Cherry Bomb: A Siobhan Quinn Novel

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  The taxi pulled away, and I wondered briefly if the driver would tell anyone about us. Selwyn pointed up at the redbrick building.

  “This is it,” she said. “Welcome home.”

  “I’ve done worse,” I told her, which sure as hell wasn’t a lie.

  It was a ten-story walk-up, though the stairs didn’t seem to bother Selwyn, and they certainly weren’t an issue for me. You can’t get out of breath when you only bother breathing if you don’t want to draw attention to the fact that you’re a cadaver. Anyway, the place was still chock-full of the sort of clutter I suppose archaeologists accumulate. Stacks of yellowing books, ceremonial masks from New Guinea and Japan and Thailand, a mummified cat in a miniature cat-shaped sarcophagus. Et cetera. Plus the spoils and tools of Selwyn’s own enterprises, sort of Lara Croft meets Madame Blavatsky. Selwyn set the bag of sex toys by the door, then apologized for the mess and excavated half a couch and a love seat. Both had seen better days and had probably been new when Kennedy was president. The place smelled like dust, old paper, and Top Ramen. Well, those are the smells that would have greeted the living. Me, I also caught the stink of rats and roaches, dirty dishes, mildew, a toilet that badly needed scrubbing, unwashed laundry, an expired carton of milk in the fridge, and . . . you get the picture.

  “Sorry it’s such a wreck,” she said.

  “Hey, at least it’s an interesting wreck.”

  I picked up a book on Mesoamerican astronomy and flipped through the pages.

  “After Pop died, I just—”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me. It’s your house. I’m just a guest.”

  “I didn’t want to throw out any of his stuff, you know? Plus, I’m sort of a pack rat myself.”

  I closed the book and returned it to the teetering stack beside the love seat. “Didn’t I just fucking say you don’t have to explain anything?”

  I picked up another book, this one on Hindu eschatology. Selwyn chewed at her lower lip and worried at a loose thread in the sweater she was wearing.

  “How often do you have to eat?” she asked.

  I didn’t look up from the book. “Thought you were some sort of an expert on us undead folks,” I said. “What with your line of work and all. A regular Abraham Van Helsing.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Christ, all I said was I can tell one when I see one. I never said I was an expert.”

  “Every two or three nights,” I told her, relinquishing the answer to her question. “Four, if I’m willing to deal with hunger pains.”

  “That’s an awful lot of corpses,” she said, and then there was the blare of police sirens down on the street, and neither of us said anything while we waited for them to pass.

  I said, “Fifteen a month, give or take.”

  “About a hundred and twenty a year,” she said, still messing with her sweater. She wore that sweater a lot. It was a cardigan, and the yarn was a shade of gray that reminded me of a kitten I’d had when I was a kid. Anyway, I nodded. Grisly arithmetic, especially when you pause to consider that a city the size of Manhattan likely has a dozen or so vamps in residence at any given time. All the resurrection men in the Empire State can’t make fifteen hundred bodies a year disappear. And not all of us are careful about covering our tracks. There’d surely be a lot more hunters than there are if it weren’t for the bloodsuckers who hunt the hunters.

  “All these books were your dad’s?” I asked, using the one I was holding to motion to the rest.

  “Yeah, mostly. I suspect he never even read half of them.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any beer?” I asked, and she shook her head and said she’d run down to the corner store and pick some up. At least there were ashtrays, so I didn’t have to ask if it was okay to smoke. I put the book down and lit a Camel.

  “Selwyn, it’s not too late for you to walk away from this shit.” Looking back, I have no idea why I said that. No idea what the hell I was thinking. How the fuck was I supposed to let her off the hook? It was not like I had the thing in Brooklyn to go back to.

  “You’d let me do that? Walk away?”

  I took a drag on my cigarette and watched smoke curl towards the ceiling.

  “Even if you would,” she said. “And I don’t believe you’d take that risk, no way I could go back to the way my life was before.”

  “Fine. But here’s the rub. Don’t you ever get it in your head you’re indispensable or safe from me. I don’t care how good a lay you are, and I don’t care how much you get your freak on playing sidekick. That’s not the way it works.”

  “How long has it been?” she asked.

  “Since what?”

  “Since you died.”

  I stared at one of the masks hanging on the wall, something hideous carved from wood and bone that was clearly meant to be a bird. I had the unnerving impression that it was gazing back at me, that it was waiting on my answer same as Selwyn Throckmorton.

  “Five years, almost,” I told her, then added, “I was sixteen.”

  “I’m almost twenty,” she said. “You seem a whole lot older than me.”

  Here I am pretending that I remember a conversation verbatim that I hardly even recall the gist of, right? I just stopped and read back over the last few pages. If I sounded a lot older than twenty-one that day, there in her cluttered apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, I can only guess how much older I must sound now. How much older than my actual age, I mean. I know I hardly come across as the same person who—while I was traveling—got so bored that I decided it would be a good idea to write out what happened to me with Mercy Brown and the Woonsocket loups, then that whole cock-up with the Maidstone sisters, the dread madams Harpootlian and Szabó and their “Maltese unicorn.” I’d say, “Hell, I was just a kid,” but I’d have to tack on so many qualifiers it’s not worth the effort. Reading this, I don’t hear the snarky brat who wrote, “First off, taking out monsters absolutely doesn’t come with a how-to manual.” It’s not the days, the months, the years that wear you down. It’s the slaughter, the nightmares that I’ve seen strolling about in broad daylight and every time I look in a mirror, the close calls and deceit and pain I’ve inflicted and that have been visited upon me. For that matter, it’s the years I spent on the street and the toll that took before I had any idea monsters were anything but the stuff of fairy tales and spooky stories.

  See, this right here is why immortal is anything but, why so few vampires stick around more than three or four centuries. Time and the high cost of survival, it fucks you up. No, I don’t want sympathy. I’ve always had a choice. Just like the living, I can put an end to my existence whenever I please. This might have begun with me being a victim, but it never followed I had a right to embark upon my own reign of terror.

  I ain’t no more than any serial killer ever was. Most times, I figure I’m a good bit worse.

  But I digress, as they say.

  That autumn day I was twenty-one going on fifty, and here I am twenty-two going on seventy. That day, I didn’t tell Selwyn she seemed older than she was; but, obviously, her own life had also been the sort that increases the gulf between actual and apparent age.

  “Well, for what it’s worth,” I said, “I feel a lot older than you, kiddo.”

  She laughed, and then there was another silence, and this one we couldn’t blame on street noise. I smoked, and she picked at her raveling cardigan. After maybe five minutes, the quiet became uncomfortable, and I volunteered to go for the beer myself.

  “Okay, but I’ll go with you. I don’t feel much like being here alone.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “You expecting company?” I asked her, stubbing out my cigarette.

  “Not really,” she said.

  I didn’t much care for the way she was looking at the door.

  “Selwyn, I take it you’re thin
king this isn’t a social call,” I said. She was buttoning her sweater and combing her hair with her fingers.

  “I don’t get those,” she said. “Leastwise, not very frequently. And never this early.”

  “So, what, then? A customer?”

  “That’s not the way it works. I don’t tell clients where I live.” She stood watching the door, wary as a cat that’s just heard a barking dog. Whoa, three cat similes so far. Anyway, whoever our visitor was, they knocked again, harder and more insistently than the first time.

  “I hope you aren’t so naive you think that means they can’t find out. You’re not that naive, are you, Ms. Throckmorton?”

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Want me to get it?”

  “I told you I can take care of myself,” she replied, but it came out even less convincingly than it had the night before.

  “Fine. Then how about you answer the door before they huff and puff and blow the damned thing down.”

  She rubbed at her forehead and glared at me.

  “Hey, I was only joking.”

  “Who is it, and what do you want?” she shouted at the door, her blue eyes still fixed on me.

  “Ms. Smithfield?” a gravelly male voice shouted back.

  “Ms. Smithfield?” I asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” she muttered. Whoever was at the door knocked a third time. It was starting to sound like they were using a claw hammer on the wood.

  “Yeah. Hold your horses. I’m coming.”

  Selwyn threaded her way through the maze of books and boxes, relics and furniture, and when she reached the door, she peered through the peephole. There were three dead bolts, along with two sliding chains and a steel bar brace for good measure. She didn’t touch any of them.

  “I told you never to come here,” she said.

  “You promised a week,” the voice on the other side replied. “It’s been a week and a half.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me. I raised an eyebrow and shrugged. She could take care of herself, right, and I wasn’t the one making promises I couldn’t keep—or couldn’t be bothered to keep.

  “Don’t think he’s a happy camper,” I said, not the least bit helpfully. And that’s when she stooped down and opened an old cigar box only a foot or so from the threshold. What with all the junk, I hadn’t noticed it before. Selwyn took out a revolver, a snub-nosed S&W .44 Magnum. She opened the cylinder, checked to see that the gun was loaded, then closed it again. She slowly pulled the hammer back.

  The way she held the gun, I could tell she’d never fired it.

  “It’s been a week and half,” the man in the hall reminded her. “Mr. Snow is not a man of infinite patience. You assured him that you know the whereabouts of the Madonna.”

  She had another look through the peephole. “You tell him there’s been a complication. You go back and tell him I’ll be in touch when I know more.”

  I lit another cigarette and glanced at my gym bag, lying next to the sofa. But from what I could hear and smell, the man was just a man, and if worst should come to worst, I wouldn’t need the guns or the crossbow to stop him.

  “That wasn’t the deal, Ms. Smithfield.”

  “Hey, buddy,” I shouted at the door, pitching my voice low, filling it with anger and the assurance of violence. “Why don’t you listen to the lady and fuck off!”

  Silence. Maybe thirty seconds of the stuff.

  “You’re not alone?” the man asked. “Who is in there with you?”

  Selwyn didn’t answer but only looked from the door to me and back again. I noticed she was holding it with its barrel aimed down towards the floor.

  “You’re gonna blow your foot off,” I sighed. She licked her lips, then raised the pistol, pressing the barrel against the door.

  “I’m not going to ask you again,” I shouted.

  “And I’ve got a gun,” Selwyn said.

  I rolled my eyes.

  The man in the hallway laughed. It was an ugly laugh, one that made me wonder if I’d misjudged his humanity. I leaned over and unzipped the gym bag. Just in case.

  “We’ll be in touch, Ms. Smithfield,” he said. “We’ll be watching.” And he laughed that laugh again, and I heard his footsteps retreating to the stairwell.

  Selwyn slumped against the door and smacked herself hard in the forehead. I walked over to her, took the revolver from her, and emptied the cylinder. I pocketed the six bullets and put the gun back into the cigar box. She didn’t lift a finger to try and stop me.

  “But you can take care of yourself,” I said. “And last night, this had nothing at all to do with you being up shit creek with this Mr. Snow and needing someone to watch your back, did it?”

  “Not entirely,” she said. She didn’t really seem upset that I was calling her on the ruse. Mostly, she seemed annoyed and maybe just a little embarrassed.

  “Did I maybe neglect to mention how I’m no longer in the hired-hand business?”

  “Quinn, no way you think last night . . . this morning . . . no way you can possibly believe that was all a put-on because I needed protection.”

  “I don’t know, Ms. Smithfield. I’ve met some awfully good con artists. You tell me.”

  “That’s not my real name.”

  I made my way back past the sofa and the love seat to the room’s one window, which appeared to have been painted permanently shut quite some time ago. Out on the sidewalk, I watched a tall, thin man climb into the passenger seat of an idling black SUV with Massachusetts plates.

  “Is it even Selwyn?” I asked her.

  The SUV had already melted into the stream of traffic flowing downtown.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Selwyn Throckmorton, just like I told you. Want to see my passport and driver’s license?”

  “Not especially,” I replied, still watching the street. “But I am having serious second thoughts about sticking around. Whatever bind you’re in, I’ve got better things to do than get caught up in it myself.”

  “Do you? Do you really, Quinn? What would that be? Lurking around the city, keeping an eye out for the next miserable man or woman willing to provide safe haven in return for the occasional hit off your carcass?”

  I turned towards her. I’d say that I spun around, but I’ve always hated that phrase. Makes me think of whirling dervishes. I turned around very quickly. And very angrily. I felt the Beast rising, the loup swelling beneath my skin, ready to set my entire body and mind on fire. The Beast in me has a nasty habit of showing up when I’m really, really pissed, full moon or no, and suddenly I was really, really, really pissed.

  “Little girl, you do not want to go there,” I said, and the words came out in sort of a half whisper and a half snarl. Every syllable was loaded down with threat. “Whatever the next words out of your mouth are going to be, you’re gonna want to choose them very goddamn carefully.”

  So, there I stood with my back to the window, and there she stood with her back to that locked door. Probably there’s some sort of symbolism in that, but if so, I have no idea what it might be. Selwyn didn’t appear the least bit afraid, only stubbornly defiant, almost daring me, and that made me even more angry. The loup writhed and banged at the bars of its cage.

  “I’m not sure just when you got the idea that I’m afraid of dying, Quinn.”

  I took a step towards her, knocking over a stack of books in the process. Maybe she wasn’t afraid, but she jumped at the noise of them tumbling to the floor.

  Don’t do it, you stupid bitch. Get a fucking grip and do not let that dog out to play.

  Something like that went through my mind, again and again and again. The Beast strained at its raggedy leash.

  I said, “Sorta thought you might be smart enough to possess at least a scrap of self-preservation. But maybe you’re only book smart.”

  “And
maybe,” she said, that sly, wicked smile of hers returning, “you have it all turned around backwards. Maybe, Siobhan Quinn, I just went out last night to find an interesting way to commit suicide. And here you are, unable to control yourself, about to give me exactly what I want.”

  No one calls me Siobhan. Even Mean Mr. B knew better than to call me Siobhan.

  She took a step towards me.

  “OK,” she said. “If you’re too weak to control yourself, come on.”

  I yanked back so hard on that figurative leash it’s a wonder the damned thing didn’t snap and take whatever was left of my sanity with it. But hell if I was about to give either one of them the satisfaction, my Beast or Selwyn. Maybe she was bluffing, and maybe she wasn’t, but on the off chance she was serious, on the off chance she actually was taunting me into killing her . . . fuck that. I took two steps backwards and bumped against the windowsill. Defeated, the wolf withdrew. It knew from experience there’d be lots of other opportunities.

  “Liar,” I growled. Yeah, growled is the most honest and accurate way to describe the way the word came out. “You might be a grifter, but no way you’re in this for the short con. You wouldn’t have waited this long if that was your angle.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You’re probably right.”

  How had she even learned my first name? I sure hadn’t told her. I never would learn the answer to that one.

  “And don’t you ever fucking again call me Siobhan.”

  “Okay, Quinn. I’ll try to remember that.”

  Jesus, she looked smug. Right then, I hated her as much as I’d ever hated anyone, which is saying a lot. It passed quickly, but for a moment that hatred was almost enough to call the Beast back again.