Cherry Bomb: A Siobhan Quinn Novel

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “Quinn, we are not all dissatisfied with our humble lot,” he said. “Many, indeed most, are content in the Lower Dream Lands and in those dim, funereal corners of this world we still inhabit. We’ve no desire to enter into the folly of a second war with the Djinn, or, for that matter, to see your civilization reduced to ash and—”

  “Pickman, it isn’t my civilization. It stopped being mine when I died. I’m just a blood-sucking parasite latched on to the armpit of this civilization. A leech. A tick. A goddamn bedbug.”

  “Truly, you’ve that low an opinion of yourself?”

  “On good days? Yeah.”

  He made an annoying tsk, tsk, tsk noise through his bucked front teeth.

  “Anyway,” I said, “so Snow thinks he’s the Second Coming, but you beg to differ. That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “No, not exactly. The prophecy may well be genuine. The Snows might be precisely who and what they believe they are. Yet that doesn’t change our desire to avoid this war and all its unpleasant, inconvenient consequences.”

  “It’s a ripping good yarn, Pickman. You should write a novel, sell the film rights, retire to a nice little cemetery in Bermuda. But I still have no idea why you want to drag me into your Luke Skywalker partisan shenanigans. Except for this fucker having snatched Selwyn, it ain’t my circus, and it ain’t my monkeys. You don’t need me.”

  “Quinn, you’re something Snow didn’t count on, something unforeseen. The dreaded fly in the ointment, as it were.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “And if I had a hundred bucks for every time I’ve heard that line, I wouldn’t be couch surfing with wannabe monsters like Selwyn Throckmorton. Speaking of whom—”

  “Someone will be in touch,” Pickman replied. “There are other factors, other variables to consider. The way things stand, we can’t afford to be hasty.”

  “No, no, no. Fuck that ‘someone will be in touch’ crap,” I muttered, and I shut my left eye, then opened it and shut my right. “They have Selwyn, and I have their holy grail. Everyone wants me to play this game so badly, then we’re gonna keep it simple. We make the swap and get it over with.”

  “It’s not that straightforward. We cannot allow you to actually give them the Madonna.”

  “Then what the fuck am I supposed to do with it, and how do I get her back?”

  I opened my right eye and shut the left.

  “Someone will be in touch,” he repeated, more firmly than before, and right then, before I could say another word, a train rushed past. I shut both eyes tight, savoring the noise and whoosh and the rumble beneath me, wondering what the passengers would make of the two of us, if any of them stopped sucking at their various electronic iTeats long enough to even notice the pair of monsters on the abandoned platform.

  When the train was gone and the station was quiet again, I opened my eyes. Pickman was gone, too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BAD PENNY AND POSTCARDS FROM HELL

  The abandoned platform was only about six hundred feet south of the Brooklyn Bridge Station, and I’d walked the tracks before and a hell of a lot farther than a paltry six hundred feet. Just mind that third rail, natch, and keep a weather ear open for those racing conqueror worms of stainless steel and fiberglass that call the tunnels home. I was naked except for my pants and the torn duster, and I was starving. It takes a lot out of a dead girl, going all wolfish, getting her ass handed to her by a pack of ghouls, and then puking up her eyeballs. So, first things fucking first. Food and clothes, and, conveniently, the latter tend to come with the former, no added cost or effort. It was only a matter of slipping out of the subway and finding dinner topside. Or breakfast. I had no idea whatsoever how long I’d been down there, how many hours had passed since Selwyn and I had gotten on the train at Fiftieth and Eighth.

  Anyway, fortune smiled, luck was a lady, and all that happy horse shit. No one spotted me climbing from the tracks onto the mostly deserted platform, and I made it through the turnstiles and up the stairs to City Hall Park without incident. There were a few sidelong glances, sure, but nothing any filthy, barefoot bitch slinking about the subway wouldn’t have attracted. Aboveground, more good luck. It was night. Late. Though I wasn’t sure if it was still night or if it was night again. I pulled the tattered duster about me and waited in the shadows beneath the trees. Oh, and I had Selwyn’s bundle, of course.

  I gotta admit, I was feeling better right about then than I probably had any right to feel. Most of my injuries from the previous chapter’s misadventures had healed up nicely. And if I let myself go, there’s a warm and fuzzy place the hunger can take me, all sizzling anticipation, like being horny for days on end and here you know that any moment you’re going to get laid good and proper. Or, say, like savoring all the smells of cooking while you wait for an especially fine meal. Or, fuck it, Quinn. Be honest. Like watching H bubble in the spoon, waiting for the needle’s sweet prick.

  I squatted in the gloom beneath a huge oak tree and waited as the dry autumn leaves rustled overhead. I didn’t have to wait very long. After only twenty minutes or so, a young Korean woman, maybe twenty-five and just about my size, wandered past. She was in a hurry, probably running late and taking a shortcut through the park. I called out to her with the voice of a lost and frightened child. It’s a handy trick I’d learned since Providence. And she fell for it. I can’t say that I was merciful. I was too hungry to be merciful. I did manage to be quiet. I held her down on the grass, one hand clamped tightly over her mouth, the other between her legs. She fought, but only until my teeth sank into the flesh just below her left ear and opened up her carotid. She poured into me, a hot red deluge, and if this sounds like porn, well . . . down here in the pit among the nasties, the genteel distinction between fucking and eating can get awfully blurred sometimes.

  To my credit, I wasn’t messy. After all, I needed her clothes as much as I needed her blood, and I needed them more or less clean. I was careful, and when all was said and done, there were only a few spatters on the collar of her coat. I quickly undressed the corpse and left the body propped against the roots and trunk of the oak. I went to the granite fountain in the square to wash away the grime from the subway, the dried vomit in my hair, and the Korean girl’s blood that stained my sticky face. There were a couple of kids making out on a park bench, but they ignored me while I bathed. The icy water raining down on me felt like heaven. Afterwards, well . . . let’s dispense with all this tedious blow-by-blow nonsense.

  Thanks to the CEO, it had been a while since I’d needed to kill. Okay, discounting the Beast’s recent rampage. What I mean is, it had been a while since I’d done what all honest, hardworking vamps do, finding an unfortunate mark—wrong place, wrong time, as they say—and then drinking until the well goes dry and the heart gives up the ghost. And, sweet Moses on a motorbike, it felt good.

  I could have lain there until dawn, drifting in the crimson buzz and the soft orange glow from the gaslights ringing the fountain.

  But then the seagull showed up.

  It was perched on the edge of the fountain, staring down at me with its beady piss-yellow eyes.

  “Hey,” it squawked. “Nice tits.”

  I glared up at it. Jesus, I hate seagulls. Not as much as I hate Faeries, but still.

  “Who the fuck sent you?” I asked.

  “You know, lady,” it said, ignoring my question, “people do sometimes tend to notice shit like vampires bobbing around naked in public fountains.”

  “While talking to shit-for-brains talking birds,” I said.

  The gull scowled.

  “Nice to meet you too, Sunshine.” It sounded genuinely offended.

  “Who sent you?” I asked again, sitting up and pushing my dripping bangs out of my eyes.

  “I mean,” said the bird in its raspy seagull voice, “I know it’s New York City and all, but . . .”

  “Dude,
am I gonna have to fucking pluck you to get an answer?” I splashed the bird, and it squawked and flapped its wings like it wasn’t fucking waterproof.

  “Just need to be sure you’re really her,” it said, shaking itself indignantly. “‘Be absolutely certain that it’s her.’ That’s what he said.”

  “He who?”

  “Him,” replied the bird. “My employer. And I have a rep to protect, I’ll have you know. I take pride in my work, and I’m not gonna get all slipshod and careless over the likes of you.”

  I splashed him again.

  As I’ve said before, lots of the hoodoo and demonic types routinely employ birds as messengers. Spies, too. Owls, crows, sparrows, pigeons, ravens, ducks, and, especially, seagulls. Their profound lack of scruples makes them imminently useful. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, right? Hell, a herring gull will sell out its whole family for a handful of cold McDonald’s French fries.

  “Show me your hand,” it said. “Your left hand.”

  Which I did. You see, right after the Bride made me what I am, I lost my left pinkie and the second toe off my left foot. Well, no, I didn’t lose them. I sold them to a bogle grifter named Boston Harry in exchange for—never mind. It’s a long story. I held up my left hand.

  The bird nodded its head, making a big show of looking all serious and shit.

  “Okay, good,” it said. “Now, show me your left foot.”

  “Tell you what, birdie. How about I put my foot up your lice-riddled ass and you fuck off back to whatever landfill or chum bucket you call home?”

  The bird scowled again. Seagulls are masters of the scowl.

  “Why you gotta be such a hater? You don’t hear me running down bloodsuckers, do you?”

  I stood up and looked about. The couple on the bench were gone; near as I could tell, it was just me and the bird. I leaned forward and wrung some of the water out of my hair. Then I held up my left foot, balancing on my right. I wiggled the four surviving toes.

  “See, now, was that so damn hard?” asked the gull.

  “If you only knew,” I said, and then I climbed out of the fountain, wishing I had a goddamn towel. I considered using the black T-shirt the Madonna was wrapped in, but that would have meant having to see the thing.

  “Ballard sent me,” the seagull said.

  I stared at it a moment. “Yeah, well, I don’t know anyone named Ballard. So maybe you’ve got the wrong nine-toed, nine-fingered vampire.”

  “Nope, you’re her, all right. You’re Siobhan Quinn Twice-Damned, Twice-Dead. You’re that epic hard-core BAMF went all Chuck Norris on a whole goddamn busload of loups, and, oh, never mind the—”

  I reached down and grabbed the gull’s hooked beak, squeezing it shut.

  “You want me to break this off?”

  The seagull’s eyes went wide with panic. It made a strangled noise, beat at me with its wings, and tried to pull free. So I squeezed just a little harder.

  “I asked you a question. Is that what you want?”

  The bird rolled its yellow eyes, stopped struggling, and shook its head. I turned it loose, and the seagull immediately hopped safely out of reach.

  “So, who’s Ballard?” I asked it.

  “The man who ain’t paying me enough to put up with this sort of abuse to my bodily person,” snapped the bird.

  I retrieved my dinner’s panties and bra from the pile of clothes lying near the edge of the fountain. Both were decorated with My Little Pony characters—a matching fucking set, and I shit you not. I decided I could make do without underwear.

  “You used to work for the guy,” the bird said. “He changes his name a lot, like every damn day, but it always starts with the letter B. Always, always, always. Frankly, he’s sort of a douche, but don’t tell him I said that, okay?”

  I dropped the ridiculous bra and panties and sat staring at the seagull.

  “B,” I said. “B sent you?”

  “Ain’t that what I just said?”

  If I’d been holding the Browning that Pickman had given me, I’d have shot the bird dead, right then and there, before it had a chance to say another goddamn word. Kill the messenger and the message and be done with both.

  “He said you’d be glad to hear from him.”

  “Of course he did.”

  “Wants a face-to-face,” the seagull went on, “this morning, uptown at the Museum of Natural History. Says it’s important. Real important. Wants you there at ten thirty a.m., sharp and on the dot.”

  “Yeah, and people in Hell want hemorrhoid cream, too. You fly back to that son of a bitch and tell him I said he can go fuck himself. I was done with him three years ago, and I’m ten times more done with him now.”

  The bird made a sort of flustered, exasperated face, and I picked up the black turtleneck sweater my dinner had been wearing.

  “He said tell you it’s about the Snow twins. What’s their names? Ishmael and Isis?”

  Suddenly, I felt dizzy, and my mouth had gone dry. Clearly, the cosmos had no intention to stop fucking with me anytime soon, and clearly I had yet to see the bottom of this mess Selwyn Throckmorton had gotten me into.

  “Isaac and Isobel,” I said, and I pulled the sweater on over my head. The wool smelled, not unpleasantly, of sweat, herbal shampoo, and vanilla oil. Then I sat, still naked from the waist down, staring south out across City Hall Park towards Broadway.

  “Yeah, them’s the ones,” said the seagull. “Always been terrible with human names, I have. They all sound alike. Six of one, half dozen of the other. But you’ll meet with him, right? I can tell him that?”

  “What does B have to do with the Snows?”

  “How the heck would I know? You’ll have to ask him yourself. Now, how about you put your britches on. Not too long till sunrise, Sunshine.”

  “Wait, what day is it?” I asked, but the seagull didn’t answer. It just giggled the obnoxious way that seagulls do, and then it flew away and left me sitting there.

  Sitting there alone.

  I pulled on my dinner’s jeans, and her socks, and her shoes—a scuffed and down-at-heel pair of black cowboy boots with red stitching, so score. I sat thinking how, in the old days, I’d have struck out for Boston on my own, and fuck Pickman’s “someone will be in touch” and his “there’s more a stake” shtick. In fact, I’d have said fuck him, in general. If all that mattered to me was getting Selwyn back— and that was all I gave a shit about—I had the twin’s precious gewgaw, didn’t I? How hard could it be to find them?

  But now there was this nagging fear that doing things the old way, my way, might get Selwyn killed—or worse (because when dealing with nasties, there’s always something worse than dying). I’d spent the past three years solving problems with brute fucking force, putting out fires with gasoline, as Mr. Bowie said. There’d never really been anything at stake except my own sorry hide and, occasionally, a paycheck. I’d always come out in one piece, more or less, no matter how close the calls. But now . . .

  Now Selwyn’s life was at stake. And the fact that I cared was paralyzing me. Hobbling my tried-and-true recklessness. Never mind that for all I knew she was already being ceremonially tortured, raped, or served up with an apple in her mouth as the main course at some ghoul fête.

  I looked up, and standing a few feet away, there was a homeless man pushing a baby stroller stuffed to overflowing with garbage. He was just standing there in his filthy rags, staring. And I realized my true face was on display for anyone and everyone who wanted a look-see. So, this guy with his scraggly gray beard and ratty Sherpa hat missing an earflap, he was gazing into the abyss, and it was gazing right back into him. But from his expression, I got the feeling he’d spent a decent part of his life seeing monsters of one sort or another. Maybe he was a war vet, and maybe he was a schizophrenic. Maybe he was just a drunk or a fellow junkie. Whichever way it was, he didn’t
look particularly surprised. Well, good for him. Too many ignorant motherfuckers walking around with blinders on and no idea whatsoever what the world’s really made of.

  I winked at the man, and he smiled a smile mostly devoid of teeth, then went on about his day.

  Overhead, the sky was growing lighter, the oncoming day—whichever one it might prove to be—dimming the stars. I pulled on the dead woman’s black wool peacoat, turned up the collar, and left it unbuttoned. I checked the pockets and found an iPhone, half a pack of American Spirits, a disposable lighter, an unopened pack of Juicy Fruit, and a MetroCard. After checking for cash (there wasn’t any), I’d left her purse with the body, back beneath the oak tree.

  The phone told me it was, in fact, Tuesday morning, 5:55 a.m. So . . . I’d missed a whole damn day in there, presumably lying unconscious on that abandoned subway platform, healing from my wounds while Richard Pickman watched over me. Presumably. There are few things I find more unnerving, on general principle, than missing time. And in this case, it was missing time during which fuck knows what all had happened to Selwyn.

  Anyway, I still had four and a half hours left until I was supposed to see Mean Mr. B, and since I didn’t have money for a taxi, and since I’d had my fill of tunnels and trains, I figured the long walk uptown would be good for me, give me some time to think some of this shit through, consider my options. But on the other hand, let’s say the hand that still had five fingers, what options? It was hard to imagine there was much to think through. I was along for the ride.

  * * *

  I was still about fifteen minutes early, despite having traveled in anything but a straight line and having passed some time poking about the Garment District and Times Square and then the Sheep Meadow. Along the way, I’d shoplifted a head scarf and a pair of cheap black wraparound sunglasses, because nothing screams “I’m not a vampire” like wraparound shades. As long as I didn’t smile and was careful when I spoke, I could almost pass for a normal person. It was a sunny autumn day. Too damn sunny. One of those wide carnivorous skies, right? The blue like the blue of a demon’s eyes? The sun a white-hot hole punched in Heaven? I kept my head down. When I reached the Central Park West entrance of the museum, there was someone waiting on the granite steps to greet me. The constant reader will not have to be reminded of B’s tastes in ass, the parade of pretty young boys and drag queens and transsexuals he wears like cuff links. That day, the pretty young boy who met me couldn’t have been much older than seventeen, and he had hair the color of pomegranate seeds and eyes such a startling shade of green I knew he was wearing colored contacts. His fake fur coat and lime-green patent-leather go-go boots looked like something stolen off a dead Russian hooker.