, not to mention injured. You need the help.”
“If you really believe that, tell it to Brace. Get reassigned. Find that ‘useful’ partner of your dreams.”
“You’re just doing this for the glory.”
Finally. Finally he cracked a smirk. “Like how you’re only with me to bum rides and smokes?“
At least he was feeling a bit better but still, it was times like this his Brujah bullheadedness really pissed her off. Also pissing her off was her lack of a retort. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, slamming the passenger-side door behind her, standing there then on the sidewalk her shoulders hunched and the rest of her huddled in her coat like she’d been stood up on a first date. “Fine. You want to be the first notch in these kids’ belts, see if I care.”
“Write me a funny obit,” Connie said, pressing down on the clutch and the brake levers, throwing the stick back into first. He lingered a moment. “See you soon, T.”
“Better be with good news,” she shot back. For a moment she was content to watch him pull away but soon a recollection disturbed that peace. “Wait. Connie!” But he was already halfway down the block, exhaust roaring behind him, well out of earshot. She ran behind him for a few paces, knowing it was fruitless but deciding to hope anyway. Some traffic, a red light he actually cared to respect, anything, but no, he was gone. “Shit!” Teresa groaned, throwing her hands in aggravation. “My fucking shotgun!”
Unhurried, she walked back towards the car, her eyes lingering on the two cops. They weren’t relaxed. They weren’t distracted by their smartphones. A poor omen, she considered, knowing what she knew about the local cops. Attention was always the first sign of trouble. Music blared from Connie’s car, bad music. The same terrible shit he blasted everywhere. Teresa frowned. He annoyed her. His car annoyed her. Always had. Hardly better than a beater, it looked like the sort of thing her father would have driven. If he’d had the money. If he hadn’t lost it gambling. If he hadn’t spent it all on booze. If he hadn’t been…
The traffic post nearby was all kinds of fucked up. The hand-shaped crater and scattered paint chips inspired nothing in the way of confidence. Knocking softly on the car roof, she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. A metallic smell greeted her, a familiar scent that sent a pang of desire coursing down her neck to the pit of her stomach. Fresh vitae, rising above the chemical-ey, waxy smell of leather polish. The lingering odor created by decomposing morsels, moldy crumbs, melted scraps of cheese that languished between the seat cushions. She adjusted the rear view mirror, all casual-like, as if she wasn’t keeping an eye on the two knockos. Drawing the sawn-off from her leg holster, she stuck it between the center console and the seat.
“You have a run in with our friend the parking bollard?”
Connie’s gaze avoided hers, his knee bouncing like a piston at a putter, the fingers on one hand (the one not stowed in jacket pocket to hide the avulsions) rapping the steering wheel. "Better than Oz's jaw," he murmured. Not one of his usual shitty jokes, despite its trappings. More deflective than that. Avoidant.
They were running out of time. They needed answers. Before more bodies brought more attention to the Strip, the real strip. Brace wasn’t going to let them play detective forever. She could see the sword in the sky above them, dangling by its horsehair thread. The doom promised to those who failed the princeling. She’d drag Connie with her, kicking and screaming if she had to. His talents were as important as hers. The fledglings were unlikely to come easy, and less likely still to accept their Final Death. They’d left a giant fucking mess to clean up. And Connie was busy worrying about a fucking cop. Teresa tsked into the inside of her mouth, resisting the urge to scowl. She waited, but her partner didn’t respond. He didn’t take the bait. Shocking. He didn’t want to pick a fight? Not over a scornful look? Not over the apathy that laced her voice?
“What’d Mr. DeWayne have to say?” he said, curtly cutting in before she could say anything more about the subject. Not that she wanted to. She could see the look in the corner of his eyes. The thing grasping for control behind his slouched form. Violence looming. Not the usual sort of petty violence that Connie peddled in. Something worse. Something more immediate, more urgent.
“The short version, then,” Teresa said, waving a hand in the direction of the body. “There’s asphalt pebbles stuck in his knees, and superficial abrasions, and a normal body response—swelling, clotting. He was pushed. Maybe tripped. No more struggle after that; just the bites. The usual exsanguination on the thigh, two channels with a lot of bruising. It’s the neck that killed him. Strange teeth, though. More of a gnawing mechanism than a piercing one. Less—...proboscular. Nagaraja? Nosferatu, maybe.“
“Gangrel.”
Teresa snapped from her soliloquy, distracted from the circular trough she’d been walking like a donkey lashed to a millstone. “Yeah?”
Connie pressed a button, rewinding the footage until just before the two fledglings entered the parking lot. He zoomed in on the woman, and there she was all ringleted hair and prim, practiced bearing. A surgical mask for the teeth. Those hideous, furry, legwarmer things for whatever was going on with her legs. Sure enough. He teased the footage back and forth—playing and rewinding—and the girl had a prominent limp. Worse than a limp.
Teresa couldn’t help but marvel. “Digitigrade legs,” she guffawed, but she began to lose her steam as Connie glowered, the contempt legible in his face as he sensed another diatribe. “That’s…what they’re called…”
He chose not to interrogate; not to tease or incite. Like he was the exhausted one. “Whatever,” he said. “Point is that’s one sire down. There’s a Feral in town making strays.”
“And the other one? Mr. Skin-and-Bones?”
“How calmly the victim went along with them he could be using Dominate. But his hands don’t leave his pockets either. So he might be packing too.”
“Ugh. Goddammit, Connie, this isn’t the best you can do.”
“Not in the fucking mood, T.”
“Neither am I but here you are, still offering nothing but baseless speculation. Where’s your lead? Your M.O.? Isn’t this supposed to be what you’re good at?”
“I mean it. Are we fucking married now? Do you see a ring?” He finally showed his hand—literally—pulled it from the pocket, the skin avulsed at the fingertips, most of the nails broken clean off in spots, but brutalized in others. Bones and ligature glistening, gaping, and stuck through with concrete pebbles like a Thanksgiving onion studded with cloves, or the asphalt crumbs stuck in Curtis DeWayne’s knees. On a living creature with a beating heart the nerves would have been screaming. “No? Then go nag someone else for once.”
Teresa laughed. A practiced and purposeful reaction. “Just saying, ‘partner’: I’m upholding my end just fine. It’s you who isn’t making yourself very useful right now.”
“Oh, man, what am I gonna do?” he snarled. “What am I gonna do if I can’t meet Teresa Martinez-Hernandez-Ramirez-Lopez’s fucking deadlines? I guess I’ll just roll over and die! It’s the end of the fucking world, after all!”
“Fuck you.”
“No. ‘Oh, Connie, you didn’t walk down to the Evidence Store and load up a cart like me? What are you, dumb?’ No, fuck you, T.“
“It’s not my fault you can’t track down two fledgling as they thrill-kill along the Strip.”
“You think my job is easy? Let’s switch places then if it’s so easy. I’ll poke dead people with a stick for an hour while you do all the—”
A blur streaked past the passenger side window. Reacting to the movement, Teresa reached for the shotgun she had stashed within easy reach. A loud thump echoed as something, small and light, landed on the hood of Connie’s car. Standing uneasily, a cat looked at them through the windshield glass. Body shaking as it drew heavy breaths that began with a rasping, wheezing noise. She could see it was in pain. Its tongue curled and lolling as it panted, gulped at tepid air. Purpose burned in maddened eyes, gold orbs scorched with desperation. Exhausted, the cat lowered itself shakily to the simmering metal, wary of the two monsters. It could sense their purpose, their unholy lusts; and its fear of them coiled between its shoulders. Studying the pitiful creature, Teresa noticed no collar around its neck, no spay scars or tattoos, no clipped ears, but the matted fur, and its healthy body weight, obviously well-fed by someone... Martha. It was one of Martha’s strays. A message then. Or a warning. Maybe both.
She caught Connie’s stare. He had to be really desperate if he was eyeing up animal blood like a fine-dining hors d'oeuvre. Martha wasn’t likely to approve of the Brujah snacking on one of her pets. And whatever Martha had to tell them was probably important. Always was. The old crone didn’t reach out to dither and blather about just anything. She knew better than to waste their time.
“We’ll find you something near the camp,” Teresa said. “Right now she needs our help.” Didn’t have to speculate. No need to mention who or how or why. They were on the same page already.
So Connie frowned, but didn’t argue. The car lurched forward as he shifted gears, wheels squealing, rubber burning into the concrete as they sped out of the parking lot. The cat, in its panic, sprung down from the hood and disappeared into the side-view mirrors, abandoned to its fate on the warm midnight street. As they turned the corner Teresa saw the first predator step out from the shadows. Then another. One by one they appeared, Julian Prince’s cronies, dropping Obfuscate and converging on Austin McGlinn and his partner. Teresa exhaled; everyone had gotten lucky. Connie for managing to hold it together. The cops for the same reason. And her, for not having another mess to clean up.
Merging into traffic, the Brujah ripped down Sahara Road, rivuleting from lane to lane, between traffic and sidewalk, anywhere there was a gap. His frenetic and impatient driving—the least of law enforcement’s problems when it came to Conrad Olivier Beauclerc—but with the Hunger strumming his nerves, pinpricking his vision, all his veers and twists were even more jittery than usual. Leaning against the window, Teresa kept an eye on the rearviews all the same, trying to make sense of the streaks and blurs and kicked-up dust. Street signs and stop lights passed behind them, but no one followed. Teresa had a joke on the tip of her tongue, something to smooth over the night, just the sort that Connie liked to hear. But then the police scanner, stuffed into the dashboard in front of them, crackled to life with a woman’s cool, clinical voice.
“All units be advised we've got a four-nineteen on the corner of East Flamingo and Escondido. Suspect is at large and presumed still on foot. BOLO young Caucasian woman, slender build with long brown hair. Requesting all available units for an area check, Clark County Library.”“Adam-1-4 to dispatch.” Male. Gruff. ”I don’t get it. Did you call in the wrong code? Is this a dead body or a homicide? Over.”“Uh—information unclear, unit. Possible miscoded. Eyewitness at scene reports one suspect fleeing the scene, presumed dangerous.”
“But nobody heard the killing?”
“Affirmative, Adam-1-4. No weapons reported. Probable foul play.”“Fuck,” Teresa said.
The car began to slow.
“Really? Really. Hey, come on. I didn’t mean all that about how useless you are,” Teresa pleaded. “C’mon Connie, I was kidding. You don’t have to take it so…”
But the car coasted to a stop. Nowhere, just some random sidewalk, suspension jostling as he threw the transmission into park. Heedless, it seemed, to the urgency that had overtaken them mere moments before.
“Out.”
“I can’t believe it. You’re serious about this.“
“You said it yourself. Martha still needs you.“
“Oh, a fine excuse indeed! And what about you? Suppose you even get there before LV’s Finest—which you won’t—you wanna get ambushed two-on-one? Ashed by a newborn baby Gangrel and her Ventrue-or-whatever friend?“
“Won’t happen.”
“You’re hungry, Connie, not to mention injured. You need the help.”
“If you really believe that, tell it to Brace. Get reassigned. Find that ‘useful’ partner of your dreams.”
“You’re just doing this for the glory.”
Finally. Finally he cracked a smirk. “Like how you’re only with me to bum rides and smokes?“
At least he was feeling a bit better but still, it was times like this his Brujah bullheadedness really pissed her off. Also pissing her off was her lack of a retort. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, slamming the passenger-side door behind her, standing there then on the sidewalk her shoulders hunched and the rest of her huddled in her coat like she’d been stood up on a first date. “Fine. You want to be the first notch in these kids’ belts, see if I care.”
“Write me a funny obit,” Connie said, pressing down on the clutch and the brake levers, throwing the stick back into first. He lingered a moment. “See you soon, T.”
“Better be with good news,” she shot back. For a moment she was content to watch him pull away but soon a recollection disturbed that peace. “Wait. Connie!” But he was already halfway down the block, exhaust roaring behind him, well out of earshot. She ran behind him for a few paces, knowing it was fruitless but deciding to hope anyway. Some traffic, a red light he actually cared to respect, anything, but no, he was gone. “Shit!” Teresa groaned, throwing her hands in aggravation. “My fucking shotgun!”
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6 mos ago
Teresa walked along Lake Mead Boulevard. Night hid the ugliness of the city. The filthiness of the streets no longer as obvious beneath the dimming street lights. The strip malls that she passed bathed the sidewalks in warm rays. Neon signs beckoned. Offering all kinds of services, and always, always, satisfaction. Pawn shops adorned with gold. Bail Offices promising freedom at ever falling prices. Strip Clubs dealing in flesh. And late-night burger joints dripping with grease. Teresa felt a sense of revulsion. It was wrong. All of it. The buildings crammed too close together. The people pushed against each other. The writhing mass of humanity that surrounded her. Touching her, no matter what she did to avoid it, leaving a sickly sweet smell on her skin that she couldn’t remove. No matter how hard she scrubbed. The throbbing, oozing heart of the city that she fed on. That she needed.
The adrenaline had faded. Not that it had ever been there. Not really. It was a memory. A hollow husk she knew only by the emptiness it left inside of her. The slowly simmering anger she felt was real though. Connie was gonna fuck it all up. He was gonna get himself ashed by some week old fledglings. And she’d be the one stuck explaining to Brace how it was all his own damn fault.
Teresa stopped, letting out a weary sigh. She had walked off enough of her frustration. Her hands found a pack of cigarettes in her pocket. A fleck of orange glowed between her fingers as she blew puffs of smoke into the air. She watched the cars zipping by, wondering if it was too late to buy a flight to Paris. The burner phone in her pocket began to vibrate, ringing silently.bFishing it out of her coat pocket, she stared at it warily, letting it ring several times before she flipped it open, mashing the Call key, “Crusoe’s Casino & Hotel, hiring—uhhh…— department. How can I help you?”
A nasally male voice crackled over the cheap quartz speakers, “Yes, we were looking for some help regarding a temp assignment, Mister Karnes recommended we speak.”
“One moment, please,” Teresa said, burying her frown in the collar of her coat, holding the phone away from her as if it was some rotten thing. Strangers didn’t call her. Not ever. Not unless Brace handed them the number to her latest burner phone. Malas noticias. Bad news. Simepre bad news, for someone, and she hoped it wasn’t her. She knew she should be wary. But she was curious. The scraps of meat were there. Right where she could see them, where she could smell them. Brace wasn’t in the habit of doing anything for free. To help the stranger was to help Brace and to help Brace was to earn her keep. They were dogs. Connie and her. But even dogs grew hungry…and they couldn’t hide forever.
She tossed the halfsmoked cigarette to the pavement, stamping out the fire as she put the phone back against her ear, “You’re in luck, we’ve got some openings. Let’s meet for a quick chat. Taormina Restaurant, 347 North Nellis Boulevard, in two hours. The cannolis are good. And tell them Sofía sent you.”
The caller said nothing at first, although Teresa thought she could hear a pen scratching on paper, the person on the other end of the line scribbling down the address. There was a muted muttering that she couldn’t quite make out, before the voice replied, “Thank you, Sofia. Be sure to bring anything you have on file for Johnny Shea—you might know him as Dandy.”
She tried to remember the name, but nothing came to mind. There were enough kindred lurking in the shadows, feeding on the kine that flocked to Las Vegas. Enough faces to remember. And more than enough names to recall. She wasn’t a big shot like Brace. Connie sure as fuck wasn’t either. They were the problem solvers. The ones who put in the work. They only knew the big wigs in passing. When they needed them to do something. Teresa tapped her leg with her fingers of free hand, as if it might jostle some forgotten memory, “No problem. I’ll see if we have a resume from Mr. Shea. Thank you for your call.”
The adrenaline had faded. Not that it had ever been there. Not really. It was a memory. A hollow husk she knew only by the emptiness it left inside of her. The slowly simmering anger she felt was real though. Connie was gonna fuck it all up. He was gonna get himself ashed by some week old fledglings. And she’d be the one stuck explaining to Brace how it was all his own damn fault.
Teresa stopped, letting out a weary sigh. She had walked off enough of her frustration. Her hands found a pack of cigarettes in her pocket. A fleck of orange glowed between her fingers as she blew puffs of smoke into the air. She watched the cars zipping by, wondering if it was too late to buy a flight to Paris. The burner phone in her pocket began to vibrate, ringing silently.bFishing it out of her coat pocket, she stared at it warily, letting it ring several times before she flipped it open, mashing the Call key, “Crusoe’s Casino & Hotel, hiring—uhhh…— department. How can I help you?”
A nasally male voice crackled over the cheap quartz speakers, “Yes, we were looking for some help regarding a temp assignment, Mister Karnes recommended we speak.”
“One moment, please,” Teresa said, burying her frown in the collar of her coat, holding the phone away from her as if it was some rotten thing. Strangers didn’t call her. Not ever. Not unless Brace handed them the number to her latest burner phone. Malas noticias. Bad news. Simepre bad news, for someone, and she hoped it wasn’t her. She knew she should be wary. But she was curious. The scraps of meat were there. Right where she could see them, where she could smell them. Brace wasn’t in the habit of doing anything for free. To help the stranger was to help Brace and to help Brace was to earn her keep. They were dogs. Connie and her. But even dogs grew hungry…and they couldn’t hide forever.
She tossed the halfsmoked cigarette to the pavement, stamping out the fire as she put the phone back against her ear, “You’re in luck, we’ve got some openings. Let’s meet for a quick chat. Taormina Restaurant, 347 North Nellis Boulevard, in two hours. The cannolis are good. And tell them Sofía sent you.”
The caller said nothing at first, although Teresa thought she could hear a pen scratching on paper, the person on the other end of the line scribbling down the address. There was a muted muttering that she couldn’t quite make out, before the voice replied, “Thank you, Sofia. Be sure to bring anything you have on file for Johnny Shea—you might know him as Dandy.”
She tried to remember the name, but nothing came to mind. There were enough kindred lurking in the shadows, feeding on the kine that flocked to Las Vegas. Enough faces to remember. And more than enough names to recall. She wasn’t a big shot like Brace. Connie sure as fuck wasn’t either. They were the problem solvers. The ones who put in the work. They only knew the big wigs in passing. When they needed them to do something. Teresa tapped her leg with her fingers of free hand, as if it might jostle some forgotten memory, “No problem. I’ll see if we have a resume from Mr. Shea. Thank you for your call.”
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"Attention all headbangers: hands off that dial because you're listening to The Last Call with me, DJ Danny Rancid, only from 2am to 4am right here on 96.7 FM, WSOS: The Smoke. Where noiseISthe message.""Yo yo yo, don't eventhinkabout changing that channel, pissant. Not until you've reached the end of the hour and learned how you——yes, YOU, and a cumdumpster of your choice——can score two free tickets to Skullcrusherpocalypse at Rock Incorporated on July the fifteenth. That's Saturday, July the fifteenth, at Rock Inc. (And just so you fucking morons don't show up at the wrong joint again like last year: that's Rock Inc. the stone quarry out on the Freeway, NOT Rock Inc. the dive bar in Whitney. I repeat: look for the big fucking stone-breaker machines.) The party starts at 8pm and it don't quit until we're out of beer, the cops show up, or everyone's pregnant. So tall cans in the air, lynch your landlords, and FUCKING BE THERE. Coming up next is 'Laid to Waste' by Bolt Thrower, but best believe there's a whole helluva lot more good music on the way. So windows down and crank it loud, bitches! Stay tuned."Connie obeyed. He reached out toward the stereo and with his large, garish rings flashing with the heats of speed-smeared streetlights—bright and dark, bright and dark, scintillating across the polished stones—he grabbed hold of the knob and cranked. He didn't know what it was about the wind spooling through his hair, about the shriek of the city's fetid warmth spilling through the window slits, about four hundred horses swimming through a starry neon sea, about giving himself a war drum, a soundtrack, but he stomped the pedal as he would a cockroach and the Hemi roared and the sudden gulping of air through the intake shoved him back into his seat like a curveball into the waiting splay of a catcher's mitt. And for a moment the streets were like tunnels and he followed as naturally as a subway car on electrified rails, flowing, dodging without conscience. And for a moment his teeth weren't chattering, clashing. Edge to edge, point to point, the same way other teeth wounded him, ivory knives gnawing at his stomach. Raking his esophagus wracking the backs of his eyeballs. Too honed for that. Keen, focusing. He could sense, down to the centimeter, the gulfs between cars, the angulature of curves and corners, the trickle of a balmy wind through palm fronds. He could smell terror; taste war.
It furrowed at him, digging circular ruts across his brain, treading and retreading, fixation, obsession: Clark County Library. Farther from the Strip than the other massacre sites; didn't match the M.O. An aberration. An outlier. A paranoid internal voice wondering if one of the fledglings had stuck around, been watching from a nearby window or a car in idle with the headlights switched off. If Connie wasn't the owl he thought he was, circling above the snows, waiting from the safety of the updrafts for the martens' impatience to overpower their wariness. Unpolished, these two, but fast learners; they wouldn't give him another chance the likes of this. Unless this wasn't a chance at all. Unless they were already beginning to think like the predators whose vitae inhabited their arteries, leaving crumbs, baiting wolfhooks. But did they know who was after them, or was this something more precautionary—more—no. No the time to think this way was two hours ago, before he'd ditched his backup on the sidewalk, before he'd crushed the gas pedal, sent the old Dodge Challenger torpedoing southeastward, bloodhoundesque, hot on the scent of another body cooling on the concrete, the blood gluing it thereto as it congealed. (So wasteful, these fledglings.)
He'd pushed himself too far again he knew. The gulf turning jagged in his gut, need growing, impulse rising. Worst of all he'd done it for nothing. He shot down 592 and as the library came into view he saw its travertine walls, already drenched in the flashing red and blue, already sectioned off with yellowjacket tape that fluttered in the gusts. A crowd coalesced from the nearby strip malls and 99¢ cent shops, congealing where the sidewalk edged the cracked and brittle road, three of LV's Swinest baying them back, two more corralling bystanders out of the building and across the cordon. Not getting in that way. He hit the gas; hoped they were still unspooling the tape around the other side of the building. But the cops had noticed his approach, slow and scheming as it was. Chins tucked into necks (thick, succulent necks); shaved heads quirked; hands lifted radios to wormy lips which wriggled against the speakers. Oz must've called it in ahead of his arrival. Shit. And Connie could hear their heartbeats by then. He could taste their body heat. Had to get away. Had to focus had a job to do.
A little ways farther down East Flamingo to make the boys in blue think they'd shooed him off, then Connie jerked down a side street, ripped a U through the Paradise suburbs. Found a two-story tenement complex; rumbled in between a Kia and a Honda, revving low, careful not to wake the nine-to-fivers. He reached down between the door and the seat. Popped the trunk, where waited any number of tools for hastening a fashionably-late, dramatic entrance. But he reached past the sledgehammer, past the crowbar, even past the door shims. He only needed two articles and they sat folded up in a black nylon knife roll, between the five-gallon buckets and the bag of concrete. Connie unfurled the bag and between the hooks and rakes, tension tools and pincombs there they sat. These two effects made their way into roomy suit-jacket pockets and he was off.
A brisk skulk later and he was one plaza over, stood atop an HVAC unit, peering over an eight-foot stuccoed wall. The cops had already locked down both visitor entrances and were watching the corresponding parking lots but not the side of the building with its loading bay door, its employee entrances, its fleet of book vans, all locked and cold but unsupervised save for the cameras and the cameras Connie could live with. He hopped for the top of the wall but with his inertia working against him, and the smooth heels of his ratty monk shoes finding no purchase, he fell into an unceremonious slump. No matter. Behind this Skechers outlet were a few garbage bins and Connie wheeled one over, filling the gap between the wall and the air handler. Once again from the top of this sheet-metal box, the rumble of the fan shuddering through his feet, the reek of dust coughed up into his crotch. Connie would have made it this time were it not for the bin's lid collapsing under the forces, plunging his stronger leg knee-deep into a week's accumulation of soggy coffee cups and half-eaten lunches. As for the rest of him—falling onto the bin's edge with each leg on either side thereof, nutsack slamming down onto the rigid plastic—after a quick teeter, the topple. The spilling out across the pavement—Connie, punctured garbage bag and all. A mouthful of asphalt and the upward sigh of churned dust.
When prying himself loose didn't work he ripped the lid from its hinges, shredded the plastic from around his thigh, thrashing and yowling, by then no more civilized than a rabid wolverine thrown into Animal Control's paddywagon. And when he restored himself to his feet he looked down at the state of him—one pantleg now darker than the other, spattered with stale coffee and rancid mayonnaise—and that was it. That was when the last of his patience burned up on the breeze, flitted away like ashes on an updraft. He walked the row of businesses along this stucco wall; found the sports medicine practice. Kicked in the front door, barged through in a beeline, taking nothing, touching nothing, unconcerned with cameras, unconcerned with silent alarms (what were the cops gonna do?—abandon a murder scene to investigate a B&E?), and let himself out through the back, and there he stood across the driveway from Clark County Library's vulnerable flank entrance.
A glance in either direction, a short limp across the driveway and Connie got to work on the employee door, procuring from his pockets those two effects from the trunk of his Challenger. The first, a bumpkey, he thrust into the tumbler, applying a pinch of torque and raking in and out, in, out, feeling for the teeth's catch against the pins. Then the second, which he rapped against the key's head: a small, rubber mallet. It was, in all, a cheap door—all painted sheet metal—chintzy, with an equally chintzy lock; Connie could have just as easily kicked it in as he had the first, or hell, improvised a shim out of a can of pop for all the defiance it would offer. The kind of door installed to provide to inhabitants the illusion of security, but no worse than an inconvenience to an intruder with real intent. Still, after he alerted McGlinn's cronies to his presence he reckoned he had maybe fifteen seconds before they emerged from behind every door, window, curtain, and bookend to converge on him, wasps to honey, locusts to rye. So when the tumbler popped aside and the latch gave way and the door relieved its pinch-grip on the threshold, Connie grimaced with relief. Into the black and echoey stairwell he slipped, shutting the way behind him; swapping his burglary tools for his badge wallet—bail enforcement and CCW licenses glinting behind their laminate windows. It was the silence and the darkness alerting him to just how sharply he stank of a cheap deli. Bad coffee and vinegary sandwiches.
He skulked past the children's section: its beanbag chairs and picture book prop-ups. Past a derelict reading area lined with conference rooms, with outlets for phone chargers and laptops. Past an unmanned reception desk. At first he followed the lights, then the chatter of the two or three nincompoops in fleece vests and badge lanyards, sent in to "comfort" whatever sorry librarian had stumbled onto the scene of her coworker's throat gouged out and sprayed all over the Agatha Christies. They came into view as yet another threshold yawned out into the largest of the library's repository rooms: where two detectives needled a single employee, already pale and bony and run even more haggard by the sights he'd seen, the night he'd had. Connie recognized the pigs. Of course he did. (Vamps and the local homicide squad running afoul of each other—who could fathom?) Hoogmoed was the one's name, as unfortunate as a wet, boogery sneeze, and the other—well, Detective Whoosit from Precinct Whoocares. It was the latter recognized a movement in the darkness, cut it atwain with the beam from his flashlight. Connie had ducked aside in time to avert being spotted outright but not to shake all suspicion. The detective called it out—first into his radio, code this-and-that, 403, possible prowler, investigating—then into the next room. "This is an active crime scene. Come out slowly with your hands up."
The next room went quiet. Ears searching, eyes swimming the dark.
"Is it possible any of your coworkers didn't hear the orders to evacuate?" Hoogmoed said, presumably to the librarian. "Cleaning the upstairs? Maybe had headphones in?"
"Nuh-nuh-nuh-not that I'd know of," shivered the latter.
"Alright. Pinette, you want a shadow?"
"I'm good. Hey, man. I definitely saw you. Come out right now, we'll escort you off the premises, no harm no foul, okay? It's the longer you keep trying to hide that I'm gonna start getting angry."
"You sure you saw something?" Hoogmoed called over to his partner who by then stood planted in the threshold, peering his flashlight one by one down the rows of shelves.
"Just some homeless guy keeping out of the cold I think. It reeks of trash over here, like old salad dressing."
"Sit tight; I'm coming over."
"He's not going anywhere with twenty of our guys outside. Just stay with the witness. Hey, man, I can help you, but not until you start cooperating with me. I know you can hear me..."
It was roughly four minutes later this decision caught up with Detective Pinette, who'd already combed through the Languages and had moved on to Science & Technology, where small, clumsy hands had painted styrofoam balls and wired them up in the likenesses of neutrons and electrons and their orbits around a nucleus; where sat a few bluish-grey moldy lemons forgotten beneath a cake dome, and a corked beaker crawling with pondwater; each of these replete with its own posterboard. THE ANATOMY OF AN ATOM and DOES ACID INHIBIT FUNGAL GROWTH? and ALGAL BLOOMS IN LAKE MEAD each title hand-cut and hand-glued by its very own local middle schooler. Pinette's flashlight sliced the blackness but it was his Glock bringing him the most comfort, his hand draped over the grip, thumb hooked by the holster strap for a speedy draw. Didn't help, of course. Only Pinette himself knows whether he heard Connie first or smelled him but the skiptracer came from behind him and the left, forced the detective to cross-draw if he wanted any chance at hitting his assailant. Made his aim shaky, his grip weak. Too weak.
Maybe Connie thought to take the Glock with him and use it as a drop weapon against the fledglings; would have saved him the trouble of spending the next few weeks filling out lengthy usage reports, wheedling with the Property & Evidence people, recovering his own piece from lockup. Or maybe he had simply meant to throw the magazine one way, the slide another, the recoil spring and the firing pin any-which-way, disarming the detective quietly so he could initiate a more peaceful kind of chat. But intent be damned, the Brujah looked down at the weapon in his grasp and his grasp had imprinted itself in the weapon, bending and crunching the few steel internals, snapping the polymer frame. Worse, he awoke as if from a moment's hypnosis and there stood Detective Pinette in the dark, eyes bulging, breath labored, a sour sweat wringing up from his pores. His right hand trembling, the arm attached thereto all aquiver with the wristbones buckled and ajar. The detective would have alerted the whole damn avenue if not for the shock, if not for the endorphins, and Connie wasn't going to let these wear off before he'd fixed this, not with half the precinct prancing around just outside so he lunged, and with Pinette's shattered arm offering no more resistance than a soggy noodle silencing his scream before it left his heaving, hyperventilating chest was as simple as reaching out and plucking him by the throat like a grape; ragdolling him to the library's ugly, cheap loop carpet. A few questions spilled from Connie's snarling lips—about the brunette girl, about her business here, about whether she'd checked out any materials or used the tablets or had simply chosen her victim in a presumed-secluded, quiet place and bailed—but the detective was no longer lucid—delirious from pain and trauma awash with the adrenal flood. So the vampire rummaged pockets, starting with the chest rig and the windbreaker and working his way down until he found the notebook, all previous pages ripped out and shredded or burned or catalogued; the topmost page still damp with the bleed of gel ink. Connie held it to the light and a name glared back at him—Caroline—the surname crossed out and spell-corrected—but so too did a second, smaller slip of paper fall out from between the gridlined pages of this little notepad. A guest pass for one of the public computers. Booked at 1:19 in the morning, barely ninety minutes past.
By Caroline Capdevielle.
So he finally had a name. Finally had an M.O. The first inkling of a hunch as to what had happened to this out-of-towner trying her best to navigate this new, frightening world from what she remembered of corny movies and old pulp novels. All the ill-conceived attempts to cover her tracks, to select her prey, to go undiscovered. Connie pocketed the crumpled Glock; pocketed the notepad and the guest slip. Exuberant. Triumphant. But the voice—the urge—these he could not discard so easily along with the rest of the evidence, scattering them in bins and dumpsters across town on his way to wherever this Caroline Capdevielle was hiding out. And there at his feet still laid Detective Pinette, panting, not quite sobbing. Who it was not too late to save from the fate of yet another mortal who had seen too much. Who in his search for his notes and his weapon wouldn't even notice a few pints missing too.
Who can't do a goddamn thing to stop you, reminded the urge, ever-so-helpfully.
And with the temperance, the measure, the self-control in him all spent, Connie smiled; the smile widening into a yawn; the yawn issuing forth its weapons, two crescents slipping, noiselessly protracting from between the perfect teeth, one of ivory and its twin of gold; curving and tapering and terminating in sewing-needle points. Both glistening. Both eager.
It furrowed at him, digging circular ruts across his brain, treading and retreading, fixation, obsession: Clark County Library. Farther from the Strip than the other massacre sites; didn't match the M.O. An aberration. An outlier. A paranoid internal voice wondering if one of the fledglings had stuck around, been watching from a nearby window or a car in idle with the headlights switched off. If Connie wasn't the owl he thought he was, circling above the snows, waiting from the safety of the updrafts for the martens' impatience to overpower their wariness. Unpolished, these two, but fast learners; they wouldn't give him another chance the likes of this. Unless this wasn't a chance at all. Unless they were already beginning to think like the predators whose vitae inhabited their arteries, leaving crumbs, baiting wolfhooks. But did they know who was after them, or was this something more precautionary—more—no. No the time to think this way was two hours ago, before he'd ditched his backup on the sidewalk, before he'd crushed the gas pedal, sent the old Dodge Challenger torpedoing southeastward, bloodhoundesque, hot on the scent of another body cooling on the concrete, the blood gluing it thereto as it congealed. (So wasteful, these fledglings.)
He'd pushed himself too far again he knew. The gulf turning jagged in his gut, need growing, impulse rising. Worst of all he'd done it for nothing. He shot down 592 and as the library came into view he saw its travertine walls, already drenched in the flashing red and blue, already sectioned off with yellowjacket tape that fluttered in the gusts. A crowd coalesced from the nearby strip malls and 99¢ cent shops, congealing where the sidewalk edged the cracked and brittle road, three of LV's Swinest baying them back, two more corralling bystanders out of the building and across the cordon. Not getting in that way. He hit the gas; hoped they were still unspooling the tape around the other side of the building. But the cops had noticed his approach, slow and scheming as it was. Chins tucked into necks (thick, succulent necks); shaved heads quirked; hands lifted radios to wormy lips which wriggled against the speakers. Oz must've called it in ahead of his arrival. Shit. And Connie could hear their heartbeats by then. He could taste their body heat. Had to get away. Had to focus had a job to do.
A little ways farther down East Flamingo to make the boys in blue think they'd shooed him off, then Connie jerked down a side street, ripped a U through the Paradise suburbs. Found a two-story tenement complex; rumbled in between a Kia and a Honda, revving low, careful not to wake the nine-to-fivers. He reached down between the door and the seat. Popped the trunk, where waited any number of tools for hastening a fashionably-late, dramatic entrance. But he reached past the sledgehammer, past the crowbar, even past the door shims. He only needed two articles and they sat folded up in a black nylon knife roll, between the five-gallon buckets and the bag of concrete. Connie unfurled the bag and between the hooks and rakes, tension tools and pincombs there they sat. These two effects made their way into roomy suit-jacket pockets and he was off.
A brisk skulk later and he was one plaza over, stood atop an HVAC unit, peering over an eight-foot stuccoed wall. The cops had already locked down both visitor entrances and were watching the corresponding parking lots but not the side of the building with its loading bay door, its employee entrances, its fleet of book vans, all locked and cold but unsupervised save for the cameras and the cameras Connie could live with. He hopped for the top of the wall but with his inertia working against him, and the smooth heels of his ratty monk shoes finding no purchase, he fell into an unceremonious slump. No matter. Behind this Skechers outlet were a few garbage bins and Connie wheeled one over, filling the gap between the wall and the air handler. Once again from the top of this sheet-metal box, the rumble of the fan shuddering through his feet, the reek of dust coughed up into his crotch. Connie would have made it this time were it not for the bin's lid collapsing under the forces, plunging his stronger leg knee-deep into a week's accumulation of soggy coffee cups and half-eaten lunches. As for the rest of him—falling onto the bin's edge with each leg on either side thereof, nutsack slamming down onto the rigid plastic—after a quick teeter, the topple. The spilling out across the pavement—Connie, punctured garbage bag and all. A mouthful of asphalt and the upward sigh of churned dust.
When prying himself loose didn't work he ripped the lid from its hinges, shredded the plastic from around his thigh, thrashing and yowling, by then no more civilized than a rabid wolverine thrown into Animal Control's paddywagon. And when he restored himself to his feet he looked down at the state of him—one pantleg now darker than the other, spattered with stale coffee and rancid mayonnaise—and that was it. That was when the last of his patience burned up on the breeze, flitted away like ashes on an updraft. He walked the row of businesses along this stucco wall; found the sports medicine practice. Kicked in the front door, barged through in a beeline, taking nothing, touching nothing, unconcerned with cameras, unconcerned with silent alarms (what were the cops gonna do?—abandon a murder scene to investigate a B&E?), and let himself out through the back, and there he stood across the driveway from Clark County Library's vulnerable flank entrance.
A glance in either direction, a short limp across the driveway and Connie got to work on the employee door, procuring from his pockets those two effects from the trunk of his Challenger. The first, a bumpkey, he thrust into the tumbler, applying a pinch of torque and raking in and out, in, out, feeling for the teeth's catch against the pins. Then the second, which he rapped against the key's head: a small, rubber mallet. It was, in all, a cheap door—all painted sheet metal—chintzy, with an equally chintzy lock; Connie could have just as easily kicked it in as he had the first, or hell, improvised a shim out of a can of pop for all the defiance it would offer. The kind of door installed to provide to inhabitants the illusion of security, but no worse than an inconvenience to an intruder with real intent. Still, after he alerted McGlinn's cronies to his presence he reckoned he had maybe fifteen seconds before they emerged from behind every door, window, curtain, and bookend to converge on him, wasps to honey, locusts to rye. So when the tumbler popped aside and the latch gave way and the door relieved its pinch-grip on the threshold, Connie grimaced with relief. Into the black and echoey stairwell he slipped, shutting the way behind him; swapping his burglary tools for his badge wallet—bail enforcement and CCW licenses glinting behind their laminate windows. It was the silence and the darkness alerting him to just how sharply he stank of a cheap deli. Bad coffee and vinegary sandwiches.
He skulked past the children's section: its beanbag chairs and picture book prop-ups. Past a derelict reading area lined with conference rooms, with outlets for phone chargers and laptops. Past an unmanned reception desk. At first he followed the lights, then the chatter of the two or three nincompoops in fleece vests and badge lanyards, sent in to "comfort" whatever sorry librarian had stumbled onto the scene of her coworker's throat gouged out and sprayed all over the Agatha Christies. They came into view as yet another threshold yawned out into the largest of the library's repository rooms: where two detectives needled a single employee, already pale and bony and run even more haggard by the sights he'd seen, the night he'd had. Connie recognized the pigs. Of course he did. (Vamps and the local homicide squad running afoul of each other—who could fathom?) Hoogmoed was the one's name, as unfortunate as a wet, boogery sneeze, and the other—well, Detective Whoosit from Precinct Whoocares. It was the latter recognized a movement in the darkness, cut it atwain with the beam from his flashlight. Connie had ducked aside in time to avert being spotted outright but not to shake all suspicion. The detective called it out—first into his radio, code this-and-that, 403, possible prowler, investigating—then into the next room. "This is an active crime scene. Come out slowly with your hands up."
The next room went quiet. Ears searching, eyes swimming the dark.
"Is it possible any of your coworkers didn't hear the orders to evacuate?" Hoogmoed said, presumably to the librarian. "Cleaning the upstairs? Maybe had headphones in?"
"Nuh-nuh-nuh-not that I'd know of," shivered the latter.
"Alright. Pinette, you want a shadow?"
"I'm good. Hey, man. I definitely saw you. Come out right now, we'll escort you off the premises, no harm no foul, okay? It's the longer you keep trying to hide that I'm gonna start getting angry."
"You sure you saw something?" Hoogmoed called over to his partner who by then stood planted in the threshold, peering his flashlight one by one down the rows of shelves.
"Just some homeless guy keeping out of the cold I think. It reeks of trash over here, like old salad dressing."
"Sit tight; I'm coming over."
"He's not going anywhere with twenty of our guys outside. Just stay with the witness. Hey, man, I can help you, but not until you start cooperating with me. I know you can hear me..."
It was roughly four minutes later this decision caught up with Detective Pinette, who'd already combed through the Languages and had moved on to Science & Technology, where small, clumsy hands had painted styrofoam balls and wired them up in the likenesses of neutrons and electrons and their orbits around a nucleus; where sat a few bluish-grey moldy lemons forgotten beneath a cake dome, and a corked beaker crawling with pondwater; each of these replete with its own posterboard. THE ANATOMY OF AN ATOM and DOES ACID INHIBIT FUNGAL GROWTH? and ALGAL BLOOMS IN LAKE MEAD each title hand-cut and hand-glued by its very own local middle schooler. Pinette's flashlight sliced the blackness but it was his Glock bringing him the most comfort, his hand draped over the grip, thumb hooked by the holster strap for a speedy draw. Didn't help, of course. Only Pinette himself knows whether he heard Connie first or smelled him but the skiptracer came from behind him and the left, forced the detective to cross-draw if he wanted any chance at hitting his assailant. Made his aim shaky, his grip weak. Too weak.
Maybe Connie thought to take the Glock with him and use it as a drop weapon against the fledglings; would have saved him the trouble of spending the next few weeks filling out lengthy usage reports, wheedling with the Property & Evidence people, recovering his own piece from lockup. Or maybe he had simply meant to throw the magazine one way, the slide another, the recoil spring and the firing pin any-which-way, disarming the detective quietly so he could initiate a more peaceful kind of chat. But intent be damned, the Brujah looked down at the weapon in his grasp and his grasp had imprinted itself in the weapon, bending and crunching the few steel internals, snapping the polymer frame. Worse, he awoke as if from a moment's hypnosis and there stood Detective Pinette in the dark, eyes bulging, breath labored, a sour sweat wringing up from his pores. His right hand trembling, the arm attached thereto all aquiver with the wristbones buckled and ajar. The detective would have alerted the whole damn avenue if not for the shock, if not for the endorphins, and Connie wasn't going to let these wear off before he'd fixed this, not with half the precinct prancing around just outside so he lunged, and with Pinette's shattered arm offering no more resistance than a soggy noodle silencing his scream before it left his heaving, hyperventilating chest was as simple as reaching out and plucking him by the throat like a grape; ragdolling him to the library's ugly, cheap loop carpet. A few questions spilled from Connie's snarling lips—about the brunette girl, about her business here, about whether she'd checked out any materials or used the tablets or had simply chosen her victim in a presumed-secluded, quiet place and bailed—but the detective was no longer lucid—delirious from pain and trauma awash with the adrenal flood. So the vampire rummaged pockets, starting with the chest rig and the windbreaker and working his way down until he found the notebook, all previous pages ripped out and shredded or burned or catalogued; the topmost page still damp with the bleed of gel ink. Connie held it to the light and a name glared back at him—Caroline—the surname crossed out and spell-corrected—but so too did a second, smaller slip of paper fall out from between the gridlined pages of this little notepad. A guest pass for one of the public computers. Booked at 1:19 in the morning, barely ninety minutes past.
By Caroline Capdevielle.
So he finally had a name. Finally had an M.O. The first inkling of a hunch as to what had happened to this out-of-towner trying her best to navigate this new, frightening world from what she remembered of corny movies and old pulp novels. All the ill-conceived attempts to cover her tracks, to select her prey, to go undiscovered. Connie pocketed the crumpled Glock; pocketed the notepad and the guest slip. Exuberant. Triumphant. But the voice—the urge—these he could not discard so easily along with the rest of the evidence, scattering them in bins and dumpsters across town on his way to wherever this Caroline Capdevielle was hiding out. And there at his feet still laid Detective Pinette, panting, not quite sobbing. Who it was not too late to save from the fate of yet another mortal who had seen too much. Who in his search for his notes and his weapon wouldn't even notice a few pints missing too.
Who can't do a goddamn thing to stop you, reminded the urge, ever-so-helpfully.
And with the temperance, the measure, the self-control in him all spent, Connie smiled; the smile widening into a yawn; the yawn issuing forth its weapons, two crescents slipping, noiselessly protracting from between the perfect teeth, one of ivory and its twin of gold; curving and tapering and terminating in sewing-needle points. Both glistening. Both eager.
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Who’d have imagined a world where gambling could be boring? A world where the most exciting part was picking which betting system to use on the roulette? Vegas: Stats City! Sam idly scrolled as the roulette spun. His phone vibrated.
“Fuck.”
He cleared his throat. One of the drunks next to him had a snide comment. Sam pulled away from the roulette table and booked it to the cashier’s cage. His eyes darted between the passing seconds and the line ahead of him. Did he have seconds to spare?
Ruining a feeding was impossible. Every troubling thought and illusion of feeling were washed away from the moment blood passed her lips. The precise sensation differed, and still Caroline couldn’t help but to close her eyes, fall limp, and embrace every new experience. Blood was, in a word, life. It didn’t taste so much as it felt. The experience merged all the best life could offer, in countless different ways she could never imagine a way to articulate. Notes of joy, elements of tranquility, touches of relief—it felt as if her unbeating heart was being caressed by the hands of God and fed Olympian nectar from His very teat. If any living wine could be even a pale reflection of this, she’d have drowned herself in a barrel of it years ago. For all it had done to her, for all it had taken, Caroline could not help but to fully immerse herself in a gift greater than heaven itself.
So then, was it so wrong that she wanted to lap those stray drops of blood off the floor? She hesitated and stayed in place a moment longer, longing for another moment even now. She wanted to return to the dream. Caroline dragged her phone and stylus back into her purse, then stumbled to her feet. She knew she should have been panicking. She should have been running. But a stroll felt right. Everything was going to be fine. Maybe if she could fix some of these problems—maybe then she could slip home? Attend evening galas again? Get Paul to explain? Make things right again? Taste Kelsey’s blood? Take Jerry’s life? She donned her mask again. She’d get better. They just needed to leave and regroup.
She chirped goodnight at the librarian and pranced out without a second thought. It’d take a while for him to find the janitor anyway, wouldn’t it? There was no need to act crazy. After all, running would only attract attention. And why ruin the good feeling with bad vibes? She could just stay calm, act calm, and make a clean getaway.
Caroline pulled her mask off and snorted. He was still packing? What had he been doing—what kind of mess had he made—that made him take this long? He should have been long gone by now. Was he really this—. Sam looked up from his rummaging. They met eyes. He looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin.
“Do you think this is funny?”
He stammered for a moment.
“What the fuck did you do? All I asked was for you to be careful?”
Caroline smugly crossed her arms.
“And how much tibe habe we washted on what you call ’carepul’?” She punctuated careful with air quotes.
“ ‘Wasted!’ Is trying to cover our asses a was—” began Sam’s retort. But Caroline spoke over him before he could finish.
“We were alwaysh on a timer. It’sh always been about getting our money, and getting—out.”
Caroline approached Sam as she spoke. Sam clenched his fists, darted to the door, and pushed it shut.
“And how are we supposed to do that if the Feds get on to us?” he hissed. “I’d rather waste time than get my brains blown out by a fucking sniper!”
Caroline rolled her eyes and scoffed. Sam retreated and groaned.
“This is serious, Caroline.”
Caroline bobbed her head and wrinkled her nose. She pointed at his luggage and clothes, still strewn about as they were.
“I—you know what? No. I don’t wanna hear it. We’re washting time again. All ober your crazhy conshpirashy t—teo—your crazhy conshpirashies. I killed a damn janitor, okay? Dat’sh all. I texhted you ash shoon ash it happened; to be proactibe. Sho ip it did caushe problemsh, we’d be ahead ob it.” She slipped back to the door and opened it as she spoke. “Don’t act like you’re lessh ob a monshter jusht becaushe you’re lessh ob a p—pr—hr—”
She groaned and sighed, searching for easier words, words her disfigured, clumsy mouth, her new mouth, could fashion.
“Ugly, bullshit...chimera.”
She brought the door to slam it behind her, but halted right before it closed.
“Shee you in a little bit,” she chirped.
She shut the door gently.
“Fuck.”
He cleared his throat. One of the drunks next to him had a snide comment. Sam pulled away from the roulette table and booked it to the cashier’s cage. His eyes darted between the passing seconds and the line ahead of him. Did he have seconds to spare?
╠══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══ ◇ ⯁ ◇ ═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩══╣
Ruining a feeding was impossible. Every troubling thought and illusion of feeling were washed away from the moment blood passed her lips. The precise sensation differed, and still Caroline couldn’t help but to close her eyes, fall limp, and embrace every new experience. Blood was, in a word, life. It didn’t taste so much as it felt. The experience merged all the best life could offer, in countless different ways she could never imagine a way to articulate. Notes of joy, elements of tranquility, touches of relief—it felt as if her unbeating heart was being caressed by the hands of God and fed Olympian nectar from His very teat. If any living wine could be even a pale reflection of this, she’d have drowned herself in a barrel of it years ago. For all it had done to her, for all it had taken, Caroline could not help but to fully immerse herself in a gift greater than heaven itself.
So then, was it so wrong that she wanted to lap those stray drops of blood off the floor? She hesitated and stayed in place a moment longer, longing for another moment even now. She wanted to return to the dream. Caroline dragged her phone and stylus back into her purse, then stumbled to her feet. She knew she should have been panicking. She should have been running. But a stroll felt right. Everything was going to be fine. Maybe if she could fix some of these problems—maybe then she could slip home? Attend evening galas again? Get Paul to explain? Make things right again? Taste Kelsey’s blood? Take Jerry’s life? She donned her mask again. She’d get better. They just needed to leave and regroup.
She chirped goodnight at the librarian and pranced out without a second thought. It’d take a while for him to find the janitor anyway, wouldn’t it? There was no need to act crazy. After all, running would only attract attention. And why ruin the good feeling with bad vibes? She could just stay calm, act calm, and make a clean getaway.
╠══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══ ◇ ⯁ ◇ ═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩═══⬩══╣
Caroline pulled her mask off and snorted. He was still packing? What had he been doing—what kind of mess had he made—that made him take this long? He should have been long gone by now. Was he really this—. Sam looked up from his rummaging. They met eyes. He looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin.
“Do you think this is funny?”
He stammered for a moment.
“What the fuck did you do? All I asked was for you to be careful?”
Caroline smugly crossed her arms.
“And how much tibe habe we washted on what you call ’carepul’?” She punctuated careful with air quotes.
“ ‘Wasted!’ Is trying to cover our asses a was—” began Sam’s retort. But Caroline spoke over him before he could finish.
“We were alwaysh on a timer. It’sh always been about getting our money, and getting—out.”
Caroline approached Sam as she spoke. Sam clenched his fists, darted to the door, and pushed it shut.
“And how are we supposed to do that if the Feds get on to us?” he hissed. “I’d rather waste time than get my brains blown out by a fucking sniper!”
Caroline rolled her eyes and scoffed. Sam retreated and groaned.
“This is serious, Caroline.”
Caroline bobbed her head and wrinkled her nose. She pointed at his luggage and clothes, still strewn about as they were.
“I—you know what? No. I don’t wanna hear it. We’re washting time again. All ober your crazhy conshpirashy t—teo—your crazhy conshpirashies. I killed a damn janitor, okay? Dat’sh all. I texhted you ash shoon ash it happened; to be proactibe. Sho ip it did caushe problemsh, we’d be ahead ob it.” She slipped back to the door and opened it as she spoke. “Don’t act like you’re lessh ob a monshter jusht becaushe you’re lessh ob a p—pr—hr—”
She groaned and sighed, searching for easier words, words her disfigured, clumsy mouth, her new mouth, could fashion.
“Ugly, bullshit...chimera.”
She brought the door to slam it behind her, but halted right before it closed.
“Shee you in a little bit,” she chirped.
She shut the door gently.
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The cash left her hand easily as Teresa exited the cab. The night was spoiled. Ruined by Connie. Wasted by some blood drunk fledglings—the very reason Brace dragged her away from her comfortable haven yet again. Far from things that actually mattered to her. An emptiness tugged at her, the weight of the shotgun she had left in Connie’s beater. She felt weak, naked, like some slithering thing still shedding its skin. Slamming the taxi door shut, she swallowed the curse that darted across her tongue. Anger wouldn’t help, that was always Connie’s mistake, not hers. And he could sort that out on his own.
Makeshift fencing surrounded the camp, bearing strange symbols and signs warning the uninvited and uninitiated. It was clean, organized in ways that suggested a guiding hand, a puppeteer tugging at the strings of the blood filled marionettes that danced with each deft jiggle of the skeletal fingertips that bound them. Teresa didn’t care for most mortals. She held no particular affection for them. She wasn’t interested in their predictable, pointless ways. But Martha was—she’d always been—as long as Teresa had known her. She befriended them. She twisted their senses until they saw just another harmless old lady. It was a good act, useful with the demands of the Beast, for the endless hunger was always swimming, cutting the black waters just beneath the surface of the blackened soul. Teresa’s kind had no such luck, no such talent. The kine could sense something wrong within her. They tasted some invisible malice in the air when she approached them. No matter what she did to assuage them, the threat she posed would stir some hidden instinct within them.
With each step, more of the camp appeared. Tents rose in measured rows, a collection of material and ramshackle engineering. She could hear people talking. Laughing quietly, speaking in low voices as they sat around. But most were, cocooned in their huts of nylon and polyester, stirring occasionally, filling the air with the disgusting sounds of life. Sickness was unavoidable for those that lived on the streets. Stacked on top of one another, they had little choice; they were welcome in very few places. The tourists didn’t want to see them. Even the degenerate gamblers found them depressing. And most of the vampires preferred to feed on healthier humans, victims tasting less of the hard life they lived, of the filth they were forced to crawl through. Animals lingered, moving through the camp, happy for the scraps offered to them, and the warmth of shelter.
A half-cut piece of plywood held up by rusted hinges served as the gate to Martha’s fiefdom. Sitting in the gloom of flickering camp light was an old man lounging in a folding chair, with a dog lounging at his feet, and a bottle of whiskey tucked into the crook of his arm. He noticed her quickly, raising his head as she looked at her. The animal at his feet sniffed the air, ears falling back as it cowered away from her, hiding behind the man and chair.
“Help you?” he said, his voice filling the air with the smell of alcohol.
“I’m here to see Martha. We’re old friends," Teresa said, doing her best to seem human, trying to recall the meekness she remembered from her youth, the anxiety that grasped at her throat, the fear that set her heart beating. She smiled, forcing the expression over her lips, hoping it seemed no more than nerves. She was too well-dressed to belong in the camp. “She sent me a message.”
“Sure don’t look old,” the old man grumbled, throwing his thumb over his shoulder, “She’s at the fire. I’m sure you can find ‘er.”
“Thanks,” Teresa replied. Emotion faded too easily, too quickly from her face as he pointed to the thumb latch of the gate. The less said the better. People usually knew not to ask too many questions, and whatever story she breathed would be wasted on a man who cared so little about her business. She walked into the camp like she had been there before. She had, of course. She was fond of Martha. She had been younger and brasher then, when they’d first met, and still uncertain enough to be dragged along by the waves that inevitably rose in Connie’s wake. Not that Brace had let her escape him. Sometimes she had trouble figuring out who was tasked with watching who—a troubling thought that she buried beneath deeper thoughts. There was trash scattered on the ground. Trash bags formed a small mound, a neat pile of garbage tucked almost out of sight, behind a pair of gratified Jersey barriers. Cans and bottles were visible within large clear plastic bags. Small profits, no doubt, but worthwhile for the denizens of the homeless encampment.
She approached the main fire of the camp. The roaring flame that grew from a stack of burning wooden pallets, bits of paper and scraps heaped on top, reminded her of some funeral pyre of old. What did Martha burn in there, she wondered. Bodies?
She found Martha sitting alone by the fire, a steaming cup held in her hands, a blanket wrapped around her, a shroud protecting her from the encroaching cold. “Beauclerc was busy, then? Please, sit.”
“Just me tonight, Martha,” Teresa replied, claiming a wooden crate as her seat. She didn't try to hide the irritation that tickled her throat, the itchy feeling of anger that burned at the back of her hands. Connie. Connie. Connie. He wasn’t even there. He hadn’t even showed. He'd just raced off to get his rocks off or get ashed trying. She was the one who answered the old hag’s summons. Sulking, Teresa plucked a pack of cigarettes out of her coat and dangled a cigarette towards the fire, waiting for the tip to burn a bright orange before she pulled it back. She took a slow, heavy drag, then puffed out a cloud of smoke as she let her annoyance fade. She looked at Martha—really looked. The elderly vampire seemed worse. More worn and tired than usual. Fresh lines seemed to be carved into her wrinkly skin, tension filling the space around her. Shrugging to herself, Teresa spoke with a subtle hint of kindness in her voice, something that might once have been categorized as affection, when she still walked freely in the sunlight. “You look worse than usual, Martha, trouble in paradise?”
Martha wrinkled her nose at the smell of the cigarettes. “Well, someone is better than no one. A dream. Another dream. Probably who is making your recent mess, Garcia. Tea?”
“No, thanks, can’t stomach it, since the—well you know,” she replied, eyeing Martha curiously. She knew about Martha’s visions. She had relied on them many times. They interested her—the nature of them, and everything about them. Where they came from, how they worked, and what they meant. She tempered her excitement, fighting against the urge to ask too much too soon. It was poor form to play a hand too freely, especially when one didn’t know what cards the other players held. Tossing a broken bit of wood into the fire, Teresa watched it burn, before she continued, “Heard about our mess, did ya? What’s that got to do with your dreams?”
“Not really. Figured you'd be around. You always are,” Martha said, pausing as she recalled the details of the two and the prior encounter, “They hunt my flock. Two of them. Young, hungry, stupid. Stupid enough to strike twice. You know how it is.”
Teresa listened with growing interest, eager for anything to hasten the hunt, any way to find the thrill killer, and nursing the hope that she might discover something greater, “You learn anything about them? A face? A name? Where they’re from?”
“No faces, no names…a girl and a boy, I think. You know it's never that kind or clear. Was all lions and hyena-laughter, and the last time I saw a lion was…the 50s or so. They'll strike my flock again, though.”
Teresa didn’t say anything right away. She didn’t let the disappointment take hold of her. She didn’t snap at Martha like some part of her wanted to, begged her to. Instead, she shifted closer to the fire, took another drag from her cigarette, and focused on the heat that touched her with each breath. Disappointment lingering between her words, softened as it was. “That’s it? That’s all you got? We already know there’s two of them. Does the Savannah theme mean anything?”
“I don't know. Is that what it's called…haven't seen a Savannah in too many years. I don't know. A desert, oasis, heat…the camp, the sick with us all, that's all I'd guess. I can't choose to see more or less, Garcia, “ Martha leaned back in chair, cradling the mug in hands. They sat silently, Teresa patiently waiting until the old woman let out a long exhale, finally deciding to speak, “How many have they taken?”
“Five, that we know of,” Teresa said—not that anyone cared about the number of bodies. But it was drawing unwanted attention. No, what mattered—what always mattered—was that Brace wasn’t happy staring at the growing collection of headlines he had laid out on his desk. And if Brace wasn’t happy, then she and Connie definitely weren’t going to be. “They get any of yours?”
“One. Just one. If there’s anything to trust in the dream, it’s the numbers, and Mark hasn’t shown for some time. I haven’t made much of it. Nothing for the flock to do in this.”
“Not a lot to work with, if I’m being honest, Martha. Any chance you can look a little bit further ahead?”
The old crone paused, fingers caressing the mug rim before another lingering breath moved through her. “You’re right. It’s not much. I’ll just…check and see for something else.”
Teresa waited, eyes alight with curiosity, a greedy glee pushing the corner of her lips into a thin smile. Joy that quickly vanished as Martha folded forward, hands clutching at her eyes and temples, fingers turning white as she pressed her own skull until the brittle bone crackled. She let out a low, pained gasp, her teeth clinching together with a loud clack that caused Teresa to place a hand gently on her shoulder. A useless attempt to stop the shaking—the seizures that wracked Martha’s feeble frame.
“Venice, gondolas and canals and old buildings half-sunk…” Martha said, her voice nothing more than a raspy whisper. Teresa did not move, her hand remaining on the shoulder of the hunched over old woman, who moaned, pain coursing through her from everywhere at once, burning her nerves like a jagged lightening bolt, “I could hear slot machines. Roulette wheels. Old lights that are too bright and glare…a ceiling with a cheap false of…I don’t know. Something old, men naked and posing in a fresco.”
Falling against the back of the chair, she turned towards Teresa with a thin smile—the rictus grin of a corpse—all horror and pain doled out in equal measure. Martha sighed, her tongue moving against the inside of her cheek, the air between them filling with copper taste. Her voice, although weak, rose as she channeled what strength Teresa could still see within her, “Enough for you, I’d think.”
Teresa nodded, smiling fully, truly, as she sensed the snare tightening around the neck of their prey. “There’s only one place in Vegas with decor that ridiculous, that fucking pompous. They’re at the Venetian."
Kicking her feet out, stretching as she , Teresa pulled out her flip phone and keyed in a new number that she had memorized days earlier.
Our friends are staying at the Venetian. They wanted to say hello.
Makeshift fencing surrounded the camp, bearing strange symbols and signs warning the uninvited and uninitiated. It was clean, organized in ways that suggested a guiding hand, a puppeteer tugging at the strings of the blood filled marionettes that danced with each deft jiggle of the skeletal fingertips that bound them. Teresa didn’t care for most mortals. She held no particular affection for them. She wasn’t interested in their predictable, pointless ways. But Martha was—she’d always been—as long as Teresa had known her. She befriended them. She twisted their senses until they saw just another harmless old lady. It was a good act, useful with the demands of the Beast, for the endless hunger was always swimming, cutting the black waters just beneath the surface of the blackened soul. Teresa’s kind had no such luck, no such talent. The kine could sense something wrong within her. They tasted some invisible malice in the air when she approached them. No matter what she did to assuage them, the threat she posed would stir some hidden instinct within them.
With each step, more of the camp appeared. Tents rose in measured rows, a collection of material and ramshackle engineering. She could hear people talking. Laughing quietly, speaking in low voices as they sat around. But most were, cocooned in their huts of nylon and polyester, stirring occasionally, filling the air with the disgusting sounds of life. Sickness was unavoidable for those that lived on the streets. Stacked on top of one another, they had little choice; they were welcome in very few places. The tourists didn’t want to see them. Even the degenerate gamblers found them depressing. And most of the vampires preferred to feed on healthier humans, victims tasting less of the hard life they lived, of the filth they were forced to crawl through. Animals lingered, moving through the camp, happy for the scraps offered to them, and the warmth of shelter.
A half-cut piece of plywood held up by rusted hinges served as the gate to Martha’s fiefdom. Sitting in the gloom of flickering camp light was an old man lounging in a folding chair, with a dog lounging at his feet, and a bottle of whiskey tucked into the crook of his arm. He noticed her quickly, raising his head as she looked at her. The animal at his feet sniffed the air, ears falling back as it cowered away from her, hiding behind the man and chair.
“Help you?” he said, his voice filling the air with the smell of alcohol.
“I’m here to see Martha. We’re old friends," Teresa said, doing her best to seem human, trying to recall the meekness she remembered from her youth, the anxiety that grasped at her throat, the fear that set her heart beating. She smiled, forcing the expression over her lips, hoping it seemed no more than nerves. She was too well-dressed to belong in the camp. “She sent me a message.”
“Sure don’t look old,” the old man grumbled, throwing his thumb over his shoulder, “She’s at the fire. I’m sure you can find ‘er.”
“Thanks,” Teresa replied. Emotion faded too easily, too quickly from her face as he pointed to the thumb latch of the gate. The less said the better. People usually knew not to ask too many questions, and whatever story she breathed would be wasted on a man who cared so little about her business. She walked into the camp like she had been there before. She had, of course. She was fond of Martha. She had been younger and brasher then, when they’d first met, and still uncertain enough to be dragged along by the waves that inevitably rose in Connie’s wake. Not that Brace had let her escape him. Sometimes she had trouble figuring out who was tasked with watching who—a troubling thought that she buried beneath deeper thoughts. There was trash scattered on the ground. Trash bags formed a small mound, a neat pile of garbage tucked almost out of sight, behind a pair of gratified Jersey barriers. Cans and bottles were visible within large clear plastic bags. Small profits, no doubt, but worthwhile for the denizens of the homeless encampment.
She approached the main fire of the camp. The roaring flame that grew from a stack of burning wooden pallets, bits of paper and scraps heaped on top, reminded her of some funeral pyre of old. What did Martha burn in there, she wondered. Bodies?
She found Martha sitting alone by the fire, a steaming cup held in her hands, a blanket wrapped around her, a shroud protecting her from the encroaching cold. “Beauclerc was busy, then? Please, sit.”
“Just me tonight, Martha,” Teresa replied, claiming a wooden crate as her seat. She didn't try to hide the irritation that tickled her throat, the itchy feeling of anger that burned at the back of her hands. Connie. Connie. Connie. He wasn’t even there. He hadn’t even showed. He'd just raced off to get his rocks off or get ashed trying. She was the one who answered the old hag’s summons. Sulking, Teresa plucked a pack of cigarettes out of her coat and dangled a cigarette towards the fire, waiting for the tip to burn a bright orange before she pulled it back. She took a slow, heavy drag, then puffed out a cloud of smoke as she let her annoyance fade. She looked at Martha—really looked. The elderly vampire seemed worse. More worn and tired than usual. Fresh lines seemed to be carved into her wrinkly skin, tension filling the space around her. Shrugging to herself, Teresa spoke with a subtle hint of kindness in her voice, something that might once have been categorized as affection, when she still walked freely in the sunlight. “You look worse than usual, Martha, trouble in paradise?”
Martha wrinkled her nose at the smell of the cigarettes. “Well, someone is better than no one. A dream. Another dream. Probably who is making your recent mess, Garcia. Tea?”
“No, thanks, can’t stomach it, since the—well you know,” she replied, eyeing Martha curiously. She knew about Martha’s visions. She had relied on them many times. They interested her—the nature of them, and everything about them. Where they came from, how they worked, and what they meant. She tempered her excitement, fighting against the urge to ask too much too soon. It was poor form to play a hand too freely, especially when one didn’t know what cards the other players held. Tossing a broken bit of wood into the fire, Teresa watched it burn, before she continued, “Heard about our mess, did ya? What’s that got to do with your dreams?”
“Not really. Figured you'd be around. You always are,” Martha said, pausing as she recalled the details of the two and the prior encounter, “They hunt my flock. Two of them. Young, hungry, stupid. Stupid enough to strike twice. You know how it is.”
Teresa listened with growing interest, eager for anything to hasten the hunt, any way to find the thrill killer, and nursing the hope that she might discover something greater, “You learn anything about them? A face? A name? Where they’re from?”
“No faces, no names…a girl and a boy, I think. You know it's never that kind or clear. Was all lions and hyena-laughter, and the last time I saw a lion was…the 50s or so. They'll strike my flock again, though.”
Teresa didn’t say anything right away. She didn’t let the disappointment take hold of her. She didn’t snap at Martha like some part of her wanted to, begged her to. Instead, she shifted closer to the fire, took another drag from her cigarette, and focused on the heat that touched her with each breath. Disappointment lingering between her words, softened as it was. “That’s it? That’s all you got? We already know there’s two of them. Does the Savannah theme mean anything?”
“I don't know. Is that what it's called…haven't seen a Savannah in too many years. I don't know. A desert, oasis, heat…the camp, the sick with us all, that's all I'd guess. I can't choose to see more or less, Garcia, “ Martha leaned back in chair, cradling the mug in hands. They sat silently, Teresa patiently waiting until the old woman let out a long exhale, finally deciding to speak, “How many have they taken?”
“Five, that we know of,” Teresa said—not that anyone cared about the number of bodies. But it was drawing unwanted attention. No, what mattered—what always mattered—was that Brace wasn’t happy staring at the growing collection of headlines he had laid out on his desk. And if Brace wasn’t happy, then she and Connie definitely weren’t going to be. “They get any of yours?”
“One. Just one. If there’s anything to trust in the dream, it’s the numbers, and Mark hasn’t shown for some time. I haven’t made much of it. Nothing for the flock to do in this.”
“Not a lot to work with, if I’m being honest, Martha. Any chance you can look a little bit further ahead?”
The old crone paused, fingers caressing the mug rim before another lingering breath moved through her. “You’re right. It’s not much. I’ll just…check and see for something else.”
Teresa waited, eyes alight with curiosity, a greedy glee pushing the corner of her lips into a thin smile. Joy that quickly vanished as Martha folded forward, hands clutching at her eyes and temples, fingers turning white as she pressed her own skull until the brittle bone crackled. She let out a low, pained gasp, her teeth clinching together with a loud clack that caused Teresa to place a hand gently on her shoulder. A useless attempt to stop the shaking—the seizures that wracked Martha’s feeble frame.
“Venice, gondolas and canals and old buildings half-sunk…” Martha said, her voice nothing more than a raspy whisper. Teresa did not move, her hand remaining on the shoulder of the hunched over old woman, who moaned, pain coursing through her from everywhere at once, burning her nerves like a jagged lightening bolt, “I could hear slot machines. Roulette wheels. Old lights that are too bright and glare…a ceiling with a cheap false of…I don’t know. Something old, men naked and posing in a fresco.”
Falling against the back of the chair, she turned towards Teresa with a thin smile—the rictus grin of a corpse—all horror and pain doled out in equal measure. Martha sighed, her tongue moving against the inside of her cheek, the air between them filling with copper taste. Her voice, although weak, rose as she channeled what strength Teresa could still see within her, “Enough for you, I’d think.”
Teresa nodded, smiling fully, truly, as she sensed the snare tightening around the neck of their prey. “There’s only one place in Vegas with decor that ridiculous, that fucking pompous. They’re at the Venetian."
Kicking her feet out, stretching as she , Teresa pulled out her flip phone and keyed in a new number that she had memorized days earlier.
Our friends are staying at the Venetian. They wanted to say hello.
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10 hrs ago
Sometimes it took the form of an ambush, as it had in the library. Other times a bribe, a trade. Extortion or duplicity or even a gift freely given. But The Hunt; ever and always and ubiquitously (and more than a little euphemistically) they called it The Hunt. Its afterglow still tingling in his veins, Connie expressed himself on anything that would survive him; vented some of that vigor, that aggression, some of that newfound resolve on whatever laid within reach. He slammed his palms against the steering wheel and stomped down on the gas pedal. And when the Hemi roared so also did he, hanging out the window of the Challenger, loosing a war-whoop which startled a gaggle of sidewalk-goers into a bout of nervous giggles. A message to the Other sharing his body that he wasn't for sale—not tonight. A message to the fledglings wherever they were. A warning. They didn't have to hear it bellowing through downtown toward the Strip; only feel it as a rising of the hairs on the backs of their necks, a dread-stone calcifying in their kidneys, a whisper, a promise. Another of their Dark Ancestor's many barbed gifts: the same voice scraping the insides of their skulls as which scraped every Kindred's. Danger. Danger...
He took stock of himself, the Brujah, once he was pulled away into the first abandoned, weedy lot he'd happened across; engine idling; headlights tunneling the dark and terminating on the white and grey wall of a derelict auto body shop, white paint flaking off grey concrete in scabs. The scents of the city tangled in his hair, the Brujah, its dusts darkening the inner conch of his left ear. One of the lenses popped from his clubmasters, a mean, one-eyed glare peering back at him from the rearview mirror. (He peeled the broken sunglasses from his face and cast them out the window, heard their plasticky clatter across the asphalt.) Sand and road grit glued to the mayonnaise slathered up and down his suit pants. But despite this—despite it all—better. M̴͕̖̫̱̒ü̷̧̡̼̬̐c̶̥͆̀̂h̶̞̜͎͇̐́ better.
He patted down his pockets and much to his relief it had survived his hot-heeled escape across the library lot, back through the sports medicine place, the entirety of his rolled-window rout out of downtown: the guest slip, thin and brittle as a cicada's sheddings. "Alright, 'C. Capdevielle,'" Connie muttered—as if he addressed the Gangrel herself, sat beside him in Teresa's usual spot or perhaps in the backseats where the ziptied fugitives liked to kick and struggle, and their loved ones bleated and begged without end—"show me where you've been hiding." Already the MDT, built into his center console, glowed at the ready; bathing his every scruffy feature in an artificial cobalt blue. He didn't waste his time where the cops no doubt had already scoured—residences, registered vehicles, previous criminal activity, outstanding warrants—all the obvious and trodden avenues—no need. Not when he knew something they didn't. Instead, navigating the blocky U.I. with practiced pecks, tapping in the name of the fledgling who'd haunted and harangued them for most of two weeks, Connie pulled up two nationwide databases. Missing persons first, a compilation of Silver Alerts and AMBERs, kidnappings, all the human trafficking hotlines. Then, windowed beside it, the obituaries. He queried strings, substrings, and tokens. Hot cases and cold ones. False positives and recent sightings and every dead-end lead. He pulled it all; cast his net as wide as wide went. Couldn't be too thorough, not with Brace breathing down his neck.
Sifting through the flagged results, his spine curdled.
Not at first, of course; fewer than a dozen matches, most of them useless. (Thank God she wasn't a Smith or a Jones or a Lopez.) But as Connie sifted through the males, the elderlies, the blondes, the pre-2000s, just as he was becoming sure he'd sniffed his way to nowhere, lost the scent at a creek or a falter-line like an old bloodhound with a nose not half of what it used to be, the first fateful track caught his eye: wherein a "Paul Capdevielle, Sr."—along with a Horatio T. Behan and a Jack and Lily Addison—had pooled a $25,000 dollar reward for information leading to the safe return of their three children, last seen, the whole clique, on the eighth of June, boarding a taxicab to Louis Armstrong International. Connie didn't know what compelled him to pull up a police report from Louisiana, replete with a Xeroxed scan of the reward fliers ("5'3...petite build...last seen wearing..."); to give it more than the perfunctory dismissive glance; but it could not have been anything less than a quirk of fate, the guiding hand of good luck itself. As these posterboards had not only been slathered across every telephone pole, bulletin board, and milk carton in NOLA that Old Money could buy: a little more delving, and it turned out this cadre of aging socialites had photocopied it to every major newspaper and late-night news outlet in Vegas. A few tabloids had picked up the story and buried it on page six or ten or twenty-two; the Review-Journal and the Sun had each rented out a half-spread of ad space. (Hardly the showing a few old rich pearl-clutching cunts had hoped to bring out for their dead rich cunt kids, and yet...)
Connie's hands would have begun to tremble had his undead body still featured a functioning endocrine system. All the same he lit a cigarette. Readied his notepad and a cheap gel pen, and kept digging.
Caroline Capdevielle, Madison Behan, and Haley Addison. Once he had all three names, courtesy of their worried-to-death families' missing persons flier, tracking their week-long glorified bar crawl across the Strip was a cinch: their cards pinging from concierge desk to restaurant to casino teller. ATM to ATM to ATM. (Spoiled little shits. Connie couldn't see the objects of the transactions but he salivated at the amounts in the statements, all zeros and commas; seethed at the names of hoity-toity celebrity chefs, at hour upon hour of bottle service. And not a credit line in sight; only debit.) Interestingly, all three paper trails ended at roughly the same time, in roughly the same area: the Resorts World complex. For some reason all three girls had drawn large sums of cash all within twenty minutes of each other—one at the on-site sports betting shop, two more at the casinos—seemingly to meet up again somewhere nearby and blow it all at a fourth location. Connie clicked his pen and recorded his suspicions:
He took stock of himself, the Brujah, once he was pulled away into the first abandoned, weedy lot he'd happened across; engine idling; headlights tunneling the dark and terminating on the white and grey wall of a derelict auto body shop, white paint flaking off grey concrete in scabs. The scents of the city tangled in his hair, the Brujah, its dusts darkening the inner conch of his left ear. One of the lenses popped from his clubmasters, a mean, one-eyed glare peering back at him from the rearview mirror. (He peeled the broken sunglasses from his face and cast them out the window, heard their plasticky clatter across the asphalt.) Sand and road grit glued to the mayonnaise slathered up and down his suit pants. But despite this—despite it all—better. M̴͕̖̫̱̒ü̷̧̡̼̬̐c̶̥͆̀̂h̶̞̜͎͇̐́ better.
He patted down his pockets and much to his relief it had survived his hot-heeled escape across the library lot, back through the sports medicine place, the entirety of his rolled-window rout out of downtown: the guest slip, thin and brittle as a cicada's sheddings. "Alright, 'C. Capdevielle,'" Connie muttered—as if he addressed the Gangrel herself, sat beside him in Teresa's usual spot or perhaps in the backseats where the ziptied fugitives liked to kick and struggle, and their loved ones bleated and begged without end—"show me where you've been hiding." Already the MDT, built into his center console, glowed at the ready; bathing his every scruffy feature in an artificial cobalt blue. He didn't waste his time where the cops no doubt had already scoured—residences, registered vehicles, previous criminal activity, outstanding warrants—all the obvious and trodden avenues—no need. Not when he knew something they didn't. Instead, navigating the blocky U.I. with practiced pecks, tapping in the name of the fledgling who'd haunted and harangued them for most of two weeks, Connie pulled up two nationwide databases. Missing persons first, a compilation of Silver Alerts and AMBERs, kidnappings, all the human trafficking hotlines. Then, windowed beside it, the obituaries. He queried strings, substrings, and tokens. Hot cases and cold ones. False positives and recent sightings and every dead-end lead. He pulled it all; cast his net as wide as wide went. Couldn't be too thorough, not with Brace breathing down his neck.
Sifting through the flagged results, his spine curdled.
Not at first, of course; fewer than a dozen matches, most of them useless. (Thank God she wasn't a Smith or a Jones or a Lopez.) But as Connie sifted through the males, the elderlies, the blondes, the pre-2000s, just as he was becoming sure he'd sniffed his way to nowhere, lost the scent at a creek or a falter-line like an old bloodhound with a nose not half of what it used to be, the first fateful track caught his eye: wherein a "Paul Capdevielle, Sr."—along with a Horatio T. Behan and a Jack and Lily Addison—had pooled a $25,000 dollar reward for information leading to the safe return of their three children, last seen, the whole clique, on the eighth of June, boarding a taxicab to Louis Armstrong International. Connie didn't know what compelled him to pull up a police report from Louisiana, replete with a Xeroxed scan of the reward fliers ("5'3...petite build...last seen wearing..."); to give it more than the perfunctory dismissive glance; but it could not have been anything less than a quirk of fate, the guiding hand of good luck itself. As these posterboards had not only been slathered across every telephone pole, bulletin board, and milk carton in NOLA that Old Money could buy: a little more delving, and it turned out this cadre of aging socialites had photocopied it to every major newspaper and late-night news outlet in Vegas. A few tabloids had picked up the story and buried it on page six or ten or twenty-two; the Review-Journal and the Sun had each rented out a half-spread of ad space. (Hardly the showing a few old rich pearl-clutching cunts had hoped to bring out for their dead rich cunt kids, and yet...)
Connie's hands would have begun to tremble had his undead body still featured a functioning endocrine system. All the same he lit a cigarette. Readied his notepad and a cheap gel pen, and kept digging.
Caroline Capdevielle, Madison Behan, and Haley Addison. Once he had all three names, courtesy of their worried-to-death families' missing persons flier, tracking their week-long glorified bar crawl across the Strip was a cinch: their cards pinging from concierge desk to restaurant to casino teller. ATM to ATM to ATM. (Spoiled little shits. Connie couldn't see the objects of the transactions but he salivated at the amounts in the statements, all zeros and commas; seethed at the names of hoity-toity celebrity chefs, at hour upon hour of bottle service. And not a credit line in sight; only debit.) Interestingly, all three paper trails ended at roughly the same time, in roughly the same area: the Resorts World complex. For some reason all three girls had drawn large sums of cash all within twenty minutes of each other—one at the on-site sports betting shop, two more at the casinos—seemingly to meet up again somewhere nearby and blow it all at a fourth location. Connie clicked his pen and recorded his suspicions:
Caroline Hilton casino floor
Madison Conrad cas. floor
Haley Egan's Saloon/Sports Book
___________________________________
June 14th, met up @ RESORT WORLD, drew cash
in 3 difrent spots (worried abt getting traced/
folowed??) to nervus to use cards?
WHY THE SECRESY
Must of been founded last sign of them
befor they vanish of the face of the earth
Madison Conrad cas. floor
Haley Egan's Saloon/Sports Book
___________________________________
June 14th, met up @ RESORT WORLD, drew cash
in 3 difrent spots (worried abt getting traced/
folowed??) to nervus to use cards?
WHY THE SECRESY
Must of been founded last sign of them
befor they vanish of the face of the earth
He had a date now; maybe even a rough triangulation of where these girls had met their First Deaths; but hardly enough to seal the case. With that avenue, for the time, exhausted, he continued the—
Girls?
He paused—wasn't the second perp—the one in the CCTV footage...?—Connie fast-rewound the tape, still inserted; pulled up the feed of the parking garage, of Curtis Prince DeWayne being herded to his slaughter. He played it back. Rewind and replay and rewind and fast-forward and replay. No. No, no matter how he looked at it, what timestamp, what angle, Caroline's accomplice was male. Skinny-wristed and a bit of a faggot, sure, but in the shoulders and the crotch and the hunched, shrinking gait, shriveled by neurosis, by paranoia, unequivocally a fucking dude. Connie tabbed over to the missing persons poster; zoomed in on the photocopy of a photocopy of three small, grainy, cropped pictures of three dead girls, all three dolled out and dressed up in their prettiest little princess blouses and bell skirts. Nope: not a she-male in the bunch. This, too, began to make its way into his notebook, but before he could finish asking himself the question did its answer call out to Connie from the dark, low and mewling. It occurred to him to tab back to the obits—to query Behan and Addison and sure enough up came their mugshots, the splatter across their chins and throats the color of chocolate cake batter, their perfect skin the color of grubs, the one girl's stare a glassy and lidless stare the other's bunched and raisined, transfixed mid-scream by the death-stiffness. Connie looked at them; beheld them. Beheld the desolation and the waste. He amended his question.
Girls?
He paused—wasn't the second perp—the one in the CCTV footage...?—Connie fast-rewound the tape, still inserted; pulled up the feed of the parking garage, of Curtis Prince DeWayne being herded to his slaughter. He played it back. Rewind and replay and rewind and fast-forward and replay. No. No, no matter how he looked at it, what timestamp, what angle, Caroline's accomplice was male. Skinny-wristed and a bit of a faggot, sure, but in the shoulders and the crotch and the hunched, shrinking gait, shriveled by neurosis, by paranoia, unequivocally a fucking dude. Connie tabbed over to the missing persons poster; zoomed in on the photocopy of a photocopy of three small, grainy, cropped pictures of three dead girls, all three dolled out and dressed up in their prettiest little princess blouses and bell skirts. Nope: not a she-male in the bunch. This, too, began to make its way into his notebook, but before he could finish asking himself the question did its answer call out to Connie from the dark, low and mewling. It occurred to him to tab back to the obits—to query Behan and Addison and sure enough up came their mugshots, the splatter across their chins and throats the color of chocolate cake batter, their perfect skin the color of grubs, the one girl's stare a glassy and lidless stare the other's bunched and raisined, transfixed mid-scream by the death-stiffness. Connie looked at them; beheld them. Beheld the desolation and the waste. He amended his question.
Who is the boy?
Were did Madison and HaWhy only Imbrace
Caroline?
Were did Madison and HaWhy only Imbrace
Caroline?
Little by little, inch by agonizing inch the picture was becoming clearer, but he had to laugh; it wasn't like him to flinch away from uncomfortable truths, to draw out the inevitable, to ignore disquieting questions by posing other, gentler ones. Certainly not to miss the constellation for the stars. They'd already found the girls. They'd already found the girls and catalogued their names, their faces, already uploaded the mugshots to their server farms, already filed the carcasses away in cold, steel cabinets scrubbed neat as silverware. They'd already prodded glass rods at the wound channels (cursorily and amateurishly concealed with knife or gunshot or belt sander as was the habit); already typed up a coroner's report awash with words he didn't understand like "carotid sheath," "antemortem," "acute exsanguination," "demarcated." And his "C. Capdevielle"—already toe-tagged, already autopsied, already a fucking Masquerade breach. He was wasting time. A corpse walked the streets—they had her I.D., her picture, they'd broken the news to her family and here was Connie Beauclerc puzzling over the polite dead girls, the obedient ones not walking out the freezer front door and eating the tourists. There had to be something. Come on you washed-up bastard, you old sniffer-dog, it's out there somewhere and all you got to do is find it, then you can go back to your ratty apartment, the neighbors' meth-den stink seeping through your walls, your loathsome landlady; get back to the nightly grind and stop doing charity work for the Primogen Council at least for a little while. The bank statements. That's right, all those bottles of Château de Fartsniffer 2007, all those Michelin-starred midnight snacks, there had to be a room; and no mere four-walls-and-a-bed affair, either, not for this pillow-mint posse. Come on, you stupid little pricks, Connie muttered as he backclicked his way to the relevant page, as cigarette ash spilled down into his lap, please for the love of Caine don't use PayPal. And his prayers were answered. He widened the parameters, pulled up new searches; scoured Addison's financial details and Behan's, but accordingly it was Caroline herself who had paid for the group's lodging, for so went one of several dozen frivolities she had transacted within city limits since her arrival: Point of Sale Withdrawal / VENETIAN PALAZZO FRT DESKLAS VEGAS NV 881921311 Card #1447.
And so at last. At last he'd hunted down the next bread crumb. At last he knew where to go next. And yet no exuberance, no triumph flooded him; for weren't Connie's heart an inert lump of muscle in his room-temperature chest it most assuredly would have dropped down into his diaphragm, pressing the dread deep, deep into the gulf of his stomach. The Venetian was Giovanni turf.
And so at last. At last he'd hunted down the next bread crumb. At last he knew where to go next. And yet no exuberance, no triumph flooded him; for weren't Connie's heart an inert lump of muscle in his room-temperature chest it most assuredly would have dropped down into his diaphragm, pressing the dread deep, deep into the gulf of his stomach. The Venetian was Giovanni turf.
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