Blood Oranges (9781101594858) (24 page)

The scene before me would have put a big ol' grin on the face of that pyro squatting below Battle Hill. The flames had spread to the porch and roof of the sagging house.

At least,
I thought,
something here gets its wish.
I climbed over the wall and stood at the edge of Purgatory Road. In places, the explosions had left the tar shiny, gummy, gone almost back to goo. I pulled off my shoes and socks (nothing looks more idiotic than a vampire crossing the street in only her socks and shoes; trust me on this), and wondered dimly where the hell the Exeter Fire Department was. People must have seen the Big Mystical Mushroom Cloud for miles around. More of Penderghast's voodoo? After all, couldn't have a bunch of hayseed do-gooders getting in the way of this avenging angel, now could you? I walked towards the husks of the Honda and the bus, taking care to avoid the sticky spots in the road. That's really all that remained of the two vehicles, charred and twisted shells. Here and there, small flames still licked from them. What was left of the melted tires was still smoldering. As for Hannah Grumet's swarm of righteous indignant loups—avenging angels in their own right, I suppose—it was no more than ash and a few bits of bone. What sort of heat is needed to reduce a corpse to ash? Fuck if I knew. I know now that crematoriums burn bodies at temps ranging from 1,598° to 1,796° Fahrenheit to get the task done. So, maybe that gives me some idea just how hot the spontaneous conflagration from the locket must have been. I walked naked through the sooty ruin of my fallen enemies, and a breeze made minute tornadoes of the ashes as I went. Whirlwinds to dance circles around me.

Here's a joke, but I won't be offended if you don't laugh. A naked vampire walks into a burning house . . .

Never mind.

That's what I did, and Evangelista Penderghast's sorcery kept the fire from touching me. It parted like the Red Sea is said to have parted for Charlton Heston. There was cool air around me, and I shivered as it caressed my burns. As the sagging house was consumed, not so much as an ember was allowed to fall upon my skin.

I was pretty sure where I'd find the Bride.

I followed what was left of a hallway to what was left of a basement door. The knob should have barbecued my palm, but it could have been ice in my hand. Even through all the smoke, I recognized the mustiness rising up from the basement. It was the place where I'd awakened on that mattress, needing a fix so badly I thought my guts might come crawling out and skip the light fantastic. The place where the china doll who called herself Mercy Brown sat on a stool and taunted me, promised me I'd be her weapon and her pet. The place where she'd taken my blood, and I'd become the creature the trolls called Siobhan Twice-Damned, Double-Cursed, undead
and
roiling with the beast. I descended the wooden stairs. The fire hadn't made it this far yet, but it wouldn't be very much longer. The house was dying all around me, and I was happy for it.

Let's not draw this out.

There she sat on her stool, dressed exactly as she'd been the last time I saw her: so small, the protruding teeth and wisps of gossamer hair, the cyanotic lips, the ancient babe dressed in a white lace pinafore, and barefoot as her executioner to be. Her long toes curled about the rails of the stool, nimble as any bat's. She was slowly clapping her hands, and smiling.

“I'm most wonderfully impressed,” she said. “You truly are my child, blood of my blood.”

I stared at her for a few seconds, and then I looked down at the glinting dagger of volcanic glass gripped in my hands. I don't even remember how it got there, how it wasn't lost in the explosion or when I pulled off my shredded clothes.

“Then you knew it would go this way?” I asked her.

“Of course I didn't,” she replied in the high, sweet voice of the child she'd still been when she died. “I'm not clairvoyant, Siobhan. I had no idea. I only knew it would be a grand game.”

“A grand game,” I muttered.

“The grandest,” she gleamed. Overhead, fire was quickly chewing through the floors.

The Bride sat up straight on her stool.

“And the prize is yours,” she said.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” and so maybe part of her wanted the void as much as the house she'd taken as her own and soured against any cleansing.

“There were five deaths so you could play your game.” I said. “Two of my friends died. I killed them.” I recall no emotion in my voice, none whatsoever.

“This is the way of our existence,” she said. “Life and death, births and murders. Now, you're wasting time,” and she glanced up at the glowing timbers overhead. “I think you have me in checkmate, daughter.”

“Daughter,” I whispered, and without another word I plunged the black dagger into her heart. The Bride of Quiet shattered precisely the way porcelain shatters. She shattered, and shards broke into still smaller shards when they hit the cement floor around the stool.

Where are you going, my pretty fair maid? Where are you going, my honey?

The dagger vanished from my hand.

A shower of flame, engulfing the basement.

I'd walked into the fire, and then I walked back out again. As soon as I was clear, the tunnel of cool air was gone, and the sagging house was permitted, at last, to collapse in upon itself.

I stepped past the shell of the loups' bus, and there was Mean Mr. B, standing by the shell of my Honda. He smiled his oily smile. He bowed a gentlemanly bow.

“What is it tonight?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the inferno behind me. “Your name, I mean.”

“Why, Quinn, let me think on that,” he said and tapped at his left temple. “Tell you what. Tonight, call me Balthazar, like the last king of Babylon.”

“Balthazar,” I said.

“Yes, as I have seen the writing on the wall, love, and damn if I can make heads or tails of it. She dead?”

The best I could do was nod. All at once, every inch of my body was swept with a degree of weariness I'd never even imagined. The locket and brass chain around my neck abruptly changed to quicksilver and trickled down my exposed chest and belly.

Balthazar frowned and asked, “Whatever happened to your clothes?”

I opened my mouth, but realized I didn't have the energy to explain.

“Well, I think I heard sirens,” he said. “The enchantment's gone. Let's not stick around for the after party.”

I think I laughed. I know I said, “The party's over.”

“Oh, the party's never over, love. There's always a party somewhere.” And he led me down the road to an emerald Porsche. One of his boys was behind the wheel. B helped me into the backseat, and I lay down, even though the cool leather started me shivering again. The last thing I remember before sleep overtook me is B telling the boy to head back to Providence. And as dreams of snow and ice flowed over me, I wondered how differently it might all have gone if taking out monsters
did
come with a how-to manual.

 

 

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AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHY

Kathleen Rory Tierney
, despite her very Irish name, has never once left her home state of Idaho. She is a three-time recipient of the Dewda Yorger Prize in Poetry, and her verse has been collected in two volumes—
Hark! The Yaks Are at the Door Again
and
Reflections on Inevitability and Entropy
. She currently lives in a raccoon-infested house trailer in Deerfield, Illinois, where she spends her spare time collecting bottle caps and antique license plates.
Blood Oranges
is her first novel, and if there is another, no one will be more surprised than she.

BOOKS BY CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

Novels

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Murder of Angels

Daughter of Hounds

The Red Tree

The Drowning Girl: A Memoir

Writing as Kathleen Tierney

Blood Oranges