by P. N. Elrod
Rookwood’s rent was due in a week. He was on his last legs as far as funding went. It was foolish to turn away work, even this kind; but when possible, he preferred to err on the side of caution.
She had money, too. Real money. Her shoes—high-end walking numbers—the fashionable gym-toned slimness, French manicure, and the haircut gave away the size of her bank account, but upper-middle-class suburbia was all over her. There was one like her in every minivan in America. This one had nicer breasts than most, big brown eyes, long, glossy brown hair, a pink T-shirt, and jeans. All she needed were 2.5 kids and a golden retriever to finish the picture.
“Not according to Detective Molstein.” She leaned forward a little. That long brown hair fell over her shoulder. She used expensive shampoo. Something with cloves in it.
Damn you, Mole. What did I ever do to you? Rookwood couldn’t settle in the chair behind the desk just yet. Instead, he looked up at the window with its thick iron bars. Rain slapped at the glass, and the night sighed as traffic on Lombard sent splashes of headlight glow through the lattice of blinds. “I don’t care who sent you, lady. You’ve got the wrong man.”
Her lips parted, and the flash of pearly-sharp white in his peripheral vision was all wrong. A burning smell slid across his nose, a tang under her brunette spice.
No wonder the inside of his mouth was tingling. If she smelled like that, there was only one possible explanation. Rookwood’s weight sank onto his right leg, his entire body subtly braced. This is either what I’ve been waiting for or very bad luck.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Rookwood. My husband . . . he’s already dead.” Her shoulders slumped. “Detective Molstein believed me. He said you’d help me.”
He half turned, facing her. Her manicured hand pulled down the scoop neckline of the T-shirt. Her bra was plain and white, the strap cutting into her shoulder, and the deep, glaring red purple bruise on the upper slope of her left breast was as plain as it could be. There were two holes in the middle of the bruising, white and worn-looking.
She was shaking. Her eyes looked even bigger with tears filling them, and his heart thumped twice. This was what he’d been waiting for, it and bad luck at the same time.
Rookwood dropped his rangy frame into the chair behind the desk. Paper crackled and rustled as he poured her a jolt of Scotch and wished he could take a slug of something strong himself. The sensitivity in his canines retreated a little, but his tongue found the sharp places before he took a deep breath and forced some calm. “All right. Pull your shirt up, ma’am, and tell me everything.”
Her name was Amelia King. Thirty on the nose, settled in the suburbs with a husband and a house. They were planning on kids, and she spent her time being the good little wifey, shopping and keeping the house—and herself—trim and clean. Hubby contented himself with making money as a lawyer with Briggs, Fann, and Chisholm.
Mr. King was an up-and-coming criminal defense tightrope walker, successful enough that he was looking at making partner soon.
Which meant he would have security access to the office building downtown. Rookwood’s eyebrow rose a little, but he didn’t say anything. That was probably, he realized later, his mistake.
He should have come clean with her from the beginning.
But by that point she was crying openly. It wasn’t much—a slow trickle from both big, brown, bloodshot, and dark-circled eyes. Her makeup was good, but it couldn’t hold up to that constant leak.
She had no idea anything was wrong until the afternoon she returned from grocery shopping and found out hubby had come home early for once, and in a big way. He’d hung himself with his belt over the banister. Hell of a job he did of it, too. Broke his neck and everything.
Three nights after the funeral, after Amelia had cried herself to sleep again, he’d come back.
“There was a tapping at the window.” She shivered. “I thought I was dreaming.”
The rain swept Rookwood’s window restlessly. His teeth ached, and the bottle of Scotch looked really good. The thought of the canister of red stuff in his minifridge looked even better. “Let me guess. You saw him floating outside. Just bobbing up and down like a balloon.”
“You . . .” Amelia swallowed dryly. She didn’t ask how he knew. It was a stupid question, and maybe she realized it. “It was his eyes.” The color had drained from her face, shadows under her cheekbones turned her gaunt.
“They glowed red.” Rookwood leaned back in his chair. “Are you a churchgoing woman, Mrs. King?”
Her hands tightened in her lap. “No. We were married in front of a judge.”
He waited. An unnecessary detail like that meant there was more to the story. He had trouble keeping his pulse even and steady. This is it. Don’t scare her off. Play this one right, Rookwood.
The traffic outside made wet, shushing noises, and car light ran over the room in waves. The green-shaded lamp didn’t light more than a pool on the desktop. Her eyes glittered a little in the gloom, slowly leaking tears.
Each one was a fresh little nugget of guilt, for him. It was hard to sit still when he wanted to pace.
“My mother was Catholic,” Mrs. King amended slowly. “I thought of going to a priest, but . . .”
“But hubby’s already bitten you, and you didn’t ask too many questions the first time he came in the window. Naturally. Because he’s your husband.”
The first surprise was that her chin came up, and the second was the flash in those brown eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Uh-oh. The front legs of his chair thudded down on the floor. He scooped up a pad of paper and a pen he was fairly sure would work. “Write down the cemetery he’s in, location of the grave, and his exact name—first, middle, last. The fee’s ten thousand. Half now, half when he stops showing up at your window.”
Her hands moved nervously. She didn’t say a goddamn thing about the money. Instead, she went right for the throat. “Will . . . that . . . make the dreams go away?”
“What dreams?” Rookwood asked, but he knew. The same dreams that rocketed around inside his skull every time he settled down on his cot. The red-tinted, hot, squirming little dreams that filled his mouth with saliva and the fresh copper tang, instead of the pale, dead substitute he held the Thirst off with.
God, yes, he knew. Did she want the bad news now or later?
Later, Rook. After she’s paid you.
She shook her head. “If you’re going to treat me like I’m stupid—”
His entire mouth ached, and the crackling in his jaw was clearly audible. He leaned forward into the desk lamp’s glow, knowing it would etch the shadows on his face even deeper. It would gleam along the lines of the sharpening, lengthening canines and fill his eyes with a flat, reflective shine. He hadn’t had his daily dose, and she smelled good—except for the edge of burning to the scent of woman, perfume, and red salt copper.
The edge of burning that tainted his own smell.
His lips peeled back from his teeth. She choked on whatever she’d intended to say next. Under the splash of car tires outside was a nervous, high thudding; it was her pulse tearing through the air of the room and touching his sensitive eardrums.
His mouth ached fiercely as he pulled the Thirst back, the rope he held it on fraying as the sun slipped away over the horizon. His canines retracted, too, his jaw crackling once again. When he was sure he wouldn’t cut his tongue on the sharp edges, he spoke. “The dreams don’t ever stop. But if my . . .” The words stuck in his throat. “If my treatment is successful, they won’t get any worse—and neither will you. That I can promise you, Mrs. King.”
Her rib cage almost fluttered with sharp, sipping breaths. The sweat along the curves of her throat stood out in diamond drops. Her shirt was now damp, and the fresh wave of clove-tinted scent about knocked him sideways.
He’d always wondered what would happen if someone with his particular problem came along. It would be a key to the bigger problem, of course. But he’d wondered wh
at the Thirst might do.
“Am I going to look like . . . that?” She stared at him as though he’d just done something obscene.
Well, he just had. Hadn’t he?
“I don’t know.” He pressed his fingertips together. His mouth didn’t want to work right, wanted to slur the words around as if he were drunk. The Thirst pressed its sharp prickles against the inside of his throat. Soon it would spread over his whole body, and only the red stuff would make it retreat. “But I’ll give you some advice. Get some raw meat from the supermarket and suck on it. The bloodier the better, or tell your butcher you want blood for blood pudding. It’s the only thing that kills that feeling in your throat, and it quiets the dreams down, at least for a while. And that’s all you’re getting for free, Mrs. King.”
Yeah, he was a son of a bitch. But he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.
Shady Hope Cemetery and Remembrance Home wasn’t hallowed ground, for all they buried people here and spoke empty words over them. Hallowed ground would have made the dead sleep a little more quietly.
As it was, anything could rise from these graves. In the last six months, Rookwood had gained a thorough education in just how weird and fluid the borders between life and undeath were and an even more thorough education in how someone who didn’t mind a little weirdness could possibly make a living around the edges.
But this was the prize. This was the thing he’d been waiting for since that night of blood and screaming and Chisholm’s fangs in his throat.
As soon as he stepped on the grounds he smelled it, the dry burning rat-fur reek of particular contamination. He’d grown used to the varied and insanely ugly smells drifting across his nasal receptors at the slightest provocation, ever since he’d fought off—
Don’t think about that. You’re on a job, you’ve taken the nice lady’s money, let’s get this dog-and-pony show started.
Caution was called for. It could be a trap.
He stayed where he was, boots planted solidly on wet concrete. Behind him, the yellow-painted bar that was supposed to keep out cars and people rattled in the rain-soaked wind. His sweatshirt jacket was already soaked through.
The cold meant nothing. He was used to it. He still ran at a perfect 98.6, but external changes in temperature had ceased to matter as the Thirst got stronger. Tiny increments of burning inched through him every day, nibbling at the edges of his sanity.
That was another mental road he didn’t want to go down. Instead, he decided the cemetery was safe enough and got to work.
Amelia’s hand-drawn map was exact, committed to memory, and destroyed. He’d also spent a little time looking at satellite photos of the cemetery’s green mournfulness. It would have given him the shivers to see how anyone with a laptop and a connection could cruise the city, but the things no satellite photo would show were still safe.
Like the thing he was hunting. Or the things that had made the widow’s dearly beloved into a monster.
The grave was right where she’d said it would be. He read the name in the wet, dim glimmer, a nice white marble headstone. The widow certainly hadn’t skimped.
Rookwood stood a good three or four feet away from where the corpse’s feet would rest and sniffed deeply at the wet air.
The smell was fading. Mr. King was out visiting. When he came back home, he’d find a surprise.
A faint smile clung to Rookwood’s face, his flesh stiff against the bones. He took the last few steps forward, set the edge of the shovel against the wet turf, and began to dig.
The first faint gray streaks of dawn found him showered and in dark sunglasses, parked in a nice suburban neighborhood. Led Zeppelin was pouring out life through the speakers of his rusted Cadillac. It was a good car, but stood out like a sore thumb here in the land of minivans and SUVs. Still, it ran like a dream. And with the mods under the hood, he could outrun just about anything. He couldn’t quite beat the devil, but it was close.
He waited for “Dazed and Confused” to moan out its last few beats and later thought that if he’d just gone to meet the widow a little earlier, instead of at dawn as agreed, everything would have turned out differently.
The newborn edge of morning sun was struggling up over the rim of the earth, peeking through scudding clouds, as he slammed the car door and hitched the duffel bag onto his shoulder. Jeans, army jacket, boots—he didn’t match the neighborhood, either. It made his back itch. He was used to blending in.
In his slices of the city, that kept you alive.
Rookwood scooped the paper drink carrier off the roof and set out for the widow’s front door. The daylight, weak as it was, was a painful glare even behind the shades.
Nice house, white with two stories, green shutters, and a good lawn. Looked as if she’d planted primroses early this year and lavender a few years back. That was good. One lavender bush was worth ten or twelve crucifixes when it came to the—
Rookwood stopped, frowning.
The cedar green front door was open a crack. He couldn’t have seen it from the street, but six feet from the door it was a wrong note in the newborn symphony of day.
“Shit,” he muttered, and strode up the walk. He hit it with the palm of his free hand, and the door jerked, stopped halfway on its arc by something soft.
Amelia King lay on the floor in the hall. The door had hit her on the head, and her long, glossy brown hair was tangled. She was paper white, in a tattered gray T-shirt and shorts that she probably slept in, and if he hadn’t been able to hear the faint whisper of her struggling pulse, he might have thought she was dead.
The entire house reeked of ash and undead. Jesus Christ. What the hell’s this?
But he knew. The bait had been taken, sooner than he’d thought.
He pushed the door closed and locked it, then knelt at her side. The coffee went on a tiny, spindly decorative hall table. The vase that had probably been sitting there last night was on the floor. He could see how she would have blundered into it, knocking a spray of dried flowers to the floor and smashing something china blue to flinders.
She was taking in little shallow breaths, her lips blue and the rest of her chalky.
“Fuck.” The duffel unzipped with a screaming sound, and the insulated chill-pack crumpled aside as he grabbed the plastic bottle. Three or four quick shakes to get everything mixed together, and he checked her teeth. There wasn’t time for a transfusion, but if she wasn’t far enough along yet—
Reflex snapped her sharp white teeth together, and he almost lost a fingertip. Rookwood snatched his hand back and grabbed her jaw. He jammed the nozzle between her blue lips and gave the bottle a gentle half-squeeze.
“Come on, kiddo,” he whispered. “Come on. It’s instinct, don’t fight it. Come on.”
She went rigid for a moment. Some shred of human decency was fighting for its life, and he found himself wishing it would win and hoping it would lose at the same time. Even when it was clinging to survival, there were some things the human animal wouldn’t do.
Like drinking the red stuff. He’d given up wondering if it made someone better or worse to get rid of the idea that there were some things you wouldn’t do even to survive.
Her lips fastened on the bottle and she guzzled greedily. The sharp points of her extended canines punctured the plastic and she tilted her head a little. The burning smell got stronger as the cold red fluid slid down her throat.
“That’s a girl. . . . Good girl.” But his eyes scanned the hall. He slid the sunglasses off carefully, blinked a few times, and found it was bearable. Visual acuity was a boon at night, but not so good inside a house with the lights on.
She made a choking noise. Her eyes flew open, and he grabbed her, shoved the spout of the bottle in as far as it would go, and squeezed. She swallowed most of the rest in a huge painful gush, then feebly tried to push him away.
“Quit it. This’ll stop the Thirst.” He gave the bottle another squeeze, and it burbled in her throat. Her arms stiffened, then she gul
ped and pushed at him again. Her pulse came back, the doors of her heart slamming solidly shut and then thudding open.
It was damn near miraculous.
“When was he here?” He restrained the urge to shake her. “When, goddammit?”
The bottle fell away from her mouth, hit the polished hardwood floor. Her lips were still cyanotic, but she blinked and an unhealthy flush crept up her cheeks. “What?”
“When did he come back?”
Sense returned to her dark, swimming gaze. “I was asleep. On the couch.” The gray T-shirt gaped open, torn over her chest.
Rookwood felt the urge to look down. Those breasts were worth a peek or two, even if she did have suburbia all over her. But wherever his gaze wandered, all he saw were the bruises and the fang marks. There was more than one set, and he wondered how many she had on other parts of her body. The ones on her right breast looked fresh, the edges not worn away and whitened. There was a pin-thin scraping along the border of one perky little nipple, as though a fang had slipped.
Rookwood realized he was staring at her chest. It gave him a funny unsteady feeling, as though he’d been caught peeking in her window.
Christ. Bruised all over; and hubby wasn’t too happy last night, either. He tore his eyes away, carefully watched her nose instead, her eyes, the sharp, pearly teeth. Her canines had retracted. A good sign. Her irises were still brown, too—no threading of reflective crimson. And her smell was only tainted, not dipped in the ash and buried. He let out a shaky half-breath.
The widow was proving to be full of surprises.
“There was . . . he was . . . he was angry. Furious. He came in and . . .” The shakes hit her, and Rookwood let up a little on her shoulders. His thumbs wanted to move, little soothing motions, but he pushed the urge down. “God. God.”
God doesn’t help, babe. If He did, we’d be in a better position down here. “I owe you a partial refund.” The words scorched his throat. “I didn’t think he’d’ve prepared a place here. Most of the young ones don’t think that far ahead.” Still, they’re organized here. Other towns, they can’t even cooperate enough to wipe their asses.
