Dawn found me sleeping under a chapel's bells, a god fifty, hundred feet off the ground. It was the tolling that woke me. I yawned and jammed my fingers in my ears, leaning against the railing in the narrow room. God, what was it called? The bell rang and rang and rang and I still couldn't find the name for the place when my bones stopped shaking.
When I first toured the circuits I was a bit wary about sleeping in churches. But now, I don't feel anything off about it. Hell, churches are a pretty safe bet to weather the night in, especially if you're being hunted by gribblies who can't touch a threshold over church ground. For instance, right now. In conclusion, get bent, Reds.
I yawned again, tracing the slowly healing scar on my cheek when I went to cover my mouth. It was raw to the touch, sending a twinge of pain all throughout my jaw when I poked at it. There were more all along my arms, similar to the sort of wounds a guy takes when he's defending himself from a maniac with a knife. Some of them had wandered to the sides of my chest, and when I stretched, arching my back until my spine clicked, they drew lines of pain across my ribs.
It's only been a day since my last meal and I'm already starving. Ugh. That's no problem, I thought to myself as I looked out over the cityscape, Dubois wasn't long for this world. Week, tops. Then I'd be noshing down on his corpse.
How would I solve the problems of the vampires, though? This was a trickier one. Me and Jen never expected to bum around Redhorn for long, so she never bothered digging up anything about the local supernaturals.
I sat down cross legged, thinking. Maybe they would have left Redhorn already. If it really was the Reds that took the rocket to my van, then the cops would be looking. They're pretty good at it nowadays. "But," I said out loud, "there was a Red in Dubois' office. That means Dubois is connected somehow. Maybe for protection."
So where does that leave me?
"The same place where I was before," I said as I rubbed the knuckle duster in my pocket. "I'm gonna find Dubois and eat his liver."
"You don't want to do that."
"Why not? Dubois' a mook, I take people like him daily. Even if he got Reds pulling bodyguards on him, he's gonna outplay me every turn. I just gotta win once." I responded before I realized that it wasn't me I was responding to. It was a little songbird, a thrush or a chickadee or some other cute little ball of fluff speaking in a deep and sonorant voice. Weird. Which baritone chooses something as chirpy as a songbird to talk through? Get a hawk or something. "Who the hell are you?"
I slowly stood up, eyes darting all over the place. There was nothing. Some pigeons sitting on wires, nothing more. "He's a heavy drinker," the songbird elaborated. "He's got liver cancer."
"Euck. Thanks, helpful bird." We lapsed into silence. One second passed. The bird pecked at the granite railing and ate a bug. Three seconds. It was pretty awkward. Ten seconds.
"So who are you again?"
The bird scratched its head with a wing. "Redcap," it said after a while. "I was supposed to tell you to meet up with some other people. Oh. Did I do that?"
Literally birdbrained. In any case, dollars to doughnuts that these are the local supernaturals. See? Plenty of good things come if you sleep in a church. I'll go along and be on my best behavior. "You just did," I replied. "Let's go, Redcap. Give me an address and I'll shimmy down."
The songbird cocked its head at me. "Can you do that? Gosh. There's a spiderman over here."
"Doc Ock, but yeah." The songbird flitted downwards, and I followed it, swinging the cello bag as I gracefully lept like a goat from protrusion to protrusion. Don't knock goats. Goats are pretty nimble. Truth to be told, my form could have done with some work. I fell once or twice, not fatal to a ghoul like me. Those bannisters are pretty slippery. Eventually my feet hit dewey lawn, at the back of the church. I vaulted the fence before anyone from the church heard the thump. "Say, Redcap," I asked as a thought ambled into my brain, "did the Fae ever give you trouble?"
"Sorry?" it squawked at me.
"The Redcap," I elaborated. "It's a fairly psycho sort of good neighbor. Shouldn't that…"
The bird looked thoughtful as it landed on my shoulder. "No," it said. "I should probably change the name, huh?"
"Probably a good idea," I agreed as I stopped at an intersection. I got more than a couple of looks from passersby, I admit. Old ladies smelling like chamomile and old fashioned perfume with saggy necks looked at the bird as they passed, as I waited for the lights to change. Young, fit joggers with tight muscle passed by flicking glances at Redcap as I ground my teeth so hard I thought they were going to break. Fuck. Every inch of me was screaming to snag someone and drag them into a secluded alley and snap their neck there. Then I'd fill my mouth with flesh, hot and juicy in my mouth. I'd snap the bones and suck out the marrow, rich and peppery. I'd lick the blood- I rubbed my temples. It was getting to me. If I went nuts in broad daylight the Dogs would kill me and nobody would give a shit.
I thanked all the gods alive and dead when the sign blinked and I set off, stridently ignoring the stares. If I was fuller, I would have luxuriated in them. I'd have taken Redcap off my shoulder and mouthed along to what it'd say. But not now. The bird eventually led me to this abandoned construction site by way of pecking at me. Abandoned was the nicer way of describing it. Rotting. Even the graffiti artists had fucked off from tagging the building. It gave me anxiety about standing in it a block away. How did the city not tear this thing down? It seemed like something everybody would be onboard with.
"Jesus," I said. "Planning a murder?"
"Maybe."
Gee. That was reassuring. But I walked into the building anyway. Redcap flitted away when I walked up the second floor. Smart. If they wanted to whack me, the first floor would have gotten eyes from passers by.
The second floor had no walls. There were some load bearing pillars made of rotting concrete with iron rebar poking out the sides. Glass from broken bottles and paper halfway crunched and squelched under my sneakers as I stopped in front of a couple of people sitting on boxes and leaning against pillars covered with fading graffiti.
I heard a gun click behind my head. "That you, Redcap?" There was a hint of casual menace in my voice. I shifted forwards, ready to explode in a blur of motion the moment they thought about pulling the trigger. I'm worried, even though I'm hiding it. I might have been able to shrug off a bullet or two or dodged out of the way before the trigger was pulled, but not when I was this hungry. The only thing I have left is my sparkling attitude.
"Yessir." The voice was different somehow. Smoother. More certain. Guess having a brain bigger than the songbird does you wonders.
An old man- worn by time and tide- raised his hands. Every inch of him screamed sailor. I don't know why. I've never met a fisher, but this guy just had that energy. There were two others- leaning against the pillars and trying for an air of equal casualness and equal menace. I was better. "Peace, ghoul. I'm taking a precaution, that's all there is."
I shrugged. "Kid Hunger. Pleasure to meet you, gun at the back of my head aside. By the way, this isn't the best precaution you could have taken."
There was a twinkle of… something in the old man's eyes. "Oh? Then what would you have done?"
"I'd have a sniper across the road. Then I'd make sure that the guy has a clear line of sight to the target. Moment he twitches, bam, there goes his brain."
"Heh! I'll keep that in mind, kid. I guess you can call me Joseph. You've already met Redcap, and the fellas to my right and left are Let and Lien." They looked like fraternal twins, male and female, wearing matching dark blue jeans and matching black hoodies, with matching cropped haircuts that left a slash of hair, the guy had it falling to the left, and the girl to the right.
"Nice color coordination you have going on there," I remarked. They nodded and the girl gave me the thumbs up. I don't know which one is Let and which one is Lien. "So, Joseph. What's the deal?"
He stroked his stubbly chin. "We want you out," he declared bluntly. "Out of Redhorn. Sonny, you came in yesterday and now the police are on your ass. The Red Court is here, and they don't come up this north without a reason. And, on top of that, you want to whack Dubois, and he's Morelli's- you know Morelli?- biggest name here."
"Yeah. He's the guy that plays second fiddle to Marcone in everything."
Everyone laughed at that. The two twins laughed like crows, harsh and cawing. The old man laughed like a seagull, which boiled down to more cawing. Look, I'm not an ornithologist. Redcap laughed, an operatic tittering that joined the strange outburst. "Oh, it's true. It's true, but you oughtn't say it," the old man wiped his blue gray eyes. Tempest tossed, the phrase rose in my mind. Like sea foam whipped by a storm. He leaned in, elbows on his knees. "Kid, you're a threat if I've ever seen one. What are you going to do? Tear this city upside down?"
I ran my tongue over my teeth. My lips were dry. "That was in the cards," I confirmed.
Joseph waved his hands like it proved his point. Which, if I was being honest, it did. The male twin stepped forward. "You're gonna kill us," he said, low and grumbly. "Morelli's gonna see that his guy here died, and he'll come fuckin' looking. They're gonna say a freak killed him, and that's gonna lead him to us. Then what?"
"So I'll kill him too."
I think it was the casual way I said it that knocked them off guard. They looked like me as if they weren't quite sure if I was there in the flesh, or just some illusion, a hallucination they dreamed up in a nightmare that was standing on the floor in front of them. All four of them said, "you're insane" or some variation of it at more or less the same time.
Still got that touch. "Why not?" I asked quite reasonably. "He's just human, you know. He hasn't even splurged for a supernatural bodyguard. One guy with a gun could take him. I could shake him down like-"
"-a ghoul in the talons of the Red Court," the sentence finished by some other voice in a dangerous contralto. I turned around, Redcap's gun- a sawn off, which is a horrid choice against a hard target- already pointed at the intruder.
"Pardon if I'm wrong," I said, taking her measure as I shrugged off the cello bag and slipped a hand around the knuckle duster. The mid morning light shone off her black leather jacket and baggy pants. She was a solid head taller than me, and walked like a boxer. Light on the feet. A bruiser of a higher grade, with enough restraint to be trusted to walk around in broad daylight. "But I swore I handed the sangre its own ass yesterday. Was I high?"
"You mean esclavos," the woman grinned, exposing a mouth full of sharp fangs. I feel cheated. My teeth are tough, sure, but they just look like normal teeth. You can't intimidate anyone with that. Sucks. "Buuut, I guess ghouls would be proud of taking out trash."
We're circling like wolves. There was electric energy here in the abandoned second floor of the construction site. Sizing each other up. A little prefight banter to toss around, and then there'd be blood on the floor. "Oooh, they're called esclavos. I really need to brush up on my Spanish."
"Don't bother." We were tracing a long circle in the rot, the four others at a perpendicular axis. "Everyone here is going to be dead in-" she raised a thin finger, checking a watch. "Five minutes."
"Five minutes, huh?" Everyone? Shit. She was going to kill the others first. And then I'd be out of a contact. "Your clock is wrong." My heart beat faster and faster, and my senses sharpened as I gnawed on yesterday's yesterday's meal. "It's gonna be over now."
I'm hungry. I'm nearly starving. At this point, even her vampiric leech flesh would taste like heaven. Normally, my tank would still be topped up, but I metabolized a bunch to heal whatever wounds I took after the RPG, and then I spent another chunk to hand the vampire mook its own ass yesterday. With how much I have left, I guessed that I could wring out one, maybe two seconds of superhuman capability.
The vampire makes the first move, raising up on her toes and bringing her fists in an orthodox boxing stance, weaving in and out like some kinda insect. Her first strike came to the gut, and it doubled me over even though I'd been prepared for it. I spat out a mouthful of spittle and went for a leg takedown. My pocket feels lighter. Did the knuckle duster drop out?
I'm a sambist. Dragunuv learned it from one of the original masters way back in her stint as a sniper in the Red Army, and she taught me when I was a kid in Tooth Flats. It's a grappling style, and grapplers tended to have an edge over strikers in any mixed martial arts match.
We fell to the ground as I coiled into a heel hook, drawing on my dwindling reserves to snap her leg in half. But she's tougher too, and more well fed than I was, so she's a cheating bitch that didn't need to escape with a slip or whatever. She stood up and kicked me into the ceiling instead. My vertebrae ground against each other for the second time. I flattened out like a pancake in the ceiling, before falling and hitting the ground.
Something crunched. I hope that it was just my nose.
Everything hurt. My bones feel like a rice krispie that somebody stomped on. Cheating fucking vampire. How are we supposed to fight against that? They gave us the scraps off their plate, I remembered. Someone. Was it Jen? It sounded like Jen. And they want us to be grateful for that.
Oh. I'm lifted. The vampire has me by the shirt, holding me like a puppy and looking at me like I was an insect pinned under glass. Something wet trickled down my lips. I can barely see, what with the dust in my eyes, but I think that-
Pow. It was definitely bones that cracked, when the vampire hit me with a haymaker. "Hey, worm, you awake?" I heard. "Wake up."
Again.
"You dead?"
Again.
"This is just sad."
Again.
