Red Delicious

by Kathleen Tierney

  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.

  “So many places you could have gone, but you had to come here,” I told her. Because, you know, it’s always easier to lay at least some of the blame on the victim. She mumbled something behind my hand.

  I leaned in close, forcing myself to take it slow, and licked at her throat, at the warm and pulsing river of her carotid. All around us, the cold February wind rustled the dry weeds.

  And right here is when the gaunt showed up.

  Night gaunts are not exactly among the rogues’ gallery of nasties familiar to most people. Mr. Lovecraft, he knew about them, and he wrote about them. Made up a bunch of nonsense about them having come from some island in an alternate dimension, right, but that’s a load. Way I’ve heard it told, they’re the spawn of a Persian alchemist from way the hell back in the Middle Ages. Night gaunts are ugly sons of bitches, tall and lanky bastards with rubbery skin black as sin. What with the horns and wings and long thorny tails, lots of folks not in the know mistake them for some stripe of demon. But I digress.

  The gaunt came sailing in low and hit me at least twice as hard as I’d tackled the homeless woman. It got a firm grip around my shoulders with those long claws, and the two of us went tumbling ass over tits. The woman let out a screech, scrambled to her feet, and ran. Bye-bye, juicy morsel, but I did take some very dim consolation that she was crazy enough no one was gonna believe her story about two monsters duking it out beneath 195. Small goddamn mercies.

  The gaunt and me came to a stop with it on top, me on bottom, and I glared furiously up into the narrow slits that passed for its eyes. It grinned.

  “That was my lunch,” I growled.

  It chattered something unintelligible by way of a response and grinned even wider.

  I head-butted it.

  Which was sort of like smacking my head against an iron girder. I was left stunned, pretty lights dancing before my eyes. And the gaunt was still right there on top of me, clearly unimpressed. It clicked its teeth together. Ever seen those deep-sea fish with the crazy long needle teeth? That’s the sort of teeth night gaunts have.

  “Fine,” I heard myself croak through the throbbing haze inside my skull. “Be like that. Don’t take a hint.”

  Helpful tip: Witty banter never saved anyone’s butt from a monster. Or much of anything else intent on doing you bodily harm. Trust me. Or don’t. But I’ve learned this the hard way.

  The gaunt stood up then, hauling me up with it, a taloned hand beneath each of my armpits. The thing was a good nine feet tall, and I was left with the toes of my sneakers dangling above the dirt. I kicked it in the gut (at least, I think night gaunts have guts), which was no more effective than the head butt had been; plus, I damn near broke an ankle. It lifted me even higher, as if offering me up to whatever gods its kind worships. I was scratching at the creature’s forearms, trying to latch on to that rubbery skin. It made a squeaky noise beneath my fingers, almost the same sound a balloon makes when you rub it.

  It didn’t even occur to me to reach for the Glock.

  “You gonna tell me what this is about?” I asked, figuring I was at least owed that much before being dismembered or devoured or ground to a pulp. “When the hell did I piss you guys off? Refresh my memory.”

  There was a sickly, sour glint in its eyes, and it grinned up at me. There was another burst of chatter, and then it managed a few words of mangled English.

  “Who does not hate you, Twice-Damned?”

  It had a point. I didn’t argue.

  Then it lifted me maybe a foot higher, and in that final second before it hurled me at one of the overpass’ concrete support columns, it murmured, “Buzz, buzz, buzz.”

  Buzz, buzz, buzz.

  Bees.

  B.

  Fuck me.

  I sailed four or five feet and hit the column with enough force I heard the wet crack as quite a few bones snapped. So, here was justice, with an exorbitant interest rate, for slapping that homeless woman. You gonna hear the music, sooner or later you gonna have to pay the fiddler, yeah? I lay in a crumpled heap, helpless to do anything but watch as the gaunt folded its ebony wings and lunged.

  Maybe someone else would have tried to shoehorn a prayer into those last few seconds. Me, I knew better.

  But . . .

  A fist the size of a basketball snatched the gaunt from the air in midpounce and slammed it into the ground, over and over and over again. None of this was making much sense to me, trying to see, and suss out what I was seeing, through all that hurt dragging me down to the nowhere place, the anterooms of dear ol’ Hades.

  Before long, the gaunt wasn’t much more than a bag of shattered twigs inside a latex sack. The hand dropped it into the weeds. And a moment later I was being lifted again, which might have been painful if I hadn’t already been in so much pain. I squinted through blood and twittering birds into the gnarled, misshaped face of my savior.

  “Hate that numpty lot, I do,” snorted Aloysius. “Worse than vampires and wolfish sorts, they are. Sleekit wee basturts, all of ’em.”

  I must have said s
omething, but I’ll be fucked if I can remember what.

  “You rest, Quinn girl. I’ll watch out until you’re not so busted. Any more them basturts come round, I’ll make jelly of them right quick.”

  I don’t get a lot of opportunities to be grateful, but grateful’s what I felt as I shut my eyes and did as Aloysius said, as unconsciousness washed over me. Wicked goddamn grateful, despite the gaunt’s last words spinning round and round in my head: Buzz, buzz, buzz.

  • • •

  In this line of work, she who is surprised by betrayal is a moron. Like the man said, “Everybody knows the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.” Damn straight, Mr. Cohen. And Mean Mr. B, he’s about as crooked and backstabbing as they come. Maybe there is honor among thieves and maybe there isn’t, but there’s hardly a shred among the nasties.

  Though my vamp healing superpowers still had a ways to go to make me right as rain again, soon as I was awake and could hobble, I headed for Wickenden Street. It was maybe an hour past sunset (no sign of Aloysius, by the way), and I had no doubt B would be there, recumbent on his red Naugahyde throne. And I wasn’t wrong. B was looking especially dapper that night, and I’d been around just long enough to know this could be another ill portent. Guy can always be counted on to put on the ritz when he’s up to something more unsavory than usual.

  Also, he was alone. No arm candy.

  “Surprised?” I asked. I must have looked like something from a zombie film. A zombie with a gun. But, as usual, the patrons of Babe’s wisely kept their eyes to themselves. I hadn’t changed clothes, just grabbed the shoulder holster with my Glock.

  “Well, hello,” said B, ignoring the question. “Do have a seat, my dear Miss Quinn.” He motioned to the chair across from him with a grand sweep of his arm, smirking like the Cheshire Cat. He lit a Nat Sherman and blew a perfect double smoke ring my way. “Christ on his bloody cross, but you look an awful sight tonight.”

  “You kinda noticed that, did you?”

  I sat down and he ordered me a beer.

  “Yes, well, I hope you gave as good as you got,” he replied, and blew more smoke rings.

  “You’re a son of a bitch.”

  He raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to one side. “And to what do I owe such unexpected flattery, obvious though it may well be?”

  My Narragansett arrived, and I sat staring at the beads of condensation clinging to the bottle. They gleamed like liquid diamonds. Then I took a long swallow of beer before I asked him what the B stood for on that particular night. I’d lost some teeth to the gaunt, and they were still busy growing back in; the beer burned in the empty sockets.

  “B is for Bailoch. Scots Gaelic, in case you’re in a curious mood this evening.” He took a sip of his Cape Cod, tapped ash into the ashtray, then said, “I know I’m in a curious sort of mood tonight. So, tell me, precious, how’d you get so dinged up?”

  I looked up at him and thought a moment about the Glock 17 9mm tucked snugly into its shoulder holster. I knew damn well B was scared to death of guns and never went near them, relying, instead, on his reputation for seeing that people would get righteously fucked up if they laid even a single finger on one hair of his head.

  “Looks as though you played chicken with a lorry.”

  I drew the Glock and pulled back on the slide, chambering a round. I didn’t say a word, just pressed the barrel hard against his forehead, about an inch above the bridge of his nose. He scowled at me.

  “Now, now. I don’t know what’s got your nappies in such a twist. But you and I both know you’re not going to pull that trigger.”

  “The gaunt said it was you sent him to kill me,” I snarled. No, not strictly true. But I figured I’d done a decent job of putting two and two together. “So, don’t you be so sure what I will and will not do.”

  “This may disappoint you, kitten, but I have absolutely no idea what you’re on about.”

  I shoved the gun hard enough to leave a decent bruise there between his eyes.

  “This may disappoint you, Mr. Bailoch, but just before Aloysius squashed it like a cockroach, the fucker let slip how you sicced it on me.”

  “Aloysius,” said B. “So the fellow’s not deceased after all. Good news, him being such a decent sort.”

  His voice was cool as vanilla ice cream, not the least trace of concern, taunting me. Egging me on. My hand was beginning to shake, but I pressed the 9mm still harder against his forehead.

  “You’re a liar,” I said.

  “Pot calling the kettle, sweets. Regardless, bad idea, kiddo. Trust me.” And he pointed at the pistol with the index finger of his right hand. “‘But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur . . .’ That’s Revelation 21:8, kitten.”

  All junkies are liars. Even the dead ones.

  This is the golden rule of addicts.

  “Isn’t there some sort of holy cosmic law against worms like you quoting scripture?”

  “Haven’t been struck by lightning yet,” he replied, glancing at the ceiling of the bar, as if looking heavenward for confirmation. “But, Quinn, rest assured, not only did I have no hand in . . . whatever happened to you . . . if you’ve gone and made someone keen to kill, well, I’m the last man you want to put in his narrow house.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, “and your brains would look awful nice spattered all over the wall.”

  Bailoch sighed. “And this is exactly why you’re not an interior decorator, if you’ve ever wondered.” He furrowed his brow and sat up a bit straighter, so I was thinking maybe I’d at least made him a tad or so less sure of himself. He carefully balanced his Nat Sherman on the rim of the ashtray, then looked me in the eye. Have I ever mentioned that his eyes are gray? Well, they are. Still, point is, for all his associations with the nasties, B is as mortal as they come. I’d been around long enough to figure out that much.

  He sighed again, a sigh that was the very essence of having come to the end of his rope. “This is getting boring.” That’s when I squeezed the trigger. The Glock 17 clicked, empty as fuck. B opened his left hand, and ten bullets rolled across the table. Their shiny copper-wash jackets glinted in the dim light above the booth.

  He picked up one of the shells. “Commodious spot of legerdemain Ol’ Drusneth taught me a few years back. Nice, yes? Tiptop. Now, please, put away the pocket rocket.”

  “Dirty pool,” I muttered, lowering the Glock, slipping the useless gun back into its holster.

  “Only sort worth playing. Though, a fact you may not know, snooker’s more my style.”

  “You really didn’t send the gaunt?”

  B rubbed at the circular red indentation the Glock had left there above the bridge of his nose. “Have I not already answered that question to your satisfaction?” He retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray, and the smoke coiled into a tidy question mark above his head. “Where’s the percentage, my having you killed? You’re my best girl. I’m insulted, I am.”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  He stopped rubbing at his face. “I was about to ring you when you came sauntering in, looking like the ragged end of a puppy’s favorite chew toy. There’s been an interesting new development in the Maidstone case.”

  I finished my beer. “Someone found Amity?” I asked. The way we’d fallen back into the usual rhythm of our frequent conversations, you’d never know I’d tried to pop him only a minute or so before.

  “Alas, no. But recall the rumor I mentioned, the one came my way from Manhattan?”

  “You mentioned it, yeah.” My neglected stomach rumbled, reminding me of the lost meal.

  “It has proven to be more than idle gossip. It has proven to be, I think, a common motive linking disparate elements into a single—”

  “You will eventually come to the point, I trust.” I ran my fingers through my hair, which
was sticky and matted with blood. I found something sharp and hard in my bangs. A tiny shard of bone that had been a piece of my skull before the gaunt threw me into that concrete column. I dropped it on the table, and Mean Mr. B made his disgusted face.

  “Quinn,” he continued, “I admit I’m playing a hunch, and you’ll please keep that in mind. But I believe Berenice Maidstone coming to me has nothing to do with a missing sister. I suspect both sisters are trying to use us—first Lashly, then you—to help them recover an extraordinary artifact.” He took a drag on his cigarette, which he’d smoked down to the filter, then crushed the butt out in the ashtray and lit another.

  “Okay, then why not be up-front about it? Why go to the trouble to bullshit us?”

  He watched me a moment, almost as though he were trying to decide whether or not I could be trusted with the answer. Asshole. “Because, precious, they’re after something that individuals considerably more formidable are also after.”

  “And who would those more formidable individuals be?”

  “Would you like another beer?” he asked, then motioned to the bartender. He held up two fingers. Peace out. V for victory.

  “Sure. Now, Bailoch, kindly fucking tell me what you’re talking about.”

  Another bottle of Narragansett arrived, along with a fresh Cape Cod for B. When we were alone again, Mean Mr. B said, “Our Grand Dame Drusneth, for one. Which explains why she made you feel less than welcome yesterday.”

  “For another?”

  “For another, another madam of the demonic persuasion, a certain Yeksabet Harpootlian.”

  I picked up the bottle, but my stomach rolled at the very thought of more beer, so I set it back down again. “Harpootlian? Even for a succubus, that’s a hell of a name,” I said. “No pun intended.”