I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (4 page)

Not that there were any supermarkets anywhere
nearby; DeAndre and his momma having to take a cab to the closest
one. Plenty of pawn shops, liquor stores, and check cashing joints
where he lived though.

Even a twenty-four hour Chinese take-out
place a block away.

“What you lookin’ at?” Marquis snapped at him
and DeAndre said “Nothin’” but in truth he was having a hard time
not looking at Marquis’ bruised face. Maybe it was true then what
he’d heard, that these three had mixed it up with some Dominicans
from up out of the Heights. That’s the story they were telling.

“Yo give me a dolla.” Yuri wasn’t asking. The
shortest of the three, Yuri wasn’t much taller than DeAndre, which
was sad in a way because DeAndre was only twelve and looking
forward to a growth spurt, whereas Yuri was sixteen and didn’t have
much more height to look forward to. Yuri’s peanut head almost too
small for his body.

DeAndre always thought it funny: how’d a
nigga like Yuri get a Russian name?

“What you smilin’ ‘bout?” But there was no
way DeAndre could tell him. He’d heard stories from his brother
Terry about Yuri in juvenile detention, how the guy’d brutalized
younger inmates. “Yo where that dolla, black?”

“What chew want a dolla for?” DeAndre asked
him, clutching his book, trying to sound street. Wouldn’t think to
use words like
indubitably
with these guys.

“What chew want a dolla for?” Marquis
mimicked him, reaching up to dab at his face, the bruises bothering
him. DeAndre wishing he’d been there to see Marquis take those
shots.

“Nigga please—just give me dat dolla.”

“Nigga I ain’t got no dolla.” DeAndre still
trying to talk like them, sounding pathetic to his own ears. To
theirs too, Marquis repeating his sentence again.

“’Bout them kicks then?’” Yuri eyeing his
shoes.

“Nigga dem things ten years old.” Luke
pronouncing judgment, Marquis and Yuri laughing. Luke—who called
himself Terry’s friend—making no move to intervene, only making
things worse. DeAndre not sure whether he should laugh or cry or
what, finding it hard to maintain a calm demeanor, thinking he’d
best start walking now, be on his way.

Yuri slapped the book out of his hand.

“Now what’d you go and do that for?”

Marquis still mimicking him, not even
finishing the sentence he was laughing so hard.

“Yur. Chill.” Luke sounding bored. “Shorties’
Torell’s brother.”

“Yeah, well, fuck that Torell nigga.” Yuri’s
peanut head poked out the top of his counterfeit Karl Kani t-shirt.
“And fuck you too, shorty.” DeAndre bending down to pick up his
book, Yuri calling
him
shorty. “Yeah, what chew lookin’ at?
What
?”

DeAndre deciding discretion the better part
of valor in this particular situation and he walked away, his book
pressed to his chest in both hands.

Yuri calling after him, “Betta have my dolla
I see yo’ ass later.”

Luke calling after him, telling him tell
Terry he’d stop by later to chill.

DeAndre tried to control his breathing, not
about to let them see him shaking. Forced himself to walk off, not
run. DeAndre couldn’t and wouldn’t kid himself. He wasn’t like
these other boys. And he didn’t want to be.

Days like this, DeAndre Watkins felt the
streetest thing about him was his name.

Lost in his thoughts, clutching his book,
DeAndre wasn’t paying attention to what was right in front of him
and almost walked into the man.

“Wuz’ up, DeAndre?” Dodd was in his thirties,
a hard man recently back from prison. Dodd wore a black denim
jacket over black jeans, his face bearded with short kinky hair.
Dodd one of the few older folk who called DeAndre by his name and
didn’t try and stick some nickname on him, call him
shorty
or
son
.

DeAndre believing he’d heard once that Dodd
was some kind of friend of his momma’s.

Like Old Toke.

DeAndre nodded to the man, walking past, Dodd
saying to him, “That bullet-headed nigga mess with you—” meaning
Yuri “—you come tell me, hear?”

Still walking, DeAndre turned his head and
nodded again, then turned back around where Dodd couldn’t see his
tears. He headed home.

Dodd walked up to the three young men on the
street, little more than kids themselves. He ignored the short one
in the counterfeit t-shirt who’d knocked the book out of the kid’s
hands, ignored him for the moment. He addressed the tallest and
toughest looking one, cat wearing his shades on top of his head.
“What ya’ll messin’ with that kid for?”

“We aight,” Yuri went to speak up, Dodd
saying “I ain’t talkin’ to you” without looking at him. Dodd still
staring down the tall one, the kid looking at the ground, drawing
his lower lip over his upper.

“It’s like he said,” the one with the bun
said. “We aight.”

The leader.

“We just toughenin’ him up is all.” The tall
one said looking down.

“You is, is you? What you know ‘bout tough?
Who hit your face?”

Marquis sputtered, going to say something
about Dominicans from up out of Washington Heights, but Luke was
speaking with the man, speaking of DeAndre, “He ain’t got no daddy
is all—” the man cutting Luke off with a pointed finger, with “And
you ain’t his daddy, hear?” Dodd’s tone shutting Luke up, Marquis
shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to the other.

“
Toughen
him
up
,” Dodd
said it with disgust, staring at Marquis again, Marquis still
looking at the street. “Toughen him up. Oh, you is, is you? What’s
that—” reaching to cup his own ear the way old people might, “speak
up son.”

Marquis with his bruised face muttering
something about you should have seen the other motherfuckers.

Dodd exasperated but in control. He was a
man, after all, and these were just boys. And he’d come here for
more than just a reprimand. So he got to it.

“Either you niggas know how to drive? I’m
lookin’ for a nigga want to make a little extra cheddar.”

The short one with the little head
volunteered, a little too fast for Dodd. “How ‘bout you?” He asked
Luke.

“Me?”

“Yeah. Can you drive?”

“Word.”

“Okay then. We gonna talk, little later on,
you and me.”

“Yo, what about me?”

“
What
about
you nigga?” Dodd
asked him and Yuri had nothing to say to that.

The hard man in the denim suit walked away
from the three boys. Marquis stood there prodding an empty fast
food bag with his foot.

“But I
can
drive.”

“Chill, Yur.”

“You do not remember me,” Rainford’s voice
cut the silence in the room, “do you?”

“I remember you just fine.” Boone was
stretched on the rack, naked save for a loin cloth, all muscle. The
room cold, the lights harsh. “You bloodsucking cunt.”

“This is the thanks I get.” Rainford sighed
for the benefit of the other vampires present. “Tell me, Wells,”
the Dark Lord spoke to a tall, thin vampire with a crew cut, “Is it
no longer customary to acknowledge a debt with gratitude?” It was a
rhetorical question and the vampire called Wells did not answer. He
stood there gripping a Russian knout, the rawhide thongs raw and
mean.

“Is it me or does this entire generation feel
entitled
?”

The rack was a rectangular wooden frame with
rollers on either end. Boone—all 250-plus pounds of him—was draped
across it, legs fastened to a fixed bar, his hands tied to a
movable bar, wrists and ankles fastened to rollers. The rack was
elevated at a 45 degree angle to the ground.

“The fuck should I be thanking you for?”

Rainford came and stood over the rack,
looking down on him. “Your life, for one.” The vampire made no move
to work the handle and ratchet, to increase the tension on the
chains that secured the hulking young man. “Tell me, how much do
you remember of your little tète-a-tѐte with Kreshnik?”

“Hmmm, let me see.” Boone scrunched an eye
closed like he was thinking hard on it. “I remember his head
exploding like a fuckin’ piñata.”

“It is as I hoped,” Rainford spoke to the
other vampires. “His lucidity and alacrity remain untrammeled.
Would you not agree, Pomeroy?”

Coifed with a pompadour, the third vampire in
the room lisped, “And such a magnificent physical specimen.”

“I get your dead dick hard, do I?”

“One of the most terrifying exercises with
the rack,” Rainford informed Boone, “is to force another to listen
to its use.” Rainford’s hand brushed up and down the handle.
“Cartilage and ligaments pop when they snap, like taking a pin to a
balloon. To say nothing of the crepitation of bones. Music to some
ears,” Rainford looked to Wells with the heavy whip, “though not to
mine.”

As he spoke, Rainford circled the rack, in no
great rush. “I must confess, I do find this whole endeavor quite
distasteful. I trust your dishabillment accords you no great
discomfiture, yes?”

“Know what I think?” Boone figured the old
vampire was referring to his lack of clothes. “Think you fags just
like seeing me hanging here half naked.” Boone directed his next
comment towards Wells—

“He does anyway.”

—and Pomery tittered, covering his mouth with
his hand.

“Your homophobic jibes might work well with
middle-schoolers,” continued Rainford, “but I assure you they fall
on deaf ears here.”

“Christ you talk like an educated Nancy.”

“Touché.”

“Douche. How ‘bout you’re gonna torture me,
get it over with already. I got shit I got to do.”

“Wells.” Rainford spoke its name and the
vampire placed the heavy scourge on the floor. “A purely symbolic
gesture on our side, Boone. The laying down of one device, a symbol
of torture and torment, a deliverer of pain and distress whose sole
purpose is to instill fear and dread and break the human spirit—”
Pomeroy had produced a softcover book, an elementary primer with a
capital and small case
A
on the cover “—and pick up another,
a symbol of edification and knowledge imparted.”

“You’re gonna teach me to read?”

“A mere symbol, Boone, nothing more and
nothing less.”

“You’re gonna what,
teach
me? The fuck
can
you
teach me?”

“I could tell you of a multiplicity of
Russian torture contrivances,” Rainford leaned in. “Not least of
which, from my experience, would have to be the Street Sweeper’s
daughter. Fascinating, yes, but inconsequential at this juncture.
Some other time.”

“You just sound like some crazy old fuck. You
got Alzheimer’s or something?”

“You have no concept as to the vampire aging
process.” Rainford stood back up to its full height, grey blue eyes
locking Boone in their gaze. “We are not immortal in any true
sense, though our lifespans would appear such to human kind. We are
beings capable of existing hundreds of years. We age, yet we do so
slowly, imperceptibly. Until the end. Towards the end the process
speeds up. A few generations, and, well, as they say, nothing is
forever.

“I, for example, am 326 years old.”

“How old’s Hitler youth there?” Boone spoke
of Wells with his crew cut. “He go back to the First Reich?”

“Forgive me, I did not make proper
introductions. Boone, this is Wells, my personal bodyguard. And
this young child of the night so impressed with your anatomy is
Pomeroy, my factotum—”

“That mean he’s on bottom?”

“—and you’ll be meeting Colson soon enough.
Exigencies upon my time will call me away shortly, but rest assured
I will leave you in capable hands.”

“Jesus Christ! Are you going to torture me or
what?”

“No. I thought that was apparent. Quite the
opposite in fact.”

“Then let me down off this fucking
thing.”

“That would not be a wise decision on my
part.”

“Why not?”

“Tell me, Boone. If I freed you from the
rack, what would be your first course of action?”

“I’d kill your dead ass.”

“Which is why you will remain immobilized for
the remainder of our time together this day.”

“You mean this shit ain’t done yet?
Fuck
!”

“I am 326 years old and I have spent the
majority of my existence in the form of a youth, a boy.”

“Yeah, yeah. You told me last time you were
turned by the Italian, about the Jew and his Jew kids tried to kill
you—”

“You
were
listening!” The Dark Lord
sounded pleased. “Yet Boone, our last conversation was so abruptly
ended by your departure…”

“Oh shit no. Here we go again.”

Rainford gestured to Pomeroy and the vampire
wiggled its fingers over a steno pad. “One of Pomeroy’s various
capacities in which he serves me,” Rainford mentioned to Boone, “is
as my personal amanuenisis. In case you were wondering.”

“That mean he pisses on you or somethin’,
doesn’t it?”

“Nothing of the sort.
What
if
,
Nietzsche enjoined us to ask,
what
if
some
day
or
night
…

What
if
, Nietzsche enjoined us
to ask,
what
if
some
day
or
night
a
demon
were
to
steal
after
you
in
your
loneliest
loneliness
,
come
after
you
and
say
unto
you
:
‘
The
life
you
now
live
and
have
lived
,
you
will
have
to
live
once
more
and
times
innumerable
beyond
that
;
and
there
will
be
nothing
new
to
it
.
Every
pain
and
joy
,
every
thought
and
sigh
,
everything
unutterably
small
or
exaltingly
great
in
your
life
will
return
to
you
again
,
each
in
the
same
succession
and
sequence
….
The
eternal
hourglass
of
existence
is
righted
again
and
again
,
along
with
you
—
a
speck
of
dust
?
’