Gypsy Blood (42 page)

But he had shown Carnival his weakness.

He had shown Carnival his priorities.

“If he gets away with this there’ll be no world left to fuck,” Carnival argued.

Olaf paused.

Carnival could see the thoughts slowly processing through the man-thing’s slow dead brains. And then Olaf turned towards the ocean. Towards the sea of undead unburied men. He waved his arm like he was General George Patton.

“Come on then,” Olaf shouted.

The sea rose up.

All of those dead unburied sailors and gangsters and lost love suicides came storming out of the muck and the mire. Churning up into life stirred by the energy of the Red Shambler, and the Aggregate and maybe even a little of Momma, me and Maya.

“Let’s fuck this big red bastard up,” shouted Olaf.

He led the harbor dead in a
Balaclava
charge against the towering blood god. They followed Olaf because he was freshly dead, and he had lain in their great mother’s belly for at least a little while. They followed him because they were bored with their sea bottom existence. They followed him for the hell of it, climbing atop the Red Shambler, like ants taking down a behemoth. They piled on top and gangbanged the Red Shambler. Pumping him harder and higher than he’d ever dreamed of growing.

It just doesn’t pay to fuck with the dead.

The Red Shambler grew and then he fell like a great redwood coming down in a forest of blood and tears, he toppled ground ward.

Right on top of Maya.

Doing the Gypsy Stomp

T
he Red Shambler fell like the leaning
tower
of
Jenga
.

He hit the pier and the remaining four by eights heaved upwards and fell about like a rain of jack straws. It was party games all around, and up to Carnival to have the last hopscotch. The Red Shambler was down, but Carnival had to finish him off.

Carnival stomped upon him, stomped upon each of his swollen blood vessels like a small boy stomping on an acre of jellyfish. Carnival burst the rest of the Red Shambler’s blood cells, one by one, until he was tattooed in blood and cathartic pain.

Do you know how many cells there are in a giant mad blood god’s reanimated body?

Carnival counted them all as he stomped them flat.

He counted them carefully, coming up with a number that could never be told.

He counted just the same.

Why not?

The Rom love to keep their secrets.

Finally, he came to Maya.

She was beneath the wreckage and the ruin, lying beneath the Red Shambler’s carcass.

He touched her cheek.

It felt cool.

He prayed that meant she was still alive.

He kissed her on the lips.

He felt the barest tug of her vampiric thirst.

She was alive, as alive as any vampire could be. Just barely, but the sunrise was coming.

“Don’t die,” Carnival begged.

He worked his knife out of his blood soaked pocket. The knife, where all the trouble first started.

No. That’s not it. It started long before he ever thought of using his knife.

He stuck the blade into his own throat. Opening himself, freely and of his own free will.

“Drink,” he said.

Carnival pushed her mouth against the wound, and involuntarily Maya began to suck.

For a second time that night, everything went red.

One Final Kiss, Hello, Goodbye

M
aya put her lips upon against Carnival’s wounded throat.

The blood must have tasted so sweet to her. The Red Shambler had sucked her so damn dry.

Then, all at once the tide changed.

Carnival felt it change.

She softened his flesh, forcing the blood back into it. Pumping her self back into him.

She was killing herself, leaving her self too weak to flee the sunrise.

Carnival tried to fight her but the blood loss left him weak and helpless. He tried to rise up, but he couldn’t. It just wasn’t healthy trying to come back from the dead more than twice in one day.

She pulled back from his throat as the sun rose.

Just for an instant he heard her laugh.

And then the burning.

He grabbed at her as she started to burn. He seared his hands beating at her flash, softly first and then frantically pounding at her, calling her name as she rose up like a flame in his very arms.

“Maya! Maya! Maya!”

Too late.

She was gone.

Long gone.

There was nothing left but ashes and cindered bone.

Did she understand what she was doing?

Did she know?

You bet your ass she knew.

Freely and of her own will.

Carnival lay there, wet and blood soaked and basking in the morning light.

The sun should have felt good, but it didn’t.

Fortune’s Fool

I
t had been a long day.

The haze around the waterfront slowly cleared.

Carnival could see the hermit already beginning to gather up the chunks of what was left of the Aggregate. He’d rebuild it, Carnival knew he would. It would take a while, and quite possibly he would mix up some of the chunks of Red Shambler with the Aggregate rubble, but that was simply evolution.

For a time the city would live without a collective spirit.

He didn’t think anyone would notice.

He gathered up his own hallowed remains. Scooping up what was left of Maya into a green plastic bucket that he recovered from the hermit’s warehouse.

Later he found Chollo and Tupo, sitting under a fallen dock, passing a bottle back and forth.

It figured. You couldn’t kill that bastard with an axe.

Tupo was singing a soft Spanish song. For a man who never spoke he had a gentle tenor that was surprisingly easy on the ears.

“Your Momma went home,” Chollo said.

Carnival looked up into the sky, his heart sinking.

She was gone.

“No, not home that way,” Chollo corrected. “She just went home. She said she’ll hide in the tattoo parlor, until you can find an old church steeple for her to live in”

Carnival looked at him.

I’d never told him who the demon had been.

“How did you know who she was? She looked like Stevie Nicks, the last time you saw her.”

“Hey, I’m Spanish. We know many secrets.”

Tupo kept on singing.

Carnival asked Chollo what the words meant.

“It’s a very old, very sweet love song about a man mourning for his runaway mule.”

“Asshole.”

“Even assholes can mourn for their lost mule.”

Carnival heard a ringing.

“It’s for me,” Chollo said, rooting into his pocket until he found his portable telephone.

“You brought a cellular to a firefight?” Tupo asked, aghast.

Carnival stared in wonder.

Besides the singing, it was the first words he’d heard Tupo speak.

Chollo said hello.

Then he listened.

Then he smiled.

“I got the part,” he said.

“Romeo?”

“No hombre. Mercutio. A good man in a fight. You didn’t really think I was trying for Romeo, did you?”

Carnival laughed and wept at the same damn time.

Resurrection, One More Time

I
t had been a long day and a long wait for nightfall.

Carnival mixed the ink and ashes together and tattooed them on to what was left of Maya’s bones.

It was more of a melding, than a tattoo. Trying to tack two heaps of nothing together is damn tricky work.

He wasn’t an artist but he would do what needed to be done.

What the hell? If it was good enough for the Red Shambler it was good enough for Maya.

He had to make a lot of spells, and talk to three more demons, but he negotiated a resurrection.

He’d pay for it all later, in services rendered.

In hell, or somewhere else farther down the line.

She looked up at Carnival. Her eyes, soft in the moonlight. Her skin, nearly transparent, her flesh a gentle mirage.

“There’s probably a few chunks of coffee table and broken china mixed in there. Maybe a few stray hairs of my father.”

She raised one eyebrow.

Damn. He was going to miss that look.

“Your Poppa is in me?”

“It’s okay,” Carnival said. “You’ll like Poppa. He’s dead.”

She laughed.

He definitely was going to miss that laugh.

“My kind of people,” She said.

She looked at the ashes.

“Think maybe you could give me something nifty, like a Technicolor dragon?”

Carnival shook his head.

“I’m more the Pollock school of art.”

“It’s funny, you don’t look Polish.”

She smiled. Carnival laughed.

And then they both grew quiet.

“You know,” He said. “I can’t hold you here any longer.”

“You never did. It was your Poppa’s doing. He bound me to his service, using the power the Red Shambler gave him.”

“I know, but its different now. You’re not a vampire, any more, but you’re certainly not human. I made you into something different. I’m not sure what.”

“I’ll figure things out,” she said with a soft sort of smile.

Hell.

He really was going to miss this girl.

“Where will you go?”

She shrugged.

“The night’s large. There’s room for everyone. Even you.”

Ha. Good to know he still had that old Gypsy charm.

“Not me. Not this time around. I like my steak well done. Closest I come to the red stuff is a little ketchup and cheap vino.”

“Piker.”

Carnival shook his head.

“Have we seen of the last of the demon?” She asked.

“For sure.”

“How about your father?”

It was Carnival’s turn to shrug.

The Rom love their secrets.

A Mass Burial

T
he cardinal kept chanting.

Chollo sat in the cab of the backhoe, waiting to bury the remains. Tupo strummed a soft Spanish guitar. Momma watched from the top branches of an old oak tree.

Carnival stood by, his father’s hat in hand, listening to the burial ceremony for the dead.

The cardinal was barefooted. He hadn’t thought to put on shoes when Carnival had roused him from his bed. Carnival supposed he could have nudged him a little, but the bare feet had a solid earthiness that he thought particularly appropriate.

The red vestments were a touch of vanity on Carnival’s part. It gave the entire proceedings a certain sense of ceremony.

A sense of style.

It was quite an undertaking. He’d had to call in a few favors to get it all done right. It took a lot to find room in a city graveyard for a mass burial site that would remain undisturbed for the next hundred years. The remains of the pizza boy, Elija, Sally, the tattoo artist, the sailor and his lady, and Mario.

It took a big favor to get Olaf’s body dredged from the harbor. His corpse had sea-welded itself to the revolving chair, so Carnival buried him with that as well. At least he’d be comfortable.

The cardinal finished the ceremony. It’s good to see him working for a change. Carnival figured he was making an honest man out of him. Building his character. He’s probably a little rusty. Carnival hoped he’d get all the words straight.

Of course they’re in Latin, so who would know the difference?

He’ll have a headache in the morning, and the memory of a really strange dream.

That, and a pair of muddy feet.

When the ceremony was over Carnival dismissed him as politely as possible.

“Go on home, your eminence.”

He thought briefly about tacking a KICK ME sign to the back of the Cardinal’s ceremonial robe, but that might have tarnished the reverence of these doings.

Chollo and Tupo waved goodbye. They had to get the backhoe back to where they’d stolen it from.