Part 3 (2/2)
Alek took the rice from him. ”He's a good kid. A little slow, but he has dedication.” He served himself some chicken and a little beef. ”From the Midwest, right? A runaway?”
Book nodded between mouthfuls. ”Mother's dead. His daddy was a shotgun preacher. You know how that goes.”
Alek felt cold; the food stung his mouth. The pattern again. His kind, no matter how evolved they were, were not destined for happiness; it was a fact Alek had come to understand a long time ago. They fell from one kind of death to another, death of spirit, death of reason. Some, like he and Booker, found the Coven and were thus saved from themselves. Others were lost forever. Like Debra.
Alek said, ”The Father gave me this Sean Stone character.”
Booker choked, coughed, wiped his mouth with his napkin. ”Jeezus, no wonder you're sulking. You have my condolences, brother.”
Alek arched an eyebrow. ”That bad?”
”This is strictly hearsay, you hear,” Book said, pointing his fork, ”but I heard he drew a six-inch switchblade on some dumb punk in a downtown bar, gave the kid a second smile.” Booker leaned forward, dropped his voice to a conspiratorial hush, ”Then, believe it or not, brother, he drank the kid's f.u.c.king blood.”
Alek had to all but sew his jaw back up into place. ”You're s.h.i.+tting me?”
Book smiled, wagged his head No s.h.i.+t.
”So he's a bad seed.”
”Bad seed? Way it's being told among the brothers, he's the whole f.u.c.kin' crop.”
Alek was silent and busy pus.h.i.+ng his food into artful patterns on his plate while he tried to take hold of all this new information. Who was this Stone character, then? A sniper from one of the Coven-decimated hives? He tried to imagine this whelp imbued with G.o.d alone knew what kind of power creeping around their Covenhouse. Either the Coven as a whole had gone mad to let in this crazy, or someone was serious about marking Amadeus. He supposed he could appeal to the elders, maybe even Rome, but that would take weeks. And what good would it do ultimately? Circ.u.mstantial evidence was just that. Unpat. Even a Covenmaster could not halt the flux and flow of the Coven over a vision of paranoia, no matter the power of the Seer he was. Such was the nature of politics--and religion, unfortunately--to push even the supernatural to the back burner in the name of social evolution. Alek had heard, in the far distance of many conversations, that the Vatican had begun disavowing its exorcists in the very same manner. What would come next? An extraterrestrial origin for vampirism for a whole? Or maybe the disease theory again?
Book rubbed his hands on his jeans and took a long sip of his c.o.ke. ”So, when are you and Mr. Pleasantries getting it together?”
Book's voice broke his train of aimlessly wandering thoughts and brought him back to earth. ”Tonight, I suppose.” Alek picked at a fragment of chicken. It was almost too spicy, like medicine. He reached for his sake, finished it. He pushed his mostly full plate away. The spices were turning in his stomach. ”You?”
Book nodded, grabbed the ginger beef platter and refilled his plate. ”Though I'm sure we'll probably spend the whole night at Dairy Queen talking history of Catholicism over shakes. You know how whelps are the first time out.”
”I remember.”
”Robot and me spent the whole night at a marquee on Delancey Street watching a triple feature John Ford fest. They say you never forget your first time out. Or your first kill. You remember your first time?”
Alek s.h.i.+vered. Darkness and the odor of blood and metal commingled on his tongue. Communion was done in bloodsong and wafers were made of steel. So hot in here, the air spiced and p.r.i.c.kling his skin. Suddenly he wanted the cold and the open city. He needed to see the winter sky.
”Alek?”
”What?”
”You remem--”
”That was a long time ago, Book. A lifetime ago. I really don't want to talk about this anymore.”
Book looked hurt.
”Look, I'm sorry if I seem sulky; I'm not being good company, I know. But I really don't want to talk about this anymore right now.”
Book brightened. ”All right, we'll talk about something else. I have an extra ticket for La Boheme next Sat.u.r.day at the Lincoln Center if you want. You know how I hate seeing the ending all alone...” He paused, the last of his rice on his fork. ”Go home, brother. You're not yourself.”
”Good advice, Doctor.” Alek stood and reached for his coat.
Book finished the last mouthful and pushed back his chair. ”Drive you?”
”That's okay.” Alek dropped a Was.h.i.+ngton onto the table. ”I need a walk.”
”Well, man,” said Book, forever the kla.s.s klown, even now, ”while you're out get yourself a Damocles cross and a whole lotta garlic if you're gonna be hanging with that dude tonight.”
Alek shook his head, and a moment later he smiled.
The carousel: it was garbed in its wrinkled and weatherworn tarpaulin skin, its s.h.i.+ny-worn animals caged in a miserable circular rictus like wors.h.i.+pers around a dead high altar. Alek studied it from a bench, letting the cold bite through his coat with its little terrier teeth.
A carriage horse clip-clopped down the asphalt trail winding through the park, past darker avenues in the trees that undoubtedly concealed any number of dangers. The lovers in the carriage were silent and busy, as if their pa.s.sion had magically pushed back the darkness and the ghosts haunting the garbage-strewn paths, driven far away the homeless skittering between the islands of streetlamp lights and the rats wrestling under the sewer grates. The carriage approached, then rumbled away into the distant roar of the city.
Above the canopy of the carousel, Alek could make out a few of the brighter stars through the haze of light and air pollution that constantly blanketed the city in an unhealthy golden brown atmosphere. Sirius. The jackal that called the Nile to crest. He watched for many minutes as the star grew brighter like a lighted hole punched through black paper. He rose at last only when the sun touched the horizon of cityscape rising like the humps of a leviathan above the trees. Nightfall. The coming dark meant the junkheads and the staggering psychotic homeless would begin their evening stake-outs of park benches.
He shrugged, coughed, his throat raw as sandpaper. His muscles felt shortened and his stomach ached hollowly. Maybe, he thought, if he'd tried to exist on something other than his usual cataclysm of caffeine, booze and aspirin he'd be better suited to tonight. Right now, though, the thought of food turned his stomach inside out.
Tonight.
He and the new one would not spend tonig ht at D airy Queen. He knew that. It would be a disaster. He knew that too. Felt it murmured in his bones. This Sean Stone character didn't need apprentices.h.i.+p; obviously, he needed exorcism.
Alek sighed. For Amadeus. He would endure for Amadeus. Like the Christ that had presently forsaken his race, he would suffer for love.
But first he needed a drink before this h.e.l.lnight began. He picked himself up, shook himself clean of snow, and headed uptown toward Sam's Place.
6.
”Bout time, man,” called a bored Bronx voice when Alek stepped into the studio some minutes before ten, Vincent shooting between his legs like a beast afire. The voice came from a street-smeared blonde figure draped all over his futon and reading his latest issue of The New Yorker, a hand trailing on the floor.
Alek slammed the alleyside door and eyed this pretentious stranger stupid enough to break into a slayer's apartment. Were he among the more impulsive of his kind, the hood would be eviscerated and sitting on the floor in a puddle of his own gore right about now. Lucky for the stranger, Alek preferred explanations first.
He checked the door's many locks, but none of them looked jimmied or otherwise tampered with. He returned his narrow-eyed attention to the stranger. ”Who the h.e.l.l are you and how the h.e.l.l did you get in here?”
The stranger, a child really, peered up, eyes slanting dubiously. There were hard and metallic, those eyes, and around them the sculpture of the boy's face was like a Michelangelo angel with a particularly nasty turn of mind, cherubic and yet seemingly too wise. One narrow pale eyebrow arched evilly. He looked to the open industrial window facing out over the alley and tapped his temple with a forefinger, grinned, giggled, showing a mouthful of heartlessly perfect teeth he'd filed to absurd points.
Well, that just about left no question as to who or how. Alek let out his breath and relaxed his light instinctive battle stance--but only a little. He estimated the child to be sixteen, certainly no more than eighteen, and tried hard not to hate him too completely. Only a whelp in the Coven, like Eustace. A psychokinetic--and probably psychotic--result of crossed genetic codes that had no business meeting at all. It wasn't his place to judge, but something about the kid made the hair want to stand on the back of his neck.
Alek clenched his fist, let it go, looked around his studio. The centerfold art of all his New Yorkers had been torn brutally from their spines and lay scattered across the width of the studio as if a tornado had pa.s.sed none too subtly through the alleywide s.p.a.ce here. Alek watched with a dry mouth as Sean delicately stripped the copy he held of its Andrew Wyeth.
Alek closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He let it go.
”Rip it up, man. Shred it gooood...”
Alek opened his eyes. ”What?”
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