Rock Paper Sorcery

by L. J. Hayward

  “Are they there now?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is the monkey there?”

  “I don’t know. The whole house smells of monkey. Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not.”

  “But the Tool Brigade is there?”

  Mercy rolled her eyes. “There are kids there, yes.”

  “Okay. Feel up to some close quarters snooping?”

  “Sure.” And she was gone in a blur of reflected moonlight.

  I reached and opened the link to let things flow between us without having to force the thoughts. The night as Mercy experienced it came to me in a great rush.

  It wasn’t dark anymore, but bright with all the varied colours of the different lights. Silver moonlight; yellow electrical light; the flickering rainbows of TVs; the pale white of those solar-powered lamp things everyone but me seems to have staked out in their yards these days; the ambient glow of the high-rises across the river.

  As bright as the day, the world was a mass of shapes and colours and shadows that blurred by as Mercy pounced at vampire speed. Our ears filled with all the rhythms of the night—traffic, TVs, music, the breeze in the leaves, the whispering of insects, the barks of hundreds of dogs, the yowl of a cat either getting lucky or not so lucky. Underneath all that were the sounds that sang to Mercy like a hymn from the angels.

  The sounds of humans. Their voices, their movements, their breathing. The beating of their hearts, a background drumbeat that tugged at every thread of Mercy’s being.

  She was fed, though, and not hungry. But it was so pretty, that sound, that lovely signal that meant blood pouring through veins. Warm, salty, tasty blood that felt so good sliding over my tongue and down my throat. Thick, beautiful food that filled my empty belly and seeped out into my body, bringing heat and nourishment and life and… and… But it didn’t. It didn’t do all those things. Not when I fed. Not when Matt gave me those plastic bags of wrong tasting blood. It brought nourishment, and heat if he remembered to warm it up first, but not… not life.

  With a wrench I pulled away from Mercy’s mind. I felt her pull back as well, leaving a slightly bitter tinge to the connection.

  What the hell was that?

  Not the thinking I was Mercy bit. That’s happened before and will probably happen again, a risk of opening up the link. But the whole… disappointment at what I fed her. Mercy knew she wasn’t allowed to feed off humans. She’d been happy enough to rely on the bags of expired blood I got from my old pathology lab. She’d never expressed disappointment at them before. In fact, sometimes I got scared at how she eyed them with gleeful predation, usually before I handed them over.

  This was… strange.

  “We’ll talk about this later,” I promised her down the link.

  I got a brain full of her confusion. “Talk about what?”

  She wasn’t trying to pull a swiftie. We were so closely linked I could have picked a lie. Mercy honestly didn’t know what I’d felt. Or she felt it and didn’t comprehend it.

  Ugh. Between this and the whole missing parts of her head, I was probably going to have to book an appointment with a therapist. Most psychiatrists probably wouldn’t believe me if I told them about my vampire’s suppressed issues, but maybe Dr Angelshire could be reasonable. I mean, he’d had his eyes opened to the world of demons and demon possession a couple months back. I’m sure adding vampires to that wouldn’t hurt too much.

  “Why do you need to see a shrink? Again.”

  I grimaced. “Stay out of my head and in your own. You’ve got a job to do.”

  Mercy snarled at me but her concentration turned to the house she’d pinpointed.

  I made sure to just skim her senses, not wanting to get so embroiled in them I forgot where and who I was.

  The house was an old bungalow style, on short stumps, with panels of swirlingly patterned, yellow glass in the front room. The yard was mostly neglected, untamed weeds in bare dirt and overhanging branches from the big poinciana tree in the backyard. It was too early for it be flowering. The jacarandas had to give way first, then the fiery red of the poincianas would take over in December.

  Mercy stalked around the house, slow and perfectly silent. A couple of the guys sat in the front room, playing some violent video game. In a bedroom, a pair of voices grunted and puffed their way through a fairly obvious activity. Despite my protests, Mercy went and had a look in the window.

  I had to give it to Leaf Boy. He had balls… eh, wrong word. He had courage letting Razor get him into that position.

  With a few prods, I got Mercy to move on.

  Around the back, one of the boys sat on the step, dragging on a cigarette and staring up at the stars, a can of bourbon and Coke beside him. Mercy skirted him easily enough and came up the other side of the house. Another bedroom and more voices. Thankfully talking, or not so, considering who it was.

  “—need to go.”

  “You went the other week,” Chop snapped at Feeble. “Don’t see that you need it again. I mean, you look fine.”

  “But I feel—”

  “You’re just lazy. I mean, you couldn’t even walk home with us. Had to catch a fucking bus. I’m not Scary, Feeble, with his mountains of money. I’m not made of cash. You know that, don’t you?”

  The derision in his tone boiled through Mercy to me and made us both snarl in response.

  “I know that,” Feeble said meekly. “But if Scary were here, he’d take me—”

  There was a soft thump and Feeble gasped. The only thing keeping Mercy from breaking in through the window was the fact it hadn’t been flesh on flesh.

  “If Scary were here,” Chop ground out. “You know, I’m sick of hearing about how great he is, how fucking amazing it is he got all that money. Scary’s gone. He skipped out, Feeble. Don’t fucking carry on like he’s going to come back and save you.”

  There was a small noise, like Feeble sniffing or sobbing.

  Chop continued, tone cold and scathing. “I’m glad he’s gone. At least he’s not here sniffing around you anymore. Did he fuck you, Feeble? Is that why you want him back so badly?”

  “No,” she said, desperately fast and panicked. “No, he never touched me. He just… Chop, please, I need to go. My legs—”

  “My legs hurt, Chop,” he mimicked in a nauseatingly high pitch. “Oh, I’m dizzy. Jesus fucking Christ, girl, I’m not sure you could get even more annoying if you tried.”

  Mercy snuck closer during his tirade and peered in the window.

  Chop sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, arms stretched out along the top of it. He was shirtless, showing off an impressive torso of muscles and tattoos. Long, jeans-clad legs out straight, crossed at the ankle, he gave off the air of a king on a throne. That impression may have been helped along by Feeble, kneeling on the foot of the bed, head bowed, shoulders slumped.

  “You probably caught something off that fucking monkey. I told you to get rid of it.”

  Feeble’s head came up. “No. I won’t get rid of Marcel.”

  All Chop had to do was tilt his head at her and she backed down.

  “Okay.”

  “That’s better. It better be gone tomorrow.” He lifted an arm and held his hand out to her. “Come here.”

  She hesitated, then scrambled up the bed and lay beside him, much as Mercy and I had sat earlier. Chop curled his arm around her shoulders, stroking her arm, fingers drifting over that horrible bruise.

  “See, I can be reasonable,” he said, his tone suddenly sugary and soothing. “You just have to give me something I want and I’ll give you something you want. Right?”

  Feeble nodded against his shoulder.

  “Good girl.” He kissed the top of her red head. “Now what do you want?”

  “I want…” She looked up and for a moment, I thought she saw Mercy’s face at the window, but then she turned her face away. “I want to go—”

  “No. Not that. What else do you want?” He paused, then said, “You want it, don’t yo
u. You need it.”

  Lips pressed together, Feeble nodded again.

  “Okay, go get it.”

  Chop waited like a lord while Feeble got off the bed. She had a noticeable limp as she went to a chest of drawers across the room. From the top drawer she took a small box and brought it back to the bed.

  Things progressed much as I feared they would, with Chop taking out a syringe, a small packet of brownish powder and a tourniquet.

  Again, I pulled Mercy back from the window. And it took every ounce of strength I had to do it. Not because Mercy resisted, but because of my urge to send her in there to beat the absolute snot out of Chop. He was a manipulative, abusive bastard pusher and I wanted very much to feel him trembling in my hands.

  With Mercy at safe minimum distance, I left the bike, walked to a bus stop, and proceeded to kick and punch the shit out of it instead of Chop’s fucking face. As a punching bag, it wasn’t that great. My knuckles busted and my jeans tore on the sharp edges, but as an alternative to being dragged in for aggravated assault it did the job.

  Relatively satiated, I let Mercy go back to her surveillance. I don’t know what I was thinking we might accomplish with it, but right then I couldn’t force myself to leave Feeble alone with that monster.

  Yes, I was aware of the fact Erin was right. I was hanging around for a chance to play the white knight, but I knew for a fact if Erin had been here, she wouldn’t have held back.

  Simmering anger kept me awake through the night. I paced a lot and played Shark Dash on the phone and found some messages from Erin. The first one said Kermit had coughed up some information, and that apparently there was some long standing feud between sorcerers and ghouls. The next one wanted to know if I’d found anything and that she’d dropped Dev off at a hotel. The third one said she was going to bed and to call her in the morning.

  Fantastic. I was probably going to get an earful from Kermit about sending a sorcerer to him now. It was a bloody wonder he hadn’t already clogged up the towers between him and me with abusive messages and calls.

  It was around three a.m. when Mercy signalled movement at the house. I slipped down the link and looked through Mercy’s eyes.

  The back door opened and the slight shape of Feeble crept out. She had something in her hands. Going to the poinciana, she stood under it and looked up into the branches.

  “Marcel,” she called softly. “Marcel?”

  With a series of chirps and skitters, the monkey scrambled down the branches, leaping from one to the next until he dropped down onto her shoulders. Tail curling around her slender neck, he leaned down and grabbed at whatever she held.

  Feeble laughed. “Here you go, sweetie. It’s all I could get, sorry. Hope it’s enough.”

  The monkey stuffed what looked like a strawberry into its mouth, chewing noisily. Feeble’s face lit up with joy, watching him. She scratched him under his chin and he leaned into it, almost humming. He fed from her hands, greedy and eager for her touch.

  “Do you like that?” she asked, stroking him from head to tail. He arched into her pat. “You like that, don’t you. What else do you like? Someone scratching your ears and holding fingers and climbing trees.”

  The litany of what the monkey liked went on and on and after a while, I realised she was crying. Silent tears rolling down her cheeks, eyes glistening in the pale light.

  “I hope they let you do all the things you like in your new home,” she said. “I think they will because she looks so sweet and pretty.” Feeble turned in a slow circle. “I know you’re there,” she said to the night. “I can feel you watching me.”

  Chapter 26

  “I saw you at the window.” Feeble’s voice trembled, but she took a deep breath and continued. “I have to give Marcel away. He can’t stay here anymore. I’d like you to take him. Can you please take him?”

  Without a thought, Mercy was moving. I was so stunned by Feeble sensing us I forgot to stop her.

  Feeble turned to Mercy and tensed when she saw the silver-sheened eyes, the smooth, predatory way the vampire moved. On her shoulders, Marcel jumped and whined, his tail curling and uncurling, little hands grasping at her hair.

  “It’s okay,” Mercy purred. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Both Feeble and the monkey calmed.

  “I know,” Feeble whispered. She stared wide-eyed at Mercy, lips parted slightly as she breathed hard.

  Mercy was putting out a low level feeding compulsion, that psychic touch all vampires put on their food to keep them still so they didn’t fight. It made the feeding process very enjoyable for the victim, right up until they died.

  I was so caught up in the moment, I didn’t even worry that Mercy might feed off Feeble.

  My vampire circled the girl, drinking in her flavours. Feeble’s aura was a mix of sweet strawberry and tart lime, smooth rich caramel and what could only be described as bubbly champagne. There was a sluggish texture to it, though. It moved around her in slow, thick waves, congealing on my tongue until I swallowed it down forcefully.

  In the moonlight, without the thick covering of makeup, I saw the discolouration on her face wasn’t bruises, but red splotches, like a rash or Fifth disease, also known as Slapped Cheek disease. That was probably where she’d wanted to go, where Chop wouldn’t let her go—to a doctor. We seethed, but it quickly got lost in a new sensation flooding through us.

  “Would you…” Feeble began, but shuddered so hard when Mercy leaned in to take a lungful of air from her neck the words stalled.

  Hunger drenched Mercy and me. Blood. So much blood. Our fangs ached to sink into that thin, soft flesh and let the blood out. To drink the blood and feel… life.

  “Please,” Feeble murmured. “If you take Marcel and keep him safe, you can do whatever you want to me.”

  And just like that, I was snapped out of the trance. The utter defeat and surrender in those words horrified me. I pulled back so hard, so fast, I took Mercy with me. She stumbled, turning away from Feeble, fighting the need to take what she wanted, what she needed.

  Usually it was me forcing Mercy back from that particular edge, but right now, it was all her. She knew it was wrong to hurt humans, I’d taught her that they weren’t food. I fed her.

  And yet, she starved.

  “Are you okay?” Feeble came up beside Mercy. She was taller than the vampire, but not by much, and even though Mercy was slender, Feeble looked about half her width.

  Mercy nodded, with prompting from me.

  Big eyes wide, Feeble reached up and coaxed Marcel off her shoulders. “Please take him. I don’t want Chop to see him again. I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds Marcel still here in the morning. Please.”

  Without prompting this time, Mercy took the monkey. The little animal trembled in her hands, certain he was in the grips of a predator but unable to do anything about it.

  “Thank you,” Feeble gushed. “He’s a good boy. He eats fruit and nuts and comes when you whistle.” She leaned in and kissed the top of the monkey’s head. It made small grabbing motions for her. “Goodbye, sweetie. Maybe I’ll see you again, one day.”

  Then she was running back into the house.

  Mercy stood in the middle of the backyard, looking at the stiff monkey in her hands, dangling like a doll. After a moment, the long tail curled up and around her arm. Mercy just frowned at him.

  “Come back,” I sent to Mercy. “You should get out of there before someone else sees you.”

  “Do I bring the thing?”

  I couldn’t answer for laughing, but she brought the monkey all the same. The poor animal was petrified and when Mercy all but threw him at me, he latched onto my neck with desperate strength. He made a nice warm scarf, but the night wasn’t that cold, so I tucked the monkey into the front of my leather jacket and zipped him in.

  Mercy scowled and grumbled about the smell, but got on the bike and we went home.

  We got there just in time. The eastern horizon was pinking up over the water as w
e turned into the driveway, and Mercy was off the bike and dashing inside the moment the door was up enough for her roll under. By the time I got into the house, she was in her room, the door closed and as the sun breached the sky, I felt her presence in my mind fade as she went to sleep.

  Opening my jacket, I looked down at the curled up monkey and wondered just how weird things might get in the coming days.

  I set the alarm for a couple of hours’ time and fell face first onto the bed. Marcel jumped around the bedroom for a while, then finally settled onto the pillow beside my head and curled up.

  He was still sleeping when the alarm went off. I felt about as rested as if I’d just finished the Kokoda Trail but hauled my arse into the shower. When I got out, a small, upturned death’s head waited for me on the en suite sink.

  Marcel chirped at me, head tilting.

  “What?”

  He tilted his head so far in the other direction he was all but looking at me upside down. His teeth flashed in a monkey grin.

  “No, I don’t understand you, either.”

  With another inquisitive chirrup, the monkey sprang at me. My first reaction was to punch it out of the air. Lately, the only things flying at my face were evil. I stopped myself though, and Marcel landed lightly on my shoulder. His tail wrapped around my neck and I froze, waiting for the strangle hold, but it didn’t come. He began scratching through my hair.

  No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the monkey to leave me alone. He wouldn’t budge off my shoulders, scurrying from one to the other and bouncing around as he watched me make coffee. Lucky he was pretty light. And, I guess, a bit cute. Kept stealing the grapes out of my bowl of cornflakes, though.

  Taking my coffee to the back patio was interesting. Marcel decided I wasn’t nearly so fun anymore and took off to explore the backyard. He jumped and skittered around, bouncing off the couch and swinging from the awning. I chuckled as he played, his brown eyes bright and wide at all the new things.

  My phone rang and I hurried inside to answer it.

  “What happened last night?” Erin asked instead of enquiring as to how I was.