Lilith--Blood Ink

by Dana Fredsti

  I hustled.

  In stunt parlance, hustling is networking on steroids. If you’re not lucky enough to belong to a crew like KSC, which gives priority to its own members before bringing in outside stunt players, you need to get your face and résumé in front of working stunt coordinators. Which means first you find out when and where they’re working. Then you have the fun of sneaking onto the set—avoiding sometimes very over-zealous security—finding the stunt coordinator, and then trying to find a good time to introduce yourself and hand off your résumé without pissing anybody off.

  I hoped that the in-person touch might have a more positive outcome than calling. A voice on the other end of the phone was easier to dismiss than someone standing right in front of you, right?

  Doing my research with a little help from Randy—who I know would have hired me if there’d been any female parts in Deadly Emancipation, the low-budget high-testosterone Deliverance rip-off he’d just scored as stunt coordinator—I started with Bogle McNabb, a long-time crony and friendly rival of Sean’s. The only thing supernatural about Bogle was his name, which came from a mischievous spirit that haunted the McNabb family manse in Scotland. Bogle’s parents had given him the nickname because he liked to do scary things, like jump off buildings and crash cars. He was tall, thin and pale, but not particularly scary or mischievous. He took his job seriously and was someone that Sean spoke of with respect.

  I successfully hunted Bogle down on the closed set of a television spy thriller at Warner Bros, lurking by craft services and doing my best to look like a harmless production assistant until cast and crew broke for lunch.

  “Lee, good to see ya!” The warmth in Bogle’s hug was genuine, but his smile was a little too forced to give me optimism. “What can I do you for?”

  “I just thought I’d see if you might need an awesome stunt woman.” No point in wasting time with false modesty, right?

  Bogle’s smile slipped a notch. “Gee, Lee,” he said, scratching his head with long white fingers. “You know I’d love to work with you, but we’re full up right now, and it’s a mainly male cast and all that.”

  I nodded even as I gave an inward sigh. I had a feeling that even if the show had called for a cast of more Amazons than Wonder Woman, he would not hire me to work on it.

  “That’s too bad, Bogle,” I replied, keeping my tone upbeat even as another chunk of hope broke off and sank into the pit of my stomach. “I’d love to work with you. Know anyone looking to hire?”

  Bogle scratched his head again, pretending to think really hard. “Not offhand, Lee.” No surprise there. “If anything comes up, I’ll be sure to pass on your name.”

  I didn’t let on that I knew the key word here was “pass.”

  “Thanks, Bogle.” I handed him an envelope with my résumé and he took it with promises both of us knew he couldn’t or wouldn’t keep any time soon. Then I left, walking off the soundstage with the purposeful stride of someone who had someplace to be. Another trick for staying under the radar of security guards. Mentally crossing Bogle off my rapidly shrinking list, I psyched myself up for a drive to Sun Valley and another stunt coordinator I fully expected to turn me down.

  Sometimes I really hate being right.

  * * *

  A few hours later, I’d officially gone through all the remaining stunt coordinators on my list. I’d done a good job keeping my spirits up until my third miss, on the set of a little pissant studio off of the 118 freeway in Sun Valley. I’d dropped in on a stunt coordinator I only knew by reputation, but whose right-hand man happened to be a woman. I’d thought this might make him more open to taking a chance on me and maybe it would have, but his assistant was not happy to see me and didn’t bother trying to pretend that she was. So much for female solidarity in the Industry.

  It looked like I’d be holding down things at the Ranch while the rest of the team worked on Spasm. Randy was going to help out when his schedule allowed, along with any of the core team not needed on any given day on set, but it would mostly be me running the training sessions.

  It made me feel slightly less guilty when I knew I was contributing to the household even though Sean had told me more than once he didn’t expect me to pay rent. Still, I needed to earn real money and get my own place instead of feeling like one of those little birds that lives on the scraps it cleans out of crocodile teeth. Besides, as far as Seth was concerned, job-hunting didn’t count—the end result was all that mattered to him. He’d never lacked for work a day in his adult life and certainly didn’t know what it was like to be repeatedly rejected—how that wore a person down. If he’d ever been rejected by anyone for anything in his lifetime, I’d eat an airbag.

  I almost called Randy to see if he wanted to get together, but then I remembered he was working today. Just as well—I didn’t want to become reliant on him, or for him to think I was relying on him to cheer me up whenever I was down. In my current state, that would be a full-time job. Something a boyfriend would do. But if I wasn’t willing to commit to that type of relationship, it wasn’t fair of me to expect him to do the work without getting the perks.

  Okay, he got some of the perks, but still… I didn’t want to dial our relationship up any higher at this point.

  I’d already hit Eden up once this week for cheer-up duty, and I was nowhere near her neck of the woods anyway. Instead, I drove home to an empty house, tired, depressed and hangry, hoping that there were still a couple of bottles of decent beer in the fridge. There was. Dogfish Head 90 Minute tucked away in the back behind one of Drift’s six-packs of Stella Artois. And, wonder of wonders, there were also a few slices of leftover pizza. Nothing special, just from a local delivery joint, but it would do me fine.

  I threw a couple pieces in one of Seth’s beloved cast-iron skillets, covered it with a lid, and turned the heat on low. Then I popped the top off a bottle of Dogfish Head, finishing half of it in two greedy gulps.

  I pulled the pizza out of the cast-iron, adding a drizzle of truffle oil on top. Seth could be a dick, but he’d taught me things about cooking that turned cheap delivery pizza into something just short of gourmet. I made sure to wipe the pan out, mainly because I wasn’t up to getting reamed out. Besides it would’ve been a dick move to leave a mess.

  Who says I can’t be mature?

  Retrieving Cayden’s card from my bag, I stared at it while I ate a slice of pizza, finished my first beer, and opened another. Stared some more. And finally decided I had reached bottom and had nothing left to lose.

  Taking a deep breath, I dialed the number on the card.

  One ring and it went straight into voicemail.

  “Leave your name and number. Tell me why you’re not potentially wasting my time.” Beep.

  I recognized that voice. All husky and deep and full of arrogance. My first instinct was to hang up. My second? To say “fuck you,” and then hang up.

  What I actually did?

  “Lee here. You know why I’m calling. And if your phone isn’t smart enough to have stalker vision in this industry, talking to you would be a waste of my time.” I hesitated, then added cheerfully, “Have a great day!”

  Click.

  Well, that’s the end of that, I thought.

  My phone rang. The theme from Jaws, meaning someone calling for the first time. I checked my own caller ID. Cayden.

  Okay then.

  I hit the button. “This is Lee.”

  A low, smoky chuckle. “I know.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “Saves us both time.”

  “I like that.”

  “Uh… good?”

  Another chuckle. “You want the job.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “Depends.”

  A pause, but not a silence. Amazing how a lack of words could fill the space so eloquently.

  “Good enough. We’ll talk it over. Meet me at my place in an hour.”

  I thought about it. I mean, really gave it some consideration. I’d al
ways wanted to see the inside of the DuShane mansion, because who can resist a good, old-fashioned horrific tale of ghosts and murder? But this was not the time or the occasion for indulging in ghost house porn.

  “How about we just meet at a coffee shop?”

  “I’m surprised. You don’t strike me as being timid.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t strike me as necessarily trustworthy. And for the record, I prefer ‘prudently cautious’ to ‘timid.’”

  There was silence at the other end of the line, but I could swear he was laughing.

  “Fine,” Cayden finally said. Yup, I definitely heard a slight quiver of amusement in his voice. “Meet me at the Starbucks at Trancas Country Market at 10 A.M. tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” I paused, then added, “What’s the job?”

  “Just be there.”

  Click.

  He’d hung up.

  Asshole.

  * * *

  “Dude, hurry up and pick a fuckin’ tattoo already. Bourbon Street, booze and bitches are waiting!” Simon let out a raucous belch to punctuate his words. Looking up from the portfolio he was flipping through, Charlie saw Tia, the tattooist working on his friend, wrinkle her nose in distaste. Simon didn’t notice. She wasn’t his type, Charlie could see that—no makeup, oversized glasses, brown hair pulled back in a single braid. Real bookworm type. If she’d had decent tits, Simon would have been flirting with her, but those were A cups at best under her plain black tank top. Not worth the time.

  Charlie—an on-campus DJ whose shock jock persona was only slighter cruder than Charlie himself—was Simon’s best friend. Their frat house had just been reinstated after a year’s suspension, and both of them were in a mood to celebrate. They’d come to New Orleans to get drunk and—if possible—get laid. They had a free place to crash close to the French Quarter with Simon’s cousin, and three days to do the town—which pretty much meant Bourbon Street, as far as they were concerned.

  Charlie had been the one to spot the little tattoo parlor tucked away in a side alley off the ass end of Bourbon Street, and they’d had just enough potent hurricanes earlier at Pat O’Brien’s to make spending time and money on tats seem like a good idea. Luckily this tattoo shop, unlike many, didn’t have a hard and fast rule about their customers being sober.

  Simon had quickly picked out a Greek symbol meaning “strength” to go on his left deltoid and the work was already underway. Charlie was still skimming the portfolios, trying to find something that caught his fancy. The buzzing of Tia’s tattoo gun sang in the background, like a chorus of quiet hornets.

  “What about that one?” Simon pointed to a photo on the wall of a hammerhead shark tattoo. “You’re always hammered, am I right? Or you could shave your mustache and get ‘pussy eater’ tattooed there instead.” He guffawed at his own joke, shoulders shaking with drunken laughter.

  The tattooist paused in her work to avoid a potential blowout, even though the urge to ink the kanji for “anus” on the frat boy’s skin was nearly irresistible. If LeRoy hadn’t been lurking in the back room, keeping an eye on her work, she might have done it. But she knew better. She was lucky to be LeRoy’s apprentice. And one of his favorite sayings was, “Do not fuck with the integrity of the ink, no matter how unworthy the canvas”—even if the canvas was shitfaced.

  Charlie shook his head. “Lame, bro.”

  “Dude, not supposed to use that word, remember?”

  “Do me a favor,” Charlie said. “Go into your safe space and fuck yourself.”

  Simon belched again in reply. Charlie flipped him the bird and continued his search for the perfect tattoo. The shark had been kind of cool—he liked the idea of a predator inked on his skin. But it wasn’t quite right.

  “Nothing catching your eye?”

  Charlie looked up from his dissatisfied perusal of a stylized tiger to find a smiling man with dark hair standing behind the counter. Later—after his skin burned and peeled, crusted over and then hardened into scales—all Charlie could remember was the man’s smile, with lots of crooked teeth.

  “See if you find anything more to your taste in here.”

  The man slapped another binder down on the counter, although this one had a much nicer cover than the others—dark brownish-red leather. Charlie found his fingers caressing it even though there was something unpleasant about the soft, almost oily texture of the leather. Unpleasant and yet…

  Charlie opened the binder, revealing a world of vivid colors and unforgettable images. The noise from the streets faded into the background as he flipped through the pages, marveling at the depth of imagination that went into each piece of art. Even the simplest of drawings crackled with a life and animation that none of the other samples came even close to having. An ouroboros done as a stylized Celtic knot… A Chinese dragon with red and gold lacquered scales… A blue butterfly so realistic it seemed to be suspended in flight… A phoenix in a nest of flames, beak outstretched in a cry of agony and rebirth… The face of a woman in mourning, a black tear tracing down her cheek, the skin splitting where the tear had already passed… A man eating his own arm…

  He finally paused when he came to a drawing of a crocodilian head rising from dark water rendered in dark-green ink. Its reptilian jaws stretched wide to reveal jagged rows of teeth and its eyes seemed to glow with endless hunger. And was that a human hand caught in those jaws? He peered more closely. It was. Ribbons of flesh seemed to float between its teeth.

  “Oh yeah,” he whispered.

  The man behind the counter nodded in satisfaction.

  “These are my own designs,” he said, the slightest hint of a French accent evident in his voice. “I’ll do the work myself.”

  “Awesome,” Charlie said absently.

  “Tia, you good to mind the shop till Hyla and Polli get here so I can ink this boy?”

  “Sure, LeRoy,” Tia replied.

  “Give me a few minutes to set up in back and we’ll get to work.” He grinned at Charlie with more teeth than the reptile.

  Charlie nodded, unable to take his eyes off the drawing. The rest of the world was irrelevant.

  * * *

  LeRoy pulled out the ink he only used for the special tattoos. Whenever these were necessary, he tried to find the joy and glory of knowing that out of the bearer’s agony would come a harbinger—and that his skill was an integral part of the process. But still, the gods did not always choose vessels deserving of the suffering that went with their fate. The young girl who had picked the butterfly, for instance—her personality had been as fragile and beautiful as the symbol she had chosen. Her soul as pristine as her milk-white skin. When she had gravitated to the special book and pointed at the blue morpho, what was left of LeRoy’s soul had curdled a little around the edges. But there was nothing for it. All harbingers decided upon their own vessel.

  Her fate had been sealed once he’d laid down the last of the ink.

  When the time had come for her transformation to begin, he’d removed her from her home in the silence of the night and placed her in an oven vault in La Fayette Cemetery No. 1 for the gestation period. The girl would be aware of the changes being wrought to her body for every agonizing second, right up until the point when the harbinger finally ate its way out of her skin. It was on this sort of insufferable pain that the harbingers drew enough strength to bring back He Who Eats Worlds from beyond the stars into this dimension.

  He might have spared the girl if it had been up to him.

  Others, like her four friends… Well, he had no pity to waste on them. As for this youth, he wore his corruption and bad intentions like a badge of honor. Was it any wonder that he’d been drawn to this particular image? Of all the harbingers, the one that would come forth from this oaf’s screaming flesh was the key to the most important door of all. Without the Thaumaturge as the central beacon, He Who Eats Worlds could not find His way through the frozen stars and hell dimensions to finally reach the Earth.

  If the other vessels suffered
agonies of the damned during the gestation process, this youth’s suffering would eclipse it all. What was the quote? Oh yes. His suffering would be legendary, even in Hell.

  LeRoy couldn’t wait to begin the process.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Some film execs liked to meet prospective employees in plush offices, secure behind their big-ass desks, like in The Big Picture. I preferred the informality of restaurants or coffee houses. I might not get the job in question, but at least I’d usually get a decent cappuccino. Starbucks wasn’t the world’s best coffee, but it was reliable. As Miles from Sideways put it, “quaffable but not transcendent.”

  I arrived at Trancas Country Market at nine-thirty the next morning, a half-hour before I was due to meet Cayden. A surge of nervous energy had woken me at five, so I’d surfed that wave and given myself plenty of time to shower and dress. I wore jeans and a form-fitting gray AleSmith T-shirt from my ever-growing brewery collection, this one advertising Evil Dead Red Ale. I’d got on the road with time to spare—enough to show I was serious but not so early as to appear desperate.

  Checking my minimal makeup in the rearview mirror of my Saturn, I ran a brush through my hair, which I’d worn long and loose today. Then I wandered around the uber-quaint and rustic shopping center, killing time by admiring jewelry, casual beach wear and household items I couldn’t afford. At nine fifty-five I headed over to the Starbucks and went inside, planning on getting my drink and snagging a seat before Cayden arrived.

  I felt an irrational surge of irritation when I saw that he was already there, ensconced at a corner table that allowed him a view of the parking lot, as well as both entrances to the Starbucks. Which meant he probably saw me arrive early, and fix my hair and makeup. And of course he’d assume I cared what he thought of my appearance.