Suicide Kings, page 14
“Come on in,” she says. Voice a little cracked, a little weary. I hear her shift over to the far side of the tent before I unzip the entrance, step inside, and zip it back up.
It’s a roomy tent. Three compartments that act as semi-private bedrooms. She’s done her best to make this place a home, her sparse belongings that have spent years in a shopping cart finally laid out for all to see. I wish she wouldn’t. She can’t stay here.
She looks the way she always looks when I come by. Jaundiced skin, sunken cheeks, hair a dishwater gray with clumps falling out. She doesn’t leave her tent most of the time, and never during the day if she can help it.
“Wish you’d let me take you to the shelter,” I say. “Gabriela’s got a standing offer for you.”
She looks at her feet like a guilty five year old. “I know. I just . . . I just can’t, okay?”
“Okay.” I don’t push. Some days Rosalie inches my way on the topic and other days it’s like moving a boulder. Not my job to change her mind.
“Got your stuff.” I hold up a little Coleman cooler with dry ice and a supply of bagged blood inside. “Clean needles, too. Not even out of the package.”
Rosalie is, if you haven’t guessed, a vampire. Vampires live on blood, sure, but they’re not like you see in the movies. Most drink their blood, but a portion of the Los Angeles vampires can’t, and I’ve never been able to get one of them to tell me why. I don’t know vampire politics, but I can tell when people are getting screwed by the system.
These vampires can only feed by getting it directly into a vein. To call them junkies isn’t an exaggeration. And that’s how they live, in places usually worse than this, the only places that will take them in.
“I got my works,” she says. “But yeah, I’ll take the needles. Thanks.” I pass the cooler and bag with the syringes to her. The needles don’t matter to her. She takes them as a gesture. She can’t get any diseases, but she can pass them along. And if she feeds on somebody, she’s going to stab a syringe into their neck, almost guaranteeing they get Hep C or HIV unless she’s careful.
“You mind?” she says. “I think better when I’ve had a hit.”
“Go right ahead.” She pulls a bag of blood and draws a little from her syringe, finds a vein and pumps in that sweet shot of life.
The effect’s immediate. Her hair regains color, features fill out, eyes brighten. She sheds thirty years in thirty seconds and goes from withered crone to stunning 1920s flapper with a bob haircut and a predatory gleam in her eye. Her eyes roll up and she takes a deep breath.
“God, that’s good. You have no idea.” The vamps claim it’s better than sex, though most of them will agree that sex is pretty great, too. “Thank you.”
“Happy to help,” I say. More like, “Happy to keep the vampire from going hungry and starting to stab people in the camp trying to get her fix.”
She looks into the cooler with eyes that can see straight and a brain that works. “This is like a month’s worth,” she says. “You going somewhere?”
“Just got a feeling things are going to get a little weirder than usual. Might not be able to get out here as often.”
“What? Not even to see your sexy lady friend?” She laughs and it’s light and breezy and I can see how she could have made many a man or woman follow wherever she wanted.
“I get accused of bangin’ a twenty-year-old mage yesterday, and now you think I’m goin’ for a single mom in a squatter’s camp. The hell is with everybody?”
She laughs again. “I know it’s not her. Or me. But if bringing me blood and staring at that ass in those tight jeans of hers helps you feel less guilty, who am I to judge?”
“You good to talk?” I say, changing the subject. Much as I want Rose to not be here, as long as she is, I’m going to use her.
“Yeah. No more of that weird green blob coming out of the fog. You either took it out or scared it off good. Haven’t seen it all week.”
“That’s a bright spot of news.”
The night I stayed here Lani told me about a glowing green blob that came out of the Toxic Zone and would roll down the street, split off pieces of itself, reform, and eventually go back in. Hadn’t hurt anybody but it was only a matter of time. The only things that go into that fog are stupid, and the only things that come out are dangerous.
“But—” she says, and there’s a long pause. “It doesn’t really matter to me one way or another.” The hesitation in her voice tells me that’s bullshit. She won’t admit it, but she likes these people. As much as someone who sees humans as lunch can, at least. “But I’ve been hearing some stories.”
“Yeah, what kind of stories?”
“El Cucuy,” she says.
For most people, El Cucuy’s another name for the boogeyman. The thing under your bed, comes for you in the night. For mages they’re bad news.
El Cucuy, or a dozen other names they go by, are magic eaters. In their normal form they’re tall monstrosities with heads like horse skulls and arms like tree trunks tipped with foot-long razor blades. But they can squeeze themselves into a hollowed-out corpse. They don’t look all that human up close, but if they’re up close you’re already fucked.
I fought one back east—they call them Jersey Devils out there—and I know Gabriela has fought at least one in Mexico. Neither one of us thought we’d make it out of those scrapes alive. They’re tough fuckers and you have to be careful about the magic you use, because a lot of it they’ll just eat like you’re tossing them treats.
“I don’t like hearing that,” I say.
“Nobody does. Right now just stories, but they fit. Heard from a guy in another camp, kids are going missing all over. Never the same place twice. Other night, something stole some woman’s baby.”
“Mage?”
“No. But the guy said it looked like some old woman and then it turned into a monster. Coulda been high, though.”
Could be about a dozen different things I can think of just off the top of my head. I don’t like the old woman angle, though.
El Cucuy love to eat baby mages. They don’t put up a fight, but they’ll pretty much leave anybody else alone unless they catch a scent and can’t narrow it down. You get a mage baby in a maternity ward or an orphanage, anywhere with normal children, and they’ll keep showing up in the night and stealing kids until they get the right one. But it could be something worse.
“Also sounds like a Baba Yaga.”
“Okay, now I don’t like hearing that.” Rosalie shivers. “I’ll keep an eye out, and with this”—she gestures at the cooler—“I can hang around the camp more often at night. Maybe scare whatever it is away. Somebody needs to take it down.”
“I’ll talk to Gabriela. The people here need to know about it, too.” But how? They know there’s something off with me, but they really think there’s something off about Rosalie. She only comes out of the tent at night when no one can see her or after she’s had a hit and looks human. Nobody here has seen her as a withered old crone as far as I know, but vampires just give off a predator vibe.
“No,” she says, panic in her voice. “I got a good thing here. Don’t fuck it up for me.”
“Rose, it’ll be fine. I won’t tell them about you. Just to keep an eye out and run if more weird shit happens. They’ve already seen weird shit.”
“Fine,” she says. “You’ll do whatever you do, let everybody else get fucked. You’re harshing my high. Get out of here. Go see your MILF in the tight jeans. And zip the door up on your way out.”
The hell of it is, she’s right. She’s found good people and as long as she keeps to herself she’ll be fine. Vampires are adaptable if nothing else. Also really hard to kill, so she’s got that going for her.
I leave her tent, carefully zipping the tent closed so it doesn’t snag. Sunlight wouldn’t kill her, but it’d definitely be uncomfortable as her skin flakes off, and I don’t want to mess up her living room.
The people here need to know. Vague warnings should be enough. Most of them saw the green blob thing, a nature spirit, if you can call it natural. I’ve seen similar. With trees you get forest spirits, cities get city spirits, toxic waste sites, you get the idea.
I head over to Lani’s RV, where she’s sitting under an awning enjoying the cool, misty air and a beer. Lani’s an Asian woman with a ten-year-old who’s afraid of me. Kid’s got good instincts. I ignore Lani’s tight jeans.
“Hey,” she says, pushing a lawn chair toward me with her foot. “You’ve been away too long. Was starting to get worried.” She smiles. It’s a nice smile.
“I was here like three days ago,” I say. The smile’s infectious. I don’t have anything to smile about, but I do it anyway and it feels good. I lower myself into the chair and all my bruised and tightened muscles scream at me.
“Are you okay?” she says. Concern. She starts to get up and I wave her back.
“Rough couple days,” I say. “How are things here?”
“Good,” she says. “Little exciting. Matthew and I might be leaving.” I’m surprised. Not that she’s leaving, but that I’ll miss her.
“That’s fantastic,” I say. “Where you thinking?” A look of disappointment flickers across her face and then it’s gone.
“I’ve got a cousin in Denver. Her husband’s looking for a job for me where he works. They’ve got a couple kids and she’s a stay-at-home mom. We can stay there for a while. Get on our feet.”
“Do it,” I say. The words come out a little too quick. A little too urgent. She needs to leave. I need her to leave. But there’s a pinprick in my gut when I say it. “Now. I’ll give you money for a flight, a bus, whatever. What do you need to make that happen?”
“Whoa. Eric, you’re scaring me a little. What’s going on?”
That was probably a little too insistent. How to say this? “Sorry. You know that green glob that was coming out of the Zone? There’s worse out there. A lot worse.”
“Oh,” she says. “That’s why you’ve been coming around?”
“Not the only reason,” I say.
She’s thinking. I have a feeling that what she’s about to say next is something we’re both going to regret.
“Come with us. We’ll make it a roadtrip. I know you think Matthew doesn’t like you, but he does. He’s a little shy is all. Think of it as a vacation. You don’t have to stay.”
“Lani—”
“We’ll be stopping in Vegas for a bit on the way to see some friends and you and I can hang out. Maybe.”
“Lani. Stop. I can’t. You don’t know me. I like you . . .”
“But not enough?”
“That’s not it,” I say. And realize it’s true. It sounds like a great plan. Get out of here. Get away from the politics and the bullshit. I know Denver. Nice town. Good people.
But Vegas? That brings it all to a screeching halt. Vegas, Denver, Los Angeles, doesn’t really matter. She’s normal. I’m so far from normal I can’t see it from here. Me and her? She and Matthew would be dead in a week.
“Vegas and I don’t get along. It’s complicated.” Which is easier than saying, “Last time I was there I almost didn’t make it out and going back to deal with the shit I did would be bad for everybody.”
“Always is,” she says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to throw that at you. I just . . . I’ve been thinking about the fires, how lucky we are to be alive. How easy it is to say, ‘Oh, I’ll do that tomorrow,’ until there’s no tomorrow. I don’t want to keep doing that.”
“Believe me, I get it. And I’m not saying I don’t like the idea. I do. A lot.” Stupid though it might be. I’ve spent all of maybe a week total in Lani’s presence. Even less in her son’s. But there’s an allure to it. Life isn’t calm or easy for anybody, but normal people don’t have to worry about being assassinated for lopping some magic asshole’s head off.
I think I understand where Letitia’s coming from a little better now. I still think her keeping everything secret from her wife for so long was a dumb move, but what if she hadn’t? Would she even still be with her?
Normals believe in magic. We could all come out of the closet tomorrow and most of them would just nod their heads and go, “Yeah, and?” Magic they wouldn’t have a problem with.
Mages, on the other hand? The first time an overly zealous mob with pitchforks comes after the wrong hedge witch and ends up a bubbling smear on the pavement, folks are gonna get a better idea of just what they’re dealing with.
And that’s before they find out how sociopathic so many of us are. How many murderers there are among us. It’s not that we’re necessarily more bloodthirsty than anyone else—except for the ones who drink blood, of course—it’s that for the most part we simply don’t care. Mages see normals pretty much the way most vampires see humans. A necessary evil. An annoyance. Peasants.
“I know I don’t understand your life,” she says. “And I get that it can be dangerous. But everyone is in danger. All the time. Maybe think about it?” she says.
I plaster a smile on my face and lie like I’ve never lied before. “I’ll think about it.” Neither of us says anything for a little while and it’s a comfortable silence.
“You want to come by tonight?” she says. “I was thinking we can hang out, just you and me. One of the other parents can watch Matthew.” I’m saved from having to answer when the pastor comes over to us.
Pastor Nancy Grimm runs the church here. Nice black lady, sixty years old, maybe? Grandma vibe. Built like a fucking oak tree. Probably arm wrestles Marines for fun. She’s a no-bullshit sort of woman. I avoid her as much as I can.
“Mister Carter,” she says. “I was wondering when you’d show up. It’s very nice to see you again.” She gestures toward a third lawn chair. “May I?” she says to Lani.
“Of course. Uh—”
“I was just leaving,” I say. “I just came to drop off some more stuff.”
“Where do you get all that food and whatnot, I’ve been wondering,” the pastor says.
“Where else? I steal grocery trucks.” She laughs like a seal barking.
“Lani, could I trouble you for a cup of tea?” the pastor says. “Don’t worry, Mister Carter won’t leave until he can say goodbye.”
“Oh. Of course. I’ll be right back.” She gives me that smile but now it feels like a twist in my guts.
“She’s sweet on you,” the pastor says once she’s out of earshot.
“I know,” I say. “I’d appreciate it if you’d steer her away from that particular line of thinking.”
“I will. She’s not for the likes of you. But I do hope you’d keep coming by. You’re a good man, Eric Carter, even if you don’t believe it. You solve problems that need to be solved and I appreciate that. Even if I question the methods.”
“Might be gone a little longer than expected,” I say, wondering what that last bit meant. I don’t know why, yet, but that gnawing in my gut tells me I won’t like it when I find out.
“I’ve gotten the word out about the El Cucuy, already,” she says. “Some of the folks out at USC are friends of mine. They’re looking into it.” I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say. She laughs again.
“You’re a mage.”
“Of course I am,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “And I know who you are. And I know what you’ve done.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“The half that matters,” she says, sweeping her hand to take in the entire camp. “This half. The one that’s taking care of people.”
“You knew this was happening,” I say, suddenly angry. “And you’re doing fuck all about it? I don’t want to get into a pissing match with you, especially here. But I’m leaving. Now. Deal with your own problems. You won’t see me again.”
Lani steps out the door with a steaming mug in her hand, not sure what’s going on. The pastor mimes putting glasses on her face and I hurriedly get my sunglasses on before Lani can see that my eyes have gone black.
“Everything okay?”
“We’re good,” I say. “Thanks for the chat, Pastor. It was illuminating. And watch yourself. It might be a Baba Yaga.” The pastor’s hand stops centimeters from the cup Lani’s handing her and her eyes go wide.
“You sure?”
“No,” I say. “But ask around. And ask yourself, if it were an El Cucuy, why you of all people haven’t seen it on your doorstep.” I turn on my heel and leave, Lani looking back and forth between us. She calls my name, but I ignore her. Being here, being involved in any way with these people, I was afraid I was endangering them, endangering Lani and her son. Poisoning the well.
Turns out somebody beat me to it.
Chapter 13
Mages and normals don’t mix. It never goes well.
Everything I said about understanding Letitia marrying one? Yeah, forget that. She’s an idiot. I don’t even understand how she managed to keep her wife from knowing magic existed for their entire relationship. I let the cat out of the bag when she asked who I was, and being a smartass, I told her.
She didn’t believe me, but she believed Letitia, who finally realized that all the years of lying to her wife was going to get her killed. And almost did. As relationships go, I’d call theirs “rocky.”
A lot of normals know about us. Some more than others. The best interactions are strictly business. Sometimes they become friends. But like everyone else, friends die, and normals are more fragile.
Even the word we use looks down on them. We’re a bunch of bigoted assholes who should be looking up at them as the paradigm of humanity, not the other way around. It’s not that they’re normal, it’s that we’re monsters.
I don’t even understand why I care so much. So what? The pastor’s a mage. We don’t go advertising what we are even to each other most times. And she’s actually doing some good, right?
