As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  “Technically, yes.”

  “What do you mean, technically?”

  “I set it up for you a couple of months ago. I kept forgetting to tell you about it, but I did the same for mine with you. And then today, when you weren’t answering my calls, I got nervous. When I saw you go off the grid . . . well, I went looking in the last spot you were logged.”

  Beth had heard enough. “I’m not your property, Ryan. You can’t just LoJack me like a Labrador retriever.”

  “You can forgive me later. I’ll take it off if you want.”

  “That’s not the point.” She crossed her arms. Arguing was useless. Ryan wasn’t listening to her. Maybe he never had. They drove on in silence, as downtown neon skipped off the rain-slick asphalt.

  “What were you doing down there, anyway? You hear something about Zoë?”

  “What do you care?” she huffed.

  “Tell me. Maybe I can help.”

  This was the first time he’d offered anything other than excuses or sarcasm. “I saw this homeless guy pulling down one of my fliers. I thought he might know something about Zoë. So I went looking for him.”

  “Did he? Know anything?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. He said something about . . .” Beth’s voice trailed off. Even she couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. “Something about vampires.”

  Ryan shook his head slightly. “Vampires. Why not?” He pulled the car over. Beth didn’t realize where they’d gone until she looked up. Axis.

  “No. No way. Not happening.”

  “I need a drink. I think you could use one, too.”

  “I need to find Zoë.”

  “Maybe she’s in there. It’d be where I’d look first.”

  “Fuck you, Ryan.”

  He took her hand tenderly, the way he used to when they’d first started dating and would sit for hours sipping cappuccino on lazy afternoons. “Look. I’m sorry I got angry. I was just so worried about you. And I’m not going to even pretend to know what you are going through. But you have to believe me when I say that these things usually just work themselves out. And right now, nobody knows what’s happened with Zoë, nobody. Until we do, you need to be someplace safe. You need to be around people who care about you.”

  “They don’t care,” Beth said, staring up at the club’s brick façade. “They just pay to think I’m their friend.”

  “I care.”

  His smile was almost enough to make her forgive him. Almost.

  She followed him through Axis’s big oak doors. The club was packed. Bodies pressed tightly against one another. Voices strained to connect over the pounding music. “I’ve got to use the restroom,” she said. “Clean up.”

  “Fine. I’ll order us a round. Meet me at the bar.”

  She made it halfway there before running into Hank. “I think we need to talk,” he said.

  “I don’t feel like talking to you right now, Hank. Actually, I don’t ever feel like talking to you. And since I’m not clocked in, I don’t have to.”

  “You ditched a shift yesterday, Becker. Then you call in sick today and have the nerve to come in here after. I had to give your shift to the trainee.”

  Beth couldn’t imagine listening to one more word Hank had to offer. “You know what?” she said. “Give her all of them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I quit. Happy now, Hank?”

  A look of shortchanged triumph bloomed across Hank’s face. “Fine. Guess that solves both our problems. Don’t expect a reference.”

  “I don’t expect much. Certainly not from you.” Beth headed to the bar. Ryan had drinks for both of them lined up and was chatting with Kelsey. She was in no mood for any of it. “Come on, let’s go,” she said, grabbing his arm.

  “We just got here.”

  “I don’t care. Let’s go.”

  “Hey, Beth,” said Kelsey. “I got the first draft of my pilot script—”

  Beth held up a hand. “Not now, Kelsey. Ryan, I’m serious. Let’s go.”

  He held a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks out to her. “Don’t embarrass me,” he teased.

  “Yeah, Beth,” Kelsey said, hoisting her own glass. “Drink or be gone. Remember?”

  “Drink or be gone,” Ryan echoed with a devilish wink.

  Beth bit her tongue to keep from screaming. “Guess I’ll be gone, then.” She wheeled around.

  “Wait!” Ryan called. Beth turned to see his keys dangling from one outstretched pinkie. “At least take the car.”

  Kelsey laughed. Ryan laughed. Beth snatched the keys and, true to her word, was gone.

  Eighteen

  Turn up here,” the old man said. His voice practically vibrated with anticipation.

  Jack wheeled the van around, scraping bottom as he barreled over a series of potholes that would have swallowed a compact car whole. They were on the opposite side of the University campus now, far from Fort Red Rock but not far enough for comfort. He knew he had no business getting mixed up in that brawl. But what was he going to do? Let that girl get raped?

  It was bad enough that the man who’d been spray-painting Beware the Night Angel on every flat surface in New Harbor had turned out to be the same lunatic who’d accosted him in the church. A self-styled prophet who smelled like a colostomy bag and was currently riding shotgun with him.

  Jack gripped the wheel tightly. It was only a matter of time before that graffiti drew the attention of someone beyond city limits. It had to stop. He couldn’t risk anything compromising the mission. But now five people had gotten a solid look at him tonight, and he’d barely slipped out of that park before the cops had seen him too. He’d made short work of the three thugs and now could only hope that their own fear of Johnny Law would make them keep their mouths shut. He’d deal with the spray-paint Picasso shortly. That left only one loose end: the girl.

  “There!” The old man stabbed his finger at a narrow alley. “That’s it over there. That’s where I saw it.”

  Jack pulled the van down the alley, cut the engine, and killed the lights. Then he gave Blood a pat on the neck and told him to stay put. The dog obeyed.

  “I’m Gil, by the way.” The old man held out his hand. “Gil Gibb—”

  “No names.” Jack slipped on his belt. “The less I know about you, the better it will be. For both of us. Now, show me where you saw your Night Angel. And make it quick.”

  The old man slipped from the van. Jack followed him into the shadows. They went deep, passing an overflowing Dumpster. The stench coming from it almost matched the one wafting from Gil. Soon they were standing in front of a low hole in the brickwork. Not surprisingly, the broken masonry was all angled outward.

  “I knew you were the One,” Gil said. “Didn’t I tell you, you were the One?”

  “Silence.” Jack bent down to investigate the hole. He shined his light inside. The dirt floor sloped down into the blackness. Like the walls, it was splattered with dried blood.

  “It’s a tunnel, isn’t it?” Gil asked, excited. “Just like the damn VC used back in Nam. Sneaky bastards.”

  “I said silence.” Jack rose. One of the creatures had fed here. Along with the three he’d spotted down by the Docklands, it made four. At least four. This was totally off the map. Jack sprayed the edges of the hole with repellent solution. Then he set another location tracker wire across the entrance. If it came back this way, he’d know it.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We don’t do anything. I handle this. You will be on the first bus out of town.” Jack pulled a couple of one-hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and held them out. “You will speak of this to no one. You will forget my face. Repeat that back to me.”

  Gil regarded the money with the wary eye of one being tested. “What if I say no?”


  Jack casually rested his palm on the hilt of his pistol. “Then we sort it out the hard way.” The old man’s sticking around in New Harbor was something Jack was unwilling to risk. He’d seen his face up close, heard his voice, been inside the van. “Your job here is done,” Jack added, half wondering what it might be like to hear those same words spoken to him one day. Your job is done, Jack Jackson, good and faithful servant. May you rest in peace. “Go. Before things get messy.”

  Gil snatched the bills and shoved them into his pocket. “Fine. Sure they’re in need of a prophet someplace warm. Not speak of this, forget your face. I can do that.” He paused, narrowing his eyes at Jack. “Just one thing I got to do before I go.”

  “Just be on that bus come sunrise,” Jack said, already turning for the van.

  “No,” Gil called out, shambling after him. “Need you for it.”

  “Need me for what?”

  “You got any oil?”

  “Oil?”

  He nodded, his dreads shaking like wisteria in the wind. Jack paused by the side of the van, eyeing Gil quizzically. It was an odd request, but if it would put an end to the old man’s ravings, he could spare a quart of motor oil. He flipped open a side panel, grabbed a plastic bottle, and tossed it over.

  “Quaker State,” Gil mumbled as he twisted off the cap. For half a moment, Jack wondered if he was about to drink it. Then Gil beckoned. “Come over here.” Jack humored him, stepping right up to Gil like a congregant to the altar rail. Gil pressed the mouth of the bottle to his thumb. It came back the deep garnet of synthetic oil. In the light, it almost looked like blood. “It is not a prophet’s place to fight demons,” he intoned. “A prophet is to keep faith. To speak truth. And to anoint the deliverer. To herald the One Chosen.” He quickly daubed Jack’s forehead with a smeared cross.

  “You finished?”

  “Now I am.” A strange mix of relief and shame blushed across Gil’s face. Jack knew the feeling. “You give ’em hell.” The old man handed back the bottle and shuffled away without another word.

  Jack climbed into the van. He twisted on the ignition and just as quickly turned it off. He tried to make sense of what was happening. This new hunting pattern wasn’t like any he’d seen before. Relying on old strategies and worn tactics would not be enough this time. He needed a new approach, a fresh look. He wiped away the last of Gil’s “anointing” with the cuff of his sleeve and headed to the back. Blood was curled up under the tracking console, his foot twitching with dreams.

  He pulled down the map of New Harbor and marked where Gil had shown him this new den. He tapped the X he’d drawn for the trio in the drain culvert down in the Docklands. And then ones he’d drawn for two more victims found on the outskirts of Grey Hill. Together they formed a rough triangle. Or, perhaps, a perimeter. He sketched a circle through the marks, then quadrasected it with a fat X. It crossed directly over a large building in the city’s old nightclub district.

  Nineteen

  Few who knew Ryan Hall would describe him as having a mean streak, but it was there. It ran deep, like a vein of quartz struck through granite. Only those close enough to dig beneath his affable surface got to see it, and it was less than pretty.

  He pushed his empty glass toward the bar mat. “Set me up again. And make it a double. And one for you, too. Kelsey, right?”

  Kelsey nodded, bobbing like an unmoored float as she poured his drink. Maybe she lacked Beth’s panache, Ryan thought. But she had certainly acquired his girlfriend’s taste for liquor and flirtation.

  “You know . . . fuck it.” Ryan slapped down his AmEx card. “Set up the whole bar,” he hollered out to all who could hear him over the thumping music. The crowd cheered. Hands clapped him on the back. Eyelashes were batted in his direction, as their slinky owners eyed both him and his platinum credit card.

  On any other night, Ryan might have gone to the diner. Plopped down at the counter, alone, for a hot cup of coffee and a warm slice of pie while he let Beth cool off. But not tonight. Tonight he was going to get stinking drunk. Tonight he was going to be the life of the party for a change. Tonight he was going to flirt with anything in a skirt that had two legs and a pulse, and he was going to forget—for a while, at least—about his narcissist girlfriend. Tonight Ryan would finally get to be that guy, the one who didn’t look at the seven deadly sins as a litany of prohibitions, but rather, a menu.

  He downed his drink, tapped the bar for yet another. Half was gone in one gulp, and he gazed out at the crowd. All of them desperately angling for that one night of release that would hold them through the next day’s anxiety. Dreading the dawn and drowning the apprehension, the unease, the discontent that plagued their mayfly lives in a tsunami of booze and blow and one-night stands.

  Ryan’s heart sank. He set down his drink, unfinished. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t that guy. No one was. That guy existed only in the minds of ad execs and the cognac commercials they dreamed up in their Madison Avenue high-rises. Those he watched out on the dance floor aping that illusion—with their outfits plucked straight from the pages of GQ—half of them would go to work in the morning selling steel-belted radials or worse. And that was the lucky half, the half who still had jobs. The others were zipping along on a line of credit that had nothing at the end of it for them but a noose.

  “Square me up, Kelsey.”

  “Oooooh,” she whined, putting one soft, warm hand on top of his. “We’re just starting to have fun.” She leaned close; her breath smelled of amaretto and chewing gum. “We could have a lot more fun after closing.”

  Ryan offered up a sideways smirk, then lifted her hand and planted a light kiss on the back of it. “Good night, Kelsey.”

  His act of alcoholic largesse brought the bill to slightly less than eight hundred. Kelsey’s tip rounded it up to an even grand. Money well spent. He stumbled out through the front door and onto the sidewalk. The booze had gone to his head, and the world tilted slightly the wrong way. A light drizzle fell, soaking the shoulders of his jacket as he wandered the block looking for his car. It was nowhere to be found.

  Right. He’d let Beth take it. He should give her a call. He reached for his cell and hit an empty pocket. Right. He’d left the phone in the armrest, in the car, which was with Beth. Damnit! He spotted a pay phone on the far corner and ambled over. Ryan already had the grimy receiver stuck in the crook of his neck when he realized that he didn’t have a quarter—or Beth’s telephone number committed to memory, for what it was worth. Which was a moot point, anyway, because the phone was out of service. He noticed with a laugh that the steel cable dangling from the receiver wasn’t even connected anymore.

  They’d know Beth’s number at Axis, Ryan figured. He could get it there or—worst case—just have the door guy hail him a taxi. Halfway back, the dizziness hit him hard. He stopped for a moment, leaning up against one side of a narrow alley as he waited for the wave of nausea to break and subside. And that’s where he saw her.

  The woman from Halloween, his Pre-Raphaelite dream. The same creamy translucent skin, the same explosion of ginger curls that snaked down to kiss the nape of her long alabaster neck. She was even wearing that same velvet dress. What was she doing just standing in the middle of an alley?

  She began to glide toward him. Ryan felt his feet rooted to the concrete. He couldn’t move away if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to. Her hand wrapped around his, cool and smooth as marble. The hair at the back of his neck rose as she pulled him deeper into the alley. Soon he, too, felt as if he was gliding, as if he was flying—off to a place where he could be that guy forever.

  His heart thumped in his chest like a bat caught in a blanket. They slipped down the crumbling stairwell of a shuttered building. The slick walls sweated wavy gray streaks. Everything was leaden with the scent of must. Ryan didn’t care. All he could think about was her.

  Was it wrong? What every ounce of his flesh scr
eamed for him to do? Was it wrong to want to grab a fistful of those lush curls as he buried his face between her dewy breasts? Buried another part of himself farther down? Was it wrong to want it? To do it?

  It was beyond the reach of reason, past guilt, past excuses or morals. Here, with her, all the old rules were swept away in a cyclone of desire. She sniffed the air around his neck and chest, her copper curls dancing over her chalk-white skin. She had yet to say a single word to him.

  “You’re quiet. I like that.” He traced a spiral on her collarbone. She slapped his hand away, gripped both wrists, and pinned him to the wall. Her mouth was warm and wet on his neck, hungry and wanting more. He felt a slight pinch.

  And then the rush. There were no words for it. He could have tried to write them till he ground his pen to dust and his fingers to bloody stumps, and still it wouldn’t have come within a thousand miles. Like being filled with liquid gold. Like a million orgasms. Like being torn apart by feathers—put back together by butterflies. Like every drug, every love, every bliss all at once. All that and more, much more, as his mind exploded into white.

  Twenty

  Jack sat on a broken cement abutment, watching in resigned silence as the first beams of an uncaring sun broke free from the horizon. He’d parked the van under the shade of a relic trestle bridge. Wide flakes of rust, sloughed from its ancient riveted beams, lay in a heap among the broken bottles, sun-bleached beer cans, and used hypodermics.

  In his hand, he held a tin of honest-to-goodness dog food he’d bought for Blood at an all-night bodega. The dog sat patiently at his feet, waiting. He’d earned it. Without the dog, Jack wouldn’t have been able to take on those thugs down at Fort Red Rock—not by a long shot. The dog had saved his life more than once now. Perhaps he’d saved more than just that.

  Blood rested his muzzle on Jack’s thigh, but his eyes were on the food. “Fine.” Jack gave him a scratch behind the ear before pulling the tab. He set the tin on the ground, and Blood had at it. And for the first time in twelve years, Jack Jackson knew what it was like not to feel alone.