The Pardoner's Tale Read online

  "I was seventeen. It was just before I left home. It was why I left home. And it was an accident. I'd locked myself in my room. I was doing that a lot because I was terrified I'd wolf out at the wrong time. My dad assumed... I guess he thought I was doing drugs because I would turn my stereo up loud and take my phone off the hook. One night he let himself into my room and..." I made the clawing gesture.

  Alex stopped pacing and stared down at me. Then he motioned for the cigarette. He took a long drag, held it, then exhaled smoke through pursed lips. "What about your mother?" He asked finally.

  "She died when I was ten. Cancer."

  "What'd you do? After you...."

  "Killed him? I ate him."

  The expression on Alex's face was so worth it.

  "I'm kidding, man. I'm kidding. Relax."

  Alex handed the cigarette back and sat down next to me. "Hey, who am I to criticize? I'm a vampire."

  "I didn't really eat him. I dumped him in the woods. They found his body, assumed he'd been attacked by wild animals, and came to tell me. The autopsy confirmed that there was no other method of death. Like, he wasn't killed and dumped. They decided the lack of blood at the scene was because the animals had dragged him around.

  "That's the main reason I moved to the apartment. My room was covered in blood. I cleaned it and painted over it and replaced the carpet, but I could still smell it. I couldn't live like that. What about you? Your parents."

  "They're alive. I haven't seen them or contacted them in ten years, but I looked them up once I left Xyj'Ru. They had me declared dead three years ago. I've got two sisters, a brother-in-law, and a nephew."

  We lapsed into silence. There wasn't really anything more to say; at least not on that topic. It was a nice night. Clear, chilly, and sitting there in the park the dominant smells were dirt and plants and small animals like squirrels and rats. There were a few stray cats as well, and somewhere there were ducks. I could smell a pond, so there were probably also fish and turtles.

  Alex's shoulder was pressed against mine and he had his eyes closed. His soda cup was clutched in his right hand. I thought he'd fallen asleep. I envied him. For a vampire, he was a pretty normal person. A little immature, but very human.

  "Hey, Nicky? I'm Hungry."

  I was about to make some sarcastic remark when I realized there was something different about the way he said "hungry." I thought back through all the days and weeks we'd known each other and I couldn't think of any time he'd fed. Not with me knowing about it, at least. Aside from stopping my lip from bleeding, anyhow, which hadn't been a lot of blood, relatively speaking.

  I used my limitless mental faculties to process things. "Uh," I said. "We'll talk about this tomorrow." Wise words. Wise words, indeed.

  We walked the streets and roamed through the park, but saw nothing more interesting than hookers and their clients making arrangements. Just before sunrise, we went back to the restaurant to wait for Buck. We saw his replacement go in, then a few minutes later Buck came out. We followed after him like stray dogs might.

  We followed the same procedure as we had the day before. This time, after we'd gotten some sleep and Buck had gone to run some errands, I took a long, hot shower. We made use of Buck's washing machine and got ourselves looking somewhat respectable again.

  "We should get the car," I said while Alex studied a pile of individual socks and attempted to pair them all. The car was still parked in the lot at the hotel. I assumed it would be safe there. People going on trips by bus were likely to leave their cars parked there for more than a day or two, but I didn't want to push my luck and find out it had been towed somewhere.

  "I should have a real Meal," Alex said. He tossed a balled-up pair of socks at me.

  I caught it and put it in my bag. "I don't want to know what this entails, do I?"

  Alex shrugged. "Might as well see it. We've got to get the car, anyhow. We could combine the two."

  I had complained that I didn't know much about vampires. I was about to get another lesson.

  The second we stepped on the bus an assortment of foul smells assaulted me: urine, shit, garbage, sickness, sex, sweat, and the musk of domesticated animals. The sticky-sweet odor of rotting food and the antiseptic stink of industrial disinfectant mixed with the baby powder and candy scent of children. All of this was carried on the common thread of despair. Even the infants had begun to think that this life was nothing but pain. There was not one happy soul anywhere on the bus. Except for Alex. He inhaled the scents and emotions, cherishing them with as much fervor as I rejected them. A delicate cast of pink touched his cheeks and his eyes were bright with this early phase of hunting.

  I pitched my voice low so only Alex would hear, although considering the volume of the conversations around us, it might not have been necessary. "Why are we doing this?"

  Alex's reply was just as low. "How do you decide what you're going to have for supper?"

  "I go to the grocery store."

  "Exactly. Think of this as the human equivalent of the lobster tank. Only instead of tapping on the glass to decide which bottom-feeding shit eater you'll take home, you're much closer to your choice.

  "Essentially," he said, the faintest hint of a smile playing on his lips, "if you're not Kin you're kibble."

  I didn't need to kill for food and I'd never had the desire to kill for sport. Most of my life had been spent passing myself off as a normal human being. This was one thing I hadn't really thought about the whole time Alex had been creeping into my life ñ how he had dealt with his need for blood. How often he'd needed to feed.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Alex's gentle tugging on my sleeve. "That one," he said. He pointed to a rail-thin woman about to get off the bus. She swayed with the motion of the bus, looking as if her legs would collapse under her at any moment.

  We stood behind her, flanking her, although there was no need. She was so high on methadone that anyone could have handled her. Alex had chosen the easiest target: slow, helpless, and likely to not protest or struggle too much or too loudly.

  We followed her off the bus. Alex paused and looked around, lighting a cigarette. The other people walked off, went into stores and homes, and our quarry staggered and swayed down the street like a marionette in a child's hands.

  Alex quirked an eyebrow at me after he smoked half his cigarette. It was time.

  Even at a slow pace, we caught up with her quickly and then got in front of her. As we passed a narrow alley, Alex ducked into it while I stopped to tie my shoe, directly in the woman's path. The woman stopped and looked down at me as if she couldn't figure out how to walk around me. That gave Alex all the time he needed.

  The woman made no sound when Alex grabbed her. The only sound ñ barely perceptible even to me ñ was the sound of her sweatshirt tearing as he pulled it away from her throat. I moved closer to the end of the alley, keeping watch. The street contained mostly shops that had closed a few hours (or perhaps years) earlier. Pedestrian traffic was light and cars slid by without any indication the drivers even glanced my way.

  I turned and looked in the alley. Alex's back was to me. I could see the woman's face; her head was resting on his shoulder. Something like pleasure had torn through the drug-induced fog and gave a light to her eyes that had probably been gone for years. For an instant she was the beautiful girl she had been before she found drugs.

  Alex lowered her to the ground gently, propping her against the wall. She looked like she'd just fallen asleep. Alex crouched next to her for a minute and smoothed her hair away from her face. "The end," he said. "No more addiction. No more pain. No more troubles. More than likely, her family will be glad they don't have to worry about her anymore."

  "Don't the drugs affect you at all?"

  "A little, yeah." Alex nodded slowly. "It'll burn off much faster, though. You shouldn't let me drive. Just in case. And feeding makes me a little wobbly anyhow. Come on. We can't keep standing here. Someone will remember us."

 
We walked the rest of the way to the car.

  ***

  Another night passed. In the morning, we went to the Central Pratt Library and started our research into the origin and area of Howler. Alex and I sat side-by-side, hunched over newsprint and microfilm copies of the community's free, weekly paper, reading the crime blotter and "feature" stories, and the cross-referencing them with the state-wide publications. We also pulled video footage from local news broadcasts when we found something that seemed particularly relevant.

  Evidence seemed to put his first appearance in the early 1980s. "I forgot how bad the hair was in 1984," Alex said as he skimmed through a disc of nightly news footage. "Always liked the Mod look of the sixties, myself." He looked up and found me staring. "I watch movies! I'm only twenty-three, I swear."

  "Thirty-three, with a technicality."

  "Technicality, schmecnicality. Give me the list."

  I slid the paper over and he marked off several tick boxes. Then he attacked the page with a ruler and a crayon he'd found wedged under the microfiche.

  "Wish I had some other colors," he muttered and continued drawing, using hash marks and dots to fill in and shade the graph that was taking shape.

  Finally, he leaned back and let out a long breath. "I was a math major. Probability. Statistics. Graphing." He turned his graph so I could see it and explained what it showed.

  "See, this is the general region Buck gave us. Operating just in those borders, using the reports you flagged as supernatural, we get this smaller area. I drew boxes to indicate the individual assaults.

  "The different patterns in the box indicate the intensity of the encounters. They go from what's probably what you and I felt, to murder."

  "What are the question marks?"

  "If the same person or people were involved in another altercation on another day. Buck said Howler can only touch you once, so either it wasn't Howler, so it's not part of our pattern and just coincidental, or there was something different about the situation. Like there was a third person the second time, and he's the one that got touched and the other two just got roped into it."

  I stared at Alex with something like awe. "You've been holding out on me. And all this time I thought you were an idiot."

  Alex smiled almost shyly. "I am an idiot. I'm just quick with numbers."

  "No, you did great! This is really useful."

  He shrugged. "It's not as good as knowing what the key is for."

  I grinned and scratched the back of his head. Alex wiggled like a puppy. "I've got a feeling we'll figure that one out, eventually."

  We collected our data. We stopped on the way back to the diner and bought a box of colored pencils and a pad of actual graph paper to make Alex's job easier. He continued to draw his charts and graphs. I felt smug. Satisfied. Cocky.

  We were going to beat Howler. Then, flushed with our success, we'd take on Xyj'Ru and defeat him, too. I just knew it.

  It was nearly midnight when Alex declared himself "spent" and insisted that his "head would explode" if he graphed any more. I suggested we go out drinking.

  We managed to drink quite a lot between midnight and one, and by closing time neither of us was feeling any pain. Our conversation had degraded into slurred jokes and snorting laughter. The fact that we now had two demons to deal with instead of just one was the furthest thing from our minds.

  Until Alex pulled his keys from his pocket.

  Alex took the key off his ring and spun it on the table. It turned in a quick circle, ending each time with the teeth pointed at me.

  Alex picked it up again and made a turning motion. "Maybe it's the key to your heart," he teased.

  I snatched the key from his hand and examined it closely. It was heavier than I expected it to be. The wood was dense and as far as I could tell, very old. It was also remarkably clean. He'd been carrying it in his pocket and there wasn't a nick or a scratch on it. It was cool to the touch and didn't seem to be warming in my hand.

  "You have no idea what it opens?"

  "Not a clue. He kept it on a brass ring and would carry it around with him. He'd spin the whole ring on his finger like some sheriff in a Western."

  "You never saw him open anything with it? Never heard him mention what it was for?"

  Alex shook his head vehemently. "I thought it was just a good luck charm. I took it because I thought it'd piss him off."

  "It worked."

  "I mean I thought he'd say something like 'that miserable shit' and forget about it! I didn't think he'd, you know, try to kill me because of it!"

  "You spent a decade learning from a demon and never really picked up on the fact that they're ruthless and needlessly savage? Considering that's what he was teaching you to be, I'd think that fact would've sunk in."

  "In my defense, time moves differently in the demon realm so I wasn't really aware it was ten years. I mean look at me! I don't look ten years older, do I?"

  "Vampire!" I shouted and smacked Alex in the forehead. Fortunately we were the only customers in the bar. "You don't age at all, you idiot," I hissed. "You're never going to look older! You didn't learn anything. You know even less about what you are than I do. You don't know anything about the demon that was keeping you. You don't know anything about anything. I'm surprised you were graduating college!"

  Alex slid down in his seat until his chin was level with the table. His knees bumped against mine. "Hand me over to him."

  "I should."

  "I wish you would! I'm useless. You hate me. You'd rather be alone and miserable, anyhow, so what use am I?"

  I stood up, grabbed his collar, and hauled him to his feet. "We're going outside. Right now." I was growling. Alex's eyes moved back and forth across my face, rapidly scanning me.

  "Are you... changing?"

  "No. I'm just going to kill you." I shook him so hard his teeth clicked.

  His eyes darkened and his lips pulled back in a smile that was more like a grimace. I threw an extra ten on the table and we slowly made our way out of the bar while the bartender focused on the television. All the better to not identify you, my dear.

  We walked stiffly, my hand gripping his shoulder so tightly that I threw him off-balance. He latched on to my arm. "Nice and slow," I growled. "We're just two drunk guys trying to get home. Don't look at anyone. Don't make eye contact. Don't draw attention to us."

  We turned the corner and stood in a narrow alley that angled away from the main street. I shifted my grip and stood Alex in front of me. My thumbs pressed into his throat and he coughed as he struggled to catch his breath.

  "Nicky?"

  "Howler."

  "How? Buck said...."

  "Maybe because we're different. Maybe Howler got a rush from shifter blood, too. Remember that? Remember what it was like to taste my blood?"

  I backed Alex up against the wall and shoved. His head connected with the rough brick. Something cracked. I hoped it wasn't his skull, but I couldn't stop myself. I pressed against him and pinned him there, much like he'd done to me the first night we met. "You want to taste it again, don't you. You want to open my vein and drink me dry, isn't that right?"

  We were standing so close I could taste his breath. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck starting to rise. Alex's hands were scrabbling under my jacket, pulling at my shirt.

  Even in the dim light I could see that his eyes were almost entirely pupil. He was in hunter mode, as was I, but he was manipulating the fight in an entirely different direction.

  He raked his nails across the small of my back. I jerked forward and smacked him against the wall again. This time I knew I heard something crack.

  I forced my hand behind his head and felt something warm and wet. Blood was also welling up in the furrows along my back. "It's not working," he said. Then Alex turned things up a notch.

  I kissed him. It wasn't a polite sort of kiss, either. It was open-mouthed, lingering, and frantic. My fingers were tangled in his hair. I could feel the blood from the cut
on his scalp as it oozed through my fingers. A line of sweat rolled down my back and stung as it passed over the scratches. Alex's hands were in the pockets of my jeans, groping, then he was kneading my back again.

  I opened my eyes when warm metal touched my skin. Alex's eyes were open and I could tell by the feel of his mouth against mine that he was grinning. I looked at the hand he held up and out to the side.

  An iron pellet trembled in his palm.

  "Next time," I said as we straightened our clothes, "tell me if you're going to turn up the sex."

  "That wasn't me. If it was another taste of you it wanted, I was just going to draw your blood and then trap it when it went in to feed. You're the one who got all kissy with me."