I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (19 page)

Busta’s man outside the door was staring over
at them, interested.

“Like, yo click-click-clack on that nigga,”
Marquis volunteered, all enthusiastic. The bruises on his face
fading but still apparent.

Yuri was whispering in the ear of a girl who
looked ten years old.

“Eggs-actly!” Luke high, already putting
Dodd’s snub behind him. “Dodd like
blat
-
blat
-
blat
. Me, I’m like: so what nigga?
Buck
-
buck
!” Luke stabbed the air with two index
fingers, thumbs raised, like a kid playing cowboy. “What? You want
some too nigga?
Buck
-
buck
!”

“Yo—Luke, I been meanin’ to tell you, yo,”
Marquis handed the weed off to one of the girls, “know I seen the
other day?”

Something Yuri said elicited a laugh from his
pre-teen.

Luke was high, thinking of the wealth that
had been on display, seated across from him inside the rec center.
Even Busta’s man in the hallway with Addidas Harputs on his feet,
Luke knowin’ the man must have ordered them from San Francisco, fag
town.

Marquis said, “The fat lady, yo,” and Luke’s
mind abruptly left shoes.

The fat lady.

Luke’s hand was frozen on his chain.

They all knew who the fat lady was.

Who her son was.

Her son had ripped a chain off Luke’s neck,
swatted Marquis in the head without warning. They’d told everyone
they’d been jumped by some Latins from Manhattan. Truth was, the
three friends were waiting for the punk to show himself ever since
but he hadn’t. Dude was either layin’ low or who knew what.

But the man’s mother, man, that bitch was so
fat you couldn’t hide her. Circus side-show fat, Yuri persisted in
describing her, though neither he, Marquis nor Luke had ever been
to a circus.

And Luke, whose real name was Luther and had
a hard time keeping his mouth shut himself, had the good sense to
say to his boy Marquis, “We talk on that shit, later,” already
hatching a plan, rubbing his new chain between his fingers.

The day of, Gritz wasn’t sure he was even
going to go to the lecture to begin with. The Mercury and the men
in it pulling him over like that, could be someone in the
department fucking with him. He’d been on the force twenty-five
years. His fiftieth birthday was past him. There were no other
major milestones he could think of, nothing they’d go to such
elaborate lengths to get him somewhere to celebrate. Not that he
really thought a surprise party was in the cards. Still, Gritz knew
it didn’t mean someone
wasn’t
fucking with him.

Or warning him.

He’d considered inviting Cath, thought better
of that too. On the one hand, maybe it’d be good to bring her
along, make her think there was more to Gritz than drinking and
being married to his work. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine
some kind of lecture like this was going to be too interesting.
Better to look up that band from the other night, find out where
they were playing next, invite her to that. He figured he could do
that online somehow.

He parked the Crown Vic on 33rd street, down
the block from Jim Hanley’s Universe, the comic shop he used to
take the boys to when they were younger. Either that or Forbidden
Planet downtown. The kids loved both places. Gritz left his badge
on the dash so no one would tow the car. He started walking, the
Empire State Building stretching into the sky next to him.

As he walked he consulted his mental rolodex,
considering the local bars, thinking the Playwright was all right
and only a block or two away, noting it for later reference.

Gritz turned up 5th Avenue and crossed the
street. An enormous side-walk shed with nets hugged the Grad
Center, some kind of construction work going on higher up. Some
graduate students were standing outside the building, smoking
cigarettes. Gritz walked in, wanting to flash his badge at the
security guards, resisting the urge. This wasn’t police business of
any sort. And, he remembered, his badge was back in the car.

The Proshansky Auditorium sat around four
hundred and it was a standing room crowd when Gritz walked in. The
lecturer was already doing his thing and the crowd was quiet,
attentive. Gritz found some room towards the rear and stood next to
a behemoth of a man. His site line to the stage was blocked by a
column and he couldn’t get a good look at the speaker.

“Myth, if we allow ourselves to paint its
definition with broad strokes,” The man was saying. He sounded
distinguished, sounded like an older gentleman, older than Gritz at
least. “…here is meant to include religion and the prejudices
people attribute to themselves and their societies. As such, myth
can be used in the service of idealist or materialist philosophy,
as an instrument of oppression or a means of liberation…”

Gritz unfolded the flier to get a look at the
guy’s name. Dr. something-something. Gritz had never heard of him.
The title of the lecture:
The
Promise
of
Prometheus
—
Myth
in
the
Service
of
Truth
.

“Burke employed a much more catholic
definition of prejudice than we conceive the word. As no less a
distinguished authority than Andrew Hacker puts it, in Burke’s
terms,
prejudice
‘is the whole accumulation of untaught
sentiments which resides in every member of society.’ We ‘cherish
our prejudices’ because they are prejudices that have persisted
over time…”

Would Cathy be surprised to find Gritz
here?

“…we fear reason, Burke opined. We fear
reason because we know man isn’t equipped with much of it. ‘We are
afraid to put men to live and trade each of his own private stock,’
he explains in his
Reflections
on
the
Revolution
, ‘because we suspect that this stock in each man
is small…’ And Burke’s status as patriarch of modern Conservatism
is clearly seen in what he says next, to wit, that ‘individuals
would be better off to avail themselves of the general bank and
capital of nations, and of ages.’ Burke’s argument is that things
are what they are after generation upon successive generation, that
by complying with the prejudices of a time, men—Burke’s word, not
my own—are acting reasonably, reasonably because these are the very
prejudices that have allowed their society to flourish…”

Phantom Redemption had to be playing
somewhere else around the city. Some better venues than Jackie’s.
Places Gritz could take Cath, places he believed she’d be
comfortable.

“…turning to Marx, his use of myth is
two-pronged. There are the myths he cites and the myth that
constitutes his method. Robert Tucker describes Marxism as ‘a
moralistic or religious system,’ and by that he alludes to the
humanism at the heart of Marx’s project…”

She wasn’t returning his calls. It was
driving him crazy. They were still married for God’s sake. Gritz
wondered if she was seeing someone else.

“…Marx, who described Prometheus as ‘the most
eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar,’ admiring
Prometheus’ stand against the gods. Marx, who quoted Aeschylus’
Prometheus approvingly, Prometheus defying Hermes and those the
herald served, Prometheus chained, stating, ‘better to be servant
of this rock’—” the speaker at the lectern paused, his audience
waiting for it “—‘than to be faithful boy to Father Zeus.’”

There were some laughs, a few claps.

“…Marx’s Prometheus a true revolutionary,
chained to his rock and defying ‘all heavenly and earthly gods who
do not acknowledge self-consciousness as the highest divinity.’
Quite the opposite, indeed, of our dear Edmund.”

More laughs from the academic crowd.

The giant man next to Gritz said,
“Human.”

Gritz turned his head to look at him. The guy
wore a collar. Biggest goddman priest Gritz had ever seen in his
life. “Pardon?”

“
Human
self
-
consciousness
is what Marx wrote.”

A little man wearing a bow tie had turned
around and was frowning at them.

“Okay.” Gritz turned back to look at the
column, the speaker still lost from his sight.

When the man on stage started speaking about
myth as a totalitarian construct, Gritz looked at his watch. How
long did these things go for? Yeah, no way Cath would ever imagine
him at a place like this. Gritz was here and he couldn’t imagine
himself here.

“‘
But
from
out
my
coffin’s
prison
-
bounds
/
By
wond’rous
fate
I’m
forced
to
rove
/
While
the
blessings
and
the
chaunting
sounds
/
That
your
priests
delight
in
,
useless
prove
.’”

Gritz hadn’t caught the seque or how the
speaker had pulled it off, but the audience was listening raptly,
so the guy must have done it well. “He lost me,” Gritz said out
loud to himself.

“He’s talking about vampires.”

Gritz looked at the over-sized priest next to
him. “Vampires?”

“It’s
The
Bride
of
Corinth
.”

“The
Bride
of
Corinth
?”

“Goethe.”

Hearing the German’s name pronounced out loud
always sounded funny to Gritz. When he’d first picked up
Faust
he’d looked at the name of the author and figured it
was pronounced
Gothe
or something. Then he’d heard it
pronounced
Ger
-
ter
over and over again and realized
he was wrong, realized it was one of them things about language and
pronunciation. Like the way
v
sounded like a
w
in
certain words or phrases like
veni
,
vedi
,
vichi
.

“Vampires. Huh.” Gritz flashed back to the
men in the Mercury, the Monster Squad or whatever they styled
themselves.

The man in the bow tie had turned around
again to give them that disapproving look. Gritz smiled back at
him, thought it tempting to snatch the guy’s bow tie off his chest,
decided it was time to leave.

Some more grad students were smoking
cigarettes outside on 5th Avenue, under the sidewalk shed. The
Empire State Building was lit up red, white, and blue. Gritz stood
looking up and down the avenue. Which way was that bar?

The library was five or six blocks up. Sure,
the Grad Center had its own. Gritz thought about retrieving his
badge, using it to get in there. Dismissed that idea because he
didn’t want to be surrounded by men like the little guy with the
bow tie. He debated getting back in his car, driving to the midtown
library. But there was nowhere for the car, the parking situation
worse up there than here.

And, he thought, if he walked he could stop
in at the bar for a quick one on the way. Gritz looked at his
watch. The library should be open for a while still.

The beast stalked its enclosure, growling,
drool trailing from each of its mouths. The concrete walls and
floor bore deep gouges from its claw-like paws. Sensing something—a
presence—it looked up towards the wall that separated it from its
freedom.

“Nothing to say?” Halstead goaded and, for
once, Boone was at a loss for words.

The monster stared as if it could see through
the one-way glass, as if it knew Boone was there, the bristles on
its back standing erect. Each of its mouths gnarred with hostility,
teeth glistening. One Doberman-like head let forth a deep, whooping
bark and the other two followed suit. The barrier muffled its
barks.

Boone had seen it before, much closer than
this. He didn’t know what it was called but he knew what it could
do. He felt naked straight-jacketed and strapped to the hand truck
they were rolling him around on, naked without a .357 or something
larger. He’d run into this thing once before.

And it had fucked him up good.

The vampires that stood around him—Colson,
Wells, Halstead, and Pomeroy—contemplated the beast through the
glass.

“What—what is it?” Boone managed to ask,
never taking his eyes off the thing.

Colson answered. “A cerberus.”

“
A
cerberus? You mean there’s more
than one of these things?” Boone couldn’t imagine.

The vampires did not answer.

The cerberus resumed pacing its space, heads
turning to keep Boone locked in its multiple gazes.

“It’s like it knows he’s here,” Wells said of
the creature and Boone.

“Nah, it smells you.” Boone shot back,
regaining a confidence he didn’t feel. First they know about
Jennifer and the kids, now this fucking thing. “It wants to
mate.”

“Legend holds,” proffered Halstead, “it
guards the gates of the Underworld.”

“It prevents those who have crossed the river
Styx from ever escaping,” Pomeroy added.

“Then what’s it doing here?”

“The dark Lord has a taste for exotic pets,”
replied Colson.

“And you’re showing me this
because
?”

“Because the dark Lord doesn’t make threats,
Boone. He doesn’t have to.”

“You do it for him. That right, Colson?”
Him
. It was the first time, Boone realized, he’d referred to
the thing running this show by the masculine objective pronoun
instead of as an
it
.

“I remind you of what is at stake here,”
Colson was saying.

“I get it. I run, you sick this thing on
me.”