I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (20 page)

“Not necessarily you.”

“You f—” Boone blurted before he caught
himself.

“Feeding time,” noted Halstead.

“It has an appetite for live meat,” Pomeroy
said, an aside to Boone.

As they watched, a partition in one wall rose
and four chimpanzees burst into the enclosure, scattering in
different directions, chattering and shrieking. The cerberus sprang
forward, the jaws of its mouths barking and snapping, catching one
of the primates up before it had gotten far. Two of its mighty,
shaking jaws tore the screaming chimp in half, showering blood
across the scarred ground. Even as it did this, the cerberus had
cornered a second terrified chimpanzee and commenced devouring
it.

“Like the dark Lord, Boone,” Colson remarked
calmly, “I find making threats distasteful, beneath me. But let me
be blunt. That little, ‘I got business to take care of’ you pulled
back at Enfermo’s? Try something like that again, and we’ll let
Betsey off her leash.”

While the Cerberus devoured a third
chimpanzee before their eyes, the final chimp pried futilely at the
section of the wall where the partition had descended.

“Not much to say all of a sudden.” Halstead
smiled at Boone for the first time ever. “Is there?”

When Colson asked if there were any
questions, Boone didn’t respond. “You’re a young man, Boone, a
young man with much rage. But I believe you can control this rage.
More importantly, the dark Lord believes you can control this rage.
Tell me, Boone: can you control this rage?”

Boone paused before answering. “Yeah.”

Colson nodded approvingly. “Wells.”

Wells got behind the hand truck and rolled
Boone from the viewing chamber, following Colson. Pomeroy and
Halstead were left alone at the glass, side by side. Betsey groomed
its forelegs and paws, licking them and wiping its mouths. The lone
chimp had given up at the wall and huddled in a corner.

“Rainford asked me to go with them,” Halstead
mentioned.

“I was afraid so.”

Their hands found one another and they stood
together, the cerberus chewing its meal.

“Whether this mission fails or succeeds,”
Pomeroy reached up with its free hand to its pompadour, “our side
is declaring war.”

“The war is already upon us. We have a chance
to end it with the opening shots.”

Hands clasped, they stood quietly for some
time.

“Be careful,” Pomeroy squeezed Halstead’s
hand. “Come back to me.”

“I will.”

The cerberus called Betsey turned its
attention to the chimpanzee cowering in the corner and the thing
started to screech.

“That’s where she went? You sure?”

“That’s where she went, yo.” Marquis answered
Luke’s question, the boys’ attention drawn to the apartment
building a block over.

They stood together on the corner, Luke,
Marquis, and Yuri, the three black youth not looking out of place.
This neighborhood had been heavily Polish and Ukranian half a
century ago. Since then it’d changed and there were all sorts of
people that called it home. When the Moses towers had gone up a few
blocks away in the late sixties, the neighborhood had taken on a
darker tint. No one stopped to ask the boys if they lived nearby or
what they were doing, and they were careful not to say anything to
the few passersby. This last part was harder for Yuri than Marquis,
but Luke had warned them both.

“You sure it was her?”

“I seen the bitch, yo.” Marquis harbored no
doubts. “Took her ten minutes to get in the door.”

You
know
a
lady
walks
by
here
? Her son had asked them that day
on the street.
Big
lady
?
Heavy
lady
with
thick
ankles
? Nice way to put what it
was.

“Bitch fat like an elephant.” Yuri putting it
like it was, his mind on the knife in his pants, the girl waiting
on him back at the Moses. He’d finger fucked her behind the
ventilation system. Made her touch him down there, pull on him
some. Yuri wanted to get back to Moses, seal the deal. What he
liked to do, when he fucked them, liked to take his knife out,
unfold it, put it up against their throats. Not too many girls were
into that though. Occasionally one of the older freakier ones,
maybe one of the younger ones too excited to stop him.

“Who that?” Luke asked about the older white
guy in the folding chair outside the building, some kind of brace
on his neck.

“Some nigga.” Marquis was touching his
cheeks, his bruises fading. The man had hit him in the face that
day, had hurt him more than physically. Hurt his pride. Marquis had
stood there trying not to cry, the man telling him in front of his
friends he had blow job lips. Telling him a man steps to you, you
got to step right up to him. Which Marquis intended to do, the 9mm
under his shirt intended exactly for that purpose.

“We wait.” Luke leaned back against a car,
arms crossed.

An Asian lady pushing a baby carriage passed
on the other side of the street. Yuri was looking over at her and
Luke saw him doing it, Luke figuring as long as Yuri was looking
and not saying anything, not drawing any negative attention their
way, then that was all right.

Yuri was wondering what it’d be like to stick
his dick in an Asian lady. There’d been that girl Mona that time in
school, when he’d gone to school. Mona wasn’t Asian but she had
Chinky eyes. She’d been tight as hell too. Yuri thinking that had
more to do with her age than any shape of her eye.

A white car with a red and blue stripe marked
Department
of
Sanitation
pulled up at the curb
next to the man in the folding chair. The driver and the man
carried on a little conversation, the man reaching up at one point
to his brace. When the car pulled away, the man got up, folded his
chair and went inside the apartment.

Luke watched the city car go, looked both
ways on the street. “Come on.”

The three crossed, swaying a little with
their swag on. Feeling good about what they were about to do. Luke
paused to look both ways again before they stepped into the
vestibule of the apartment. There was a wall of bells and mail
boxes and a door barring their path. Yuri turned the knob and
pushed against the door a few times until Luke told him to
stop.

“We should what, yo?” Marquis already had his
strap out, down behind his leg. “Ring the bell?”

That’s
Mrs
.
Coyle
, the
son had told them.
Let
me
tell
you
about
her
.

Luke reached out and did just that, rang the
bell for 3B.
Coyle
. Then he pulled the steel pipe he had out
of his pants. If Eddie Coyle came to answer, they’d have a little
something for him. Club him—stick him—shoot him right there.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
—

The door unlatched. The boys looked at each
other. They stepped into a short hallway, a steep stairwell
ascending to the second floor, a door to a ground floor apartment
marked
1
.

They went up the steps with their weapons
out, the stairs making all sorts of noise under them.

Let
me
tell
you
about
her
. The fat lady’s punk-ass son telling them
his mother was some kind of den mother for one of them faggot white
boy groups.

The second floor was a long hallway, an
apartment door at either end. Strong smells in the air, food and
something else.

Yuri was wondering what it’d be like to stick
his dick in a woman that large.

With Luke in the lead, they crossed the hall
to the next staircase, another steep set of stairs disappearing
into the murk above. Like the lights up there were out. The only
illumination muted daylight that came from a smudged sky light.

Something creaked on the third floor
landing.

Marquis looked at Yuri, Yuri looked at
Marquis, and then both boys looked to Luke. A door opened on its
chain back down the hall the way they’d come and Luke stepped back
there fast, pressed against the hallway wall, the door closing
before he could reach it. He heard the sound of multiple locks
being set. Luke pressed himself to the wall next to the door,
figuring whoever lived inside was looking out into the hallway now
through the peep hole.

Yuri and Marquis looked back at him and Luke
lifted his head, telling them to go on and get upstairs. He watched
them turn onto the stairwell and listened to the stairs under their
feet. He waited by the door, the pipe in his hand, waiting for it
to open. Some nosy nobody gonna get their head bust.

Fat lady’s bitch son telling them his mom had
named the dog after LeRoi-somebody, like it was some nigga they
should know. Luke hadn’t had a clue who the man’d been talking of.
It wasn’t like he went home and looked it up.

The noise on the stairs had ceased. His boys
were up there now. Better save a piece of that sumbitch for
him.

Luke looked at the peep hole, wondering if
the person inside was looking back out. He had Marquis’ nine, he
could press the muzzle to the peep hole, put one in the door, teach
whoever was inside a lesson about spying on people. But he didn’t
have Marquis’ nine; Marquis did. Would the person inside call the
cops they saw three unfamiliar black kids in the hall?

A snap and a grunt from upstairs grabbed
Luke’s attention. A brief commotion, sounded like a scuffle, then
nothing.

Luke looked back at the apartment door. Still
no one opening it. Fuck them if they were watching through the spy
hole.

He crossed the hall to the bottom of the
stairwell, looking up into the dark. Couldn’t see nothing.
“
Marquis
!” he whispered. “
Yuri
!”

Nothing.

“
Marquis
!” A little louder.

A sound from upstairs. Somebody was up
there.

“
Yuri
!” Even louder.
“
Marquis
!”

Yuri came down the stairs, something not
right with him, his boy leaning against the bannister like he
couldn’t keep his balance. In one hand he held some kind of cup,
looked like an old-fashioned goblet from King Arthur days. Yuri’s
other hand was up on his forehead, his knife sticking out of his
skull.

Luke’s eyes opened as Yuri sat down, slumping
back on the stairs five steps from the landing. His body convulsed
with a seizure, eyes swimming in his head trying to focus on the
knife handle jutting out of his forehead. His eyes shone white and
his arms dropped, hands going slack, the cup tumbling down the
remaining stairs to land at Luke’s feet.

Luke reached out and took the cup. He was
puzzling over it, puzzling over what had become of Yuri sitting
there motionless, when the stairs creaked beneath a new weight.

A man was coming down the stairs, looked like
the man from the street that time, except—Except this guy was all
kinds of fucked up.

The thing that had been Eddie Coyle descended
slowly, unsteadily. The torso entered the weak mote of light from
overhead first and it looked to Luke like the man was missing most
of the fingers on one hand. When Luke got a look at the man’s
face—the ears gone, one eye missing, the other with a sleepy look,
drugged—he couldn’t believe it. The skin on the lower jaw didn’t
match the rest of his face. It was covered with tufts of hair
didn’t look like no beard Luke had ever seen, like someone had gone
and stitched new skin to the man’s face, pasted some clumps of hair
to it.

The thing came staggering down the stairs,
holding Marquis’ gun by the barrel, no idea how to use it.

But there was no mistaking it. This was the
punk had stepped to them on the street that day. This was him—

Luke rushed up the steps and batted the thing
with the pipe, knocking its head sideways. He hit it again and its
head came off its shoulders, plunking down the stairs, its mouth
still moving, rasping at him. The body was still standing there,
one hand on the bannister, the other continuing to reach out,
fingers splayed, Marquis’ gun hanging from the one finger by the
trigger guard.

Luke ran. Back down the hallway, past the
apartments—the one door open an inch on its chain slamming shut. He
tripped and fell down the last half of the first landing, losing
his pipe but holding onto the ornate cup and then he was through
the vestibule and out onto the street, running full-on down the
block, the fuck if anyone saw him. Running back towards Moses,
clutching the chalice.

“Looks like he met Eddie,” one of the three
women seated in the car up the block remarked to the other two.

“Eddie? I thought he went by Bowie.”

“Not with his mother he doesn’t.”

Halstead and Pomeroy rolled Boone in on a
hand truck, Boone seated and chained to a steel chair, bound and
gagged. His arms were crossed over his chest in the strait-jacket,
tied down at his sides. His mouth was full of the ball gag Pomeroy
had intimated spent time in other orifices.

“What’s with the Hannibal Lectar getup?” One
of the four male figures seated in folding chairs asked. Colson,
standing in front of them beside a projector screen, did not
answer. A short, bespectacled man stood next to Colson.

“It’s the best thing for him.” Boone tried to
crane his head around to glare at Halstead but the vampire remained
out of his sight. “Trust me.”

The last few days of training had not been
pleasant, for Boone or his teachers.

“I demand this man be unbound.” The one who
had spoken dwarfed the folding chair he sat in. Shoulder-length
white hair with streaks of grey framed a hard face carved with
lines. A star-burst scar circled one eye, the orbit milky. The man
wore a utilitarian button-down workshirt over straight pants. Big
hands and forearms gnarled with muscle and hair. “There’s no way
I’m working like this.”