Moonshine: A Novel (14 page)

He waited until Charlie gulped and then released him. The vampire staggered a few steps away, but no farther. He regarded Nicholas with an expression sickeningly close to worship. Perhaps he meant what he had said about the Turn Boys being his only family. What a harrowing thought.

Nicholas laughed, and slapped Charlie on the back. I tensed, expecting another round of violence, but Nicholas's mood seemed to have shifted as easily as the wind.

"All right, then. Sooner you get the drop, the happier we'll all be--am I right, boys?"

And damn if every other person in the bar didn't laugh and shout their agreement like they hadn't just watched the same boy vampire shove his poisonous, fetid blood down the throat of one of their fellows. Charlie gave a quick nod and ran with that unnatural vampire speed out the door. I thought I saw his shoulders shaking slightly--he, at least, wouldn't be so quick to forget what had happened this evening.

I was still staring at the empty door when Nicholas appeared by my elbow.

"Unavoidable delay," he said, like an upper-class gentleman delayed by a game of croquet. "You'll teach me back here." He opened a door tucked beside the far end of the bar. His arm could barely reach the pull cord for the single electrical light. The room was small--less than even the space I shared with Aileen back at Mrs. Brodsky's. It seemed like a storage closet that someone had haphazardly cleaned out. One half was still filled with dusty crates and broken instruments, and the other half held a simple pine table and two chairs. A battered player piano rested against the far wall.

"Do you play?" I asked.

Nicholas slammed the door shut behind him. "I hate music."

My heart started to race. I didn't want to trigger anything like the violent episode I'd just witnessed in the bar. I didn't have the throat of a vampire. If he tried to make me swallow his blood, I'd just die slowly and painfully.

"I--I'm sorry," I said. "I just saw all the instruments and wondered . . ."

Of course, it took me until now to notice they'd all been smashed, torn or shattered. Nicholas's work, I guessed.

"My father's," he said. "He loves to play."

Well, I'm certainly not the only person in the world with daddy issues.

"So," I said, rubbing my hands together in what I hoped was a professional and specter-dismissing fashion, "let's get started. Do you know the alphabet?"

Nicholas stared at me, and then sat down. "I can write my name," he said.

I stifled a sigh. "It's a start."

We'd struggled our way to
L
by the time Charlie returned with several unmarked casks from what I assumed was the Pell Street drop. The door to the main room was closed, but everyone inside was cheering his return, and the noise easily pierced the thin walls. Nicholas looked up, his eyes bright with blood fever, and I knew there was no chance of convincing him to pay attention to the rest of the alphabet. I felt exhausted and frustrated, anyway--I wasn't any closer to finding Rinaldo, and the tutoring had been tough going. Nicholas had a diffcult time understanding how letters were formed, and kept drawing them backward and upside down. Rather similar to the mistakes a young child will make while learning to write, but Nicholas had to be a few years older than I. Perhaps turning so young had irrevocably locked some parts of his brain into a childish state. He certainly had the attention span of a boy. Perhaps once I had earned more of his trust, that trait would aid me in my efforts to trick some hint about Rinaldo from him.

Nicholas took a quick step to the door, then paused and tossed a few dollar coins on the table. "For to night. You might not want to stay here any longer. The boys can get a little rowdy with this stuff."

Chivalry, coming from a thirteen-year-old vampire known for his cruel and senseless murders and iron grip on the streets, might seem hard to credit. And yet Nicholas was perfectly serious. It occurred to me for the first time that Nicholas didn't see himself as evil. But did anyone?

So I said, "Of course," and followed him back into the bar.

The room was packed now, the air filled with smoke from a hundred cigars and cigarettes. Most of the haze hovered over the bar where vampires clearly half-mad for blood were holding up silver dollars and fives and practically tossing them at Bruno. The bartender poured shots of a ruby-red drink from a black bottle. Nothing else. Charlie pushed his way through the crowd, angling toward Nicholas and me.

"Did you hear?" he yelled, barely audible over the din.

Nicholas frowned. "Not the Westies again?" I wondered if there was some kind of gang war brewing between Rinaldo and the Westies. This was the second time I'd heard of a shipment raid, counting Giuseppe's troubles.

Charlie took a quick step back, bumping into the crowd behind him. "No, no, drop went fine. Not a whiff of the micks. It's Dore!"

"I told you, Charlie, I don't give a fuck what that--"

"That's just it, Nick! He's dead! The runner told me. Popped in an alley. Sounds like it was a mess out there the other night--he said the crews scraped up at least four poppers this morning. The Boss doesn't know how it happened."

Nicholas let off a long, giddy laugh. He lifted Charlie off the floor in a bear hug that looked strong enough to crack human ribs and then yelled, "A round on the house!"

Charlie beat a retreat and I edged away from the roaring crowd. Against the walls, a few lucky vampires nursed their precious shots. Blood? But it seemed too bright and liquid. And certainly not alcohol. Even reckless vampires wouldn't risk exsanguinating with such gusto. Yet they seemed to be getting . . . splifficated.

"What did you call this stuff?" I asked Nicholas as he led me to the door.

He grinned. "I didn't, but I reckon a do-gooder like you will hear about it. Faust. And it's going to make us Turn Boys the kings of this whole damn town, just you wait."

Faust. The blood clone mixed with an intoxicating fungus that Lily had told me about. It had hit the streets even sooner than she thought--probably outside Horace's, given the similarities between these inebriated vampires and the two I'd seen last night. Cleanup crews had dealt with no less than four exsanguinated vampires this morning. I looked around the frenzy inside the Beast's Rum. The atmosphere was charged, just an inebriated incident away from violence. Kings of the whole damn town? I had no doubt in my mind that Nicholas spoke the clear, awful truth.

I wanted another encounter with Daddy like I wanted to fight a horde of zombies with an iron spoon, but I was afraid of what he might do if I didn't preemptively discuss a few parameters with him. And, of course, I was rather curious about what kind of commission Troy had snagged that would necessitate dragging my famous daddy all the way from Montana to help. It must be a big hunt. The Gramercy Park Hotel was more than a mile away from the Beast's Rum, but at least the ride gave me time to think. I wasn't sure what unnerved me more about Faust: the sudden, unheralded appearance of a legal drug for vampires or the fact that it would make Rinaldo and the Turn Boys the undisputed kings of Manhattan's organized crime. And where power grew, violence was never far behind.

Too soon I saw the familiar wrought-iron gates and perfectly manicured topiary of Gramercy Park. Like Madison Avenue, this part of town alternately intimidated and infuriated me, but I had to admit that Troy knew how to treat a partner. I left my bicycle with the astonished concierge and then entered the elevator. This new hotel was at the pinnacle of New York chic. If Troy could afford to put my parents up here, he must be doing even better with his Defenders than I'd thought. The elevator operator wore a red velvet jacket with gold epaulets and embossed buttons. He seemed a little disdainful of my presence; his elevator was apparently used to more elegant personages.

"Penthouse?" he said, incredulously, when I named the floor.

"I'd ride up with the freight, but I don't think my daddy would appreciate it," I said sweetly.

"Your daddy . . ." He cleared his throat. "Mr. Hollis?"

I nodded.

He turned back to the controls, but I enjoyed the chagrined blush on the nape of his neck the entire ride up. To be perfectly honest, though, even I was shocked that Daddy had managed to score himself some of the priciest rooms available in this golden city. He might get the royal treatment in Yarrow and Butte, but New York was an altogether larger pond.

There was only one set of doors on this floor, so I knocked. Mama answered the door in a blue and burgundy kimono that made her look shockingly in fashion.

"Zephyr!" she said, hugging me like we hadn't just seen each other that afternoon. Then again, perhaps we were all better off pretending that had never happened. "Come in, your father's just taking care of his collection."

"Collection" was my mother's euphemism for Daddy's weapons. Silver bullets were a convenient, but blunt-force instrument against many Others--especially vampires. So Daddy and his type of Defenders preferred old-fashioned blessed blades. At this moment, he was engaged in honing his knives to a razor-thin edge. He usually sang while he did this--disturbing, bloody lyrics he tacked on to traditional mining songs. And why not? All he had to do was change the manner of violent death. He and Troy used to get ossified after successful hunts in Yarrow and roar these songs late into the night. It looked to me like Daddy was expecting to have some old-time fun.

"Hello, Daddy," I said, when he didn't look up at me.

"Zephyr," he said. He almost never used my full name. My goodness, he was sulking!

"Daddy, what did you think I was doing in New York, anyway? Bible study and soup kitchens?"

He didn't look up. "I thought," he said, sliding the blade down the wetstone with a shudder-inducing flare, "that you were still my little girl. I guess I was wrong. Cause my little girl doesn't go giving herself away to damn pagan wog demons!"

He stabbed the knife in the table and took out the next from his carrying case.

"He is a djinn, Daddy. A prince of the Djinni, in fact, so you can take your--"

Mama winced. "Honey . . ."

"Doesn't matter what he is--"

"For once we agree, Daddy! It doesn't matter, because I'm a modern woman, in the modern era, in a modern city, and I can damn well give myself away to whoever I please!"

"Whomever, dear."

Daddy and I stared at my mother.

"Winnie," he said, his voice pained, "do you always have to do that?"

"Well, if she's going to teach those unfortunate illiterate immigrants how to read, she ought to at least speak properly."

Daddy and I looked at each other. He rolled his eyes and Mama pretended not to notice. "Sit down, little girl. I'm tired of looking up at you."

And thus the storm passed. Daddy still wasn't happy about Amir, but I could tell that he'd resigned himself to the situation. You might think Daddy is the kind to disown a disobedient daughter, but that's only if you buy his act. Daddy might hate a lot of things, but he loves me and Mama and the rest of us a lot more than that. I don't think there's a thing I could do to push him away. Not really. He'll always be there for me, and I'll always feel like I might want to kill him.

"So," I said, when I had properly admired his knives and tested their balance, "what's this fancy mission Troy's brought you in for? It must be big, if he's putting you up in a posh place like this."

Daddy put the last blade back in his case and folded it up carefully. "Huge, Zeph. A whole sucker nest. Real nasty buggers--all turned too young, they say, and cruel like you wouldn't believe. Torture, you know. Slow deaths. Bleeding, burning. Anyway, some guy has put up the cash to get rid of 'em, but Troy can't do this one on his own. So he asked me to come down."

My hands were shaking. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. "This nest, Daddy . . . they have a name?"

"Yeah. You must've heard of them, with all your do-gooder stuff. Turn Boys."

Bloody stakes
. "And when do you think you're going to . . . ah . . . wipe them out?"

He shrugged. "Next few days. Troy says the client will give us the word when they're all in one place. Then we strike. Why, honey? You want in? I promise Troy will give you a good cut. At least six percent of the take. What this guy's paying us, that's good money."

Six percent? That must mean Daddy was getting at least thirty. He hadn't become the most famous demon hunter in Montana without a knack for deal-making. "Actually, Daddy, I have a problem. See, that nest you want to exterminate? I kind of need them alive for the next few days. I have another . . . uh, contract, and I need to use the Turn Boys to get some information. And if you kill them, no information."

Daddy looked at me like I'd sprouted horns, but Mama just narrowed her eyes.

"It's that Amir, isn't it?" she said.

I swallowed. "Well, yes. He's . . . well, something happened to him, I'm not sure what, but I think it's making him sick and he asked me to help."

Daddy sat up. "And that's it? He asks, you help? Sweetie, your heart's too big for your damn chest."

"Well, he's paying me. He's got a lot of money, you know. And anyway, it's a job and you can see how yours might cause mine some trouble."