Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,79

a narrow, winding road leading us into the heart of the cemetery. We passed obelisks, a gaudy little chapel that would have been right at home in my storybook dreams, a goddamn sphinx, and all those headstones like warning signs we were too stupid to heed. But nothing moved.

“You know where we’re going?” I asked.

“I do,” he said. “It’s not much farther.”

And it wasn’t. At the crest of what I took to be the highest point in Mount Auburn, we came to a granite tower. The thing, at least fifty or sixty feet tall, looked like someone had plunked one of the rooks from a giant’s chess set down onto that hilltop. Clearly, subtlety wasn’t something Isaac and Isobel were overly concerned with.

“Here?” I asked, and he killed the engine.

“Here,” he said. “The hill’s hollow. Well, if you know the way, the hill’s hollow.”

“And you know the way?”

“And I know the way. Are you ready?” he asked.

I looked at him, and then I looked back at the tower.

“So,” I said, “we are seriously just going to stroll into the Snows’ not-so-top-secret lair of unspeakable fucking evil, Madonna in hand. No backup, no escape plan, no contingency plans, no plans whatsoever. One gun. Don’t you remember what Boromir said about just walking into Mordor?”

He turned and looked at me, and right then, I couldn’t imagine how I hadn’t realized, right off, that he was a vamp. Right then, there hardly seemed to be anything human about him.

“Quinn, do you want to save her, or do you want to see her cut down in the crossfire?”

I didn’t bother answering him. Instead, I tucked the pistol back into my jeans, then reached under the seat and retrieved the Madonna.

“Who gets the honors?” I asked, holding out the bundle.

“You, I’m afraid. That’s what they’re expecting. Let’s not disappoint our hosts.”

I nodded, opened my door, and got out of the cherry-red Porsche. From the hill, the lights of Cambridge and the Boston skyline were spread out below us, and overhead there was only the waxing crescent moon and a handful of stars bright enough to shine through the urban light pollution. There was just one entrance to the tower, a gaping lancet-shaped archway at its base. A line of stairs led from where we’d parked straight up to that black hole.

What are you waiting on, Quinn? Come and see!

I looked across the roof of the car at Charlee. He’d pulled a small shoulder bag from the backseat. It was bubblegum pink, and the fabric was decorated with an assortment of Sanrio characters.

“I do have something for you,” he said, reaching into the ridiculous pink bag.

I laughed and rubbed at my eyes.

“What the fuck could you possibly have in there, Charlee with two e’s? Maybe a handful of deadly, explosive chocolate-flavored Bad Badtz-Maru pocky? A sawed-off twelve-gauge over-and-under Hello Kitty charm bracelet?”

He smiled, and his own set of piranha teeth glinted dully in the faint moonlight. He took out a corked bottle and tossed it to me. I held it up and saw there was water—or some clear liquid—and a few shriveled, discolored leaves inside.

“I assume you know what it is?” he asked.

Fuck me, but I did.

“Aconitum,” I said. “Monkshood. Wolfsbane.”

“When Selwyn accidentally poisoned you—”

I lowered the bottle and stared at him.

“How do you know she—”

“—you changed, but you also remained lucid, for the first time ever. And please don’t start asking questions now, girlbaby, because we don’t have time for explanations. They are presently a luxury we cannot afford.”

I looked at the bottle again.

“I didn’t bring guns,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I came unarmed. Grim as all this might seem, I intend to live through tonight.”

“So to speak.” I shook the bottle.

“Exactly.”

Back at the museum, under the Tyrannosaurus, when Charlee had barged into my skull and put the zap on my brainmeats, I’d seen my Beast hanging helpless inside a cage. So, you can probably understand why the last thing I wanted was to go getting fuzzy in the presence of Isaac and Isobel and all their gang of groovy ghoulies. Never mind the fucking dream.

And Hell followed after.

“It’s a last resort,” he said. “That’s all.”

Or it was one last way that B could dream up to make me into a weapon, this time the Red Right Hand of his vengeance, set loose on the psychos who’d mutilated and crippled him. Ghouls can be scary monsters, sure. But next to a loup bitch with all her senses about her? Well, there are nasties,