Blood Oranges (9781101594858) (15 page)

I rolled over onto my back (I'd come awake on my left side). My mouth tasted like mud and blood and bile. Mostly mud. I had mosquito bites; lots of mosquito bites. I wondered if maybe there was now a swarm of hairy vampire mosquitoes. My stomach hurt like hell. There was something crawling across my belly. I never did figure out what it was, but I brushed it away into the darkness between the reeds, and stared back at the ogling moon, the nighttime voyeur eye of Jehovah, if it suits your fancy. I lifted my arm to give it the middle finger, a good “fuck off,” and that's when I realized just how much every single muscle in my fucking body ached. I turned my head to one side, pressing my cheek deeply into the muck again, and there, only a few feet from me, was a sizable pile of puke, explaining the throw-up taste in my mouth. There were sizable chunks of bone.

I'd turned loup, and I'd killed, and then eaten, Bobby Ng.

I said something appropriate, like “Fucking, fucking fuck all,” and tried to get to my feet. It took me several tries. My legs were weak and the mud was deep. The first few steps, I sank in up to my knees. By the time I reached more solid ground, I was out of breath and had to lie down in the grass and rest awhile before going any farther. By the light of that waning last quarter moon (I've learned a lot about the phases of the moon since that night; you live this life, the moon takes on all sorts of importance), I saw that hardly an inch of me wasn't smeared with mud and gore. There were various unrecognizable bits of plant matter plastered to my sticky skin. When I was strong enough to walk again, I did the best I could to get my bearings. I stumbled along eastward until I came to a narrow stream, where I did the best I could to wash. Considering the stream was pretty mucky its own self, the results were so-so. I washed out my mouth, which seemed more important than getting my body clean. There was a cemetery just across the stream, and, if I hadn't gone far during my time as a loup, I guessed it was either Pocasset or Saint Anne's. Turned out it was, in fact, the latter. Saint Anne's is newer and the rows of dead more neatly laid out, like those dominoes from my dream. Anyway, I was walking a little better by then, and it wasn't far north to Pocasset. With any luck, no one had found whatever I'd left of Bobby—assuming I'd left anything—or his car. His car was the most important part. I wasn't about to go waltzing out into the bright streetlights of Cranston bare as the day I was born. If I were lucky, the car would be there, and I'd only have to worry about someone—hopefully not a cop—noticing a naked, muddy woman behind the wheel.

I was lucky. And how often does
that
happen?

And yeah, there was
some
of Bobby Ng left beside the car. Mostly bones, and mostly bones from the waist down. His jeans and those fabled boxer shorts were gone, too. Only his tennis shoes and tube socks remained. Staring at what remained of the corpse, I decided I must have torn the poor bastard in two. Maybe I'd dragged the upper half away into the marshes. Maybe it was tucked not-so-neatly behind one of the nearby tombstones. More likely, I'd eaten most of it, which would explain the vomit and the cramps. I'd soon learn what sits perfectly well in the belly of a loup in loup form rarely ever agrees with a loup in human form. But I wasn't craving blood any longer, so at least Bobby had multitasked in death, which I sort of doubt he'd ever managed to do in life. Unless being an idiot and an asshole at the same time counts.

The Gremlin's doors were still open, and I wondered about security. But maybe Pocasset Cemetery didn't have any. I stepped over the half corpse—legs and intestines and spine and whatever—and slipped in behind the steering wheel. I reached over and pulled the passenger door shut. The keys were still in the ignition. I'd have been screwed if Bobby had taken them out and put them in his jeans pocket. I started the car, then waited to see if the noise would attract the attention of any rent-a-cops who might not have noticed the messily bisected dead guy and his abandoned car, but whose attention might be drawn to the noise of the sputtering engine.

I swore to the ghost of Bobby Ng that I was
not
driving that rust-bucket all the way home. I put the Gremlin into reverse . . .

Cut to the crawl. I drove the Gremlin back to the spot where I'd parked on Roslyn Avenue. I had spare clothes in my trunk (because we learn our lessons), tucked into a canvas bag I'd bought a few months before at the Army Navy surplus place on Thayer. Wait, I already mentioned that bag, didn't I? I managed to change without anyone noticing the nude woman standing in the street. Or if anyone did notice, they kept their mouths shut and their doors closed.

Oh, yeah. I was a lucky little nasty that evening.

Hell must have taken pity on me, or maybe it was just a kindly reward for a job well done.

Down here, down where all us monsters make our homes, the sarcasm and the cynicism is second nature.

The clock on my Honda's dash claimed it was 2:38, but it usually ran about ten minutes fast. I drove home, taking the back roads, avoiding the interstate, and keeping below the speed limit (but not
too
far below). One quick glance in the rearview mirror had assured me I wasn't about to pass for human. I'd lost the Ray-Bans, so there were my eyes, and my skin so waxy white it almost glowed (but did
not
fucking sparkle). There was still so much mud caked in my hair, it was dreadlocked by default. By the time I got back to Gano and East Transit, it was after three, and I was relieved to find Hector and his buddies had either called it an early night or were busy somewhere else.

As I was unlocking the front door, a wave of nausea seized me, and I barely made it to the toilet. I heaved until my throat was raw, and my abdomen felt like I'd taken one hell of a beating. Like maybe someone had gotten me down, and then landed a few good kicks to the ribs from a pair of steel-toed boots. Doc Martens. Okay, maybe it wasn't
that
bad, but it was bad enough.

When it was finally over—the puking—I leaned back against the tub and peered into the toilet bowl. Wish I could say I hadn't, but I did (and, anyway, I've seen way worse since that night). The sight that greeted me was pretty much what I'd expected: shards of bone and shreds of undigested meat, mostly organ meat. I made out parts of the heart and liver, and, in the center of it all—the pearl perched atop a steaming mound of manure—was a gold class ring, set with a green stone. I fished it out, then I flushed the rest away. I had to flush three times before the water was clear again. Not a very Christian burial for Bobby, first victim of my lycanthropic antics, but I wasn't a Christian, and I really didn't give two shits. If he'd never gotten mixed up with the nasties, it never would have happened. Bobby Ng had been the master of his own destiny, right? Then again, like me, maybe he
hadn't
had a choice. Maybe there was some secret in his past, some skeleton from a closet, that had compelled him and driven him to such an ignoble death. But if anyone knows
his
origin story, I've never learned it. Not that I've ever asked. I reached up and put the class ring on the rim of the sink.

What next, Siobhan?
Mean Mr. B purred behind my eyes. “Now I'm taking a fucking shower,” I replied to the part of me that only sounded like him. “Now I'm scrubbing off every last bit of filth.”

Which is what I did. I scrubbed until my skin was close to raw. I washed my hair twice with the bar of Ivory soap, and the drain would have clogged from all the grit if I hadn't kept clearing it with my toes. When I'd shut off the water, the bathroom was thick with steam, and I brushed my teeth twice (yeah, I wasn't such a slob I didn't have a toothbrush). I wished there was a bottle of Listerine, but I settled for a glass of water from the kitchen sink.

I stood there sipping at the water, trying to calm my stomach and peering into that gaping hole in the linoleum. Like Nietzsche said, maybe it peered into me, as well. I was beyond caring. When I finished the water, I went to bed, and wrapped my nude and aching body in dirty sheets. I must have fallen asleep immediately. There were dreams. Bright dreams of running on four legs as the moon cheered me on. The sort of dreams that would become familiar companions in the years to come. By the time I woke, another day had passed, and the sun was setting all over again.

* * *

H
ere's what you need to know about Boston Harry. That is, the
main
thing you need to know if you're to grasp the even tighter spot I found myself in the day after I ate Bobby Ng.

Boston Harry—and if he had any other name, it remains unknown to me—was a sort of transplanar fence, an illicit Walmart for just about any piece of eldritch junk you could ever need. If it existed, anywhere or anywhen, he could get his mitts on it. Fuckin' A. Boston Harry, he was the go-to guy—the “man” who could resolve just about any problem or situation a nasty or those who run with nasties . . . or even those who hunt and kill nasties . . . might conceivably face. An all-purpose conduit for mystical and infernal goods
and
services. He was, in short, The Man.

And if Mean Mr. B is a bastard and a son of a bitch (and he surely is), then maybe the word hasn't been invented for what you'd call Boston Harry. You didn't fuck with him. Not ever and not no how. You make an appointment, you better know
what
you want—exactly—and
when
you want it, and you sure as hell better have the cash (or whatever) on hand. Those who made the mistake of uttering “credit” in his presence didn't live so long, or, if they did, they quickly wished they hadn't.

Also, for a dude looking to make as much money as inhumanly possible, he was never precisely easy to find. There was a protocol. At least, that's what B always called it. I called it a fucking inconvenience, a hurdle that only existed because Boston Harry loved to watch people jump through hoops, like lions or trained poodles at the circus. And because being hard to find was part of his mystique.

Normally, if I'd have need to track him down, I'd have gone to B. Not that I'd ever had any such need. But B was, as the blue-haired boy had said, presently incommunicado. And I had a feeling that whatever these scary questions were I'd been told to ask myself, there wasn't time to set them aside until Mr. B resurfaced. And speaking of Clemency, she
might
have been able to help me track down Boston Harry just a tad faster than the usual rigmarole, but she, of course, was dead (or whatever). So, I was left with dick, except what I knew, what B and others had told me about this purveyor of all things unsavory.

Here's how it went:

Harry had set up different ways of being contacted in different cities. In Providence, it was the old granite drinking fountain on Benefit Street, right out in front of the Athenaeum. It's been there since 1873, and once upon a time, it actually
was
a drinking fountain, the water coming directly from the Pawtuxet River. Chiseled into the stone is the invitation “Come here everyone that thirsteth.” Nowadays, it doesn't actually work, and the catch basin is usually filled with trash and dead leaves. Even if it
did
work, knowing the state of the river, drinking from it would likely land you in the hospital. But I digress. If you were in Providence and wanted to find Boston Harry, you went to the fountain and left a drop of blood on the granite. Didn't matter where, so long as the blood was actually
on
the fountain. Then, sooner or later, you'd get a message where he could be found.

So, the night after I killed Bobby Ng, I went to Benefit Street. The RISD students were still on break, so the street was pretty much deserted. Just the streetlight pools illuminating the ancient trees and colonial houses (each graced with its own historical marker, mind you) and the uneven brick sidewalk. I felt like a stroll, hoping it might clear my head, so I parked a couple of blocks from the library and went the rest of the way on foot. There's a pleasant sort of eeriness to Benefit Street after sundown, and maybe it didn't clear my head, but it did put me a little more at ease. It was something familiar, there in the vast wasteland of the unfamiliar in which I found myself. I made a point of breathing, just so I could take in all those comfortable odors, rendered LOUD by my new vamp senses. It was some heady fucking shit, almost as sweet as the best weed I'd ever gotten my hands on.

So, I went to the fountain, pricked my thumb with one of those piranha teeth Mercy Brown had bestowed upon me, and smeared a drop, just below the
e
in
thirsteth
. I don't know; I guess it seemed somehow appropriate.

Then I sat down on the steps of the library and lit a Camel. Thank dog bloodsuckers can still smoke. I listened to night birds and the breeze flowing through the various sorts of leaves. Every now and then, a car passed by. I kept expecting the cops to pull up and ask what the hell I was doing, hanging out in front of the Athenaeum at two o'clock in the ayem, but they never did. I didn't think for a second I was going to hear from Harry right off; I figured it would be at least a week or so, and had resigned myself to that fact. Hence, when the talking seagull fluttered noisily down and landed a few steps below me, well . . . I was unprepared, to say the least. It was just a herring gull, and a pretty ragged one, at that. Now, you buy into all that Edgar Allan Poe crap, maybe you're surprised it wasn't a raven, or at least a crow. But no, it was this ratty gull staring at me with its beady black eyes. It shifted from one yellow webbed foot to the other, and ruffled its feathers.

“You wanna see Harry,” it squawked.

“Jesus, you're a fucking seagull,” I said, or something equally obvious.

The bird cocked its head to one side, blinked, and asked, “Is that a yes, or is that a no. Because, if that's a no . . .”

“It's not a no,” I replied. “I just didn't expect a fucking seagull, that's all, okay?”