The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (38 page)

“I can’t believe you destroyed it,” she
accused.

“I didn’t mean too.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Yeah . . . I did.” At least the fake one.
“Can’t let anyone have that thing in my town.”

“But you saved my life.”

“Yeah . . . I did.”

She tossed me the cold ring I’d given her.
“Thanks for the loan.”

I held it in my palm.
Nice piece of work,
King Henry
. “What about the cuffs?” I asked.

“No idea what you’re talking about.” She
poked her head back into the car and came out with an envelope,
which she handed over. “Your payment.”

“Money ain’t gonna distract me,” I pointed
out, crossing my own arms.

“A list of your services is included.” Annie
B gave me a wink as she went over to the other side of the car.
“Don’t spend it all on one anima vial.”

I sighed. I didn’t feel like getting into
another fight over the cuffs after everything I’d been through.
Plus . . . I’d stolen something from her too. Guess it’s fair.
Hopefully she’d think of me when she used them.

“Tell your friends about the
things you
don’t have that really belong to me
. I’ll make them a pair if
they pay.”

“Will do.” She opened the car door. “You
enjoy it?” she asked, meaning the whole experience.

I shrugged. “Pretty straightforward. Could
have been more complicated, don’t you think? I mean, go to San
Francisco, look around, come back, kill the Vamps responsible.
Where’s the twists and turns, ya know?”

She grinned at me. “Maybe next time,
Artificer Price.”

I grinned back. “Stay away from me, Baroness
Boleyn.”

That’s the last time I saw Annie B . . .

. . . for a whole year.

[CLICK]

My shop was as messed up as it had been the
night before, but I didn’t have the strength left to bother
cleaning it up yet. Another disaster for another day. Actually, it
was worse than the night before. I paused only briefly, but long
enough to check out apparent earthquake damage.

“Motherfucker,” I said aloud, feeling
particularly foul. I hefted the thick envelope in my hand. How much
had she paid me?

“It can wait,” I told myself.

I walked away from the disaster zone, eyeing
a two foot crack in one of my walls with disgust. I had other
answers I wanted first, way before what was in the envelope. Only
one person could give them. And I’m going to give something back to
her. Like a whole bunch of grief.

My phone in my office was on the floor. The
receiver barely hung on to my desk.
I feel you, buddy
.

Bending over, I picked up the phone,
wincing. Office didn’t look too bad. My bed was trashed but it
hadn’t been the earthquake that caused that. I smiled, a thin line
forming over my lips. I had sex with a vampire. Killed another
vampire. Caused an earthquake. Saw San Francisco. Flew in a plane.
Stole the most powerful artifact I’d ever heard of and better yet .
. . no one knew I had it.

Hell of a couple days.

I pulled the Shaky Stick from my pocket now
that I was alone.

Anima already built inside of it, but the
pool seemed small compared to what it had been before the quake.
“How did you hide from Annie B?” I asked it.

No answer.

Go figure.

Jade alright, pure pale jade, the whole
thing carved like it was wood not precious stone. Mountains, rocks,
and Japanese lettering. I was going to have to buy a translation
book. And a safe . . . a hidden safe. With lots of padding . .
.

I set it carefully on the desk, changed my
attention to my phone. I dialed.

“
Bonjour
,” Ceinwyn greeted me.

“You’re in Paris?”

“Belgium, but my tutor never taught me
Dutch.”

“Don’t they have a school? Academy of
something?”

“The Continental Academy of Elementalism,
founded 1950. I’m not recruiting. The Lady sent me as an
Institution representative.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Any reason you’re calling, King Henry?” she
asked, just barely keeping the smile out of her tone, but I knew
her well enough to know it blossomed the minute she saw my name on
her caller ID. “I usually have to call you every hour on the hour
to get a hold of you.”

“Yeah.”

“So?”

“I hate you.”

“Oh dear.”

“What possibly possessed you to mention my
name to a vampire?”

“Did Anne bruise your pride?”

“Ceinwyn . . . I could have died.”

“With her around? I doubt it. It’s good
experience for you. It got you out of your workshop. How was San
Francisco?”

“Too much water.”

“Always a nice breeze though.”

“Ceinwyn,” I tried again. “You realize Annie
B and I got into a huge fight right off the bat and you caused it,
right?”

“Who won?” she asked, eyes going all
interesting
I’m sure.

“Kind of a draw.”

“That means you lost?”

“That means I got choked unconscious with a
rope of blood and then the second time I dropped a car on her.”

Silence, then, “And how did you manage that
with a small little insignificant five-minute-pool, King
Henry?”

I nodded.
Knew it
. “That’s what you
wanted.”

“Welcome to the one in a million world, King
Henry. Not even every Ultra gets this far. About one in four we
think.”

“Yeah . . .”

“Don’t experiment too much to begin with;
you have time to figure all the limits out. No need to rush.”

“Yeah . . .”

“Call if you need advice.”

“Ceinwyn . . .”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, King Henry.”

“One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“You think it was just an easy job where I
went to San Francisco and looked around for her, don’t you?”

Her voice got sharp real quick. “What
happened?”

“Ask Annie B.”

I clicked off the phone. Yeah, that was
cruel. About as cruel as Ceinwyn had been pitting us against each
other. I couldn’t help but laugh thinking about the conversation
those two would have. “Almost makes it worth it.”

I sighed, picking up the Shaky Stick again.
“Got you and anima pool limits and static rings and maybe if Cold
Cuffs go vampire sex toy, those to churn out too. Busy, busy, busy,
Shaky Stick, how we going to find the time? Or the money for that
matter?”

I finally opened the envelope.

Fifty-five hundreds.

I whistled to myself. Not bad for two days
work. The receipt listed five-thousand as the payout for
consultation but Annie B had scrawled a note in flowing cursive
handwriting at the bottom of it. “
Four-fifty is for the blood,
you can figure out the rest, I hope.
Fifty bucks . . . damn
insulting, Shaky Stick, damn insulting. See if I have
I’m-going-to-die sex with her ever again.”

The phone rang. I put down the cash to
answer it.

“Yeah?”

“Boy?”

I almost dropped the Shaky Stick. Which I
think we can all agree would have been bad. “Dad?”

We hadn’t talked in probably six months. He
called me for my birthday in June. Longer than six months. Hadn’t
even talked to him for Christmas, kept telling myself I’m too busy.
It really wasn’t that. It was just hard with all the Mom stuff
between us. Plus . . . I’d never really wanted to tell him about
the Mancy, especially not artificing. It just . . . got in the way
. . . made us think of her. Better to pretend it didn’t exist.
Better to pretend you were too busy.

“Who else would call you ‘
boy
’?” he
asked.

“You got me there, Dad.”

Silence.

“I was just checking on you. Saw the quake
on the news, everyone’s talking about it. 6.2, big one. Warehouse
is always shaking anyway, we didn’t realize it had happened until
one of the office gals came in and told us. Visalia is pretty far
from Fresno, but people still felt it here.”

“Yeah . . . it was something alright.”
6.2, not bad . . .

“You okay though?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I walked out of my office,
through my workshop, and out on the store floor. “Broke some of my
merchandize, so I’m closed for the day.”
Almost died
. . . I
thought, but didn’t say it.

“Good to hear, boy. You doing okay beside
that?”

I thought about the question. Five-thousand
dollars or not, I was still broke. The Fresno Vampire Embassy knew
who I am. The San Francisco Embassy too for that matter. But it
could have been worse.

I had the Mancy. Had Ceinwyn. Annie B too.
T-Bone. The Shaky Stick.
I can kick a vampire’s ass
, I
thought.
I can pool for an hour straight.
I can make an
artifact in under five hours.
And I got Dad when it comes down
to it.

“Working, ya know,” I said.

“I hear you, boy.”

“You okay?”

“Me? Yeah. Well . . . actually . . . there’s
something I wanted to tell you.”

“You trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Nothing like that. I’m fine.”

“Then what?”

“I been dating a woman, boy.”

Oh.
“That’s one of us.”

“Don’t get mouthy now.”

“It’s okay, Dad. Mom would get it. I get it
too.”

“I’d like you to meet her.”

This ain’t the way I expected the day to
end. But, okay. It’s the Asylum way. Expectations smacking you in
the face. Go with it. “Sure, why don’t you guys come up to Fresno
next weekend? I’ll show you the shop finally. Take you out to
dinner.”

He seemed on the edge of turning me down but
made the jump with me. “Sounds good, boy. Sounds good.”

“Love you, Dad.”

“Love you too, King.”

The phone clicked off. I let out a sigh. In
my hand, the Shaky Stick pulsed with anima. I held it in my grip,
looking down its length, studying how it set against my fingers. I
couldn’t believe it . . . “And now I have a magic wand.”

Richard Raley was born and raised in Fresno,
California and even still lives there on account of the city being
an evil vortex you can’t escape. He grew up on
Star Wars
,
Transformers
,
Legos
, and
Everquest
—he never
escaped them either.
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady
is
the first novel in
The King Henry Tapes
; it will not be the
last. Keep an eye out for
King Henry Tapes
updates at:

http://richardraley.blogspot.com

www.twitter.com/richardraley

[email protected]

If you
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liked
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This is only the beginning of
The
King Henry Tapes
, continue the pulpanormal with the next volume,
available March 13
^th,
2012
. .
.

There are days when I wake up in the morning
and I just want to kill someone. With my hands especially. Smash
their nasal bone into their brain. Strangle them until not a mote
of air escapes their throat. Pummel guts until they’re coughing up
kidneys and livers both. I wake up and I want to kill someone with
my bare hands.

Which is odd . . . I’ve never killed anyone
before, so why the bloodlust? Well, I killed a few vampires months
back, but I’m not sure they count as people, being as they’re as
far from human as you get, nasty symbiotic blood creatures that
they are. Even animals have the decency of having arms and legs . .
. not Vamps . . .

It’s the anger. Anger over all the shit I’ve
dealt with in my life. That’s what makes me waking up wanting to
kill, wanting to fight. I wake up pissed off, ready to throw down
and crack knuckles. I want to feel that wondrous pain of a
barehanded punch, that sure pressure of a kick to the gut or ribs.
I want to ruin. I want to destroy.

Most days it goes away by breakfast, just
fades with the cloud-covered spring sun. Others, it sticks with me
and I control it like a secret all day long, every hour, every
minute. Just mine. My anger. My ace in the hole if things go down.
Rarely do things actually go down . . .

But this day . . .
shit went
down
.

Shit.

Went.

Down.

And a piece of my very pissed off soul cried
out, claiming ‘
lie!
’

You don’t wake up wanting to kill because
you were nurtured into it King Henry. It’s not that pissed off
fourteen-year-old making a curtain call. You wake up wanting to
kill because it’s a piece of your very makeup. Goes all the way to
your core, to your genetics, to your divine fucking spark, to the
place where the Mancy calls to you. Most geomancers are the shield,
the plowshare, but occasionally we get ourselves a sword, or in
your case: a big damned axe.

Let’s rumble, motherfucker, tear the whole
world down. Let’s crack a city or two in half. Let’s watch
mountains crumble. Give me everything you got and I’ll still be
standing there flipping you the bird.

That’s what you feel . . . inside.

And if you don’t learn to control this part
of you . . . one day, people really are going to die.

And it’s not always going to be the people
you
want dead.

[CLICK]

March 2018

Nine times out of ten, Fresno turns out to
have itself a false spring. There’s a brief week of sunshine, of
hope, followed by rain and winds that rip away every bit of soil
and trash and fling it into the air, along with a nice kick in the
nuts for
hope
. Spring didn’t come until April, and in May it
is already summer, sometimes even shooting to three digits. In
March it’s just wind and rain and shit dripping from winter’s hairy
ass-cheeks.