Moonshine (2010)

by Johnson, Alaya

  Now we were getting somewhere. “Does she live around here?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Now, that’s the thing. I don’t really know. I never saw her leave the station. They were just here, and then . . . gone.”

  “You mean they disappeared?”

  “No, no. They’d go over there.” He pointed to where the platform continued for a few yards into the dark subway tunnel. He tried to snatch the coins from my hand. “I swear, that’s all I know. Leave a poor fella alone, won’t you? I need some sleep.”

  Amir shrugged, and I let the coins drop. “If you see her again, tell her to visit the Lower East Side Citizen’s Council and leave a message for Zephyr Hollis about her son.”

  I almost winced to give my name, but to my eternal plea sure, he didn’t recognize me. Perhaps I didn’t need to move to the Yukon after all.

  The man watched us warily until we reached the staircase. “You should stake that boy,” he called, after we were out of range of his smell. “That sort of thing’s illegal and you know it.”

  To our surprise, Judah paused and turned toward the man. “I wouldn’t want your blood, anyway,” he said, in a clear, carrying voice. “You smell, and I’m a good vampire.”

  A good vampire?

  “Did you tell him that?” I whispered to Amir, when we left the station.

  He shrugged and shook his head. “Maybe Kardal’s been at him. Wouldn’t surprise me, moral bastard.”

  In the distance I heard the sound of snickering and a sudden tinkle of broken glass. There must be a few speakeasies around here, and I wondered how many of them already were serving the new vampire wonder-drug. My jaw cracked with a yawn and Amir turned to me, as though shocked to remember that I was human. He held my hand and Judah’s shoulder, and teleported us to the front of my building. The sensation felt like no more than an unpleasant jolt, now. And certainly easier than bicycling or taking the subway. The street was dead silent, but I was oppressively aware of glints in open windows up and down the block. It seemed the vigilante spirit had spread from Catherine Lane. And what if they recognized what Judah was? I shuddered.

  “Take him back, Amir. Everyone’s too keyed-up about Faust—there’s no telling what they’ll do if they see . . .”

  He understood. “Careful,” he said. “I’ll find you tomorrow.” He embraced me and planted a quick, fiery kiss on my forehead. He and Judah walked down the block until they were hidden in a puddle of shadow, and disappeared.

  I pushed open the door to the bedroom quietly, but Aileen was still awake. She perched on the windowsill, chain-smoking in her oversized teddy and nylon-hose turban. Her hands were shaking.

  “You’re going to kill yourself, you keep up like this,” she said. “Amir must know how dangerous what you’re doing is. I don’t trust him, Zephyr.”

  “Is that a . . .”

  She shook her head and stubbed out a cigarette. “No, not a vision. Just run-of-the-mill concern.” She cracked open the window and tipped out the bowl of butts and ashes. “So you believe me, then?”

  I was so exhausted I thought I might faint where I stood. Aileen looked nearly as bad. The shadows under her eyes were almost black in the moonlight. “They haven’t stopped?” I asked.

  Aileen shrugged. “I feel like a radio for the other side. Smoking seems to stop them.”

  “Poor Aileen,” I whispered. I hugged her tightly and waited until she could let go and cry. I couldn’t have imagined a more horrible thing to happen to her. “We’ll figure this out,” I said. “There have to be ways to control the visions.”

  “But you thought I was just hungry, this morning. What happened?”

  I sighed. “The thing outside the door last night? It wasn’t just a stray cat. It was a revenant. You shouldn’t have known it was an Other. I didn’t want to believe it, but . . .”

  Aileen pulled herself away from my shoulder. “Zeph, what was a revenant cat doing outside our door?”

  I bit my lip, but I didn’t have the energy to lie. “A threat,” I said, “from our favorite gangster.”

  Aileen hiccupped and then laughed as she blew her nose into a handkerchief. “And I thought I had problems!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Aileen and I woke up an hour before dawn to the sounds of shotguns echoing down the street. Aileen fell off her bed. I struggled up on one elbow and squinted at the window.

  The next round of gunshots sounded like cannon fire from beneath our beds. Aileen moaned.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” I muttered. I stalked to the window and pushed it open. The icy wind blew in immediately, cutting through my flannel nightgown.

  “Zeph, what are you—”

  I grit my teeth and leaned out of the window. “Will you stop it?” I hollered, cupping my hands around my mouth. “This is not the bleeding O.K. Corral! It’s Ludlow Street, and I’d like to go to work without getting shot!”

  Aileen yanked me back inside by the arm and shut our window. “Are you barmy, Zeph? Don’t answer that. Ugh, it’s freezing.”

  We both tried to get an extra twenty minutes of sleep, but as soon as the sun rose the noise of gunshots was replaced by the incessant wail of sirens streaming all over the city. Aileen claimed use of the bathroom first, and I followed her, bleary-eyed and feeling more exhausted than I had when I went to sleep.

  I said good-bye to Aileen and fetched my bicycle from beneath the staircase. Not a few street corners I passed had wary-looking sentinels awkwardly toting rifles. It was enough to make even the most sanguine pedestrian feel like she was taking her life in her hands just by going to work. The tensions were even higher around St. Marks, which held more than its fair share of gin joints. The streets were surprisingly empty, and the few people who had dared to go outside huddled under their hats and scarves and refused to acknowledge anyone as they hurried past.

  I heard the commotion outside the Blood Bank before I saw it. It sounded like a prize fight in the tenth round—boisterous, dangerous and full of illicit, disturbing fun. More than a dozen vampires, already blistering red in the weak dawn sun, had smashed the front windows of the Bank with some loose bricks, and appeared to be raiding the stores. They huddled in the shadow of the westward-facing building, laughing drunkenly and guzzling the plastic bags of hard-won blood as carelessly as bottles of pop at a carnival. I looked for the golem and saw it lying among the broken glass. They had torn its squat torso in two, but the animated halves still flailed weakly against the pavement. A small crowd of onlookers stood on the edge of the block—some watching, some pleading with them to stop. The vampires weren’t paying them the slightest attention. I let my bicycle drop to the sidewalk and sprinted forward.

  “Ysabel?” I shouted.

  She didn’t respond, but I saw her a moment later. She was at the front, being restrained by her husband and a young man I recognized as one of her collection agents. She let forth a string of Yiddish I didn’t understand but gathered wasn’t entirely suitable for polite company. I pushed my way through the crowd and put my hand on her shoulder. She turned to me, a wild grimace on her face, and I flinched. She was weeping in her rage.

  “Oh, Zephyr, bubbala, look at them! All our supplies . . .”

  “Fellas!” One of the raiding vampires hurled a crate of blood out of the broken window. It smashed apart on the sidewalk, spilling blood bags. “Found the good stuff. It’s all M.”

  They all rushed toward it, discarding what were, in some cases, nearly full bags of blood. I wanted to cry when I saw the precious red liquid seeping uselessly into the cobblestones.

  “You demons!” Ysabel shrieked. “How can you do this? How can you waste so much! It’s not for you!”

  One of the raiding vampires, an older woman, finally deigned to notice her. “Hey, Grandma, you want some?” She squeezed a bag between her hands, splattering our faces and clothes with the dark-red preserved blood. Ysabel sank to her knees.

  “That’s it,” I muttered. I headed toward them at a brisk walk,
unsheathing my knife from beneath my skirt. They didn’t pay me much attention. Not until I launched myself at the wide-eyed vampire who had taunted Ysabel. She crumpled beneath me—Faust evidently made vampires clumsy, in addition to reckless. I held the silver knife to her throat, smelled the distinctive scent of charring vampire flesh, and smiled.

  “Let go of the damn blood,” I said.

  I thought I sounded eminently calm and reasonable, but apparently her fellows finally saw someone worth noticing. Their laughter died in their throats, and they stared at me in drunken shock. Suddenly the only sounds to break the silence were the strangled gurgles of the unfortunate woman beneath my blessed blade.

  “You want her to die?” I said, when it appeared that they didn’t quite grasp the point.

  “Hey,” said the one who had fallen on the pile of precious rare blood, “don’t be like that. Just a bit of fun.”

  “Pardon me if I don’t see theft and murder as a bit of fun.”

  “Murder? No one’s murdered anyone!”

  I stood up, hauling my vampire to her feet. “Yet,” I said. “So, what is it? Stay here, and let her die? Or leave and save all your sorry asses?”

  “Come on,” croaked my prone vampire, “let’s just go. Not worth it, right?”

  I was still too angry to feel afraid, and it looked as though my insane scheme might just be working. The vampires looked warily at each other and then, one by one, began dropping their bags of blood. A few had even walked off when something slammed into my right side, smashing me against the cobblestones with bone-jarring force. My knife fell from my hand.

  “She’s just a bleeder,” someone above me said with a contemptuous laugh.

  “Zephyr!” That must be Ysabel.

  And bloody stakes, suddenly I realized just how stupid I had been. No help for it now. One vampire grabbed my left arm, as though to hold me against the pavement.

  “Always better fresh . . .” I looked up—it was the vampire I’d pinned down, looking flushed and filled with wild, reckless strength.

  Behind her, another vampire crouched, after a piece of the action. Fuck. As Aileen said, being immune didn’t mean they couldn’t bleed me to death. And where the hell were the police when you needed them?

  I bucked, dragging my arm in a painful jerk across the abrasive cobblestones while simultaneously contorting my body so I could aim a precise kick at the vampire’s rib cage. She groaned and relaxed her grip just enough for me to wrench free and stand up. There were three other suckers within striking distance, but the most worrying was one to my immediate right. He rushed toward me, laughing at what he still clearly thought would be an easy mark. I let him come, filled with the familiar, eerie joy. He groped inexpertly for my throat. I dodged him, gripped his shoulders and used his momentum to knock him to the ground beside me. I slammed my boot on his neck. Scanned the ground for my blade, and knelt to pick it up. The remaining suckers paused, looking at me warily.

  “Sun’s getting stronger,” I pointed out, blinking the sweat from my eyes.

  Suddenly, they started running, bumping into each other in their haste to get away. “The sun isn’t that bright,” I muttered, looking around the suddenly deserted street. I saw the real reason for their rapid dispersal a moment later: the police had finally arrived. I’d been so involved in the fight that I hadn’t even heard the sirens. A police officer hauled the vampire beneath my boot from the ground, and slapped special Other-grade handcuffs around his wrists.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” It was a young officer, looking at me in obvious concern. He was attractive in a wholesome, fresh-faced way. I smiled, but this seemed to worry him even more. I looked briefly down at myself: well, I suppose I’d be worried too. I was covered in so much blood—almost none of it my own—that I must have resembled Lizzie Borden.

  “They didn’t bite me,” I said. “I’m fine. And you fellas sure took your own sweet time, huh?”

  He shrugged awkwardly. “There are disturbances all over the city, unfortunately, ma’am. We’ve got a shortage.”

  I looked back at the ruined Blood Bank. “And now so do we,” I said quietly. Ysabel came up behind me and enveloped me in a fierce hug.

  “I never saw something so brave,” she said, burying her face in my shirt. “I thought for sure you were dead. And they didn’t bite you?”

  I reassured her I was fine, though at this point I’d begun to wonder myself. What had I been thinking? My left arm ached—not broken, but I’d have lovely purpling bruises there by this evening. I’d left significant portions of my shoulder skin on the cobblestones. And all because I’d thought I could single-handedly fend off a marauding posse of more than a dozen suckers? The sensation of the knife beneath my skirts—and even worse, the knife in my hands—had begun to feel almost comforting in its familiarity. I had smiled when I felt that poor, Faust-addled sucker squirming beneath my blessed blade. Smiled. I was suddenly grateful that I’d skipped breakfast. At least now I didn’t have anything to throw up.

  I stayed with Ysabel for another half hour, while she surveyed the damage and collected what remained of the blood collection. Saul released the poor golem from its torment—erasing one of the Hebrew letters of “truth” inscribed on its forehead to read “dead.” All told, the vampires had drunk or destroyed seventy percent of all the supplies, including most of the rare forms of blood. The shortage would cripple the Bank for at least the next week and a half, until the regulars could come back and donate. I described what suckers I remembered to one of the officers, though from his expression I doubted that they would look very hard for them.

  “They won’t do anything, will they?” Ysabel said, after the police had left.

  I grimaced. “Well, between Rinaldo and Jimmy Walker, the wheels are so greased it’s a wonder they don’t spin off.”

  “Rinaldo’s a schlemiel. But you mark my words, things keep up like this, it’ll get too big for even old Mayor Herod to ignore.”

  It took me twice as long to bicycle home as normal, I ached so badly. My hip had taken a beating in the fall, too, it seemed. But Ysabel’s words had given me an idea, and I didn’t have much time to implement it. Jimmy Walker, corrupt and ineffectual though he may be, still had a nominal public mandate. Enough public pressure, and he’d have to change his policy. And if I was going to get recognized everywhere in this damn town anyway, I could at least use my notoriety for good. But first, I had to clean myself up. A brief glance in the mirror made me wince: I looked like I’d been on the losing end of a bar fight. And not far from the truth, at that. I took a sponge bath with tepid water, doing my best to clean the grit from the graze on my shoulder. It was only when I hobbled back to my room that the sobering truth dawned on me: I had run out of clothes. Three sensible skirts and five blouses served me quite well under normal circumstances. But now they were all either covered in mud or blood or both. I still had Aileen’s flapper dress, but I couldn’t very well wear it in the middle of the day.

  I wrapped my kimono more tightly around my waist and went back down the stairs, gripping the banister like an arthritic pensioner. Mrs. Brodsky was in the parlor when I padded in. She seemed appalled at my state of undress, and I braced myself for her tirade, but something made her snap her mouth shut.

  “Vampire?” she asked.

  Oh, yes. I had forgotten that I looked nearly as terrible as I felt. “About twelve.”

  She clucked her tongue. “The other girls, they all have sensible jobs. But you, Zephyr . . .”

  I rubbed my temples. “It’s been a bad week. And I need to use the phone.”

  I called the offices of the Evening Herald, and could have cried when Lily came to the phone. I didn’t know what I would have done if she was out on assignment. She, however, was decidedly less thrilled.

  “I just got a visit from my friend at the Daily News. Want to know what their cover story is? ‘Vampire Suffragette Fights Back: Our Girl Faces Down Sucker Pack.’ And they have a money shot, Zephyr. Yo
u look like a fucking Valkyrie.”

  “Bloody stakes.”

  “You’re supposed to be my source! You do something, I get to hear about it first!”

  “It’s not like I planned this, Lily!”

  She sighed. “I figured. Aren’t you supposed to help vampires?”

  “It’s been a bad week. Listen, if you want another scoop, I need your help.”

  Lily sounded immediately wary. “What kind of help? You know I can’t violate my journalistic—”

  “Oh, get off it, Lily. I just need some clothes.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Ha ha. Everything I own is a bloody mess. I want to catch Jimmy Walker at recess and make a scene about the Faust disturbances. Given all my damn press lately, I’m sure you can parley that into a solid three inches. What do you say?”

  It didn’t take Lily long to decide. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  Lily arrived twenty-eight minutes later, carrying what looked to me like half her wardrobe, but was apparently just the ten or so items she could bear to part with.

  I looked enviously at her latest ensemble. A bias-cut dress of green chiffon velvet, with four dramatic blue stripes cutting diagonally down to the dropped hemline and then wrapping around back. I didn’t know how I could pull anything like that off. In this neighborhood, it had seemed safer (and cheaper) to go with sensible. But being around Lily made me long for stylish.

  I shrugged. “Well, have at it.”

  In the end, we settled on a green fitted vest with a double row of buttons, a wide-collared coat with black trim and matching skirt, with a daring little slit up the side. She produced a black velvet cloche trimmed with a green silk floret to finish everything off, and then stood back appraisingly.

  “Not bad,” she said, breaking into a sudden grin. “The shoes are a shame, but we’ve mostly hidden the bruises.”