disused track lay. This is what usually happens after the Beast comes out to play. My liquid-diet vamp stomach can’t deal with all that shit the wolf wolfs down, and as soon as I’m this me again, I hork up all that meat and . . . well, too often, worse stuff than meat. The Beast is not a discerning gourmand.
So, there I am, huddled on the filthy platform of a forgotten subway station, naked as the day I was born, puking up my innards and cursing the indiscriminate appetites of loups. Hardly digested ghoul McNuggets spattering all over the place. Not a pretty picture. Not one I’d want preserved for posterity. What I would like very much to consider a private goddamn moment. Too bad. Not meant to be. I wiped my mouth on the back of one hand and sat up, hoping there was nothing left in me wasn’t supposed to be there.
I realized someone was watching me.
Vamps are extraplusgood at that. Probably I’d have figured it out sooner, if not for all the hurt and regurgitation.
And then the watcher spoke. He—it was a he—had a voice like a two-hundred-year-old chain smoker. But I could also hear the remnants of the same sort of old-money Boston accent I’d heard through the phone when Isaac Snow had called Selwyn’s apartment. I have an ear for shit like that, accents.
“Poor girl,” he said. “I trust you feel better now?” he asked. I turned around and gave the whoever it was a good look at my middle finger. Right hand.
The speaker was leaning against a tiled wall, puffing a cigarette. He wasn’t a ghoul, not really. But he also wasn’t human, not really. He was what you’d get if a mad scientist set out to make one, then decided, halfway through, to make the other. He was also naked, so at least I wasn’t the only one. He had the scabby gray-purple skin of a ghoul, but his face was still more of a face than a muzzle, and his feet were not quite hooves. I could sorta make out a couple of toes. The son of a bitch had a schlong that dude porn stars would kill for, right? I mean, never before had I beheld a baloney pony of such prodigious dimensions. How do you not stare at something like that?
“Who—and what—the fuck are you?”
He didn’t answer me, just took a long drag off his cigarette. The tip flared in the gloom.
“You’re not Isaac Snow,” I said. “I’ve heard his voice, and you’re not him.”
I spat, trying to get the throw-up taste out of my mouth. Didn’t work.
“No, I’m definitely not Isaac Snow,” said the nasty with the enormous dick. “But he’s the reason I’m here.”
I’d already sorta guessed that part, but I didn’t tell him that.
“Is that so? Well, do you happen to have any idea where the rest of my clothes are?” I pointed at the duster and my pants. “And my fucking gun?”
He grinned, and his eyes glimmered. He for sure had the eyes and the toothsome smile of a ghoul—only different. I spat again.
“And what about Miss Throckmorton?” he asked. “Surely you’ve noticed she’s missing, as well.”
“Yeah, well, fuck her,” I said. “I’m tired of getting my ass kicked on her account. She can go hang, for all I care.”
And right then, I probably meant it.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But the hour is late, Quinn, and how you feel about her has ceased to be an issue.”
I crawled the few feet to my clothes, my legs still too wobbly to stand. He kept talking.
“She’s made you a part of this, and it’s unlikely you could, at this point, extricate yourself from the muck and mire of unfolding events.”
I pulled on the duster. It was ripped and torn and the leather was still tacky from all the blood.
“Goddamn cocksuckers went and killed my fucking coat,” I muttered.
The nasty laughed, a sound that made his speaking voice positively melodious by comparison. I glared up at him, and he smiled back at me.
“Dude, who the fuck are you?”
“Pickman,” he said. “Richard Upton Pickman.”
My turn to laugh. I dropped the ruined duster in my lap and shook my head, the way you shake your head when you can’t decide between That just fucking figures and No fucking way.
“Well,” I said, flipping a mental coin, “that just fucking figures.”
“Then you’ve heard of me?” He sounded pleased at the prospect.
“Maybe I read a couple of stories once,” I replied.
“Ah, yes. Those.