by Ian Hiatt
A Division of Whampa, LLC
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© 2016 Ian Hiatt
www.ianhiatt.com
Cover Art by Eugene Teplitsky
http://eugeneteplitsky.deviantart.com
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ISBN 978-1-62007-691-0 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-62007-692-7 (paperback)
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For all the people who indulged my addiction to penning words.
Congrats, you’re all enablers.
’m a problem solver.
Or maybe you could call me a freelance recruiter for the eternally losing team.
Passive-aggressive bounty hunter?
Whatever you want to call me, it doesn’t change what I do.
And tonight, I am on my game. I’m dressed to kill and downing the free drinks Terrance O’Halloran is buying for me. He’s a good-looking boy, no question about it. Trust fund baby pulling down a C average at an Ivy league in the middle of Boston or New York or some other metropolis far cleaner than the one he’s come home to roost in. He’d probably go and work for Daddy once he got himself a nice piece of paper to hang on his wall, letting everyone know it only took him six years to convince his professors to accept bribes.
I don’t take bribes, though. I do take bourbon on the rocks. Straight. But Terrance is a frat boy at best. So I finish off the cocktails he sends me all night with some disgust. Eventually, he works up the courage―read: buzz―to come over and ask me for a dance.
“Hey, baby, I bet you can do all kinds of things with that body,” he says, his voice husky and warm on the back of my bare neck. His hand cuts up the smooth and slinky black dress I’ve picked for the occasion. While his line twists inside me, therein lays the joy in my work.
I casually toss back the ringlets of my crimson hair, draping them on the shoulder farthest from the disgustingly moist breath as he stops short of thrusting his hips against me. With a soft laugh and inebriated demeanor, I turn to him and let my lips pucker for a fraction of a second.
He notices. They always notice.
“You have no idea,” I say to him, leaning close and doing my best to match his gruffness.
His gaze falls to the ground to stare at my heeled feet, then traces up my legs, eventually taking note of every individual curve. He’s writing his roadmap for tonight. What places he plans to visit when he finally convinces me to come back to his apartment paid for by money he never earned. He gives me a nod of approval. I’ve passed his test. Intoxicated, beautiful, and so incredibly out of his league that he’d be insane to resist me.
“Why don’t you come show me then?” he says, not really asking as he grabs my wrist and gives me a tug toward the gyrating crowd of twenty-somethings in the middle of the club. He’s spent the night pumping me full of wasted drinks. Fruity flavors only elicit boredom from me.
Amid the flashing mauve lights of sweat and unquenched desire that is the Saint Roch City nightlife, Terrence tries his luck, pressing close to a predator he takes for prey. I meet each of his movements, leaning into him. He needs to believe that I’ll be his tonight. His pet. His to control. Those fumbling hands wander and grab at me. I choke down vomit with each of his awkward groping misadventures, but I still manage to do the same back.
If the bounty weren’t so high on this waste of oxygen, I wouldn’t be bothering.
Sometimes, I like to play with them. But this one wouldn’t be worth the cab fare back to his place and the trouble of finishing the job in the morning.
Eventually, when his fingers scratch at my chest and threaten to tear the dress that I’ve grown so fond of over the course of the night, I decide that I’ve had enough. He’s drunk. He’s horny. He’s done.
I lean in and whisper into his ear. “Why don’t we go back to your place for a little… privacy?”
He grins like a dog that’s just been given a bone, stupid and giddy.
“Yeah, baby. I’ll show you a good time…” I couldn’t even make up the lines falling out of the poor bastard’s mouth. I slide my hand along the rim of his pants, tightening his leash. He won’t wander far.
By the time we leave the club, I hear him salivating beside me, his breath puffing small clouds in the cold night. If I let him, he’d throw me on the rusted-out dumpster in the alley and take me right there. If I wanted him to get tetanus, I might. But I don’t want this stupid prick lingering. Lingering jobs are reserved for the truly wonderful dregs of society.
He stumbles a few times as we walk, whether from the drink or the desire, I can’t be sure. Either way, it’s perfect. I’ve only dedicated three hours to this job, and at my rate, that’s several thousand dollars per groping, drink-fueled hour.
“Mmm, baby, I am going to do all kinds of shit to you… You want that?”
He grabs my wrist again and then pulls me against him, stopping on the sidewalk.
I lean close to him, but I don’t let him taste my lips. I never let them kiss me. With a breathy moan, I grab his shirt and pull him against me.
“I’m all yours tonight,” I say before stepping off the curb and giving him a devilish grin and a beckoning hand as I pull the neckline of my dress down just the slightest bit, exposing enough cleavage to make his eyes light up like a thirst-addled man spotting an oasis. He is clay in my hands.
As I step back a few more paces, my heels echoing clicks up and down the night-lit street, I arch an eyebrow. He steps from the curb, his foot splashing in the puddle of the gutter, staring at me with insatiable lust.
He crows and smiles. “Oh, baby, you are gunna look so good ridin—”
His head bounces smoothly against the hood of the oncoming silver Lexus, the sharp crack of a skull fracture lighting up my night. With his body lifted off the ground, he moves like a rag doll tossed about by a toddler, ignorant to the fact that the human body can only contort in so many ways. Terrance O’Halloran lands like a heap of unwanted garbage on the side of the road, the crumbled curbing snapping his neck to the tune of a used toothpick, as though he needs anymore causes of death for the morgue to choose from. The driver of the Lexus pauses, eying me while I stand in the middle of the road, a light breeze carrying my hair as effortlessly as the soft fabric of my dress. The silver car speeds off into the night, likely to find an all-night car wash to scrub away the blood smeared over the fine vehicle.
The dull, glassy eyes of poor Terrance stare up at me like any other species of road kill you might come across. The dumb bastard is still grinning as his brain matter leaks into the puddle he had stumbled in only moments ago.
I sigh and purse my lips. It was a boring death to come up with, but I’d rather his obituary not make him sound like a hero. I consider checking his wallet for cash, but I know I’ll have an envelope of at least twenty grand slid under the door of my cozy three-room apartment. I’m a hungry vixen, but not greedy.
My name is Layla. And I am a siren.
s expected, the manila envelope has been slid under my door. It must’ve only just made it under the crack, as it’s stuffed with stacks of Benjamins, non-coincidentally my favorite monetary character. I tear it open and count out my payment to make sure I haven’t b
een stiffed. I’m not sure what O’Halloran did to deserve becoming a hood ornament, and I don’t care, either. In my line of work―waste disposal―you learn not to concern yourself with the garbage you take out. A twenty-grand contract means I’ll be able to pay my bills for another month and still have enough to squirrel away between marks.
A yawn, bitter from a late night, escapes me as I kick off my heels and slide my dress off. A shake of my head and the blood-red hair melts back to my preferred black. Black hair doesn’t make the trust-fund babies come running. Can’t tell you why they enjoy thinking about the red sprawled out on their sheets. Part of me―the morbid part―likes to pretend it has to do with the stuff they end up leaking all over the sheets. Or the road, in O’Halloran’s case. And probably leaking down the drain at a twenty-four-hour car wash on the outskirts of Saint Roch. Whoever drove that sleek silver car had to be the type that likes keeping it sparkling clean, but that dent on the hood wouldn’t wash out.
After snatching the bathrobe dangling from the edge of the bathroom door, I carry my bounty to the bedroom and kneel down in front of my bed. After a night of dressing up for a crowd and a drunken fool, it is so freeing to have the plush carpeting on my bare skin, with no one to touch me. I slide out the heavy safe I keep beneath my bed, the wheels on the track it sits on squeaking just so. I punch in the electronic combination, pull the safe door open, and drop the envelope in beside the others. I run my fingers run over the papers, taking stock of my holdings while the dampness of the muggy winter night picks up in my apartment. My brow sweats and the plush of the carpet begins to soak at my knees as I lean over my bounty. Bounties.
Remember, Layla. Get half up front. My mother used to drive that into me from the first day we stepped off the coach bus. I can still smell the exhaust from the engine way past its expiration date.
Saint Roch is a hell of a city, mostly ‘cause it’s the city from Hell. That was the bus driver. He’d questioned my mother’s sanity in bringing an eight-year-old girl to this city. It’s not the kind of place you would bring a normal kid to. It’d be just north of negligent homicide.
I’m not the deadliest creature prowling the streets. Most nights I feel like the least dangerous thing. But I’m also driven. My employers like driven.
I close the safe and slide it back under my bed. I get to my feet and walk toward my balcony, the bright lights of the city pooling in over the wafting silk curtains. I reach past the red fabric and unlatch the glass door, then slide it open to let the billowing wind in, sending the curtains across my body. They shroud me, covering my body like the cocoon of a lethal moth. Bursting forth, I step out onto the balcony.
The crisp winter air nips at me, but I don’t care. The moon shines above, the sky surprisingly clear for a major metropolitan area. Nightclubs up on Fifty-Eighth Street radiate with neon lights, and the Crux even has its spotlights flaring to the heavens, as though anyone still needs to be told that it’s the center of the world. Robert Nox, the illustrious owner, operating the club out of the lower floors, has stopped just short of having a red portrait of himself created to shine off the high-rise building he owns.
The top floors contain the brothel. Even the Saint Roch PD is afraid to touch it.
I lean over the railing, my breath making involuntary clouds to float up the street to my neighbors. The skin of my hand burns frigid, the metal railing coated in a very fine layer of ice. The night twists and turns over my sheer-covered curves, desperate to find some place it can grab hold of me. But it doesn’t really matter; I won’t ever really feel it. The blessing of the siren, my mother said.
Her reasoning behind leading my father into the spinning tail rotor of a helicopter.
I shrug at the thought when I hear a short exhalation beside me, and I glance over to see my neighbor, Cassie, leaning on her own balcony. She’s clad in a thick robe, her hand grasping a wineglass like the life preserver of a sinking cruise liner.
“You should really cover up a touch more. You’re liable to catch a cold,” Cassie says. She takes a sip of the wine, and I shrug off her thought as quickly as I do my own.
“You’re one to talk.”
She grins, turning back to the city to take in the same view I’ve been devouring. Her own gifts show for a moment at her smile―twin reptilian fangs, hypodermic needles courtesy of some rather strange family traits. Cassie and I don’t exactly sit in the same knitting circles, but we’re civil neighbors. At least to the degree that we don’t judge each other for where our meals come from. Mine, the all-night burrito joint on the corner of Lexington and Eighth. Hers from the occasional hapless tourist.
“Long night?” Cassie asks, swirling her glass to let the red drink spin like a merciless sea.
Not for the first time, I consider stepping back inside to grab the bottle of Jack I’ve got stashed beneath my pillows. Once her breath-clouds drift to me, and I catch the acrid-sweet aroma of her fresh venom, I answer.
“You could say that. Had to work tonight.”
“I see. Late night, then?” Cassie says, pulling a wrought iron patio chair out and curling up in it. She tucks her legs up close, and I wonder―not for the first time―if she’s as cold-blooded as her serpentine animal kingdom relatives.
Snapping back from my wandering wonders, I nod. “Later than I would’ve liked.”
“Who was it this time?” She sips her wine, and when I look over to her, I catch the faintest glint of her slit pupils reflected in the moonlight. She really is quite beautiful for such a strange creature―as though I’m one to cast stones. I’m just grateful she takes only those of the male persuasion into her bed; otherwise she’d be trying to leap across the balcony to take me. Another blessing of the siren. Snakes can do a lot of strange things, but seventy-five-foot falls are likely not one of them.
I sit down on the floor of the balcony and cross my legs, the same fine layer of ice that coated the railing now melting beneath my robe and warm skin. I lean back against the closed portion of my slider and shrug. “Just some guy. No one special. O’Halloran?” I look over to see if the name rings any bells to her―or rather her crime-lord mother. Cassie stays out of the family business, but that doesn’t mean her ears stop working at Sunday dinners. Or whatever it is snakes do when they gather.
She seems more interested in the swirling of her wine, though. “Sounds like no one special. I bet you he just slept with some guy’s wife.”
My face cracks audibly in the night, and I’m comfortable with the smile growing there. “Probably. He didn’t seem like he’d be all that good a time. I feel bad for the guy’s wife.”
Cassie snickers beside me and takes a long drink from her glass, emptying it, and then setting it down on the wrought iron table, the metal and uneven legs scraping a little on the concrete of her balcony. She adopts the cross-legged position I’ve been sporting for the last few moments and looks up and down our street.
Unlike Fifty-Eighth, our slice of hell on Jefferson Street has long since gone quiet. Apart from the woman on the corner who sells spices and strange ingredients that Betty Crocker would never call for, Cassie and I are the only ones on our street. The only nonhumans. Most of our neighbors are just blue-collar people. Dock workers who are very aware that swimming in the Swift River―an original name if ever there was one―is a death sentence. A few doors down, there’s a cop and his accountant wife. I think one of the guys across the street runs numbers for Pete Dawson, the boss of the West End.
In the palette that is Saint Roch, our neighborhood is one of the few mixed colors. Humans and Inhumans living side by side, usually unknowingly. Nicolai Lecomte, one of the old-blood human patriarchs in our fair metropolis, owns most of the buildings around us, including our own. For all the superiority my kind might feel over them, the humans have always had one steadfast advantage. They were here first. For many, that very fact fuels the constant fire in the streets.
For my part, I could not possibly care less who lives on my block. Nicolai seems to
feel the same, except that the number of zeroes in my security deposit tells me he knows what I am and likely what my source of income entails. But Cassie and I abide by the rule of not eating where you shit―or in this case live. She keeps to the streets of the flashy motels and illegal casinos for her meals when she has the desire. And, let’s face it, no one who can afford my rates has the urge to kill a taxi driver or a liquor store clerk. My marks lean more toward the wise-guy persuasion.
A shiver runs through my neighbor, and she spreads her robe out. Curious as to what a shiver might actually feel like when necessary, I stare at her legs and wonder if she has goose bumps spreading up her skin. Do the nerves beneath tingle at the night air? Abandoning my lotus seating, I stand, grabbing the railing to heave myself up. My robe ripples in protest, clinging to me as soon as I’m on my feet. As though thinking it finally has a chance, a stiff breeze blows down Jefferson and tries to illicit something from me. My hair tosses about, and I feel the wind slipping through the thin fabric to attack my thighs, my neck, my chest. But it’s nothing more than information.
Yes, Layla. There is wind hitting you right now. It’s somewhere near thirty-five degrees, coming from the southwest. Would you also like to know the debris of pollen, smog, and dead insect parts it contains?
But I can’t feel it. It doesn’t make me want to cover up as Cassie does. She looks to me and smiles a little as I probably look like I might pitch myself over the side, gripping the metal bars with the ferocity of a prisoner.
From the Eastside of town we hear a shrill scream from one of the high-rise hotels, and both of us look over just in time to see it. A man tumbling from one of the topmost floors, plummeting to be caught by the curb below. He’ll make the Saint Roch Police Department work late tonight.
Cassie chuckles and I glance over to see that she’s brought her camera out with her and has it trained on the high-rise. She stands up and walks to the very edge of her balcony, holding out the camera to me. “Here, have a look.”
