Tuesday
September 8, 1998
51.
5:12 P.M.
When Boone entered the Oasis Smoke Café, Fakhri and two attendants immediately met him at the door.
“What do you want?” demanded Fakhri.
A cacophony of men and some women smoking and drinking filled the air around them. The attendants wore Oasis Smoke Café t-shirts and scimitars on their sides. Boone knew the curved blades were real but didn’t give a shit.
“Where’s your boss?”
“Leave this place,” ordered Fakhri. “Now.”
Boone pulled his flannel shirt back to reveal the butt of the .357 in his waistband.
“You heard what they did to Frank, right?” he asked the shorter, rotund man. “I want to talk to your boss.”
Fakhri shook his head, a look of disdain on his face. “Go ahead. He’s in the back.”
Boone let his shirt close over the butt of the revolver and followed one of the attendants. “Nice hat,” he growled as he passed Fakhri, causing the man to reach up and touch his fez.
“This Frank Booth,” Raheem said as Boone was ushered into a carpeted room. “He is a bad man I think.”
The genie lounged among a pile of pillows in front of a wide screen television screen that took up much of one wall. Raheem was dressed in a three piece suit and his hair was gelled.
“I have seen this film several times…” he admitted as Boone stepped around the cushions and stood looking down at him, his back to the screen. “…and I have some questions about it. For instance, Frank’s personas of daddy and baby, or the huffing gas? ‘mommy, mommy, baby wants to fuck.’ Why is this funny? Is this funny? Please explain.”
“You know what they did to Frank, right?” Boone asked as evenly as he could. “Our Frank?”
“I have heard it said,” the genie’s attention was still on the screen, “that Blue Velvet is a surreal film, but how do you explain surrealism to a djinn? Like Dali, I would suppose. I always admired his mustaches. And this Isabella Rosellini? Beautiful yes, but no Googoosh! Have you, by any chance, seen Bita? A wonderful film—”
“They killed Frank and they cut off his hands. I saw his hands.”
“This is lamentable.” Raheem, sounded suitably serious.
“Lamentable?” scoffed Boone. “He was your friend.”
“I have had many friends,” Raheem had turned his attention from the television. “And yes, your Gossitch was one of them. A man must be careful of his friends. What have you come here for?”
“I want to know where I can find them. The fucking blood suckers. That old fuck, Rainford.”
“And when you find them?”
“I’m going to kill them,” he promised. “All of them.”
The genie sighed. “You come into my establishment and you interrupt my entertainment—”
“Fuck your entertainment, camel jockey.”
“And you insult me and offer no apology for past transgressions—”
“I should have broke your fuckin’ bottle a long time ago.”
“—but choose to heap fresh insults upon the old.” Raheem shook his head as if he were dealing with a difficult child. “Why is it that you came to me?”
“Because you can get shit done. You can find people. Things.”
“Yes, and I will help you find those you seek.” Raheem rubbed his chin between his index finger and thumb and considered the man standing before him. “But before you thank me, know that in doing so, I will be sending you to your death. For there is no way you can survive a confrontation with creatures such as these. But so be it.”
“Maybe I’m not as easy to kill as you think.”
“For your sake I hope not. However, I sincerely doubt it.”
“Just tell me what I need to know.”
Raheem told him the address of a park in Queens. “Be there tomorrow when the sun goes down. You will come alone?”
“I might bring a date.”
“I will get a message to the other side, have them meet you there. I will tell Rainford to come alone.”
“No. Tell him to bring the tall fuck.”
“I assume he will know whom you speak of. I will get word to his kind, and they will be there.”
“If they’re not,” threatened Boone, “you can bet your wispy ass I’ll be back here for you.”
The genie’s tone was one of admonishment. “You come into my place of business and have the temerity to threaten me? This is why Frank would leave you outside all those times.”
Boone made to leave.
“Let me ask you this Boone.”
He turned to Raheem.
“Have you played Magic: The Gathering? It is delightful! Planeswalkers, powerful magicians, these are who you are when you play. Fakhri, bring me my cards!”
Boone was already gone.
Wednesday
September 9, 1998
52.
7:34 P.M.
“So,” Emmanuela asked Boone as she steered the Lincoln Town Car. “You really don’t know how to drive, huh?”
“Maybe that’s something you can teach me. After tonight.”
“I have to be honest with you, Boone. There’s a very good chance you won’t be alive after tonight.”
“You’re the one wearing the suicide vest.”
Boone had been there when Emmanuela had shrugged a vest laden with plastic explosives on over her black latex cat suit. The vest was filled with silver ball shot and carpenter’s nails. A rain coat hid the vest now.
“No, Boone, you don’t understand.”
“What are you saying to me?” Boone popped the cylinder on his Ruger .357 and inspected the shells.
“Listen, it’s just that, I think you should know. You probably won’t survive this.”
“What? That Albanian fuck?” With a flick of his wrist he snapped the revolver’s cylinder shut.
“Kreshnik’s not the only one you have to—”
“Who? The other twelve hundred year old fuck?”
“Rainford is not twelve hundred years old.”
“Look, I see where this is going. Just pull the car over.”
“Why?”
“You want to fuck and just get it out of the way? I mean, let’s say—on the off chance—that you’re right, and I don’t walk away from this—not going to happen, but okay—let’s just pull over and bang so we can say we did it.”
Emmanuela shook her head.
“You know you want to.”
“There’s something about you…I can’t put my finger on it.”
“There’s something about you,” replied Boone, “I’d like to put my finger on.”
“You really are a disgusting human being sometimes, aren’t you?”
“I’m glad somebody noticed.”
53.
7:45 P.M.
The sun was sinking into the night when Emmanuela popped the trunk of the Town Car.
Boone looked down into the trunk.
“What are we expecting tonight?” he asked her.
“The unexpected. That’s all you can ever count on.”
“Right.” He reached into the trunk and retrieved the machine gun. It was an M-249 light machine gun, its bipod folded up against the barrel. A hard plastic box magazine was already in place.
“Two hundred round belt,” explained Emmanuela. “One tracer round followed by four ball cartridges. Each round silver tipped.”
Boone whistled. “That must cost a pretty penny. What you packin’?”
“Just my H&K, and this.” She tapped the vest under her jacket.
“You figure on settin’ that thing off, give me a heads up so I can get the fuck out of dodge.”
“If I have to set this off, then things will be pretty bad.”
Emmanuela buttoned her coat and closed the trunk. She and Boone crossed the street and started walking to the entrance of the park.
It was another warm, muggy evening.
“How many y
ou think they’ll show with?” Boone asked her.
“Who’s to say? Rainford’s a man of his word. But who knows. Why do you want to know—are you frightened?”
“Nah, I’m just thinking about how many motherfuckers I get to fuck up tonight.”
“You really like this, don’t you Boone?”
“They killed my friends, Emmanuela. I’m going to kill all of them. And then I’m going to find Jay and that psycho bitch he’s protecting and I’m going to cap her ass too.”
“Not if we can help it,” Emmanuela said honestly.
“What do you want to do, rehabilitate that fuckin’ thing?” Boone asked. As they walked into the park, the few people left saw them and saw the weapons they carried and quickly exited the grounds.
“A lack of understanding of something isn’t a warrant to kill it.”
“Fuck it. I don’t want to understand it.”
“Don’t imagine that everything you know is everything there is to know.”
“I never claimed to know shit. Are we alone here?”
They were walking out into an enormous grassy expanse. Each corner was a regulation sized baseball field. A jogging track ringed the fields. The lights of cars zoomed by on the Long Island Expressway to their left. A row of middle class residential homes lined the street on the right where they had parked the Town Car. A gas station and car wash took up most of the block across the street to their north. The playgrounds, basketball courts and monkey bars of the park itself stretched off to the south.
“Isabella is over there,” Emmanuela’s chin barely moved as she indicated their positions, “and Daniella is up on those roofs.”
“They’re just going to watch.”
“No, they have sniper rifles.”
“It wasn’t a question.” Boone corrected her. “They just watch. I’m going to take care of this shit.”
“Well…” they had reached the center of the field. “We have to wait.”
“I hate waiting.” Boone shifted the M-249 on its shoulder strap.
54.
8:15 P.M.
Emmanuela cocked her head, listening to the device in her ear.
“Here they come,” she said to Boone.
He looked where she indicated. Two figures were walking through the night, crossing the field towards them.
“Just two?” he asked.
“Like I said, Rainford’s a man of his word. He said it’d be him and Kreshnik. It’s him and Kreshnik.”
As the two forms got closer Boone could see them more clearly. The taller of the two carried some kind of automatic shotgun in one hand, the other wrapped around the foregrip of a rocket propelled grenade launcher that rested on its shoulder. The other form walked with its hands empty at its sides.
“I can understand the street sweeper,” Boone announced when the other two were close enough to hear, “but what gives with the rocket launcher?”
“Emmanuela,” greeted Rainford. “How long has it been?”
“Not long enough.”
“Ah yes, the Commune,” a wistful look crossed Rainford’s face. “Do you recall the barricade on rue Ramponeau during La Semaine Sanglante?”
Kreshnik and Boone hadn’t taken their eyes off each other the entire time.
“It ends tonight,” Emmanuela told Rainford. “Here.”
“I don’t remember you being so melodramatic, Emmanuela. The sisterhood has been hunting my kind for—how long now?”
“Millennia.”
“Hmmm. I see you brought a friend.”
“Hey fuck face. How you doing?”
The Albanian growled.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“The last time I saw you,” recalled Rainford. “You were holding back your own intestines. Remarkable.”
“Yeah, you and your fagalla the Jew,” Boone sneered. “I thought you were going to bore me to death you fuckin’ windbag.”
“So you were listening…”
“Did you think we were going to bring a tank?” Emmanuela asked Rainford, nodding her chin at the RPG that rested on Kreshnik’s shoulder.
“This…new plaything of yours—” Rainford meant Boone “—I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
Kreshnik spoke in his language, something that promised pain. The tall vampire wore a red cape with two black eagles back to back on it.
“What are you looking at?” Boone asked it. “You fucks talk too much,” he addressed himself to Rainford and Emmanuela, then Rainford and Kreshnik. “Which one of you pussies is first?”
“Rainford is mine,” stated Emmanuela.
“Nah. I’m gonna fuck the old man up just as soon as I take care of Kreskin here. Yeah, now I’m talking about you bitch!”
Kreshnik emitted a low growl.
“No, Boone.” Emmanuela drew her kukri. “This has been a long time coming between Rainford and me.”
“Indeed it has,” agreed Rainford. “Why don’t we let these two have their tete-de-tete first?”
“I don’t think much of being the undercard.” Boone snarled at Rainford. “I’m done with him, I’m gonna fuck you up next old man.”
“Your lack of couth nearly outshines your hubris.”
“Speak English, fag.”
“Wait.” All three males looked at Emmanuela. She held one hand out, her thumb depressing a button on a detonator. She’d let the H&K drop on its sling from her shoulder and unbuttoned her coat, pulling it open to reveal the explosives vest beneath.
“If I take my thumb off this, we all die.”
“Again, Emmanuela, these histrionics are beneath you.”
The Albanian took a step forward, the muzzle of the auto-shotgun on Boone.
Boone held up a finger and Kreshnik stopped and watched.Boone shrugged off the strap of the machine gun and tossed it to the dirt.
“See?” he splayed his hands at his sides. “I don’t need it.”
The Albanian looked at him quizzically.
“Tell your fuck buddy there,” Boone watched the tall vampire but addressed his words to Rainford, “me and him, we gonna settle this the old fashioned way.” Boone settled into a fighting stance, one leg in front of the other, arms raised in front of his face.
“Knuckle up, bitch.”
Kreshnik laughed, its chest rising and falling. It laid the automatic shotgun down on the ground besides its feet.
“Dumb fuck.” Boone reached behind his back, drew the Ruger Speed-Six and fired. The shot went wide—
Emmanuela shook her head.
“Your friend—”
—and before Boone could fire a second round, Kreshnik had sprung forward through the air, landing on him, the two of them rolling in the dirt.
“—has terrible aim,” concluded Rainford.
The two on the ground grappled before breaking away from each other.
They crouched, intent on each other. Boone had heard a line in a movie he always wanted to use in a fight. He used it now.
“I used to fuck guys like you in prison.”
Kreshnik rushed the man a second time, but Boone was ready. When the Albanian went to push Boone’s chest, the man pulled the vampire’s arm and elbow, stepping back, causing Kreshnik to lose its balance and lean forward. Boone jack hammered his knee into Kreshnik’s face and head half a dozen times before pushing the vampire back and away.
Kreshnik shook its head and smiled at Boone. If it had been human, it would have been a bloody mess.
“This might be interesting,” Rainford said to Emmanuela as Boone charged Kreshnik.
Boone fought by instinct, his only guiding thought that he wanted to fuck this vampire up. He rushed right into the beast, striking it with his elbows and knees, ducking and blocking what blows he could, absorbing others. He hooked his left leg behind Kreshnik’s right knee and pummeled the Albanian with his elbow in the chest and head, knocking the creature down.
Boone didn’t wait for Kreshnik to gain its feet. He launched himself on the felled beast, st
riking it repeatedly with the underside of his fist and elbow.
With a roar, Kreshnik threw Boone off.
Boone landed on his side, rolling to a stop next to Kreshnik’s automatic shotgun. He scooped it up and straight armed it as Kreshnik stood, depressing the trigger.
The auto-shotgun barely bucked in his hand as it fired, the muzzle flashing each time as the twenty round drum magazine emptied itself. Kreshnik staggered back with each round of buckshot, shielding its face with an upraised arm. The vampire’s boonie hat got lost in the dust. When the shotgun locked on an empty chamber Kreshnik was down on one knee.
“You’re friend is performing considerably well.”
“He’s not my friend,” replied Emmanuela.
A group of men holding towels from the gas station/car wash had crossed the street and stood against the chain link fence, watching the melee.
Boone threw the emptied shotgun off into the dark.
“What? Not so easy when you’re not hiding in a coffin, huh?”
Kreshnik stood, one hand brushing off its cape. The thing reached both hands under the cloak and when it returned it gripped a sai in each.
“I’ve seen them shits before.” Boone unstrapped a silver tipped stake from each thigh. “Come on-come on-come on…” He flourished them in each hand before gripping them firmly.
The two circled one another, each eyeing the other, completely ignoring the dark Lord and the woman who watched.
Boone and Kreshnik moved incredibly fast, a flurry of strikes and parries, of blocks and lunges. When Boone stepped back he was cut and bleeding in several places and Kreshnik looked smug.
“Come on-come on-come on…” Boone encouraged and Kreshnik swept in, the sai moving faster than the eye could see. Boone grunted as one of the weapons entered his abdomen and lodged there. He managed to brace a stake against the vampire’s neck, getting behind it, pulling back with all his might.
Kreshnik leaped backwards and the two were at it again amid the dirt and grass. Rainford and Emmanuela watched, as did the men across the park at the fence. When the dust cleared in the light from the overhead lamps, Boone had Kreshnik in a triangle choke, a knee across the vampire’s neck, his left leg locking down on the instep of his right foot. His right thigh cut off Kreshnik’s carotid artery, his right shoulder cut off its right carotid artery. If he had faced a human opponent, Boone would have choked it into submission and death in a manner of seconds.
I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) Page 27
