Red Delicious

by Kathleen Tierney

  Through the ringing in my ears, they sounded at least half a mile away. But I could make out the words. Barely.

  Drusneth smiled with those pilfered lips. “Well, more for me. Your cut, that stays the same, Belmont.”

  “A man can hope.” Mean Mr. B shrugged.

  The bogle had stopped twitching. B glowered at me with his smoky gray eyes.

  “Do you think you can behave yourself for the next ten minutes?” he asked.

  “I can try,” I replied, hardly able to hear myself. Too bad I hadn’t had the good sense to just throw something at the bogle, instead of blasting him. “Also, can you guys speak up? I can’t hear for shit.”

  Drusneth rolled her eyes, snapped her fingers, and, presto, my ears cleared. What a sweetheart, that Madam Calamity.

  “Now, can I please get a goddamn cigarette?” I asked B. “Pretty fucking please?”

  B offered me one of his rainbow-colored Nat Shermans, and I decided I didn’t want a smoke that bad. I passed. I’d already checked my own pockets, but apparently the se’irim had seen fit to take their pick of my personal effects, including my lighter and half a pack of Camels.

  There was a long moment of tense, uncomfortable silence. You know the sort. I listened to the ticktocking of the grandfather clock in Dru’s office and the muffled racket through the walls, the sort of racket one hears in a demon brothel. It was Drusneth who broke spoke first.

  “So, you’re in bed with Amity Maidstone, literally. Please correct me if I’m wrong.”

  I sat back and stared at the ceiling. “Yeah, so I was overcome by her macabre charms and suffered a lapse of character, okay? A girl’s got needs. Oh, and by the way, she has a dick.”

  Another moment of uncomfortable silence, this one longer than the last one.

  “I shit you not,” I said, mostly because the ticking of that clock was beginning to get on my nerves. So was the sound of some dude having an orgasm upstairs.

  Then Mean Mr. B chuckled. “Thought you were a devout tuppence licker, through and through.”

  “Generally, that I am. But we were already in the moment before I made the discovery.”

  I stopped staring at the ceiling and looked at Drusneth instead. By her expression, it was clear she wasn’t amused.

  “Some people,” I said to her, “got no sense of humor. So I fucked her. So what? That doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like we’re engaged.”

  “It gives me pause,” Drusneth said. “It leads us to doubt your loyalty.”

  “You mean ‘us,’ or do you mean ‘you’?”

  “Kitten—” B began, that do-be-cautious, beware-thin-ice tone in his voice, but the succubus cut him off.

  “Fine, I am speaking for myself,” she said.

  “Fine,” I replied. “How about let’s pause to take stock of the situation you two have gotten yourselves and me into, why don’t we?”

  She glanced at B, then back to me. B just shrugged and turned his eyes towards the floor.

  “And by that, what do you mean?” she asked.

  “I mean, Drusneth, that I’m beginning to wonder if the two of you have ever actually tried to steal anything before. I’m starting to doubt either of you got slightest idea just how deep the shit you’re wading into is.”

  “Dear,” said B, “your grammar is atrocious.”

  I ignored him.

  “Unlike either of you, I’ve seen this Harpootlian character, okay? Up close and personal. And, Drusneth, with all due respect, she makes you look like Strawberry fucking Shortcake.”

  “Truly, precious—”

  “B, just shut up and listen for once. It’s time for a reality break, no matter how much you two don’t want it. This bitch jumps between parallel universes. Sure, our Madam Calamity here, she’s got some ferocious tricks up her sleeves. I’m not saying otherwise. But Yeksabet Harpootlian is a goddamn thermonuclear bomb ready to go off at the drop of a pin, and that’s with her hands partway tied by not being on her home turf. Push her far enough, I’m guessing all that’s gonna be left of this city is a cloud of dust and a crater that glows in the dark. Next to her, Drusneth’s really is just a whoremonger. Hell, she’s not even a whoremonger. She’s not even a whore. Next to Harpootlian, she’s the piano player in a whorehouse, and Harpootlian’s about to foreclose on the dump.”

  Now, yeah, I was exaggerating a smidge. After all, if the bitch was that badass, why would she have wanted or needed my help? Anyway, Drusneth looked ready to blast me into next Thursday. Or the Thursday after that. Also, as I rattled off this spiel, I was beginning to have serious flashbacks to my conversation with Amity.

  “And as for the younger Maidstone whelp,” I continued, “she’s no lightweight her own self. Her penis wasn’t the only thing caught me off my guard.”

  “On that subject,” B said, “how did you manage to locate her?”

  “B, just like you thought, she was never missing, okay? That was just some lie cooked up to get you involved.”

  “If she’s such a force to be reckoned with, this child, why would she need Belmont’s services?” asked Drusneth.

  “Stop and think. The last thing the Maidstones wanted was Harpootlian going after them, so they tried to hide behind you two and me and Shaker. Make us look like her competition. She didn’t fall for it, of course, but the Maidstones are even more deluded than you pair. And that blue rat son of a bitch lying there. Before I shot him, I mean.”

  “Not the shrewdest move,” B said. “Samuel was rather well connected.”

  “Whatever. His connections can blow me.”

  “So, what exactly are you saying, Quinn?” Drusneth wanted to know. “That we should simply abandon our quest for the unicorn?”

  I rolled my eyes and went back to staring at the ceiling. A rhythmic thump was coming from directly overhead, so I figured one of Dru’s girls or boys had their bed parked right above me and was hard at work.

  “And there’s another thing. Has anyone even seen this doodad? Do either of you have even the foggiest idea where it might be? Seems to me you’re just blundering about with blindfolds on, hoping the dick of doom will fall into your laps, easy as pie.”

  “And what would you have us do?” asked B.

  “Honestly? Back the fuck off and let Harpootlian have her toy. No, better yet, back the fuck off after you toss her the Maidstone sisters as a peace offering. Make them, you know, fall guys.”

  Drusneth laughed. B didn’t.

  “Might be she has a point,” he said to Drusneth.

  “Might be you should consider hiring toadies with balls,” she told him.

  “Wait, you think he hired me? You think I get paid?”

  “Merely a figure of speech,” she assured me. “Regardless, I’m of the opinion that it isn’t the province of a minion to advise her betters as to the proper course of their actions.”

  My turn to laugh.

  “So we all go down together,” I said.

  “We hold the course,” she replied. “You do as you’re instructed, if and until you’re instructed otherwise. Keep tabs on the sisters. We think they know the present whereabouts of the unicorn.”

  Wrong. But why bother telling the two of them? Not like they’d have bothered to listen.

  “And Harpootlian?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Drusneth said, leaning towards me, “there is the matter of Harpootlian. It seems unlikely she went to the trouble of scooping you up just to let you walk. By your own account, she hardly seems the trap-and-release sort. So this leads me to believe a deal was struck, which brings us back around to questions of your loyalty. After all, if you’re more afraid of her than you are of me . . .”

  “Dru, I’d have handed over my lady parts to get out of there. And I assure you, I treasure my lady parts.”

  “So what did you promise her?”

  “What do you think? Same thing I’ve promised Amity and Berenice Maidstone. That I’d go turncoat and betray who-the-fuck-ever I needed to betray to help her get
the dildo.”

  “You’re a crude woman,” Drusneth muttered.

  “And like I said, you’re a piano player in a whorehouse, but that’s just a figure of speech.”

  If you’re thinking, right about now, how my demeanor towards Drusneth had changed since I showed up unannounced asking if she’d seen Amity—how I was kowtowing before and now here I was, all up in her face and talking smack—let me just remind you of the shitstorm thrill ride I’d endured between that day and waking up half loup in a cage in her office. That sort of foolishness can totally wreck a person’s manners.

  “Belmont, you’d best put a leash on your mongrel before I do it again.”

  “And then what?” I asked her before B had a chance to respond one way or another. “Do you think, at this late date, that you’re going to get anyone else who’s wormed herself into the good graces of the Maidstones and Harpootlian? You can doubt my allegiances all you please. Makes no difference to me. But you go changing horses in the middle of the stream like that, jump back to square one, and you and I both know—”

  “Enough,” Mean Mr. B barked. “Enough, Quinn. We do as Drusneth says. We hold to the present course.”

  “Even though it’s suicidal,” I said.

  “You let us worry about that,” Drusneth told me. She’d picked a long stemmed ivory pipe up off her desk and had begun packing it with a ball of black-tar opium.

  I stood up, staring at the body of the dead blue bogle. A shame he hadn’t lived long enough I could have shot him twice.

  “You’ll forgive me if I tend to consider death wishes a somewhat personal choice,” I said.

  “From what I understand,” Drusneth said, lighting her pipe with a greenish flame that appeared at the end of her left ring finger, “you have a stubborn habit of habit of seeking out your destruction every chance you get. Or am I wrong, Belmont?”

  “I have my moments,” I replied, answering for Mean Mr. B, before he had a chance.

  “Go back to the Maidstones,” he said. “If you need to feed, take care of that first. But then, you go back to them and when our cheeky twat Harpootlian grabs you again—”

  “Yeah, got it. You’ll be the first to know.”

  “Good little mutt.” Drusneth grinned as opium smoke leaked from her mouth, coalescing into the perfect likeness of a Chinese dragon above her pretty, borrowed head.

  “The unicorn is here somewhere,” B all but whispered. “Were it not, she wouldn’t be here.”

  I wanted to kick the corpse of Samuel the Rat Man. I restrained myself. “And if the dildo turns up?”

  “Then you get it here, precious. Kill who you have to, but see that you—”

  “Sure. I’ll just whip out my trusty six-shooter and gun down Miss Thing From Another World before she knows what hit her. You betcha.”

  “By the way, Quinn, where are your false teeth?” asked B, and I told him I’d misplaced them somewhere or another. He hung his head and tsk-tsked.

  “Go,” said Drusneth, and she waved a hand at the door. So I went. I’d had ten times enough of the both of them. And yeah, after the Beast and what came after, after my ordeal behind bars, I was starving. Outside—I’ve neglected to mention this—it was late afternoon, almost sunset, so hunting and disposal would be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. And it would give me time to ponder my ever-more-sticky predicament.

  • • •

  You tell a story, any story, and you can spin it an infinite number of ways. Lots of people would say that’s a load, that there’s the lie and there’s truth of the matter. Reliable narrators and unreliable ones. Black and white, no room for the infinite confusion of gray. Which just goes to show how lots of people don’t know jack about truth, lies, facts, storytelling—all that and more. Anyway, all junkies lie, remember? Every word I say is a lie, and if you didn’t catch the inherent fucking paradox there, you’re not paying attention and should go back to the beginning, do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars.

  But I digress. Sort of.

  Lots of people need to pretty up and romanticize the hunger, turn bloodlust into passion and a route to eternal love, so murder becomes a surrogate for sex, hot vampire love becomes socially acceptable necrophilia, and so forth. Well, fuck that noise. Death gets you wet or gives you a hard-on? That’s your business, and if you want to trip the “Don’t Fear the Reaper” road, cool. Just don’t pretend it’s something it ain’t. Don’t be a coward. Problem is, very few people—even the death fetishists—want to die, and thus they invent all sorts of sparkly fantasies to keep their fear at bay. Or at least make it more palatable. Some are happy enough with the Old Man in the Sky, but others, they make caring lovers of us uncaring monsters. I call it “fiend porn.” And delusional. You call it what you like.

  Most people are idiots.

  Which makes things a lot easier for the nasties, me included.

  And don’t you dare take that as an insult. To me, you’re food, and when’s the last time you were impressed by the intelligence of a cabbage or a codfish?

  See, what I do, as I said right back at the start of this tale, it isn’t pretty. It isn’t romantic. It isn’t sweet Edward Cullen concerned for the fate of Bella Swan. It isn’t Louis de Pointe du Lac getting by on poodles ’cause he just can’t bring himself to be the death of another human being. If you gotta have a pop culture point of reference, it’s more akin to something you’d see on the National Geographic Channel or Nature or whatnot, a lion ripping apart a wildebeest, a pack of hyenas gnawing at the carcass of a baby gazelle who couldn’t keep up with the herd, a crocodile pulling out the intestines of a zebra while it’s still alive and kicking and trying to cross some muddy river.

  Sure, I could spin this story another way.

  I could summarize the next bit, for example, something like this:

  I fed once, taking a homeless teenager who was sleeping in the back of an abandoned body shop near the banks of the Seekonk River. I was gentle with him, and maybe that was guilt, but maybe it was just my lingering distaste for preying on the “dregs of society,” to quote Mean Mr. B. The kid had an erection the whole time, and came about four heartbeats before he died.

  I might as well tell you, “Jack the Ripper, that motherfucker did what he did, but damn, he (or she) sure was a merciful sort of bastard.”

  Or I could find any of a hundred thousand compromises. But I’m in the mood for something more closely approximating the facts of what happened after I strolled out of the brothel on Cranston. Yeah, all junkies are liars, those who drink blood and those who shoot heroin, but . . .

  Right, so, after I left Drusneth and B, I walked and walked and walked all the way back across the river to College Hill, half-consciously following one of my usual routes, slipping between the pools of streetlight along the sidewalks with only the windows of sleeping houses eyeballing me. Despite the full moon, the bitter winter night was plenty dark enough for my purposes.

  I spotted the kid sort of shuffling along Prospect Street, heading south with the bitter wind at his back, the collar of his leather jacket turned up, trying to shield his ears from the worst of it. He was maybe a hundred yards ahead of me, but it wasn’t hard to catch up. I’m fast, quick like a bunny, and my feet can be as wicked silent as a cat’s paws if I want them to be.

  “Hey, dude. You got a light?” I asked him, taking out one of the Camels I’d bought at a gas station, just before crossing the Point Street Bridge. I didn’t smile. I shivered, so he’d believe I was cold as him. He had brown hair, and that’s about all I remember. I do not tend to memorize the faces of my food.

  The guy turned around, and at first he just stared at me, surprised. After all, he hadn’t heard anyone walking along behind him, right? Then he told me no, he didn’t have a light, that he didn’t smoke. I laughed, and if he noticed the piranha teeth or how my breath doesn’t fog, he didn’t let on that he had.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Seems like nobody smokes anymore. Jesus, I’m freezing my ass off. What
about you?”

  Ah, here’s another detail I remember. He was wearing glasses, horn-rimmed, fake tortoiseshell. He furrowed his brow and squinted at me from behind the lenses. My stomach rumbled and my mouth watered.

  Sometimes, by the way, I like to play with my food, make a game of it all, and that night I was definitely dragging the ritual out longer than necessary.

  I pretended to have a violent coughing fit.

  “You all right, man?” he asked me.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I mean, except for this fucking cold night, I’m fine.” But, sadly, I knew the jig was up. I could see the kid knew something wasn’t kosher in Denmark, even if he didn’t know it was time to start counting off what was left of his life in seconds, what with him standing there on death’s doorstep and all.

  “Well,” he said, “I should get going.”

  “Why? What’s up?” I asked, and cleared my throat.

  “Nothing,” he said, backpedaling, and he smiled at me. “Nothing at all. Sorry again about the light. Anyway, you take it easy. That cough sounds ugly. Better get out of the cold. Get something warm inside you.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s what I should do.”

  “Take it easy, man,” he said.

  He would have walked away, and likely as not, our paths would never have crossed again. I’m sure that’s what he was thinking. But I was on him immediately, one hand clamped tight over his mouth. Can’t have screamers. He made the usual futile effort at a struggle, the way they all fight before they realize how strong I am.

  I didn’t apologize. I didn’t say anything at all. What would have been the point? And I sure as fuck wasn’t gentle. There were rhododendrons growing at the edge of the sidewalk, and I hurled him through them, slamming his body down beneath the shadow of a huge oak tree. He clawed at my eyes, so I growled my scary growl and punched him in the gut hard enough I probably ruptured his spleen or liver or something else essential. He stopped fighting, and I did what I do.