“Something to look forward to,” I said. “I’m on my way.” I slapped shut the computer. Hung up the phone. And extended my consciousness toward Washington.
But not before I made a phone call first.
18.
You wanna know the worst part about a pack of sociopathic immortal nutjobs getting the drop on you? It’s not the torture, though there was plenty of that, from the second I hopped into the scruffy, chair-bound trucker they had waiting for me, Dru and Izzie took turns cutting on me some, Kate screaming at them to stop the whole while, leastways until they gagged her. They dug cone-shaped pits out of the tender flesh of my cheeks with the rounded tip of a potato peeler, jabbed toothpicks underneath my fingernails, Dru even lopped off my left ear before a furious Grigori castigated him for doing damage to his new trophy that would not heal itself with time and did his best to mystically reattach it, all crooked and wrong.
It’s not the humiliation at being bested, either, though there was that as well; blunted somewhat by the fact that these deranged motherfuckers had hunted unseen in humanity’s midst for centuries, but stinging nonetheless.
It’s not even the growing certainty you’ll wind up frozen in a cheesy action pose in some evil fucker’s living room for all eternity right beside his startled-looking stuffed gnu, his mountain lion poised to strike, and his tacky bearskin rug.
No, more than anything, it’s the monologuing. The nonstop, mustache-twirling gabfest that you’re forced to endure before they just do the deed already. And the worry that it won’t stop once they lock you inside this body forever. That Grigori is gonna while away his lonely centuries nattering at my magic-stilled ass, and there won’t be a goddamn thing I can do to shut him up.
“I confess, Collector,” he said, “I misjudged you some when first we met. I didn’t think you’d best fair Ricou so easily, which is why you and I are forced to kill time now. The sigils inscribed in blood beneath you must be fully dry before the ritual can begin. Three hours at minimum is recommended. Five, if one has the time to spare. But it does, at least, mean Dru and Izzie get some time with you. They take such delight in pain, you see — nearly as much as they take in one another. Touching, is it not, to see such devotion across the vast expanse of time? Theirs is truly a love story for the ages.”
“Yeah, real heartwarming,” I said, spitting blood and tonguing the spot where the glistening molar in Izzie’s hand had recently resided. Izzie smiled prettily at me and held out her prize for Dru to see. Then she popped it in her mouth and swallowed it, while Dru looked upon the scene with the dopy infatuation of a teenager’s crush. In the hour and change the two of them had been cutting on me, I hadn’t heard them say a word. “Plus, they don’t seem to talk much, which I’m kinda fond of. Maybe you should try it.”
“Oh, the Lovers haven’t spoken in centuries,” Grigori told me. “They’ve no need to. The only bond they truly care to foster is between each other, and said bond is far deeper than mere human utterances could hope to express. Which is why they choose to express it in suffering.”
Dru, who’d waited patiently on deck while his blushing bride removed my molar, stepped up to the plate to take his swing. In his hand was a paring knife from the kitchen, dull orange-ish and glistening. As he approached, I wondered almost idly, thanks to shock’s kind remove, what he’d coated it with. Then, in the instant before he jabbed it handle-deep into my thigh, I caught a whiff and knew.
The fucker’d drenched the blade in Tabasco sauce.
I thrashed in agony, beet-red and screaming. Kate, gagged and wide-eyed, mirrored my movements, in her case a futile protest.
Dru removed the blade and licked it clean. Izzie clapped, coquettish, as if he’d just performed the most delightful party trick.
“Understand I derive no pleasure in your suffering,” Grigori said. “But I feel I owe them a little leisure time, having yanked them so abruptly from their home. Much as I was forced to back in Whitechapel, 1891, when their playful dismantling of several lowly streetwalkers attracted a hair too much attention from Scotland Yard. For the longest time, London was their playground, but then Simon’s precious modern science made such play far riskier as the livestock began collecting evidence and doing proper detecting rather than simply hanging whatever pauper they could get their hands on. The Ripper killings were too high-profile, I told them, and continued feasting on the delicious, fear-drenched viscera of London’s whores too risky if they both wished to evade capture. From then on, I endeavored to settle them in less civilized locales, where their avant-garde expressions of their besottedness might raise fewer hackles. Luckily, the twentieth century proved quite the extended honeymoon for them. The Armenian genocide of the First World War. The wholesale massacre of Kurds in Dersim in ’37. Poland, Russia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia during World War Two. After that, unfortunately, the whole of Europe got disappointingly civilized, but a series of bogus humanitarian aid posts on the Dark Continent made possible by my purchase of a number of respected charities allowed them to continue indulging their outré predilections without fear of reprisal — for a time, at least. Recently, they’ve spent their days feasting on the tender flesh of the young women of Juarez, Mexico, some two hundred dead and mutilated, yet no one seems to care. It’s the ideal arrangement, really. All these two have ever wanted was to be left alone to kill.”
“How can you sit there and say that like it doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “You and your so-called siblings were human once. How can you stomach having become such fucking monsters?”
“Let me answer that with a question of my own. Which is worse, that monsters lurk in the dark corners of Man’s existence, or that Man is such a brutal, vicious creature in his own right that he’s scarcely even noticed?”
“I’m pretty sure the answer to that is, ‘Fuck you and the giant tidal wave of evil you rode in on.’”
“Samuel, that stings. But not, I fear, as much as this ritual is going to. For you see, the sigil’s dry. It’s time to begin.”
Outside, I heard the traffic’s din build, a diesel engine revving somewhere outside the wobbly translucence of Grigori’s protective bubble — weaker, it seemed, than the one erected around his castle, but present nonetheless. It seemed strange to me, this showdown, this potential end to my life’s story, taking place inside a dime-a-dozen chain restaurant situated in a strip-mall parking lot in a bland commercial district beside a highway. It could have been anywhere in America. It felt like nowhere at all. Time was, they’d’ve had the decency to make a trophy outta my sorry undead ass inside a nice little mom-and-pop place, at least.
I glanced toward the broad expanse of tinted glass that faced the road. Saw the dim reflection of my own unfamiliar body, and across the room, Kate’s as well, while between us stood three ancient, twisted, repugnant creatures nothing like the physical forms they each projected, but somehow instantly recognizable nonetheless. I guess they could not hide their true selves from us entirely.
Beyond the glass, and the reflections, I saw the yellowy stare of headlights looking in.
“Kate,” I shouted, “avert your eyes.”
“That’s sweet,” said Grigori. “You not wanting her to see your final defeat.”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“Then what?”
“It’s just, my ride’s here.”
Grigori tilted his head and regarded me with confusion. Kate’s eyes widened, and then clenched shut. She knew me well enough to listen first and ask questions later when I start spouting the crazy.