by Ace Gray
My feet limply scrambled against the hot aluminum ramp simply because of the scorch of my skin. I deserved what I could feel of the pain shooting through my arm for letting Mickey ruin Cole’s mark. Mickey dropped me onto sunbaked earth and I gasped and choked a few times as plumes of dirt were sucked into my lungs. All I could see as it settled were shoes, male dress shoes, with the same red-brown dust clinging to them.
“That one is infected.” The thickly accented man was clearly used to speaking Spanish.
“That one’s mine.” Mickey’s Irish one grated against it with a snarl.
“Then yours is going to die.”
Thank you, God.
I closed my eyes and pictured Cole’s shoes. White-toed Chucks pressing on those dirty gas and brake pedals in the Charger. His oxfords tiptoed in blood. His flip-flops that showed off the ace of spades tattoo on his right foot and the tiger claws on his left.
They continued to talk about me as if I was meat on the auction block. I vaguely registered an argument over my flesh, though who wanted the blood and shit and piss covered fester of my body, I couldn’t fathom. My hair was matted to my face, stuck in the white and yellow ooze that had started leaking from my forearm some time around when the hope had been sucked out of the moving van and the other girls had stopped crying.
Sometime around when I dreamt of Cole wading through a river of lost souls to find me. The souls had pulled him down, angry at what he’d done. They had latched onto his wrists and ankles, drawing him down to the floor like that night, forming chains to bind him all the same. For a moment I panicked, watching them wriggle down his throat and suffocate him. But then his wings shot out, slicing the horrors away.
I’d woken with sweat dripping down my brow, breath wheezing in my throat and eyes unable to focus. I wanted to throw up. Or sleep. But if I slept, the dreams were too dark, too demonic. The fever was boiling my sanity in my skin.
And now I hoped my vital organs went that way too.
But gentle hands grabbed me this time, and pulled me up, cradling me to a chest. It wasn’t chiseled but it wasn’t weak either. The kindness coaxed my hands to hold on but tied as they were, they simply flopped back to my body and then limply and oh-so-awkwardly dropped to the side. The grip still held firm.
We walked for a few steps and then I was laid out on another bed of straw. A scratchy blanket draped over my shoulders and hips covering my raw and grimy skin. It wasn’t soft fabric but being covered was a small comfort. The tears came back, this time because of the first kindness I’d known since the flames of hell had lapped at my veins.
The engine sounded like it was better suited to a go-kart or a lawnmower than a flatbed but it bobbed and wove down what felt like a cobblestone road. I couldn’t open my eyes but the shadow and sun alternated on my face, drying the tears almost as soon as they fell from the corners of my eyes.
My skin had just started to fry from the sun rather than the fever when the flatbed pulled to a stop. Once again the careful hands grabbed me and carried me. I was jostled a few times as we navigated stairs, the swoosh of cool air started rhythmically kissing my skin and warm, white greeted me when I cracked my eyelids.
The hands set me into a small basin. Cool porcelain was such a contrast to my boiling skin that it hurt. I cried out and warm, quiet Spanish words tried to soothe me. I still did what I could to get away from the ice piercing my back but I didn’t have the strength to rise.
Water splashed into a silver bucket in the corner of the room and the man who I guessed belonged to the chest that had carried me, likewise carried the bucket to the tub I lay in. The woman still murmuring softly, grabbed one of those large tan porous sponges and stuck it in the water. She dragged the leaden sponge up behind my back and squeezed. Warm water ran down the porcelain and pooled along the curve of my backside.
She smiled and her whole face crinkled, lines radiating from the corners of her warm chocolate eyes, thin paper lips and hollowing out on either side of her mouth. She gruffly pushed me back against the now lukewarm wall.
The man bent over the tub and cut away the rope at my wrists. His jagged knife grated at the fiber, pushing and pulling my skin in different directions and setting a little bit of fresh blood loose from the scabs that had formed. When he pulled it free, a single sob cracked through my chest. In the back of my mind, it represented freedom, but my reality was that I was anything but. I rolled them once then let them splash into the water at my sides.
Slow, warm sponge by slow, warm sponge she bathed me, avoiding the knife wounds Mickey had given me. The blood that had trickled down my body, from my wrists, from my thighs from my ruined and bastardized love, slowly scrubbed from my body. The filth that had channeled down my skin too.
The raunch that now ate at my insides wasn’t so easy.
She gestured for me to spread my legs, then tapped at my knees to get them to part. I shook my head. She tapped again. “Necesito lavarte.”
I didn’t speak Spanish but I knew what she wanted.
“No.” I pressed my knees together.
“Necesito lavarte,” she repeated, more forcefully. “Infectado.” Her eyes narrowed and she gestured again.
As much pain as it shot through my body and as much energy as it drained from me, I wrapped my arms around my thighs to keep them pinned. “I know,” I murmured against the smoldering skin beneath my cheek. “I know, but just let me die.”
My eyes slid shut and my mind went blank.
Cole was stalking down a long, brick and stucco hallway. The further he walked, the more doors he checked, the longer the hallway became. Only the echo of his oxfords clicked on the uneven flooring.
Door after door he searched the rooms jutting off the hallway. Each held something foul and decrepit. Demons dancing on corpses. Horse’s body laying in ruin. Snakes swallowing sin whole only to vomit out something more depraved. Conrad drowning in inky dark. Siobhan beckoning him between her thighs. Mickey growing horns and nails, hungry for my flesh once more.
I watched him, step-by-step from the glass at the end of the hall. When he shuddered, I tried to reach out. When sobs shook his shoulders, I whispered words to him. When none of the rooms, none of the horrors stopped him, I realized what he was looking for.
Me.
My tiny fists started pounding on the glass but somehow made no sound. It didn’t waver, didn’t flex. So I screamed. The sound echoed in my ears but didn’t leave my lips. I threw my body against my small window but it stayed as still as stone. I shouted louder, wailed on the wall faster, creating my own breeze but it only buffeted the one-way mirror and bounced back, blowing the straw—or was it hair—from my face.
So I stopped. Stopped fighting, stopped yelling. I leaned my forehead to the glass and let my body slide down until I was a small and broken ball of a human. Or what had once been human.
A warm breeze rustled the curtains beside me. It rippled the soft sheets covering my body just enough to wake me. The lazy wicker fans above me still pushed warm air around the room with a whump, whump, whump. My eyes fell from the ceiling to a white bandage covering my forearm.
“No,” I whispered as I scanned up to the gauze that covered my wrists, then whipped back the sheets. A clean cotton shirt covered me and matching white bandages were stuck to my thighs. “No,” I cried, hushed and strangled all at once.
My nails picked at the edges of the bandage on my left and peeled. I shrieked when I ripped it off then bit down on my lip and let my eyes dart around the room. No one came running. I used the gauze to scrape the brownish paste from the painful gash. It was still wavering between the yellow of infection and red of fresh.
I pulled all the faster on the other side and wiped it in one swipe. If they healed, I knew where I would go, who’d take pleasure in the scars, in making new ones. And I wouldn’t do it.
My nails were broken into jagged shapes and points. All the better to split the scars back open. Streams of blood started down my thighs, staining the pe
rfect sheets beneath me. My grunts and cries were simply punctuated by the whump, whump, whump of the fan. I kept clawing, digging deeper into my thighs, hoping to hit something vital, hoping to finally leave this bed, this nightmare behind.
But strong, gentle hands tangled in the sheets to find mine. I shouted something unholy as I looked up into the warm chocolate eyes of the woman that had tried to heal me. She held me firmly but she made sure not to hurt me, even with my wrists so fragile.
“Senior Mickey will not be pleased,” she said softly.
“I’m not his.” I choked back sobs. “I will not please him. I’d rather die.”
“I know, amanecer, I know.” She used her grip to push me back toward the bed. “But you are not ready to meet the darkness.”
I wrestled with her for a moment but her look shifted from soft to pity and I couldn’t make myself fight against her anymore. She let me go when I lay back quietly and turned on my side studying the small garden outside my door circled by a massive wall crowned in barbed wire.
My eyes went a little fuzzy and whether it was the blood or the pure desolation, I didn’t know. Honestly, I didn’t care. But I answered the gentle woman in a hushed and choked voice all the same, “I hate to tell you, but I already have.”
30.
Cole
I had one word to go on: Tenancingo. At least that’s what I remembered Elle saying in the middle of the night all those days ago. Mickey had cleaned out my apartment, taking anything that resembled his business before I’d gotten back from the Italians. Her artwork, the prints and plates, and the pages of twenties had disappeared.
Only her blood had been left.
And that was enough to make me want to burn the place down. With all the bodies in my wake, and no protection this time around, there was nothing for us to come back to anyway. He’d watched my apartment after that, making it impossible to chase Elle for far too many days. When I finally got in, I packed one bag, complete with sketch paper, pencils, two of my favorite horse figurines, the crane Elle had folded for me, her perfect white dress and beat up Chuck Taylors, along with the secret stacks of cash I kept hidden behind fresh drywall behind the fridge.
I’d thrown my giant duffle into the backseat, glanced once at the bench seat that belonged to my Ladylove, and swore. I’d shot out of Chicago like something more snarly than the engine beneath me. And I hadn’t stopped until a dive motel with cracked paint, flickering neon and a leaf-filled pool just outside of Laredo.
Now I lay on the scratchy, geometric patterned comforter wondering about what kind of diseases I was picking up or the cheap hookers that had been bent over the mattress. It was better than thinking of Elle, of where she was, and what Mickey had done to her. VD and bed bugs were a far more preferable subject matter.
Why I’d even bothered renting a room, I didn’t know. I couldn’t sleep. Fear and anxiety tore at my stomach. My foot tamped on an imaginary gas pedal in the hotel room. I slid one of my guns under the pillow and let the other rest on my stomach.
A part of me knew I’d end up here someday, in some shit hole motel running either from or after Mickey, my fingers itching for his death. I always thought Horse would be beside me. Or at worst, what I was chasing. That it was Elle, my Ladylove, was the darkest kind of miracle.
I’d found her. For a few painfully beautiful, fleeting moments, I had her. And the way she cradled my soul was more than I ever expected. More than my dark heart deserved.
I studied the red neon light where it flooded in from the plastic-coated drapes that wouldn’t quite close. Red like blood. The blood on her legs, the blood dripping down her arms.
No!
Red like Mickey’s life seeping from the wounds I would deal him.
I would kill him. Slowly if there was the chance to drag it out. Blood would pool around my feet and splash in that too familiar way around my shoes. I’d watch as all the sins he committed came for him, I would watch as each ghost haunted behind his eyes. And dammit I’d enjoy every second of it.
The taste of salt and iron was on my tongue, red slid like a film over my gaze, and for a moment I was calm. Sleep hit me hard and fast, death and the certainty of dealing it had silenced the racing questions.
Well, all but one.
Drip, drip, drip.
Elle’s blood pooled beneath her toes, one small drop by one small drop from the cuts on her thighs. Mickey stood behind her, his mouth poised in a gentle kiss along the curve of her neck.
I watched. For some strange reason, I watched. My arms pinned to my sides, my legs unwilling to stride forward. I watched his lips massage her pale flesh. Then his hands came to her bare breasts.
She moaned, one of her beautiful moans only I got, but it turned to a brutal shriek. Mickey bared his teeth as he bit into her. Each one looked like a jagged point as it broke her flesh and blood poured down her body.
Blood. So much blood. Her skin wasn’t beautiful cream anymore but deep, dark and terrible crimson. Every. Single. Inch.
Mickey drank from her neck in gulps, letting her life ring around his lips and drizzle down his chin. She didn’t move or try to stop him, she just cried out in obvious pain.
And still, I watched.
He circled Elle and latched onto her dark red breast. Exactly as he’d done with her neck, he kissed, caressed and teased. She moaned in ecstasy until those razor-sharp fangs bit in. A fresh wave of her blood cascaded down her body. He twisted to catch it, to drink it, as it spilled off the tip of her nipple.
The taste of salt and iron coated my tongue and I smacked my lips wanting to trade him tastes. Mickey kissed and bit her until a lake of blood was beneath her. Both Mickey and I stood shin deep in the warm, viscous liquid.
His hands were at his belt buckle and he let his dick free then pressed it against her so that sticky red could drizzle and coat his cock to match his face, his chest. He was covered in the life draining from her veins. When he squared between her thighs I finally moved.
Her blood waved out from my shins like the gentle ripples in a calm lake as I trudged toward her. My hands wrapped around Mickey’s throat and his teeth snapped at me, just as desperate for my blood. But my hands started squeezing, dissolving his neck as if he was made of shadow rather than flesh. I barely had to try to conquer him. Like the wicked witch, he melted into the puddle beneath us.
A smile played on my lips, my dimple hollowed at my cheek as I looked up from the clothes floating on the surface. Elle’s face was devoid of any emotion, and I reached out to reassure her only to find her cold.
I looked closer at her eyes. They were muted, glassy, and didn’t shift. I pressed my hand to her blood-covered chest to try and find the heartbeat that had replaced my own. There was only a silent hollow beneath my fingers.
“Elle,” I said sternly as I shook her.
Her body flopped with my violent shake, her eyes didn’t blink, her head simply fell forward.
“Ladylove!” My voice cracked as I shouted, diving beneath her broken looking neck to find her lips.
I kissed her. I kissed her with everything I had, everything that I was. My life leapt from my lips to hers. Electricity tingled where I touched her.
But blood started to spill into my mouth. The salt and iron ran down my throat. The dark red dripped from her eyes into mine until the darkness of blood was all I could see.
I stepped back and tried to wipe my face clean. I needed to see her. I needed to taste her.
Too long. It took far too long to clear the ever-replenishing blood. Because when I did, it wasn’t Elle in front of me. It couldn’t be. The tiny bones of the blood-soaked skeleton had no life, no flesh.
I screamed loud and long as I rushed back to the bones, only to find Ladylove carved into the forearm of the skeleton and a long dark scratch splitting the letters down the middle.
I shot up from the springy mattress with the gun aimed at the mirror in front of me. I didn’t remember grabbing or cocking it, but I was ready to kill. Swea
t clung to my skin and quivered on my top lip and my heart hammered in my chest, forcing my shoulders to shake as I took shallow, unsteady breaths. The barrel of the gun was pointed right between the eyes of my reflection.
After the nightmare I’d just had, I felt like pulling the trigger.
I’d let Mickey take her. My rational mind knew I’d fought. I’d fought through the wounds freshly bandaged but still weeping from time to time. But it felt like I had failed and, in this exact moment, I’d left her to die.
My breath wouldn’t deepen, my heart wouldn’t slow. The red neon of the sign outside still coated the ceiling and bathed the room in a demonic glow. The clock also had red numbers, ones that I couldn’t convince myself weren’t melting, ones that told me I’d slept for less than four hours.
I needed to rest. I wouldn’t get the chance once I got there, once I started waging war. But the thought of her at his mercy, or worse… I grabbed my bag and slung it roughly over my shoulder as I scraped the plastic key across the cheap dresser and left the room. My heavy steps clanged on the steel walkway outside the second story room and I didn’t try to muffle them as I bound down the stairs.
There was an ancient woman behind the bulletproof glass of the front desk this time. I was about to throw the key at her under the small opening that sunk into the counter when she gasped.
“Diablo blanco.” Her hands covered her mouth and her glassy chocolate eyes widened despite the heavy lids and deeply creased wrinkles.
“I am no devil, Señora. And I’m on my way all the same.” I nodded, sure the wild look in my eyes and the rapid rise of my shoulders didn’t make me any more reassuring.
I set the key in the metal tray and slid it toward her. I smiled a thin smile and turned toward the parking lot when gnarled hands grabbed mine. She held me awkwardly, her fingers quaking against my skin where she’d trapped me in the pass through. I schooled my features into a familiar, cool mask as I met her gaze.
