Venomous (15 page)

There’s a whiff of lighter fluid, and then the picture goes up in a ball of flames to the tune of everyone in the room cheering, screaming, celebrating the death of ignorance and rigidity and all things old and evil. After a few seconds, Casey produces a bucket of water, puts out the fire, knocks the picture over, and stomps the ashes until Hitler is nothing more than a slimy black stain on the stage. Once finished, he wipes his brow and steps back up to the microphone.

“Glad we could clear that up. Now, on to other business,” he says, suddenly appearing solemn. “Shall we talk tarot?”

Approval booms around us.

“I thought so. As you know, the tarot and its meanings have become an important part of what we stand for. And as you know, we occasionally bring folks we’ve taken a liking to into the Major Arcana.”

Oh my God. My card. I get it.

“We have the Tower manning the bar, a Fool playing a guitar recital uptown, a Hierophant in a beautiful white dress, an Emperor running the show, and a Hermit as our wonderful host. If you ask around, I’m sure the Devil will teach you some fun drinking games, and the Hanged Man will sell you some, ahem, party favors later. But tonight we initiate a new individual into the Major Arcana, a newcomer to our little group, who I, personally, am rather enamored of.”

Renée’s hand tightens on mine.

“If Renée, Randall, or myself have not yet introduced you to this wonderful boy, we will eventually. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we present to you: Locke Vinetti, the Strength.”

The crowd reaches a frenzy. Applause and exaltation fill the ballroom, and a hundred hands rise into the air, throwing fists in celebration to my acceptance. I’m totally dumbstruck by the reactions. A feeling rushes through me unlike any other, and I almost start to choke up. There is no gnawing anxiousness, no seething displeasure—just joy.

Renée kisses my cheek softly, and then gives me a sharp slap on the ass. “Get up there, you silly boy.”

I make my way slowly to the stage, hands patting my back and shoving me forward, almost carrying me to the stage. When I finally reach the edge, Casey pulls me up. And when at last I stare out into the crowd, I see an ocean of pierced faces and colored hair gathered together to honor me, only me, Locke. Pushed into my hand is a tarot card, a depiction of a woman in a white gown, wrenching open the jaw of a fierce lion, her face twisted in a spasm of determination. Casey, at my ear, says, “Welcome to the tarot, ya big hottie.”

The venom is gone tonight, but for the first time that I can remember, I am not alone.

A few hours and a couple more drinks later, I’m making out with Renée in the hallway of her building.

The rest of the party was a whirlwind of celebration. We tore the ballroom to pieces once the music started again, a punk-rock symphony of biblical proportions. At some point they played the
Cabaret
soundtrack, which absolutely destroyed any sanity left in the crowd. People appeared to be having sex up against a few of the columns while a couple of Goths dueled with jagged bottlenecks. Pandemonium, pure and unfiltered. Then Renée introduced me to the wonders of tequila body shots; the salt, lemon, skin, and tongue making the liquor somewhat palatable. Randall even called her cell just to send his blessings to me. “Welcome to our fucked-up world, Stockenbarrel!” he shouted. “My work is done!”

And so now I have Renée pressed hard up against the wall across from the door to her apartment, with one of her hands cradling the back of my head and the other one kneading one of my butt cheeks. We’ve gone from kissing to making out to no-holds-barred dry-humping in less than an hour. I’m not drunk, just tipsy enough to forget everything but this girl. Our tongues are dueling in each other’s mouths. Sweat and makeup’s just being ground into my face, and I couldn’t care less. I’ve never been so consumed with lust in my entire life. All I want, all I need, is her touch and her taste.

Abruptly she ducks out from between me and the wall and giggles as she unlocks and opens her apartment door. I try to recover my senses and mumble, “Well, um, guess I should get out of here—”

“Oh no, you shouldn’t,” she says, twirling on one of her heels.

“What…I mean, it’s late, and I don’t want your aunt—”

She reaches behind herself, and I hear the distinct sound of a zipper.

“Aunt Marie is gone for the night,” she says, biting her lip. “Andrew is over at a friend’s house. The apartment is mine.”

The dress hits the ground with a soft
whoosh.
She stands there, clad only in a white satin corset covered in buckles, a garter belt, her stockings and her heels.

“And I’m yours.”

A million reasons why I shouldn’t do this swim through my head. My mom’s expecting me. We haven’t been dating for long enough. I’m drunk, or drunk enough to know I’m a little drunk, which means that I’m perhaps too drunk, and she’s a little drunk too, and there’s nothing wrong with just a quiet evening, which this evening certainly hasn’t been so far, but—but—

“Renée, maybe we should think—”

“I’ll tell you what,” she says to cut me off, “I’m going to go to my room and light some candles and some incense. You stand out here and think. Think all you want for as long as you want. I’ll wait in my room. And when you’ve thought good and hard about everything, you come inside and I’ll make love to you real slow.” She blows me a kiss and walks slowly into the blackness of her apartment, giving me a shot of her rounded ass bobbing slowly after her before darkness engulfs her.

I think for about twelve seconds, then make sure to lock the door behind me.

H
OW?”
I said, snatching him by the collar and shoving my face into his. “What happens to Renée?”

“My God, your eyes…”

“HOW?!”

“She—she becomes the second Blacklight,” he stuttered, scared. “When it escaped you, the venom looked for the nearest possible person who your darkness rubbed off on, who you left a—an impression on, and it was her.” His face twists in both terror and grief. “She’s the one who does the most damage, who destroys half of the city. With a fresh host, it was unstoppable. God, if you could’ve only seen her, she was magnificent, this mass of black lightning and burning dark light, like some sort of fallen angel from Hell….” His eyes glazed over, and I could almost hear him imagining Renée, a spirit in black wiping out half of New York. “I remember how she laughed when she killed most of the people in Times Square, it was this huge pile of bodies—”

“And you?” I managed. “How’d you become this…thing?”

“Locke.”

“Tell me.”

His eyes squeezed hard shut. “I killed her,” he whispered, “and the venom moved on to me.”

That was all I needed to hear.

“How do we stop it?” I blurted out. My costume rippled, crackled, swirled with my agitation. “We need to stop it. I need to know how the venom can be stopped. There can’t be another Blacklight, do you hear me?”

“I know, I came back here to—”

“SPEAK UP, DAMMIT!”

“TO MEET YOU!” he screamed. “I just wanted to meet you! To see you face-to-face, to tell you what was going to happen, and maybe you could stop it…. They—they wanted me to—to try and make you, convince you to kill yourself, you know, or try and kill you, so the world wouldn’t—”

“THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU!”

“Please stop, I can’t—oh no. Oh God, no.”

His pores turned deep black, and then begin growing into nubs; shapes; long, reaching appendages. The first of the tendrils began to form around his neck and arms, stretching hungrily out and twitching with anxiousness and rage.

“Get away,” he gurgled in a voice only slightly his own. “Get away. It knows who you are, and it won’t stop….” And then his voice became garbled, because out of his mouth grew a mass of slippery, wriggling black tentacles, whipping fiercely. I watched as his legs formed huge, backward-facing spindles, like those of a dog or a goat. For a second there was still the silhouette of a man, hanging in the air, and then it was the creature, this horrible Blacklight from the future, my hideous reflection.

It made a noise, sort of like metal being crushed in a scrapyard, and took its first careful step toward me.

I
S THERE ANYTHING
more satisfying than taking a shower in the bathroom of the girl who you just had a whole lot of noisy sex with? Unfamiliar showers are a pet peeve of mine, so this moment of bliss is less common. I never know how to operate the shower, what knobs to turn where, and what buttons to push this way or that. The water pressure always sucks, the floor feels strange and slippery, and, of course, there’s the pressing ethical question of whether or not you’re allowed to pee on the floor. The shower is one of those private, personal spaces that, through constant daily routine and observant familiarity, you know as your own. Cleaning yourself in someone else’s shower is like being the Jewish friend who was brought along to Sunday mass. This morning, however, was different. Walk in, turn on the water, and do my thing.

Midway through washing my hair, the curtain gets pulled back and I jump. It’s probably Renée, right, but it could be Andrew or Aunt Marie—no glasses means constant paranoia (think Velma from
Scooby-Doo
). Fortunately it is Renée, naked and giving me a smile that I’m pretty sure is reserved just for my lanky ass. Without a word, our bodies mesh together, her breasts slippery against my chest, her lips hot and full and pillowy. As if on cue, everything besides Renée Tomas is gone. Nothing could make me happier than her and here and this.

After we, ahem, wash up for a while, our arms curl around each other and just stand there in the steam, her head cradled under my chin.

“Hey, you,” she says.

“Mmm.”

“So, last night…That was your first time, I take it.”

“Mmm.”

She giggles and runs her index finger back and forth along my skin. God in heaven, yes. “Is that an affirming or denying mumble?”

“Affirming.”

“Right.”

After some silence, I have to ask Stupid Guy Question Number One. “How’d you know?”

She makes a noise in her throat that means that she was expecting this. “There was just that little amount of…unfamiliarity with the procedure, I guess. Don’t worry. You’re a bit of a natural in the first place, and I had fun teaching you new things in the second.” She chuckles. “Corrupting you is kick
ass
.”

And Number Two, of course: “How was I?”

“Good,” she says. “Really good. For your first time, stellar.”

“Really?”

“You just learned as you went along, y’know, placement and such. You were drunk, too…but man. You’re just on the ball when it comes to the little things.”

“Hrm?”

“You were good to my ears. Things like that.”

“Just…reciprocating.”

“You’ll be reciprocating a whole lot if I get my say from now on.”

We take some more silence, occasionally rocking back and forth in each other’s arms. I feel her head twitch, and she stares straight up at me with a reluctant, miserable look.

“Anyone told you about my folks yet?”

The question catches me off guard, and I can’t be clever. “Yeah. I heard about it at school.”

She nods. “I figured.” A pause, then: “It’s okay, you know. We can talk about it, or not, but I just want you to know it’s okay if we do. It’s not forbidden.”

“Okay.”

She keeps her eyes locked into mine. “I don’t sleep with a lot of boys.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“I mean, I have slept with some boys,” she says way too fast. “And some girls. And some of them were for fun, but most of them were only if I really, really cared about them.”

All this is doing is making me think about my girlfriend with other guys, which is the most uncomfortable thing I can imagine, and girls, which is embarrassingly much less so. The venom stirs, mumbling low in its throat. She can feel the change in my body too and holds me out at arm’s length.

“Look, this has a point.”

“What’s that?”

She puts her hand under my chin and guides my eyes to hers.

“That I know last night was a little sudden,” she whispers, and then laughs. “And a little drunken, yeah. But I want you to know…that this isn’t just…I’m not…”

The venom retreats like a wounded animal, and my heart feels like it’s going to burst. I lean forward and kiss her. It’s a
Dawson’s Creek
kiss, an interrupting kiss that lets the other person know that you understand what they’re going to say before you do. Her response is frantic; her hand finds the back of my head and presses. We kiss as if I’m going off to war.

When we come up for air, she looks at me hard. “I’m going to be a bitch now.”

“How so?”

“Are you in love with me, Locke?”

“Oh, you fucking bitch.”

“I’m serious.”

No matter what I answer, I’ll think it’s the wrong thing. Either I take the clingy, emotional path or the totally superficial path. So I go with what I feel. Which is something I rarely do, seeing as going with what I feel usually results in me standing over someone, cackling and sobbing in the same breath, while they rethink why they were fucking with me in the first place. This time, I feel something random and unprovoked and strange and utterly fantastic lying in the depths of my heart. The Great Truth, the Engine of Survival, the Fifth Element.

“Yeah,” I whisper, “I’m pretty sure I am, Renée.”

She looks at me for a bit more and then says, “Yeah, me too.”

We grab each other tight, fearless.

Renée has made it readily apparent that she’s not so adept in the cooking department, and I can make a mean batch of cream-cheese scrambled eggs (hey, you have a little brother, you learn to cook some fabulous platters that Mom wouldn’t tolerate if she was around). But as I come through the hallway into the glaring daylight of the kitchen, I realize that I’m in trouble.

Because Andrew’s sitting there reading the funnies. The thin newspaper is bunched in his clenched-white hands. He looks like a big, mean, stupid, and thoroughly pissed-off gorilla who likes the Wu-Tang Clan. He looks like someone who’s just found the guy who fucks his sister in their kitchen.

I freeze and let cold wash over me and come to rest in the pit of my stomach. A voice in the back of my mind reminds me of something I heard on the Discovery Channel: If a bear attacks, make yourself as big and loud as possible to chase it off. But before I can lift my arms and yell, “GO! AWAY!” Andrew takes a sip of his orange juice and mumbles, “Sid-down, Vinetti.”

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

This is really, REALLY not the time.

Say “make me”! That’d be awesome! Just try it. “Make me, Andrew.” It’d be like you’re in a Robert Rodriguez movie!

I sit slowly, clasping my hands in front of me and regulating my breathing. The venom crouches calmly on its haunches, preparing to launch if necessary. There’s a good chance I’m going to bleed furiously at the end of the conversation, and I have to be ready for that. In the meantime, I can just pray that Renée stays in her room—or is wearing headphones.

Andrew dramatically folds the paper in front of him and gives me a good, long exhale. “You spent the night here, I see.”

I nod. Well, glad we got that out of the way.

“You know about my parents, don’t you? Someone must’ve told you, if not Renée.”

Change of direction much? I look up into his eyes, which are still hard, but now with prepared stoniness rather than anger or pride. There’s no right way to go about this, is there? How the fuck can I answer that? Why does this big fucking monkey have to bring that shit up to me? The venom spins inside me, like a top, frustrated, backed into a corner. After last night, after that shower just now, I can’t fight Andrew.

“Yeah,” I croak through a mouthful of the venom. “I’m really sorry.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” His eyes flitter like those of a trapped animal, like he can’t focus on anything for too long or else it becomes his parents. “I’m incredibly territorial about my sister, Locke. Don’t know what you heard, but my parents died ’cause of me, so I tend to think of myself as her protector.”

“They…It wasn’t your fault, Andrew.”

“You SHUT UP!” he screams. There’s no drama or facade to this statement; it’s a primal scream, an uncontrolled blast. I’ve never seen someone get angry and go pale at the same time. The screaming stops as abruptly as it began. “Shut up. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Vinetti, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to have an opinion on the matter. I made a mistake and they died because of it, simple as that. Have you ever lost a parent, Locke?”

“My dad left us, and I…think it’s ’cause I’m such a spaz.” Jesus. I’ve never said that out loud before. “But it’s not the same thing.”

“Damn right it isn’t,” he snaps. “You don’t know
shit
. You don’t have any fucking
idea.
My dad left a long time ago, and it wasn’t because of a choice, it was because he was addicted to crystal, and we couldn’t get him to stop pawning off about seventy percent of everything we owned. You can’t—you can’t comprehend what the fuck this family has been through just ’cause your dad left…. It’s not even the same species.”

I shut my eyes tight as the venom brays for blood. Before I can stop myself, the heat behind my eyes gets too high and I blurt out, “Well, what
I
went through was pretty fucking bad, so how about you watch your mouth, okay?”

He sneers for a second and then says, “Fair enough. My apologies.”

The venom is shifting like an eel in a coffee can. Andrew’s still being an asshole, and the urge to smash his face in is incredible, but something’s off here. He’s articulate. He’s giving me an inch, for once. What’s the fucking deal?

“I am very
territorial
of my sister,” he repeats, “no matter what kind of psycho shit she’s into. She’s my
family
. And she…” I can see the words arranging themselves in his head. “Renée hasn’t done too good since it happened. She’s not happy a lot. She’s full of fucking pills most of the time, but they keep her pretty cohesive and carefree, so I don’t say nothing about it, but I’ll tell you that I don’t like it, and I hate these freaks she surrounds herself with. I hate that mincing queer buddy of yours, I hate the tall Mohawked black kid, but most of all, I’m
beside myself
that she’s ended up with
you
.”

“Tough shit, she’s my girlfriend.” Again, the venom seems to speak for me, standing up when I don’t have the spine to.

“Watch yourself, Vinetti.”

“Thanks for the advice, Andrew. There a fucking point to this?”

His eyes harden on me, and I can feel his anger in the air between us. “The pills keep her okay,” he seethes, ignoring my statement. “And so do you. Apparently.”

Something catches in my throat. The venom stops in its tracks, somewhere between infuriated and confused. ”Go on.”

“She talks about you quite a bit. She’s had little pep talks about you with me, which is why I don’t destroy your ass regularly for touching her, though I will say, the desire to kill you has been somewhat overwhelming.” He sneers, disgusted. “And it pisses me off that you get your spastic little hands on her whenever you feel like it. It…
incenses
me. Fancy word, you like that? I didn’t get into our school ’cause of Mommy and Daddy or basketball or any corner-cutting bullshit—I studied my ass off and got the grades I deserve. You think you’re King Shit because you’re all fucking tragic, but you’re no smarter or classier than me.” I feel his eyes skim me up and down. Planning on where he could break me. “But you keep her okay. She’s happy a lot. She sings fucking Joy Division in the shower again and can get out of bed on her own. And if that’s the case, maybe she’ll be okay…y’know, finally. So I want to make a deal with you. Set some things straight.”

He stares, waiting for me to reply, but all I’m doing is focusing on not going on a rampage. Think of Renée. He’s doing this for her, and so are you.

“Keep her happy,” he rasps out. “Don’t hurt her, don’t treat her like a piece of meat, and we’ll be okay. I don’t
like you
, Vinetti, but if you make her happy enough to forget what happened, then I can stand you. And I think that’s all we both want.”

“So basically, you’re telling me that if I act like an asshole, you’re going to kill me.”

“Yeah. But if you keep yourself in check, I’ll leave you alone. And…” He sighs, resigned. “She asked me to do this part a week or two ago—I’ll start calling you Locke now.” He stares for a bit longer, and then says, “You have a little brother, right? So you get where I’m at.”

I want to be angry. I want to go on a rampage of pure hatred. But the last words kill me, and all the hot, rebellious anger behind the venom deflates, leaving me with just the horrible black depression. He’s right. I think of Lon and I know exactly where he’s at. As much as I want to hate, empathy wins this round.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, okay.”

Before I can sputter out more brilliant insight, Renée walks into the room singing, “I don’t hear eggs cooking!” and then halts at the doorway with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. Andrew looks up at her with a mixture of pride and fear and whispers, “Hey.”