I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (14 page)

“Just do what you got to do man.”

“Oh, I’m a gonna. So you just worry ‘bout
what it is you gots to do. You got that money I gave you?” Dodd
turned back around, checking the load on the 9mm again. “You better
be here when I come out of there you want to see the rest of it. My
ass come out of there and I got to take the train home, first
person I’m a come see I get back to the Moses is you, Luther.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Right
here
.”

“Right here.”

“Better be,” Dodd warned him and when Luke
didn’t respond the man told him “I said you better be.”

“Aight, aight. I heard you.” Luke scared of
the man but also growing frustrated and angry. Who’d this guy think
he was, showing him such disrespect? Luke hoping the man would get
out of the car so he could take another bump of the ye he had in
his pants pocket.

Luke got his wish, Dodd stepping out of the
car. The interior light never showed, Dodd having switched it off
earlier.

“Yo, Dodd.”

Dodd looked back into the car at him.

“It’s
Luke
. Not Luther.”

Dodd closed the door and walked off without
another word, both handguns tucked into his waist, under his denim
jacket, one button of the jacket closed, concealing them. Kid had a
set on him, talk to him like that. Had a set on him or was just
real stupid.

He walked back up the block, in no great
hurry. This part of Manhattan was a whole other world from the
Moses houses. Real quiet this time of night too. Cars passed on the
green lights, no foot traffic to speak of. Skyscrapers disappearing
up into the night on either side of the wide avenue.

A breeze stirred the litter on the sidewalk,
a discarded plastic bottle rolling in the gutter.

Dodd glanced into the lobby of the building
he’d be coming back to, spying a black doorman in a suit behind a
counter in the lobby. Man looked bored. Dodd kept walking.

He was almost to the other corner when the
limousine glided past, a white stretch all tinted out. Dodd already
turning and retracing his steps, unhooking the one button on his
denim jacket, the limo stopped up ahead, its passengers getting
out.

Dodd counted six of them as he pulled the
ski-mask from his jeans pocket:

his target, all iced out and clutching a
bottle;

some big black-Chinese looking bodyguard;

a shorter, slighter black man;

a couple of bitches in short skirts hanging
off the man with the bottle;

and the driver.

The driver closing the car door behind the
others, getting back in the car as the five entered the lobby, out
of Dodd’s sight.

Dodd picked up his pace, the limousine
already pulling away from the curb, hired by the record company. He
looked up the block, saw the taillights of the Mustang idling at
the pump. Dodd entered the lobby with both guns already out and the
ski mask over his head, the mouth of the doorman dropping open.
Fool behind the counter not even ducking, Dodd passing him,
bee-lining for the elevators, the target and his entourage getting
into a car.

The black-Chinese or whatever he was good at
his job: He saw Dodd first, saw the masked gunman’s hands full of
steel. He stepped in front of his employer, reaching for whatever
he had on him but it was already too late, Dodd’s arms out, the
nine barking.

The bodyguard collapsed, one woman punching
the buttons frantically, the other bitch hollering at him in her
heels. Dodd straightened both arms in front of him, the door
refusing to close on the bodyguard. He put three in the target from
the nine, the man slumping.

Bitch screaming down the barrel of the snub
nosed, saying she was going to
fuckin’
kill
him
. The revolver cracked and her eyes crossed like she was
trying to see the neat little hole that had opened up above the
bridge of her nose, her wig coming off her head as she wilted.

The slight man standing there the whole time
shaking, not moving, making no attempt to draw down on Dodd. The
way Dodd was told it would happen. Dodd didn’t say a word to the
man, aimed the .38 at his face and then shifted
it—
bang
!—winging him, the man sliding down the wall,
clutching his shoulder.

Dodd took a moment to shoot out the camera
mounted in the ceiling.

Abandoning the buttons, the other woman had
pressed herself into a corner, crying hysterically.

The target was half-sprawled on the floor,
his back against the wall. He raised a pointed finger and Dodd hit
him with one from the .38, a few more taps of the nine, holes
opening up in the man’s chest above the ones already there, the
superstar’s oversized shades askew on his face. Dodd aimed about an
inch above the sunglasses and fired the revolver.

The woman in the corner had both hands up to
her mouth and nose, eye shadow streaked down her face. Dodd shot
her in the side of her head.

He walked away from the elevators, back
through the lobby. The doorman was still standing behind the
counter, this time with a cordless phone to his ear. Seeing Dodd,
he lowered the phone. Dodd put the revolver on him and squeezed the
trigger, the .38 dry-firing, empty, still the man standing there,
looking dumbfounded. Dodd put a nine in him and leaned over the
counter, following up with a double-tap to the back of his head for
good measure.

He reloaded the pistol before he stepped
outside, pocketing the empty mag, jamming a fresh stick up the
well. He’d reload the .38 later, in the car.

Dodd stepped outside, his mask back in his
pocket, starting purposefully up the block. He walked fast but
didn’t run and he could see it from here already: No car at the
pump.

Of course.

Thinking maybe he shouldn’t have snatched a
Mustang. Put a boy behind the wheel of a Mustang, he was gonna want
to drive. Thinking maybe he shouldn’t have persisted in calling the
boy Luther, knowing he was irritating the hell out of the kid each
time he did.

When he reached the corner, Dodd crossed the
street, listening for sirens, knowing the lobby man had been on the
phone to the police.

He was halfway down the next block and the
Mustang pulled up next to him on the street. Dodd stepped from the
sidewalk, crossed between two parked cars, went around the back of
the Mustang, got in.

“Had to move it,” Luke said to him.

Dodd didn’t ask for or expect a further
explanation. Luke drove away without having to be told, keeping it
under the limit.

The kid had the radio on.

Dodd was going to reach out, turn the knob on
the stereo, kill that noise. Then he heard what that noise was and
he paused.

Gangsta Khan rapping, saying a lot more on
the radio than he had back in the elevator.

Smiling, Dodd sat back in his seat, his smile
becoming a chuckle as he broke open the .38, spilling the empties
into his hand, stuffing them in a pocket of his denim jacket. “Now
this,” Dodd was still laughing and Luke was pretty sure he knew why
the man was laughing but decided laughing himself wasn’t a good
idea. Maybe not until Dodd gave him that other hundred.

“Now this is all right.”

Dodd snapped the cylinder shut on the
revolver—“Yeah”—stuffing it back in his jeans. “Yeah, Luke. This
all right.”

Behind the wheel of the hot Mustang, Luke
smiled.

It was dark outside and the lights were off
in the apartment. A breeze from the street caressed the curtains,
making the candles flicker throughout the living room. A circle had
been drawn on the floor, salt sprinkled around it. Nine feet in
diameter, the circle was inscribed with words and names of power,
magical symbols. Candles burned at each of the four cardinal
points.

Leroi and Warrior sat across from each other,
outside the circle, their fore paws stretched out in front of
them.

Within the purified space, dressed in black
ceremonial robes and surrounded by the tools of her craft, the
heavy woman sat. Olga Coyle, necromancer.

Beside her in the round, a small dog panted
on its side.

Sarafina had adopted the dog from a shelter
earlier in the week. To the shelter employees she had been an old
woman looking for companionship, company in her old age. When
they’d asked her for a reference she’d given them Olga’s phone
number. The dog was drugged, lying on its side, its eyes
glazed.

Olga read from her grimoire, her book of
shadows an aged collection of tattered parchment papers. She spoke
in a tongue lost to the modern era.

Sarafina did not understand the words of the
incantation, but she recognized their import. What they would
invoke. She sat beyond the circle, dressed like her friend.

Within the magic circle, Olga was surrounded
by her tools and artifacts. A wisp of smoke wafted from the censer.
The athame and cup gleamed in the candlelight, both freshly
polished. Bowie’s Steelers jersey and t-shirt were folded and
stacked one atop the other. Next to them his car key and
sneakers.

His corpse and head rested on the plastic of
the sofa.

A trio of pickaninny statuettes in the
circle—Sarafina had found them in the dollar store—stood in as
effigies for the curse.

The preparations had taken days.

Olga read with her eyes closed, the fingers
of her chubby hands running over the page of her black book. Her
voice seemed to come from some place deep inside. As she spoke, the
curtains billowed and the candles wavered, casting shadows upon the
walls and ceiling.

The hair was standing up on the backs of both
cats, and Warrior yowled.

Shadows danced on the walls and ceiling.
Sarafina had accompanied Olga in black magic before. They stood on
the threshold of a world unseen, a world whose inhabitants were
here with them now. Sarafina knew whatever happened she must not
enter the circle.

A pinpoint of light flashed to life in midair
and expanded, drawn like a line, unzipping. As the portal widened a
hellish glow emanated from its depths. The curtains had fallen
still, and yet a cold breeze filled the room. Warrior and Leroi ran
from the circle’s perimeter, disappearing elsewhere in the
apartment. Olga continued to chant, her eyes clenched shut, one
hand reaching from the book to the ceremonial knife at her
side.

Sarafina listened to Olga’s incantation and
watched her friend do what she did to the three statues, having
some idea of the maleficia that was being thrown upon those boys in
this world.

Olga raised the athame and brought it down
into the dog, the animal’s eyes widening, closing again. Laying her
grimoire aside, Olga put the chalice to the dying animal’s side,
collecting the blood that coursed through the canine’s hair.

Olga brought the cup to her lips to
drink—

The candles flickered and Sarafina saw
clearly what inhabited the shadows. The Nameless One, queen of the
night. Hers a cold, terrible beauty. Sarafina looked away
quickly.

—and Olga lowered the chalice.

The body on the couch stirred. A hand reached
up to where its neck ended, fingers exploring the stump. A leg
lifted from the couch, the foot dropping awkwardly to the floor.
The remaining eye blinked.

The portal burned steadily above them.

“Eddie—” Olga wanted nothing more than to go
to her boy, but she forced herself to finish what she’d started.
She sawed at the dog’s body with the knife, the double bladed
Athame not really made to slice, sawing until she was able to tear
a hunk of flesh from the dog’s body.

Olga left the circle and went to her boy,
kneeling beside him on the couch. She reached out, running a hand
over his chest, taking his head in her hands, pressing it to her
bosom. Dog blood covered them both.

“My baby, oh my baby…”

The head worked its mouth but made no sound.
A deep, guttural moan emanated from the body itself:
Huhhhhh

“Soon enough, my baby.” Olga cooed to it,
running her hand over its scalp. The mouth chewed uncertainly at
the dog flesh, all motor functions severely impaired. “Mommy will
make everything right. Soon enough.”

The portal had closed, the candles burning
steadily. The shadows were empty once more. Outside it was
dark.

Sarafina exhaled.

Mrrrwow
? Leroi stood in the living
room doorway.

“Sarafina.” Olga looked up from her boy to
her friend, tears of joy in her eyes. “Get me my sewing kit, would
you please.”

“Big Duke, huh?”

They sat in a dark blue Lincoln Town Car a
block from Enfermo’s nest: Boone, the man he knew as Damian, and a
black man who went by Big Duke. Damian, a bartender at the Hellfire
Club in the meatpacking district, wore a black t-shirt with STAFF
emblazoned across the back. Tall and broad shouldered, a lot of
blonde hair—a surfer transplant without his board in this city—and
a gleam in his eye.

Crazy
eye
, Boone recognized it
when he saw it.

Gossitch had described the man as a psycho
once.

“Yeah,” the black man with the cowboy hat
behind the wheel affirmed. “Big Duke.”

Big Duke wore boots to match the hat and
jeans, a flannel shirt tucked in under an oversized belt buckle. A
small decorative band circled the crown of the hat. Middle aged and
going soft in the middle, his stomach spilled over his belt buckle,
the seated position not helping.

“You some kind of black cowboy?” Boone looked
the man over again from the passenger seat. Damian sat in the back
of the car, silent.

A sawed off double barreled shotgun rested
across Big Duke’s thighs. The fact that the barrels were aimed in
Boone’s general direction didn’t seem to bother him.