God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (5 page)

“Fuck
you
,” Clover said. “Ugh that was
awful
.”

“Hey I wanted to tell you something, too,” AJ said. Clover leaned forward a little and as AJ was about to continue, the waitress came and took their order.

“So,” Clover said as the waitress walked off. “What were you saying?”

“I just wanted to tell you, when you hit that guy in the head, with the wine bottle? Like smashed it over his head?”

“Yeah?”

“That was just about the coolest fucking thing I ever saw someone do, like, outside of a movie, you know? In real life?”

“Yeah?” Clover asked.

“
Hell
yeah! It was just, it was
bad ass
.”

“Woulda been cooler if it had dropped him, though, huh?” Clover asked.

“It should have,” AJ said. “That wasn’t your fault, though. And regardless, it was just awesome, and I wanted you to know that.”

“So did the police find out what that guy was on?” Clover asked, thinking how sure she had been when she was swinging that bottle of wine that it was going to end right there.

“Not that they told me,” AJ said. “I know they ordered a tox-screen, or something. Those probably take a couple days to get back.”

She put her coffee cup down then and reached across the table, laying her hand in a warm and familiar way against his cheek. She put her hand under his chin and gently tilted his head back, grimacing a little at the bruises on his neck. She trailed her fingers down his throat and held two of them against his jugular, where the bruise lay, as though she were taking his pulse. He looked at her split and swollen lip, and as he did, she turned her head a little so he could see the bruise on her cheekbone and under her eye.

“We’re quite the pair, huh?” AJ asked.

“Is that what we are? A pair?” She took her hand away from the tender skin of his throat and rested it on the back of his other hand, which was sitting on the table.

AJ swallowed hard, not sure what to say. Instead of speaking, he nodded his head and she smiled again.

The waitress reappeared then with AJ’s coffee and refilled Clover’s. He watched her spoon sugar into hers.

“I don’t believe you,” AJ said. “You like a little coffee with your sugar, or what?”

“Lee,” she said, “I’m not satisfied until the spoon stands straight up.”

AJ sat in stunned silence for a moment. “I can’t believe you caught that.”

Clover looked up from her coffee. “I almost didn’t say anything. That’s not exactly the most quoted line in the movie.”

“Oh, there’s so many, though.”

She narrowed her eyes to slits. “Don’t condescend me, man. I’ll fuckin kill you.”

“Yes! Oh man, that was one of Brad Pitt’s finest moments right there.”

“God, what a cast, though, right? Him, Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Gandolfini, Walken--”

“Val Kilmer, fuckin’
Oldman
?” AJ asked. “He shoulda won an
Oscar
for that part. I watched that movie like four times before I realized
he
was Drexl.”

“Oh, I know!” Clover said. “Dude’s such a chameleon. From that to
Dracula
to
Fifth Element
? What was his name in that?”

“Jean-Baptiste. Emanuel. Zorg.”

“Zorg
!” she said, arching across and squeezing his arm. “That’s another great one.”

“Yeah, it is.
True Romance
has to be just about my favorite movie, ever. Top three, at least.”

“Oh, for sure,” Clover said. “It’s one of the few absolutely perfect films ever made. I mean, what could you change?
Nothing
.”

The waitress showed up then with their food and they leaned back, AJ just then realizing her hand was still on his arm. He felt a rush of warmth and happiness spread through him as he looked into her eyes while the waitress unloaded her tray.

As they ate, AJ glanced across the street and saw a man in a trench coat and hat, across the street, leaning against a telephone pole. He seemed to be looking right at him and took a drink from a silver flask he took from inside his coat pocket. He replaced the flask in his coat and then took out what seemed to be a pocket watch.

The waitress bumped AJ’s coffee with a plate she was setting down.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” the waitress said. “Did that spill?”

“Nope, we’re good. No worries,” AJ said. He glanced back out the window and then turned his head and took a longer look up the street as far as he could see in either direction. The man was gone.

“What’s up?” Clover said.

“Nothing,” AJ said.

“Getting paranoid?”

“No way, see?” AJ said, putting on the voice of a gangster from a movie in the ’40s or ’50s with a little Cagney twist. “They’ll never take me alive, see?”

Clover snorted a small laugh. “You’re fuckin’ nuts, man.”

He smiled back and they dug into their respective meals.

“So,” AJ said after he finished his last bite of bacon. “Any chance you want to hang out tonight? Maybe watch a movie or something?”

“Ohhh,
or something
? I like the sound of that,” Clover said. “I’ve always
dreamed
a guy would ask me to do…
something.
”

“And you say
I’m
nuts.”

“No, I would love to, but I can’t tonight. Going away party for a friend of mine that’s moving back home to Ithaca. Kind of a girls’ night.”

“
That
sounds made up,” AJ said.

“I’m
serious
! What about tomorrow night, though? I’d love to come over and watch a movie with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’d like that a lot.”

“Me too,” AJ said, feeling his face flush a little. “
True Romance
?”

“Yes,” Clover said, again holding him in her eyes. “Please.”

AJ sat on the train, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. He already missed her, and it ached, but it was a nice ache. His life had been a bit short on nice things as of late but it went beyond the last twenty-four hours. The last few months had been hard ones so this dull and pleasant throb in his center was a welcome respite. The train slowed as they neared his stop, the last one the train made before heading back the other way. The train hissed and the doors opened. It was relatively empty of people for this time of day, but AJ hung back and let a crowd of teens get off before he stood and made for the exit.

He walked through the platform to the stairs on the other side that went up, over another set of tracks, and then back down the other side.

AJ was whistling a little song to himself, thinking of the way Clover had made sure the syrup was in every square of her top waffle before cutting into it, something he used to do as a kid that he guessed some people never grew out of. He stood in the middle of the walkway for a moment, looking down the train tracks and back toward downtown, same as he always did. It’d been foggy lately, as the year advanced toward winter, but today was clear and the sunset was brilliant, golds and oranges and reds slowly spreading across the horizon.

The walkway was encased in hard, clear plastic. It was a hamster-tube for people. AJ had always liked the look of it because it seemed like something out of a movie from the fifties about what the eighties would be like; oddly quaint and somehow almost futuristic at the same time. Every time he took the light rail he’d spend a few minutes in the middle of the walkway, which was about ten feet wide, so he didn’t have to feel self-conscious about being in anyone’s way. His eyes followed the golden, glowing clouds until he was looking nearly straight up. There was some kind of giant bird, wheeling in the sky, circling, slowly, wings spread widely, riding whatever atmospheric drift that allowed it to hover up there endlessly.

The bird then folded its wings and dropped like a stone out of the sky.

The fuck
, AJ thought, wondering if he’d just witnessed the avian version of a massive coronary, only mid-air. The bird then spread its wings and he chuckled to himself; the bird was diving after food, that was all. It wasn’t a hawk, the neck looked out of proportion to the rest of the body, but it was still diving, getting closer.

AJ looked around to see if anyone else was watching this, if there was perhaps an ornithologist in the crowd that could offer a timely explanation.

No such luck; he was the only one on the walkway. He took a few steps toward the other set of stairs and then stopped. The bird was still diving, closing in rapidly.

AJ stood, mesmerized, watching as what had once just been a black dot in the sky growing larger, and with alarming speed.

It was coming right at him, still diving, its massive wings pumping and increasing the speed.

“Shit!” AJ said and took a step back from the curved, plastic wall. The bird slammed into it at an incredibly high speed with a deafening
thump
and a
crack
and if the wall hadn’t been there, it would have hit him right in the face. The
thunk
of the impact reverberated through the tube. AJ realized that the crack had been the sound of the bird’s neck—maybe even more of its hollow bird bones shattering on impact. There was nothing but a red smear slowly running down the side of the curved walkway wall. AJ took a couple steps to the side and leaned forward, his forehead pressed against the smooth, cool surface, looking down. He could see the lifeless body of the bird laying between the tracks, a few black feathers still see-sawing toward the ground.

He looked around again; surely
someone
had to have seen this?

He didn’t even know vultures lived near the city.

Still, there was no one. AJ shook his head and zipped his hoodie up the rest of the way against the chill in the air and headed back down the other set of stairs.

As he neared the bottom, he heard something, a graveled voice that may or may not have been forming words. AJ turned and looked behind him and jumped back—his heart already pounding from the kamikaze vulture—at the man that was nearly on top of him.

“Hey, man, sorry I didn’t see you,” AJ said, taking a few more steps backward as the old vagrant advanced.

His nostrils flared with the stench of the man, a smell of shit and dirt and disease. The man’s eyes were clouded and red, his nose a red knob of skin, crooked of bone and a massive patchwork of busted capillaries from years of booze.

The man wore an old, dirty watch cap and what was left of his thin, white hair was greasy and unwashed. He held his cracked red hands out and took another slow step forward.

AJ made a show of patting his pockets, though he knew he had no cash on him. The man took another step forward and AJ retreated again.

“Sorry, man, I got nothing on me. Take, uh, take care, though.”

The man kept coming forward. AJ turned and walked off, quickly, casting an eye back over his shoulder at the man still stumbling after him, his face a rictus of anger.

“I’m sorry!” AJ said. “I got nothing.”

The man kept coming, so AJ put his head down and just walked faster, looking backward as the man shouted something unintelligible at him, maybe the truth about the aliens in his brain, maybe asking AJ to go fuck himself, maybe nothing but a guttural caveman expulsion of nonsense syllables. The wind and sounds of another train washed away whatever meaning, if any, the words might have had. Relieved, AJ spotted a cab, held his hand up to hail it, and started jogging forward.

I am
definitely
running
toward the cab
, AJ told himself, when the cabbie nodded at him and switched off his light. AJ climbed in and rattled off his address. He tried not to think about what percentage of his bank account this little cab ride, a trip he always made by foot, was going to cost him.

“Sure thing, buddy,” the driver said and the cab pulled away from the curb.

AJ turned and look back; the homeless man was still lurching after him, arms outstretched. AJ glanced upward, and in the reddening sky, he saw another two vultures, circling, circling.

AJ was sat on his couch, rolling a joint, his eyes checking the clock on the wall, making sure he had enough time to smoke and then relax a bit before going to work. He knew he should call his parents too, but after what had already happened, he just wasn’t in the mood for it.

Down the hall he heard a door creak open. He waited for the sound of it slamming shut.

He finished twisting the joint and ran it through his mouth to seal it, then held it out, gently turning it between his fingers, admiring the symmetry of it. There were a couple slow footsteps in the hall and he set the joint in a small tray on the coffee table and grabbed his remote control off the arm of the couch and flipped on the TV. Talk show, skip, talk show, skip, infomercial, skip,
Dr. Phil
, skip, another couple clumping footsteps in the hall, and then he settled on the weather forecast. The forecast was just ending, though, and the weatherman tossed it back to the anchorwoman, with her perfect smile and tan skin even at the end of fall in the Pacific Northwest, the result of a tanning bed and a few hours in a makeup chair for sure. She cautioned any parents watching children in the room that the next story might be upsetting and gave these hypothetical parents time to scoot their hypothetical kids out of the room.