The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (17 page)

“Oh
. . .” she said.  Overbite . . . forgot the overbite.  “But I’m cold . . .”

I thought hard to
get out of the problem.  “Well, maybe you and Miranda can snuggle to warm up . . .”

Miranda had stopped enjoying herself.  She stared at Isabel, trying to overcome the manners her parents had taught her.  “I guess
. . . if you got your sleeping-bag we could lean against each other . . .”  What I tell you?  Teach your kids to be rude and how to read a person, wins out over manners in the end.

Manners will get you killed one day
.

“Just a minute,
I’ll move it!” Isabel hopped off over to the other side of the camp.

“You better hope Valentine is dead, King Henry,” Miranda told me, “because if she’s alive and
if I get to see her again, I’m talking her into burning a hole into you.”

“Kinky
. . . you never know when you’re going to need another hole . . .”

[CLICK]

I stood horizontal to the world.

Down below, trees poked free from the soil that had once belonged to me, the mountain miniaturized, made for the cupping hand.  At my neck, the sun floated at perfect noon, directly center in the sky.

I looked down, or at least, at what
to me
was down, and found my feet bare, toes tapping against rock. 
Eat your heart out, Spider-Man
.  Above, a pebble shook loose from wind and down it went, pulled swiftly past my ear.

Also above
came the voice I’d learned as Meteyos.

DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND MY WARNING, LITTLE MANCER?

“Am I asleep?” I asked, eyes taking in a valley below.  There was a river and animals, snow and ice.  No cars.  No roads.  No people. Chillingly quiet, filled only by birdsong and breezes strong enough to scour skin raw.  “I fell asleep?”

FELL?  I WOULD WATCH YOUR WORDS, LITTLE MANCER.

I turned around, valley at my back, sun ahead.  Under the sun was my vertical world, a sheered cliff face for thousands of feet.  Across it geo-anima flowed, welling from someplace deep, forming lines of power.  I could feel my own anima type but it might as well have been necro or floro for all I could do with it.  This geo-anima was under another’s management.  It wanted nothing to do with a geomancer.

“I’m dreaming again
. . . and of your crumbling ass again, fairy.”

INSOLENCE.  I COULD DROP YOU TO YOUR DEATH WITH A THOUGHT.

“We’re in a dream.”

SO SURE?  THERE ARE MORE PLACES A MANCER CAN STUMBLE THAN YOU HAVE EVER IMAGINED.

“We’re in a dream,” I repeated.  To show how reckless I could be, I jumped into the air and landed back on the mountainside.  “
Ta-fucking-da!
  Not dead.”

The lines of geo-anima converged together near where my feet came down, forming
. . . a face.  A face of brownish power, wisps faded along its cheeks, lighting its eyes, crackling over its forehead.  Whole, it was probably twice the size of my body.

YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE.

“Better than freezing my ass off back in the real world.  Why Miranda got to be so stuffy?  I’d have been a gentleman, would have kept my hands away from anything important.”

A LIE.

“Well . . . okay, maybe a hip.  Got to check and see, ya know?”

THE WIND IS NOT OUR FRIEND.  IT IS AN ENEMY.

“I don’t know . . . I like Ceinwyn.  She’s cool.”

FIRE TO SUPPORT US.  SUN TO WARM US.  SHADE TO COOL US.  DEATH TO GIVE COMPANY.  BUT NOT WIND.

“Come on, even a mountain has to have itself a little tickle every now and then.”

NEVER WIND.

“Don’t see why you merit an opinion on my currently non-existent sex life.”

THE GIRL OF FIRE PERHAPS.

“Oh . . . yeah . . . Valentine, I mean . . . yeah . . . she um, still alive, by the way?”

FOR NOW.

“Good . . .”

THEY ARE COMING FOR MORE OF YOU AS YOU SLEEP, LITTLE MANCER.

“Shit.  It Samson doing this or it really werewolves?  Fill me in on the fairy 411, Meta Yo-Yo.”

THEY MEAN TO CAPTURE AND TRAP YOU.  THEY MEAN TO BRING YOU TOGETHER AND MOCK YOU.

“Double shit.  I need to wake up.”

TRUST IN US AND WE WILL HELP YOU.  RUN.  RUN THE MOMENT YOU WAKE.  DON’T PAUSE FOR A SINGLE SECOND.  LOOK FOR HELP AMONG THE ROCKS AND SOIL.

“But how do I wake up?”

YOU FALL.

And just like that my feet were free of the mountain. I hung for a bare second, then I hurtled downwards, trees at my back waiting to impale me, sun above without any comment on my passing.  But the face of the mountain . . . the face of the mountain laughed.

[CLICK]

I was up and standing on my feet before my eyes had a chance to open.  When they did it was to nothing but dark woods, the twin fires managing to coat the world in orange.

I glanced down, saw Miranda and Isabel.  Just above their heads . . . words scraped in the dirt.  DON’T PAUSE FOR A SINGLE SECOND.

“Shit’s like being in the
Matrix
,” I grumbled before diving down to grab both Isabel and Miranda.

Shows you how scared everyone was that they didn’t immediately punch me in the balls.  “Up!” I yelled at them,
then at the camp in general, “They’re coming!  Get the fuck out of here!”

I’d just
finished the last word when the first howl sounded.  Neither Isabel nor Miranda needed any coaxing to their feet.  “Come on!” I told them, dragging each by the arm.

Around us
, kids bolted out of sleeping-bags.  The kids declared guards hefted spades and sticks, searching for something to hit.

More howls.

Screams from the girls.  Cursing from the guys.

“Run!” a first voice.

“Stay and fight!” a second voice.

“Run!” to the two girls I’d
been saddled with.

I looked for Pocket, for a word, or a glance, or anything, but there was no time.

Don’t pause for a second.

Didn’t need to tell me a third time.

“This is the place?” I asked
T-Bone.

He nodded.

Staring across the street I couldn’t believe what I saw with my own two eyes.  “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

T-Bone
was rightly confused, not having been around for the crazy vampire community lake bullshit the last go-around.  “
Huh?
”

“Motherfucking mansions
. . . why the fuck it always got to be motherfucking mansions?”  I waved at the buildings around where T-Bone had parked his car on the side of the road.  My finger ended pointing especially at our target.  “And fucking walls, man . . . fuck walls with a trebuchet throwing some dead God-damned cows.  Stanky, moldy
dead
fucking cows.”

“That was a lot of cursing even for
you
, King Henry.”

“
Fucking walls . . .”

They were a good ten
feet in height, made of stone and overrun with ivy at the top.  Just in reach, maybe, but ivy ain’t a rope and ten feet ain’t the vertical for most people not playing in the NBA.  Would have taken one of those crazy
Ninja Warrior
bastards to climb those walls.  Not my short ass and not T-Bone’s three-hundred-pound ass.

If you turned your head to either side there were more mansions, with some serious yards to them, but not
walls
.  Huge trees and sculpted bushes and some lawn art that said ‘
I’m rich, bitch
’.  But not
walls
.  I’d only been in Fresno for a couple years and hadn’t been into much exploration, but even I knew Van Ness is where you found the rich people.  Real estate developers, doctors, lawyers, and Horatio Vega, King of the Coyote Nation.

It’s
the vampire community all over again.

Forget
me
, how could one shitty city in a shitty valley have so much weird crap going on in it?

“Know the problem with walls?” I asked, shaking my head at the
heap of dinosaur-sized crap the Mancy had put in front of me.

T-Bone
kept checking his smart-phone.  Probably hoping that Ceinwyn would call and threaten him into stop helping me.  Didn’t matter.  I’d gotten what I needed.  T-Bone did good work.  I’d gotten a list of addresses associated to Vega’s name.  Long fucking list.  Rich bastard.  He owned property all over Fresno, all over Fresno County too with a bunch all clumped together in the foothills going towards the mountains. Gee, wonder what he grew up there?

Still
. . . got what I needed or not, it was good to have the only other Ultra in town with me.  Shit turned real I could use some lightning bolts up some Coyote furry assholes. Plus . . . I didn’t like to admit it, but he was the only reason I hadn’t killed someone back at my shop with those machineguns going off.  If I hadn’t been worrying about keeping him from getting shot . . . might have taken a bullet just to break Suit’s skull.

My moral
conscience put down his phone, finally giving his thoughts on walls.  “They’re . . . tall?”

“The problem with walls is gates.  Know what the problem with gates is?”

Yeah, Vega owned some property.  Probably owned more than what’s on paper too.  That’s the way the movies say criminals do it, got to be true.  A long list to look through, but . . . Van Ness . . . everyone in Fresno knows that’s where the rich people are at.  Where else I going to find a
king
?

“They
. . . keep people out?”

“Exactly,” I snarled, studying me some wall and metal gate both.
  The gate had initials at the top . . . HV.  Had to be the place.  Had to be.  “We don’t got us a clue what’s going on behind those gates.  We go in, we go in blind.  All them knights back in the medieval days, they knew what defense really came down to.  Comes down to walls.  All them armies that broke back in the day, know when they broke, T-Bone?  They broke when they actually got over that wall . . . and they saw another fucking wall they didn’t know about.”

T-Bone
frowned over this logic.  “I think it might have been the burning oil and arrows . . .”

“Nah, those are just obstacles
. . . like getting sick or your car breaking down.  People like to ignore the obstacles, focus in on the big things, them big goals.  That’s what a wall is, big goal to get over.  Like college or marriage or retirement, big life goal.  Work hard for it, got it beat, then . . . it all looks like shit on the other side.  That’s when people break . . .”

T-Bone
started to get alarmed.  “Please don’t Jericho the walls . . . I think they’ll notice that.”

“You’re right.
” I glanced down the street, took in the cars going by.

All that time spent with the police and t
hen the sheriff’s had eaten us into morning.  Everyone in Fresno was getting ready and leaving for a day of work.  Not
Casa de Vega
though, that place didn’t move at all.  It just said: 
wall, bitches
.

“About what?”

“We need a distraction.”

“I don’t like the sound of that either
. . .”

“And we need to be sneaky.”

“Better . . .”

“We need to get over the wall in a way that we ha
ve time to figure our bearings.  Who knows what’s behind there?  Pool?  Guesthouse?  Coyote pits?  Could be anything.”

T-Bone
pulled out his phone again, flipping to something.  “King Henry . . . you’ve heard of Google maps, right?”

Casa de
Vega
looked all naked, butt-cheeks sagging and holding its limp cock in a spare hand once satellites got done with it.  A guesthouse at the back, a pool, and a basketball court.  At least JoJo would be a wealthy widow once I finished my business with her husband. 
I don’t even know what he looks like but I can still imagine his nose breaking . . .

T-Bone
expanded the image on the phone, zooming to a section near the walls.  “That’s where we should go over.  The guesthouse will screen us from anyone in the yard.”

“Someone’s been playing too much
Call of Duty
.”

“I wish y
ou’d stop with the video game jokes, it’s not like every time you make a comment about punching someone I say something about
Fight Night
, is it?”

“Wait
. . . they make
boxing
video games?”

“Oh Mancy, what have I done?”

“Do they make MMA video games too?”

“You do remember about the werecoyotes we need to deal with, yes?”

I just stared at him.  “You really need to work on your tension releasing snappy dialogue; you could learn a thing or two from Annie B . . .”

“You keep mentioning her.”

“She made an impression . . .”

“
I’ve never met a vampire.”

“They make an impression
. . .”

T-Bone
seemed to realize something.  “Did you sleep with . . .
it
?”

“No
. . . but we fucked.”

He sighed.  “I just
. . . why are we friends?”

My turn to frown.  “Why don’t
you
have a girlfriend again?”

If the Gates of Hell had opened,
T-Bone’s face couldn’t have been more stricken with horror.  “I . . . I . . . vampire . . .”

“
I’m serious, you keep dodging me.  I can help if you want.  King Henry Price ain’t awesome at everything, but he’s an awesome fucking wingman.”

“I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

“Didn’t say you were . . .”

“I like women
. . . they just . . . I . . .”

“I mean
. . . you’re a huge black guy.  Odds are if your head and feet and hands are that big, then the rest of you is big too.  Ladies that go for that perk aren’t exactly ones you want to
date
but, shit . . . that’s some great clubbing material to be working with.  Can’t go wrong with huge black wang.”

“
How many times do I have to ask for you to not be racist about my wang size?”

“
You got the money, so that ain’t it.  All that new equipment, brand new car . . . have your own house too.  You should have a chick . . . it would be really easy.  It’s decided!  We survive this and I’m taking you out for a night on the town and we’re getting you laid, T-Bone.”

“Don’t call me that!  And what type of name is
Annie B
anyway?”

“It’s my nickname for her.  She’s really
Baroness
Anne Boleyn, but like I’m going to be bringing up that absurdity every time I want to get her attention?”

“Anne Boleyn
. . .”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re King Henry.”

“Right!”

“You’re both named after historical figures?”

“No
. . . she
is
a historical figure.”

T-Bone
was having a very bad day.  Can’t blame the guy, I had three months to get used to the vampire thing and I sprung it on him the exact same time that the Coyote thing happened to us.  “Anne Boleyn is a
vampire
?”

“You’re back on track.”

“And you . . . made love to her?”

“
Made love
. . . really?”

“Slept with her
. . .”

“No.  There was no love and ain’t no sleeping either.  Don’t blush.  She thought she was dying.  I thought there was a good chance I might go down with the ship too.  We fucked our brains out, got it?”

Silence for a straight minute.

Curiosity got the better of
T-Bone, “What was it like?”

“Normal.  L
ike with a normal beautiful woman who’s hurting . . . that’s the shit that haunts me at night when I think about her,” I remembered aloud.  “Not the vampire of her, not thinking that she’s some blood creature, not that I saw her kill or that she ate on me once . . . but that face of hers . . . her velvet eyes as we finished.  Nothing not human has the right to be so vulnerably human like that . . .”

Second minute of straight silence.

“Every time I think I have you figured out, King Henry,” T-Bone said, shaking his head and not meeting my eyes, “you punch me in the face.”

[CLICK]

All that talking wasn’t wasting time.

One plus to the Mancy is you have lots of downtime while working up a pool.  Ain’t no fastbreaks, least not that I’ve figured out yet . . . but commercials?  We got plenty of commercial time.  Mancy is the football of magic.  One play . . . wait . . . replay . . . wait some more . . . play again.  Gets annoying if you’re in a gun fight, but you learn a thing or two about killing time.

My pool was just over five minutes when I exited the car and crossed the street, doing my best to smile and not seem like s
ome criminal to the passing traffic.  Rich people probably master many a skill, but this one they all got down pat: if you’re going to have a big fucking mansion, ain’t no better pep-me-up than showing that big fucking mansion to jealous pedestrians driving down one of the busier streets in the city.

Two cars
zipped behind me as I turned back to T-Bone, giving him a big thumbs-up.  He started dialing his phone, calling in our distraction.  I’d wanted a pizza guy, but being as it’s the morning and even pizza places have standards, the only place we could find willing to deliver was a twenty-four hour Vietnamese place called
Lon Ga
.

Yeah, it doesn’t exactly fill a man with hope that his plan is going to work, but odds were one of the
Coyotes trying to tell off a delivery boy who doesn’t speak much English would be damned hilarious to watch.

Three more cars went by, an old SUV with gas bills that must have been legendary, one of those new Smart two-person cars that look like they’re going to fall apart, and a hybrid truck pretending to get good mileage.  Someone
would wonder what I was doing if I just stood there, so I kept going, walking down the wall before taking a corner, following it down someone else’s property.

Seven’s good enough
.

Seven minutes.  Split it twice, leave some leakage, and I should have enough left over.  Seven minutes
. . . I couldn’t be sure, but since I started practicing with oversized pools I think my pooling came faster too.  I’d have to get out a stop-watch to make sure, since we’re talking seconds on the minute here, but . . . it seemed faster. 
How much you hiding, Ceinwyn?  How deep does the Asylum’s bullshit go?

My hand ran over the stone of the wall.  Stone, I can’t stand stone.  Love me metal, metal hard or metal
liquid.  Glass too, though it’s very complex and fragile stuff.  Dirt . . . can’t do much with dirt, but it’s flexible.  Gems . . . do I look that rich?  Stone . . . stone wants to be stone.  You can’t mold stone.