Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,33
it into brick and mortar came loose, and the whole mess crashed to the alley below. I was wondering what would happen to me if the bitch got herself killed, and I was assuming that would be the end of both of us, when the monster pulled herself from the wreck. She looked like . . . well, a werewolf that had fallen thirty feet and had a ton of steel dropped on it. But she hardly even seemed fucking fazed. Just shook her head a few times, then resumed her killing spree. Scary monsters, right? I could hear police sirens and ambulances now, rescue vehicles, whatever.
So much for caution.
Scary monsters. And, thank you, Mr. Bowie, because, I thought, and there she goes, opening those strange damn doors, and ain’t no one ever gonna come along and get them closed again. And she might have been the porcelain demon who’d made me half of what I am. Or she might have been the girl with the wolf. Or my loup. Or, simply, me.
The girl’s wolf whined, and I opened my eyes.
The girl’s black wolf. My black loup.
Lightbulb. Duh and/or hello. Me, myself, and I.
“Sometimes,” the blonde girl said, me talking to me, “people lose themselves in their secret selves. Once upon a time it happened in France. Have you ever heard of the Beast of Gévaudan? That was someone who lost herself and never did make it back again.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of the Beast of Gévaudan. But I didn’t know it was a loup.”
Between 1764 and 1770, a nasty attacked more than two hundred people in the Margeride Mountains of France. More than a hundred died. The nasty ate on most of those. Don’t say I never taught you people anything.
“Sure you did, Quinn.”
“If you say so,” I told her, getting to my feet, wiping grass and dirt and crap off the seat of my jeans. There was a shiny iridescent beetle crawling on my leg, and I flicked it away. “I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have to hate her, but you can’t lose yourself to her,” said the girl. “You always have to come back.” Then she kissed the top of the black wolf ’s head, and it thumped its tail happily—at least I assume it was happily—against the ground. Goddamn heartwarming stuff. A girl and her carnivore.
I rubbed at my eyes. The sirens were getting louder, nearer. The sound of them only seemed to encourage the Rhode Island werewolf in Manhattan. It gutted a waiter who’d just gotten off work.
“Yeah, well, people die either way, whether it’s the Beast or a vamp. What difference does it make?”
The girl narrowed her eyes, and for the first time she looked impatient with me.
“Quinn, if you lose yourself tonight, or any other night, you’ll both be killed. That’s the way it always goes when a loup garou surrenders to—”
“You’re assuming I give a rat’s ass.”
She nodded very slowly.
“You’re not a suicide, Quinn. Maybe that’s what keeps you going, knowing it’s an option, that you can always kill yourself if the world gets to be more than you can endure. But, personally, I think if you were going to do it, you’d have done it by now, don’t you?”
Fuck it. Fast-forward. I’d figured out where that neon exit door was. First I broke the black wolf’s neck with a single quick twist. It didn’t put up much of a fight. The blonde girl didn’t try to run. I’d halfway hoped that she would. I drove my right hand through her rib cage and breast bone and tore out her heart. It wasn’t beating, and it wasn’t warm. It was nothing but a shriveled lump of discolored muscle. And it was exactly as easy as that.
The forest and the field dissolved.
And I was looking out across the city from some high place, out across rooftops and the asphalt grid of streets, everything lit up like a Christmas tree.
You always see people saying that time seems to slow way down during, say, car wrecks or pretty much any other sudden, violent event. Those times when their lives are in danger, or the lives of a loved one. Those sorts of situations. Encounters with the unexpected, chaotic incursions. Well, what came next, it was surely fucking chaos, and it certainly could have ended with my going down for the count, once and for all. But it happened so fast it seemed to be over almost before it began. Looking back, I can only