Christ, he hoped it wasn’t poisonous or something.
Overall he couldn’t find anything useful in the upstairs apartment, but the house was large, especially by New York standards, three stories plus the attic room, and from his brief journey through the house, Jasper knew it was stuffed full with potentially interesting crap. He glanced at the werespider still asleep in his bed. He’d barely moved the entire night, his revolvers still within easy reach. Jasper grabbed a heavy flashlight from his backpack and headed down to the next floor.
The gloom of the third-floor hallway was thick, broken only by the cracked bathroom door. The beam of his flashlight broke through, bringing the dusty piles of boxes and broken furniture into sharp contrast. Besides the bathroom, three other rooms were on this floor, the doors closed. Jasper went to the room closest to the attic and tried the door, finding it locked. Picking locks always took him forever, and kicking the door down was probably going to be loud enough to wake the werespider. He opted to start sifting through the nearest stack of boxes instead.
The first box was full of clothes, dated garments he couldn’t imagine Crimson wearing, stuff better suited for some hippy-dippy love child of the seventies rather than the goth/punk aesthetic the werespider favored. Demons, especially old ones, were often chameleons, changing with the times to blend into society to better trap their prey. Maybe the werespider had once worn tie-dye and bellbottoms and had since moved on to some sort of weird alternative grunge style.
Jasper started to search the next box, but his hand came in contact with something soft and wet, and he jerked it back, knocking the box to the floor. Rotted papers and books and cloth tumbled to the ground, along with a bundle of some of the biggest and ugliest spiders he’d ever seen. A particularly large one scuttled towards him, and he squished it under his boot, feeling the crunch even through the thick sole. He shuddered, having had enough of boxes for the time being, then shook his disquiet away, heading for a door across from the bathroom.
The light streaming from the cracked bathroom door was yellowish and did little to illuminate the room across the hall. Jasper tried the worn crystal doorknob and found it unlocked. With caution he toed it open, his flashlight beam cutting ahead of him.
The room was dusty, disused, the walls covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of heavy, dark wood, full to bursting with menacing-looking tomes. A large antique desk was pushed against the far wall, not far from the boarded-up window covered in rotting green velvet curtains.
The books interested him—they were not unlike many of the books back in the library at St. James, which were filled with all sorts of information on demons. The desk could be promising as well. This room hadn’t been used in some time, but if the werespider had an old address book stowed away, that would at least be something.
Jasper took a step into the room, the floorboard screeching at his weight. He stepped back, certain both that the werespider would have heard him and that the floor was bound to collapse beneath his feet. The floor held and the door to the attic remained closed. After a moment of waiting, Jasper ventured back in, placing his feet carefully so the boards merely whimpered rather than screamed.
He reached the desk and opened the top drawer. It was empty except for a single piece of yellowed paper, its edges curled up from age. Two words were written in flowing cursive: Fuck You.
Jasper didn’t have time to wonder what its purpose was—a heavy click sounded from the drawer as he opened it, and the room came alive with a vengeance. The wooden sides of the bookshelves exploded with a crack, and half a dozen curved blades, easily four feet long if not more, burst outward, slicing across the room. Books flew, hitting the floor with thuds like muffled gunfire. A particularly deadly blade came at him, and Jasper acted only on instinct, leaping backwards so that his back was against the wall, the blade slicing through the air in front of his face. On the back swing the blade hit the flashlight out of his hand, sending it spinning crazily through the air, the beam bouncing around until a different blade struck it in the air, breaking it. Darkness fell around him, blinding him. The blades continued to swing—he heard them even if he couldn’t see them. Pressed against the wall, Jasper thought he’d just stay there. The blades couldn’t go indefinitely, right? It might have been a good idea, but on one of the returns, the blade moved closer, cutting a slash in the thigh of his jeans, slicing the skin above his knee. Jasper hissed in pain and cursed. He had to move.
The darkness left him blind. He tried to remember the layout of the room: how many paces across was it? Was there any furniture other than the desk? How many blades were there? And who the fuck would put something like this in their house? It was like something from an ancient pharaoh’s tomb, or a trap a serial killer with a lot of time on his hands would make.
Jasper could linger no longer; before the blade could swing back and remove the leg from his body, he moved, throwing himself forward into a low roll, pausing with his back to the side of the desk. He listened to the sound of the blades cutting through the air around him, trying to gauge where they were. One passed by so close that the air tickled his ear; he rolled into the space it had just inhabited, jumped to his feet, and ran, twisting and hoping he’d stay lucky.
The door was open the barest of cracks. Jasper threw himself against it, burst into the hall and promptly hit the wall, his palms smacking against the drywall, sending cracks running through it. His heart was pounding and his breath came out in pants, the adrenaline catching up with him now that he was out. In the room, the blades continued to swing.
Once his breath was a little more even, Jasper took stock of his injuries; the worst was the cut above his knee, though there were a few others, and he’d banged himself up pretty good in his haste. Better than getting cut in half, anyway.
A sharp, sudden snap of applause made him jump, and Jasper whirled around towards it, finding its source instantly. Crimson stood in the hallway, shoulder leaned against the wall, legs crossed at the ankles. He clapped slowly, the faint glow of his red eyes standing out of the shadows. “I’m impressed, hybrid. Thought for sure I’d be feedin’ the stray cats your insides tomorrow.”
“What the hell is that?” Jasper burst out before he could think better of it.
Crimson shrugged, slipping his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Told ya not to touch my stuff.” He was acting casual, but Jasper was sure it was just that: an act. There was tension held in his loose frame, evident in his sharp gaze. Jasper felt pretty tense himself. Stupidly, he had not brought any weapons with him. He didn’t even have the flashlight, which could be used as a club in a pinch. The werespider didn’t appear to be armed, but Jasper didn’t want to have to find out for sure. Even unarmed, the werespider was dangerous. “What were you lookin’ for?”
“What? Nothing. I, uh, couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d read something. I didn’t think the library would attack me.”
Crimson made a soft, noncommittal noise. The glow of his eyes seemed to deepen, and Jasper did his best not to react negatively, not to give him reason to attack.
Finally, the werespider spoke. “You’re bleeding.”
Jasper looked down at his left leg, where the biggest cut was. Blood coated his jeans from the knee down. “Yeah,” he said lamely.
“You planning on bleeding out in my hallway, or you going to do something about it?”
Jasper couldn’t tell what the werespider was thinking. He’d caught Jasper red-handed and he didn’t seem pleased, nor was he furious. If anything, he only seemed curious, his gaze considering.
All at once Crimson shrugged and turned away. “There should be some bandages under the sink in the bathroom. If you decide to die, do me a favor and do it in the basement. I’m goin’ back to bed.” The shadows swallowed him up, his steps silent as he went down the hall.
The noise of the swinging blades in the other room stopped, leaving only the creaking of the house around him. Jasper watched the space where he’d last seen the werespider, h
alf-expecting him to reappear and finish the job his house had attempted, but he did not. The pain in his leg demanded more of his attention, and he shuffled into the bathroom, locking the flimsy lock behind him. It would do nothing to stop the werespider if he wanted to get in, but it was better than nothing.
Just as Crimson said, a roll of bandages was under the sink in an ancient first aid kit. Jasper took off his jeans. Under the fluorescent lights, the cut on his leg looked ghastly. Six inches across, it was thankfully not too deep, though the smeared, sticky blood made it look worse. A cabinet was in the corner, and Jasper was surprised to find it stocked with clean dark towels. A pile of dirty rags seemed more likely. He took the first aid kit and an armful of towels and sat on the edge of the claw-foot tub to wash the wound. His blood swirled pink and red down the drain. Once washed, the cut was not as bad as he had anticipated. Stitches were probably called for, but the idea of sewing his own skin made him feel light-headed, and the only needles he could find had long ago given in to rust, so he settled for wrapping it tightly with the roll of bandages.
Jasper pulled his ruined jeans back on. The whole ordeal left him shaken. His walk back to the attic room was full of limping, his eyes darting around the shadows that seemed to grow deeper around him. Returning to the attic was almost a relief. After all, he was pretty sure the only thing that would kill him would be Crimson, and a quick glance showed him back in his bed, appearing asleep. Jasper settled on the edge of the second bed, as far away from the spider as he could get. His pistol went under his pillow. He was too tense to sleep, the very idea preposterous. Instead, he dug his old, dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird out of his backpack, leaned his back against the headboard, and read the familiar words, one eye on the spider the whole time.
#
Crimson slept soundly through most of the day, barely moving and never making a noise. If Jasper didn’t know better, he would have thought the demon was dead. Finally, when it was nearing dark, Crimson dragged himself out of bed, not to do anything interesting, just to make some coffee.
By this time Jasper was starving. There was no food in the house except the few unappealing cans he’d found in the cupboards, and he was hungry. When he mentioned it to the spider, he seemed uninterested, shrugging his shoulder and sucking back on a smoldering cigarette. If Jasper wanted, he said, he could have a drink or a smoke, but that wasn’t what Jasper wanted. Eventually Crimson rolled his eyes at him and stood up from the couch, leading the way through the house and out the door. Jasper wasn’t too surprised when they returned to Rascal’s.
The bar served food, so to speak, and Jasper put down a burger of questionable origins and a few glasses of Coke, the werespider grimacing distastefully at the display. “I don’t know how you stomach that,” Crimson said, the tip of his cigarette glowing, delighted to ignore the no-smoking sign behind his shoulder.
“I don’t know how you stomach that,” Jasper countered, meaning the cigarette. He’d read the phrase “smokes like a chimney” a dozen times in books, but this was the first time he’d seen it executed in real life.
“Try one,” offered the werespider, sliding the pack across the table.
“No, thanks.” He slid it back.
Crimson shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
They didn’t go back to the house until the early hours of the morning when the sun began to threaten its rise. Crimson seemed good and drunk and talked endlessly but not about anything Jasper thought was valuable. Once again, when he got home, he shrugged off his jacket, hung it by the door, hooked his holsters on his bedpost, well within reach, and then fell into bed, seeming to fall asleep.
Jasper stayed up for a while longer, but he was tired, and all that yammering had given him a headache. He fell asleep, his own gun not an arm’s length away.
#
Crimson woke up before dusk the next day and chased his coffee with a shot of clear liquor, offering Jasper one too. The Hunter declined. Crimson offered him another cigarette, and again he said no.
“You’re no fun, half-breed.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
A wicked grin spread across Crimson’s handsome face. “Alright, hybrid.”
Jasper’s hands tightened into fists. “Look, I’m not a demon, so if you could stop with the implication that I am…”
“I don’t get why it bothers you so much,” said Crimson.
“Demons kill people for food,” Jasper explained, though this was only a small part of it.
Crimson laughed as if Jasper had just told him a fantastic joke. “Oh, I see. Killing a person for money is just so much more noble.”
“I kill people—” he said the word to appease Crimson, though what he really thought was things “—who deserve it. I don’t deal in innocents.”
Crimson arched an eyebrow, eyes gleaming. “And how do you judge innocence?”
Jasper frowned. He knew the answer, of course. Humans could be bad, but they were out of his jurisdiction. Demons were bad by definition. But he couldn’t tell Crimson that. “I would just really appreciate it if you’d stop calling me ‘hybrid,’” said Jasper, in lieu of an actual answer.
“You got it, killer.” Crimson grinned.
Jasper sighed. He thought he preferred hybrid.
#
Jasper expected the next day to be like the day before and was thinking maybe this was all a big waste of time. The spider didn’t do anything except drink and smoke and talk, usually without any input on Jasper’s part and never about anything that could be considered remotely useful to St. James. Surely there were better things for him to be doing. Charlie was wrong.
They went out after dark, and Jasper figured they were going back to Rascal’s, but they passed the bar and continued through the neighborhood, going up and down streets at random, occasionally looping back around to pass through an area twice. After an hour of this, Jasper asked him what they were doing.
“I’m checkin’ for those vampires, or anyone else stupid enough to come pokin’ around.” Crimson gave Jasper a pointed look, punctuating it with a wink so quick Jasper wasn’t sure if he imagined it. Jasper’s hunch hadn’t alerted him to anything demonic while they were walking around, other than the dull ache the werespider gave him, so he thought the coast was clear. Crimson came to the same conclusion. “What a waste of time,” the werespider said, echoing Jasper’s thoughts. Crimson elbowed him in the side, the gesture so familiar that Jasper tried not to bristle visibly. “Let’s go have some fun.”
“What kind of fun?” Jasper asked, suspicious. He was sure he and the demon would have different ideas for the definition of fun.
Crimson smiled, all straight white teeth and movie-star charm. “Well, it’ll be fun for me, anyway.” Jasper didn’t like the sound of that.
He wasn’t exactly surprised when they found their way to another bar, just disappointed by the spider’s predictability.
The club music reached them first, its generic blown-out bum-baba-bum grating on Jasper’s nerves already. Rascal’s would have been better—the jukebox had the Stones and Nirvana and the only person he’d seen try to dance there was Crimson. The music brought forth visions of too many, too drunk bodies tucked in tightly to a too small space.
The building was brick and stout; a hammered metal sign hanging crookedly over a chipped red metal door read “The Crystal Ballroom.” Jasper regretted coming along.
If Crimson sensed his displeasure and apprehension, he did not acknowledge it. He flashed his eyes briefly at the bouncer in a shirt several sizes too small for his bulging muscles, and the two of them entered.
The volume of the music doubled, tripled, the bass thumping in Jasper’s chest like a second, sick heart. The smell hit him next: hot and sweaty bodies, sweet, sticky alcohol, and hairspray, so thick it was like a cloud. A low-ceilinged hallway painted entirely black led them to the club proper, where the two stories opened up into a high-ceilinged room, a giant disco ball hanging in the middle, spinning in
a cloud of smoke that swirled and danced around it. Below that were the people flowing and crashing together like river rapids, out of control yet somehow natural. Jasper thought there was even more of them until he realized one of the walls was made entirely of mirrors, reflecting the crowd back at itself. Crude messages, drawings, and phone numbers were scrawled across nearly every part that could be reached, reminiscent of a high school bathroom. The bar was low and black, lit from underneath by green neon, giving those near it a radioactive quality. Bright lights pulsed through the gloom, punctuated randomly by nauseating bright colors: red, yellow, blue, pink. Jasper rubbed his temple.
“Wanna dance?” asked Crimson, smiling as bright as the pulsing lights.
Jasper bristled, his shoulders raised. “No.” He didn’t even like being here; he couldn’t imagine dancing alone, never mind with Crimson.
“Didn’t think so.” Crimson pushed through the crowd, and Jasper debated following him or turning around and going back to the house. He didn’t have a key but was sure he could easily break through one of the windows on the ground floor (most of them were broken already anyway) and get in that way. Surely there was nothing useful to do here. Other than the general anxiety a crowded place like this gave him, he felt no demon presence. Did he really want to waste another night watching the werespider get drunk?
Jasper sighed, pushing his hair back from his face, and followed him. When he found Crimson, he was not alone. The werespider was standing next to the bar, a half-finished drink in his hand, talking to a Native American guy in skintight jeans and a lime green tank top that fit like a second skin and left a sliver of his toned stomach visible. A small woman (she barely looked Jasper’s age) was holding the second man’s hand, her wide brown eyes staring at the dancing people, swaying slightly to the music. As Jasper approached, she looked over at him, and he realized he’d been wrong: there were other demons here. At least two.
Strangers in the Night Page 5
