Charlie Huston - Half the Blood of Brooklyn

Am I pretty?

I nod.

Her eyes close again.

I put my fingers at the clog of scab and new flesh that has grown over the wound in my neck.

A girl like this, how can I not try everything to save her? How can I keep myself from trying every last cruel and desperate trick to keep her with me?

Simple.

I can’t.

I tear open the wound in my neck and lean close and place it against her mouth and the Count grabs me and pulls me away and my hand goes to the Defender and the Enclave has it and I am across the room and more Enclave are there between me and Evie and I try to go through them and I cannot.

The Count leans over her and mops at her mouth with the cuff of his white shirt.

– Hey, man, what’s up, you trying to kill the girl? I mean, dude, imagine if her throat wasn’t swollen shut. She’d be spewing foam all over the place right now.

I try to get to her.

They stop me again.

The Count stretches his arms, hands pushed out at me.

– Joe, man, cool it. You’re gonna get all fucked up by these guys if you don’t cool it. I can only do so much here. Sure I got potential. But potential only gets you a little ways. You got to deliver if you want your shit to stick.

He opens his shirt.

– Now, I know Daniel told you the girl’s like you, but he just meant that she’s Enclave. Or Enclave potential, I guess. Enclave enough to get in here. That doesn’t mean you can infect her. That takes a special touch.

He peels his shirt from his skinny torso.

– Check it. The Vyrus changes when it comes into us. That’s what Daniel said. That’s common sense. That’s why one Vampyre’s blood can infect some people, but kills most others.

An Enclave hands him a short silver tube, one end cut on a bias and honed to a point.

– Thanks. But then, it reasons, some can’t infect anyone. And some, they can infect lots of others. Like carriers. Daniel, he was a carrier. Know what he did? Part of what made him who he was? This is so cool, he told me about this last night, right up here. He infected new Enclave.

He sits down next to Evie.

– Like, if they saw the potential in someone out there, they brought them here. No questions asked. No choice. And Daniel bled into them. And it didn’t always work. Mostly it didn’t, but it worked more than for most Vampyres. Or infecteds. Or whatever you like.

He’s handed a small hammer.

– So we’re talking, me and him. He’s impressed with the way I handled that shit last night. He’s also whacked as hell, you saw him at the end there. Who knows where he was on the inside? But he wanted to talk. Lots of things. Mostly Enclave, but wanted to talk about music too. All kinds of stuff. Women. Kept asking about how high the hemlines are this year. Trippy. And I told him about my girls. Remember my girls?

He raps the hammer against the floor.

– Sure you do. Three sweet little things, wanted nothing but to party, have a good time, give a man some comfort. Well, how could you forget, what with the way you shot them down?

He puts one end of the tube at his eye and looks down it at me.

– That was not cool.

He takes the tube away.

– But I’m off topic. Check it. Daniel was even more impressed that I’d infected all three on my own. Hey, granted I broke a few eggs before I had my girls. There were definitely some that didn’t make it on the way to that ideal three, but it was still pretty unusual. The fact that I could infect three out of a pretty small fucking sample was beating the hell out of the odds.

He taps his temple with the tube.

– And here I am, dropped on Daniel the night before he’s going to try and take the next big step in his evolution? Well, he was a man who believed in signs and that kind of shit.

He looks at Evie.

– And then there’s her.

He holds up his index and middle fingers.

– Two new Enclave. Coming in, just like that. Bang and bang. I don’t need Daniel to tell me that’s got to be some kind of record. That’s got to mean something. That’s got to be an opportunity for something. To learn something.

He pulls Evie’s blanket down.

– ’Cause a man can have all the potential in the world.

He places the pointed end of the tube at his heart.

– But that’s just meaningless.

He hefts the hammer.

– Unless he does something with it.

He strikes the end of the tube and it pierces his chest and blood shoots from the end and he bends and places it over Evie’s trache and the blood fills it and it spills over her neck and face and her heels bang against the floor and her arms tremor and her throat works.

And she’s swallowing.

And she doesn’t die.

She doesn’t die.

And I try to get past the Enclave to kill the man doing what only I ever should have done. But I can’t. I’m too weak.

So I fail.

– That was doing it old school.

He’s balled his shirt and uses it to mop blood from his chest, carefully circling the hole he’s tucked a finger into.

– Mean, you don’t have to do it that way, but from what I gather it’s something they respect around here.

He drops the bloody shirt and puts his back against the wall and shakes his head.

– Which stands to reason, right? I mean, if punching a hole in your own heart doesn’t say something about who you are, I don’t know what will. Shit hurts, I can tell you that.

I sit across the room from him, watching the place on the floor where Evie was before they took her away.

– Heart’s blood. No reason why it should make a difference, but Daniel mentioned it a few times. Said it made for a closer bond between whoever was spilling their blood and whoever was drinking it. What do you think? Me, I can’t see why that’d be. But who knows. Mothers say they can tell when their kids are in trouble and shit, even when they’re hundreds of miles away. Maybe it’ll be like that. Maybe I’ll know when she’s in trouble. Or happy. Or sad. Maybe I’ll just kind of always know what she’s feeling. What about that?

I touch the finger I’ve stuck in the wound I reopened in my neck, the scabs have sealed tight against it. I ease it out and some blood leaks and then stops.

The Count pokes at his own wound.

– About that time, huh? Well, let’s see.

He draws his finger free and the clean edges of his unscarred flesh suck closed.

He looks around the empty room, hushes his voice.

– Truth, I didn’t hit my heart. Fuck that. Sometimes a little medical training comes in handy, let me tell you. Hey, would I have been surprised if my aim was off and I stuck myself in the fucking aorta? No. But there was no way I wasn’t gonna try and miss. We can theorize all we want about what the Vyrus will heal and what it won’t, but that was a chance I wasn’t interested in taking.

I put my hands on the floor and push myself up and work my back up the wall until I’m standing on my good leg.

The Count gets himself up.

– Yeah, getting late here, isn’t it? Probably time to call it a day. Things are gonna be plenty interesting for me. Should be getting my beauty sleep. Sure you don’t want to stay and see how this is all gonna work out?

I head for the door.

He walks behind me.

– Yeah, kind of what I thought. You got places to go, things to do, people, no doubt, to fuck up. Too bad. Things are gonna be getting very interesting around here, Joe. I mean, they got no one. I mean, no one on deck to take Daniel’s place. And here am I. Just arrived out of the cold dark. Overcoming terrible struggles in my first night. Representing by sticking a fucking pipe in my heart and successfully bringing a new Enclave to the Vyrus. Got the inside track, man. Got influence already. Like, the king is dead, long live the king, right?