"But don't you dare say I didn't give you-"
The shotgun roared.
The blast missed me, but not by much. I'd tumbled to the left, rolling away through the shrubbery towards that black wrought-iron fence. The back of the fountain, it wasn't so lucky.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I heard myself saying, over and over like some Catholic-my mother, for example-praying the Rosary. I was up and on my feet almost before I knew I was up and on my feet. Rizzo didn't have even half a chance to reload the shotgun. I hit him like a pile of bricks, and the gun sailed away into the darkness. My ears were ringing, but I heard ribs cracking, and I heard one of the bastard's lungs collapsing. And when he hit the granite steps leading up to the front door of the Athenaeum, I clearly heard a sickening crunch, and I didn't need to be some ER doc to know I'd snapped his spine. The cold air suddenly stank of piss and shit.
To his credit, he didn't scream. Just a low moan, and that much pain all at once, you can't expect anyone to take it quietly.
I crouched over him like a spider over a fly, and stared into his eyes-at so much hate and spite and self-righteous fury-and he stared back into mine. The loup wanted out. It was slamming itself against the bars of my fraying will, and I very almost let it out.
Almost.
"Lots of people must have heard that," I said. "So maybe the cops will be along soon."
Though, you'll recall, they hadn't shown up when Father Rizzo threw down on me at my apartment.
"So I'm gonna give you a choice, and I'm not gonna offer three times. I'm only gonna offer it once. Which, mind you, is one whole time more than I got."
Maybe I was holding the Beast at bay, but the hunger was filling up every crevice of my mind. Heard that phrase "seeing red"? Right then, yeah. But it was goddamn literal. Drool leaked past my teeth and lips and spattered his face. He winced, and turned his head away.
"Stupid," I hissed again. "Stupid fucking me. Should've dealt with you a long time ago."
"So do it now and shut the fuck up," he said. "Get it over with."
"There's where your choice comes in. I leave you lying here, crippled in a pool of your own filth, and you can maybe think on all those boys you raped. Maybe someone will find you, or maybe you'll die of shock or hypothermia."
That's when I slapped him. A wonder I didn't snap his neck. "You look at me," I growled.
He looked at me.
"So, I can do that, or here's your other choice. Door Number Two." I leaned nearer, pressing my teeth hard against the racing drumbeat of his carotid, and, oh, that's all I wanted in the world. To open up this man of a god I had no use for and take my own communion . Instead, I whispered, "You wanna live forever, Father Bertrand Rizzo? Wanna see the stars grow old with me?"
He was silent a moment, and during that moment, I ran my tongue along his throat. I could taste the blood through stubble and skin and the cloying sweetness of aftershave.
"You'd do that?" he asked.
I sat up and slapped him again. "The real question, Father, is would you?"
He blinked, and now there was blood on his lips, a steady trickle from his nose. He blinked a few more times.
"Yeah," he gasped. "Yeah, I would."
I stared up at the sky, briefly trying to imagine what Lenore had seen up there just before I'd put her out of the misery Berenice had doomed her to.
"You're a piece of work, you are," I laughed.
"Better than dying," he said, gasping again, clearly having trouble getting enough air to speak, what with just the one lung and all. "Isn't it better than dying?"
No, you asshole. No, it's not.
"Rizzo, you know what I hate even worse than a rapist? Cowards and hypocrites."
"But you-"
"Lied," I said. And then I broke his neck. It was a cleaner death by far than he had coming. But I still had just enough self-control to remind myself how little time I had. I had to get the dildo to Aloysius and hope he'd help. Besides, back then, I had no idea if I actually could do to someone else what had been done to me.
I did waste half an hour hauling the body away to the river, weighing it down with a gut full of stones, and tossing it to the fishes. Then I slung the cocksucker's shotgun over my shoulder and headed for the troll's underpass.
• • •
"Don't know, Quinn lass," Aloysius said, holding the unicorn between a gigantic thumb and forefinger, well back from his tangerine eyes. "Stinks of magic. Don't like it one damn bit, I don't."
I was sitting cross-legged on a ratty mattress near his feet, a mattress someone had dragged there and left in the dirt and gravel and weeds. I'd just lit a cigarette. Breathing out smoke, it's almost like watching my breath fog in the cold.
"And you don't?" I asked.
The troll stopped staring at the dildo, and he stared at me, instead. "Ain't the same. You tumble to that."
"Whatever, dude. Fairy magic. Old-time alchemist magic. Voodoo. Demon magic. Jesus fucking loaves into-"
"You're not learning nothing," he sighed.
I blew smoke rings. "Look, I don't find a way to get the upper hand in this mess, my learning days just might be over pretty goddamn soon."
"You even bring me presents?" he asked.
I had. I dropped a plastic bag with half a dozen 3 Musketeers bars on the ground in front of him.
"King-size," I said. "Big on chocolate, not on fat. Just like you love 'em."
He grinned and swept up the bag in his free hand.
"Twenty-four hours. That's all I need. At most, twenty-four hours. No one's gonna even think of looking here."
He flared his nostrils and went back to staring skeptically at the ivory dildo. "You so sure about that Mr. B dug of yours? He's a cannie wee cunt, that one."
"He's too busy counting money he doesn't yet have and kissing Drusneth's scaly ass."
"Always ye come askin'," he grunted. "Always with your havering, lass. Asking. Thinkin' it nae danger to me nor mine, an' not even, ‘Aloysius, 's'a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nichtaye?' Think me tally?"
"I liked you better when you spoke English."
"Liked ye better when ye were drawing breath and not gone wolfish."
Well, yeah. I'd liked me just a little bit better then, too. But I didn't tell him that. I just sighed and took a long drag on my Camel.
"Not even a bottle in the bag," he muttered.
"Twenty-four hours, man. That is all I'm asking Take it back into your . . . wherever . . . and I'll be back for it not later than this time tomorrow night. Cross my heart and hope to-"
"Bit late to promise that much, lass."
The son of a bitch had a point.
"Twenty-four," he said, snorting again. "Not a tickytock longer, or I toss it. Grind it to dust."
"I swear."
"The word of one gone plumb dead and wolfish," he huffed, and shook his head.
I ignored the implication I was a liar, just because I was a vampire and a loup. It's the sort of argument I always lose. Mostly because I'm a liar. But I was a liar a long time before I joined the ranks of the nasties. Still, no use arguing about such fine distinctions.
"That's wicked nice of you, Aloysius. And I-"
"Scramble," he grunted, then disappeared in a swirl of inky black.
And I sat there below 195, smoking and listening to the late night traffic above me, trying hard to figure out what the hell I was going to do next.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BAD AS ME
Okay, so, how about another quick and dirty rundown of my situation as it stood, that cold, cold late night after Saint Valentine's Day? Partly, for the idiot kids in the back of the class who've been too busy sexting to pay attention, but also because even I'm having trouble keeping up with all the ins and outs of this kerfuffle. And, hell, I'm the one who was caught in eye of the storm, right? Don't want this tale to end up as big a mess as, say, Howard Hawks' 1948 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. You may recall, the screenplay was such a complete fucking discombobulation that even the directors and screenwriters-one of whom happened to be William Faulkner-finally admitted they had no idea whether a key character had been murdered or had killed himself.
True fact, so there. Film history. Don't ever say books like this are utterly devoid of educational value.
I'd found the unicorn outside the Athenaeum, right where zombie Lenore had told me I would. Then I'd been surprised by and killed Rizzo, demon slayer.
I'd spirited the dildo away to Aloysius the troll, and he'd hidden it in Faerie, where, I figured, not even Harpootlian could find the damn thing.
As for Harpootlian, she still thought I was her bitch.
Same with the Maidstones.
And Mean Mr. B and Drusneth, those two were pretty sure they also had me in their pocket.
But by this point, I realized that I'd become a free agent. Like I said not too far back, finders keepers. But, you see, what does the finder do with what she's found?
After leaving Aloysius, I'd switched off my phone and headed to a hipster dive over on Federal Hill. That crowd, I hated them like the plague, but they were a lot less prone to staring at the waxy-skinned chick with the pointy teeth. I only had to endure the inane conversation, mostly crappy music, and the ironically mismatched and anachronistic clothing of that cooler-than-thou crowd. Pull that off, and I could drink all I wanted until the sidewalks rolled up at two A.M. Which was only about forty-five minutes after I showed up.