raised by wolves

It’s coming up on four in the morning. My guts are sloshing around inside me, awash with coffee. I feel all twitchy and fatigued. Gracie went home. She told me to call her if I need her, but I think I’ll be able to handle the rest of this weird god damn night on my own.

Von Tier. What the hell kind of name is that?

I remember the files Lusky gave me. Von Tier is—supposedly—the one who sent the thugs after The Boss. But why?

In a few short hours, I’ll find out.

I refer to the files Lusky gave me and look at the faces of the black boys in the photos. They all have dumb names, Pooky, Suga, Greck, Ceelo, Tiny, and Rabbit. Rabbit’s the one I tossed out the window. Tiny’s next on the list. In the photo, he has a big scar sideways under his left eye. I remember him. He was the driver. The one that pointed out The Boss. An impressive sheet on this one. Older than the others, he’s got a military background, specializing in…what’s this? Demolition. Ha.

Five AM I’m through the door, kicking it right to saw dust. I’m counting on the element of surprise here, but it turns out I don’t need it.

Tiny’s here alright, but he’s not exactly in a state where one can be surprised: unconscious on the floor. I notice beer bottles strewn about the place, a half full one within arm’s reach of the collapsed figure. I step on a creaky floorboard and Tiny stirs ever so slightly. I wonder why they call him Tiny. Looks about average size to me. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s tiny next to me.

“Tiny,” I whisper, hunching down by his head. “Wake up, Tiny.”

He groans.

“I said, ‘Wake up, Tiny,’ you fucking pipsqueek,” I say through clenched teeth, voice rising to a roar. That gets him. His eyes pop open and he’s going for the beer bottle, but I stop him by dropping all my weight on his outstretched arm. I hear that old familiar bone-snapping sound, like one big kernel of popcorn. He cries out and says, “Alright, alright!” and I shift off of his arm, onto his back. I hold his face against the floor.

“I’m not going to repeat myself here, Tiny. I want answers and I want them now. Where’s Von Tier?”

“Who?” he says, voice quivering ever-so-slightly. I reach over with my free hand and break his other arm. He cries out again, and again with the “Alright alright.”

“Yeah yeah, Von Tier, fuck man, yeah I know him. I don’t know him know him, but shit man who does? He just some crazy old white motherfucker, lives up north on the water. Collects art and shit. What the fuck you want with him?”

“I’m asking the questions here. A few weeks ago, you and a gang of idiots came up on The Crab and started shooting. You remember. You killed a man, Cosmo Marini, my boss and I want to know why.”

“Man, yeah, shit, I remember. Damn, that was you? I thought you got shot in the head. Fuck, man. Them boys fucked up. Greck started the shooting. Pooky got you. I was just the driver, man, I ain’t do shit. We wasn’t even supposed to shoot nobody. Von Tier told us your boy’d have a body guard though, so we packed. He…He just wanted some necklace. Some old antique shit he said your Boss wasn’t selling but he wanted bad enough to take. He paid us large,” he says, gasping for breath. I ask him where up north does this guy live and he tells me. I ask him what the necklace was.

“I don’t know what it was. I don’t know what for. Some art collection or some shit, man, I don’t know nothing else, I swear!”

“Do you swear?” I ask and he stammers, “Sh-shit yeah, I swear!” then I turn, keeping one knee pressed firmly into his back bone and break one of his legs.

I ask again, “Do you swear?” and he screams, “I swear! I swear! Jesus man, get off me! Please! I swear!” he tries to thrash around a bit, but with two broken arms and one broken leg, he doesn’t have much fight left in him. I get up.

“I’m going to leave you alive to tell the other boys their time’s almost up. After I’m done with Von Tier, I’m coming back and I’m going to kill the rest of you. Enjoy what time you have left.”

And then I stomp on his other leg, right up near the hip. Pop, tear, that hip’s definitely dislocated at the least. He cries out and I leave. The sun is just peeking up over the edge of the city, red beams of fire and orange morning haze. The city stinks. It’s going to be another hot one.

The file on Von Tier himself is rather thin. No picture. No aliases. No sheet. The address is an empty storefront downtown, but that’s not what Tiny told me. I flag down a cab, driven by a sleepy-looking unshaven young man with a big metal bar through his nose. I tell him Von Tier’s address and he nods, then yawns and turns up the radio. It’s a relentless barrage of distorted guitars, brutally fast drums and a howling guttural singer.

“Who is this?” I ask the shaggy kid behind the wheel.

“Skullsplitter,” he tells me. “Some band from the east coast.”

Skullsplitter. That gives me an idea that I’ll save for later. And through the music is fast and loud, I find myself drifting off in the red morning light, the warmth magnified on my skin by the cab windows. I feel like baking in an oven, like a cake. I smile and when I wake up, the driver says, “Here we are. $22.35.”

The place looks like you’d expect some rich yuppie art collector fuck’s house to look. Long drive way, big gate out front, three or four floors, a big deck looking over the water of the Pacific ocean. I hop the gate easy as can be. Right after, I hear a distant electrical buzz and the gate opens. They know I’m here, they just didn’t buzz me in soon enough. Cameras probably everywhere. So, there is some security here. It won’t do them any good.

The front door is open. Well, here goes.

It’s dark inside, pale light filtering in through closed expensive drapes, casting long funny shadows all over the room.

“Right, stop right there, chap,” a voice says. My blood goes cold. It’s him.

In an easy chair opposite the front door, the man in the ski mask sits looking at me down the length of that big fucking rifle.

“You don’t scare easy, I’ll give you that,” he says with some kind of accent. “I told him to just let me kill you, but no, he wanted you to stay in the game, see how things panned out. And here you are showing up to shit on our doorstep,” he sucks air through his teeth, tsk-tsk. “Oh well. Always a shame when pawns don’t realize their purpose. Maybe we could’ve worked together, if only you’d signed those papers. You could’ve lived a long happy life, you know? That girl of yours maybe could’ve become your wife, you could’ve had a bunch of kids and the whole lot. Your mother could watch them on the weekends while you two went out for drinks. It could’ve been just swell, old chap.”

He smiles, teeth like white razors behind the ski mask.

“Are you gonna talk all day,” I ask him finally. “Or are you gonna start shooting?”

His smile grows. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Even at this range, the rifle is barely audible. Click-tzing! A bullet rips through the air, and then through me. What a moron this limey fuck is. Bullets from a gun like that just pass through the target at this range. It hurts, but he doesn’t hit anything important. In three long steps I’m on him, him still sitting pretty like the hot shit he thinks he is. I grab the gun by the muzzle and he fires again. My hand burns and the smell of sulfur fills my nose, but he missed that time, too.

“You can’t shoot for shit, man,” I tell him, echoing our last meeting.

“No,” he says as my hand closes on his throat. “But who needs to shoot?”

I hear a knife coming out of a hidden sheath and then a knife plunging into soft flesh between ribs. Imagine a really bad bee sting. I look down and see a black leather handle sticking out of my side. In the next instant there are two. Then three.

I grunt through my teeth and tighten my grip on the man in the ski mask’s throat. His eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head.

“Poison,” he gurgles. “You fuck,” he gurgles. The knives are poisoned which is why I imagine it’s starting to feel like my blood is being replaced with red ants. God damn it.

Before things go black, I lift the man up and pitch him haphazardly towards the door I came in. I don’t see him land.

Stuck down the mineshaft inside my own head, I see Gracie and all I want to do is tell her how sorry I am for being such a fuck up. But she’s baking me a cake. She smiles at me and I smell chocolate and a gas oven. She stands on her tip toes to kiss me, lips made of sugar and gumdrops. We never touch.

I’m starting to come to. My first instinct is to leap to my feet and start killing, but that’s not going to happen. I’m tied down pretty securely with thick, rough rope that cuts into you when you press against it, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I can’t see anything. There’s a big white circle of radioactive light above me, burning my eyes, driving me crazy. I scream and strain against the ropes, but it’s no good. I feel awful. I hurt all over, especially in my ribs. I give up and close my eyes. I want to sink down that mineshaft again. I’m tired of fighting now. I want to sleep. I want to see Gracie.

Gracie.

That asshole in the ski mask mentioned her. Is she in trouble? Do they know about her? My strength and itch to kill come rushing back to me, but I’m still tied down. I notice a sound, like air escaping a bike tire, but in short little bursts, tss-tss-tss. Laughing.

“That’s our Legs,” says a voice from somewhere I can’t turn my head to look. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

I know that voice.

“Been a long time, Legs.”

There she is, brown hair full of gold sparks, dripping down over her face, swooping off to one side, covering one of her eyes. She leans forward, close to my face and smiles. I can’t keep my eyes from flicking over to the top button of her low-cut blouse, that low urge to peep at the soft curve of tits whenever possible, no matter the circumstances.

“Natalia,” is about all I can say. Maybe I’m still dreaming.

“Yes, Legs. I see you’re still up to your same old horseshit, ah? I thought I’d fixed you up for the last time. No such luck, ah?” She shakes her head and stands upright. “Too bad.”

She reaches out and touches my forehead with a single finger where the rope has cut into me. She takes it back with red on the tip.

“Natalia, where am I?”

She smiles. “As if it matters? You’re in the basement. This is where Von Tier has me fix up his men when they come back fucked up. It keeps me very busy. Von Tier has a lot more men than old Marini. Pay’s better, too.” She steps out of sight and is silent. For a moment I think she’s left, but then she speaks again.

“They’re planning to kill you, Legs. Don’t believe a word they tell you. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

And then she really is gone. I fall asleep under that awful light. I don’t remember any dreams.

When I come to again, I’m sitting upright with something tapping me on the end of my nose. It’s a small round bit of what looks like dark red glass, tied and hanging from a black bit of cord.

“So much trouble,” says a raspy voice. “All for a tiny bit of stone.”

My eyes begin to focus on the shape of a bent old man with a big white mustache and short-cropped white hair. His skin is full of wrinkles and pits. He wears round, gold-rimmed spectacles. Behind him is the man in the ski mask, still lounging, slouched in a red chair, legs crossed far out in front of him. His rifle is propped against the wall next to him.

“I suppose you represent the estate of Cosmo Marini,” the old man says and they both laugh. “Or what’s left of it. Arthur McGinnis. Legbreaker. My name is Aldebert Von Tier.”

I want to lunge for him but I know I’m tied with that same cutting rope. Like pressing up against a chainsaw.

“Yeah, great,” I say to him. “Why’d you kill my boss? Why’re you trying to kill me now? Who is that woman?” My voice is getting a little frantic here. I decide to stop talking. One thing at a time.

The smug old fucker just chuckles, his ancient shoulders bobbing up and down. I’m surprised there’s no dust falling off of him.

“Oh you poor small man,” he says. “I mean that-er-figuratively of course. There’s so much you don’t even know. I could have guessed you were just an idiot stumbling around in the dark. With how many of Salvatore’s men you took out, I figured you for a psycho, or maybe one of those agents-er…Where was I? Oh yes. Either an idiot or a maniac. Turns out you’re both! A psychotic idiot,” and this he finds hysterical. Ski-mask laughs too.

After a minute, the tremors of humor fade and he takes a deep breath, followed by a sigh of satisfaction. He stands there looking at me down his nose, over the tops of his glasses. His eyes look like those milky green marbles you had when you were little. Just like them. I imagine them clacking together, that thok! sound.

“I was never trying to kill you. I sent,” he nods, his neck crooked as the bend in your elbow, towards Ski-mask. “him just to try to keep you moving. Away from me. But, somehow that stupid Salvatore got you spinning around in circles. Like throwing change at a ceiling fan. I guess it’s just bad luck you landed in my lap now. Just a bit of bad luck. It’s been Sal all this time, you know. He put his men on you the same reason I did. To keep you moving. To keep you from just going and signing those papers. Ha, you didn’t even know. You never got even part of the whole story!

“First and foremost, I’ll tell you that my involvement in the difficulty you’ve experienced recently is minimal at best. Certainly, I hired the men who—unfortunately—killed your boss, Mr. Marini, but murder was not their goal. They were sent simply to acquire this necklace. This necklace, which I’m certain you never even knew Marini wore, did you? Never noticed it there, dangling ‘bout his collar. Of course not. A psychotic fool.

“After that, by sheer coincidence, Salvatore put his own plan into action. The woman is one of his. But she was a failure and needed to be disposed of. Salvatore put her on you, figuring her con wouldn’t get you, but he, ah…overestimated your ability. He wanted you to kill her, and her to put you out running around all night, until ten this morning when the property deeds would default to his name,”

“Who?” I interrupt. All this talking really makes my head hurt. I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about.

“Salvatore. Lusky, you fool. He was Marini’s partner way back when. They had a contract where Lusky was the silent partner, getting a dividend, but not having any say in how the club was run. That was up to Marini. In the contract it’s stipulated that if anything should happen to one of the partners, full control reverts to the remaining partner after thirty days if a next-of-kin doesn’t step forward. The whole bit about you being next-of-kin was something that woman threw in for added flavor. I bet you didn’t even look at the papers she gave you, the so-called ‘DNA evidence.’” he shakes his head and tsk-tsks at me. “Amateur.”

Like I said, I don’t take well to name-calling. I lunge forward in the chair, feeling the rope dig into me, my wrists and forehead and waist. The chair creaks under the force, but doesn’t move. Nailed to the floor. I feel the warm cascade of blood down my face and close my eyes before everything goes red. I have to get it together. I’m going about this all wrong.

Von Tier is laughing across the room. “You think you can break the ropes before bleeding out? Be my guest.”

The man in the ski mask is reading a newspaper. The picture-in-the-dictionary next to “Indifferent.”

I growl and yell like a wild animal. I start seeing big black blobs behind my eyes. I have to stop.

“All finished, Mr. McGinnis?” Von Tier. You’re going to die.

I open my eyes. The black spots are gone. Everything is clear.

Instead of fighting the ropes, I should be fighting the chair. I throw my weight backwards and get another satisfying moan out of the wood. I pull my shoulder blades together and think of an axe chopping down a tree. The skin on my wrists is shredded, but I can almost pull my hands out. I feel the back of the chair snap free from the seat and suddenly I can stand up. I slide my arms backwards down the arms of the chair so the loops of that awful rope simply unravel. The back of the chair falls off and I can move again. I start laughing. I can’t help it.

Von Tier is already running, but I catch him easy.

“All finished, Mr. Von Tier?” I say, yoking him up by his fancy asshole collar. “Where you going? Where you going, huh?” I pull him around in front of me and hold him between me and the man in the ski mask, who by now is looking me in the eye through the scope on his rifle.

He says: “You know I wasn’t trying to hit you before. At this range one shot will tear both of you in half.”

I say: “Yeah, bullshit.”

He says: “You’re dumber than you look. You don’t even know what game you’re attempting to play.”

Von Tier is flailing his arms in front of him, wrinkled little fucker, whimpering: “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”

“You won’t kill him. If you were going to shoot, you would’ve,” I say.

“We were going to let you live, you moron,” he snarls. “You’re out of your depth but you’re too bloody stupid to realize it.”

He won’t shoot. His gun probably isn’t even loaded. I take off running right for him.

His eyes go wide, for a second it looks like they’ll fill the holes of his ski mask entirely. He jumps to his feet, but I’m already swinging Von Tier at him. Von Tier yelps as he collides with the broad side of the humongous rifle, and then again as his face gets ground into the top of the man in the ski mask’s head.

“Wait,” the man in the ski mask says as he drops. Von Tier is out, hanging limply from my outstretched arm. I drop him and pick up the rifle. Then I pick up the man in the ski mask by the front of his shirt. I start to shake him and holler, “Wake up, asshole.”

As his eyes start to open, I rest the rifle against my shoulder, left hand on the trigger, with my right arm holding him out so the barrel rests neatly against his nose.

“Why were you going to let me live? Bringing me here, telling me all this bullshit. This is rotten and I know it. This is just another distraction. And now you’re going to die.”

I pull the trigger and POP no more man in the ski mask, just another stiff without a head. I drop him on the ground next to Von Tier, who is still unconscious. I bend down and grab the necklace, The Boss’s necklace, the hunk of red rock that this whole thing seems to be about. I put it in my pocket and then shoot Von Tier in the head, transforming his brain and skull into a hole in the floor.

It bothers me a little bit that there’s a whole side to this I’ll never understand. But I’m too bloody and sore and tired to care. They’re all dead, and it seems like this whole thing is over without me knowing the truth. The woman—the one who claims she’s my mother—I have no leads on her. I’ll have to wait for her to come to me. If she is a con, her bosses are dead. And Von Tier said Lusky wanted her dead anyway. But Natalia told me not to believe anything they told me. I’ll have to…

Were they lying about having Gracie?

I run out, down the drive and hop the fence. Bloody, my eyes and throat burning, I start running back to town. Luckily, I’m able to flag down an ambulance. They put on their lights and sirens and help me wrap myself in some bandages while we go flying down the country road. Once we’re in the city, I jump out of the back and call “Thanks!” to the two paramedics. They look at me stunned, but before they can react, I’m gone into the mid-day city.

The first payphone I come to, I jam in two quarters and dial Gracie. No answer at her apartment.

Again, I’m off running.

I burst into Gracie’s apartment and find the place trashed. A note conspicuously tacked to the wall opposite the door reads:

5 pm, The Crab.

No sign of Gracie. No sign of anybody. I look at the clock, miraculously still on the wall. 4:24. I can definitely make it to The Crab. In fact, I can get there early.

At 4:49, I’m on the street in front of The Crab. Traffic is heavy this time of day, but there are no cars in the parking lot. I go around back. The husks of the cars I blew up are still there, cordoned off with bright yellow strings of “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.” No sign of any bodies. The back door is chained shut and similarly cordoned.

They must not be here yet.

I climb a fire escape up to the roof of the building across the street from the parking lot and wait, lying on my belly, peeking up over the concrete edge. At 4:58 a white sedan pulls into the parking lot and two women get out. The woman and Gracie. The woman has a gun and is dragging Gracie towards the back door of the club. I slide down the fire ladder and right when I hit the bottom, I hear a shot. My blood runs cold until I get across the street and see that the chain holding the back door shut has been shot off. I breathe a sigh of relief and charge in. I see a fire axe on the wall and grab it as I pass. What was that band called?

I find them in the main dining room. They’re screaming hysterically at each other, spastic shrieks like cats in a duffel bag.

“Let her go,” I say too quietly. Neither one hears me over the ruckus they’re making.

“I said, ‘LET HER GO.’” My voice booms over their noise, confounding and silencing them. I think I hear a chandelier rattle.

The woman doesn’t let Gracie go, but instead pulls her closer and shoves the barrel of her gun up under Gracie’s jaw.

“Oh Arthur, why has it come to this?” she pleads. “We could’ve had everything! But you couldn’t even show up in the right place at the right time! We could’ve controlled most of the west coast, Arthur, but you threw it all away. Now Lusky has control and we have nothing,” she sobs.

“Lusky’s dead,” I tell her.

“What?” she gasps, tears drying up. I knew it. I just fucking knew it. And I knew I could do what I’m about to do from the very beginning. I could do it. I will do it.

“Yep. And Von Tier, too. And the guy in the ski mask, and most of their goons, too. Dead as Dillinger.”

I see her face turn red. She bites her bottom lip until she draws blood and begins screaming, “NO! NONONONONO!” and unloading the gun at me, the loudest popcorn kernel exploding you could imagine. Is that a fucking magnum?

“Gracie, hit her!” I yell, overturning and ducking behind a table. Gracie, who’s worked in this city long enough to have picked up a few particularly nasty self-defense moves, whips around and jabs her outstretched fingers into the soft, fleshy front of the woman’s neck. My heart melts a little. The shots stop coming and I stand up, a wide grin on my face.

“Good girl, Gracie! Now duck!”

The woman gasps for air, clutching at her neck with her free hand. The scarf unravels from around her head, her hair falls over her face, and I let the axe fly.

The woman drops, the crescent of the fire axe buried neatly into her forehead, the pointed end protruding from her skull like a backwards shark’s backwards dorsal fin.

Gracie leaps into my arms from halfway across the room. I hold her so tight I worry she might break in half. “You did so well, baby,” I tell her. “You did so well.”

“Legs, I was so scared. I can’t believe you saved me,” she sobs quietly into my neck and I go shhhhh through my teeth and run my grubby fingers through her hair. She inhales sharply and then sighs, slowly regaining her cool. She looks up at me like a baby bird with those big green eyes and we kiss until we hear sirens.

“We need to get gone, baby.”

She nods and closes her eyes. I put her down and she takes one of my hands in two of hers. We hurry out the back and down the street where we hail a cab back to her place. We fall into bed and sleep the next two days away.

Sometime later, I’m sitting at the kitchen table with the remains of breakfast between me and Gracie. Not only is she beautiful and sweet, she is an amazing cook. She knows exactly how to cook the bacon so all the fat turns to delicious bits that crunch but are still juicy. She’s perfect. She sips her coffee, a hollowed out half of a cantaloupe on the table in front of her and smiles at me.

“So it’s over, yeah?” she says, bending over to reach into her purse and grab her cigarettes.

“Yeah, I think it is.”

“What about those other guys? The ones who killed your boss?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I doubt they’ll come after us—I doubt they even know where to look. But I don’t have any plans this week. I still have the files Lusky gave me. I’d almost forgot about them.”

A long moment and then: “Are you going to kill them?” she asks meekly. I think for another long moment about what to tell her. I decide any good relationship must be based on honesty.

“Yes,” I tell her, looking her in the minty oceans of her eyes without flinching.

There is a strange spark there, one I have seen before and remember being confused by, but I can’t recall when. It’s something…

“Can I come with you?” she asks, barely a whisper.

Perfect.

My heart overflows with joy and she is an ocean in which I would not mind drowning.

The End.

I stand and watch the burning cars. I wonder about the woman. Where could she have gone? I start walking. The blood runs through me like oil in an overheated engine. I’m all wired up from caffeine and killing. I need to get my head straight. I need to decide what I’m going to do.

As I walk down the street away from The Crab, I hear a strange sound, a whistling and a pop, but quiet and far away. Something goes zing! past my ear. I start running. People see silencers in movies and think it does what it’s name implies. But that’s not true. A silencer reduces the sound of gunfire substantially, but does not silence it. The mechanical noise of gun parts sliding back and forth is still there. The sound of bullets whizzing through the air is still there. That’s what I’m hearing. I drop behind a car and hope I’m running in the right direction—that is, away from whoever is shooting at me.

I get up and run some more. That distant clicking of gun parts is getting harder to hear. I’m going the right way. But I’m still in range. The sound of glass shattering is still there. I pivot on my toe as a I leap forward and run backwards like you would if you were playing soccer, in order to try and catch a glimpse of whoever is shooting at me. I look high for perches, but everything is pretty much ground level. I look at second story windows, but I’m in the middle of a long street, all the doors and windows facing me on either side. No one could hang out a window and shoot like that. Then I’m stunned to see the distant figure of a man with a rifle running towards me from a few blocks further up than The Crab. Reinforcements. He’s fast as hell. Gaining on me. I see him raise the rifle and take the shot. I drop and duck behind another car. The side view mirror shatters and flies apart. A high caliber round leaves a dent in the asphalt. I take a deep breath and pull my legs up to my chest. I reach for my gun. At the count of five, I pull my gun. At ten I’m up and aiming for him, but he’s not there. He’s gone.

Suddenly the street seems a lot shorter. I realize, somehow that I’m only two blocks away from The Crab at absolute most. Did I run in a circle? I get confused about directions sometimes, but I don’t think I turned at all. My head is above me on the end of a string, like a balloon it feels like. What is going on?

It seems I have just hallucinated being chased by a man in a brown suit and ski mask, but I can’t think of anything that makes that sound reasonable. On the other hand, I can’t think of any other explanation. I put my gun away and begin walking briskly home. I try to think as little as possible. Not thinking is easy. Thinking is difficult. My head clears before I get to my door.

It’s late now, past midnight. Nine hours. I’m starving but I don’t have time to eat. I sit down in my apartment. I yawn and stretch and then slouch down real far in the chair and put my hands in the pockets of my coat. I feel a small piece of paper in one of them. I pull it out. Salvatore Lusky. I clench my fist around the business card. I’m out the door.

I burst through the door of the Pallid Mallard like the goddamn Incredible Hulk. The girl in front screams. I’m surprised they’re still open. It looks dead. I point my gun at the girl and demand to know where Lusky is hiding. I’ve killed enough of his men by now that he’s got to know his plans turned to shit. But that doesn’t matter. Fuck his plans. No one uses me.

But what if she was lying? Something inside me says. You still don’t know who she is.

But the more I think about it, the more I feel like I do. Why did she run? Why didn’t I chase her?

“Where is he?” I say again and pick the girl up by the collar. Her face turns white and she points towards the stairs. I drop her and tell her to run. She does. Smart girl.

Downstairs, Lusky is eating a bowl of soup at a table of armed men. He does a perfect spit take when he sees me, and I start shooting. I brought two guns for this one. The red mist fills the room and Lusky sits there at the end with soup dribbling down his chin, mouth hanging stupidly agape. I count the sitting dead men. Six. I smile at Lusky.

“I have some questions I’d like you to answer, Mr. Lusky.”

Lusky drops his spoon into his soup and gets up from the table as fast as he can, knocking his chair over. He breaks for a door that isn’t there. We’re in the basement. There’s only one set of stairs. I grab him by his thinning hair and pull him backwards and onto the floor.

“Mc…” he chokes out, my foot on his throat. “Legs! Achh!” I take my foot off and let him breathe, then I bend down and put my knee on his chest.

“Legs, Legs, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just listen! Listen to me will you! I can explain I can explain! They weren’t after you! The men you killed, they were after the woman I swear!”

I pause. Interrogations aren’t usually this easy.

“We didn’t set you up! She’s the one setting you up! My men were at The Crab to get her, we’d been watching her. Oh God, Legs you gotta believe me!”

I slug him one in the mouth for good measure.

“She’s not your mother! She’s a con!”

I slug him again.

“She wasn’t even married to Cosmo! He didn’t want nothin’ to do with her! I swear it! She works for Von Tier! Those pictures are fakes, she tried pulling the same con on one of my guys about two years ago! I swear it, I swear it!”

I pick him up and toss him over a table. I put my hands on his face and press down.

“Even if you were telling the truth,” I say, my face mere centimeters from his. I look directly into his eyes, from as close as I could possibly be without kissing the guy. “I’d kill you anyway.”

I cover his mouth with one hand and close his windpipe with the other. I hold him down until he’s gone.

Outside of the Pallid Mallard, I hear that familiar zing!

I’ll try something different this time. I throw up my hands and call out, “Lusky’s dead!”

I hear another shot whiz past me. “Come on!” I holler. “Killing me won’t solve anything! You won’t even get paid now!”

Another shot, and I look down the street. Here he comes. Brown suit and ski mask. Big scary rifle. Running full speed.

“You can’t shoot worth shit, man!”

This time I don’t take my eyes off him. I pull my guns and start shooting back. And somewhere in the muzzle flashes and sulfur smell, he vanishes again.

This is getting insane.

I feel dizzy again. I find a payphone.

“Hello?” she says, voice like a church mouse with a cold. She was asleep. I shouldn’t have called.

“Gracie?”

“Legs? What time is it?”

“Gracie, something strange is happening. Can you meet me somewhere? I’m down town.”

“What time is it?” she says again, still struggling to break the hold of sleep.

“About three. I’m sorry Gracie, I just…”

“No, it’s okay, I know…Give me a minute.” she takes a deep breath.

“I’ll meet you at Wester’s in half an hour. Is that okay?”

I can’t help but give a big sigh of relief. I tell her it’s fine and thank her. Maybe too much.

No, she’ll understand. She’s smart. She’ll know what to do. She’ll know just what to tell me.

At least, this is what I tell myself on the walk to Wester’s.

When I come to, it’s all sterile white sheets and a curtain and the buzzing of complicated machinery. Hospital. Haven’t been to one of these in a while.

Someone’s talking.

“Well, Mr. McGinnis, welcome back to the world of the living,”

It’s a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck. He’s wearing glasses and looking at a clipboard.

“Legs,” I grumble. He raises an eyebrow.

“No, you were shot in the head, Mr. McGinnis, your legs are fine.”

“My name. My name is Legs.”

My head hurts. It’s hard to think. Not that it was particularly easy before. This doctor is making my head hurt.

“Oh,” he says, finally understanding. “Well um…Legs. You’re very lucky. The bullet took off a chunk of your ear and part of your skull, but your brain was untouched. You’ve already been through surgery and you’ll make a full recovery in just a couple days,” he smiles and takes a step closer to me. He snaps his fingers in my ear. I flinch reflexively and glare at him. He nods.

“And you haven’t suffered any hearing loss, either. Very lucky indeed.”

He taps his pen against the clipboard and says he’ll come back to check on me in a couple of hours. He tells me there’s a little button to push if I need anything, food or water or maybe a newspaper. I ask when I can leave and he tells me tomorrow.

“Oh, and one other thing,” he says. “You’ve got a visitor. A Miss…Partridge? Perkins? There’s a little blonde girl here to see you, I didn’t catch her name.”

“Parker,” I tell him. It’s Gracie. She came to see me. I can’t help but smile.

“Right, Miss Parker. Would you like me to send her in?”

I nod, or try to, but my neck is very stiff. I wonder how long I’ve been here. The doctor winks at me and says he’ll send her right in.

A little while later, there she is.

“Look at you,” she says. “They fixed you up good, huh, you big lug?”

Gracie. What a doll. Five-five, a hundred and twenty pounds. I could lift her up with one arm like you’d lift a bag of groceries. She’s got her hair pinned up in a cute little bun with chopsticks stuck in it. She’s wearing a brown fur overcoat and black heels. I smile.

“Hi, Gracie,” I say, but my voice cracks like it used to when I was a kid, before my growth spurt. I cough and clear my throat and she smiles.

“Easy, killer,” she says and comes to stand next to me. She takes my hand in both of hers and it reminds me of Russian dolls. “You don’t have to talk or anything, I didn’t expect you to be awake. I hear you’ll be fine in a couple days though,” she says and smiles wide, full red lips peeling back like curtains on ivory piano keys. I nod and tell her I feel fine now, even better with her there. She squeezes my hand and smiles.

“Yeah, well, you aren’t going anywhere, least not til tomorrow.”

When she smiles, she shows her dimples, the left one with a tiny black speck in the center.

“You’re very lucky to be alive,” she says after a pause. “I’m glad they only grazed you. You can hardly tell there’s anything wrong with your ear,” she goes on, but stops and then blushes. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it at all, I mean…You know what I mean, Legs.”

She purses her lips and slightly narrows her eyebrows. I smile and tell her I don’t mind. Not like I’m the one who has to look at me.

“Who put the nasty idea in your head that you’re so ugly, huh?” she asks and gently strokes my hand. I shrug. No one, I tell her. That’s just the way it happens.

She frowns. “You’re a silly fool, Legs,” she says just above a whisper.

I tell her I know.

“And you’re not ugly. Whoever told you that is the ugly one,”

Normally I don’t take to people talking to me like that, insults are always out of line; coming from Gracie, though, it doesn’t sound unreasonable that I might be a fool. I try to think, though my head still hurts and my ears start to ring, to prove that I’m not a fool, about the first time I heard someone call me ugly.

“It was the Boss,” I say.

“Who?”

“The Boss. Mr. Cosmo. Mr. Cosmo told me I was ugly. But he didn’t mean it bad or anything,” I hesitate. It never occurred to me that he could have meant it as anything but a statement of a fact. I didn’t mind being ugly. That’s just how things were.

Gracie’s turned red again.

“Well that horrible man got what he had coming,” she says. I ask what she means and she looks at me, eyes suddenly wide and round and mint green, like lifesavers caught in headlights.

“They didn’t tell you?”

I ask, tell me what? And she covers her mouth with her hand.

Back on the surface, it’s pretty obvious our cover is blown. There is a horrible black vortex ripping down the hall in front of us. People are screaming and running, just like Santiago and I. We don’t have time to be discrete, and so we join the throng and hope that they picked the right direction. The floor behind us gives out and crumbles away into that magical void that things don’t come back from. A man running behind me loses his footing and vaporizes before he can hit the floor. He opens his mouth to scream, but the sound is sucked out of him. I keep running. I notice Santiago is gone. I call his name but, blind with panic, I can’t convince myself to stop running.

I feel the floor giving out under me. I leap and dive and tuck and roll, back on my feet. At the end of the corridor, I see something that looks suspiciously like daylight. I pray the comet hasn’t fallen from the sky. Not yet.

I feel a cold wind on the back of my neck like fingernails made of ice. I stumble at the last moment on a dislodged piece of ceiling, and drive my face into the mud just outside the complex. By the time I roll over to get my bearings, it’s as though the complex was never there. There’s a sound like a vacuum seal being broken, and then simple nothingness. What an odd sight, hundreds of vampires standing by the sea in the morning. I don’t see Santiago. I lay flat on the ground and stare up at the wretched blue sky. I have a vision of a cigarette burning all the way down to the filter without a single drag being taken. I wish for the simple annihilation that the sun could have brought me before this whole mess. It’s true what he said, that old monster. Not existing would be much easier than dealing with this.

But nothing worth doing is ever easy.

I’m roused from my nihilistic daydream by strong hands gripping me around my shoulders and pulling me to my feet.

“Is this him?” one of the guards asks. I don’t bother looking up. I feel so drained.

“Yes, it’s him. Put him down unless he can’t stand.”

Her voice sounds so far away. The heavy grip eases up off my arms, and I feel my knees wobble, but I stay standing.

“Sergei? Earth to Sergei, come in cosmonaut,” she says and there’s a white hand like a feather tickling at my forehead, running fingers through my hair. It’s Sophie.

“Sergei, you saved us.”

This is the last thing I was expecting. Torture, vilification, execution maybe. Certainly not “you saved us.”

I look up at Sophie with tired disbelief. She says it again, that I saved them. I shake my head.

“Santi’s gone. He didn’t make it out.”

Her eyebrows shoot up so fast I think they’re going to fly off her face.

“Mon Dieu,” she says and shakes her head. She puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls me close to her. I can’t stand it. I don’t want to be touched. My skin feels like a prison. I want to tear at myself and explode outwards, out of this horrible undead shell. I rest my face in the crook of her neck and she strokes the back of my head comfortingly.

“Come,” she says, releasing me when she realizes I’m not going to break into tears. “Sit.”

We walk to the car. She sits on the hood and explains what happened after I got the axe in the head.

The guard hit me and Santiago took him down. He then ripped Solomon’s insides out and threw Sophie face first through the nearest wall. She assures me she’s fine, not that I asked or cared at this point. Solomon is fine, too, she says.

After we disappeared, Solomon began calling his own abilities into question. He had never had any experience with or talent for magic until comparatively recently. Being a vampire, and a simpleton, he never questioned that his influence and ability were never any effort. When he tried to move the meteor of his own accord and nothing happened, he realized I was right and that, whatever it was, we were heading for a trap. Then the complex started collapsing. The sun turned red in the early morning sky, and the howl of ancient demons flooded everyone’s ears.

“I don’t know how you did it,” Sophie says. “I don’t know how you knew, but you were right. We’re in your debt, Sergei. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

I sigh. “Don’t worry about it.”

I get in the car and turn the key in the ignition. “See you around,” I say to Sophie and unceremoniously peel out to meet what might be the last stretch of daylight I ever see.

I stop in a coffee shop. No one sees me. I drink three cups and eat a donut and leave without paying. No one says a thing. I drive all day, back to the city, back to my hole. I stop at a Mexican corner store and buy a portrait of the virgin. When I get home, I draw a mustache on it and hang it on the wall next to my book case.

That night I have dream that I’m a fly caught in a web. I hear the old witch cackle. In my dream she says, “I don’t know how you did it, little Cyril. You escaped both traps, his and mine. You are a special lad, little Cyril. There is a place for you yet in this world of men and monsters. You have earned it.”

In the dream the spider sinks its fangs into me and sucks me dry.

When I wake, the sun has gone down.

I find myself overcome with a terrible, familiar thirst.

The pause, the words, the look are imperceptible to everyone in the place but me, it seems, and the hollering only gets louder as the dance continues.

Finally stripped bare, Sophie stands and twirls herself around a metal pole jutting out of the stage. She moves like a feather, or like water, fluid, weightless. Sublime. And then, she’s grinning down the bar at me and she’s asking for a volunteer. The previously unseen emcee, a short man in an untucked button-up shirt and tie, hands her a mic and she says over the techno-garbage excuse for music: “I need a volunteer from the audience,” and her black-painted lips turn themselves up at the corners, pointed like a flick-knife.

“I need a volunteer from the audience who would like an experience that they will remember for the rest of their lives.”

She says it breathily, heavily, enticingly. She says it the way that makes you excited, and the way that lets you know she’s the one that will be calling the shots. The roar of the attendees reaches a feverish pitch. Sophie winks at me and walks once more to the end of the stage and on to the bar. Every man at the bar is clamoring for her attention, some of them even going so far as to stand up and wave their arms. She passes them all, one by one, looking them up and down, running her fingers through their hair as she passes, discarding them like spent napkins. A perverse game of duck-duck-goose. Then she comes to me, and it seems like I’m the goose. An image of a fried duck in a big black pot flashes through my mind. Her black-painted lips part to show a hint of pointed pearl, and a flash of pink tongue running over them like a slug sliding down a razor.

She picks the man sitting next to me.

She pulls him up, just a regular guy. Dark hair, collared shirt, khaki slacks. He’s had a few and his face is bright red. He can’t believe his luck. I know what’s happening now. I know this song and dance, and when I look over at Santiago, it’s clear he’s got a pretty good idea, too.

Sophie speaks again into the microphone:

“Tell me your name,” she asks the man. He answers: “David.”

“David, how do you feel, being here, seeing me at Rodrick’s for the last time ever?”

He stammers: “I uh uh uh I feel honored uh I guess?” like he’s asking permission.

Sophie smiles and puts her hand on his chest and guides him like a tugboat towards the metallic pole. “Very good, David. I’m glad you feel honored,” she says breathily, moving him slowly and gently, like one moving an antique chandelier. Once his back is to the pole, she slinks around him, never breaking contact, never taking her hand off of him. She pulls his hands behind his back, and he doesn’t protest even a little, just turns a darker shade of red.

“Now David, I’m going to ask you a personal question. And I want you to be honest with me. We’re all friends here, right? This won’t ever leave this room. Will you be honest?”

She puts the microphone up to his face, reaching around from behind him, pressing ever so slightly against his back, soft pink nipples on soft cotton fabric. I’m sure he can feel her. Darker and darker red.

He stammers that yes, he’ll be honest.

“David, do you like it rough?” she asks like a mousetrap flying shut. He falls to his knees then and cries out.

There’s blood pouring out of his neck, but the crowd never saw Sophie take the bite out of him. They’re too busy laughing to see Sophie spit out a piece of neck flesh. They haven’t seen the blood dripping down her chin and onto her naked chest.

The sound of grown men screaming in abject terror is one that is wholly unique. It never sounds the same twice, but it is always unmistakable and it will always bring a smile to my face.

Like lightning, quick, I leap to my feet. The sight of blood, the hiss of severed arteries, it dries my throat intolerably. The thirst. Hunger so abject, so hollowing, so complete, it nearly overwhelms me. It’s all I can do to rip out the neck of the man standing closest to me. The cascade of red flows through a dying gargle, a gasp of terror drowning quickly. The spray hits my face and I lick my lips and sink my teeth into the soft wet esophageal hole and drink. And drink. And drink.

I move onto the next one in short order. A distant corner of my cognizance registers the image of Sophie tossing aside her victim, the man David. Her lily-white skin has turned entirely ruby red. Only her black-painted lips, still smiling sinisterly, give any impression that she was ever any other color. She is beautiful in only the way a woman partaking in wholesale slaughter can ever be. And then she’s gone into the crowd, sending men flying in all directions, their windpipes dangling down their chests from torn necks. I follow suit, wading in like a buzz saw through a butcher shop.

Time passes as in a dream. Days go by as the showers of red turn into a pool at our feet. No one makes it out, though not for lack of trying. One courageous patron attempts to defend himself with a chair, only to have it placed firmly into his middle, impaling him on three of the four legs. I lift him up and open my mouth as blood pours out of him. I drink until my stomach hurts and all the screaming has stopped.

Sound and time and my senses shift back to working normally as the sound of a familiar belly laugh breaks into the silence like a burglar. It’s Santiago, covered in blood, the girls he had on his arms before now strewn about the floor, mangled, drained. He’s laughing.

“My god, Sergei,” he exclaims, motioning to the carnage around us. “I didn’t know you had such wonderful friends.”

He smiles a wide wolf-smile at Sophie, who is still naked and covered in blood. She smiles back, then turns to me and leaps clean across the room and into my arms. She kisses me, and I taste the blood of many on her lips.

“Sergei! I cannot believe it!” she says. “Where have you been all these years? It has been too long! And now, you show up here on this night of all nights! It is truly an auspicious sign.”

I want to ask what she’s talking about, but I’m distracted by the naked skin in my arms and the blood on my lips. Instead I say, “Sophie, this is my friend Santiago. Santiago—Sophie.”

They smile and nod approvingly of one another and Sophie daintily extends her blood-stained hand. They shake and Santiago says, “How do you do?” and, like a real asshole, bends and kisses her hand.

“Yes,” she says, looking down her arm at him. “You’re one of Sergei’s friends all right.”