Charlie Huston - No Dominion

I sit in the darkness and smoke. I drop the spent butt and stomp on it. My foot lands on a trapdoor. Fuck, Joe, take a better look around next time. It’s one of those spring-loaded jobs. I give it a push. No luck. It’s locked on the other side. I stomp on it. Something gives. I stomp again. Something rips loose and the trap swings down and a ladder unfolds and bangs into the floor. Subtle. I go down. Just a tiny landing at the top of the stairs. One door. No one looks out of it to see what the noise is about. Lucky them. I fold the ladder and close the trap and go down a couple floors.

The Count’s door is locked. Well, no shit. I take out the picks. They’re good locks. It’s an expensive building, they should be good locks. But I’m up for the game. Fresh pint just down the hatch, I can feel and hear every pin as I tease them into alignment. I pop the first. I pop the second. I draw my gun and go inside.

They’re all on the nod, heaped half naked or more in Poncho’s door-walled room. If they hadn’t been high when they crashed, they would have woken up the second I came through the door. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe when you live like this, with people, lovers, maybe when you have a Clan to watch over you, you sleep easier. Maybe I’m the only one whose eyes snap open five or six times a day, when a car with an odd sounding engine drives past or a rat rustles the garbage out front or a kid laughs on the sidewalk. Maybe that’s it. Maybe my life sucks just a little more than everybody else’s. But I doubt it. I think all our lives suck about the same amount. Just in different ways. I look at The Count, Poncho’s legs wrapped around his, Pigtails and PJs jumbled next to them.

This guy, I’m about to make his life suck in all kinds of brand new ways.

I nudge the sole of his foot with the toe of my boot. He stirs, they all stir, but only his eyes open.

– Wha? Hunh?

– Morning.

– Whan? Joe?

– Yep.

– Hey. What’s up, man?

– You.

He cracks a tired smile.

– Not really, man.

I show him the gun.

– Count. Get up or I’m gonna start shooting your girls.

Poncho’s eyes fly open at that.

I level the piece at her face.

– Stay there.

She stays there. The Count gets up. He’s wearing blue and white briefs and a girl’s T-shirt that rides too high on his skinny belly, Buffy silkscreened on the front.

I point at the girls, all of them stirring now.

– Tell them to stay put.

He runs a hand through his tangled hair.

– Yeah, no problem.

He looks at them.

– Chill, ladies. This is cool. Just a misunderstanding. Nobody lose it. Me and Joe are gonna figure this out.

He looks at me.

– Right, man?

– Sure.

I let him lead the way over to the kitchen. Behind us, the girls press their eyes against the cracks between the doors that screen Poncho’s room.

The Count points at a coffeemaker.

– You want some?

– No.

– Cool if I make some?

– No.

– OK. OK. So what’s the deal?

He leans his skinny butt against the counter, arms folded, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

– This a jack? You after my stash?

I point at his shirt.

– That supposed to be funny?

He looks down at the picture of the vampire slayer on his chest, shrugs.

– I don’t know. I guess so, maybe.

– I hate that shit. That self-aware, ironic, pop culture Vampyre shit. I hate it.

– I.

– Like it’s a game.

– It’s not supposed to mean anything. Just a shirt.

I bang the barrel of my gun across the bridge of his nose. The nose breaks and bloods runs out. He barks, goes to his knees, hands over his face. Another of those kids who hasn’t figured out the pain thing.

– Fuck! Oh fuck!

– That funny, Count? That fit in with your hipster Vampyre lifestyle?

I kick him in the gut. He rolls onto his side, curled in a ball.

One of the girls hisses. I don’t bother to look. I put the gun to The Count’s head.

– Stay in that fucking room or the gravy train goes off its rails right here.

The hissing continues, but quieter.

I grab some of his hair and pull his face out of his hands.

– Those supposed to be your brides, those girls? They complete the scene for you? Help to polish your image, Count?

I knock out a couple of his teeth with the pistol butt, knowing they won’t grow back. Happy about it.

More hissing.

– Fuck you. Fuck your stupid games. Come down here. Like the vibe, do ya? Uptown not your style? Columbia not for you? I get it. Me, I was just Uptown myself. I see why you wouldn’t be into that. All those boys the old lady keeps around, I can see where you wouldn’t want to join that scene. So, pre-med wasn’t what you wanted. Tell me. Tell me about Columbia. Was she saving a spot for you on her wall? Old lady Vandewater, she got a place all picked out to hang your sheepskin next to the others?

– Don’t.

I put the barrel in his mouth, make it harder for him to talk.

– Come down here where people live their lives. People try to get by. Try to make this fucked up shit work. Come down here playing games and drawing attention and making life harder than it already is. You fucker.

He dribbles some blood from his mouth.

– Dunht!

I take the barrel out.

– What?

– Don’t. Oh fuck. Don’t fucking. Don’t kill me, man. Don’t.

I drop him.

– You stupid fuck. You’d be lucky if I was the one to kill you.

– Just. Please. Don’t.

– And besides, nobody tell you yet? You already died.

He coughs blood.

I drop a dish towel on him.

– Get your shit together. I want to hear about Tom. Tell me again how he was the one sponsored you. I want to hear about you and Tom.

The door busts in.

I hesitate for less than a second. That finishes me. I had time to get one round off. Trying to decide whether to use it to kill The Count or slow down Hurley finishes me. I do manage to get one in on him, one punch in the gut. It doesn’t do anything. You can’t fight Hurley. He puts me down, Tom right behind him.

They’re pretty surgical about it, almost as clean as Vandewater’s boys. They chill the girls, get me and The Count wrapped tight, and have us out and into a van before anyone in the building can take an interest.

Figure we’ll end up at one of Tom’s personal safe houses. Someplace private where he can ice The Count until they have their story straight. Me, I’m way past icing in Tom’s book. I’ll be lucky if this hood ever comes off my head. Actually, I’ll be luckier if it never does and they just put a couple in me and sink me in the river. Figure there’s a chance of it. Tom may have enough heat on him that he won’t take any chances, just waste me and get rid of me. Figure that’s wishful thinking. He’s had a hard-on for me for too long. He wants to get his licks in before the story’s over. He’s such an incredible dick he won’t be able to resist torturing me one last time. Figure that’s about the way things work out. I ain’t got any better coming to me anyway. I’ve done my share of this shit. What goes around, it comes around. Figure it’s my turn.

And figure I’m pretty fucking surprised when the hood comes off and the first face I see is Terry’s.

He’s not alone. Far from it.

They get me strapped to my seat. When the bag comes off my head, I’m expecting to see Tom’s fist coming at my face. Wrong. There’s Terry, sitting at the kitchen table in the Society headquarters, sitting there with some notes and shit in front of him, looking at the papers. There’s Tom, pacing back and forth behind him, a few of his partisans standing around the room. There’s The Count, taped up to a chair right next to mine. Looks like Hurley must have given him a good one ’cause he’s out. Dry blood covering his lips and cheeks and chin, snuffling through the scabs clogging his nose. He’s better off. There’s Hurley, right off my shoulder, making sure I don’t try to do fuck knows what. And there’s Lydia, sitting next to Terry, not looking happy to see me at all. Terry, Tom and Lydia in the same room. Me on the other end of their hard looks. Not the first time I’ve been here. But it’s never a good thing, having the senior council of the Society all in one place looking at you like your head coming off is a foregone conclusion and they’re just deciding who gets to swing the ax.