I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (15 page)

“Big Duke like John Wayne.” The man looked
out the windshield.

A bandolier of shells lay atop the console
between the Big Duke and Boone.

“Like John Wayne, huh?”

“Greatest goddamn western hero ever.”

“Ain’t that somethin’.”

The street they were parked on was deserted,
the houses boarded up. No one had come in or out of the house they
were watching, and no one would. The whole thing reminded Boone too
much of the stakeout with Gossitch a few weeks ago. Which had led
to all of the bullshit he found himself in now. Feeling decidedly
agitated, he was ready for action.

“You’re antsy,” Big Duke remarked. “I can
tell.”

“Yo, D,” Boone turned to the man behind them.
“You holdin’?”

Damian produced a baggy of marijuana from his
black cargo pants. Big Duke raised an eyebrow.

“Somethin’ stronger?” asked Boone.

A small package of powder appeared from
another of Damian’s pants pockets.

Boone felt better already. “That coke?”

“It’s meth.” Big Duke answered like he
knew.

“Shit.” Boone smiled. “Now
that’s
what
I’m talkin’ ‘bout. Let me see that, D.”

Boone looked around the car for something.
“Man, I wish we could smoke this.” Damian handed him a rolled
dollar bill over the seat. “Thanks, D. What ‘bout you, cowboy?” Big
Duke shook his head and said
no
—“You partake?”—but Boone
wasn’t listening. He’d taken his first snort and his brain lit up,
his pupils dilating, Boone already twitching after only one hit. He
took another and one after that and
fuck
if he didn’t feel
better than before.

And he said as much. “Fuck if I don’t feel
better now.”

Big Duke was giving him a look, Boone he
didn’t particularly like.
Pass
judgment
on
me
, Boone thought, and when the other man started to
answer—“I’m just saying”—it was like he’d heard every single word
Boone had thought—“I’m a do a job with a man, I need that man’s
head to be straight.”

“Don’t worry about my head.” Boone said it
aloud, wondering if maybe he’d said the other thing out loud
too.

“You ain’t the only one I got concerns for.”
Big Duke glanced at Damian in the rear view mirror.

“Make you feel any better,” Boone was
preening himself in the sun visor mirror, checking out his gums,
“you wait outside with the car.”

“Yeah. Think I’ll do that.”

“Need a man’s head to be straight,” Boone
mimicked the driver.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Fuckin’
nigger
, Boone mentally
dismissed the cowboy-wanna-be.

“Now why’d you go and have to say that? You
just met me and you—”

“I didn’t
say
shit.” Boone looked at
the man with new interest.
Big
Duke
.
Pass
judgment
on
me
.
You
look
like
some
kind
of
two
-
bit
pimp
.

Big Duke had turned and was looking out the
windshield again.

Don
the
Magic
Wand
here
. Juan
motherfucker
—

“Show some respect.” Big Duke wasn’t looking
at him, but his voice was all serious.

“I meant
wand
,” Boone pushed the sun
visor back into place, “and motherfuck yourself. You read minds,
that it? That your
secret
power or somethin’? That why you
here?”

The black man ignored him.

“Let me ask you somethin’,
Big
Duke
.” Boone lowered his head, took another hit. “You ride a
horse? Drive a bike?” Big Duke’s face remained impassive. “Huh? A
chopper? Nah, man calls himself John Wayne—” something on the side
of Big Duke’s face twitched “—doesn’t even ride an iron horse. Kind
of bullshit is that?”

“What you saying?” The shotgun was still
resting on Duke’s lap, the barrels pointed in Boone’s
direction.

“I’m just sayin’.” Boone flicked the visor
down again, looked at himself in it. “
Big
Duke
. Okay.
But I’m thinkin’ more like Isaac Hayes, you know? The Duke?
Escape
from
New
York
?”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“We should have some chandeliers on this car
is all I’m—”

“Yes you are. I can tell what you’re
thinking, so don’t try and lie. Believe me, I don’t want to be
here. Son of a bitch. You just met me and you—”

“Yo, chill homes.”

“Let me warn you, brother—”

“I ain’t your brother,” Boone hit the meth
again. “I ain’t your brother and whatever you’re about to say is
gonna fall on deaf ears.” He switched nostrils. “Look at you.” And
switched nostrils again. “Don the Magic Wand. You know—
Wand
?
Like a fuckin’ tool?”

“You’re calling me a tool?”

“Hey, we’s cool Big Duke.”

“No, we most assuredly are not.” Big Duke
turned to the man in the backseat. “Let me see that bag of weed.”
Damian handed the bag over. “For later,” said the driver.

“So.” Boone looked back to Damian. “We gonna
do this or what?”

“Let’s do this.” Damian spoke for the first
time.

“I can’t keep sitting here like this.” Boone
had his head cocked back, examining his nostrils in the visor
mirror. “Couped up like this.”

“You’re high,” said Big Duke. “You’re out of
your mind.”

“Let’s do this,” Damian said.

“Pop the trunk, Big Duke.”

The trunk was bare save for a meat hook, a
cleaver, a five gallon jerrycan and a wooden stake. “He gets a
shotgun but they don’t trust us with guns, huh?” Big Duke didn’t
look like he was going to lend out his sawed-off and Boone wasn’t
going to ask. He reached into the trunk and hefted the meat
cleaver, thought better of it and handed it to Damian. “Here.”

Boone tried the meat hook on for size, liked
how it felt in his hand.

“What’s that for?” Big Duke was standing
there with his sawed off, wearing his sterling silver belt buckle
that had
Red
River
in the lower right corner, a large
D
above two parallel curved lines, the rest of the buckle
obscured by the flannel-shirted belly curtaining it.

Boone ignored him and spoke to Damian. “Grab
the gas.” He took the meat hook and the stake, started walking off
down the block. “Come on, D.”

Big Duke watched the both of them go, two
big, crazy young white men. The hell had he gotten himself into.
Maybe they’d both get themselves killed inside the vampire’s nest.
Then
he’d
have to go in there and finish shit off. Yeah,
maybe they’d get themselves killed. Somehow he didn’t think so.

“You usually this quiet?” Boone didn’t know
Damian all that well.

“When I have nothing to say.”

“Don’t know ‘bout you,” Boone glared at a
civilian who crossed to the other side of the street, steering
clear of the two men wielding butcher equipment and a gasoline can
in broad daylight. “I’m amped up.” The guy hurried off minding his
own business. “I can almost taste this.”

“That’s the meth talking.”

“How ‘bout you, D? You ready for this?”

“Lead on.”

“Hey—whoever or whatever we find in there—the
bloodsucker is mine. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“You got more meth?” They’d reached the
building, each man taking his place on either side of the door.

“Plenty where that came from. You know,”
Damian said before they went in, “I don’t think Big Duke likes you
much.”

“Yeah. Fuck him. You go first.”

Damian leaned over and rapped on the door
with his knuckles.

“No.” Boone shook his head like he was
irritated, surrounded by amateurs. “Like this.” He kicked the door
open with his booted foot. Going in low, he expected gunfire. None
came. The interior of the building was dark, its windows blacked
out and curtained, suiting his dilated pupils just fine.

“The fuck guys?” A woman rushed at them and
Boone put her down with one swing of the wooden stake. She slumped
to the floor, groaning, her jaw broken, an eye bulging out of her
head. A second slave stepped through a door, his finger pointed,
mouth opening—and Damian buried the cleaver in the man’s forehead
with a wet
thwack
.

Someone scrambled in the shadows and Boone
spied another woman bolting from the room. He raced after her in
the dark, catching her in the next room.

She wore cut off denim jeans and a dirty
t-shirt. The scabrous flesh around her neck looked like the inside
of a junkie’s elbow from her master’s fangs.

“Where is he?” Boone had a hand on either
side of her face, holding her in place. “Where is he?”

She was shaking like a rabbit but wouldn’t
answer him.

“Come on. Talk to me.”

When she wouldn’t, Boone took one hand off
her face—letting the wooden stake clatter to the floor—and brought
his open palm down on her cheek, jerking her head around.

“That hurt? That hurt, right? Where is
he?”

She wouldn’t say a word and he smacked her
again, harder.

Damian was watching him from the shadows of
the room.

“You got somethin’ you want to say, D?”

“No.”

“Come on.” Boone mandhandled the woman over
to a table littered with half emptied Chinese food take-out
containers. She was crying. “Get over here.” Boone put her hand
down on the table, holding it there by the wrist. “Open up. Open
your goddamned hand.” She shook her head, tears streaming down her
cheeks. “
Open
. Spread your fingers on the table.”

“N-N-No.” She whimpered, terrified. She’d
balled her fist on the table.

Boone brought the wooden handle of the meat
hook down on the back of her fist, hammering it once. Bones in her
hand audibly cracked and she gasped before screaming.

“I said open!”

He lifted her hand from the table and slammed
it back down. He slammed it a second time and when he did her
fingers had splayed, whatever fight left in her gone.

“I’m going to ask you again,” Boone brushed
her fingers with the meat hook’s handle, letting her know he’d
crush them. “Where is he?”

She shook her head behind her tears and
snot.

Boone exhaled. Before he could break any more
bones in her hand, Damian stepped forward and brought the cleaver
down, severing three of her fingers. “Oh shit!” Boone recoiled
slightly, surprised, grinning maniacally, the woman screaming.
“Damn, D. You don’t play.”

“Where is he bitch!?” Damian shouted at
her.

Her breath came back to her and even as the
sobs ratcheted up a notch she raised her good hand to point. Boone
let her go and the woman fell down on the table, pulling her
wounded hand in close to her body.

“Mine!” Having retrieved his stake, Boone
stalked off into the dark where she had pointed. The woman was
reaching for her fingers on the tabletop when Damian waded in
and—over her desperate cries—finished her with several blows from
the cleaver.

Boone found Enfermo in the back of the
house.

The vampire was hanging in a closet, resting.
Boone looked it up and down, expecting more. It was a gaunt little
thing, deathly white, not much better than the slaves it kept. He
prodded it with the stake and it didn’t stir.

He tapped crystal out onto the back of his
hand and snorted—“Ah
fuck
yeah”—electricity shooting through
his brain. Damian was standing next to him, his bare arms and face
blood spattered.

“You?” Boone gestured with the meth.

Damian shook his head.

“Let’s do this.” Boone leaned into the closet
and grabbed Enfermo by its throat, yanking it free of its perch and
dumping it onto the floor of the room they stood in. The thing
tried to rise to a seated position, groggy. “Wake up sweetheart.”
Boone cracked it in the head with a swipe of the meathook, sending
it sprawling across the floor. “Wake-the-fuck-up.” Boone hit it
with the stake. “Wake up motherfucker.” And again.

Enfermo was coming alive, trying to say
something, trying to scramble away on all fours. Boone knelt down
and rammed the sharpened stake through the seat of its pants, deep
into its rectum and stomach. “Yeah—” The beast shrieked “—you’re
awake
now
, right?
That
got your attention?”

Boone brought the sharpened end of the meat
hook around and down, burying it deep in Enfermo’s chest. “Come on
motherfucker!” He dragged the vampire from the room and through the
house, the creature garbling, claw-like hands struggling against
the meat hook. Boone dragged it from room to room, past its dead
and wounded slaves, screaming at it the whole way: “You know who I
am motherfucker?” Damian followed in their wake, splashing gas on
the walls. “You know who I am?”

Boone hauled Enfermo out onto the sidewalk,
out into the sun—“I’m a’ tell ya”—the wooden stake projecting from
its rear. “I’m the one who got away!” Boone dumped the vampire on
the street, yanking the meat hook free.

Big Duke was leaning against the Town Car,
cradling the double barrel, an unlit spliff in his mouth. The belt
of shotgun shells rested on the roof of the car.

Enfermo started to smolder in the
daylight.

“I’m the one they didn’t get!” Boone walked a
tight circle around the smoking vampire. Enfermo wailed in agony,
scampering back towards the doorway and the shadows within.

“You seeing this?” Big Duke asked Damian
around the spliff.

“Not so fast!” Boone hooked Enfermo again and
made to tug it back from the doorway but the vampire gripped either
side of the doorframe with its blackening hands. “
No
. You
get back out here.”

“He won’t let you!” Enfermo sounded
desperate. “He won’t let you get away with this!”

“Hamilton. Madison. Gossitch.” Boone recited
their names. “They were my friends!” He ripped the meat hook out
and drove it back in. “You hear me? My fucking friends.”