Wild Blood (3 page)

“Evening, son. I see your mother finally got around to telling you the truth.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

“Does it make any difference? Would you have loved us any less?”

“No. I'll always love you—both of you—no matter what.”

“We know that now. But the fear of losing love makes cowards of us all.” Will Cade puffed a cloud of aromatic smoke into the air. “You're going to try and find your natural parents.” It wasn't a question.

“Yes.”

“Do yourself a favor, son. Leave it alone. Your mother and I were the only real parents you had. Leave it at that.”

“I can't, Daddy. You know that.”

William Cade nodded and lifted a hand to his face. As he did so, blood as dark and thick as maple syrup ran down his arm and splattered against the bare floor boards. “Just be careful, boy. The journey you're about to undertake will be a dark one. Seeing how I'm dead, I'm not allowed to go into specifics. All I can do is warn you and give some advice. Whether you'll remember it once you wake up is another thing, though. But pay heed: whatever happens, whoever the father of your flesh proves to be, always remember whose son you are at heart.”

Skinner wanted to ask his dead father what he meant by that, but Will Cade turned back to the closet. The door was open and Skinner could see his mother, wearing the same dress they'd buried her in that afternoon. She smiled at her husband. It was the happiest Skinner had seen her since his father set off on his hunting trip, all those years ago.

Edna Cade opened her arms to welcome her long-lost groom, her wrinkles and gray hair disappearing as his arms encircled her waist. The last Skinner Cade saw of his parents, before the closet door shut itself, they were younger than he was and locked in a lovers' embrace.

Chapter Three

The night was warm and sticky—hardly unusual in New Orleans, even in spring. Johnny paused to check out his reflection in a nearby storefront. He was wearing an appropriately ironic t-shirt with a keffiyeh-like scarf loosely looped about his neck, along with skinny jeans and leather Chuck Taylors. He noticed with some dismay that his carefully mussed coif was degenerating into the real thing, thanks to the humidity. As he leaned against a parked car to retie his high-tops, he caught sight of graffiti on the wall across the street:
VARGR RULE
.

Arcane messages were hardly uncommon in that part of town, though the word ‘vargr' was new to him. It looked like it was missing a vowel or two. He shrugged and walked on.

The bar was located in the old commercial district near the Tulane and Loyola campuses. After dark the street became the province of students and other citizens out for a good time. The building to the right had long since been demolished, providing the neighborhood with an impromptu parking lot and graffiti gallery. The bar had changed names and owners numerous times over the year, but it always managed to remain a live-music venue. The evening was already well underway. A handful of Tulane students dressed in Calvin Kleins and polo shirts stood on the street corner, eyeing a gaggle of skate punks with elaborately decorated boards loitering in the parking lot, smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

Johnny glanced at the graffiti encrusted wall more out of reflex than genuine interest. Twice a year the landlord whitewashed the exposed firewall under the impression it foiled the spray-can artists when all it did was provide a fresh canvas for creative vandalism. As far as he could tell it was the same old scrawled depositions of teenage love, the inevitable “Class Of” bullshit, the handful of local bands making use of all the free publicity they could get, and a spray-stencil of a grinning man with a pipe clenched in his teeth. Among the overlapping conglomeration of slogans, names and insults, he spotted the words
VARGR RULE
written in paint the color of blood.

Two surly young men flanked the front door. One sporting a bicycle-spoke Mohawk and muscular arms wreathed in cobras and thorns, the other sporting a white forelock that hung down over one eye. Both wore battered leather jackets with sleeves that looked as if they'd been chewed on by a rather large, unfriendly animal, the tattered remnants of leather and silk lining dangling like strands of flesh from a gnawed bone.

The one with the white forelock thumped the flat of his palm against Johnny's shoulder, halting him in midstride. “Five dollars,” he said.

“Whassamatta, Sunder?” rumbled the spike-haired giant. “This dude tryin' t' skip the cover?”

“Naw, I don't think he got th' cojones for that, Hew,” the other replied, daring Johnny to challenge the assessment.

He flushed as he handed over a sweat-dampened five-dollar bill. The one called Sunder grunted and transferred it to his compatriot, who held a welter of crumpled paper money in his massive tattooed fist. They then stepped aside, allowing Johnny entrance, but he could still feel their eyes on him.

The only lighting in the place was provided by the neon beer signs hanging over the bar and a half dozen stage lights suspended over the cramped stage like metal bats. Although the establishment was supposedly air conditioned, the press of bodies and the propped-open front door effectively cancelled it out.

The band was already into its first set by the time he arrived, not that Johnny cared. The throb of the bass and the drums threatened to rattle the fillings out of his teeth. His ear drums reflexively sealed themselves in self-defense.

The three musicians on stage wore the same ragged leather jackets as the brutes taking cover. The lead guitarist was medium height, with long, cream-colored hair and a wolf's head tattooed onto the top of his left hand. The bass player's head was shaved close on both sides, while his reddish hair hung down his back like a horse's mane. The drummer was bald as an egg, giving him a vulnerable, almost babyish appearance and flailed at his kit like a wife-beater. The bass drum was decorated with a wolf's head, its mouth open in a snarl, and had bicycle reflectors in place of eyes. Under its slavering jaws was the word
VARGR
in dripping red letters.

Johnny headed toward the bar. All he wanted to do was get himself a beer and bide his time until a suitable candidate for debauchery showed up. The rail was crowded and it took a good deal of elbowing to get his beer. As he lifted his drink to his lips, he was jostled from behind, slopping PBR onto his shirtfront. He turned to curse the person behind him and found himself looking into his own eyes. The illusion was brief but distracting enough for the girl wearing mirrored sunglasses and a black leather jacket with chewed-off sleeves to slide past him and breach the bar.

Johnny forgot his drink. He forgot his place at the bar. Even with the mirrored lenses obscuring her eyes, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Her hair was platinum blonde and looked like it had been styled with a Cuissinart. Her lips and fingernails were the color of fresh blood and she wore a low cut leopard print T-shirt and a pair of leather fetish pants with enough zippers for a motorcycle gang. Although her feet were encased in a pair of red stiletto pumps, she moved like quicksilver on a plate, not even disturbing the head on her beer as she wove through the crowded dance floor.

She was the One. The Target For Tonight. No other woman would satisfy him. It had to be her. Johnny licked his lips in anticipation. He'd screwed punk sluts before. Despite their cultivated decadence, they all proved to be middle-class Catholic school girls at heart.

He watched the girl as she retreated to a table in the corner, parking her tightly trussed rear on a battered leatherette barstool. She sipped her beer and stared in the general direction of the stage without really looking at it.

Johnny walked over and smiled at her. She turned to look at him, reflecting twinned images of his lusting features back at him. “I just wanted you to know that I can die happy, coz I've just seen a piece of heaven,” he said, in his most sincere pick-up voice.

Her painted mouth bowed into a smile. It was impossible to tell if she was genuinely receptive or simply mocking him. She pursed her lips and lifted a hand to stroke his face, the tip of her forefinger resting on his jaw. Still smiling her eyeless smile, she tapped the cleft of his chin as if dotting an “i.”

Johnny lifted his hand to his face. When he drew his palm away, it was smeared with blood.

Johnny leaned against the lavatory in the men's room, squinting at the smeared mirror as he dabbed at his chin with a wad of wet toilet paper. The amplified roar of the band made the sink rattle in time with the music.

Normally he would have written off the girl in the leopard print shirt as a head-case and set his sights on far more predictable prey. But he could not get her out of his mind. He could still smell her and feel the feather-light touch of her hand on his face. Crazy bitch or not, he was going to make another try.

The punk chick was weird, but he was certain he could bring her down. It was just a question of when. It had been so long since any of his weekend conquests had proven a challenge. He had almost forgotten what it was like to pursue a woman worth the effort. He smiled at his smudged reflection, his self-confidence restored. He would make her his. And the consummation of the evening's chase would be the fuck to end all fucks, of that he had no doubt.

Suddenly there was movement behind him, and he saw the reflection of the punk girl. It felt as if Johnny's legs had disappeared and the only thing keeping him from falling down was his hold on the sink. She was standing behind him, smiling at him. A crimson fingernail tugged on the zipper of her leather jacket, and with a slow snarl the black leather parted, revealing white flesh. Her breasts were perfect, full and without sag. The nipples were round and pink, like the eyes of a white rabbit. The zipper continued its downward track, exposing her second set of breasts, set on the split of her ribs. They were smaller than the first pair, and looked more like of a young teenager.

At first Johnny thought she was wearing a pair of foam rubber “joke” breasts, like the ones for sale in every other gift shop on Bourbon Street, but he didn't see a seam of any kind, and he could have sworn the second set of nipples had hardened as they were exposed to the air. Was it possible he'd been drugged? Were her fingernails coated in some kind of hallucinogen? That thought was almost as crazy as having multiple pairs of tits, but at least it kept him from having to accept what he saw in the mirror as reality.

Despite his revulsion, Johnny could not bring himself to look away as the zipper continued its downward journey, revealing a third set of breasts located just above her belt buckle. Now completely exposed, she stood with her hands on her hips and sneered, daring Johnny to turn and face her.

He came to on his hands and knees, his body racked by muscle spasms. He must have blacked out. The stink of fresh bile joined the odor of stale urine, making the air even fouler than it had been before.

I am drunker than I thought, he told himself.

When he returned to the dance floor he saw the punk chick was at her table. Her jacket was open, and she was still wearing her leopard-print shirt. She smiled at him as he walked by.

This was getting too damned weird. All he wanted was to get laid. Was that really too much to ask? Johnny looked forward to his weekends and the chance to exert his control over others via silk ties and bed posts. Now all of that was being turned upside down by a platinum blonde slut in fuck-me shoes. He pushed his way to the bar, eager to blur the memory of six nipples pointed in his direction. Somewhere around his third gin and tonic, he realized they'd switched bands. He looked around, searching the bar for sign of the girl with the mirrored eyes. His shoulders slumped upon realizing she was gone. There were plenty of women still hanging around, but as far as he was concerned they were nothing more than consolation prizes.

A tall, leggy secretary who looked like she'd stepped out of a music video made her interest in him quite clear while borrowing a light for her cigarette, but he could not bring himself to respond to her overtures. He paid for his drinks and headed for the door.

The humid night air closed around him like a sweaty palm. He loosened the knot on his keffiey, grimacing as his stomach began a series of queasy barrel rolls. By the end of the block he was leaning against a telephone pole studded with rusty staples and the faded tatters of band flyers, wiping the sweat from his upper lip with a shaky hand.

Christ, I must be getting old! Maybe I should call a cab, he thought, and then shook his head. In a couple more blocks he'd be able to catch either the streetcar or a bus, and the fresh air would do him good. Suddenly his guts violently surged and he staggered into a nearby alley and puked next to a dumpster.

Maybe I'm sick. The flu or something. I must have picked up some kind of bug at work. His hands trembled as he wiped at his lips.

It wasn't until he heard the growling sound that Johnny realized he wasn't alone in the alley. At first he assumed he'd surprised a stray dog raiding unsecured garbage cans. Johnny peered into the alley, trying to locate the animal. The last thing he needed to do was trip over the damned thing in the dark. He edged back toward the street, trying not to make any abrupt moves that might provoke the animal. The growl gave way to an agonized yelp and then a gray blur shot towards him from the darkness, striking his kneecap and knocking him into the side of the dumpster. He vaguely registered the image of a Labrador retriever bolting towards the street.

“Goddamn mutt …” he groaned as he struggled to his feet, only to freeze upon seeing what lurked at the end of the alley.

There were five of them, their pelts shining greasily in the dim light. At first he thought they were dogs, but then he saw their hands. The things were gathered around what remained of a German shepherd. The poor animal lay on its side, legs twitching blood bubbling from its nostrils. One of the creatures—its fur the color of clotted cream—squatted next to the dying animal, lolling its tongue in parody of its suffering, before savagely ripping out its throat.