The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  The world turned itself around.

  Despite all our talk otherwise I had Miranda under one arm and Isabel under the other. Both of them slept.

  But not me . . . not any longer.

  I knew that last voice, hard to hear or not.

  “You motherfuckers,” I whispered. “It’s on.”

  Session 119

  My eyes went from fight mode to search mode in a blink.

  Ears went quicker than even that. The Mexican music was gone with the stereo and in its place . . . mostly silence. Goonie was completely out of it with his broken up face, Overcoat managed some type of grunt that came every few seconds and Backup had a hiss of air escaping from his lips. Maybe the Mancy did watch out for me. All that action . . . a gunshot, a lightning bolt, breaking doors and all we had was some silence as the caboose.

  Unless the train ride’s not over.

  We were in a living room. Big fucking living room. I didn’t know houses came with rooms that big. Mostly because most houses I’ve known aren’t even as big as the room. One room and it’s two stories, little balcony at the top to watch down on the plebs. I caught sight of a kitchen through an arch and headed for it, motioning to T-Bone. “Find something to tie them up.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know . . . rope?”

  He only stared. “King Henry, who actually has rope in their house?”

  “I do . . .”

  He kept staring, a little concerned. “Why?”

  “Towels then, whatever. People don’t stay knocked out long and Coyotes with extra anima stay knocked out even less.”

  “Towels,” T-Bone growled to himself. “Leads me into a fight after lying to me and I get to find towels . . .”

  The kitchen confirmed what the living room had hypothesized. No way was this a family man’s house. No way a woman lived here for any long period of time. Bachelor pad . . . complete with lots of liquor on display, steel fridge, steel oven, steel lots of stuff. No fucking teapots to be seen but every dish they did have was in the sink.

  I’m not saying I expect JoJo to be much of a housewife—I grew up with her, I know how much she shirked her chores off to Susan and me—but all women have some urge to homemake that doesn’t have a lot to do with clean steel. Steel . . . that’s a man’s element.

  I remember back at the Asylum going into other classmates’ Ultra apartments for the first time. That shit’s shocking. You expect Naomi Gullick to have flowers all over the place and lime furniture with topaz highlights but . . . Miranda Daniels’ landscape paintings and baby blue walls were not what I’d have imagined. Not in the top ten of what I’d have imagined.

  All women like to decorate on some level—sometimes the ones you’d least expect to the greatest extent—and the kitchen in Casa de Vega had no level at all.

  It said: guys live here, get lost with your topaz and teapots.

  I headed down a hallway and then into another room, an exercise room with weights and machines, even a yoga mat. Covered in mirrors. Guess someone liked the way they looked. Hopefully I could rectify that character flaw with some punches to the face . . .

  Downstairs bathroom. Spartan, no sign it got used other than by guests or freeloaders like Overcoat and the boys. Piss stains on the toilet . . . learn how to aim, assholes, or you lose your standing privileges. Next came an entry room, not as big as the living room but as tall. Wide open, lots of glass about and tile like all the rest of the place.

  Stairs.

  I had a decent enough pool again for iron fist and still plenty of toys to play with. Guess I could risk the unknown some more . . . T-Bone would be fine as long as he found those towels. Or rope . . . which is totally not weird to have in your house . . .

  So I went up the stairs.

  My foot didn’t step down on Floor Number Two before I got myself a nice shock with Pajamas popping around a corner. Shaking her head at the ceiling she yelled out, “What happened to the music, assholes? How many times I need to tell you not to listen to us make love? You perverted losers!”

  She stopped and gasped on seeing me.

  I stopped and quirked an eyebrow on seeing her.

  Not a bit of clothes on that girl . . . woman. Older than I thought compared to the night before last . . . upper twenties, maybe lower thirties. Makeup helped her fake it but the gravity job on her tits and the stretch marks at her stomach said kid if not kids. She had tattoos that the pajamas had hidden . . . tramp stamp peeking over the sides of her hips, fairies or some shit sparkling over her arms, cross on her stomach, a name at her wrist in ugly cursive script ‘Hector’. Pierced bellybutton and left nipple.

  “You!” she shrieked, horror and anger in her face.

  Not outrage, not shame at me seeing the goods. Woman that walks around naked with a bunch of goons around likes flaunting her body, enjoys using the one sure power she’s got. Not all Were Nations go chauvinistic patriarchy but . . . nine out of ten do. Blatant nudity has its advantages in that kind of culture.

  Pajamas . . . I’d thought her JoJo’s friend but apparently she was more tied to Suit. Who else would she have been fucking? Blond hair wild, sweat on her skin, and smell . . . smell tells you sex is going down more than sight ever does. Pajamas smelt like sex in a bottle.

  Not bad, Suit, if you’re into gang scank.

  For just a second I thought about throwing a punch and knocking her ass out just like the others.

  Some women would scream sexist over this reaction. But that’s a complaint for someone living in a world without Weres or the Mancy or even vampires. Normal life, sure I wouldn’t hit women. Men big, women small. I get the thought. Got to be a scumbag to hit a woman.

  I don’t live in the normal world. As Ceinwyn likes to remind me, I live in the one in a million world. Society and social norms ain’t what’s protecting women in my world. Being able to light a cocksucker on fire is what’s protecting women in my world. Don’t need no feminism to right the scales here, scales been equal and scales staying equal forever.

  Sure, I still outweighed her. Sure, I had more muscle mass. Sure, ignoring the piercings and tats she looked like a normal chick that probably weighs one-twenty or something or other—women and weight, even I don’t go there—with some decent fit muscles under her plump, mid-five-feet range and C-cups if I’m a betting man.

  Except . . . she’s not normal. She’s a fucking werecoyote. That normal chick could have herself some fangs in not so long a time. Damn right I almost punched her in the gut before slamming an elbow into her jaw to end her day early. Thought about it, visualized it.

  Didn’t do it.

  She did try to punch me though.

  How’s that fair?

  And why naked women got to throw themselves towards me at precisely the wrong time?

  I grabbed her wrist as it thudded off my shoulder. She hit hard, guess that extra coyote anima adds some juice, but I grunted it off, focused on that wrist. I turned with my hips, pushed her back into a wall. Pajamas grunted, sweat dropping from her hair at the impact.

  Twisting her whole body around I yanked the arm behind her back and locked on a pair of cold cuffs at her wrists. Her gasp wasn’t like Annie B’s back in my shop. Wasn’t no surprise here. Cold cuffs worked perfectly, cryo-anima driving her to her knees, curling her into a ball to try to get warm.

  “Stay.” I ordered her.

  Hey, I’m allowed at least one coyote joke.

  [CLICK]

  I found Suit down the hall in a bedroom.

  Heh.

  I might have totally screwed up my little meeting with Horatio Vega, my sister might be nowhere in sight, T-Bone and Ceinwyn were both probably pissed at me, my shoulder was killing me from all the punching and shotgun-turned-club hits it had taken . . . but sometimes the Mancy loves me.

  Heh.

  Suit was cuffed to the bed’s headboard, naked as can be. I’d describe it in more detail, but do you really want to visualize Mexican pecker at half mast? Nah, no on
e wants to visualize that, so we’ll just say this: naked. If the cuffs weren’t lucky enough he also had a blindfold on. Marry me, Mancy, marry me.

  The room smelled of sex more than Pajamas had. Just . . . some hardcore grunting and humping had been going on. Suit probably had to work out his frustrations over not killing me. Nothing like blind, cuffed, Coyote muff to make you feel a man, right?

  The bed was a hunk of serious wood—unlike Suit’s Mexican pecker—four posts and all that. Here was a woman’s touch finally. Too many worthless tiny round pillows propping up Suit’s head for that to be a man’s work. Then the walls . . . painted some burnt orange with molded wood something or others along the floor and ceiling.

  Other stuff usual for bedrooms too: TV, computer desk, bookshelves, a lamp. All kinds of stuff. Bedside table with a huge black dildo on it. Damn . . . my knowledge of dildos is less than my knowledge of molded wood, but . . . damn. Didn’t know they made them in 5XL.

  Suit must have heard my footsteps, took me to be Pajamas returning. “Why the music stop? Stupid idiots break my system again?”

  How many people in this world fear this situation? Not the stranger walking up to them while you’re blinded and tied up. That’s scary on its own, but only physical fear. Might hurt me. Might steal my stuff. Nah, I’m talking about someone walking in on your sex life. That shit . . . that’s the real nightmare type shit.

  Best stay silent, best stay hidden in the bedroom. Start getting into kinks, start getting into preferences and what turns a person on . . . there’s some real fear. Fear enough to break a person. The wrong side of voyeurism overcharged. As sexually forward as our society can get there’s still that nice puritan tootsie roll center, ain’t there? Someone find out you like nipple clamps? Someone find out you got a fleshlight collection? Enough shame in that to last a lifetime.

  I stopped at the foot of the bed, shaking my head. “Dildo for her or for you?”

  Suit went from half-mast to piercing the sky. Oh yeah, when I described Pajamas’ nipple piercing everything was cool, turn it around and laugh at the Mexican pecker and it’s a step too far. Gross, King Henry! Well . . . who’s the sexist now?

  Fight-or-flight chemicals will do some crazy shit to you, boners not even in the top five. I’ve had wood so hard during some fights that I could have impregnated a sequoia.

  “This isn’t funny, Zoey, get them out of here! What the hell you thinking?” Suit growled, struggling with the cuffs.

  I laughed, sound low and slow. “Probably should listen to my voice and think yourself, you dumb cocksucker.”

  “What the hell . . .”

  “Yeah. Hell, going to wish it’s that nice.”

  “Zoey!”

  “Don’t worry, didn’t kill her or nothing.”

  “Zoey! Help! Jose! Sam! Gabe! Help me, you useless fucks!”

  “She’s just as cuffed up as you are.”

  “Touch me and I fucking kill you, Price!”

  “Not so tough without guns, are you?”

  He went from threats to pleading really quick. “Don’t! My uncle will ruin you if you hurt me!”

  “Uncle?”

  “King Vega!”

  “King Henry!”

  That came from downstairs.

  “Help! I need help!”

  “Stay,” I told Suit. Hey, I’m allowed a second coyote joke . . . trust me, it wasn’t getting old.

  I ran out of the room, trusting that if Suit could have gotten out of the cuffs he would have already. Nothing like a mortal enemy in the room while you’re naked and cuffed to a bed to make you try out your inner Houdini. I mean, he could try Shifting . . . but I should be so lucky.

  Remember . . . thumbs.

  I turned the corner, glanced back at Pajamas to see her still curled into a ball, shivering. I’d made the cold cuffs assuming clothes . . . for a second I wondered if she might get hypothermia but then I remembered: Coyote. She’d keep for an hour.

  I turned the way opposite where I’d come from, searching for the balcony I’d seen from the living room. Bedroom, study, bathroom, there we are. I took another corner at a jog, popping out on the balcony expecting to see T-Bone in a panic fighting off Overcoat and his boys.

  Overcoat and his boys had hardly moved, leaking blood, snot, and drool. For a guy who got himself dragged into this T-Bone was quick on the uptake, having used the cords from the television and stereo to tie the lot up. Survival and Defense back at the Asylum teaches you quite a few things, knots among them. I’d never thought that would come in handy but here we were . . . knotted up Coyotes.

  T-Bone paced back and forth, looking the same as usual but a bit more paranoid. His eyes kept darting around the living room, to the busted doors and back towards the entry room.

  “What’s up?” I asked him.

  He flinched, looking up like he was seconds from dodging bullets flying at him. When he saw it was me he calmed a bit, but only a bit. I get the feeling that if T-Bone’s pool had been back to shape I would have been electrocuted and charbroiled like Backup.

  “Get down here quick!” he downright ordered me.

  “I’m busy with Suit and Pajamas.”

  “Huh?”

  “The guy who leads these idiots and his skanky girlfriend,” I said, remembering that T-Bone wasn’t in on my internal naming scheme, “I got them cuffed up.”

  “Where’s Vega?”

  “No Vega and no JoJo.”

  He pointed down at the floor. “Then get down here!”

  “Why?”

  He glanced at every door or hallway in sight. “After you left me behind I locked the front door, only someone tried to open it, and now they’re walking around the house!”

  Has to be Tatter, I thought.

  Before I could do anything about it Tatter popped up at the backdoor, arms so filled with takeout food he couldn’t see the door was blasted glassless. “Who think it a funny broma to order Lon Ga, then make me go get it, then cerrar a door on me? Which pendejo needs to get reminded who I work for and who you work for?”

  Too perfect.

  I had to indulge the wordplay this time . . . no choice with such a slow pitch.

  “How ‘bout me?”

  He looked up over the edge of the paper bags, eyes going wide at the sight of mancer in his den. I grinned again, leaning against the metal of the balcony railing, hands white, knuckles scraped up from smashing face earlier.

  You.

  Are.

  Going.

  To.

  Get.

  Fucked.

  Up.

  Tatter didn’t notice the three tied up Coyotes . . . didn’t notice T-Bone either, standing there in the middle of the living room, nowhere to run to.

  Probably the only thing that saved T-Bone’s life.

  The Lon Ga dropped out of Tatter’s hands, smashing down to the floor in a wet crunch, whatever Vietnamese eat and plastic containers getting it on with an orgy. A gun came out quick, of course a gun, always a gun with these guys. Small-like in totality, hidden in his jeans at his back, but with a big barrel on top. He didn’t bring it around his body in an arc and up around to me but instead . . .

  The gun came forward with a quick snap of his elbow, horizontal not vertical.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Too low, the bullets embed in the wall just below the balcony.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Recoil from the first shots and the awkward angle push the gun too far to the left, his shots spraying wide of me.

  I don’t bother turning. My mind does the angles, does the math. It realizes real quick that being that far up I don’t have to go left or right to get out of the way, I just have to back up enough to have wall between us.

  As Tatter’s arm fights the recoil to return back to its original position his wrist rotates and his shoulder drops to bring the gun to vertical.

  My feet set, my center of gravity goes backwards, and my hamstrings launch themselves.
>
  Pop.

  Pop.

  Two bullets go right over my head, so close the air around me snaps with their passing.

  Tatter’s other hand rises, surrounding the hand on the grip and providing the correct platform.

  My arms go out and down, throwing my momentum off and bringing my upper body down while having my kicking legs rise into the air.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Pop.

  Click.

  I was still alive and Tatter was out of bullets. Time went fast forward, my brain finally catching up with everything else that had happened. I touched my stomach, my chest, my neck. No blood, no wounds. Above my head, my eyes found six bullet holes really quick. I grabbed my balls, my thighs. I looked at my arms and wrists, my hands.

  I just barely didn’t piss my pants.

  “Fuck!” I growled just to hear my favorite word.

  Time returned to normal.

  My eyes glinted.

  I was still alive . . .

  . . . and Tatter was out of bullets.

  Gun, I thought first off, before I’d even gotten to my feet.

  No, I thought next at my knees.

  Waste my anima pool on a gun again? Wasn’t fair. Besides, I don’t know much about guns but even I know guns without bullets might as well be paperweights. Tatter would have been better off with a pair of brass knuckles than an empty gun. Or one of Suit’s massive dildos . . .

  I hit the balcony with three hard steps behind me, pushing forward, building up what speed a short, muscled guy like I can. Why’d it always have to be speed? Where’s the situation where my stamina could win out? Instead . . . three hard steps to the balcony, my wide frame and muscled weight moving against all those Newtonian forces.

  Newton would have pissed his codpiece if he’d ever seen what happened in front of me.

  Anima rushed ahead, a vanguard of knights getting down with a charge of metal on their big bad anima horsies. It crashed into the balcony railing, flying from end to end. Not to destroy. I’m good at that. But metal . . . I can create with metal too.

  No spillage this time. No extra. One target. Not one drop wasted. The balcony railing ripped from its fastenings, the screws happily yielding to the whole. One side stayed, the rest spread out like some ribbed metal tongue. Or a ramp . . .