– It’s expedient.
He drops his arms.
– See, and there you go insulting me and doing it using words that I only sort of know what they mean.
– Means it was the smart play.
He stares at me, shakes his head.
– Well, thank you very much, Joe Pitt.
I lift my shoulders.
– Don’t take it hard, Phil. You played the center against the middle and the ends against the top and bottom so well, when the chips were finally down they all decided you were too dangerous to live.
He smiles.
– Yeah, yeah, you know, put like that, almost kind of flattering. Too dangerous to live. Make a cool tattoo.
I lean the barrel of the shotgun on my shoulder.
– So it’s not all bad.
Howls drift up from below.
I take a drag.
– And you roll a mean smoke besides.
He smiles wide, shows blank spots where he used to have silver caps to replace the teeth I knocked out of his jaw. Pawned, I suppose.
– Thanks, Joe, that means something. Coming from you and all.
He looks down a little.
– Say, Joe?
– Phil.
He looks up a little.
– What happened to your fingers?
I furrow my brow, look at my left hand, shake my head.
– Damn. Where the hell did I put those?
We have a little laugh.
Phil Sax. He’s not all bad. Just he’s an untrustworthy dirtbag is all.
That’s probably why I stick the shotgun in the back of his neck when he starts to unlock the door at the top of the stairs. Why I hiss at him to keep it zipped when someone on the other side asks what’s up. Why I kick him in ahead of me and follow only after he stumbles in and no one blows any holes in him. Why I go in barrel first, crouching, at an angle.
Why it goes all sideways at that point is because when Sela jumps from the blind corner at my far left and I turn and try to put one in her gut before she lands on me, I find out that as bad as things have got in here they haven’t yet got to the point where anyone is giving Phil a loaded weapon.
Shame on me for not checking that one.
Advantage Sela, on me, grabbing a fistful of hair, lifting my head and slamming it into the floor, raising a fist that will likely collapse my face. Good hand is attached to the arm pinned under her left knee, bad hand is free, clawing at her eyes, just enough fingers to do that. Wonder if I’ll feel the second punch, or if the first will do the deal. Fuck, I hope so.
– Sela!
The fist grazes my skull, feels like being grazed by a sledgehammer, splinters the floor next to my head.
– Baby, come here, baby.
Sela’s nostrils open, then her mouth. She leans her face to mine, I’m waiting for her to bite, and she’s gone, jumping like a tick, and I can feel an imprint of her hot skin where her legs and thighs and bottom rested against me.
And I smell blood.
Up on an elbow, those two fucking ribs broken yet a-fucking-gain, I take a gander at what it looks like when everything goes completely off the rails.
The room takes up most of the top floor. Large parts of it have been turned into a lab. Steel tables, refrigerators, computer equipment, things that look like they analyze stuff, test tubes, an autoclave. Hell, there’s even Bunsen burners. Just missing a Tesla coil to make it a complete mad scientist setup. Another part of the room is devoted to another kind of business. There are a lot of guns scattered around, cases of dehydrated high-energy and high-protein meals. Cases of whiskey and vodka, jugs of water, batteries, a couple small gas-powered generators. A bank of flickering CCTV screens, most dead, with an occasional jump to a picture of the front stoop, the stairwell, one of those empty barracks, and a night vision-green view of a row of steel doors in a basement. In front of the screens, a length of 2×4 with a series of knife switches screwed into it, wires running to a hole in the floor. The office consists of a big wood desk covered in papers and uneaten meals, three computer monitors, a model made out of sticks and little balls and geodesic blocks. Across the room are two open doors: through one I can see a bathroom, through the other it looks like living quarters.
A couple things are especially riveting. Start with a row of glass jars, big-ass jars, along one of those steel tables, each with a head floating inside. But that’s not the showstopper. That’s the young lady sitting at the desk.
Young, beautiful, brilliant and rich, Amanda Horde always had it all. Including a bonus set of whacked-out parents. Still, long as I’ve known her, she’s been looking for more. Looking to do something special. Cure what ails us. Even though she’s not one of us. Girl on the edge of things, special she is.
And at the moment, her half-starved Vampyre lover’s mouth is latched over a cut on her forearm.
She runs her fingers across Sela’s forehead.
– That’s right, baby, it’s OK. We’re OK.
She looks at me.
– Joe.
I look at her.
– Hey, Amanda.
She gives a flat smile.
– Can you come over here and give me a hand, Joe? I mean, mostly she’s fine, but sometimes it takes a little extra work to pull her off once she gets started.
It takes a little extra work to pull her off.
She keeps feeding while she swings her fist around, trying to force me back, but I get an arm around her neck and manage to wrench her face from Amanda’s arm. She’s pretty pissed about that and looks to kill me for it, then her eyes kind of roll up and she goes to all four and crawls away and curls up and goes to sleep.
So I get to live another day.
Or another minute anyway.
Time will tell.
– I’d say, if anyone was asking, I’d say he’s working for Predo on this one.
– Shut up, Philip.
– Just I’m saying is all, how those enforcers didn’t exactly beat down the door to get after him is all.
Amanda stops flicking through the slides that zip across her monitors.
– How about that, Joe, are you working for Predo again?
I pause in my rummaging.
– Yeah, afraid so. He’s getting ready to raid the place. I’m supposed to get some quick intel, get out and let him know if there’s anything in here to worry about.
She starts flicking through slides again.
– See, Philip, nothing to worry about.
Phil rocks back and forth in his chair.
– Man, there are like sooo many things in what he just said that I can worry about.
I hold up a carton of shitty clove cigarettes that smell like candy.
– Is this all you laid up?
She glances over.
– Yeah. Help yourself. I totally gave up on that bad habit.
I think about it. I will admit that much, I do think about it. Then I drop the carton back where I found it and grab a bottle of Scotch instead.
– You give up this bad habit?
She shakes her head.
– No. But I’m a total lightweight these days.
Sela is still sleeping, but I cut a path well around her anyway.
– Yeah, wonder why that is.
Amanda fingers the edge of the bandage she put over the fresh cut in her arm. Both arms have several more similar wounds, from well-healed to barely scabbing.
– Don’t be an asshole, Joe. I mean, don’t be that kind of asshole. I mean, please, am I going to let her starve?
I twist the cap from the bottle and find a couple dirty glasses in the mess on her desk and pour a couple drinks.