Hart & Boot & Other Stories (15 page)

“Shit,” I said, and wondered if that guy, whoever it was, was ever going to come home again.

“Follow that car,” the old voice said, and chuckled. There was another rustling noise, and then nothing.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey, I’m still in the dark about a lot of stuff, here,” but there was no response, and I got the sense I was talking to empty space, anyway.

I found a payphone and called a cab, but it didn’t come right away, so I stood on the street for twenty minutes, stomping my feet, thinking about my dreams, wondering if I was going crazy, wondering if it mattered, knowing I had to go to Lily’s and find out what was going on.

The cab came. I gave the driver directions to Lily’s neighborhood, and got out about a block from her house. There was light in her living room window, but the bedroom was dark, which might or might not have been a good sign. I walked toward her house, trying to think what I’d say, especially if Martin answered the door. “Hi, I changed my mind, and I would like to be in a wild three-way with you and Lily”? Or “Hi, an old lion in an alley told me you were a monster, could you get the fuck out of town”?

I didn’t feel like much of a lion as I went up the walk, up her steps. I took a breath, and I knocked on Lily’s door.

The inner door creaked open, and Lily stood behind the screen, wearing the white robe I’d seen her in so many times. Her hair was messed up, like she’d just had sex, and for all I knew, she had. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Ray, get out of here.” But she didn’t close the door, didn’t move, so I didn’t, either.

“Lily... look, we really need to talk.”

She shook her head. “We had something good, Ray, but it’s over now, I’m sorry. Please don’t come here again.”

“Fuck, Lily,” I said, and banged my hand against the frame of the door; she didn’t jump, just stared at me. “Look, I know something’s going on. I saw you leave the club with Steven Lee last night, and nobody’s seen him since, and I saw you with another guy tonight, and... shit, I’ve had these
dreams
... and Martin asked me if I wanted to have a
threesome
with you—”

Lily shook her head, sharply, and I wondered if she was drunk, or on something; she seemed distracted. “I know you met Martin, Ray, he told me. I thought you’d stay away after that, that it would be enough... you have to leave here.”

“What do you care where I go? You dumped me like a sack of shit, Lily.”

She stared at me. “I dumped you to
save
you, Ray,” she said, her voice low. “I didn’t let him... have you... even though he wanted you. I was always Lily with you, not the Judas goat.”

I just looked at her, wondering what she was talking about, afraid I sort of knew. She started to close the door, and her robe fell open, and I saw the blood smeared on her chest, on her breasts. It wasn’t her blood. I knew that.

I thought of her in bed with Martin, and another man, the man
between
the two of them, the man bleeding, and the blood smearing on Lily’s breasts, and Martin’s chest. I think I lost my mind a little, then. I couldn’t make sense of what I knew of Lily, and of that image. They didn’t fit together at all.

Somewhere in the house, a man screamed, and then the screaming stopped abruptly. Lily’s eyes widened in alarm, and she turned away, the door not quite closed.

I didn’t think. I just wrenched open the screen door and charged in.

“No, Ray!” Lily said, but I shouldered my way past her, into the living room. It was just like I remembered, but it was obvious Martin lived here, now; there were new books, instrument cases, a jacket hanging over a chair, boots by the door, little indelible traces of him.

I could
smell
Martin, like river water and desert sand, and I smelled blood; it was like being a lion in my dream, every sense cranked up.

I growled and went straight to the bedroom, expecting to see blood and horror, Martin crouched naked over a body, but the bedroom was empty, though there were more traces of Martin’s presence, intermingled with Lily’s. Where the hell was Martin, and the man who’d screamed?

“Ray,” Lily said, clutching her robe closed again, doing her best to look serious and reasonable. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you have to go.” She hesitated. “Don’t make me call the police.”

I just stared at her. “I saw the
blood
. Go ahead and call the police, please! Where’s Martin?”

“He’s not here. What are you talking about, blood?” Her knuckles were white, clenching the robe closed all the way to her neck.

I went down the short hallway, but Martin wasn’t in the bathroom or the little laundry room or the kitchen, and that was
it
, there was no more house.

Except there was a basement, the doorway tucked into one corner of the kitchen, and then stairs leading down. I’d never been down there. Lily said it was full of old filing cabinets and broken chairs and shit. Move along, nothing to see here.

Lily had trailed after me through the house, telling me to leave, but when I stared at the basement door in the kitchen she jerked open a drawer and took out a butcher knife. She held it, the point aimed toward my face, and stalked toward me. I backed up. This was some twisted shit.

“You have to leave. You have to stop making noise, or he’ll know you’re here... and then I can’t be responsible. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, don’t you understand that?”

I took a step forward. “Lily,” I said, my voice breaking. “How could you get mixed up in this?” Whatever the hell “this” was. Martin was doing something nasty, and Lily was helping, but I didn’t know what that had to do with lions or voices coming from alleyways; maybe nothing, maybe that was just the seasoning in this crazy soup.

“We all
need
things,” she said. “Martin isn’t like other people— he isn’t like people at all, Ray. Anemics need iron, diabetics need insulin. Martin needs...” She shook her head.

“Sex? Death? Rabies shots?” I said, making an effort to speak quietly, because that seemed to chill her out, a little.

“Blood,” she said. “And... everything else. Flesh. Clothes. Life. He consumes it all. I don’t have to watch that part. I do help with the rest, sometimes, with the luring-in, the seducing.” She sighed. “He doesn’t do it often, Ray, you must understand, almost never, but... every few years... he binges. He has to, to stay alive, it’s his nature. Martin is very old, Ray, he’s an old
soul
. He says I have an old soul, too, that there are myths under my skin, that he can help me live forever. Who else can love me for so long, Ray? Who else could love me forever? Not you. You could love me as well as Martin, but not for so long.” Her eyes were pleading. She wanted me to
understand
.

“Baby, Martin is fucking with your head. I don’t know what he’s told you, but what do you mean, you could live forever? I don’t—”

“We
all
have myths inside us, strains of the old creatures, shreds of the old spirits. Our ancestors mated freely with spirits of the desert, with giants of the earth. It’s only traces in the bloodline, in most people, but some of us... some of us have more, in some of us, the old blood runs strong.” She touched her hair self-consciously. “Martin says I have an island woman far back in my ancestry, a strange ancient sort of woman who turned her lovers to stone, but loved them just the same... Martin says he can help me grow into those powers. Just being in Martin’s presence brings it out in me, I get younger, healthier, his presence does that to
everyone
who has the old blood. Martin won’t say what
you
have, but he told me about meeting you at the club, told me he saw something strong and dangerous in you. He wanted me to bring you home, bring you to
him
, so he could take what you have into himself... and I
denied him
.” She shook the knife at me like a maraca. “I have never denied him
anything
, but I would not let him have that, I wouldn’t let him have you, you stupid shit, because I
love
you. But now you’re here, and if you don’t get out now—”

“What about Martin’s ancestry? What myth does he have under
his
skin?” The things she said were crazy, but they took place in the context of a greater madness in which they made sense; because suddenly I
knew
what I had, far back in my spiritual ancestry. Some multiple-great grandparent of mine had mated with something on the savanna, some lion god, and the lingering effects were still with me. But what the hell had Martin’s ancestors mated with?

Lily shook her head. “Martin isn’t like us, he isn’t a half-breed. He
is
the myth, the thing entire. He was born in the heat of a jungle before civilization was born, and he has lived in deserts and groves. He is
mardkhora
, man-slayer, manticore, with a tail of stinging spines, a triple row of teeth in a human head, his voice like trumpet and flute played together...” Her voice was dreamy, distant, and her words had the flavor of a recitation; they chilled me down to the guts and marrow. “He was always
partly
a man, and he can make himself seem to be completely a man. Except...” she glanced toward the door at her back.

I understood. “Except when he feeds. Right? Then he’s all monster.” I shook my head. “At least he’s got an excuse; it’s what he
is
. But you chose to help him.” My voice thickened; I thought I might cry. “I can’t believe I ever loved you.”

“I think you can’t love as deeply I do,” she said, simply, without malice, and it made my heart clench. “And you must know, I love you as much as I do him. He will simply be with me longer, and I had to choose.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“You’ll die, if you try that.” She lowered the knife. “I don’t
want
you to die.”

“He’s part lion, isn’t he, Lily?”

She frowned. “He... has a lion’s body, sometimes.”

“I think that’s why I hate him so much,” I said. “Because he’s a, a
perversion
of what I am.”

“What you are? You’re... a lion?”

I looked at the basement door. “I have to go.”

“I didn’t know you were brave,” she said. “A lion.” There was wonderment in her voice, and worry. She stared at me, her eyes wide, her expression fixed. Her hair fluttered, as if moved by a breeze.

I ground my teeth together, as suddenly my arms and legs became too heavy to move. I felt like I’d been turned to stone; there might have been concrete poured into my stomach, lead wrapped around my bones.

But my enemy was below, in his lair, and I could
smell
him, and he was killing my pride.

I grunted and took a step forward, breaking whatever spell Lily had put on me, whatever weight of myth she’d brought to bear. She’d tried to turn me to stone... and the worst part was, she wanted to do it for my own
good
, to save me. She gasped when I moved, and dropped her knife with a clatter, and fell to her knees. Something had snapped in her head, I think, or else I’d snapped it when I fought her, put too much strain on her psychic sinew and torn it. She crouched, swaying, shaking her head. She would be all right, or she wouldn’t—I couldn’t do anything about it.

I picked up the knife with my left hand, looking at the blade, thinking of what might be waiting for me, down below. Lily could turn people to stone, maybe, sort of, and Martin was an out-and-out monster; suddenly having the soul of a big cat didn’t seem like such hot shit. But I’d do what I had to. I opened the door.

I expected the basement to be dark, but I guess Martin liked to see what he was doing, because there was track lighting down there, bright as the inside of a supermarket. The basement was one big room, and there were dark stains on the concrete floor, some of them several feet in diameter.

Martin was...

When I had my dream of Martin by the river, I could see him, I could
see
the monster. And having that experience—ephemeral though it was—gave me some context for understanding what I saw there in the basement, seeing what Martin
really
was. I don’t think most people are capable of seeing and interpreting shit like that. If humans ever could see and understand such things, that ability has been pretty much bred out of us as a species.

Martin was a monster, a manticore, but he shifted—his fur was the purple of dusk, then a matted red, then faded orange, and then tawny, lion-colored. His tail rose, segmented like a scorpion’s, long spikes sprouting from the tail and then disappearing. For a moment, I swear, his tail became a serpent, with a hissing head on the end, and it looked at me with yellow eyes, comprehending me totally. Martin, the monster, had his back end toward me, his head bowed over something that I could only see parts of—legs, a hand. His latest victim.