A Taste of Crimson

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “M’cal?” Grindla’s faint voice floated out of the darkness.

  “We should go,” Michael said, edging toward the can. “She doesn’t like to keep her front door open for long periods of time.”

  “Gee. That’s too bad.”

  “Keeli—”

  “This is your plan?” She finally moved, shoving his shoulder. “You’re getting a demon to help us? Are you an idiot?”

  “Grindla has always been a good friend to me. Please, Keeli. Trust me on this. I know what I am doing.”

  Keeli sucked in her breath. Her gums ached from grinding her teeth. “I’m breaking up with you if she sucks my soul into hell.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “Says you.” Keeli inched over to the trash can and peered over the edge. She winced, and looked away, fast. “I feel dizzy.”

  “I’ll hold you the entire time. I won’t let you go.”

  Keeli studied his face, taking in his genuine concern, the soft worry. She squeezed shut her eyes.

  “Keeli?”

  “I hate you,” she muttered. “I can’t stay mad when you look at me like that.”

  Michael wrapped his arms around her. He held her tight.

  “Hold on to my neck.” He kissed her brow. “I’ll make this fast.”

  He picked her up. Keeli did not think they would fit through the opening of the trash can, but as Michael floated down into the darkness, nothing brushed her body. Just the whisper of cool air, the scent of damp. The sense of something large and immense hiding beyond the edge of shadow, ready to swallow them up.

  And then it did.

  When she opened her eyes, it took Keeli a moment to realize that she was not dead. Just stuck within a darkness so absolute, not even her werewolf vision worked. She could not see her hands, but she pressed them to her face to give herself some sense of presence. Some evidence that her body still existed. She patted her eyes; they really were open.

  “Michael,” she called out, ashamed at how her voice cracked. He did not respond.

  “Curious.” A low rasp emerged from the darkness, full-bodied, like a rough tongue against Keeli’s ears. “Howl gotsa need for the v’pire.”

  “Grindla?” Keeli tried to reach for the wolf, but the beast slept and could not be wakened. The heart of her, cut off. Real fear laced Keeli’s gut; sweat broke out on her back, beneath her breasts.

  “M’cal says you be a biddy, but M’cal does’no have no biddy gals. Strange, strange.” The last was whispered, so close that Keeli whirled, lashing out with her fists. Her hands cut through air.

  “Heart beatin’ like a lil’ lamb.” Keeli heard a loud sniff, the wet slurp of a very long tongue. “Tasty. Sweet to suckle.”

  “Stay away,” Keeli warned, trying to sound strong.

  “You in m’home, howl-biddy. No thing you can do till m’ready.”

  “Where is Michael? What have you done with him?”

  Keeli smelled sulfur—reared back as something wet licked her cheek. Low laughter filled the air.

  “Fear tastes good. So does M’cal. You want him, howl-biddy? Want him bad?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, fear thrumming through her heart, which hammered like a wild thing.

  “Ai,” sighed Grindla. “Ai, then. Gotsa pay a price, then. Big one.”

  “Anything,” she said. “I’ll pay anything. Just don’t hurt him.”

  “You pay with y’life, howl? How’s that for a b’gain?”

  Keeli went very still, lost in the possibilities, the irony. “Yes,” she said, wishing she could make her voice louder, braver. She sounded like a lost child. “Yes, I would pay that.”

  And suddenly she felt him there, his scent filling her nose like the most perfect bouquet—better than roses—and she sagged against his body with his arms wrapped tight around her shoulders. She could not see him, but it was Michael, and that was enough. She could hate herself later for being so weak.

  “Keeli,” he murmured. “Sorry. I am so sorry. I did not know.”

  “You heard.”

  “Grindla made sure of it.”

  Light appeared—a bright shaft shaped like a door. Keeli saw a shadow just on the edge of that light, bumpy and small, with waving limbs in all the wrong places. She looked at Michael and found his face terrible: violent, harsh.

  “I trusted you, Grindla.” Keeli felt the anger in his voice, his razor-sharp shame. “I promised Keeli she would be safe here, and you betrayed me. Broke my word.”

  “I be your biddy, too,” Grindla said, rasping soft. “Had t’be sure of the howl. Long journey you got, M’cal. Gotsa know your true biddys.”

  “I thought you were my biddy, but you made the woman I love bargain for a life that was in no danger!” Michael drew out a long, harsh breath. “Will you make her pay, Grindla? Will you?”

  “In time, everyone gotsa pays. Howl’s no different.”

  “Grindla!” Michael held Keeli so tightly she had trouble breathing. Or maybe that was just fear. Hers and his. She felt him shaking.

  The waving limbs stilled, lowered. “Ai now, M’cal. Ai. Rest easy. Long as you be around, no thing will happen to her.”

  Which was not entirely comfortable wording, from Keeli’s point of view. Michael, apparently, didn’t think so either.

  “Promise me you won’t hurt her. You or any other demon. Promise me, Grindla.”

  Grindla moved close, but her back was still to the light, and Keeli could not make out her features. “Ai, M’cal. Ai. I promise.”

  Michael finally began to relax. Keeli did not, but she kept her mouth shut. She had already done enough talking to last a lifetime—however long that turned out to be. She was not sorry, though. Not for anything.

  I would do it again if I had to.

  Yes, and wasn’t that a startling truth to discover about herself?

  “You be needing m’help, M’cal? That why you be here?”

  Michael did not let go of Keeli. His arms felt impossibly strong. “We need to go into a place where we do not belong. There is a murderer there.”

  “You goin’ to do a job on this murder-boy?”

  “Talk,” Michael said. “Help him, if he deserves it. Kill him, if he needs it.”

  Keeli thought Grindla smiled. She hoped not. It was a disturbing sight.

  “Ai,” rasped the demon. “Ai, now. I can help you with that. A little talk, a little murder. Tell me where, M’cal. Give me a place.”

  Michael told her, and Grindla laughed. She sounded like a brick scraping a rusty washboard. She stepped away from the light, her limbs waving, braiding air.

  “Go.” Her chin pointed at the light. “Go and find your murder-boy.”

  “Grindla.”

  “I be waiting for you, M’cal. You, too, Keeli-girl. My new howl-biddy.”

  Like hell. You’re a psycho demon bitch.

  “Yes,” rasped Grindla cheerfully, as Michael tugged Keeli toward the light. “I be just that.”

  They stepped through the light into a small red room. The room contained a bed, a desk covered by books, and a tiny closet. Posters covered the red walls, from movies, musicals. Music played softly: an opera, a classic recording of Aida.

  “She did send us to the right place, didn’t she?” Keeli tried not to let her voice shake, but it was impossible. She wanted to lie down on the bed she stood beside and suck her thumb. Michael, grim-faced, pulled her tight against his chest.

  “I trusted her,” he whispered. “I am so sorry, Keeli. You were right to be suspicious.”

  “You’re a good guy,” Keeli replied, her voice muffled by his chest. “And she said she was doing this to protect you. I guess if we’d been friends for a hundred years, I’d like you enough to do the same.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “No,” she said. “But she’s a demon. They probably do things differently.” Shit, yes. And I’ll tell her that, the next time she reads my mind.

  Michael drew in a shaky bre
ath; Keeli would never admit it, but she got a perverse thrill from seeing him so torn up about losing her. It made her feel just a little better about offering up her life on a plate.

  She studied the room. “Some experiment. Besides the overabundance of color, this looks pretty normal. Not like a lab at all.”

  Michael frowned, going to the desk. “Keeli, come look at this.”

  Keeli joined him. There were files stacked in neat piles. Each one had a name attached, as well as black and white photos, most of them taken from a distance. “This one has Walter Crestin’s name on it.”

  Keeli checked out his photo. Walter Crestin had been a skinny white vampire with a shaved head. There was a red “X” through his face. She flipped through the pages inside his file.

  “These notes are handwritten. Recently dated, too. Says here that ‘target has confessed to multiple crimes against humans, in particular, young boys.’”

  Keeli set down his file and thumbed through the others. Froze.

  “Michael,” she whispered, heart thundering. “Oh, God.”

  Her hand shook. He took the file from her and stared grimly at his name, a snapshot of his back. He was standing in his kitchen. The file contained a clear plastic bag. Inside the bag was a swath of cotton stained with dried blood.

  “The hunter becomes the hunted,” he whispered. “But why? What would any rogue element in the human government want to kill me?”

  Keeli flipped through some more files, frowning at the things she read. “Not all of these vampires are dead. Either he’s choosing his targets, or he’s been given them.”

  “Who else?”

  “There’s a billionaire philanthropist in this file, and a strip club owner in another. All kinds, Michael. Some of them are not very nice people.”

  “Including me?” His voice was cold. She scowled.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  “He’s executing them,” Keeli said, still watching Michael’s eyes, the emotions shifting wildly through his face. He was trying so hard to wear a mask, and it hid nothing from her. “Or assassinating. These are specific targets, you included.”

  “He said I was supposed to die.”

  “He told me he had someone to find.”

  They stared at each other. Keeli felt sick.

  “I suppose this is what the vampires I hunt feel like,” Michael said. “This man and I are both executioners. Assassins. We have jobs.”

  He thumbed the books on the table. “Joseph Campbell, Machiavelli, Gandhi … these are not the books I expected.”

  Keeli tugged on his sleeve. “Michael, don’t compare yourself to this man.”

  “Why not? I see so much of myself in him. Maybe too much. I am not sure I like the reflection.”

  “I don’t know,” Keeli said, turning around to look at the room. “He doesn’t seem to be living so bad. Not like an experiment at all.”

  Shouts suddenly erupted outside the room. There was no time to run and no place to hide. Keeli did not know the signal they were supposed to use to get Grindla to pick them up.

  “Michael,” Keeli said. The door opened.

  The first things she saw were red eyes in a stunningly handsome face, attached to a stunningly perfect naked body. And then perfection fell to his knees, hard, screaming as a thick black rod slammed into the small of his back, sliding down between his buttocks. Keeli heard the sound of cooking flesh—smoke rose from the tip of the rod as it trailed a path to his left hip. Two men in white jumpsuits flanked him. One man held the rod. The other had a clipboard.

  No one seemed to see Michael or Keeli, who stood less than two feet away.

  “Careful,” said the man with the clipboard. “We need him to heal fast.”

  “He always does,” said the other, smiling. He pushed a button in the rod and the young man screamed again, rolling on his side. Keeli took a step; Michael grabbed her arm.

  The man with the stun rod knelt and seized a fistful of hair. “You like that, Eric? Feel good? You want some more?”

  Eric said nothing. Keeli could not believe how young he looked—barely a man—but there was no youth in his eyes. Hard, resigned, and achingly lonely. No fear. Just calm expectation.

  His captor lifted up the stun rod and began shoving it into Eric’s mouth. This time, Michael moved. Keeli stopped him just as the other human dropped his clipboard and hauled up his companion.

  “Are you an idiot? That could burn away his tongue.”

  “I thought you wanted to check his regenerative abilities.”

  “No permanent damage! I have kids to send to college, man. I need this job.”

  “Yeah.” He kicked Eric in the stomach. “But she did tell us to teach him a lesson.” He knelt again and forced the young man to look up at him. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. “You learn your lesson, freak?” He jammed the stun rod into Eric’s ribs, making the young man scream. “Or do you need a little more?” He dragged the rod down to Eric’s genitals.

  Keeli wanted to gag. She leaned against Michael, holding back her own cries as Eric writhed, screaming until his voice broke.

  “Come on. Stop that. You’re enjoying it too much.”

  “Damn straight. This one’s the worst of both worlds. If I can’t get my own fang or dog, I’ll take him.”

  “No. I’m pulling rank. Get the hell off him. He has to be able to function for tonight’s assignment. The target is still loose.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  The two men were still arguing when they left the room. They never spared a backward glance for the young man sprawled naked on the floor. Beyond the open doorway, Keeli glimpsed a long white hall, cold and sterile.

  As soon as the door closed, Michael and Keeli rushed to Eric’s side. Keeli touched his cheek. Eric’s eyes flew open. His nostrils flared.

  “You,” he croaked. “I know those scents.”

  “Shhh,” whispered Keeli.

  “I don’t see you, I—get away from me.” Eric rolled onto his side. He tried to stand, and would have fallen if Michael had not caught him.

  “Don’t,” Eric said. “They’re watching me.”

  Keeli looked around the room. She did not see any cameras, but had no doubts they were there. She thought of the files she and Michael had been looking at, and wondered if that had shown up on any monitors as floating paperwork. She didn’t know how far Grindla’s demon voodoo extended.

  Eric stumbled to his bed, collapsing hard on the mattress. He curled up in a fetal position, facing the wall. Michael and Keeli crouched near his head. She watched his sweat-slick body shiver, and noticed for the first time a fine web of scars across his back and shoulders. She followed the trail of old wounds until they disappeared around his raw pink hip.

  He looked completely human except for his eyes, and that same strange scent tickling her nose: alien, yet familiar. Keeli thought she should recognize it.

  “I don’t know why you’re invisible,” Eric murmured, shivering, “and I don’t care. How did you find me? Why are you here? To hurt me? Kill me?”

  “We want to know who you are,” Michael said.

  “We want you to come with us,” Keeli added. The words slipped out before she could stop herself, but in that breathless moment, after it was too late, she suddenly did not care about repercussions or past crimes. Something terrible was happening here, something awful being done to this young man, and what she was seeing, feeling, did not add up to a coldhearted killer. Or if it did, he had been made this way—taught these things—and she could not allow it to continue.

  Give him a chance, any chance, to redeem himself. To start over. And if he can’t—if murder really is all he’s capable of—then you’ll take care of him. You’ll do what has to be done.

  “Come with you?” His eyes drifted shut. He fumbled for a cover and yanked it over his hips. “No place for me. I’ll hurt people. I’m an animal.”

  His words slurred. Keeli won
dered what else had been done to him, if he was drugged. Michael said, “You are not an animal, but you are a murderer. You killed all those vampires. You would have killed us. Me. That is why we are here.”

  “A vampire and werewolf together,” he breathed, as though he hadn’t heard Michael call him a murderer. His voice was soft, musical, and weary. “You smelled like sex. Still do. She always told me that was impossible. That it had to be rape.”

  “What are you talking about?” Michael asked immediately. “Who told you such things?”

  “She told me vampires and werewolves hate each other. Told me … told me they wouldn’t accept me. No one would. No … love.”

  Keeli saw something strange on the edge of Eric’s elbow. She bent close, peering at the inner part of his arm. Needle tracks riddled the flesh. She looked down, farther, and saw old burns on his wrist. She checked his neck and saw the same thing.

  “Michael, he’s been doped up. And here—these look like silver burns.”

  “Silver.” Michael sat back on his heels. “Silver only burns werewolves.”

  Keeli’s breath caught.

  “Check his teeth,” she whispered. Michael stared; comprehension filled his eyes.

  “You do not think …”

  “Do it,” she said.

  Eric’s eyes were half-open, but there was little life in them as Michael reached around and pulled back his upper lip. Michael sucked in his breath.

  “Keeli.”

  “I see them.”

  Michael pulled back his hand. “It is impossible.”

  Keeli shook her head. She thought about all those condoms they should have used. And suddenly, everything made perfect, terrible, sense. She knew why he seemed so familiar.

  “Michael,” Keeli said. “He’s not a lab experiment. I know who his parents are.”

  “Grindla,” Michael whispered. “Get all of us out of here.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Eric did not struggle when Michael carried him through the portal. Keeli heard alarms blare just before she stepped through—apparently, someone did notice Eric floating off his bed and disappearing—but the red room vanished behind her before she saw anyone come in after them.