He was attractive, but it was the sort of attractive that made Beth immediately suspicious. To Beth he was a chameleon, an actor who made himself into whatever was required for him to accomplish his job of getting the young and attractive to service the older and wealthier. The nice clothes were doubtless accompanied by the right words, the comforting smile. He wasn’t just a pimp and dealer; he was a pusher. He talked people into the vices that he profited from. There was nothing real about people like this, as far as Beth was concerned.
She saw his look of confusion change to one of suspicion. She had to do this quickly and quietly. This was the sort of place where people would actually phone the police, and they’d turn up, probably quickly.
He started to close the door. She pushed it hard, knocking him back. She was in, kicking the door closed behind her, her great-grandfather’s bayonet in her hand. Grab him by the face. Keep moving. Keep him off balance. Let him see the knife, then let him feel it on the skin of his throat.
‘Very quietly or I cut you,’ she hissed. He looked more angry than frightened. That wasn’t what she wanted. He tried to scream through her fingers as she drew a line of red down the skin under his cheekbone. He started to struggle. ‘I will fucking stab you!’ she told him. He stopped struggling. ‘Are you going to keep it down?’ He nodded warily. She took her hand away but kept the point of the blade pressed into the skin of his throat.
‘I know people,’ he said.
‘I don’t, and they don’t know me. They won’t know you if I cut your fucking face off.’ She had to convince him she meant it. ‘I’m Talia Luckwicke’s sister.’ There was the fear she wanted. It was the start of a very bad night for William Arbogast.
Beth had kicked his legs out from under him, taken him to the ground and then straddled him, ignoring his look of distaste, her knees pinning his arms. She kept the blade at his throat.
‘I’m just looking for information. I’m going to get it. All you need to do is decide how much I’m going to have to cut you before I find out what I need to know.’
‘Look, fuck you and fuck your whore—’
She hit him in the nose, broke it, blood spurting down his face, his head thumping into the tile flooring. Beth brought her fist back. She knew she was just going to keep hitting him and hitting him. It was war. She knew this feeling, Beth was almost gone. She had to get control, had to…
Arbogast’s vision was red and blurred; he felt sick. He shook his head, recovering, looking up at the mad girl with a big knife. He knew that look. Seen it in the eyes of his clients who liked to hurt the merchandise. He’d seen it in McGurk’s eyes.
‘Okay, okay. What do you want to know?’
Breathing hard. Trying not to kill him. Beth closed her eyes. She needed not to see the world in red right now. She willed herself back.
‘You knew my sister, and don’t fucking lie. I know you were her pimp.’
Arbogast started to scream, but her hand was over his mouth, gripping it hard as she dug the blade into the side of his head, pressed down until she felt bone and then dragged it down through the skin, blood spurting out of the wound. Head wounds always bled more. Show them their blood, she remembered Thomas telling her. She held up the bloody knife. Showed it to him. Shaking with anger.
‘I’m not in control of this. You are. How much do you want to get cut? Are you trying to show me your skull?’
‘Please, my face…’ He was crying.
Your face, Beth thought angrily, and the clothes, the easy smiles and expensive aftershave, the nice car. All props so he could use people, profit from them. She leaned down close to his ear, intimate.
‘I’m going to cut it off.’ She thought she meant it. More importantly so did he.
‘I remember her. She was a party girl. She wanted to do it all but she didn’t have any money, just her looks. Look, she was cool with it. She did some films. Is that what this was about? Did you see her on the Internet or something? Look, I’m sorry but it’s a free country. She had a choice!’ He was sounding desperate.
‘The hooking?’ she asked. She was surprised to see him turn even paler. Somewhere at the back of her head a sane voice was asking why she was doing this. She wasn’t going to hear anything good, anything that would help, and her sister would still be dead.
‘Look, I know it sounds bad—’
‘Sounds?’ Beth hissed.
‘Look, she wanted the money; I knew the people. She made her own decision. All I did was make sure that she was okay. I looked after her…’
‘Like the big brother she never had?’
‘She wasn’t standing on street corners. It was upmarket clients, reasonable. She was treated nice.’
Beth wanted to hurt him. Despite his words he knew that he had played his part in what Talia had become. She also knew that she was lashing out. Talia was capable of making her own choices.
‘She was in demand,’ Arbogast said before realising that this might not be the best thing to say in the circumstances. Beth concentrated all her attention on him again.
‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘She was really pretty, you know. She had the whole goth thing going…’
Beth didn’t doubt that Arbogast was an excellent liar under normal circumstances, but she didn’t think this was his normal power relationship with the opposite sex. He was hiding something.
‘Tell me.’
‘Look, you’ve got to underst—’
She grabbed him painfully by the mouth again. She could hear him trying to beg through her clenched fingers. She put the knife back into the wound she had made and started to twist the blade. She tried not to think whether her great-grandfather would have approved or not.
‘Please,’ he was sobbing. ‘Blood…’
‘Like this?’ She showed him the knife again and he shrank away from her.
‘Bloodletting. She and her goth friends were into the vampire thing. They would drink blood from each other. Some of my clients wanted to live that fantasy out… some of the specials… but…’
‘What?’
‘There were stories, rumours about her, that people saw things when they drank her blood.’
Confused at first, then angry again. She hurt him some more.
‘Do I look like I’m fucking around, you cockless little bastard!’
‘No, no, no.’ Begging. ‘Please… She came back bad a few times, hurt, you know, they took too much. They wanted her blood, I wouldn’t tell you this… I couldn’t make it up.’
She could see he wasn’t lying. Her anger was as much because she couldn’t understand. She had no frame of reference to process this, and people get angry and frightened when they can’t understand things.
‘Did you ever do it?’ Beth demanded. He stared at her terrified through the tears. He nodded. ‘And?’
Running, foot on the balcony, into space, travelling forward but in a backwards somersault. Land on the roof of the next building. Nice and smooth, like in PK Killer. Not just a case of augmented speed, strength, agility, but having neurally rewired yourself to remove the fear and inhibitions.
He threw himself off the roof, grabbing his knees, tumbling sideways. He dropped two storeys and grabbed the balcony rail. He pulled himself up with enough force to leap over the rail and onto the balcony. Upper body strength without tears, he thought smiling. His clan joined him.
‘It was like space, you know, like in a film. It was beautiful. Like heaven. I think I heard God. He was angry.’
Beth stared at him.
‘What the fuck am I doing?’ Beth said out loud. The anger just drained from her. Talia was gone. All she was doing was trying to put balm on that. Cheapening her sister’s death with violence and strangeness. She rubbed her face. Talia was gone. She was starting to feel it. She had often hated her but she was family. She felt tears behind her eyes. She turned away from Arbogast. He couldn’t see that. She left him on the floor in his own blood. She didn’t even bother with a parting threat.