Streets of Shadows Page 5

“I did. On the Discovery Channel.” Lorre turned a leather case in his hands, over and over. “It was…awful.”

  There was a vein, thin but good enough. I held out my hand, uncaring about where the blood came from, the horror of its harvest. I just needed it in me. Now. But Lorre wasn't finished.

  “Why do you do this, Angel?” He stared at the scars I'd needled into my flesh, the case still clutched in his hands. “Whore a goddess, just so some asshole can have his ego fuck?”

  I stared into his fake eyes until they dropped, then took the case from his hand. Inside, three glass syringes nestled, filled with darkness and divinity. I slid one out, watching the light dance off the ward marks and the stainless steel needle. Breathing slow, I pressed the sharp tip against my skin.

  “Because it's the only way I can afford to be holy,” I said, and punched the needle in.

  The pain shook me like an orgasm. I gasped, but my hand stayed smooth as I pulled back the plunger. Crimson blossomed beneath the glass, then the black blood swallowed it. Watching my blood vanish into that scrap of divinity made the dull ache in my soul clench into agony, and with a groan I jammed the plunger home and shoved every drop of goddess into me.

  I felt her. Like acid in my veins the burn spread up my arm, through my chest, hammered into my heart and exploded. Pain and ecstasy filled me, dissolving doubt, fear, shame, regret, all those things that made me human and weak.

  Not an addict, not a whore, not anymore. That woman vanished from the mirror, replaced by a goddess with eyes dark and sharp as obsidian. Shot full of divinity, we were something perfect, something pure. Something holy.

  “Gods help me,” Lorre gasped. Stumbling back, he choked out, “Tell him—Tell him you're a gift from Lorre. For absolution.” Then he was gone, the suite door slamming behind him, leaving us alone together.

  “Aphrodite?” We stared at our beautiful face, so familiar, so unfamiliar, in the mirror. Plucking the empty needle from our flawless brown skin, we smiled. “I don't think so.”

  We dropped the syringe and walked out of the bathroom, waiting for the supplicant to come, dreaming ancient dreams.

  * * *

  Nathan Marks made his living selling beauty to power. Both were familiar to him. Seeing us still made him stammer like a virgin.

  “You're- You're not an Aphrodite.”

  “No. I'm better.” We stood beside the bed, city light and shadows shifting across our body, our beauty a beacon. “I am a gift from Lorre. For absolution.”

  “Absolution?” He stepped closer, his smile triumphant. “I knew she wouldn't be able to tell those lies to my face. Or to my lawyers.”

  He stopped, his hand hovering an inch above our breast.

  “I didn't think she would try to buy my forgiveness like this. Maybe she's finally growing up.”

  “You want this?” We breathed, so close to his touch.

  “You, yes. Her forgiveness? Maybe.”

  Our fingers wrapped around his hand, mortal flesh cool against our sacred heat. Lust snapped through him like lightning, worship pure and clean.

  “You owe me something first.” We raised our other hand, caught the back of his neck and pulled his face toward ours.

  “Your sins,” we whispered.

  “Sins?”

  Uncertainty flickered through him, shaking his lust. Then it died, killed by his hunger for control, for power. For satisfaction.

  “You want sins?” He spit them out like promises, a torrent of sick fantasies, and ground his hard-on into our belly with every word.

  “Is that all?” We said softly, when he finally faltered into gasps.

  “You need more?”

  We met his ravenous eyes, stared into their depths. No trace of remorse had ever glimmered there.

  “No. I know you now, and all my gifts will be yours. Save one.” Our hand tightened on his neck, and our lips pressed to his.

  Clutching us close, Marks opened his mouth wide, hungry to devour. Then he tasted our first gift and tried to pull away.

  Too late.

  A bitter flood of disease rushed out of us, jammed past Marks teeth and tongue and filled him. He convulsed, but we held him and poured every last one of our dark gifts into him.

  “Take them,” we whispered. “And know my disapproval.” We wiped the foam from his chin, our fingers bumping over the sores that had begun to blossom like poppies across his face, then let him fall in ruins across the immaculate bedspread.

  “I—want—” The words were too much for him.

  “Too late,” we answered. “Your chance for that gift is gone. Forever.”

  His desperate eyes met ours, pleading. Then they rolled up as he convulsed, choked. Stilled.

  When his soul slipped away, we left the bedroom, shutting the door behind us to block the smell of shit and corruption.

  We had so little time left to dream together.

  * * *

  Peter Lorre stood in the doorway, uncertain.

  “Is he?”

  I wiped my eyes and sat up. The room swung, and my stomach heaved. After I'd been a god, the world never felt right for days.

  “In the bedroom.” I stood and stumbled for the bathroom. In the grey dawn light, I cleaned the snot and tears from my face, trying to ignore the scrawny junky that had replaced the goddess in the mirror.

  Outside, the bedroom door opened, then closed.

  When I was ready to go, I found Lorre sitting on the couch, staring at nothing.

  “My tip?”

  He fumbled in his suit coat, pulled out the case.

  I took it, checked the syringes inside. “Aztec, wasn't she?” I'd dreamt of pyramids and jungles, gold and jade and…So much gone, already.

  “Tlazolteotl,” Lorre said, his fake voice harsh with trapped tears. “Goddess of love and venereal disease.”

  Venereal disease. We'd given Marks every one of them, all at once. All her gifts.

  Except one.

  “I'll show you out,” Lorre said, staring still at the wall, his back to the shut door of the bedroom.

  “I'll find my own way.”

  * * *

  I sat in the empty concrete throat of the hotel's stairwell and stared at the two syringes left to me, dark and potent.

  My payment, for fucking Nathan Marks.

  I'd done that, hadn't I? Fucked him so thorough, he'd choked to death on pus after our first kiss.

  I'd gotten fucked too. By Peter Lorre, and Marrow.

  Marrow. That shark-toothed bastard had cut the blood into these doses. He had to know this bitch wasn't Aphrodite. How much had Lorre paid him, to set me up?

  Staring at the blood in my hand, I realized I didn't really care.

  Tlazolteotl. Goddess of love, and venereal disease.

  “Give me your sins,” I whispered, the words sounding so different in my weak, mortal voice. I shut the case and stood. Lorre had fucked me, and paid. But our deal wasn't done.

  * * *

  I had to threaten to call the cops before the door to Marks' suite swung open.

  “You—” started the young woman who held the door, but I shoved past her into the room. I could smell vodka, sharp and astringent, but underneath it the reek of Marks’ unclean death tinged the air.

  “You can't stop me.”

  She was young, good looking, probably, when her eyes weren't red with rage and tears. She walked past me, back to the table that held a bottle of Skyy and a spilled jumble of bright colored pills. Her fingers snatched up a handful, a greedy child grabbing candy, shoved them in her mouth and caught the neck of the bottle.

  When she tipped back her head to take a swallow, the red line the charm's cord had drawn across her throat stood out like a cut.

  “You're his daughter,” I said. In her face, I could trace the similarities. “What's your real name?”

  “Lori,” she said, picking out more pills. “Lori is Lorre. A stupid joke. Is that what you wanted? To know who set you up?”

  “No,” I sai
d. “I want to know what the goddess denied your father. What gift did she refuse him?”

  Hand to mouth, then bottle, then swallow.

  “Forgiveness.” Lori wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “She is the goddess of love, of venereal disease, and of forgiveness.”

  “Give me your sins,” I whispered. “Would he have lived, if he had?”

  “Yes.” Her fingers sorted out pills into her palm. Then she raised her ravaged eyes to me. “But I knew I was killing him, giving her to him. I knew he'd never confess. I don't think he understood what confession was. Doing whatever he wanted, fulfilling his own desires, no matter how twisted. He never understood how that could be wrong.”

  “Forgiveness. Absolution.” Wasn't that something beautiful, something holy? I sat in the chair and opened the case. How much money could I get for two vials of absolution? I bit my tongue, to keep the bitter laughter in.

  “What are you doing?”

  I ignored her and jerked the hem of my dress up, exposing my legs. There were good veins still on the inside of my thighs. My hands danced, plucked up a syringe, readied it.

  “What are you doing?” Lori asked again, her words slurring.

  “Doing?” The needle bit, and the goddess poured into me like fire. “Becoming holy.”

  “What?” Lori whispered, and despite the dullness the pills had pushed into her eyes, she dropped them, unwilling to face our glory.

  The empty syringe fell to the table, sending pills rolling. Our perfect hands took the bottle from Lori, and folded her trembling body into us. She clutched us like a child, even as she whispered, “No.”

  “Yes,” we said, holding her up. “Give them to me. All of them.”

  She stayed silent for so long, but then slowly, softly, they came. Her small sins eased the way for the great ones, until in the end the bitter rage at what her father had done to her spilled out. It poured like pus from an infection, hot and filthy.

  “I did it. Stopped that fucker, killed him vicious and ironic.” She slumped in our arms, her suicide slowly proceeding. “Part of me is so happy about that. Is that a sin, to be happy about killing someone who hurt me so bad?”

  “It is,” we said. “But it can be forgiven.” We laced our fingers in her hair, tilted her head back so her face was right below ours. “I can forgive them all.”

  Then we kissed her.

  Long and soft, holding her close, giving her our greatest gift.

  Then we let her go, let her slip down to her knees and vomit it all up, the alcohol, the pills, and the pain.

  * * *

  The warm breeze of afternoon poured through the balcony doors, carrying the smell of pollution and the distant tang of the sea. It made the curtains dance and washed away the bitter scents of vomit and death.

  “I understand now,” Lori said, staring out at the city. “Why you do this.”

  “No,” I breathed. Twice the goddess, and I lay on the couch, my hangover massive, my soul hollow and aching. “You don't.”

  Lori turned to face me. Her eyes were unsettling. Pure. Beautiful. Forgiven. And that was a kind of holy, but it wasn't the same.

  “Maybe not.” She walked over to me, knelt beside the couch and brought her strange new eyes too close to mine. “Maybe this grace you've given me is just a taste of divinity. But it's good.” Her hand touched mine, and I clutched the case that held that one last vial close. Through its thin leather, I could feel the blood stir with every beat of my heart.

  “You told me this was nothing you needed.”

  “I don't need it,” she said. “I don't want the blood. It's too much for me. It's too much for anyone. Isn't it?”

  I could meet her eyes now. “Screw you,” I whispered through bared teeth. “You used me, used my addiction to kill that bastard because you didn't have the guts to do it yourself. You poured his blood onto my hands. Now you want to fuck with me? What gives you the right to do that?”

  Lori just stared at me, her eyes vicious with sympathy. “What gave you the right to come back here?”

  I shut my eyes and turned my head away. “I just wanted another hit.”

  “And you got it,” she said softly. “And you've got one more.” Her hand squeezed mine, then it was gone, and I heard her standing, stepping back. “Take it, and you can be holy one more time, though I think it might kill you. Or you can give it to one of those uptown bitches you hate, and be forgiven. Absolved. For everything. It's….”

  Lori trailed off, and I opened my eyes, saw her standing next to the door, staring at nothing with those perfect eyes, like a newborns. “It may not be like being a god. But you can live with it, Angel. You can live.”

  “Fuck you,” I whispered again, and she nodded and was gone, the door clicking shut behind her, leaving me with the sun and the wind and the vomit and the corpse and the case that I held so tight to my chest.

  The case, and the blood.

  My fingers danced across the zipper, and I pulled out the syringe and held it up. I could use it, use it right now, be her again, and my arms, my soul, they burned for the needle. But behind the polished glass, I could see my face reflected in the black blood, my eyes like great gaping wounds.

  “Give me your sins,” I whispered, but in the blood my reflections lips didn't move, and the dark eyes that stared at me changed from hungry to holy, from lost to divine.

  I can forgive them all, and the words came from the echoes of my beating heart.

  “Gods,” I whispered. “Gods, gods, gods,” and it was a prayer and a curse, and my hand closed over the syringe. I pulled it close, clutched it against my heart, and wept.

  * * *

  Gary Kloster has always loved speculative fiction. That’s the fancy name for stories that involve lasers, or swords, or in the very best laser-swords. So as a kid, he decided to try writing it. And it went really badly.

  Gary Kloster is a writer, a stay-at-home father, a librarian, and a martial artist. Sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and Escape Pod. His first novel, Firesoul, is forthcoming from Pathfinder Tales. You can find him cluttering up the internet at garykloster.com

  Santa Muerte

  Lucy A. Snyder and Daniel R. Robichaud

  “It’ll be an easy score.” Halulu’s grin was infectious as influenza. It almost convinced Kai that the proposal was nothing more risky or legally questionable than selling ice-cold lemonade on a baking hot summer afternoon. Almost. But rent and tuition were due, his trust fund was gone, and how else were any of them going to come up with the cash?

  The Hawaiian pointed at Kai’s roommate Patrick: “You hold the case. Then, when I tell you, make the exchange.”

  Then he looked at his other roommate Mikey. “You keep your gun out, just so nobody gets any ideas. Don’t stick it in your pants and blow your dick off.”

  Kai asked, “What about me?”

  Halulu’s gaze rested on him, sharp and heavy as a bowie knife. Then he clapped him on the shoulder. “Kai, you have the most important part of all. You stay outside and keep the engine running.”

  “That doesn’t sound important,” Mikey scoffed. “I mean, I’m the one with the gat, right?” He pointed a finger like a pistol, hand cocked ninety degrees like a total gangsta. “Cough up the cash bitches!” His finger-gun dropped. “Hell of a lot more impressive than sitting on your ass.”

  “Ignore the hater.” Halulu’s tone was butter-smooth. “You are our escape clause, Kai. Remember: There’s no us without you.”

  “You sure this deal is hitch-free?” Kai asked.

  “Hell yeah,” Halulu said. “I know these guys. What can possibly go wrong?”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Kai’s beat-to-hell Pontiac sat idling across the street from the hand-off site. On the radio, fading Gorillaz beats eased the tension in Kai’s head before station identification. College radio was the best; they played t
he uncensored shit.

  Kai did not like looking at the place Halulu had led them to. It was just another cramped, dingy Karl Road tract house, but some intangible quality cast it in a sinister light. While the other homes seemed sleepily inert, this one had a jittery, predatory vibe.

  Kai patted the breast pocket of his bowling shirt. The feel of the spliff reassured him. He considered lighting up. Maybe a drag would kick the shake from his hands and heart. After three seconds weighing, he muttered, “No way, man.” It could wait until they were done and gone. Knowing it was there was enough. For now.

  A man’s gravelly voice emerged from the radio, talking about things “Everybody Knows,” when the night’s action veered an unexpected direction.

  First, came the roar of an approaching engine. With a rubber-ripping tire screech, a Cadillac rounded the corner–a Series 61 model, a touring luxury car that must’ve been cherry off the line but had aged about as well as Charles Bukowski.

  It accelerated down the street, headlights laying the street bare. Tire rubber ground wind-tossed garbage into mash without pause. The car slammed to a halt just two houses down from Kai’s Pontiac. The windshield reflected the moon, making the bone sliver crescent a lopsided grin. The passenger door swung open with a screech, and then a bundle tumbled out. Shoved or kicked. As soon as it hit pavement, the car’s engine growled anew and the car leapt away. When the Caddy rolled past, Kai caught sight of a sallow-eyed man in a porkpie hat. He grinned at Kai, and his capped teeth gleamed like rusty razors.

  The bundle lay still for three seconds and then sat up. It was a human being–a girl with a round face and slender throat. Wearing goth-finery–though all he could make out was black crinoline, black and white checkerboard pattern leggings and plenty of leather, buckles and lacing on her top and boots. She was a pale little thing, made all the more ghostly by the moonlight. He found himself wanting to run his fingers down the graceful curve of her bare neck, feel the texture of her crinkled skirts.