“It’s yo ass, white boy.”
Hard to resist the urge to point out he’s white too—almost as white as a vamp—almost.
He barrels toward me. Taller than me by about six inches. Heavier. Much. He throws his punch. Slow. Sloppy. But powerful.
Crack him hard in his jaw before his punch is halfway to me. Pain stings through my fist. His arm drops to his side—he falls back toward the floor. Blood runs out his mouth. Must’ve bit his tongue.
Heavy body slams against the wooden floor—causing it to flex and creak. Glasses flop off and land high on his forehead. Eyes shut.
Look to the three on the couch. Girl moves across the space where the big guy was just a moment ago, sitting herself next to the girl on the other end. She extends her hands, waiting for her turn in what they’re passing around. Other guy still hasn’t looked in my direction.
Start up the unlit staircase. Don’t know what horrors lie in the darkness—what twisted souls that might want to harm me—cut me—shoot me—tear into my veins. Don’t really care as long as the one I’ve come for is here. Polluted veins, harsh fangs, and all.
Staring at the blacklit ceiling fan, glowing tape on the tips of its blades, spinning and swirling as a thin glowing ring in the darkness. The last orb of light in the pitch.
All of it is suddenly blacked out by shoulders like mountains wrapped in a thin gray shirt. Its edges glow, illuminated by the black light behind. The shirt is spattered with crimson, a bleak, bloody sky rained down upon by the battered moon of his head—bruised, busted, and bleeding. An angry sky dripping onto a helpless earth.
In a flash, as if an earthquake threw this mountain range of flesh into motion, arms fly at my throat, hands grab my collar and yank me to my feet with the incredible speed of having my name called at judgment day.
The junk that I smoked makes my arms heavy and my knees buckle. Takes all my strength to hold my head up, but those two burning eyes that pierce me demand my attention.
“Too gone to help Roderick jump me tonight?”
Try to talk—my mouth doesn’t cooperate.
“Saw you there earlier—heard you in the alley. Where’d you go?”
“Needed a fix—taking too damn long to take care of you.”
“Thought Roderick gave you your fix. He’s not supplying you anymore?”
Some of his words register meaning as they’re spoken, but it takes a moment to put them all together. He shakes me—trying to knock the words into the right order in my mind. A needle drops out of my elbow and falls to the floor. Don’t remember sticking it in.
Finally the words line up, “Roderick has the good stuff—the new breed. Was gonna give it to me when we had the girl. Was already mad at me because I didn’t report back to him when you sent me after that dead girl—real sweet of you, Simon. Real sweet to screw me like that.”
“Just trying to keep you out of trouble, Edgar. At least for a few hours.”
“Found it anyway—just off Bourbon.”
Hands squeeze tighter on my shirt, stretching fabric—he crisscrosses his hands—digging the collar into my throat.
“Where were you going to take the girl? He has Ruby now—where are they?”
“If—if I tell you, Roderick’ll kill me—you know that.”
“What makes you think I won’t kill you now?”
“Too soft, Simon. Always been too tender. Shame—you coulda been one of us—if you’d only toughened up. You could’ve been the greatest of us all—so much potential, but you’ve turned your back on what you are—what you were destined to be—and instead you’ve become the opposite of your true nature: the anti-vampire. So hung up on Eleni all those years—ruined you. Ruined yourself over some silly girl.”
Hands like lightning at my throat—lifts and throws. My body flings through the air about to crash into the wall above the mattress that lies on the floor—the mattress that I was comfortable on before he came in here.
Head smacks a stud, body cracks into the sheetrock. The dust it stirs up from the wall smells like moldy disease.
Before body hits the mattress below, he’s already struck blood—running from the back of my head.
Speaks in my ear before I even know he’s over me, “That’s right, junkie. All those years. All those years over one girl. One that was taken away from me—one that was gone. I spent all those years in misery over her memory. Imagine what I’ll do now for one that I can still save.”
“What would you do, golden boy?”
“I’d dim the sun to keep it from scorching her, leaving the whole world in the coolness of an eternal autumn. I’d scar the whole earth for her.”
“Do things you’d never dream of just to get another taste of her—would you?”
“You might find out tonight.”
“Slave to it.”
“What?” he asks, his impatient hands grabbing my collar again and yanking me to my feet.
“Slave to love—you’re a slave to her. Are we all that different, Simon? You’re a slave to your emotions—I’m a slave to my chemicals. Is one any better than the other?”
“Mine fills me. Makes me feel alive when all hope should be gone. Makes me know all of this is worth it. What does yours leave you with? What but misery? What but some selfish obsession that helps no one but yourself—reducing you to cowering in the shadows of a falling-apart building filled with the horrors of people ruining their lives and the stench of walls rotting with the diseased fungus of a storm that passed years ago?”
“And what does yours leave you with but sad poetry?”
“Fulfillment, Edgar. Happiness that doesn’t fade. Fire that doesn’t go out. You should try it sometime—if you could keep your veins clean long enough to feel it.”
I try to laugh derisively but choke on blood and the sting of truth.
He pulls me nose to nose, my feet just leaving the floor, “You’re going to help me, Edgar. You fought Roderick once—for a minute you were real—a real person. You know how ugly he is—what he wants to do.”
“He gives me what I need. No one else knows where it comes from—this new breed—you just don’t understand,” not liking the sound of my own voice as it hits the eerie air, glowing with the black light reflected and spinning in the fan blades above.
“One way or another—you will help me,” holding me entirely in the air with just his palms pressed into the base of my neck, his fingernails tap against my throat, threatening my flesh, the black light reflecting in his exposed fangs making them look otherworldly and ferocious, “Starting with where they are now.”
“I’ll take you there. I’ll take you into their little hell, but I can’t get you back out again.”
“Maybe there’s hope for you, Edgar, but if you betray me before I have Ruby, I swear I’ll kill you. I swear it.”
Maybe I can be free of this. Maybe I can have a life—my life, unchained from this craving. I could lead Simon into the house—help him save the girl, bring him to Roderick’s room on the second floor—let them fight it out. Just above—the third floor. Ooh, the things that are on the third floor—the good stuff. Maybe I can find the secret to the new junk—the new breed—have it for myself forever. The girl has something to do with this. I’ll make her tell me. Never need anyone else—just the stuff.
By terror or tooth, I’ll make her tell me…Make her tell me everything…
Chapter XVI
Wails & Tails
Ear-splitting, wailing cry.
As I step out the doorway onto the creaky porch with the large sunglasses-wearing gatekeeper knocked out a second time on the floor and Edgar’s arm grasped tightly in my fist, I think how wrong the sound is.
Always heard of the hounds of hell—the three-headed Cerberus, Lovecraft’s Hound, and Gytrash—fangs hungry for human flesh—equally lusting for those that attempt to leave the underworld and those foolish enough to try to enter. As I walk out of one layer of hell, getting this pathetic creature—Edgar—to lead me into an even deeper level of the fiery hive to rescue Ruby, I expect to hear the howl of devil dogs. Their growling and barking would fit—would make sense here. But, this is no dog. Possibly not a natural animal at all.