I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (12 page)

“Me and me mates are right over at that
booth,” the man motioned but Gritz didn’t turn to look. “Buy you a
drink?”

“Maybe some other time. I finish this, I
gotta go.”

“Yeah. Hey,” holding out his hand, “Brian,”
telling Gritz his name as they shook, saying “it’s a pleasure to
meet you, really,” not identifying his work or position. Brian
gathering his longnecks, saying almost to himself, “William ‘True
Gritz’ Gritzowski. Wait until I tell the boys. Cheers.”

Gritz let him go, focusing his attention on
his vodka.

“
When
you
saw
how
hard
I
tried
and
still
I
failed
,” the lead singer asked, “
did
it
turn
you
off
from
trying
?”

What was it led Faust to his downfall? He was
a bright guy, maybe the brightest in his day. Goethe had Wagner
remarking to him out on the street that
crowds
revere
you
like
a
mighty
lord
. That
when
you
walk
,
they
stand
in
rows
to
see
,/
Into
the
air
their
caps
will
fly
… So what is it this
Faust guy wants? Faust admitting to Mephistopheles,
I
gathered
up
and
piled
up
high
/
In
vain
the
treasures
of
the
human
mind
…./
My
stature
has
not
grown
a
whit
,/
No
closer
to
the
infinite
.

His stature?

Is that what Faust wanted—greater fame?

Was that it?

Gritz couldn’t imagine.

Yeah, maybe he’d give Cath a call. Who the
fuck was he kidding?

He dreamed of a bleak landscape, bereft and
forsaken, burnt and ash. Human bones pooled thigh deep, layered
atop one another, brittle. Dun clouds against a darker sky, a red
sun burning. Something reared up from the bones, exploding in a
shower of skulls and vertebrae, rising into the air and blotting
out the sun as its wings unfolded and enveloped the firmament. Its
mouth parted to reveal row upon row of razor sharp teeth, its head
undulating from its body on a serpentine neck, fire bursting from
its maw to obliterate the world—

Boone woke up with Pomeroy and Halstead
standing over him.

“Do you know you whimper in your sleep?”
Halstead had its arms crossed, chin in its hand.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No. I don’t.”

“You do,” Pomeroy confirmed. “Troubled
conscience?”

Boone opened his mouth with a comeback, but
before he could utter a word Halstead had uncrossed its arms and
stuffed a ball gag in place. Boone roared “You fuck—do that again
I’ll bite off your fingers!” at it, which came out sounding like
“
Mmm
fmmk
—
mm
mm
ahmm
mmm
mmm
-
mm
mm
mmm
!” He couldn’t believe the
sneaky bloodsucker had fooled him, got the gag in his mouth like
that.

“You can’t believe I gagged you so easily. Is
that it?”

Just to be contrarian, Boone shook his
head.

“Believe it,” Halstead told him. “You’re not
as smart as you think you are.” Halstead spoke his next few words
for Pomeroy’s benefit: “Or as good looking.” Pomeroy emitted an
amused little titter.

Boone told Halstead he was an
ugly-dead-freak-fuck but none of that came out sounding the way
he’d hoped, what with the gag. He was already immobile, fitted out
in a straight jacket and strapped down flat. When they got behind
him and lifted him, he found he was on a wheeled gurney.

His whole body hurt.

Colson had not been going easy on him in
training. Each jounce of the gurney brought a new grumble through
the gag.

Pomeroy looked down on him as they navigated
dim hallways Boone did not recognize. “It’s from my personal
collection,” the vampire told Boone, meaning the ball gag. “You
should see where else we can put it.”

They rolled Boone through darkness and shadow
to another part of the facility. Pomeroy pressed a button in the
wall near a folding metal gate and they waited, the two vampires
and the bound man, Pomeroy humming audibly to itself—“
Hmmm
hmmm
hmmm
hmmm
hmm
”—until a bell dinged
and an elevator door opened. They pulled the metal doors apart and
turned Boone around on the gurney, wheeling him into the
elevator.

On a raised stool in the corner of the cab
sat an elevator operator unlike any Boone had ever seen. Pomeroy
and Halstead greeted it with nods, drawing the metal door closed
behind them. Boone couldn’t take his eyes off the thing.

It was short, about the size of a dwarf Boone
had tossed in a bar one drunken night. Its face was puckered up
with an oversized mouth and a pug nose; its protruding eyes would
look cute on a doll or a stuffed animal but looked downright
bizarre on this thing. The creature was dressed like it was the
1940s: it wore a navy blue suit and pants with a peaked cap, blue
with a gold band. Large, pointed ears jutted out of either side of
the hat and the suit pants ended at its shins, pulled up further
because its knees were drawn to its chest on the stool, revealing
claw-like feet.

One of its feet reached out and pressed a
button on the wall.

The elevator started its ascent.

“Boone,” Pomeroy worked the gag free, “Say
hello.”

“Not a good idea,” Halstead said as if to
himself.

“Where’s the cigarette girl?” asked
Boone.

Pomeroy laughed until Halstead’s stern glance
quieted him. “What? You and Wells...” Pomeroy waved his hand,
looking towards the ceiling. “It
was
funny.”

“What are you, some kind of goblin elevator
operator?”

“I’m a Hobgoblin mate.” The thing answered
with a thick British accent. “And I prefer the term liftman.”

“Well, I think I seen everything now.” Boone
looked around the wood paneled cab. “Tell me somethin’ guv’nor.
Aside from bein’ one ugly motherfucker, what’s your secret
power?”

Pomeroy raised its eyes in its head and
hummed out loud. The Hobgoblin remained impassive, seated on its
stool.

“You Rainford’s pet or somethin’?”

Halstead moved fast, the way vampires could,
stuffing the gag back into Boone’s mouth. “There.”

The Hobgoblin actually thanked the
vampire.

They wheeled Boone off the elevator and into
a short hallway. More wood paneling on the walls and ceiling. A
concrete gargoyle statue was set in a niche in the wall next to a
door. One of the vampires knocked on the door and as they waited
for it to open Boone watched the gargoyle, noticing how its eyes
seemed to be watching him. He kept looking at it when the door
opened and they wheeled him past and Boone would have sworn its
eyes followed him. He growled at it from behind the gag but they
were already inside Rainford’s quarters, another hallway traversing
a suite of rooms.

Music suffused the Dark Lord’s quarters.
Boone couldn’t place it at first. It definitely wasn’t the
classical he would have expected. They rolled him through dark
shadows and into a lamp-lit study. Bookshelves lined the walls. The
furniture consisted of a settee, an upholstered chair and a writing
desk with a laptop booted up to a word processing program.

Pomeroy and Halstead set the gurney up
straight, placing Boone in a vertical position. One of them removed
the gag from his mouth. Boone was thinking of things to say when a
voice spoke from the shadows.

“I have invited you here to extend an olive
branch.” Rainford stepped from the dark, wearing a black silk
smoking jacket with a red velvet shawl collar. Boone didn’t see any
smokes, no pipe. Instead, the vampire had a brandy snifter in one
hand.

“A what?”

Rainford settled itself in the upholstered
chair, one leg crossed over its other. “I come in peace.”

“You’re in a good mood you undead fuck.”

Boone felt one of the vamps behind him move
in close—figured it for Halstead—heard Rainford say, “Please,” felt
it shift back into the shadows again.

Rainford gestured with the brandy but made no
move to drink it. “I have cause for optimism.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“I assure you, it is not what I desire. All
that in due time. Today there is something
you
will want,
and I am in the position to deliver it to you.”

Boone didn’t take the bait. Over the speaker
system, Jeannie C. Riley was confronting the Harper Valley PTA.

“Not interested? Very well, then, I
suppose—”

“Oh just come out and say it already for
fuck’s sake. The fuck do you want?”

“Again, I assure you, it is not what I—”

“Okay, whatever.
Shit
. What do you
have for me?”

“I want to give you the vampire that made
Kreshnik aware of your friends, thereby sealing their doom. I want
to give you the vampire that was in league with the man you called
Santa Anna. He calls himself Enfermo.”

“Enfermo.”

“It means sickness, disease.”

“Great. Now I know its name.”

“You are here that I may impart an address as
well.”

“You give me that—you know I’m going to go
there and kill that thing, right?”

“I would certainly hope so.”

“Why?” Boone looked at the Dark Lord, looked
at him hard. “What’s in it for you?”

“I have my reasons.” A screen saver of a
winged demon over a city skyline had popped up on the laptop.
“Which I choose not to disclose at this time.”

“What is this bloodsucker to you?”

“He is nothing.” Rainford held the snifter up
to its nose and sniffed the brandy. “Less than nothing.”

“What do you want in return?”

“Only to talk.”

“
Only
.”

“Later I will have a request, one I sincerely
believe you will be eager to comply with.”

“Don’t fuck around with me, Rainford.”

“Said the fly to the spider.” The Dark Lord
smiled at him, bemused. Boone grumbled and looked down. The fuck
had a point.

When he looked back up, Boone put it out
there: “How do you know I won’t just cut and run?”

“I do not. Which is why I am not sending you
alone.”

“Great. I gotta listen to more of your
Russian stories today?”

“No.” The Dark Lord lowered the snifter,
still smiling. “Not today.”

Dickie was in the line at the dining hall,
Carlucci standing next to him, Bianchi and Nicky close by, other
guys with them too. Dickie heard one black guy say to another, “Hey
dawg, I catch a ride?” knowing the guy was asking for drugs. Dickie
catching on, picking up on the slang.

He was still drawing looks, from the C.O.s,
from the cons. Nothing hard, just respect, like,
hey
,
you
know
who
that
is
…? Because
people did know who he was, what he was. Not just any other fish. A
big man on the outside, big man on the Inside too. Dickie inside
not even a week and already back to doing prison like he’d never
left it.

Only Werner standing there, a smug look on
the screw’s face.

Dickie had pegged the guard from day one,
noticed how he didn’t have any friends, even among the other hacks.
Guy might be on the payroll, but Dickie knew they couldn’t trust
him.

“This is the fourth time in six months it
swelled up on me like this,” Bianchi was telling Romano and
Palumbo, “doctor don’t want to aspirate it no more,” the younger
men listening to him tell it, “don’t want to put too much
hydrocortisone in it or somethin’. That’s when they stick a needle
in, drain it,” Bianchi clearing up what
aspirate
meant in
case the other two didn’t know.

“Doc says can’t I just live with it like
this?” Bianchi talking, Dickie and Carlucci exchanging looks,
amused. “Sure I can live with it but thing is I don’t want to. I’m
a make another appointment, go see him again, he won’t do it, I’m a
do it myself, with a needle,” Bianchi looking to Nicky, “maybe you
help me?”

Stepping forward to take a tray from the
stack, Dickie heard a commotion and turned just as Renfeld gripped
either side of his shirt by the collar, jostling him, speaking fast
in a whiny voice. “The master wishes—”

“
Whoa
-
whoa
-
whoa
!”
Carlucci making to drag the man from Dickie. “Back the fuck up
buddy.”

Dickie took Renfeld’s hands off him, saying
to Carlucci, “I got it Cheeks,” to the men surrounding them, “Let
him talk.”

“Dickie—” Carlucci tried, cut off by Bianchi:
“No, Boss, you don’t understand. He’s—”

Dickie’s raised hand silenced them.

“Say what it is you wanted to say to me.”

“The Master wishes to speak to you.” Renfeld
shifted his nervous, beady eyes to Carlucci and the others like
him. Other prisoners trying not to act like they were watching.
“Alone.”

“Not a good time,” Dickie told him, Nicky
literally spitting, “Fat chance of that you Jamook!”

“You can come one night—”

“Okay,” Carlucci pulled Renfeld by his neck,
trying to draw him away from Dickie, “Hey’d you get a chance to
look at them potatoes yet, huh?”

“—or he
will
come and see you,”
Renfeld promised before Bianchi smashed a handful of mashed
potatoes into his face.