Chapter Twenty – Kris

 

Ghoulish saliva is a thing of macabre beauty, something that I’d never appreciated till a crew of them arrived at my front door, innocuous work van backed up the driveway, tarps in hand.

Ghouls aren’t something we normally have to deal with at FMS. They’re not violent, and modern times haven’t changed that fact. Even back in the old country before the migration to the United States, they kept themselves to churchyards and other burial areas, hardly ever straying near truly populated zones. Not because they couldn’t pass as human, which they can in the right light, but because they just didn’t really have much in common with them. Except for, of course, a taste for their necrotic flesh.

Of course, that never removed mankind’s fear of them, if only because mankind has always had that same animalistic instinct to fear the unknown. Like dogs barking at a new kind of tree.

“How long you known Sal?” I asked as the ashen, long-limbed ghoul and his coverall-clad work crew moved through the house around us, their tongues like bloodhounds as they searched out every nook and cranny even a single speck of crimson had landed on. They’d removed the bodies when they first got there, wrapped them up tightly in tarps, and carried them out to their van like outdated rugs.

I cringed a little as I watched their tongues flick out and coat every surface like junkies licking the inside of a baggy for any white residue, considering how I needed to replace all my furniture now. Not just because of the blood, which had disappeared like magic from all the fabric, but because of the…well….ew!

And I didn’t even want to think about what was going to happen to the bodies after this was done. Thank God I’d taken photos of the feather tattoos on the backs of their hands before the cleaners arrived.

“Known Sal a little while, now,” Hunter said. “I needed some services from an affiliate of theirs about two decades ago, and decided to keep in touch when I got into town.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Of course. Never know when you might need his particular set of skills.” He stood there, surveying their work right alongside me, arms crossed in front of him. “Besides, he sends me a fruit basket every year.”

I snorted as I watched Sal on his hands and knees where the man who’d bled out from his femoral artery had fallen. I grimaced as I heard his tongue lapping at the clotted and pooled blood.

Hunter glanced over at me. “Sure you want to stay and watch this?”

I shook my head, my vision feeling stuffed full of down from my exhaustion. “No, not really.” Killing a man was one thing. Watching a creature from a different species suck up his blood was completely different.

Abruptly, Sal went to stand. He dusted the knees of his coveralls clean, almost gingerly, before turning around and ambling over to me with his long strides. He and his men had been bent so low to their tasks, it was almost startling to realize just how tall he was when he came to a stop in front of me. Towering at least two heads taller than Hunter, with the tips of his wiry grey hair nearly scraping my ceiling, he grinned down at us with yellow, rotting teeth as he stuffed his overly long and slender hands into the pockets of his neutral coveralls.

“Well, you had quite a mess here, I’ll give you that,” he said, his voice sounding nearly human. “But, you know, I’ve seen worse. Used to work Chicago, and you shoulda seen what those old gangsters could pull off.”

“How much, do you think?”

“For full disposal?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. “Ten grand?”

I swore quietly. Not that it would’ve been much cheaper to go to the cops. Amount of my time they would have wasted, compounded with the fact that I’d have had to hire a lawyer despite being completely legally within my rights? I’d take ten grand, easy.

“Take a check?”

He smiled. “Come on, Hunter, you know I can’t for that kind of a price. You got plastic, though? I can run it right here.”

“Really?” Hunter asked with a raised eyebrow as Sal reached into a back pocket and pulled out a smart phone and a little white square that he plugged into the audio jack. “You take AmEx?”

The ghoul made a face, wrinkled what was left of his nose. “Sorry. Visa, though?”

Hunter drew out his money clip and thumbed off a credit card, handing it over.

Sal chuckled as he slid Hunter’s card through the little reader. “Modern technology. You dragons, you gotta get with the times. Pretty soon, these humans are gonna be living forever, and what are we gonna do then, right? Hell, they hardly even bury their dead anymore. Just right to the crematorium, and that’s all folks. Don’t they know I got mouths to feed?”

I fought back a wince. “Yeah. Sounds tough.”

“Hey,” Hunter said before Sal finished going through the process with the card. “I have a question.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you do anything about these windows and that back door?”

I gave Hunter a questioning look as Sal pursed his lips together and looked around the house. Hunter just shrugged.

“Well, I got some basic stuff outside in the van. I can have my guys nail that back door shut and board up the windows.” He turned back, eyebrow raised as he searched for approval of the plan. “Good enough?”

Hunter looked to me for confirmation.

“Sure,” I said. “That’d be great. Anything, at this point. Just don’t want it to rain and get water inside the house.”

Sal grinned. “Yeah, that mold’s a real bitch. You get mildew in here, not much even me or my guys can do.”

“How much more do you think that’ll be?” Hunter asked.

The ghoulish cleaner waved a hand dismissively. “Tell you what. You guys keep me in mind for any future business, we’ll call it even.”

“Sounds like a deal,” Hunter said as I turned and wandered over into my kitchen. All the killing had been done in the living room, and the kitchen was at least quiet from the sounds of slurping and licking. Behind me, Hunter’s dragonkin hand slapped neatly into the palm of the hired ghoul.

I pulled out my phone, looked over the faces of the men I’d slain. The strangers I’d slain.

Who were they? Where had they come from? And why the hell did that feather tattoo they all had seem so damn familiar? I reached into my hip pocket and pulled out the slugs I’d dug from my living room wall, three of the ones from the shooter who’d shot wide at me while I was on the move.

It wasn’t silver like the shotgunner had claimed. It was worse. A rune I’d seen before was carved into the side. In the dragonkin community, we called it the St. George. Its namesake had used it on his spear shaft and blade when he’d killed one of us nearly fifteen hundred years, or longer, before. One of these, anywhere in our bodies, would put either me or Hunter in a world of hurt. The kind of hurt you never came back from. You couldn’t even say that about silver, when it came down to it. Unless that particular metal went through the heart or head, we still had a chance.

These men had known exactly who I was. What I was. And when I was coming home. And, somehow, they had had the firepower to do something about it. It was only luck and our quick thinking that had gotten us out of it.

This had bad news written all over it.

I shook my head, sighing. I hadn’t gotten into this to kill people, or to be shot at. Only to protect the living, and the innocents. These men certainly hadn’t been in the second group, and I’d made sure they weren’t in the first anymore, either.

It never got any easier. Either you were able to compartmentalize it, or you weren’t. And you either got really good at that compartmentalization, and those reasons you gave yourself, or dropped out of this game and tried to do something else with your life.

Is that what I’d become? An efficient murderer who could shove all my conflicting emotions down into a variety of places, all deep within myself where they’d never see the light of day?

I closed my eyes, set my phone aside. Maybe I’d always been that way.

“You going to be able to stay here tonight?” Hunter asked as he came into the kitchen, stifling a yawn. Clearly, he was run as ragged as I was, with rings like shiners well-formed beneath his eyes. Even before my unexpected houseguests had arrived, we’d both been ready to fall over. Now was certainly not any different.

I glanced up at him, shrugging as I stuffed the bullets away back in my pocket. He’d been too busy working things out with Sal over the phone, and I still hadn’t shown them to him. Because, hell, if I was keeping one major secret, why not two?

“Thinking a hotel room,” I said, followed by a dragon’s roar of a yawn.

“Again?” he asked, walking around to the other side of the table from me and pulling out a chair. He nearly collapsed into it.

“Got a better suggestion?”

“I’ve a spare room,” he said.

I shook my head, saying, “I don’t want to put you out.”

“Kris,” he said, an edge to his voice. “Bear with me, please. A group of strange men came from out of the blue and tried to murder you as soon as I dropped you off at home.” He put a hand to his chest. “Who’s to say they’re not still tracking you, or don’t have a plan B already in place? I can’t say one way or the other. But, it will make me feel better if I know where you are, at least for tonight.”

I smirked. “That worried about me?”

He chuckled. “Well, you are my only link to getting my file, aren’t you?”

The smirk faded from my lips, as his words stabbed me right in the guts. I sighed a little as I picked my phone back up. Well, he was definitely right about that. I was his link to getting it.

“I was kidding, Kris,” he said, his voice conciliatory as he reached out to touch my hand.

I swallowed hard as I fought the urge to pull my hand away. Not only was I a killer, but I was also a liar. Hunter didn’t deserve to be fucked around like this by me. What did it matter if he was a thief and a con artist? He’d seen me in danger and come running to help.

He’d probably saved my life, for fuck’s sake, when he came in through my window!

And now, here he was, acting less and less like the dick I’d always known him to be.

“I know you were,” I said. I cleared my throat, trying to tamp down the emotions welling up. Trying to force them into the same spot I’d put my self-loathing regarding the killing and the ghouls licking up the gore from my leather couch.

“Spare room, then?” he asked again.

I sighed. “Yeah. Fine.”

He nodded. “Good. I’ll have Sal lock up after he’s gone.”

“Sure,” I said, waving my hand. There wasn’t much of real value here, anyways. I kept my horde tied up in other ways, not buried beneath the floorboards. There wasn’t anything he could take, or really do, that was going to harm me in any way. “Whatever.”