Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) Page 13

  “Later,” she said.

  She wore a serious look of determination that I’d never seen with her before.

  “Gare knows he has a lot of explaining to do,” she said. “I say we get out of this urine-smelling hole and get back to his apartment.”

  I thought it might be better for them to depart the urine-smelling hole via one of the staircases and hop the first train stopping at the platform. I thought that alright, but I said nothing. People willing to sacrifice their lives for you deserve more.

  “Right, Gare?”

  Sister Christian spoke louder than normal. Her serious and final side. I imagined for a second what she’d look like in leathers and a whip but… Inappropriate. I know.

  “Right, Gare?” Sister Christian repeated.

  “Of course,” I said.

  I waited to see what happened next because I’d been so wrapped up in mental fantasyland that I’d lost the thread of the conversation.

  “Well then,” she said, “Let’s go.”

  Ah, go where?

  Oh, yeah. Where else? My place. Seems I’d recently converted it into a hostel. But the trains would stop running soon and I knew nobody had enough money for a taxi. Four more overnight houseguests on the way. Hope nobody minded a damp towel.

  At least Karl would be happy. Ghost tail wagging the entire body and happily running from one human to the next. Peeing all over the floor. Right. I thought about delaying things by offering No Face a couple of bites of my left butt cheek in exchange for a few more rounds of combat. Probably wouldn’t work, anyway. I didn’t think the demon would be showing his face in public for a while. Ha.

  Except for Watanabe humming that 70’s tune “Kung Fu Fighting” under his breath, we walked in silence. And why shouldn’t he feel pride? If you ignore the minor detail that his roundhouse kick took out the Prince, everything else went fine. And I would have been demon poop had the gang not returned. I needed a nanosecond to turn the tables on No Face and company and my friends provided it. I needed to remember I owed them gratitude. And to bite my tongue.

  Sister Christian didn’t put her arm through mine for the trip back to my flat. Nobody else walked next to me either. Everyone hung back a little. I didn’t blame them. The better to escape in multiple directions should I prove as crazy as the situation they’d just survived.

  The casual snub should have made me lonely. It did not. A few minutes before I’d decided to abandon everyone—to include Karl and Helmet—with no goodbyes and with no looking back. That would have been lonely. My friends returning to my flat and Karl and Helmet waiting? Not lonely at all.

  Only one thing ruined my visions of settling into my comfy chair with friends and family gathered around. Sparky. I’d try to get answers out of him but he could make lies sound more believable than the truth. I could torture him. But then he’d just lie with more conviction. Torture sounded good, though. Sparky would forgive me just ahead of the next time he needed something.

  I led the group up the hill toward Louisenstrasse and we took a left into the shopping area. The stores were shuttered as tight as the flats located above them. Germany is a nation of people who obey bed time. It’s the way things are done.

  I cut through the Louisen Arkade, a kind of small building of indoor-outdoor shops. We passed the drugstore and took the escalator down to the street level. We turned down Kaiser-Friedrich-Promenade. A brief glance at the boutique hotel near my flat. Nothing stirring. We made it to Herr Doktor’s house and I opened the exterior door.

  Up the stairs and…my apartment door ajar. Perhaps pygmy cannibal number one of seven, unchallenged ruler of all things vampire, didn’t close the freakin’ door on the way out. I held up my hand and the gang knew to stop. Funny how your average fight with a few demons can make people attentive…in a jumpy kind of way.

  I pushed the door open—the slow, creaking way—and hoped for a pygmy-free environment. How many times has that one crossed your mind in the past few months as you open your front door? What had my life become?

  Finding the foyer free of both cannibals and famished shape-shifting demons, I edged into my own place like a cat burglar into a Colombian drug lord’s palace. I saw Helmet standing by the computer. I wished I’d been a bit stealthier through the door and caught him sitting in front of the computer with mouse in hand.

  The day I prove to Helmet he can manipulate the mouse and keyboard will be the same day he starts scooping ghost dog poop off the floor. And he knows it. Why do I feel compelled to prove to him he’s able to do something we both know he’s doing?

  Helmet stared at me as I inched into the living room. I pointed around the flat and gave him the arms out, palms up questioning pose. Anybody else in the apartment? Helmet continued to stare at me. Thanks for the assist, buddy.

  A glance back toward the door and four demon-shy faces peering in. I concentrated my hearing to pick up on noises. And yes, someone in the kitchen. Demons wouldn’t fix themselves a late-night snack and cannibal pygmies like to boil their people in big black pots over open fires.

  “Sparky?” I said. “Is that you, you piece of chicken poop?”

  The noise stopped for a few moments and Sparky peeked around the kitchen door.

  “I thought you’d be hungry so I borrowed a few things out of the pantry.”

  And as soon as he mentioned the word hungry I picked on the awesome aroma of Italian sauce. Maybe I’d smelled it before…in the part of my brain not worried about getting jumped by gangs of pygmies or demons. Italian sauce. And pasta maybe? I decided to hold off on deboning Sparky until I found out when the chow would be ready.

  Chapter 19

  “Did everyone get home OK?”

  In addition to his many other faults, Sparky’s smooth. Supper waiting and an innocent-sounding question designed to probe through the minefield that was my anger.

  “No Sparky, they didn’t.”

  “Where are they?” Sparky said.

  “It’s safe,” I called out.

  A few seconds later all four of my friends stood in the kitchen with Sparky and me. Karl zoomed from ankle to ankle. Barking his silent glee and spraying my floors with liquid excitement. Nobody seemed to notice, and I predicted the guys would suffer equal blindness for dirty dishes once the eating ended.

  The wooden breakfast table in the kitchen got the three men out of the way after they sat down.

  “Hey homey,” said J-Rod. I turned toward him but saw he was talking to Sparky.

  “Where the hell d’you go, man?”

  That flummoxed Sparky. Yeah, Sparks. You deserve that.

  “Where you see me now,” said Sparky. He smiled like his being in the kitchen rather than duking it out with the demons like the rest of us actually represented something we should be thankful for.

  “None of my business,” said Watanabe. “But I think you’re pretty much chicken shit.”

  Uh oh. I don’t curse. I can’t speak for my friends.

  Sparky shrugged off the insult easier than he could a coat three sizes too big. He didn’t ask what Watanabe meant because we all knew.

  Sparky responded with: “Good thing I made plenty of sauce and pasta.”

  Truth here. Despite his knack for self-preservation, Sparky’s no coward. It was Sparky who cut the beating heart out of the Roman soldier…and started this whole semi-immortal ball rolling. No, not a coward. Up to something. I suspected this particular “up to something” eclipsed most—if not all—of his bone-headed schemes to date. By a lot.

  “When do we eat?” I said.

  “You want to check the pasta?”

  Sparky held out a spoon dripping boiling water and containing a few pieces of rigatoni. He offered it to the Prince.

  Sister Christian jumped up from her chair at the end of the table. “Allow me,” she said. And then, “Perfect.”

  Sparky said, “Drain the pasta, Gay,” And I swear I heard everyone’s neck mechanisms engage as they snapped their heads around to look at me.<
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  “Explains a lot,” said J-Rod.

  “What in the heck are you talking about?” I said, and then quickly added, “It explains nothing.” I turned back to Sparky.

  “Everyone uses Gare,” I said. I hoped the look on my face put an exclamation mark on the sentence that my calm inflection left off. “You know,” I said, “as in Garrett.”

  Sparky nodded and turned back to playing with the sauce. Knowing anything I said would end up misconstrued, I shut up and drained the pasta. No colander in the place, so I held the lid over the pot and opened it enough to let the water drain. A few of the twirls escaped into the sink.

  Nobody was watching, so I returned the escapees to the pot. Sparky removed the sauce from the burner and poured it into a plastic bowl. He put the rigatoni in another. Lived for more than two thousand years and I still don’t understand why someone would move food from a pot to a bowl and end up with two things to wash.

  Food ready, and everyone jumped up to help. Sister Christian searched the cupboards for plates and cutlery. She found paper and plastic—why should I make myself wash things when all I want is a can of beans? No cups required because beer comes in its own glass.

  We sat down to our midnight meal. Most of us. No room at the table meant Sparky and I ate at the counter. Sparky may be the ultimate in screw-ups, he’s also a genius in the kitchen. Whether alchemy or pure black magic—BTW, neither exists—he turned the ingredients sitting around my place into a five-star Italian meal.

  The gang ate like the meal might be their last. Good thing because sufficient odds existed to make the assumption correct. A conversation truce seemed in effect as everyone cleaned their first plate. The guys went in for seconds. Sister Christian found a large shopping bag and put her paper plate and plastic utensils into it. She returned to her chair.

  “I’ll start,” she said.

  I hoped she meant she’d deal the first hand of strip poker, but when she reached into her buckskin purse, she came out with reading glasses. No cards. I didn’t know what she expected to read, but I have to admit those glasses did make things seem official…and sexy.

  Nobody spoke. Everyone looked at me. Well, everyone save Karl and Helmet. Karl lay curled and asleep under the table, his little wet transparent nose up against Sister Christian’s foot. Helmet had left the room about the same time I heard a text message ding into my smartphone. Even Sparky seemed interested in what I would say, though both of us knew he possessed scads more information than I did. He just wanted to see if I’d figured out anything he’d rather me not know.

  “How much did you see?” I said.

  Yeah, I know. Sound like a lame opening. Probably because it was. It signaled the others that I didn’t intend to waste the night with lies but at the same time I wouldn’t provide everything.

  “All of it,” said the Bonny Prince.

  Great response. No doubt the Prince was bluffing. I mean, the guy mistook a garbage can for a demon. How much could he have seen? But the others nodded. Appeared nobody would let me get away with too much baloney.

  “OK,” I said.

  And I thought about ways to provide minimal information without spilling the entire bag of beans. I needed subtlety, careful shepherding away from the broad highway of my true life and onto minor paths leading to the byways of insignificance. In sum, I needed someone else to talk for me.

  “I’m a vampire,” I said.

  Was that subtle enough?

  Nobody spoke for a few moments and I thought perhaps they’d already given up trying to shake something reasonable from me. Their expressions didn’t change. Either they expected something that stupid from me or maybe they hadn’t heard me.

  “Explain, please.”

  Well, Watanabe had heard me. A calm directive. I half expected laughter and incoherent questions or anger from the gang at having their leg pulled after their voluntary death-match with No Face and his four hideous sisters. None of that came.

  Seeing no way out of the situation other than the road leading straight through it, I explained. Well, mostly. I told them about my childhood and growing into a warrior of the German tribes, of the battle with the Roman legions and how Rolf, Sparky, and I became vampires. Each of them took nervous glances at Sparky.

  I hit the high points, avoiding details unimportant to the current situation. But then, wasn’t everything that happened in my long life germane to the box we found ourselves in? Everything that had to do with Sparky, that is. And it all began with Sparky. I think I always knew it would all someday end with Sparky.

  I didn’t bother to swear anyone to secrecy. Either they’d act as friends or they wouldn’t. But they deserved my trust just as they’d trusted me when they returned to my battle in the plywood tunnel. Whether they kept their mouths shut or not, I’d commit no reprisals and I’d kill Sparky if he did. And I didn’t mean in a figurative way. Not that time. I would kill Sparky if he harmed any of them.

  It took less than ten minutes to frame my life story. So why did I feel like I’d run a marathon? Don’t the psycho-babble quacks promise relief for getting things off your chest? From sharing emotional burdens? Naïve, Doctor Freud. Rather than a long exhale of relief I wanted to vomit from the sheer force of my immediate regret. Sister Christian sensed it. She stood and put her arms around me.

  I’m happy to report the others didn’t follow suit. I’m not much on group hugs, especially when it’s almost all guys. But the boys did cut me some slack and held off on their questioning. They’d demand more, mostly the war stories, chick stories, and talk about the famous people I’d met. All that would happen with Sister Christian out of ear shot. Until then, they’d respect her unspoken wish to leave me alone. Well, they’d almost respect it because J-Rod wanted a quick clarification.

  “So do you do the feed on people thing?”

  Ouch. I looked at Sister Christian, ready for her to step in and spout some malarkey about me sharing enough already and how fragile I must be. No dice. She looked as interested in the answer as the rest of them.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  It’s the hardest truth of my condition and the most shameful thing to discuss. I explained how my feeding was seldom fatal, and it sounded like claiming not to be a serial killer all the time. I went into detail as to how I choose my targets and pointed out the things they do to deserve my attention. Victims would have been a more honest word, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it. Not in front of my friends

  It all came out sounding like I considered myself accuser, judge, and executioner…that I ignored the possibility for redemption in a person’s life. The more I tried to explain the more I sounded like a douche bag—even to myself.

  Definitely put a pall over an otherwise gourmet effort by Sparky. Open business remained between the two of us but I didn’t think discussing it in front of the crowd the best idea. I considered telling them that Sparky fed on people too, and how his palette seems much less discriminating when it comes to deserving victims, but to what end. I mean, did Stalin have any credibility when he called Hitler a meanie?

  “I’m not asking for absolution,” I said. “I’m only giving you the facts.”

  Nobody spoke. They all seemed interested in the chemical makeup of tomato paste because I didn’t see an eye on me. I reconsidered standing up and leaving. But again, to what end? Sparky wouldn’t go with me. No chance. He’d remain behind. With me gone, the next beasts that came after Sparky might do for everyone what the demons wanted to do to me.

  Sparky might not even run this time. If he saw any self-benefit to doing so, he’d use his chef skills to cook up my friends and serve them to whatever monsters needed impressing. No, Sparky wouldn’t defend my friends. And I couldn’t leave for that reason alone. At least not yet.

  “Hey homey,” J-Rod said. “You gonna get hungry and eat us?”

  Watanabe laughed out loud, and I could have suspended my prohibition to guy-hugging. Not.

  “Maybe,” I said.


  “Maybe what, man?”

  “Maybe I get tired of your fake East LA accent,” I said. “And if I do,” I paused. “Homey burrito.”

  That got everyone laughing. Except Sister Christian. She still looked disturbed. Bad, because she was the one person I wanted on my side of the fence.

  I sent the guys to the living room. A Friday night football game was starting back in the USA and I hooked my computer to the big screen to stream it. If that makes it sound like I knew what I was doing, I didn’t. I’d found the instructions waiting for me one morning. Helmet, of course.

  And Helmet stood at the computer, looking interested in something on the desk. My smartphone. I walked over. Someone had entered the security code and brought up my text messages…probably the ding I heard when I was talking to the gang.

  What I saw made me happy for Soyla. And for me. And for Helmet. And for the guys back at the NSA who I assumed intercepted and reviewed the message. Judging by the photo on the screen, Soyla managed to remove all that paint she’d worn in the place of pants.

  I picked up the phone for a closer look. I’m talking medical interest here. That one photo—no five, six, seven—those seven photos restored my faith in modern skin care products. Vulgar photos, but not pornographic. I put the phone back on my desk and returned to the kitchen to help Sister Christian straighten up. The guys each found a spot in front of the television. Game on, beers handled.

  Sparky was gone. Not from the flat, darn it, but from the kitchen. He’d found a comfortable place for a snooze before the other folks started prospecting for sleeping arrangements. Of course he chose my room. As it turned out, and I ended up spending the night sitting in front of the computer. I’ll get to that.