Burned, p.24
Burned, page 24
Three other chupacabras: an Asian boy, a Latina, and a heavyset African-American—all young, like him, but all old enough to eat by Daddy’s rules—peeked in through the front door from the hall. There were more out there with them. They all wore my words on their clothes: SHE’S THE BOSS, APPLESAUCE.
“I want to have you and then kill you.” My fangs were at his throat.
“Do what you want,” he whispered. “I don’t want to die in silence.”
“Make us scream,” said the girl. She could have been his sister; her skin was marred by the same eczema-like blotchy patches.
“All we know is quiet,” said the heavyset boy. “Life in the plague is about silence. Keeping ours, enforcing it on others.”
“You’re the opposite,” said the girl. “When you rage, you howl and growl and flaunt it. When you hurt, you scream.”
“Teach us how,” said the boy beneath me, his rigid manhood pressing against me through his jeans, “and we will go where you want during the day, when you can’t, and be quiet there and listen and see. If you choose it, we will die for you. Just give us voice.”
I sank my teeth into his jugular, and his blood had taste, sour, tart, and bitter, like lime. I kissed him then, his own blood slicking his lips, and if I hadn’t taken so much, I would have mounted him and had to kill him after, but he was flaccid, not from lack of will but from lack of blood. That impotence saved him. He was the one. The right person to be my first thrall.
Clawing the shirt from his back, I rolled him over and spat dark red onto golden-brown skin, willing the blood into a tattoo, a badge of words on the back of his neck:
TEAM
GRETA
“I mark thee and bind thee.” I said the words of thralldom without officially asking, but his smile let me know there was nothing he wanted more in the entire world than to belong to me. “Master to servant. Servant to master. You are mine until I set you free. You are mine. So mote it be.”
Dad had said the experience was pleasurable when he made Rachel his thrall, but with the nameless chupacabra boy, it was more than that. Sparks lit up in my brain, and my legs buckled as I bucked against him, grinding his face into the carpet. All of the pain and confusion washed away on the wave of orgasm and my pants were wet with the scent of blood.
“I’m the boss, Applesauce,” I said as I bit through his earlobe and opened wounds in his back with my claws. I watched as the skin flowed back together, then I parted it again, and he bit back a scream. “No!” I shouted, swatting the back of his head hard enough to concuss him. “Scream for me. I command it!” I drove my foreclaws knuckle-deep into his shoulders, and the howl that ripped free of his lungs was a primal thing beyond pain, a letting go of whispers, a surrender to noise. The wounds knit back together quickly, and his eczema was completely gone.
“Me next?” the female chupacabra asked.
“I decide who gets to be my next thrall.” My eyes flashed crimson, and she responded to the anger with a smile. My breath no longer came in ragged jags. My lungs were still, my chest quiet. I was centered. Powerful. At peace. My body, once more only an interface.
“I don’t understand everything that just happened,” Evelyn said from the apartment below, “but can I say that if this is going to happen every time you get horny and frustrated, I’m buying you the biggest damn selection of vibrators and sex toys known to man.”
“Why?” I asked, but Evie never answered.
“What’s your name?” I asked the chupacabra boy.
“I wouldn’t know,” he answered. “You haven’t named me yet.”
Very good. What sort of fruit would fit him? But no, not a fruit. He was nothing like those rejects Apples and Oranges. A noise. A noise that was a triumph over silence . . . What was the name of that Spanish metal band I’d heard Telly listening to from time to time? I remembered.
31
GRETA
THE METAL’S GONNA GET YOU
Warcry walked up to the rear of the McDonald’s, cutting right through the breakfast drive-through traffic. A padlocked metal grid blocked off the ladder providing rooftop access, but he didn’t slow. His body, lean and well maintained, coiled and leaped, easily bringing the lowest exposed rung within reach, the rest accomplished by easy traction from the charcoal FiveFinger TrekSports he wore.
The smells of cooking meat and brewing coffee reached him even on the roof, and I smelled them through him in a dreamlike haze, lying in Fang’s trunk, fast asleep and wearing Percy’s glasses.
This is how you do it? I asked Percy, envisioning my words as blocks of red text.
I cannot see exactly what you’re experiencing, Greta, but I imagine it’s similar. How many senses do you get? His answer appeared in the air above Warcry, strokes of a golden pen writing in the air.
Three that I’ve noticed. I thought back. Smell, sight, and hearing . . . but no touch or taste.
Those two are the rarest of all, Percy wrote. A lost opportunity, perhaps, but the three you have are typical of Vlads.
Just as well, I thought to myself. Warcry touches his face so much, it would have given me the creeps to have to feel it all the time.
Can they hear you? Percy wrote.
No. The admission stirred resentment chased by self-loathing and inadequacy in my belly. Warcry paused, questioning wordlessly. They seem to pick up on my emotions, but apparently, that’s the best I can do when I’m asleep.
Deciding to keep going with the plan, Warcry settled in next to the edge of the rooftop, mostly out of sight, and pulled out his smartphone, flipping through the photos I’d scanned in from the scrapbooks Evelyn had found.
My three thralls perched on breakfast stops nearest the Void City police station downtown: McDonald’s, Krispy Kreme, and Arby’s. I could have used a fourth thrall to cover the Waffle House, but I didn’t want to enthrall the fat one until he lost weight. The others in the hallway weren’t in the running. They hadn’t been brave enough to come walking in the door of the Martinezes’ apartment, and I couldn’t see myself joined to fraidycats.
Moving from one thrall’s perceptions to another felt less like changing channels than rolling out of bed early in the morning and hitting the snooze button. It took time, and for random intervals, I dropped contact completely, sleeping the sleep of the dead until another dream cycle got me close enough to consciousness to reconnect.
While Warcry couldn’t stop touching the now-smooth skin on his face, Nightwish obsessed over her legs, running her hands over her shins and thighs, then hugging her arms. I hoped she just looked cold to anyone who saw her. No one would be watching her up on the roof of the . . . But she wasn’t on the roof.
Nightwish sat bold as brass in the dining area of the Arby’s, eating a croissant and sipping at a cola. Two cops walked in through side doors, and she took a long hard look at them as if it were more natural than breathing to notice them and watch them. I couldn’t compare them to the pictures from the scrapbook, but she could. Images flipped past on the smartphone’s touch display like slides on an auto-advancing carousel, with the plus button stuck.
I watched for hours, sleeping on and off, until, through Chthonic’s eyes, I saw Evelyn sit down at the table where Chthonic had made himself comfortable.
“What are you looking for, Greta?” she asked, directing the question half to herself, half to my thrall.
I couldn’t answer, but Chthonic did. He passed her his phone.
“What?” She studied them. “These are the pictures from the photo albums I found? They’re all cops.”
He nodded. “Some. The ones she wants us to examine.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?” She looked at me, through his eyes, and her mind touched my mind . . . barely. Archives of horror, those things at which other Vlads quake, waited to be shared with her, but not through Chthonic’s mind. He might break. I wasn’t ready to give up my new toys and throw away the pieces yet. I settled for sending words rather than pictures. Safer.
Speaking, even telepathically, felt like shouting into a bucket of syrup . . . which . . . I’ve done, actually. My verdict? Sticky and hard to get out of your hair. I finally gave up and used acid.
When Dad was human, after Korea, Marilyn convinced him to try being a cop. They didn’t know how the world worked. They didn’t know that all the good cops were puppets.
I follow you so far, Evelyn thought back at me.
I . . . Dad’s nostalgic. I struggled to remain close to consciousness. And . . . I was remembering how, when he made his current thralls, some of them got younger, more attractive, even. He . . . deaged them.
And you—Evelyn chewed her lip—thought he might have enthralled . . . What? Some of the cops from the old folks’ home?
Yes. Why else would I have smelled his blood in every room?
Blood tattoos? Then why look here?
Breakfast places, I thought. It’s not just doughnuts that cops like.
Evelyn yawned widely, giving me an excellent shot of her uvula. “Your brain is so slow during the day, it’s making me sleepy.”
Evie rubbed her eyes and took a sip of Chthonic’s Coke.
Caffeine worked on her? That bitch!
“You’re pissing her off,” Chthonic whispered. “Best get to the point, neh?”
“Oh.” She handed the Coke back to Chthonic. “Sorry. Marilyn.”
“She feels confused,” Chthonic said before I had to try to put it into words.
“Greta, Eric didn’t tell you to watch Marilyn,” Evelyn said. “You had me tail her the other day, to see where she went and make sure she was okay, but Eric didn’t say anything about watching her. If he made a deal with the devil to get her back, do you really think he’s going to turn her over to some unknown quantity without keeping a weather eye on the horizon?”
Gears turned and clicked into place. I smiled in my sleep.
“She likes that idea.” Chthonic grabbed up his phone and started texting. “Where did this Marilyn get sent?”
“The Iversonian.”
“Cool.”
An hour later, Team Greta had the Iversonian and his club of the same name under surveillance. By the time the sun set and I woke up for the evening, they’d spotted nine different cops who looked like they might be men from the photo album. Whether doing a drive-by in a VCPD squad car, on foot, or in one case, on mounted patrol, one of the nine passed by the club every ten minutes.
“He’s definitely keeping an eye on her,” I said, standing next to Nightwish. She rubbed at her elbows, where I’d just fed off her ulnar artery, ignoring the healing wounds at her throat and femoral artery. Thralls heal fast, but she looked weak and pale, which made me want to feed again.
Evelyn saw the look in my eye and touched my shoulder. “Don’t you think she’s had enough?” She added an emphatic nod as if that would lend weight to her statement. “Give her a rest. You have other thralls.”
“I like you, Evie.” It was my turn to put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you like me?”
“This isn’t a prelude to another weird kiss thing, is it?”
“No.”
“Then sure.” Her eyes unfocused slightly. “I can’t explain it, but I think you’re a nice person trapped inside this whole vampire mind trip. I think maybe I understand why . . . a little. Something horrible must have—”
“Don’t talk about it unless you want to see it.” I looked into her eyes. “Because I can show you, but I don’t like it when people talk like they understand me when they don’t know shit.”
“Right.”
“Can I kill you, Nightwish?” I asked the question of my thrall, but my eyes never left Evie. “If I want?”
“Yesss.” Nightwish’s answer, small and reminiscent of a chupacabra’s hiss, hurt Evie more than I could on my own without getting inventive.
“What the hell?” Evie tried to turn to Nightwish, but I held her in place by the shoulder. “Why?”
“Because she’s an unwanted thing,” I said. “They all are, the chupacabras who want me to lead them. Their parents and fellow uggos probably say they want them around, want them to be happy, but then . . . why make them stay chupacabra? ’Cause that sucks, and Popsie could cure any of them . . . let them go, let them heal, but he doesn’t want to. He just wants them to do as they’re told and not ask any questions and pretend to be happy.”
Nightwish was nodding.
“They say they want noise, but what they want is difference. Change. To feel. And good or bad, I can make them feel something. It’s what I do. Dad was lost when he rescued me, but I rescued him, too. Just a little.”
Nightwish held her wrist out, and I sank my fangs into the radial artery and let her drop when she fainted. Warcry and Chthonic ran over, each taking a shoulder, and pulled her up.
“Sheriff,” Evie said. “Can we not let ourselves get distracted?”
The “Sheriff” got my attention. I like respect.
“I don’t want to step out of line, but is showing me how badass you can be really how we want to spend our time?” She nodded at the Iversonian. The club was just now opening. Cars were queuing up, and a redcap in a dirty leather jacket was parking cars. “I’ve seen all your forms. I know how scary you are, Sheriff. What I don’t know is what Eric Courtney is up to, and I thought that was the important thing.”
“You’re right, Deputy.” A squad car with two of the men from the scrapbook pulled around the corner, driving slowly in front of the Iversonian. As it neared us, I let my claws slide out, my eyes go red, and all my vampiric speed come out to play. Daddy said I couldn’t kill the VCPD, but he never said I couldn’t carjack and waterboard them.
Public Safety Tip #5: I have no accord with Geneva, I’ve never met anyone named Miranda, and “due process” is a misspelled discussion topic for why grass is wet in the morning.
32
MARILYN
MAYBE THERE’S SOMETHING TO ALL THIS STUFF AFTER ALL
Tending bar takes more skill than some give credit for, and I don’t mean that in a Tom-Cruise-in-the-movie-Cocktail way. It also kills me that for some people, that reference is to a classic movie from a time gone by. To me, Tom Cruise is just a baby, and that movie was yesterday, but there are kids old enough to drink who come into the Iversonian, and to them, Tom Cruise is a punch line on some cartoon I’ve never watched.
Worse, to the Iversonian himself, I’m the same way. And for the record, whoever invented the damn apple mojito should be shot in the face twelve times and then run over. In a busy bar, there simply isn’t enough time to mix the damn thing. I don’t think it’s worth the money in the ingredients, either.
“I said, ‘Go fuck yourself, blue eyes.’” The twentysomething at the bar I’d convinced the Iversonian to let me open in his upstairs area didn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t going to fill his drink order.
“I just want an apple mojito,” Blue Eyes repeated. “What’s the problem?”
“Fine.” The three-deep crowd at the bar all wanted my attention. “Twenty bucks, then.”
“But they’re only ten downstairs.”
The urge to throw the guy across the room slid up my spine and sat on my shoulder like a tiny demon urging me to give in. All I had to do was tap in to the ambient life force around me, and I’d have the strength to do it. Knowing how true immortal powers work makes it clear why a guy like the Iversonian would want to run a club. More lives meant more life force, and more life force meant that if I wanted to throw my strength around, I didn’t run the risk of killing plants and animals or giving people cancer by drawing too much and confusing their immune system or mutating cells.
His girlfriend cringed apologetically. “Geez, Dylan. Just order something simple, like a lemon drop.”
I laughed, one explosive burst of air. Lemon drops are almost as bad, and they leave me with sticky fingers.
“Chelsea,” I said to the bartender next to me, “my tips are yours. I’m out.”
Chelsea glared at me with purple-accented eyes of pink, and the air around her sparkled. I forget what kind of an elf she is, but she’s good at her job and three times as patient as I am. She says the patience comes with age. Ha!
Bass thumped in time to the beat of a song I’d heard, but never with the mix that had been applied to it now. Humans danced with fae and a few vampires, but mainly the fae folk, since most of them could disguise themselves enough to pass for human. Especially with the amount of body modification some of the Iversonian’s clientele had undergone.
Headed out? the Iversonian asked telepathically from a spot at his favorite table.
I’ll be back for my lesson.
Paying a visit to Greta?
Why do you ask? I thought as I shoved my way between two idiots.
She’s outside. He raised his glass at me as I caught a glimpse of him through the crowd. I thought you might have sensed her. Most true immortals learn to do that eventually, at least with Masters and Vlads: pick up on the energy that lets them sense each other.
Nope, I thought back.
And now she appears to be stealing a police car.
What? I squinted, and the little blue lines of life force (or soul energy, as the Iversonian liked to call it) popped into view. I drew in little sparks of it to feed my speed and muscles. Stronger and faster, I elbowed my way through a sea of bruises and bumps, then out the front door.
33
GRETA
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO APPLESAUCE
Marilyn charged out the door of the Iversonian wearing a low-cut purple silk top and black leather pants with straps running up the sides. The boots and jacket I recognized, but she wore makeup . . . She never used to wear makeup. Or . . . maybe . . .
a little, but not like this. Not since I’d known her. A leather cord dangling around her neck caught my eye, and I thought I saw a hint of gold: a ring through which the cord had been threaded, peeking out between her breasts.
