I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (26 page)

Sarafina lowered herself onto the tasseled
cushions on her driver’s seat, behind the leather steering wheel.
She found she’d lowered herself right into the fixed iron sights of
an H&K MP-5, the submachine gun gripped by a woman sitting
across from her in her car.

“Hello, priestess.” Another woman in the back
seat spoke. Sarafina craned her neck. “My name is Emmanuela. The
woman next to you is Daniella.” They were both young, beautiful
girls, curvaceous and wearing black clothes that didn’t hide
it.

“Do you know what this is?” Emmanuela held up
an amber amulet on a chain.

Sarafina took it all in silently. The muzzle
of the submachine gun next to her. The amulet dangling from the
woman’s hand and the silver branching root charm hanging between
her cleavage. The decorative glass ball one of them had hung from
the rear view mirror. If Sarafina didn’t already know what it was,
she might have confused the glass ball for a Christmas ornament.
But she knew what it was, knew it served the same purpose as the
amulet being held up for her consideration.

“It nullifies our magic,” said Emmanuela,
“but also yours.”

The submachine gun in Daniella’s hands did
not waver.

A third woman out on the street closed
Sarafina’s door, smiling the whole time, looking friendly. Anyone
who saw it going down from outside the car would think an old lady
was going for a drive with her granddaughters. From outside the
Olds they wouldn’t see the MP-5 threatening Sarafina.

The third woman got in the backseat next to
the other one, the black cat hopping in the car with them.

The black cat.

Sarafina should have known.

“Say hi Isabella,” suggested Emmanuela.

“Hi Isabella.” Isabella no longer
smiling.

Sarafina looked at Emmanuela in the rear
view.

“Don’t pull the terrorized senior citizen act
with us.” Daniella poked the submachine gun towards her.
“
Priestess
.”

Sarafina took her eyes off the mirror,
locking them on the woman across from her.

“Daniella,” Emmanuela said. “There’s no call
for that. Tell me, Sarafina,” there it was, they knew her name.
Sarafina wondered what else they knew. “Are you going to answer our
questions here, or do we need to go someplace?” Emmanuella swung
the amulet in her hand like a pendulum.

“Ask.”

“For starters, what kind of magic did your
mistress invoke?”

Sarafina smiled. She wasn’t going to tell
these girls anything.

“See?” Daniella said to the two women in the
back, never taking her eyes off the old woman behind the wheel.

“Let’s go someplace then,” said
Emmanuella.

The black cat meowed.

The Oldsmobile rumbled to life, backing up
and pulling out of its spot.

Up the block, seated in his folding chair,
Lou watched it go. That Sarafina had some friends or nieces or
whatever they were. These young girls today, built like...And that
Sarafina wasn’t bad herself. Not at all. Kind of quiet, Lou
thought. He watched the car’s rear signal flash and the vehicle
turned from his sight.

Kind of quiet, Sarafina, but Lou liked that
in a woman.

Up on the third floor of the apartment
building in which Lou lived, the cat named after LeRoi Jones batted
his tail back and forth, eyes half lidded, intent on the street.
Olga Coyle hovered behind him, a forearm planted on either side of
the windowsill, listening to the rumble of Sarafina’s Olds fade in
the distance, receding among the street noise of a Wednesday
afternoon in Queens.

The next move was theirs.

“Some of the team were worried you’d miss the
flight,” Pomeroy was saying as Boone stripped down.

“I told him I’d be here.”

“That’s what I said.”

Boone had returned to the building before the
appointed time, Pomeroy greeting him inside the door. The
pompadoured vampire telling Boone he needed to take his clothes
off, make sure he wasn’t smuggling anything back in he shouldn’t
be.

“Hey, let me ask you a question, girlfriend.”
Boone noted the way Pomeroy watched him undress, the interest the
undead fag took in his disrobing, figured he could use it to his
advantage. “You there when I got my guts ripped out for me?”

“I was there.”

“You were there, taking your notes.” Boone
had his shirt off, flexing the muscles in his arms, running his
hand across his chiseled stomach. “Helping Rainford write his
biography or whatever.” Boone fingered his stomach. “Can’t even
tell now, can you?” Saw the way the vampire was watching him. “You
play up that princess act for me, right sugar?”

“Oh, behave.”

“Got that Stray Cats strut, don’t you Papi?”
Before Pomeroy could respond, Boone unbuckled his pants. “Don’t
worry. I won’t let Halstead catch us talkin’ sweet.”

“I may sport a Madame de Pompadour, but I’m
no queen.”

“Whatever you say, sista. I got no problems
with you cause you queer.”

“Then what exactly
is
your
problem?”

“You’re a dead fuck.” Boone pulled his pants
down. “I can’t stand you bloodsuckers.”

“Is that so?”

“It is what it is. You guys were smart,
you’ll kill me before I kill you.”

“Is that what you think?” Pomeroy watched him
standing there in his underwear, the vampire seemingly
intoxicated.

“Know what I think?”

“What’s that?”

“You fucks won’t kill me.” Boone turned
around, arms raised at his side, let the vampire see he wasn’t
concealing any weapons on his upper body, his legs. “You’ll try to
use me to do your dirty work, but you’ll see—I’ll get free.” Boone
faced Pomeroy again, dropped his drawers. “And I’ll come back, pay
each of you a visit. Warn you now I won’t be so nice.”

“Promises, promises.”

“You want me to bend over? Make sure I don’t
got a stake up my ass?”

“No, that will be all. Put your clothes back
on.”

“I want to talk to the man,” Boone lifted his
chin, indicating the upper levels of the building.

“What if he doesn’t want to talk to you?”

“Tell him I just want to listen.”

“Listen?”

“He never finished his story. Tell him I’ll
be quiet and pay attention.”

“You can’t be serious?”

Boone gave him a look that let Pomeroy know
he was.

“Fine. I’ll talk to him. If he grants you an
audience, I’ll come and get you.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

How is one to distinguish a demon should it
appear? How is one to recognize its temptations as the surety of
evil, as tidings of woe and nothing more? Many will warn of the
cleaved foot or horned carapace, of the unholy merging of the human
and the animal in one perverse form. Huwawa towered like the Cedar
Mountains of which he was sentry. And his face: a horrific
disarray, ropy coils of intestine. His breath alone enough to kill.
Undoubtedly Gilgamesh and Enkidu knew what they faced as they slew
the fiend.

But enough of demons supernatural. What of a
man who comports himself in evil ways? What then of a vampire? And
how are we to react when the one we thought we knew reveals his
underlying malevolent nature, acting such to realize malign
intent?

The abhorrence with which we behold evil in
its many and sundry forms.

I imagine Elizaveta’s husband would have felt
something of the same for his wife, had he suspected her complicity
in the act that cost him his family. And for a week following our
act, I thought perhaps he did suspect. For a week after the
children’s bodies washed ashore I did not see her. Elizaveta dared
not steal from out the house. To all who came by to offer their
condolences, she feigned grief. Her husband’s distress was genuine.
I watched all from my place, ensconced atop their home in the
shadows after dusk.

And having thus spoken I return to where I
last began, the exordium of this dispositio.

The mourners arrived, strangers in the dead
of night.
Lady
Hawthorne
she called herself, along
with her “brother,” though they bore no familial resemblance. The
lady was given to plume-covered hats and bell-shaped gowns
flattened in the front, rounded in the rear. The purported brother,
English as she or so it appeared, cast an observant eye to his
surroundings. He wore a knee-length frock coat over a buttoned vest
and trousers. His leather buckled gaiters similar to those worn by
the Swiss army. His ruddy face and lean, muscular physique seemed
at odds with his trappings.

An Arab accompanied them, a gentleman of
medium height who stood out for the turban he wore above his dark
suit and upstanding collar. With the Arab was a boy, apparently his
son. Also travelling in their company, a Russian Orthodox clergyman
replete with greying beard, attired in the black robes of his
station. In my mind, I immediately dubbed him
the
patriarch
.

A wagon bore their gear and, at one point,
when the servants of the house went to offload it, Master Hawthorne
quickly intervened. He admonished the household staff, instructing
that the goods born should be transferred into Elizaveta’s
grandmother’s house the following day. He replaced the tarp that
had been partially removed as he spoke, but not before I glimpsed
strange appurtenances—contraptions foreign to my eyes, and bear in
mind my eyes had seen much.

I watched all this from my place among the
eaves. It was there I witnessed the house’s preparations for the
burial; there I spied upon the husbands’ near catotonia, the man
frozen with grief; and there that I befriended the Arab’s boy. He
appeared on the roof one night, quite unannounced. I must admit he
took me by surprise. If my presence equally startled him he showed
it not.

What
are
you
doing
? He asked me.

It
is
here
that
I
sit
and
watch
, I replied. Without the
least trepidation he joined me on the lip of the roof, staring down
from the height to the grounds far beneath us.

His name was Aalam and he was a lad of eight
years, the picture of a miniature Victorian gentleman. His
suspenders held twill knickers in place, and though he chose to
forego a jacket in this chill evening air, he wore a straw hat. He
clutched this straw hat to his chest on the lip of the abyss, less
an errant gust topple it from his head and send it spiraling to the
grass. To him, I appeared also a boy, perhaps a year older than
himself. Did he mistake me for the offspring of some servant? He
did not say. A sense of adventure had drawn him to this roof, a
place he should not be, and he was delighted to have found another
whom he adjudged like-minded in his mischevious ways.

I
am
unlike
other
children
, Aalam confessed. I told him that I was also unlike
other children he might meet. I inquired if the Arab was his
paterfamilias and he confirmed it.
My
father
is
not
like
me
. Thinking of Vinci, I
concurred that my father and I were equally disparate. Aalam smiled
upon hearing this, imaging he had found a kindred spirit. I asked
him of the others with whom he travelled. He went on at some length
about Lady Hawthorne, marveling upon her beauty and the fine silk
of her dresses. I enquired if he knew the Lady and her brother from
England, to which he confessed the man was no true brother to the
lady. Oh really?

He spoke of the man, of Master Hawthorne
occupying himself in the day, whittling in his room.
Whittling
what
, I asked. Whittling lengths of ash
into spiked ends. Aalam spoke of the crossbow the man kept and a
quiver of bolts whose heads glimmered in the light. And it dawned
on me, that these were not mourners, but hunters, and they were
come to Petersburg to hunt
me
. These then, were the ones my
brother Viktor had warned of. The fearless vampire hunters.

Looking at the boy, I wondered how much he
suspected, how much he knew. How easy it would be to reach out, a
minor thrust all that was needed to pitch him from the roof.
Leonid
, he asked me, dispelling my suspicions,
would
you
be
my
friend
? He was sincere and
knew nothing of the pursuit that had delivered him with his father
and the others to this city of Peter. I told him I would consider
myself lucky to have such a friend as he. Aalam beamed and we spoke
for another hour, of the places he had been with his father, of the
funeral preparations and the grief that had fallen of the
house.

I asked him if he had any knowledge of the
demise of the poor children and he averred roustabouts were
suspected, though their identities momentarily alluded the
authorities. The grandmother, Aalam told me, spent her days
confined to her bedchamber in the grip of dementia, calling out for
her departed husband.

When Aalam yawned, he bid me farewell. I
smiled at him, promising I would come inside myself momentarily,
saying I hoped we should run into one another tomorrow—during the
day—and that if we should cross paths our midnight rendezvous would
be our secret and ours alone. He agreed, much taken with the spirit
of adventure and conspiracy, returning to the house to take his
rest.

I spent that day in our own domicile,
thinking of Elizaveta and our unborn child, of the strangers and
this boy. Aalam would prove useful, I thought, a conduit of
information for the goings-on inside the grandmother’s home.
Elizaveta and I would have to leave Petersburg; that much was
evident. Alone, I believed I could avoid the hunters. Accompanied
by Elizaveta, we would be much more conspicuous. In her early
years, as she adjusted to her new nature of being, we would be
especially vulnerable.