Moonshine (2010)

by Johnson, Alaya

  “And you won’t ruin your precious reputation for some paltry thing like another woman’s life.”

  Troy looked hurt that I’d impugn his honor. “And when we kill the Turn Boys, we’ll save hundreds of lives.”

  Like Judah’s, I thought. I sighed. “Then promise me, promise me that when you get to the Turn Boys, you will find out where Rinaldo is before you kill them. Nicholas knows. Make him tell you. And afterward, you guys will help me kill Rinaldo.”

  Daddy stood up and hollered, “Now, that’s my girl! You want to take on the meanest sucker in the city? Count me in.”

  Troy, on the other hand, did not look nearly so enthused. “Well, John,” he said, turning to Daddy, “that isn’t actually in our contract. We’re only paid for—”

  “Who gives a rat’s ass what we’re paid for? Don’t worry, we’ll finish the job, Troy. But then let’s have some fun afterward.”

  I ran and hugged Daddy so tightly that my feet cleared the ground. His muscles were hard as ever as he lifted me, and I felt myself suddenly, immensely grateful that he was still a match for the vampires he hunted.

  “Hey, Zeph,” he said, ruffling my hair, “it’ll be okay, you’ll see.” He set me down. I looked up at him, then Mama.

  “Well, wish me luck,” I said. “I’m going to go after him myself, in case you fellas are too late.”

  “You’re gonna hunt in that getup?” Daddy said. I looked at my clothes, and admitted that it seemed a little impractical. I was still running through Lily’s discards, and the current offering featured a scalloped blue silk skirt with a matching tunic top tied low on my hips. The shoes were my practical boots with one-inch heels, but none of it exactly screamed “Defender on a mission.” Well, I wasn’t a Defender anymore, now was I? No, I was Zephyr Hollis, Vampire Suffragette, and she knew how to dress.

  I grinned. “What else?”

  I scanned the weapons table and picked up a leftover short sword in a scabbard (knowing Daddy, they’d all be sharp enough to slice a hair lengthwise). I jammed it through the tie of my tunic and then hefted the last remaining pistol. It was a bit older and heavier than I knew the other boys liked, but it would suit my purposes.

  “It isn’t loaded,” Troy said, his voice oddly quiet.

  “Well, you know damn well I can’t shoot anyway.” I gave the empty barrel a meditative twirl and then dropped it into the deep pockets in the tunic. Lily would not have approved.

  I walked to the door, still feeling surprisingly jaunty, all things considered, and waved. “See you folks later. I hope.”

  “Zephyr, wait!” Mama wore a familiar expression: the abject terror she always attempted to mask when Daddy or I (or one of my brothers) went out on a mission.

  “I’ll be—”

  She shook her head. “No, take this.” She handed me a short sword. I’d seen so many weapons in the room it took me a moment to place its plain scabbard and wrapped leather pommel. The pagan-blessed blade Amir bought off of Troy. I took it, though sudden dread made my fingertips prickle with cold.

  She hugged me. “I think he’d like you to have it, sweetie,” she whispered, so softly I knew only I could hear her.

  The Beast’s Rum was rowdier than it had been the last several times I’d stopped by—packed with loud humans and vampires, almost all conspicuously male and smelling like it, too. I spied Nicholas near the bar, holding up a glass of dark liquid and proposing a toast.

  “Let those bleeders shake in their houses!” he yelled. “I’d say it’s time we had a little fun. And no damn nigger is going to stop us, am I right?”

  A loud chorus of ayes greeted this rhetorical question. I looked around a little more carefully. Yes, these vampires were in an advanced state of inebriation. And since none of them were bleeding onto the floor, I could only assume that Rinaldo had found some way around his recalcitrant distributor. At the very least, Amir had come to regret his involvement with Faust. I remembered his chagrin at Ysabel’s, when he was first confronted with its effects. Thinking about that, and what had happened after, my chest ached.

  “Zephyr!” Charlie yelled, pushing his way through the crowd to reach me. “Oh, fancy seeing you here. You’re looking lovely.”

  I smiled in what I hoped was a beguiling, charming way and thanked him. “What’s all this? I thought you told me your dealer cut off the Faust shipments.”

  Charlie smiled, apparently happy to be the first person to tell me the news. “Oh, turns out the Boss found a runaround this morning. Not as high quality as the nigger, but good enough.”

  Oh, Amir had chosen such charming business partners. Well, nothing else for it. Nicholas had spotted me and gave me a regal nod. I hated to admit it, but there were many things I liked about the head Turn Boy. And as for the rest, knowing his history, I felt more pity for him than hatred. I wouldn’t stop Daddy from killing him, if it came to that, but I had to try to save Aileen first. And that meant using a certain type of persuasion.

  “Hey, take me to Nicholas,” I shouted in Charlie’s ear. “I need to speak to him about something.”

  Charlie nodded and grabbed my hand. Some bodyguard he was. He didn’t even comment on the conspicuous blades in my belt.

  “What’s so important, Charity?” Nicholas asked, when Charlie pushed us to the bar. He was clearly a little intoxicated, but thank God not too addled for my purposes. In fact, his inebriation might work out to the good.

  “I have a favor to ask,” I said, reaching into my pocket.

  He raised his eyebrows. “A favor? Don’t you know I’m a Turn Boy?”

  I smiled. “Ah, but see, I have this sneaking suspicion that you like me.”

  “Do I?”

  “Which is why I hope you won’t be too mad at me for doing this.” I hefted the pistol and put the barrel smoothly to Nicholas’s chest. Charlie and several nearby patrons yelled. Nicholas didn’t even flinch. In fact, he leaned forward

  “I don’t think I have to tell you, but the bullets are silver,” I lied.

  He cocked his head. “What do you want?”

  “Get everyone who isn’t a Turn Boy out of here, for starters.”

  “You heard the girl! Get your sorry asses out of here! Charlie, deal with it.” Charlie’s parting glance at me was so hurt that I almost winced.

  “Hey, Nick, let me get her,” one of the Turn Boys shouted when the other patrons had left the bar. “She’s just a bleeder, no match for one of us.”

  “You wanna bet his life on it?” I said. “All I have to do is twitch a finger.”

  “Leave it, Tomaso,” Nicholas snapped. “Well, Zephyr Hollis, I think I like you even more, now. What’s this all about?”

  “Your dad has a friend of mine and I really want her back. And see, it happens that you’re the only person in this damn town who knows where he is, so I have a simple proposition for you: help me get her back, and I’ll give you boys a head start on a pack of Defenders that have a contract to kill you.”

  Nicholas narrowed his eyes at me, then wobbled. “Bruno!” he said. “Give me a Virgin Mary.”

  Bruno, looking as calm as ever behind the bar, poured a glass of clean blood and slid it across to Nicholas.

  “Mind?” he said, gesturing to the glass. I shook my head, and he picked it up and drained it quickly. I could see how it revived him. His eyes grew brighter, his movements quicker. He could probably disarm me before I could pull the trigger, and he might even know it. “So, I know my papa says I’m slow, but let’s see if I got this. The Boss has a friend of yours, and for some reason you don’t think he’s sucked her dry already?”

  I gulped. I had no real reason to think that, except that the prospect of revenge might make him stretch out his plea sure. “The fellas who took her thought that she killed Dore. They were after the bounty.”

  “But she didn’t kill Dore?”

  “No. I did that.”

  Nicholas laughed, and I wished he didn’t. He sounded so young in his plea sure I had to remind my
self that I wasn’t actually pointing a gun at a thirteen-year-old boy. “I owe you a drink, Charity. If I’m still alive after these mighty Defenders get to us.” He looked appreciatively at the eight other vampires in the room and they laughed at the thought.

  “You think a bunch of two-bit vampire slayers can touch us?” Charlie shouted.

  “When one of them is John Hollis? Yes, I do. And I don’t think you want to mess with Troy Kavanagh, Nicholas. Someone’s paid him a lot of money for you boys, and he won’t stop until the job is done.”

  The other Boys still hooted and mocked, but Nicholas at least seemed to realize the threat they were under. The Turn Boys weren’t invincible, they just profited from a combination of random terror and weak targets. Against a group of hardened men who knew precisely where to point a stake? The odds had just evened out.

  “Why are you telling me this if your papa is the one doing the killing?”

  “I told you, I want my friend back. And you are going to take me to her and help me save her. And once you do, I suggest you and your Boys make yourselves scarce for the next year or so, or my daddy will find you and I won’t mind telling him where to look.”

  “I could just kill you now.”

  I adjusted my grip on the pistol with teasing deliberateness. “I’d kill you first.”

  Nicholas locked eyes with me for nearly a minute, but to his credit he didn’t even attempt to Sway. My advantage wasn’t nearly as great as I was pretending (even if the gun were loaded), but I saw him consider his options, and then nod. “We’ll do it. You read his damn will. It’s time Papa learned a lesson. What do you say, Boys? Should we take a trip to see the Boss?”

  The answering roar was deafening. I think they were so drunk they’d agree to anything. Or maybe just so in love with Nicholas.

  I gestured with the gun. “Let’s go.”

  Nicholas led us through the streets, and I followed with the gun to his back. The speed with which every other living creature took pains to get out of our way was more than slightly unnerving. Especially when he led us, of all places, into the subway station at Canal Street. The entire platform cleared of people so quickly you’d have thought a giant hand swept them away.

  “What we need to take the subway for, Nick?” Charlie asked, but Nicholas didn’t even seem to have heard. He was staring into the dark of the tunnel, and I knew enough not to disturb him. God, but I hoped he didn’t have one of his flashbacks now. I needed him (relatively) sane. The train came five minutes later, and the one sleeping bum inside took one look at us and practically sprinted into another car.

  I can’t say I was terribly surprised when we got off again at Whitehall Street. Too much about Nicholas seemed to center in this area. Of course it had something to do with Rinaldo. Rick was back, I saw, but when I lifted my hand to wave, he just raised his fetid blanket over his head as though that would prevent us from seeing him. Oh, well. I could understand why he might not want to acknowledge me in present company.

  Instead of walking up the stairs, Nicholas led us all to the very end of the tracks. He looked back and forth through the tunnels and then hopped into the pit. We all stared at him.

  “Come on, Boys, you don’t wanna get popped by a train, do ya?”

  This got them moving. I eyed the muck on the tracks and the gray streaks of innumerable squeaking rats and thought, improbably, of what Lily would say if she could see what I was doing to her clothes. I laughed to myself and let Charlie help me down. We headed deep into the tunnels, with the light from the station behind us fading into black. Soon I had to keep hold of Charlie’s hand just so I could stay with them. Without night vision, I was in danger of falling flat on my face. This proved too awkward with the gun, and they all seemed to have forgotten about it anyway, so I dropped it discreetly back in my pocket. We heard an approaching train long before we saw it, an echoing, sustained screech of metal wheels on metal tracks.

  “It’s on the other side,” Nicholas called, before we could panic. And then, under his breath, I heard him say, “A flat.”

  A flat. The exact pitch of train wheels as they squeal around a particular turn in a subway tunnel.

  “I’m a bleeding moron,” I muttered. Of course Rinaldo lived underground. Hadn’t he turned Nicholas in the nearby storm drains? Hadn’t he locked him up down here, for Lord knows how long? Now I was sure that Nicholas was taking us to the right place.

  We could hear the next train roaring behind us when Nicholas finally opened a small iron door set into the concrete tunnel walls and led us through. The ground shook as it rumbled past, three seconds to spare. Nicholas struck a match and lit an oil lamp that was waiting by the door. He handed it to me. “Almost there,” he said, his eyes distant. He seemed like a man about to be marched to the gallows, abstractly terrified and concretely relieved.

  “Do you think the bleeder’s still alive, Nick?” a Turn Boy asked.

  Nicholas shrugged. “Papa’s angry enough. It isn’t just a snack to him. He’ll probably toy with her a bit. I’d say we’ve got some time.”

  The idea of Rinaldo toying with Aileen made me want to vomit, but at least it meant she was still alive. Please let her still be alive.

  The tunnels were narrower now, though obviously man-made. Similar to the strange labyrinth Nicholas had led me through the other day, but finished. I wondered who would have put a lamp by the door, though. That indicated a human presence in these tunnels. But how could a human live so close to the trains, so far below the city? Even worse, with Rinaldo?

  We ran across the answer to my question soon enough. A woman in a neat blue day-frock with a raised hemline and wide-brimmed hat was hurrying toward us. Her hair was longer than I was used to seeing in New York these days, and given the bizarre surroundings, I was momentarily convinced that we had stumbled upon a ghost. But a ghost wouldn’t be carrying her own lamp.

  “Nicholas! What are you doing here? With all of them?” She shook her head. “He’ll be furious.”

  Nicholas spat. “Let him. I don’t care anymore. About him, about you, or your stupid little Giudo.”

  She went very still, in the way people do when the other option might simply be a mindless wail. I peered at her more closely: she seemed haggard and exhausted, despite her impeccable attire. I suspected that she must be the mysterious Kathryn who had come into the Beast’s Rum the other day looking for some man. Rinaldo’s puttana, as I recalled. And then I thought of the will, of Rinaldo’s son Giudo . . . and his mother, Katerina.

  “So I was right,” she said, her voice wavering. “It was you. He was just a little boy, Nicholas! He’d never have harmed you—”

  Katerina sounded very much like Kathryn, if Italian is your first language. Much like Giudo sounded like . . .

  Nicholas rocked back and forth on his feet. I could almost taste his coiled tension. “He hated me.”

  “You terrified him! And now, what, you just killed him? I looked in all the morgues, asked after any little boys they might have brought in and staked. So what did you do to him? Tell me which gutter, Nicholas, so at least I can bury my son!”

  Asked after any little boys they might have brought in and staked. They would have, I wanted to say, if I hadn’t interfered. The name he’d remembered was the name his mother had given him. Judah, Rinaldo’s son. Judah, who had admired boats with his mother and was turned by Nicholas in the storm drain.

  “An alley near Lafayette,” Nicholas said, taunting her. “But we turned him good, Katerina. So if the pols haven’t picked up any little suckers lately, maybe it’s ’cause he’s still alive.”

  Kathryn looked like she was going to choke. “You’re not alive,” she managed.

  Nicholas hit her, blindingly quick and hard enough to knock her against the wall of the tunnel. Her mouth was bleeding and her cheek looked puffy. She started to cry.

  “Then you’re sleeping with a dead man, puttana.”

  I desperately wanted to stay behind and help her, but the specter of
Aileen being tortured compelled my silence and pushed me forward. I’d rescued Rinaldo’s other son. The mortal enemy of the one I now followed into his father’s lair. What a mess. And if Giudo was really Judah, then who in hell was Troy’s client? Could it just be a coincidence?

  “How common a name is Giudo?” I asked Charlie, in a low whisper. “You know a bunch?”

  He shook his head, eyes wide. “Only that one. And good thing, ’cause Nick can get a little pazzo about that kid.”

  I nearly hit him myself. That kid you helped him puncture like a pincushion? That kid who’d lost nearly all of his memories thanks to being turned so young? But then, hey, the same thing had happened to Charlie. We were all of us damaged, and I’d lost the knack of pinning blame.

  At least now I knew: someone was playing Troy. The client had used that name deliberately, but it was a reference Troy couldn’t possibly have known. So he was connected to the Turn Boys, but probably not as a member of the gang. Hell, for all I knew maybe Rinaldo himself had gotten wind of who had killed Judah and had taken the hit out on them himself.

  “Well, that’s going to make this family reunion a little awkward,” I muttered.

  Charlie looked back at me and then froze. “Uh . . . Nick,” he called.

  “What now, idiota?”

  “I think there’s something—”

  Which is all he had time to get out before the Defenders came upon us like rats from the dark of the tunnel.

  Shots echoed off the walls, ricocheting dangerously. Nicholas cursed. “Around me, Boys!” he yelled, as Daddy and Troy and half a dozen other men wielded their swords like extensions of their arms. I was lost in a moment of inappropriate admiration. Then I realized how they must have found us.

  “You bloody scoundrels!” I shouted to Troy, as he grappled with a Turn Boy going for his neck. “I can’t believe you followed me!”

  “Giudo told us to,” he said, gasping. “Listen, could this wait—”

  I unsheathed Daddy’s sword with one hand and hauled the unsuspecting vampire off of Troy with the other. The Turn Boy was strong and would have gotten away to do some damage, but I held the blade against his neck and pressed gently.