The Skunge (20 page)

"And one more thing, Sonch. Sorry about this, nothing personal." Arneson brought one big boot down, pinning Sonch's arm to the floor. Arneson knelt and picked up Sonch's sword, then swung it down and chopped off Sonch's little finger. The blade cut through flesh and bone as easily as a Ginsu blade through a tomato.

"FUCK!" Sonch shrieked, thrashing in his bed. He lifted his injured hand, waving it in front of his face as if in amazement. Blood pattered down on the filthy sheet. He cradled his hand to his chest like a bird with a broken wing. He carried on until his screeching quieted to a sobbing mewl, and then to mumbling as he rocked in his bed, wrapping his bleeding hand in a dirty t-shirt. He glared at Arneson with tears swimming in his eyes. "You muscle-bound asshole. If my hand wasn't fucked up, I would show you some shit, man."

Arneson grabbed the front of Sonch's shirt and dragged him, protesting, to his feet. "If you're feeling froggy, go ahead and jump."

"Yeah, yeah, big man, hit a guy while he's down, while he's hungover." Sonch grinned at him like a rotten jack-o-lantern. "Is this because I tried to pick up on that cunt?" He barked laughter. "You poor, dumb sonofabitch, don't you know that Maas is fucking that sweet pie every which way but
loose
every damn night?"

Sonch had just enough time to yelp as the wall approached his face at roughly Mach 5. The landlord had painted over a cockroach, now forever frozen to the wall like Han Solo in carbonite. His face slammed into the bug, cracking the drywall and sending up a puff of dust. Sonch sneezed, howling in pain at his broken nose.

"Fuck!" he barked. Blood sheeted down his top lip, pasting down his mustache.

"I said, nothing personal. Now you got five minutes to get your shit and get out, or I really start hurting you."

Sonch moved like his ass was on fire, and was out the door and in his ratty Chevy before five minutes was up.

"You're welcome." Arneson surveyed the apartment, shaking his head. "Asshole." He would find a public phone and put out a call, but he didn't expect them to pick up Sonch right away; guys like him had a way of disappearing into the muck and mire of the underworld quickly and without a ripple. But he would bubble up again, and by then Arneson would be done with this whole mess and be down the road. Another place, another name, another job.

He pocketed the finger before stepping out into the hall. In this part of town, the sounds coming out of Sonch's apartment didn't rate even a flicker of interest. He left through the front doors of the building and drove away without looking back.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Sugar scratched her arm, digging her nails into the tender itch. A long itching line of red ran along her ulnar vein. She scrubbed at it with a sea-sponge loofa, the rainfall shower head belting down scalding water. The shower was lined with dark limestone, and compared to her shower back in LA, looked big enough to play a game of racquetball. It was even bigger than the shower in her
casita
.

"Goddamn dirty bastard." She scrubbed ferociously at another red spot on her leg. This wasn't the Skunge, she was sure of it. There had been no sign of it. She was clean--except for the bad dreams. Nightmares of The Skunge suddenly squirming its way from her eyes, her mouth. Terrifying images of Palmetto stalking toward her with his surgical tools and his bottles of vinegar and salt. Worst of all, visions of Jynx, dead and rotting, dragging herself down long, moonlight highways, lost forever: but searching for Sugar to take her revenge. Sugar had been convinced that she would suffer the nightmares forever, the sweat-soaked horror movies that plagued her every night. Then, things had changed and the nightmare blew away like mist. It hadn't come back yet, not for the past two weeks.

"My ears are burning," Arneson said, stepping into the shower behind her. His erection bobbed like a dowsing rod. He leaned over her shoulder, one hand sliding over her hip, the other cupping the side of her face and guiding her mouth to his.

She sucked his tongue, feeling her teeth click against his. When she bit at his lower lip and took him in her hand, she grinned at his appreciative moan. He growled and turned her to face him, lifting her and pushing her against the tile. He pinned her there, his mouth on hers. He slid into her, one hand underneath her thigh, the other on her hip, indenting the skin. She hoped it would leave a mark. They moved together, her ass slapping against the wall, her ankles crossed behind the small of his back. When he reached underneath to stroke her, she cried out until he covered her mouth with his.

Afterward, drowsing in the fan-stirred afternoon heat, she woke him by tracing the line of his jaw with her fingernail.

"You have a cruel face." She traced his bottom lip, touching the scars, running her fingertips over the bony knot on his nose where it had been broken. She ran her finger along the scrawled white line of a scar that ran from the side of his throat almost to his cheekbone. His black stubble ran white along the scar, like a river on a map.

"Thanks." He rolled over and lit two cigarettes, placing one in her mouth before stretching out on the bed.

"It makes you look like a criminal."

"I am a criminal. Thanks again."

She snorted smoke out of her nose, her version of a laugh. She prodded at his tattoos.

"You know what I mean." She seemed to delight in poking at the muscles in his shoulders and arms, dimpling the flesh with her fingertip, watching it bounce back. "These tattoos look new."

"A couple years old maybe, most of them—I got a bunch after I got out of prison."

"How long?"

"The last time, only a year. Small-time shit."

"What does this one mean?"

He glanced at it. "It's a chick with a machete. It's from a book I read once."

"No, underneath that. The name. It looks like 'Nicole'. Old girlfriend?"

"Something like that." He sat up with a grunt and flipped on the TV. It blared into life.

"God, sometimes you're such an asshole, Arneson. You know that?"

"You keep complimenting me, it's going to go to my head."

She slapped his shoulder. "Is it so much to ask for you to talk to me sometimes?"

"I am talking," he said, squinting at the TV through the smoke of his cigarette.

"Ug ug
, I talking,
ug ug
, me caveman, you Jane
,
" she said. "What a bunch of bullshit. That's not talking, it's grunting."

He made a smoke ring. "Why all the questions?"

"Is that so bad? What, do you think I'm going to write an unauthorized biography about you? There's no money in it." She sat up, throwing her arms wide. "No, wait, you're worried I'm going to make a movie about you. A caveman who travels to the future to fall for the pornstar with a heart of gold. We'll get Lucas, and Spielberg, and—"

"Funny."

"So come on. Tell me something. Anything."

He let his eyes wander over her: the halo of blond hair, eyes the color of dollar bills. "I'm a sucker for petite blonds. I like short walks on a long beach and the smooth jazz stylings of John Tesh."

She sighed and elbowed her way into the crook of his arm. On the screen, a police sketch of a suspect in an interstate kidnapping. "Ugh, why do you watch this true-crime crap?" She stretched languorously so one long tawny leg rested across his thighs. His hand began to rub and squeeze, and she gave him more leg.

"It's interesting." On the screen, a picture of a young girl flashed across the screen, followed by the text of a 911 call. "Besides, you never know when you might see one of these kids, out on the streets. Send them home, make their family's day."

"A hit man with a heart of gold, that's what you are."

The screen flashed to a picture of a kid smiling with gap-toothed geniality at the camera. Missing for 16 months, before his bones were found buried in a shallow grave near Devil's Lake in Oregon.

"Poor little bastard," Arneson said.

Sugar moved in closer to him, breathing him in. "Sad. I bet his parents wish he had never been born at all."

He looked at her. "You don't really think that."

"I do. Maybe he thought they let him die. Scared, alone, thinking they didn't care enough about him to find him. Don't you think his parents would trade in their happy times to save him that pain?"

Arneson looked at the TV, eyes far away. He shook his head. "No. If they did their job, he would have known that what happened wasn't anyone's fault except the fucker that took him. He would have been thinking about them, and it would have given him something to focus on. He would have hoped to see them again, later on. Somewhere."

She was quiet a long time. "Bringing a kid into this messed up world is wrong. That's what I think."

He appraised her. "Yeah?"

"I never say never, but...I don't have anything to offer a kid. I'd probably just fuck it up."

"Maybe you have more to offer than you think."

"Well, the truth is, I can't have kids. Something that happened when I was younger."

His arm tightened around her. "I didn't know that. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, I'm not." She turned away, fingers plucking at the bedsheets. "I have a shoot today. Will I see you tonight?"

The show moved on to a story in California; a new disease was sending people by the hundreds into hospitals. There were shaky clips of hospital ERs that looked like Third World warzones; the hallways stacked with bleeding people, crying children, worse. The news was bad all over; some sort of blast had destroyed an entire town in Kansas. Shaky overhead shots of soldiers in bio-hazard suits, walking through smoking streets. No pictures of survivors, though.

"Turn it off," Sugar said. "Please."

"Crazy shit." Arneson clicked it off, scowling at the screen. His phone buzzed, and he checked it and sighed smoke through his nose.

"Maas?"

"Who else."

Sugar's phone buzzed. She answered the text with quick, efficient little stabs of her fingers.

"You're pretty fast at that, especially with those nails."

"Yeah? I've been told I have pretty talented hands."

"Pretty girls get told a lot of things. I'm not convinced."

They fell back into bed. Later on, he had to admit that she did have some talented hands.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Maas stared into the mirror, twisting and turning, examining the spaces and angles. He opened his mouth, popped out his tongue, pulled his lower eyelid down to examine the lower curve of his eyeball. No bugs, no creepy-crawlies. No fleas, chiggers, not even a tick. He scratched at his lower back, then whipped around, yanking the tail of his shirt up, sure that this time, he would see something.
Anything
.

Nothing there but a set of angry red scratches where he had been scratching. He backed up against the mirror, squinting at his back, until one of his love handles almost touched the mirror's cool surface.

Still nothing.

But the itching.
God
, the itching.

He opened a desk drawer and surveyed the contents.

Three joints. Two lightly dusted with a synthetic PCP analog he bought from a lab in Iowa, and the last one nothing but good old Kalifornia Kush. One ounce of premium Afghan hash, like a square of smooth black butter. Pipes. Crack. Meth so pure it was almost colorless. The toothless hillbillies who cooked it marketed under the name Nazi. The black guys were crazy about the stuff, which always struck him as funny. But not today. Today he needed some heavy duty shit. Stuff that could burn out your pleasure center in two or three days, maybe less. Stuff that could stop the goddamn motherfucking
itching.

He settled on coke. He also needed to think.

He snorted a jolt up each nostril and hopped up from his leather captain's chair, skin iced with cool, brain humming. The euphoria rocketed into his brain, sending bolts of pure pleasure down his spine.

He poured a drink, absentmindedly scratching at his arm. Something wriggled against his fingers. He glanced down, mind ticking over like a high-performance engine, and froze.

Out of his arm poked a tiny black thread. It wavered in the air like a tiny blade of grass in the wind. He brushed his finger over it and felt a bolt of pleasure race up his arm. It filled him with sweet heat and a glowing, fluttering warmth in his belly. He hadn't felt anything like it since…hell, since he was a kid, when he had just started jerking off, peeping in neighborhood windows in Limburg. His cock hardened in his cargo shorts.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked. He ignored the tremor in his voice. He pulled at it, and hissed at the pain. Pulling it was like touching an exposed nerve.

The thread, or wire, or whatever it was, extruded itself another half-inch. Maas watched, eyes wide, as it wriggled, appearing to taste the air.