Blood Oranges (9781101594858) (13 page)

As demonesses go, she was a looker, no denying that. Hell, as human women go, she was a hottie (pun unintended). Clemency was about a foot taller than me, and I'm five seven, so, to say the least, she was an imposing presence. Her skin was a faintly pearlescent hue of very pale blue. Let's say sky blue, because I've always liked the way “sky blue” rolls off the tongue. I've always liked blue skies. Anyway, Lady Clemency Hate-evill, with her spiraling ram's horns, her stormy gray eyes, and those carefully braided fetlocks that all but hid her hooves from view—it wasn't hard to see why she was a house favorite, despite her admittedly exorbitant fee. Also, I'm pretty sure she was immune to even the concept of clothing.

“Hello you,” she said when she saw me. She was smiling, but it was a nervous smile. “You're a sight for sore eyes. Let's go to my room.” I hugged her, hugged her hard, because at that point it was good to see anyone familiar. Anyone at all. Any
thing
at all.

Then I followed her up to the third floor, trailing one hand along the polished oak banister as we went. We passed a few others. I smiled and made no more eye contact than necessary. To them, I was just another mark, another bit of candy with a chewy center. The sort of acquaintance I had with Clemency, it wasn't so much frowned upon as it was deemed extraordinarily peculiar and unprofitable. Demons are all about profit; they make great madams, and even better CEOs.

Her room was the same brand of tawdry as the rest of the house. She shut the door, locked it, and pointed to a wide récamier. The cranberry upholstery looked like several very determined cats had taken exceptional joy using it as a scratching post. I knew plenty better. She sat down next to me, and slipped an arm around my shoulders. She stared intently at me for . . . I have no idea how long. But I couldn't turn away from those eyes until she was done.

“So,
this
is the new Quinn,” she said, seeming to relax now that we were in her room. “Must admit, I'd prefer you without the phony headlights and all that war paint. A crying shame, hiding whatever's under there.” She ran a finger beneath my chin, and I told her I'd wash my face and remove the contacts before I left, if she wanted, and she said she did, very, very much please.

“The word going round,” she sighed and sat back, “it isn't of the good sort, my lamby darling.”

“I didn't expect it to be. So, you've heard?”

“Enough to put the pieces together. Likely more than you, and I'm guessing that's why you're here. Knowing you, it isn't small talk and chitchat. And I know you're not here for a good belly-bumping.”

“Yeah,” I said, my throat gone dry. Until then, I hadn't realized vamps throats
could
go dry. “Wish it were.” I didn't precisely mean that, but I said it, anyway.

“Lucky they even let you through that silly maze of phylacteries. I hate to say, and no offense, but you stink of dog. And you know how that goes.”

“No offense taken.” I'd been thinking the same thing myself.

“I asked for a favor,” she said. “Old Wormlash, she owes me a few.” Wormlash was Clemency's madam, and she had a rep as a hellion among hellions.

“You probably shouldn't have wasted it on me.”

She leaned close again, flaring her nostrils and curling her lip to expose teeth that made mine look like nubs. “I do so loathe the smell of dog,” she said.

“Then maybe you should stop sniffing at me,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. Never, ever fucking pays to get annoyed with demons, not even the ones who, inexplicably, have a soft spot for you. “I need to know whatever
you
know. Anything at all.”

She sat back again, frowned, and propped those hooves up on a crooked footstool. Her arm remained around my shoulders, and I tried to ignore how horny it was making me, her touch, just being so close to her.

“You went after a loup named Grumet. Ugly bastard had the butcher's trade cornered up in the Blackstone River Valley. No idea why he was down here. He took a chunk out of you before the Bride of Quiet put him down.”

“Maybe tell me something I
don't
know?” I suggested as politely as possible. She stared up at the water-stained ceiling for a moment.

“See, that's where I have to be careful, dumpling. That's where a girl can get herself arseholed seven ways from sundown. So, what I tell you, I need to know it won't leave this room. And even then . . .”

“I fucking swear.”

“Of course you do, sugarplum. You're scared, and scared human beings—well, in your case, former human beings—will swear to almost anything if they think it'll save their backsides.”

I fished my Zippo and a crumpled pack of Camel Wides from my jeans pocket, then asked if she minded if I smoked.

“Of course not, pumpkin.”

I lit a cigarette, and held that first drag until my ears started to buzz. I exhaled, and the smoke curled into a vaporous serpent. That was Clemency's doing, and I complimented her on it.

“Don't think it's so much about what I can tell you, Quinn, as much as it is about the questions I doubt you've started asking yourself.”

“I'm asking quite a few,” I replied.

“Not the right ones, or you wouldn't be sitting here. Not the genuinely unnerving ones.”

I took another puff. This time I blew smoke rings that she shaped into a pentagram. “And what, pray tell, are the right and unnerving questions I'm not asking?”

She hesitated a couple of seconds, then chewed at the ebony talon at the end of her right thumb for a bit.

“Look,” I said, “I didn't come here to get you in Dutch with anyone. I'm not here to fuck up your shit.”

“Yes, you are,” she softly growled. “Mayhap you don't understand that's how it is. But, nonetheless, that's how it is, dumpling.”

“Then don't say another word. I'll leave right now.”

The arm about my shoulder tightened enough there was no chance of my standing up.

“Just for starters, ask yourself this. What was the Bride doing there? How did she know you were tracking Grumet, and yes, I'm assuming you and the loup, that wasn't a chance encounter. You were calling him out.”

“He was hanging bodies in goddamn trees.”

“He was a dog. Dogs like their sport.”

I frowned and watched the smoldering tip of my cigarette. “As it happens, that question's already been asked.”

“But has it been
answered
?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Well, that's a step in the right direction, plumbing the depths of that particular mystery. Someone had to have tipped her off you'd be up that way that particular night, and you need to start asking yourself who that someone might have been.”

“I killed her twat of a daughter. She could have been stalking me for who knows how long.”

“Maybe,” said Clemency, “and maybe not. Where's that son of a bitch B run away to, and why?”

“Hell if I know,” I said, and then (lightbulb) I saw what she was getting at. “No fucking way he set me up. I'm his prize pit bull . . . or something like that.”

She shrugged. “Here's another news flash, darling. The grapevine leads one to believe Mr. Bobby Ng isn't long for the world.”

“Who the hell would bother killing Ng?”

“He's the reason you killed Alice Cregan, yes?”

“Well, sure. Yeah, but . . . he's worse than harmless.”

Her skin darkened a shade or three, the way it did whenever she was holding back.

“Nevertheless . . .”

“Nevertheless nothing. You came wanting answers.”

“And mostly I'm getting more questions, or answers that might as well be questions.”

“Better than the troll gave,” she said, and went back to chewing at the claw. She pulled a sliver loose, then spat it at the floor.

“You know about Aloysius? His dumb-ass riddle?”

She nodded. “Ears everywhere. Quinn, you ought to understand that by now. Want the answer?”

I chewed at my lip, then told her sure, of course I did.

“Death,” she said. “Think about it later on. The answer is death, not a sacrifice. Your death, Quinn. Only cure for going wolfish.”

“But I'm already dead.”

“This does present a conundrum. Though I'm guessing you'd find it an unsatisfactory antidote, if you weren't.”

She was right, but I didn't tell her so.

“B absolutely did not set me up.”

“Never said he did. I only asked a question.”

“You implied.”

“No, sweetheart. You heard what, possibly, you were already thinking.”

I finished the Camel, and she pointed towards an ashtray that had once been the top of a human skull, balanced on the arm of the récamier. I crushed the butt out. The ashtray wasn't there before I needed it, which hardly came as a shock. It immediately vanished.

“At any rate,” Clemency said. “Lots of people looking for B these days. Lots of loose ends, business he didn't see fit to conclude before this disappearing act. Money he took from the powers that be, the high on high, and then failed to deliver the goods. He's slipping from the kindly graces of the Dukes and Duchesses. Must have been terribly afraid to let it come to that, wouldn't you think?”

I admitted it wasn't like him, and you don't screw around with the sorts that hire Mean Mr. B. You take a job, you see it straight through to the bitter end, or it's your ass. No way I couldn't admit that much.

“How'd you know to go looking after Mr. Grumet?” she asked, and the nervousness I'd heard downstairs was returning to her voice. “What put you on the dog's trail?”

“It was in the papers.”

“Darling, you don't strike me as a news junky.”

“B, he said I should pay attention to the newspapers. That sometimes the nasties slip up. No offense.”

“None taken,” she said very softly, her voice growing brittle. “So, B, he started you reading the papers, looking for the doings of the unholy and carnivorous, that's what you're telling me?”

I furrowed my brow and lit another cigarette.

“You smoke too much,” she said.

“Clemency, I'm
already
fucking dead,” I replied.

“Still a nasty habit,” she sort of tsk-tsked.

I tried to get the conversation back on track. “So, you're implying coincidences ain't actually coincidences.”

“
Aren't
actually,” she corrected. She did that sometimes, corrected my grammar. Usually, I found it funny, or oddly sweet. “And no,” she continued, “I'm only asking questions you haven't asked. Doubt—doubt and curiosity, doubt and suspicion—they may presently be the best allies you have, love. Listen to what they have to tell you. Draw lines, dot to dot. You know how that works, Quinn. Correlate what you know with what you
don't
know.”

“And just how am I supposed to correlate what I don't know.”

“There's a choke leash around your throat,” she said, sounding as sad as I ever heard her sound. “Might as well be a spiked collar. I'd take it off if only I knew how. Might be my loss, doing so, but you're a good kid. You deserve better than what's coming your way.”

And before I could ask what the fuck she meant by all that, she turned and kissed me. I've had my fair share of kisses, but never anything came close to that. It was the Olympic gold medal of kisses, right? It was the finest wine, and all I'd ever tasted was Budweiser. Maybe it was even better than smack and the instant my teeth tear into someone's carotid artery. It seemed to go on just about forever. Her tongue slid across mine, then grew longer and encircled it. Maybe, one day, I might forget the alien beauty of Clemency Hate-evill, but no way I'm ever gonna forget that kiss. Or the way she tasted: frankincense, a hint of what might have been charcoal, dried roses, cardamom, chocolate, and the sea.

When she broke the kiss, the whole world seemed to shatter, sure as that hand mirror I'd dropped in Nordstrom's.

“You could always stay with me, Quinn,” she said. “Might buy you some time. Might even change the path you're on.”

“Don't tempt me,” I muttered, and that made her smile.

That was the last time I saw Clemency smile. That was the last time I saw her period. Reluctantly, and with a grand air of resignation, she led me back down the stairs, we said our good-byes, and I was ushered to the rear entrance.

The very last thing she said to me was “Ask those scary questions.”

I tried to call her a few days later, and was informed by another girl, informed very matter-of-factly, that she was dead. When I asked how it had happened, I was told there had been an argument with one of her regular johns. This unfamiliar whore, she kept talking at me, how a void dissipation spell had been involved, how Clemency probably never knew what hit her, but by then I wasn't really listening anymore. Before I hung up, I caught one last thing, though. The voice on the other end wanted to know if I was Siobhan Quinn. I didn't answer her; I figured the demon already knew the answer.

I sat on my crummy fucking mattress in my crummy fucking apartment, half starved, and I cried for the first time since the night in the warehouse when I “killed” the ghoul. I cried until I finally couldn't cry anymore, and fell asleep. I dreamed of Lily and Clemency and a friend from elementary school, along with a stingy handful of other precious things I'd known and lost. When I woke, it was a little after midnight, and there was bright moonlight streaming in the window.

Hey, bummer, I know. But comedy and horror, they dance that wicked
danse macabre
. So, it can't
all
be shits and giggles, right? Feel free to stop reading at any time. I won't be insulted.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE BLUNDERBUSS, BOSTON HARRY, AND THE BEAST

I
've never much cared for dream sequences in books. Well, to be fair, speaking of those books I've read that have included dream sequences, I've never cared for them. For the dream sequences. Not even sure I can explain why. Mostly, if I set my mind to it, I suspect I dislike dream sequences, as portrayed in books, because I don't think they resemble
actual
dreams. Dream sequences in books have always seemed to me like pointing to one of those little green plastic Monopoly houses and hoping people will mistake it for the Taj Mahal. And maybe there are some people who'd accept the one for the other. Just don't number me among them. Anyway, this is my long-ass winded way of saying that a couple of days after learning of Clemency's death (or whatever), I had a dream. And I suppose it was portentous, and I could pause to read all manner of things into it. Maybe the Bride's hoodoo had left me a dash of the second sight, or maybe it was a parting gift from a demon whore, slipped into me on a kiss. I didn't know then, and I don't know now.

I dreamed of Mr. B sitting there in his booth at Babe's on the Sunnyside, with this row of dominoes lined up on the table in front of him. Hector was there, and the other guys from my street. Mr. B knocked over one domino, and watched as the others dutifully fell, one after the next.

Pretty lousy dream, yeah.

When I woke from the dream, it was late in the day, only a couple of hours until sunset. I sat in my bedroom awhile, smoking and staring at the wall and listening to WRIU on the radio. Then I wandered into the front room and peered out through the curtains. The boys were playing dominoes on the sidewalk, just like usual (loop back to the dream, so I stared at them a moment). And then I noticed what was parked by the curb. My fucking car was parked there, the Honda I hadn't seen since that night out at the Reservoir, that night I had my run-in with Grumet and the Bride. Someone had even gone to the trouble of having it washed (though, frankly, that only made it look that much dingier).

Could've been Mr. B, that was my first thought. But that didn't make much sense, not really, and so my second thought, returning the car, that must have been Mercy Brown's doing. Who the hell else was there left to suspect? Sure, I reasoned, Mercy Brown, she must have minions of her own. Alice Cregan couldn't have been the long and short of it. No doubt, there was a whole clique of little shits who did her bidding, and one of them had been told to bring the car back to me. As to the why, I hadn't the foggiest idea.

I found the Ray-Bans and slipped them on. I wasn't in the mood to bother with the contacts (or the makeup, for that matter). I'd just have to take my chances. I stepped out into the too, too bright day. I asked the boys if any of them had seen who'd left the Honda, and none of them knew shit. I'd sort of suspected they wouldn't.

“Car was there when we set up,” said Hector (or Hugo or . . . I'm never gonna figure that out, so let's just stick with Hector). “But it's your ride, yeah,
chica
?”

“I thought it was lost,” I replied.

He looked at it and spat tobacco juice on the sidewalk. “Looks like someone found it.”

The doors weren't locked, and the keys were in the ignition. In that neighborhood, it was a miracle no one had appropriated my p.o.s. Honda for their own purposes. Oh, and when I started it, I discovered the gas tank was full. And the broken speedometer was working again, and the left headlight had been replaced, the one that had only worked when it felt like it. So, whoever left the car, they'd gone to the trouble to have it cleaned and seen to a bit of fix-up beforehand. Regardless, at least there'd be no more taxis and buses. I went back and locked my front door, and then I drove. I wasn't sure where I was driving at first, just driving so I wouldn't be sitting on that filthy mattress waiting until I was too hungry not to murder the first poor, dumb schmuck who crossed my path.

I drove beneath Aloysius' bridge, and then took the entrance onto I-195, and realized that I was driving to Cranston. I realized I was on my way to find Bobby Ng, even if I wasn't exactly sure why.

Here's another news flash, darling. The grapevine leads one to believe Mr. Bobby Ng isn't long for the world.

Who the hell would bother killing Ng?

Delivers pizzas on the side. Didn't that used to be your neck of the woods, Cranston?

She was mine. They promised. She was supposed to be mine. You fucking cheated, Quinn.

They promised.

Dot to dot.

Ask those scary questions.

They promised.

And I exited onto I-95, heading south, and I started thinking about Humphrey Bogart in
The Big Sleep
, Sam Spade in
The Maltese Falcon
. They sure as hell wouldn't lounge around their shitty apartment waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or the next domino to fall, if you'd rather I not go mixing my metaphors.

I left I-95 and followed Doric to Park Ave. Must be ten, fifteen pizza joints in Cranston, right? And, naturally, I hadn't a fucking clue which one Bobby Ng was working for. But I knew he drove an ancient AMC Gremlin the color of an overripe avocado and even more banged up than my Honda. I knew there was a bumper sticker on the hatchback window, “I Want to Believe.” You know, like Fox Mulder. Pure Bobby, through and through. Anyway, I drove. It's not like I was in a hurry, was it? Hell, I could spend hours and hours driving around Cranston looking for the avocado Gremlin. Well, at least until the rumbling in my belly got too loud to ignore. Every now and then I tried to call B, even though I knew it was futile.

But luck be a lady and all that, right? Fourth pizza place I passed, there was Bobby's green-black Gremlin parked right out front. Looked like someone had rear-ended him since the last time I'd seen the car, and the back fender was held on with two bungee cords. Guess delivering pies and chasing nasties wasn't quite lucrative enough to pay the bill from a body shop, or maybe, like me, he just didn't give a damn what the car looked like, as long as it ran. I pulled up across the street from the place, lit a Camel, and tried to figure out what to do next.

Had I come to warn him, because of what Clemency had said? Had I maybe come hoping he knew something I didn't about all this crazy shit? Was I just looking to rid myself of a few drams of frustration by kicking his ass in a convenient alleyway? Or, was I just desperate for a familiar face, even if it was Bobby fucking Ng, demon hunter?

That dream about Mean Mr. B and his dominoes, there was more. I suppose my inherent dislike for dream sequences led to me skimming past those parts. Not like I could
trust
my memory of the dream, right? Anyway, he wasn't alone in that booth at the back of Babe's. The Bride, she was there, too, all china-doll pale and wispy silken hair. She sat watching the tumbling dominoes, and the way she watched them made me think of a cat stalking a bird. Just crouching for the pounce. And there was a bullet hole right between Mr. B's eyes. His brains stained the wall behind him. Right, right; helluva lot to leave out, sure. But there you go, take it or leave it.

If there are sketchier pizza joints in Cranston, I've never seen them. I figured, right off, the place had to be a front for something. Money laundering, dealing dope, take your pick. Not my business, but I did wonder how much someone was slipping the health inspector to keep the doors open. Or maybe he wasn't on the take. Maybe threats from certain quarters were enough to score a clean bill of health. Place like that, Uncle Paulie's Original Pizza, I couldn't help but think cockroaches and flies had a place of honor on the menu, along with the pepperoni and Spanish olives.

I sat there listening to the radio for, I don't know, however long it takes to hear one song by Echo and the Bunnymen, a song by the Cars, another by 'Til Tuesday, and a few I can't remember. Truthfully, no, I don't recall
any
of the songs. I'm guessing and writing stuff down because it sounds better. But it was an eighties nostalgia show, I'm sure of that much, and those are all bands I happen to like. I sat there across from the banged-up Gremlin and tried to figure out what I was going to do when Bobby Ng stepped out onto the sidewalk. Would I follow him? Would I open the door and maybe shout something like, “Hey, dick cheese!” There weren't all that many options open to me, and I knew he'd bolt the second he saw who I was. Especially if he saw what I'd
become
. Fuck those business cards of his. Talk is cheap. Embossed business cards are probably even cheaper.

Anyway, yeah, I decided to follow him and hope that when he delivered someone's extra large with all the toppings that there'd be someplace a little less public to have a chat with him.

Let's cut to the chase. (By the way, I got curious and just looked up the origin of that phrase. Thought it would lead me back to
Starsky and Hutch
or
Adam-12
or some shit. Nope. Turns out, the phrase “cut to the chase” first appears in 1929 as a line of direction in a script adapted from Joseph Patrick McEvoy's novel,
Hollywood Girl
. No, I've never heard of McEvoy, either, and you gotta figure, he probably didn't invent the phrase, and so it's likely older than 1929. But . . . it occurs to me that it's pretty stupid to say “cut to the chase” and then embark upon a goddamn eighty-five word exposition on the etymology. . . . )

Cut to the chase.

Though it wasn't actually a bona fide chase. It was more like a
crawl
. So, cut to the crawl. Bobby Ng drives like an old woman, but then maybe the Gremlin won't go any faster than fifteen miles per hour. Either way, gotta figure Uncle Paulie gets a buttload of complaints about cold pizzas and calzones. But, as I was saying, Ng was creeping along Park Avenue in his skeezy old car, finally turned left onto Roslyn. Then he proceeded to creep along another, I don't know, but let's say another two or three hundred yards. He finally pulled over in front of a house and made the delivery. I was guessing there must have been a bag of weed or coke inside the box, but, like I said, that's none of my business. What happens at Uncle Paulie's stays at Uncle Paulie's. I pulled in close behind him, and it wasn't until he was back behind the wheel that he realized I was sitting in the passenger seat.

I said, “You really do need to start locking this door, Bobby. All sorts of bad guys sneaking about. Never know.”

He made this sort of squawking noise and tried to get out again, but by then I had a good grip on his right shoulder, and we both knew he wasn't going anywhere.

“I didn't come here to kill you,” I said, though I'm absolutely sure he didn't believe me. “But it would increase your chances of survival, and decrease the chances of me changing my mind, if you started the car and drove.”

“Where?” he all but whispered. “Where is it you want me to drive?”

“I have in mind something scenic. But we'll figure that out as we go,” I replied, though I was already thinking about the Pocasset Cemetery, just above Print Works Pond. Lots of privacy up that way.

“You look like shit,” he said and turned the key in the ignition. A blue-gray puff of smoke leaked out from under the hood, and he had to try a couple more times before the car started.

“Feel even worse,” I told him.

“You know . . . I still have a limp from when you shot me with that arrow. Probably always will.”

“I didn't shoot you with an arrow. I shot you with a bolt. It was a crossbow, and crossbows use bolts, not arrows.”

“Same goddamn difference,” he said, did a three-point turn around, and the avocado Gremlin chugged back towards Park Avenue. “I still got the limp.”

“Yeah, well. Poor fucking you. My heart cries crimson piss. I got lots worse than a limp cause of that night, but you've already noticed that, haven't you?”

“Didn't want to come right out and say a thing like that, Quinn.”

“Is that some sort of demon hunter etiquette?” I asked.

“No. Just common courtesy. How's it gonna sound, you come right out and ask someone if she's a vampire?”

I gave his shoulder a firm squeeze, sort of like Spock on
Star Trek
, right? He made the chicken noise again, but kept his eyes on the road.

“You're gonna kill me, aren't you?”

“Let's just say it's a fluid situation, Bobby. You play by my rules, maybe I'll just put you in a wheelchair.” I didn't mean that, but it sounded good. I watch way too many gangster films. Guy Ritchie. Jason Statham. Quentin Tarantino. Et al.

“So you're dead?”

“
Jesus
, Bobby. Ain't that the way it usually works?”

“Who?”

“Who what?”

“Who did it to you?”

“Mama bear of that nasty I killed back in February. You know, the bitch I took down to save your sorry hide?”

“Yeah, Quinn. Sure. Right before you almost crippled me,” he muttered.

I squeezed his shoulder again. Any harder, and I'm pretty sure I'd have broken his collarbone.

“Fuck!”
he yelped and almost ran a stop sign. He stomped the brakes so hard I slid forward and smacked against the dashboard. “Stop
doing
that! You break my arm, I won't be driving anywhere.”

Gotta admit, he had a point.

I let go of his shoulder, and turned on the radio. There was nothing anywhere on the dial but static, so I switched it off again.

“Yeah, it's toast,” he said, and nodded towards the radio. “Some asshole snapped the antenna off a while ago.”

I sat back in what was left of the bucket seat and massaged my right breast, the one I'd mashed against the dashboard. I shut my eyes a moment. “I'm not gonna kill you,” I told him. “But I hear someone else has it in their head to do that very thing. So, I figure we should talk. Hang a left.”