Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (15 page)

I had seen Margot around, working her job at that truck stop and spending all her tips on one drug or another. The night I first interacted with her, true to form, she was in a knife fight with a trucker who'd decided to take advantage. She'd been having a really bad week. Behind on all her bills, evicted from her tiny apartment, lost as far as life path and career choices went.

The wrong trucker had picked the wrong tiny girl to try to take advantage of that night. I stopped her from stabbing him; I'm not sure why, it just seemed like a desperate act from a desperate girl. I felt it was all so avoidable.

She didn't see me bear my fangs at him and growl for him to climb into his rig and start driving. The speed in which the truck came to life and headed towards the highway ramp proved that he had seen me just fine — and it had scared the life out of him.

I had dropped a lot of bodies in the county and those neighboring it. Those who I had sent into the ground were drug dealers and general miscreants who the Sheriff's department wasn't too keen on wasting the resources to look for, much less solve their murders.

If I was going to stay in one place for too long, I'd have to find a source of blood that was renewable, willing, and I could talk into giving it up.

Margot was oh so very high the first time. I think she thought I was coming onto her sexually at first. She's a smart girl, in her own way — she knew there was something much deeper to it. She figured it out all on her own, and quickly, while as high as a doped up cloud.

We never had the discussion — the “you're a vampire” discussion. To her credit, she just ran with it. We didn't completely gloss over the issue, but we could be free about it just because it just wasn't an issue. We did our jobs, ran into the night with one another; she'd get high on adrenaline and life, and I'd tell her when I needed her neck.

And she always gave it over to me.

The old ones called humans like her “familiars”. I called her my student. I taught her about stealth, tactical planning, and the element of surprise. How to overpower humans and how to take from them whatever you need — or, sometimes, just what you want.

She'd gotten so good that I forgot at times she was human. I think at times, she'd forgotten she was human too.

V.

I'd never fired a gun before. What cause had I ever had to do such a thing? It was a knockoff of a Russian AK-47, which had been outfitted with a barrel drum filled with ammo. It was like a gangster movie.

Firing it was like sex.

That's what Margot and I did on our off nights. We'd go out in the desert with a pick-up load of guns and ammo and shoot them. It was supposed to make us proficient in firearms, which was important to Calvin. Aside from being a meth dealer, he was also a tried and true survivalist nutso.

He had become convinced after taking too many bong hits and flipping to the science channel on his television that we were due for another Ice Age. I didn't have the heart to tell him what had caused the last Ice Age, and that we were in no danger of a repeat performance.

Margot was better with the pistols; she could just handle them better, and they were a better fit for her tiny frame. I liked the big guns, like riot shotguns, machine guns, anything that tossed out lots of ammo in the least amount of time imaginable. We were two girls, all dressed in black, making a lot of noise so far out in the middle of nothing that nobody could hear or care.

“I'm in love with you.” That's what Margot said to me while loading more bullets into the clip of her Ruger.

“What did you say?”

“I'm in love with you and I want to be with you. I want to be just like you.” She just kept pressing bullets into the clip.

“You don't want to be anything like me.”

“Yes, I do.”

I set my own gun down on the tailgate and watched her finish loading the clip and then slide it into the handle of the pistol.

“You want to be a vampire?”

“That, too.”

“That is not happening.”

Margot abandoned the gun and leaned against the tailgate.

“I'm not good enough to be a vampire?”

“You're already a fine vampire. Better than some of the best I've ever known.”

“I'm not one, though. I'm human…”

“Hardly.” I pulled myself up onto the tailgate and let my legs swing down. “You just think you're human.”

“Physically, my body is human.”

“Maybe that's true. You are in no way human though.”

“Then what am I? You tell me.” She looked up at me with those eyes. She was persistent and bossy and hard to ignore.

“You take from humans, do you not?”

“I take what's mine, yeah.”

“You are stronger, and faster, and always have the upper hand in a fight, don't you?”

She nodded.

“The only thing that separates us is what we take in to keep us alive.”

“Blood?”

“Right. I need blood, you need other things.”

“I'd be off the drugs. If I were a vampire….”

“You'd only be replacing one drug with another. We're both addicts, Margot. We both crave.”

She crossed her arms and looked down. “I don't feel like I'm good enough for you.”

“Neither of us are any good for the other beyond what we already share. We are parasitic in our relationship.”

She pushed off the truck and went walking with her back to me. “Has anyone ever been good enough for you? Anyone ever kept up with you?”

She looked back to me and continued, “Has there ever been anyone that you couldn't just manipulate and overpower and who you felt equal with? Has anyone ever been good enough to love you?”

“No.” I stared her down when I said it. “I love no one.”

She looked down, but I was focused over her. From my higher vantage point I could see him out in the dark, watching and listening. Not trying to hide himself.

“What we have is all it's ever going to be. Know that.”

Margot nodded. “Fine then, I don't love anyone, either.”

I only looked to her for an instant — a very quick vampire instant— but it was an eternity for our kind.

It had given old Uncle Priest enough time to vanish.

I didn't look to her when I said it. I was too busy scanning the horizon for any clue as to where the bastard had crept to. “Then you're already just like me.”

VI.

I went walking to the abandoned hotel I'd found near that Salton Sea. I was far removed from the emptiness and the little maid's dress I'd stolen my first night out of the water.

If the priest was tracking me, he'd be there before I got there. That's just how good the dead old buzzard was.

The woman was standing on the second floor balcony that ran the length of the rooms. She stood proud and straight, had her hands resting on the decaying iron which had been assaulted for years by the salt air.

Her gown was as simple as the one I'd taken from this place, more earth tone and longer: flowing, tattered, broken. It wrapped itself around her because she was divine and it wanted to be close to her, the laws of physics and fashion be damned.

She had long dark braided hair and coal eyes. The antlers that sprung from her temples, just forward of her pointed ears, gave away that she was not one of my kind.

“Why are you still here?” This is what she asked me.

“Because I could not drown.”

“Did you try?”

“Yes.”

She was unmoved. “You laid on the floor of that dead sea and pretended you were part of it. That you were dead too. You knew all along that you were not. You are a creature who doesn't die as they do. But it is fully within your power to end it, if that is your choice.”

“Life stopped being about choices for me long ago.”

“You never put out the effort to choose.”

“Did you trick me?” I asked. “You stink of dirty gypsy magic.”

“Did I make you think you saw something in the darkness that you didn't want to see? Is that what you're asking?”

“Is he really here for me?”

She raised an eyebrow and an antler lifted with it. “Who is the ‘he' we are speaking of?”

“The Priest.”

She didn't care about my answer. “Why did you not slay the deer I sent for you?”

“I didn't want anything to do with that filthy beast.”

“You felt it was not a worthy sacrifice?”

I turned up my nose at her, which was a feat considering she was fifteen feet higher than my proud stance in the hotel courtyard. “I can hunt just fine all on my own.”

“Except for the one who got away.”

I was enraged by the mention, and surely that was her purpose. I fell right into it, even though I knew better. “Curse you and curse him. I'm glad he's no more.”

“He lives.”

She didn't seem to be studying my face for the reaction, but those eyes told the tale. She was always probing.

“You lie.”

“You survived the monster. Did you not?”

“I wasn't going where he desired to go. What he did is forbidden, whether we're speaking of the old ways or simple common sense. You don't goad a monster into taking you to those places.”

“Where would you have taken him?”

I looked away from her. I didn't mean to, didn't want to. I looked away all the same.

“Your time in this place is short-lived, Anastasia. You should get whatever affairs you have in order and prepare to move on.”

“I will not leave this place.”

She raised her arms from the railing and opened them wide. “Why would you stay?”

“Because it's mine. It's the first thing that's ever been all mine.”

“Selling debauchery to the humans and breaking their bones when they have exhausted their means. This is your kingdom now?”

“Yes. I care even less for the humans than your kind does.”

“You, Anastasia, are the liar.”

My fangs clicked into place.

“Oh, here we go. That is what I've been waiting for. Come run at me and show your savage nature.”

“I will protect what I'm building.”

“You will escape like a coward while your keep burns. Then you will move on and find someone else to use. It's your nature.”

I spoke, baring fang-wrath. “You know nothing of me.”

“I know everything about you, and I know everything about him. He has upset the order of the universe. And you are caught squarely in the middle of this imbalance.”

“I know nothing of what he has done, or where he is now. I know nothing of what else he's planning to wreck, what other blasphemes he has left in his playbook.”

“They know who you are. Who do you think they're coming for to find him?”

“The Five?” It still sounded ridiculous to me, after all these years. “They're not real. The Priest made them up to manipulate me.”

“Tell that to your dead sisters.”

I only cared for one of them, but I cared deeply for her, and I would not let this goddess abomination see me cry for her.

“Augusta.”

She nodded, crossing her arms back to grasp the railing. “She saw you in visions. Poor Augusta, the mad one.”

“She told them where I was from visions? She told the Priest?”

“If he is here then they cannot be far behind him.”

“I still don't believe The Five are real.”

“Neither did we, Anastasia.” The goddess and her leaf-stained dress were shadow before I turned from her words. “Neither did we.”

VII.

“I want you to run away.” I was stern, and tried not to join her in her tears. I was still heartsick over the possibility that someone had actually gotten to Augusta. My only sister who wasn't vile and wretched, saved by her own insanity from turning into the greedy, blood-soaked, princess-whores the rest had become.

Margot shook her head. “No.”

“The other vampires have found me…”

“You told me there weren't any other vampires.”

“Margot, I lied. There aren't many.”

“We can take them.” She was spinning a knife in her fingertips, and I watched the blade make lazy loops in the air. She kept them razor sharp.

“There are worse things than vampires. They might be coming too.”

“Worse than vampires?” She rolled her eyes at me.

The slap I gave her across the face was much harder than I'd intended it to be. The knife tumbled from her hands and stuck into the floor of Wanda's room.

“Wake up, little girl. I told you we're done and you have to go. Throw some things in a bag, grab your toys, and leave.”

She jumped up on the bed, landing on her knees and staring at me. “I'm staying to fight.”

“Then you'll die alone, because I'm not staying.”

She wasn't ready for this to come out of my mouth. I was running and I had just admitted it to her.

“What are you so afraid of that you'd run, Ana?”

“I'm scared of what he did. I'm scared of whoever is coming to blame me for it.”

“What who did?”

“I'm done talking to you.” I had warned her and done my part. If she was stupid enough to stay here, then it was all on her and had nothing to do with me.

“The one you love?”

I spun around at the doorway. “We've been over this.”

“What's his name?”

“I don't love him, and I don't speak that name any longer.”

“What could one man possibly do that would cause so much trouble that you're shaking in your boots and running out of here like you are? What could he have done, Ana? Tell me, and then maybe I'll believe you.”

I stared a hole into her, and it was she who shivered from the gaze alone. There was no way she'd be able to wrap her tiny mind around the actual words.

“He broke the universe.”

I left her staring out her window into the night.

When I reached the living room, Calvin was under his computer desk and showing me far too much of the crack of his ass. I was too frantic and frazzled from the events of the night and the failed talk I'd just had with Margot to be properly disgusted.