“We should take him on the hunt,” Sammy said.
“He won’t want to hunt for his friends, he can go on the next hunt.”
“He’s our friend now, not theirs, he said the words.”
(quietly) “Did he mean them?”
“If not, worse for him.”
“Stay with him, Sammy.”
“I will not miss the hunt.”
“You never miss one, I’ve missed three.”
“Wogs miss hunts sometimes.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Stop being one.”
“I did stop, I’m one of you, and for a long time now.”
“Not as long as me.”
“And you not as long as them, but they’re not garlic-in-ass-boys to me like you.”
(quietly) “Stop it.”
“Stop it, both of you.”
(quietly) “Stay with him, Sammy.”
“Yes, Sammy, you watch him.”
The two blond boys and the dark-haired girl were all out of the bath now and as clean as they were going to get. Still, cold-drowsy flies that didn’t want to fight for space on the ripe ones in the pile lit on them to taste their ears and hair, simply after the blood, not even aware of the unnatural things that blood was on; we were just furniture to bugs. And they didn’t seem to notice the bugs, either.
“But Sammy wants to uncrown him,” Duncan said.
“Not unless he shows false.”
“He won’t,” Duncan whined. “But you’ll say he did because you want to uncrown him. Because you’re nasty.”
“I am nasty, booger, and you’re a load of cold bogie. I’m not missing this hunt.”
(quietly) “You’ll miss what we say you’ll miss.”
Sammy went to talk back but didn’t. I looked at Camilla again. Sammy was scared of her. Just how strong were they?
“Go and get the pomegranates while we think about it,” Camilla all but whispered.
Sammy left.
“We might need Sammy,” Manu said, as though he hated saying it. “He’s quite strong. There are a lot of them.”
“Lots of bugs, too!” Duncan said, rolling Mapache’s head over a parade of roaches.
“We could crucify Joey,” Manu said, “so no one has to watch him.”
Oh shit!
Duncan said, “Someone else must fetch the spikes this time. It hurts my hands to pull the spikes from the tracks.”
“That’s only good for poppets. He’ll pull himself free.”
“Wait!” I said. “Why all this ‘hunt’ business? The underground is huge, goes all the way up to Harlem, all the way out to Queens. Why not share? Pick a spot for yourselves and stay there? I could show you places.”
Camilla looked at me as though I’d just suggested she should eat lightbulbs and drink gasoline.
“We don’t share.”
“Then let them run away. Tell them to go, they’ll go.”
“Not the queen.”
“Who?”
“Your queen. The Celt.”
Margaret.
She had that right. Margaret doesn’t run. I felt exasperated, afraid, yes, but just overwhelmed by the unfairness of it, how they had tricked us, everything. What I said next was really childish, I know; you won’t sympathize much. And neither did Camilla.
“But the subway . . . it’s ours. We were here first.”
She walked very close to me and put her little finger in my face; this was the first time I had seen her mad. But still she was quiet, which was worse. Honestly, I wish she had yelled it.
“No,” she said. “You were not.”
Right.
DON’T TRUST THE CHILDREN.
These children.
* * *
The mood in the throne room changed quickly when Sammy came back from the shaft they were using as storage.
“The pomegranates are gone! Someone took them! You know, don’t you?” he said, pushing me down like I was nothing and looming over me, his white face an angry moon, his coppery hair a fire. I guessed he was talking about grenades.
“I’ve been here the whole time, I don’t know a thing,” I said. Scary eyes on that kid.
“It was the quiet one,” Camilla said, drooling while she said it.
“Old Boy,” said Peter, also drooling. They wanted to bite and bite and bite.
“Where is he?” Sammy asked me, barely able to talk for the spit welling up in his mouth, shaking with the desire to twist my head. “You’d better tell.”
“How would I know?” I said. I wanted to say How would I know, stupid? but I left the stupid off. I might as well have said it for the way he reacted.
He bit my nose off. Just bit it right the fuck off, one of his fangs punching a hole in my upper lip while he did it. I screamed, my eyes tearing up, and I punched him in the throat. It would have killed a regular kid, but he just backed up and crouched to spring, spat my nose onto the dead-pile with the beetles. I stood up. Next thing I knew, Peter had one of my arms in a hard grip. Manu was only too happy to grab Sammy.
That was when the can rolled in, a little gray can with a yellow band around it. Peter knew what it was; he let go of me. Duncan didn’t know what it was; he reached for it. Camilla knew what it was; she grabbed Duncan away. Manu knew. He jumped behind the blood barrel. Alfie’s the one who saved them. He threw a fattish, bald dead guy on it. Fast. The “pomegranate” went off just as it was being covered, flared so bright and hot it hurt our eyes; a hissing dragon was loose in the room, a piece of a star landed on my foot, burned through my sock to the bone, I would have that scar for keeps. I yelled. Alfie yelled; he caught some on the foot, too. This all happened in two heartbeats.
And I’ll never forget what I saw when the grenade went off. It scared them, you see. Just for that second. They dropped their charm and I saw them as they were.
Duncan looked paler, not completely different, but clearly dead. Manu was long dead, gray-brown and dry, but still recognizably human. Sammy, too. But what really burned itself into my eyes was the brothers and their sister. Did you ever see a mummy? Not like King Tut all gold in his death mask out in Los Angeles, and not like a guy wrapped in bandages in the movies, but the little blackened, shriveled children they pulled up out of tombs in South America, in the desert, their heads packed with dried mud, little wigs of hair nailed or stitched to their dried-gourd skulls. Peter, Alfie, and Camilla were like that: their lips dried back from their mouths so their awful, outsized fangs showed, their arms no thicker than broomsticks, ending in curled little fists with fingers missing here and there. Their sunken eyes looked dry and blind. Their ribs bore stains from where their stomachs no longer held blood without spilling it. They were decrepit. I would have time to think about what that meant later, what that meant for any vampire, what happened to us when we got older. I would have time to dwell at great length on the cost of the magic or curse or whatever unnatural law kept these little things going centuries after they should have crumbled away. This was why they needed a waterfall of blood gushing through them. They were like jet engines, brutally strong but unimaginably hungry.
I saw these things in a flash. I made a noise, like “Ahh!” And then it was over. They were pale, handsome children again, scared children, reacting to an oversized flare of white flame just yards away from them. Flame was, of course, one of the few things that could actually harm them for good and ever.
They leapt back.
The dead man was on fire; smoke poured out from under him and filled the room, but I had the impression smoke was pouring out of his mouth, the gash in his throat, his ass. It probably stank. My nose was gone.
The Devil. It’s the Devil, here with his angels to collect us all because we’re his.
I ran.
Just outside the door, a hand grabbed a fistfu
l of my hair, the edge of a knife tickled my throat, we spun. Just for a second. Then we both ran, ran hard, ran for our lives.
Old Boy barefoot.
Me in one smoking sock and chewed-up clothes.
A star of pain in my foot.
I snatched up a rusty iron bar with a dab of concrete attached to it.
He used the butt of his knife.
We banged every pipe we could find.
THE WATERS OF BABYLON
“Do you know where we are?”
Old Boy shook his head no.
Pipes banged somewhere, distant, impossible to figure out where.
We had just concluded a furious sprint, ducking under trains and splashing through sewers, we hoped in the direction of our loops, but even hard-ass Old Boy was panicked. My heart was beating, actually beating. This was the most afraid I’d been since I was first turned. We stood knee-deep in shitty water. A ladder led up to a manhole, trash collected on that ladder streaming like jellyfish in the current of filth.
He pointed up with his knife.
“Go find out,” he said.
“Have I got a whole nose?” I said. It felt like it had grown back, but I didn’t want to pop up in public looking like a leper.
He nodded, let himself smile, barely, at the ridiculousness of the question, and I skinnied up the ladder. I felt better turning away from the darkness of the tunnel knowing he had my back. I popped my head up on 4th Street near one of the newer peep shows; since about, what, 1970, sex shops had been metastasizing east from Times Square with no sign of going into remission. This one was called the Owl and Pussycat, get it? The word Pussy’s in there.
Anyway, we weren’t too far from the bricked-up window I used as a front door. We ran. He hid the knife, clutched the remaining grenades under his arm. People turned after us or held their noses, enchanted, no doubt, by our bouquet of smoke and human waste. The manhole covers and sidewalk grates steamed, neon signs flashed, a lady in a white coat hid her purse from us, another lady in a hideous plaid pantsuit said to her friend, “Did you see that kid? The teeth he had?” I had let my charm drop; I was too scared to bring it back up, I just kept my mouth closed.
A cop’s German shepherd barked at me like I was a bag of cats. “Hey,” the cop said to us, “slow down!” You could see he half wanted to chase us but knew he’d never catch us; we weren’t slowing down for anybody.
We ducked back underground, started making our way to the loops. As fast as we went, I knew in my bones we were too late. They knew the tunnels better than we did. The hunt was on.
* * *
Smoke.
We ran from the unused tracks and leapt through the passageway that led to the common room. DON’T TRUST THE CHILDREN. Right. Got it. Luna’s mattress was on fire; that was where the smoke was coming from. Someone had thrown it from Luna’s high cave, perhaps Luna trying to defend herself. Her movie posters littered the floor everywhere. I saw a pair of shoes sticking out from behind the burned-up table where we used to fold clothes. Edgar. His head lay thirty yards away, near a broken television, holes where his eyes should have been. Sandy, farther off, had been burned, was in fact still on fire, though less furiously so than Luna’s mattress. I only knew her by the platinum blond wig she wore to pretend she was Lana Turner when she worked up the courage to bite people. Farther off, the sounds of fighting.
“CVETKO?” I yelled. “BILLY?”
Old Boy hit me, slashed a finger over his lips.
We moved fast and quiet after that, following those shouts, screams, and bangs. We passed ruined vampires as we went down the tunnel; lanky piano-playing Malachi frozen in a grotesque backbend, the fingers that pounded out his last “Tiger Rag” clutching at his shirt and tie as if he had been trying to get some air, a small, sooty handprint on his sleeve, a shaft of wood sticking out of his chest, his eyes rolled back in his head. Staked. I had never seen a vampire staked. Edgar’s lover, Anthony, lay headless a hundred yards down, the head nowhere to be seen. Then we saw her.
Luna.
We were moving through active tunnels, heading for Union Square station; it wasn’t far off now.
We found Luna stumbling along the wall, her hair singed, her hands cupped over her eyes. She wasn’t sobbing or anything, she was past that.
“Luna,” I said.
She said my name.
“What happened?”
“They killed everyone. Or did you mean to me? Oh. Yes, of course to me.”
Old Boy grabbed her elbow so she knew he was there.
“Um. Fire. Sammy had a spray can and a lighter. He held me down. Would have killed me, but they needed him. To fight Margaret. She was clobbering them, she and Billy. But she must be tired by now. Yes. I don’t think my eyes are coming back, are they? No, of course not.”
Old Boy whispered, “Get her off the live track.” And he sprinted after the awful sounds farther down. I tried to pick her up, but that was when she lost her shit.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING DON’T TOUCH ME! FOLLOW HIM KILL THEM GET THEM, JOEY, GET THEM!”
I tried to drag her but she flung herself down, groped till she had purchase on the track, held on.
“Let me get you out of here!” I said, yanking around her hips, crying.
“No,” she said, clutching the rails tighter, shaking now, keeping what was left of her face from me.
I let go of her hips.
“Go, Joey. Get them.”
I turned away from her, my wrist over my mouth.
“Protect your eyes,” she said, almost calmly. “They go after the eyes.”
I ran.
“They work together.”
That was the last thing I heard her say.
One backward glance showed me she was doing what I like to think I would have done. She was putting her neck on the running rails.
* * *
They were killing Chinchilla just as we got there. Manu and Alfie, I mean. Manu was on the ground, on his back, had Chinchilla’s arms cinched under his own armpits, kept a foot in Chinchilla’s chest, propping him up and anchoring him while Alfie twisted his head in violent spasms.
Old Boy ran at them. Past this, another fight, the four remaining kids were wearing down Margaret and Billy Bang, driving them back toward the light of the Union Square station.
All six of them? Had we lost so many without killing even one?
Chinchilla’s head came off in a spray of black blood. Alfie threw it at Old Boy’s feet and broke right fast as Old Boy dove for him; Old Boy stumbled, his knife gouged only air.
Yes. We lost so many without killing even one.
Hopelessness tried to wash over me but there was no time. Old Boy had caught Alfie but Alfie curled into a ball, protecting his neck with his arms. None of the truly awful things Old Boy did to him with that knife were enough to get through his arms or make him let go of the back of his own neck where his little fingers interlaced. Then here came Manu, straight for Old Boy’s eyes, gouging with his fingers. Old Boy had to cover up; he cut Manu now, flung him against the wall. I whaled on the side of Alfie’s head; he kicked me backward, broke a rib doing it, then Old Boy was on him again with that knife. I grabbed Alfie’s hands, tried to pry his arms down from around his neck so Old Boy could get at his head, but I wasn’t strong enough; it was like trying to pry a statue apart. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the fight at the tunnel’s mouth. Margaret and Billy were in trouble. They had put their backs against the wall so they couldn’t be surrounded. Margaret was working that shovel, had half decapitated Camilla, but only half; she was already healing, bent over in a caricature of someone with a migraine, using her little hands to fix her head in place. Meanwhile, Sammy flailed at Margaret’s eyes with his pencil, trying to clutch on the sleeve of her robe for purchase. No sooner had she swatted him away than here came Duncan, pitching a fistful of gravel
at her eyes. Peter had broken Billy’s legs and now hacked at him with a machete; it was all Billy could do to protect his neck. One of Old Boy’s grenades fell near me; I leapt away from it, but then snatched it up and pocketed it when I saw it had the pin in it. I ran toward Margaret and Billy, keeping low and quiet.
I pulled the pin.
The children didn’t see me coming, had no wall at their backs.
Margaret’s shovel dug a groove in Sammy’s face, pushed him back toward me. There was no time for the words to form in my mind, but I was glad it was Sammy. I was so fucking glad it was nasty, blood-guzzling, eye-burning Sammy. I grabbed his waistband, jammed the grenade down the back of his pants, then pitched him toward the third rail like a bouncer evicting a drunk. He missed the rail, the bad part of it anyway, bounced off the wood covering on top. Landed on his feet like a cat. Drew his lips back and showed his fangs, blood from his shoveled-in but healing nose and cheek running into his mouth. Then he realized what was in his pants. He yelled, “NOT ME NOT ME!!!!” like he’d been chosen as “it” and might change the chooser’s mind. He reached down his trousers, but it was too late. It popped and the pain hit him, made him shriek; he ran at me but desperately, like he wanted help as he grew a tail of fire that quickly ate him. He screamed. Came at me like a torch, showering painful sparks and giving off vicious heat. Everyone jumped away from him.
He folded in half and burned like the dry, old thing he was. In a heap. By the wall.
He died.
Still burning, smoke gouting from him.
The fighting had stopped for a second, everybody getting an eyeful of Sammy’s big finish and a snootful of smoke, then Margaret punted Duncan’s head, I mean she was going for the goalposts, and the fight was on again. She drove her shovel into Peter, breaking an arm. I turned back to see if I could help Old Boy, but Manu jumped out of the smoke and clotheslined me, knocked me ass over tits.
Alfie stomped my spine on his way past; they were both fleeing Old Boy. Camilla was up now. She gasped at the ruin of Sammy and ran toward the light of Union Station. The rest of the children followed. Margaret stopped to help the wreck that was Billy to its feet.
The Lesser Dead Page 25
