“See you under the bridge in three years, assholes,” I shout after them. “Tell me how good that liberal arts degree feels when you’re sitting on thirty years of student loans!”
One of them, a girl with a blonde plait and mean eyes, calls back to me. “We’re on scholarships, you hag!”
I raise my eyebrows and root my phone out of my pocket. “Huh. I guess hard work pays off.”
I take another swig, scrolling through my missed calls. Most of them are spam numbers. I have a text from one, which I’m about to swipe to delete—when I recognize the name typed next to the number. Fawkes.
Fawkes. Money. I’ll put in a good word.
Must be from the guy with the nice ass. Dink. I screenshot the text and block his number, just out of pure spite. I look out across the water at the park.
“I guess I’m spending my evening at the arcade, then.” I pound the rest of my forty, cock my arm, and send the can sailing through the air.
“I hope you go to prison, litter bitch!” someone screams out of a passing Prius.
“So do I!” I holler back. I wipe foam from my mouth with the back of my hand and puzzle over my utterly dismal comeback game as I head toward the park.
Fawkes is a halfsie, like a lot of Slayborn in the States. While we’re the only ones who are guaranteed the gift of Sight, plenty of half-humans are born with it as well. Of course, their Sight doesn’t come with the agility, speed, endurance, or strength of a Slayborn. And honestly, why would anyone want to live in a world of monsters that they can see, but can’t fight?
By the time I duck into the redwoods of Goldengate Park, darkness has already begun to seep in at the edges of the horizon. The marine layer rolls toward the city, unstoppable and gloomy as a hail of arrows. I give it the stink eye, shove my hands in my pockets, and duck into the trees.
A couple of pixies glitter their way through the dark. They’re far off, but I can hear their giggles. They’re so cute from afar, you’d never know how fucking sharp their little teeth are. I got one stuck in my hair at a Christmas party last year and the little bitch stayed in there long enough to give me cornrows before I swatted one of her powdered wings clean off.
There are other signs of fae in the park: massive ambiguous footprints embedded in the mud; a huge, opal feather weaving its way through the pond; impossibly quick flashes of white and silver dashing through the woods. My parents loved the Seelie fae, but they never left me alone with them.
That’s the thing about the Courts and kingdoms. It’s not a clean-cut as people think. There isn’t good and evil, nice guys, bad guys. They’re all twisted and jumbled and fucked up—just like humans. Like the Slayborn. We’re all just fat chunks of fresh meat, toddling around like we know what the hell we’re doing.
There’s a clurichaun playing a wooden flute under a sapling nearby. All knobbled hands and gnarled skin, with a little leathery face that seems to sink in on itself. His eyes are closed and he has an empty clay flask on the grass next to him. I whistle and he opens bleary, beetle-black eyes.
“Hark,” he says, then hiccups sharply.
“Looking for Fawkes,” I say, lifting my hood against the cold. “Know him?”
“Halfsie boy: human, slay,” the clurichaun’s eyes twitch closed. “Drugs and money come to play.”
I roll my eyes, but I oblige him. “Tell the bitch where the half-man lurks,” I say, “or she’ll twist your arms until...they hurts.” Never was great at riddles and rhymes.
“That’s bad,” he hiccups. “You’re no fae.”
“Thank Christ for that.” I dig out the last inch of whiskey from my pocket and toss him the bottle. “Let’s do this the old fashioned way, then. Bribery. No nonsense.”
“Down the broken willow tree,” says the clurichaun, shaking as he brings the glass bottle to his lips. “That’s where the dirty halfsie be.”
“Thank you for your service.” I roll my eyes and cut through the trees.
If there were just half as many Unseelie around, I’d be rolling in cash. But no. In the years after the Dublin Làidir masacre, they’ve pretty much all gone off the grid. Probably wise. The slaughter left so many Slayborn orphaned, it didn’t really matter which Unseelie had known or participated. We’d have made sure they lost their heads on sight.
Up ahead, a lightly-worn footpath leads to a huge trunk. It’s sawed off in the middle, leaving a gaping black hole like a mouth where the top of the tree, presumably a willow, should have been. I make my way over and peer down, but within an inch of wood, it all goes black as night. With barely a glow in the late evening sky, I have no hope of guessing what’s down there.
Great. Down the rabbit hole, I suppose.
“Hey.”
I startle, nearly falling down the tree purely by accident. When I turn around, I find a hulking man with boulder-shoulders and a shock of red hair standing behind me. His beard is braided and beaded like a Nordic cartoon viking, but he wears a stylish overcoat, nice black pants, and trendy boots that throw the image to hell.
“Fawkes,” I say. It couldn’t possibly be anyone else. “I’m Berkeley.”
“Yeah,” he says, licking the paper edge of a blunt. I notice that the dark content inside has the same glimmer as Crux. Laced. Dangerous. “Got a call ‘bout you. Lookin’ for work?”
“Yeah.” I shove my hands deeper in my pockets. The mist has caught up to the park, and it blows in between the trees like dry ice at a seventies rock concert. “You know what it’s like. Us Slayborn have to make their own way, now.”
Fawkes nods, finishes rolling. I flick open my lighter and hold it to the end for him. He nods in gratitude, takes a long drag, and grimaces. “Somethin’ dangerous out there.”
I follow his dark eyes and look out between the trees. I’m not scared of much, but he’s right. It feels like there’s all sorts of shit happening out there behind the curtain. I shiver away my goosebumps and rub the back of my neck. “So, a night club, eh?” I’m eager to change the subject.
Fawkes grunts and takes another drag, then offers it to me. Like faerie food in a Brothers Grimm story, the dope is pretty much a guaranteed mistake. But I don’t want to leave a bad impression, even if I do want to try and stay off Crux. I smoke obligingly, the acrid burnt-honey taste charring its way into the back of my throat. I hand it back.
“You know about the Dullahan Riders?” Fawkes asks, smoke escaping his lips in fine tendrils. I glance up at him and shake my head.
“Got no heads,” he mutters, shaking his own. “No brains. No mind. Just rose outta the Dark Sea one hallowed eve, hellbent on bloodshed. Women, children—babies. Did’nae matter. Not to them, leastways.”
I stare at him, wondering if the Crux is already fucking with me. I’ve had some spooky trips on that shit.
“They say they used the dark to travel,” Fawkes continues. “Step into the shadow in Shanghai, step out in New York City.” Fawkes stubs out his blunt. Tucks the roach into the pocket of his wool coat. “Now, m’lad says one’s stalking around in the arcade.”
I look at him warily. “Sounds like some Revelations-ass shit, man.”
“Yeah.” Fawkes is still looking out into the dark, and I wonder if he’s seeing things I don’t. “So, you in?”
“Dullahan Riders eating babies?” I flash him a grin. “ I mean, come on. What’s not to love?”
Never trust a guy who pays up front. That’s the next thing I’m tattooing on my ass.
There’s just something about it that makes me feel like he’s putting a down payment on my coffin. Like he thinks I’m not coming back. He’s so sure I’m gonna die, he’s prepared to collect his cash back off my future corpse.
It’s full-dark and cold as all hell by the time I hop off the Bart at the pier. Homeless encampments line the filthy, boarded-up streets like plaque in an artery. Wet wheezing fills the air, harmonizing with the clatter of glass bottles and the squeaking wheels of grocery carts plugging along the curbs.
“Pretty h
air,” says a bearded man, huddled beside a trash can. His eyes gleam, wet and dark in the gloom. “Pretty hair, baby.”
“Hey, thanks, man,” I say, waving as I pass. I gesture toward my chin—the same spot where he sports his admittedly magnificent facial hair. A veritable Paul Bunyan. “You too,” I tell him.
“Don’t fall in the dark,” is his only answer as he shakes his head, eyes wide and unblinking. “Down, down, down. No rabbits or clocks down there.”
“No?” I say. “Well damn, what a waste of a trip.” I laugh but quicken my pace, all too aware of all of the eyes in the dark.
The bodies moving, the feet and fingers tapping. I cross the street and step onto the pier—an ancient monstrosity dating back to the early city after the great fire. The guy who sank his life’s wealth into redoing the pier lost everything in the 2008 crash, and he had every door and window boarded up. They still haven’t gotten around to redoing it—or maybe they just like it like this, with lopsided buildings and owls roosting in the broken beams, the boards of the pier itself swollen with mist and sea salt, rubbery beneath my boots.
This place gives me the creeps, but there’s no backing out now. I try humming to distract myself, but someone in the shadows hums back to me, so I shut up fast. This close to the water, everything is damp. The air is so thick with fog that I start to think I’m going to choke on it.
And everywhere—every which way that I look—the shadows crawl at me like they’re alive. My mind keeps snapping back to what Fawkes said. About the Dullahan. About headless men riding out of the ocean. About babies getting murdered. I pull my coat closer and desperately wish I’d kept my whiskey.
At the end of the pier, between two seemingly endless rows of massive, dilapidated buildings, stands the arcade. Even in the city lights, the monolith hunches like a giant with its back turned. The garish facade, once bright circus red, now looks like a huge bloodstain. Peeling paint, wood stripped bare in all the wrong places. Its sign—a bright, grinning baby face—has long since toppled off the building and blocks the main entrance.
I hear an owl hooting somewhere. Behind the building the water undulates, a sparkling black plane reflects the city lights over the bay. It’s beautiful; but I can’t help but feel it’s fucking haunted.
Like me.
I snort, light a cigarette, and start picking my way toward the building. I’m grateful for the alcohol that lingers in me, steeling my nerves, bringing out my brazen side. More so than usual, at least.
There’s no way I’m getting in through the main entrance. It’s still boarded up tight after almost a decade. But the corrugated aluminum facade has been cut away in places, leaving treacherous gaps that threaten to slice me to pieces if I’m not careful.
I exhale a cloud of smoke, peering into the darkened building. I’ve never been much good at being careful, though. I prop my cigarette between my lips and gather my overcoat, high-stepping over the razor-sharp edges of the barricade. My ankle grazes the exposed metal, just above my boot, and I wince as my fishnets tear and blood wells in rapid response.
I yank my other leg over and bend to staunch the blood with my coat sleeve, taking a drag on my cigarette. It’s much darker inside the building, vague orange city light plunging through the caved ceiling in dregs and splashing over the floor. I watch the blinking light of a plane cut through the fog.
Huge beams have snapped in two, crisscrossing one another in the dozens like a messy, abstract lattice. The guts of the building, exposed for all to see. I can smell dust and sea air, the acrid scent of brine echoed by the bark of seals somewhere down under the barnacle-encrusted pylons. A flap of wings and I nearly go into cardiac arrest—but it’s just the cold gleam of owl eyes as the bird takes off through a hole in the ceiling.
I toss my cigarette and grind it out under my heel, feeling around in my pocket for the knife I usually carry. I used to have my parents’, two from each, recovered off their bodies in Dublin. Slayborn get those, and they’re nice, hefty: black hilts fit to an individual’s left and right palms, and wicked pointed blades with double-edges.
The first Slayborn was a double-wielder. She was a Celtic chieftain’s daughter, Lady Aurnia, born with the Sight. She wore the black pelt of the cù-sìth, her head adorned with a crown of werewolf claws and fangs of the Leanhaum-shee. There was a statue of her erected in the Dublin Làidir headquarters. When the Underking attacked, after the slaughter, he shattered her statue and stood reveling in the rubble.
A lot of fucking drama, if you ask me. This, right here, is plenty drama. Dark old buildings, rumors of monsters, a shitty pawn shop knife deep in my pocket. I don’t need brotherhood or tradition. I don’t need history, especially when it’s bloodied and full of martyrs. Martyrs. I’m not interested. I mean, did I stay a Slayborn to be deified as a saint? No. I’m in it for the money. Sorry, mom and dad. My dreams kinda bit the dust when you did.
“Seems legit,” I say, loudly. I hope for an echo, but my voice dies at my own feet. “Hey, uh, if anyone’s here, go ahead and step on up. I got a party to go to.” My fingers finally alight on my knife, and it seems disappointing after the heft of that twat’s—Castor. Castor fucking Blake. “Motherfucker,” I mutter to the empty dark. Though I don’t expect it, a rustle rises up in response.
I spin on my heel, knife out. But it’s just a tarp half-stapled to a broken window, snapping in the ocean breeze. I sigh.
Is this really gonna be a bust?
I lower my knife, kicking a loose chunk of plaster at my feet. It crumbles up in a plume of dust, coating my legs, my shoes, sticking to the bloody little wound on my ankle. Great. Last thing I need is some kind of bogus infection. Hopefully my juicy Slayborn blood will nip it in the bud.
I make my way deeper into the arcade. There are dozens of monolithic machines lined up like tombstones, covered in a thick coat of grime and long out of order. Their girthy black cords crowd the floor in tangles. Pacman. Asteroid. Tron. I swipe my finger across a glass screen. Wash me motherfucker! I snort, then scrawl a dick next to it.
“Yep, Berkeley Gallagher was here,” I mutter, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “And she didn’t see any fucking monsters.”
Click.
I whip toward the sound. It was a big one—the sound of something mechanical being connected. Yikes. So this isn’t some stupid, dirty fenodyree. It’s something big. Something reasonably smart.
“Hey, let’s work this out,” I call, irritated when my voice wobbles slightly. I clear my throat and puff out my chest. “Come on, I’ve got Hubba Bubba.” I dig around in my pocket, but I must have lost the pack somewhere on my way here. “OK. No. I don’t. I do have a half of a Slim Jim, though. And I’m willing to share!”
Silence. I wait, keeping my eyes peeled, taking in the dark.
Then a whirring—one loud enough to make me startle—kicks up. For a second, nothing else happens. Then all at once, neon lights spring on throughout the arcade. Quiet for a beat as everything boots up, and then: music.
I clap my hands over my ears as half a hundred arcade games burst to life. Beeping, whirring, the obnoxious faux sound of laser guns firing.
“What in the actual fuck…” I mutter, moving my hands from my ears.
After the ghostly silence, the pounding music is deafening. The overhead lights are all off, and God only knows how these things are up and running, but the effect is probably as desired: it’s creepy as all hell.
Scritch scritch scritch.
I pivot, scanning the far corners of the room, searching the shadows. My head is pounding with the music and sound effects of a bazillion arcade games.
Then a blur launches out of the dark and slams me to the floor.
Chapter Four
Dirty Talk
“Arghh!”
That’s the pathetic noise that rips out of me as I hit the filthy arcade floor.
I’ve buried my knife in whatever has tackled me, blackened blood dribbling down the hilt. The creature is dog-shaped
and massive as a grizzly, with thick black fur and teeth that glint like steel in the moonlight.
A cù-sìth. Fawkes didn’t tell me I’d be dealing with a fucking Cù-sìth. All I can say is that the guy better be prepared to pay out the ass for this job.
I abandon my knife, tossing it on the floor and lunging for the beast at full speed. I grab the thing’s snout, snapping as it goes for my throat.
“What—” I scream. “The—” I pry its jaws wide, the muscles in my arms screaming in protest. “Fuck!”
The Cù-sìth whines sharply as I strain to snap its jaw. I push harder, a scream building inside of me. It’s gonna break, just a little more and—
Whoosh.
My hands whip outward. The space where the dog was, right on top of me, is empty. There’s a thick clot of shadow, like smoke. It dissipates quickly, leaving me alone once again.
And then, I let out a gasp and stagger backward. Because out of the darkness several forms have suddenly drawn up, rising from the ground and standing as if rooted there, coin-sìth snarling in front of them with flashing red teeth. The figures look almost like men, silhouettes in the dark—but they’re too tall. Too slender. And atop their shoulders, sitting on the ends of lanky, crooked necks—nothing. No heads. No faces. Just bloodied stumps.
Fawkes’ words return to me. Dullahan Riders. Men, women, children. Babies.
There are ten or so of them, a wall of darkness, totally at odds with the blasting arcade music and pinging sound effects around us. They stand in swirls of dark smoke, eerily still.
“Back the fuck up,” I shout, pointing my knife at them like it might do something more than earn a quick laugh. “I’m serious!” God damn it, Fawkes. Did he set me up?
One of the figures—the tallest of the bunch—steps forward, raising a bony finger in my direction. From the way he carries himself, I figure he must be their leader. He steps forward, into the light, until his features begin to materialize. Black, billowing cloak. Mottled skin. Thick, clotted black blood.
Slayborn Page 3
