Red Delicious(13)

And then . . .

There was a deeper swirl of shadows among the shadows. I figured it was just Otis coming to chase me away. Otis was the albino troll took over the spot after Aloysius vanished. Otis was a son of a bitch, in every way a troll can be a son of a bitch, and, what's more, he'd blamed me for Aloysius' death. He'd repeatedly threatened me with all manner of dreadful fairy revenge. So I'd stayed far fucking away from Otis.

I watched the oily black swirl and stood, getting ready to make my exit as soon as the pale motherfucker emerged out of his portal between here and the Hollow Hills. Only . . . it wasn't Otis who stepped out. It was Aloysius.

"Fuck me," I whispered. "No fucking way."

Now, for those among you unfamiliar with trolls, just imagine a really big-I'm talking nine-foot-tall-Muppet designed by someone who's dropped too much acid. These huge ears with lobes that drooped all the way down to his feet, riddled with loops of metal (no iron) and fancy wooden rings and bones. Including human bones. But that should come as no sort of surprise, as it's hardly a secret trolls have a taste for the long pork. His eyes, orange and almost bright as the setting sun. A face not even his mother could have loved.

"Fuck me," I said again, and sat back down. Hard. So, maybe it's more like I fell down.

He scratched at his head and flared his cavernous nostrils. "Quinn girl," he grunted. "Been pondering when abouts you'd come around."

"But . . . but . . . ," I stammered. "You're dead."

"Not hardly yet. Sometimes dead ain't no ways dead, and you ought'a know that much, bein' Twice-Dead and all."

"I ought'a," I said, and then I got up, vaulted over the guardrail, and hugged one of the ugly bastard's legs. First time I'd truly hugged anyone since . . . well, I don't really remember, but it had been a while. Aloysius made a gurgling noise I think must have been half laughter, half surprise. Hard to tell with trolls.

"Now, now, Quinn lass . . ."

"Jesus, I'm glad to see you."

You might have read somewhere that vamps can't cry. Not so. And that night, hanging on to Aloysius, I cried like a fucking baby. He stroked my hair with his huge four-jointed fingers.

"Reckon I'm glad to see you, too. Even if you aren't truly you no more. Even if you are the Twice-Dead and Twice-Damned they made you into."

I told him to shut up, and he did. For a while, I just stood there, hugging his leg and crying, hearing the patter of the snowfall beyond the overpass. Finally, I let go and took a few steps backwards. Aloysius wasn't crying; maybe trolls don't. I've never heard one way or the other. But it at least seemed he was glad to see me.

"Oh, Aloysius . . . ," I blubbered, and wiped my nose, starting to feel stupid and embarrassed for crying. "I thought you were gone forever. Otis-"

"Don't you say that name," Aloysius said, and sat down in front of me. "Not now and not ever. You brought me something? Should hope, this being a reunion    and what, you'd have brought me something."

I went back to the guardrail and retrieved the 3 Musketeers bars and brandy. He grunted in a pleased sort of way and accepted the gifts.

"But Otis-"

"Did I not tell you not to speak that name? Did I not just say that?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Won't say his name, but since you're asking and won't stop, was that ginky, hing-oot scrote tried to still my bridge."

Don't ask me to translate that. Aloysius had spent time in Scotland, hundreds of years back, and still visited various Scots relations from time to time, and was a wealth of Scots insults. I could usually get the gist of it from the tone in his voice.

"Was him spread the lies about you doing me in," Aloysius continued. "Tricked me in a riddle match, what he did, and I got myself caught in a hedge maze. But he cheated, he did. And finally, though, the Court tumbled to his chicanery and set it right. Now it his ass in the maze."

"Oh, Aloysius, everything is such a fucking mess."

"Got worse than being dead and gone wolfish?" he asked, and raised a scabby eyebrow suspiciously.

"Shit always gets worse," I replied. "Only absolute truth in the whole wide lousy universe, I think."

And, surprise, that's the way the day ended. Me and Aloysius sitting under the interstate watching the snow, just shooting the shit like we used to do, back before my run-in with the Bride and Jack Grumet (but after I met Mean Mr. B). Aloysius did still seem as horrified at me being an undead lycanthrope as he'd been when he first heard the news. He talked about how it sucks to be lost in a hedge maze, and I talked about the Maidstone sisters. It was the last good night I'd have for a while.





CHAPTER FOUR


DEATH FROM ABOVE, TEN BULLETS, AND THE DINGUS

Sooner or later, a junkie's gotta fix, and sooner or later, a predator's gotta kill. These are words to live by, golden rules, maxims in the great, wide, uncaring shitstorm of life. And undeath. And I hadn't gotten a red delicious fix since the day I'd been sent off to my meet-and-greet with Berenice Maidstone and Lenore the Goth and their shuffling zombie entourage.

After our reunion   , I'd spent the rest of the night beneath Aloysius' overpass, first listening to him relate the details of Otis' betrayal and comeuppance, then telling him how everything had turned out with the Bride of Quiet. Finally, I'd dozed off to the sound of the predawn traffic on 195, rumbling by high overhead. It was a little past noon when I woke. The snow had stopped, and there was no sign of Aloysius. My stomach was grumbling and cramping, and I was ravenous as fuck all. Usually, I can go a couple more days between din-din, but the past two had taken their toll, bumping up mealtime. That wasn't so bad, but here it was, broad daylight, and I'd long since learned keeping my murders nocturnal was far less risky. Still, B expected results, and I wasn't going to be worth shit until I'd eaten. There wasn't time to wait for sunset. I'd just have to make the best of it, and try extra hard to be discreet. Inconspicuous, you know.

Hookers are always an easy mark. Hookers and drug dealers. Now, as I have said before, I don't like preying on the underbelly of society, having once been part of it myself. If I had my choice, there'd be nothing on the menu but upper-crust blue bloods. Newport, for example, would be a veritable buffet. But those are the very people that if they should go missing, the cops actually have to try to find out what happened. Maybe money can't buy you love, but it sure as hell makes the life of this vamp just a little more difficult to stomach (no pun intended).

Problem is, lots easier to find both hookers and pushers after dark. And that day I wasn't especially blessed with the luxury of a long and patient hunt. I was sitting there beneath the interstate, trying to ignore my belly (ever heard whale songs?) and the cramps, when that bitch fate took pity and smiled on me. A homeless woman-maybe in her twenties, maybe in her forties-showed up, as convenient as convenient ever gets. Filthy and rail thin, probably a fellow junkie herself, she had a bulging trash bag slung over one shoulder and was dressed in mismatched clothes and three sweaters, but no coat. I watched her from the cover of dead brown weeds, and she sat down on the concrete embankment and stared out at the blanket of new snow and the furrow of freshly plowed Gano Street. She talked to herself, a rambling monologue that made no sense whatsoever, branding her as one of the mentally ill who'd fallen through all the cracks. I'd told myself I'd make it quick, that she'd never know what hit her.                       
       
           



       

I lied.

I'd developed a habit a playing with my food.

"You're a cunt, Quinn," I muttered to myself as I slipped silently from the cover of the weeds.

"Yeah, well, that's why there ain't no air conditioners in Hell, ain't it?" I muttered in reply.

I hit her like a linebacker, and she went down hard. The trash bag tore open, spilling her sad-ass, hoarded belongings across the sidewalk. She tried to scream. They almost always try to scream, even the ones who've sunk so far they've pretty much lost any desire to go on living. That scream, it's hard-wired into the human psyche. Men and women been screaming like that since cavemen huddled together watching the eye shine and shadows lurking hungrily just beyond the firelight.

She tried to scream, all right, but I clamped a hand over her mouth and dragged her back across the street to my patch of weeds. Aloysius would probably be mortified to know I was doing the deed right there in his squat, but I'd just have to worry about that later.

I pushed her down into the dirt and gravel and spat out the dental prosthetics, revealing the piranha teeth that are the tools of my trade. The makeup I'd put on the day before, almost all of that had been smudged away, so she also got the waxwork complexion, to boot. I straddled her, and her blue eyes seemed wide as quarters, her pupils swollen with fear and the strain of a useless fight-or-flight response.

"Be still," I said, then slapped her hard enough to split her lip. The spray of blood was answered by a torch song from my empty belly. I quickly glanced about to be sure we were alone. I was desperate, but I wasn't suicidal.

The woman managed to drive her left knee into my ribs, and I slapped her again, harder than before. But I'd learned the hard way vamps gotta keep that crap to love taps or off come their heads (or some part thereof), which spoils the fun and leaves you with a corpse full of rapidly cooling, dead blood. I slapped her, and a tooth went sailing from her mouth. She stopped struggling, and tears welled from those terrified eyes.