The Beloved, page 25
The tide of people had been too pervasive for too long, filthy toes in worn-out soles, over and over again on the same path.
Kinda like the route to that elevator.
Evan used the key once more, and then he was at the bottom of the stairs. The balustrade was rickety on the way up, but he had to use it because of the gunshot wound in his thigh. There was no knowing when he’d gotten nailed. Probably a stray fly-away, a ricochet, an off-target out-the-way.
At the top, he went to the left, to the second of the two apartments on that side.
As the key went into the lock, he paused. He missed Mickey, even though his cousin had never been nice. It was kind of like how if you lived in a crappy house, you still got homesick when you were away from the dripping faucets and the chipped floors and the creaky doors. Home was where the familiar was—
Evan froze as he opened the way in.
The first thing he noticed was the smell. Old urine, sharp and lemony.
Frowning, he stepped inside and closed things behind him. As his weight transferred, the floorboards creaked and he hesitated.
What was that other sound?
The apartment had a short hallway that opened into the living room, and he put his back to the wall and eased his way down, the gun with the suppressor in his hand. As the corridor yielded to the open space, he stopped again.
Across the bare floor, in front of the puffy leather sofa… tipped over on her side… a woman was tied to one of Mickey’s crappy kitchen chairs. There was a gag in her mouth, and duct tape had been used to keep her hands restrained in front of her, while nylon was doing the job locking her forearms and ankles to the chair’s structure.
The woman began flailing around, her red-rimmed eyes bugging, her frazzled dark hair tangling even more, her buckled shoes clapping—
Evan put his forefinger to his lips. “Shhhh.”
She stilled the big movements. The little stuff, like her panting and the way her mouth worked against the gag, kept on going.
The whimpering sound reminded him of a dog left behind.
Evan left her where she was and scouted the rest of the apartment, even going through the closets. Mickey had been a messy person, and seeing the laundry on the floor, the bed with its wrinkled wedge of a comforter, and the hodgepodge of shoes and boots all over the place, was a reminder of how the guy had always been moving. The only time his kinetic energy had decreased was when he’d been high or passed out drunk.
Evan had always wondered why his cousin had never channeled all that into cleaning. But he’d certainly never shared that opinion.
A quick catalogue of assets was necessary, and Evan took the top mattress off the box spring, and was rewarded for the effort. Two more handguns. A couple of magazines. In the bedside table, some handcuffs—no key, though. The closet yielded a rifle, for which there didn’t seem to be any bullets, and two boxes of nine millimeter ammo. Also a baseball bat. And a duffle, which was handy to pack shit up.
In the bathroom, he went to the medicine cabinet and—
Evan froze when he saw his reflection in the mirror. “Oh… God.”
Leaning into the glass, he pulled down his lower eyelids, one after the other. The whites of his eyes were now… gray.
“Fuck,” he breathed as he dropped the bag and gripped the edge of the sink with both hands.
He was still going bald and his face was the same, but he was looking at a stranger—even though he couldn’t define exactly what had changed. Maybe it was the flat quality of his skin, like he was a wax figure of himself.
Lowering his head, he tried to keep the tears back and lost the battle. The weeping racked his body, and he felt dull aches and pains from all the sawing breaths. But he couldn’t stop the explosion of emotion, his eyes squeezing shut, his lungs burning—
Hard to know exactly when he saw the black smudges on the floor. But when they registered, he lifted his head… and knew what he was going to see before he focused.
He was crying black tears, his pasty cheeks scored with mascara-like riverways.
Throwing out a hand, he expected there to be a towel hanging on a rod, but there wasn’t one. He ended up scrubbing off his face with the limp shower curtain.
When he could focus a little better, he ran some water, and he didn’t wait for it to get warm before he splashed it into his eyes—the cold felt good, but it was a distilled sensation, like through a filter of numbness. Turning back to the shower, he avoided the black stain he’d left and wiped things dry in another place.
He was pivoting away when he saw the toilet.
Putting a shaking hand down to the front of the pants he’d stolen, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a leak.
Back at the medicine cabinet, he opened the thing all the way so there was no chance of seeing himself.
Tylenol. A couple of joints. Half a bottle of penicillin for that tooth Mickey had broken.
He picked up the duffle and went back out to the living room.
The woman was like a mouse in a trap, re-reacting to his presence, flailing once again as if he was the plug for her wire.
Putting the duffle down, he went to the kitchen and started opening drawers. He found a serrated knife in the third one down, and he took it over to the woman. For a moment, he watched her cry, marveling at the crystal-clear tears that dripped off the bridge of her nose. Then he knelt next to her.
When the knife got close to her face, she started screaming, the sound trapped by the gag—
“I’m really sorry,” he said roughly. “But I need this place. I got nowhere else to go. I need… to think…”
He started crying with her, and the weapon shook in his hand.
Especially as he realized the noises coming up from the woman were something like n-n-n-n-nnnnnnn-ooooo—
Hold up, he thought. The knife was going to make a mess. What if her blood seeped through the floor and onto the ceiling of the apartment below?
There had been a lot of the stuff when Mickey’s throat had been cut.
Evan put the blade aside, and the woman shuddered like she’d been given a reprieve.
“Shhhh…” he repeated.
Standing back up, he went into Mickey’s bedroom. There were a couple of pillows crammed into the seam between the mattress and the wall, and he picked them out of the tight squeeze, testing them for firmness.
He chose the softest one, even though it was fucked up. When he was suffocating her, was she really going to care that he’d picked something for her comfort? That was like getting ribbed condoms for a prostitute.
Back in the living room, he glanced over to the windows. Mickey had already pulled the drapes before leaving the other night—and good thing.
He should have checked that before. He was going to have to get better at not being distracted.
Over by the woman, Evan lowered himself down once more. When he wiped his tears, the black smudge on his fingertips was what came out of his veins, what was on the floor of that office building, what he’d been forced to swallow… the worst kind of Kool-Aid there was.
“Hold your breath,” he said in a voice that cracked. “It will be over sooner that way.”
Bringing the pillow to her face, he—
He had to stop again. It wasn’t going to work with her head to the side. She needed to be face up.
As he got frustrated with himself, her crying also got on his nerves. He was upset with this turn of events, too. Fucking hell, like she thought he wanted to do this?
With his newfound strength, he easily cranked the chair a quarter turn, so that it was as if it had fallen straight back.
“You gotta give me a break,” he muttered as she started screaming again. “I’ve never done this before, okay?”
She was totally hyperventilating now, and her bound hands were like a snare drum on her lap, the beat as she tried to get her arms free so fast he could hardly track it. Once more with the pillow, and as he put it just above her face, her eyes stretched so wide, if she’d been a cartoon, they would have popped out.
“It’s not going to be long,” he said roughly as he got sad again. “I promise—”
He surged forward and pinned the pillow to the floor on either side of her head, right by her ears. The soft one proved to be a good choice. The seal was easy and immediate.
As she struggled, he got too busy tracking her movements against the binds to keep with his crying thing. He was worried that they were making too much noise. The apartments in the building were occupied with people who could call the police to investigate strange thumping sounds.
It felt like a year and a half before the woman finally fell still, and the concentration and effort required to kill her right reminded him of having sex, what with the way he had to work at it and pay attention to what was happening with his partner.
He stayed in place for a full five minutes afterward.
Then Evan slowly lifted the pillow, and the way he peeked under it reminded him of his mother cooking, the way she would always lean to the side as she lifted the lids to pots or the dishtowels over rising dough or the seal on leftovers.
“There you go,” he said with an exhale.
The woman’s eyes were wide and pointed at the ceiling, her mouth open farther than the gag required, her face dry of tears, the pillow dotted with wet spots.
Just like sex.
As Evan fell back on his ass and set the pillow on his lap, he stared at the still woman and noted that he wasn’t crying anymore. And this was good. This was… what was expected of him.
Uncle and the others didn’t get upset when they killed people. He’d heard them talk about it.
Mickey had killed three people—well, two had been on account of that car accident when he’d been drunk driving. But he hadn’t cried over any of them.
And he wouldn’t have cried if he’d been able to get uphill of that enforcer, Nathaniel.
And that enforcer hadn’t cried over Mickey.
Putting his elbows on his knees, Evan became as still as the woman, his inner awareness settling down, becoming a reflecting pool instead of a rushing river.
Calm. Focused.
“I am changing…” he whispered, no longer as horrified at what was in his veins.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
At midnight the following evening, Nalla stepped out of Luchas House, closed the front door, and went down the porch steps. On the walkway, she leaned back and checked out the dense cloud cover. A storm was brewing, weather-wise.
When it came to her life, the blizzard had already hit.
She hadn’t slept all day. Had just lain upstairs in that messy bed, the shutters down to keep out the sunlight, her brain playing solo tennis against the backboard of her regrets, alternating between the fight she’d had with her mahmen downstairs and the argument she’d had with her sire in that alley the night before.
And, there had been one other thing on her mind.
From time to time, she’d rolled over to the side of the mattress and stared down at the pillow that was still on the floor right by the bed. She’d refused to pick it up. What had happened between her and Nate had been mind-bendingly vivid when they’d been together. But in a weird distortion, the very fact it had been so good made her question whether she’d blown the hookup out of proportion.
So the pillow they’d knocked off was staying where it was.
Proof she hadn’t made anything up.
Closing her eyes, it was a while before she could calm herself enough to dematerialize, and when she was finally able to spirit away in a scatter of molecules, she knew she had to get her head right before she got to the tattoo parlor.
After all, the problems with her parents would be waiting for her following this… date? Was that what this was? At any rate, she didn’t want to waste what time she had with Nate.
Re-forming on the roof of a restaurant that was closed for the evening, she walked over to the lip and looked down.
Needle was across the street, and with its darkened windows and sign, she wasn’t sure whether the artist had come to re-open things yet. She hadn’t heard from Nate, but she hadn’t expected to—okay, fine. Maybe she’d thought he might get a message to her at Luchas House somehow.
He didn’t know she had a working phone again. Or her number. But he sure knew where she was—
“Shut up,” she said into the cold air.
It was beyond time to pull herself together. After the day she’d spent with her racing mind, she was so over going around in circles in her head about whether Nate was still coming, if they were still on, if he still wanted to hook up with her. The good news? At this point, only she was aware of the OCD Olympic track her thoughts were running relays on, and she was damn well going to keep it that way.
There was a fire escape off to the side of the building, and as her nerves were too raw, even after her shut-up pep talk, she went down the rungs hand over hand, jumping free off the six-foot drop at the bottom, her boots landing with a slam on the grimy snowpack.
Heading out to the main street, her strides were more confident than she was feeling, and she told herself to get a grip all over again. The fact that she was losing her mind after talking to that male a couple of times and hooking up a little with him probably meant Bitty was right all along: She needed to get out more.
Although feeding Nate had been more than just a hookup. At least on her side.
Crossing Market Street, she sized up the shop as well as the area in general as she went along. Everything was closed for the night, and there were no pedestrians or cars around, but she felt safe enough. The neighborhood was not fancy, yet it wasn’t nasty, either.
Stopping in front of Needle, she looked up at the darkened neon sign that was just block letters, no glow. The plate glass windows of the front were also blacked out, velvet drapes pulled across them on the inside, no glow from the interior seeping through the folds and breaks in the heavy fabric.
Was she supposed to knock? she wondered as she eyed the many-times-painted front door. There wasn’t a doorbell to ring.
As a crushing, sinking feeling hollowed out her chest, she wrapped her arms around herself and glanced back at the roof of the restaurant across the street. The idea of retracing her steps to Luchas House, and making some excuse as to why she was going to work even though it was a Saturday and she was always off Saturdays, made her cringe. But she still wasn’t ready to go back home yet, and like Bathe was an option?
She’d already met her once-a-year club quota.
Besides, she might be banned for hopping up on that table and playing soccer with all those glasses—
“Nalla? You Nalla?” The resonant, deep voice rippled out to her, and as she jumped and looked around, it ordered, “Over here.”
Glancing to the right, she zeroed in on the thin seam between the tattoo parlor and the apartment building next to it.
“Hello?” she said.
“I’m holding the door open, you gotta come to me.”
With caution—and a heart that was suddenly tap-dancing a little with hope—she headed over to the six-foot-wide breezeway. About twenty feet down, a pool of light spilled out… along with a figure who was tall as a basketball player, thin as a model, and tattooed everywhere. With neon pink hair peaked like the top of a lemon meringue pie, a micro-mini, and thigh-high, pencil-heeled boots the same color as the hair, the person was—
“Well,” they snapped. “Are we just standing here, honey, or are we doing something? I have not got time for this.”
“Sorry, yes, sorry.”
Nalla scrambled forward, and she couldn’t help but stare as the person stepped out and motioned her into a long hall that was painted black from floor to ceiling.
Wow. Just… wow.
The tattoos that covered their pale skin were all black-and-white portraits of movie stars from waaaaay back set against a background of the Louis Vuitton logo. Meanwhile, their face, which was professional-level made up, was easily beautiful enough to be on a magazine cover, the hollows under the cheeks, the plump lips, and the luminescent eyes the kind of thing that might have been bought and paid for as part of another canvas to make art with, but really, the end result was so striking, it had clearly been an investment worth making.
“Are we going to have a problem.” That voice, which was both bass and soprano together, was sharp as a knife. “Because Amore don’t beg for anything, honey, and I am not starting with you tonight.”
“I’m sorry.” Nalla glanced down to those boots again. Then went back up, way up. “You’re just… too dazzling to look at. Like Marilyn Monroe and Vogue magazine had a love child.”
Amore arched their perfect brows. Then they fussed at their hair with their neon pink nails. “Girl, I knew we were going to get along. From the moment I saw you. Now, tell me more about how fabulous I am.”
The next thing Nalla knew, she was draped by a tattooed arm and escorted like she was royalty down into a scrupulously clean workroom that was all black and pink and gold. The focal point was the table in the center of the space and the chandelier of bright lights over it, but there were also an upright, padded chair, various rolling tables, and a couple of silk armchairs. The rest of the square footage was taken up by equipment, including autoclaves, an entire twenty-foot bank of ink colors in squeeze bottles, and all kinds of glass-fronted cabinets filled with needles, tattooing guns, and supplies.
The best part? The walls were covered with photographs of Amore with famous people, as well as countless awards and diplomas.
Nalla wandered over to look at one of the shelves full of trophies. “Are these all yours?”
“You bet your ass, honey.”
“This is incredibly impressive.” She looked over her shoulder. “I mean, whoa.”
Amore leaned back against a stretch of countertop. “I’ve been at it for a while, what can I say.”
“You’re also very good at what you do.”
