Chapter 26: Pigs Ruin a Gift

trucker friend of Erastos’, Amber was an ex-showgirl from Las Vegas, now a burly middle-aged woman with sun-weathered skin and piercing sea-glass eyes. Since Aix had so few things, and since Amber had been able to go independent and start her own shipping company with Erastos’ help, she’d been happy to have Aix’s things fill out some empty space in her trailer. She’d also been more than happy to talk with Aix and answer all their questions, and show him all the ways they prevented cross-contamination and harbouring vermin. Aix had also met her big silky brown cat, Mr Christopher Monday, that had jumped into her truck on a Monday and not left her side since. Aix had liked Amber immediately, for this tale.

The storage facility was in the industrial edge of town, right before it really started flattening out to suburbs across the highway, and catty-corner to Carroll Park. Amber was waiting on the little patch of grass in front of the wheelchair ramp, distanced from it so she could smoke a cigarette. Mr Christopher Monday was on a high-visibility orange harness attached to a leash looped around her wrist, and a tiny black kitten was in a pink harness and leash, lurching around the way kittens that age did, tail straight up in the air, arching at shadows. There was a pink cat carrier, open, at Amber’s booted feet.

The Packard, which was blue and gorgeous, pulled silently¹ into the only handicapped parking spot. Both cats perked up when the door to the car opened, and a young redheaded man in a purple mask that matched his dress shirt got out, walking around to open the trunk and pulling out the fanciest damn wheelchair Amber had ever seen. He wasn’t exactly dressed like a chauffeur, in his black jeans and dress shirt, but he was a little too formal. The painted nails and lined eyes, perfectly-shaped brows, the long intricately-braided hair and the clothes? Amber clocked him as a femme gay immediately.

The kitten arched and hissed, and Mr Christopher Monday, after thoroughly sniffing the air, opened his mouth in a flehmen sneer. Amber was curious at that; but waited patiently for answers; she was an observer, she’d always had to be.

Aix emerged, wearing beautiful eye makeup, and settled into the chair, and despite the fact that the sun had almost entirely set, only showing through a few weak breaks in the buildings to the west, the redhead opened a large black umbrella, angling it against the sun as the other occupant of the car got out, dressed all in elegant black and blue, face covered entirely by a veil, and not the style of Aix’s.

‘Hi,’ Amber called, putting out her cigarette in a pocket ashtray, and pulling a plastic bag of colourful N type masks out of her shirt pocket, putting a tie-dye one on.

‘Hi Amber!’ Aix called, waving, as a little tiny clown in little blue overalls climbed out of the car and beeped excitedly, trotting under the railings and over the grass, tail high and shivering like a cat’s, every step squeak-squeak-squeaking.

‘Prrp? Prrp?’ she said, slowing down as she got closer, crouching down and holding out her little ink-coloured hands. Christopher Monday sniffed and immediately nuzzled her hand and purred, his bottlebrush tail up and cheerful, as he was a friendly fellow. The kitten was a little more wary, but to Amber’s surprise he also did the same, and Pippin immediately rolled onto her side to play with him in the manner of cats, mewing and purring and seeming to know exactly how to Cat.

‘Who’s yer friend?’ Amber said, nodding to the shrouded goth as she picked up the carrier and made her way closer to the edge of the grass, so the wheelchair wouldn’t have to find a way around the railings and such. The little clown followed, which helped coax the kitten without Amber needing to drag him (he was still getting used to the leash). Mr Christopher Monday was used to his lead enough, and followed Amber everywhere anyway, faithful as a hound.

‘René Charbonneau, madame,’ came a French-accented male voice from behind the veil. ‘I am sensitive to light, alas, but I am pleased to meet you. This is Cameron, my boy.’ He gestured elegantly to the redhead, who waved and smiled, still holding the umbrella. ‘I hear we were once colleagues.’

‘That right?’ Amber said, glancing at the gloves, which had faceted blue rhinestones decorating them. ‘You a drag queen?’ was her best guess, given how similar drag and being a showgirl were.

‘Ah no, a stripper,’ René said, and Amber laughed like a wildfire, liking him more automatically; there weren’t many people that could mention her past in sex work as a compliment, but someone else in the business, well—and a man, at that! It was harder for men.

She whistled. ‘I’ve heard of that place, shit. That’s legend. Oldest gay strip club in the country, isn’t it?’

‘When did you get a clown, Aix?’ Amber asked him, as Pippin and Aix finally got the kitten to trust enough to pick him up and put him in Aix’s lap. Amber took the kitten’s leash off her wrist and gave it to Aix, who looped it around his own wrist automatically, and still kept his hand on the kitten. Amber liked his instincts.

‘René was fostering her,’ Aix said, as he gently introduced himself to the kitten, ‘she sorta latched onto me after the attack.’

Amber hugged him, careful of the two little ones in his lap. ‘Mike told me about that,’ she said. ‘You did good. Oh, and, speakin’ of—’ She pulled a keychain out of her pocket, that had a key to the storage unit and a pink can of pepper spray. ‘Got you a weapon.’

Aix immediately thought of the werewolves, and was pretty sure he got kind of a worryingly manic smile in his eyes. ‘Hohohoheheheh…’ he laughed his little Goblin Laugh again, attaching it to the collection on his lanyard, which was currently looped onto one of his purse straps since he’d been prepared to see a kitten and didn’t want to teach it to play with not-toys. ‘Thank you, Amber.’

She chuckled; Mike had said Aix had gotten much sillier as he’d gotten less tense, and had the fun sort of eccentricity some people got after being alone for a few years, of lots of silly little voices and flourishes to express himself. On top of clearly having found a sugar daddy who liked to dress and pamper him, shower him with gifts… it was good to see him looking so different, sounding so different.

Amber knew she couldn’t exactly ask for details, the way she couldn’t exactly ask for details about Mike’s job; but she picked up a lot, and she had once been in a career you also had to talk around. She knew there was more than humans on this earth, now, and that there were folks in the thick of that, like Mike, and Aix, and the bitch that had nearly killed Aix a few nights ago. She knew there was something that had happened when Aix had accidentally killed his assailant, something of the ‘got rid of a town menace’ variety, but also of the ‘well if you get rid of them you take their rôle’ variety. It didn’t have to make sense, much; but Amber could read people, mostly by how other people acted around them—if Charbonneau was a pimp, he was one of the rare ones that was a former whore, and wanted to be better to his boys than his Daddy had been to him.

Nepenthé had a reputation, all right, and it was one that supported that theory.

Mr Christopher Monday was sniffing around Cameron’s feet, doing that flehmen response again, his tail lashing in confusion or maybe indecision.

‘I’m confusing,’ Cameron said, unbothered. Pippin climbed down off Aix’s lap and trotted over to Mr Christopher Monday, babbling at him and patting Cameron’s leg.

Aix, stroking the kitten, who was rapidly falling asleep in a little loaf, paused, looking over at Pippin; but he decided not to say anything, looking up at Amber. ‘Thank you so much for the kitten, Amber. I love him.’

‘His little microchip has your number in it—oh, right, gotta give you that paperwork the vet printed for me…’ She patted down the pockets of her jacket, pulling out a folded packet of papers and offering it. ‘Here, microchip information and his vaccination records. He’s had all his shots, and there’s a schedule for the ones he needs when he gets older.’

Aix just put it all into his purse with only a cursory glance. ‘No health issues?’

‘Nah, he’s a healthy little mite, once we got him all fixed up.’ She didn’t mention the fleas, she knew Aix had trauma about it and didn’t want him worrying. ‘You wanna see the storage unit?’

‘We will wait here,’ René said. ‘It’s a lovely sky, I have not seen it in some time.’

‘So what’s the story here, Aix?’ Amber asked, after they got into the building. ‘Mike was vague, she usually is when it’s weird stuff.’

‘Uh, well, there’s a reason for that,’ Aix said, not great at keeping secrets at the best of times. ‘I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you more than she has.’

‘But um, I can say that this woman that kidnapped me and uh, shot herself accidentally,² has been harassing René to the point of him just… not leaving the house. That’s probably why he’s staying outside.’

The fact that René just hadn’t been outside in more than a decade was heartbreaking. Aix hadn’t needed to have it explained why a vampire would feel extremely unsafe outdoors or even interacting with a fucking necromancer; he could add.

‘Jeeeeezus,’ Amber said, stopping at the unit. Aix locked the wheels and carefully got up, balancing the kitten, who complained at his warm bed moving.

‘Aww, I knowwww,’ Aix said softly to him, as he put the key in the lock. ‘I knowwww, I’m a mean old man…’

‘No, thank you,’ Aix said, ‘I need to know I can open it myself, because you’re not gonna be here when I come again.’

Amber held the kitten for Aix while he opened the door, carefully but by himself. The unit was the smallest one, but even so, Aix did not have a lot of stuff. He looked at it for a while, quietly.

‘That’s my whole life that I rebuilt by myself,’ he said, quietly, after a few moments.

‘It is, you did great,’ Amber said, knowing from experience how sobering it was to both start over from nothing and also to look at your life packed up into little cardboard boxes. Aix closed and locked the storage unit again.

‘Thank you for this, again,’ Aix said, turning to Amber and hugging her, before settling back down in his chair and taking the kitten back. ‘Um, you probably need to get back to work, and René is taking me to see a realtor today and look at houses.’

‘Who, René?’ Aix said, and realised what it must look like. ‘Oh um, yeah. I wish I could explain this to you, I’m sorry, Amber.’

‘As long as he lets you have friends and your own bank account,’ Amber said, starting to push him back toward the entrance.

‘Yes,’ Aix said, firmly. ‘Yes, definitely. He’s just sort of, um, he wants me to stay here and he knows that means he needs to offer me a house and a way to earn a living, because that’s what Virginia’s offered me up in New York. I think that’s pretty green flag, that he asked me to stay and I told him, “okay, this is what I have in New York, so you have to offer me that too” and then he just… did. And is,’ Aix said, frowning as they tried to work out what tense was correct for that rambling sentence. ‘Anyway, I’m planning on splitting my time, half here and half in New York, because one of the little gigs Virginia offered was teaching people to read and I can’t not do that, that’s like, so importa—oh no. Oh god. Oh no.’

There were two police cars in the parking lot, and Aix felt Cthulhu’s voice, because he was in the car, still, hidden.

They cannot see you, but stay where you are, perhaps go deeper into the building.

He was quiet, and Aix knew things had been a little tense between them, but Aix was calmer now, and whatever René had told him had smoothed things over, and Aix was willing to call it solved—he’d spoken his piece, it was solved to him.

She quietly wheeled them outside, to the other side of the building, in the back parking lot that was for big rigs like hers. Amber’s had a picture of a beachy sunset and running horses airbrushed onto the cab, and Amber opened the passenger door, Mr Christopher Monday leaping inside immediately, Pippin climbing nimbly up after him. Aix held the kitten to his chest as he got out of the chair.

‘I’ll put this in the back. You get yourself and the joey in the shower until I tell you it’s safe, okay?’

‘I suppose asking if there’s a possum belly would be weird?’ Aix asked, and Amber chuckled.

‘The weird shit you know—yeah, but I can’t show you until I get back. You need a boost?’

‘No,’ Aix said, climbing up into the cab and shutting the door as quietly as he could, before unhooking the kitten from the leash so he could go hide. Mr Christopher Monday picked him up as soon as he got on the cab floor and took him up to the bed that was over the little booth.

Aix was surprised she called them that, but took it in stride. ‘Yeah beeble, the rozzers are here and harassing René, so you and me have to hide, okay?’

Pippin nodded, dimming her Flash and making her Mask splotchy camouflage greys that would help her disappear into the shadows—if she hadn’t been wearing her cute little outfit, anyway. Aix quickly found the closet-sized bathroom, which blended into the faux wood panelling of the walls, and Pippin followed him inside, taking off her shoes and putting them in the nearest cupboard she could reach.

It wasn’t as cramped as Aix expected in the bathroom, likely because it was made for a woman Amber’s size (she was very tall, and fat, just like Michaela), and waited. There was a sound that vibrated through the truck, and Aix figured that was Amber closing the trailer doors, and then the door opened and the cab rocked like someone was getting in.

Amber: That’s Tim, him and Elvis are giving us cover. I’m gonna pull out and drive a little way off. This has happened before, don’t worry kiddo. Truckers hate cops too.

Amber checked her mirrors, backing out of the spot as she flicked on the radio, hearing the back half of a message.

‘Mustang Mama, I say you’re all clear to get on the 95, King Coyote and Fat Wizard standing by to escort the lady.’

In the bathroom, Pippin insinuated herself into Aix’s lap, hugging him as he typed a message to Michaela and Victoria.

Aix: The cops came while Amber was showing me my storage unit. Amber hid me in her truck and we’re going somewhere like she’s pretending she’s just leaving. But I’m worried about René being trapped outside with cops. ;A;

Michaela: I might have already mentioned you as my partner a few days ago. >:3c

Michaela: If you can, let Amber know V and I are heading over. Call Gin if you have to and head all the way up to NYC. You can train back down when the coast is clear.

Aix frowned, feeling upset and angry that his plans were being messed up. He wanted to protest, and he even typed out a rant before he looked at it and deleted it. He put his phone away and hugged Pippin until he calmed down a bit, and opened the door to the bathroom, going carefully out and sitting at the dinette.

‘Heyo,’ Amber said. Aix sighed, and carefully made his way up to the passenger seat, buckling in.

‘Mike says I should skip town. She’s. Said that before. I didn’t listen. But… I guess she’s right.’

‘Feels cowardly,’ Aix said, sullen and cross about it, folding his arms and hunching with his mood.

‘You ever seen any ghosts or anything?’ Aix said, impatient with the Mummery, wanting to talk to Amber.

‘Sure, yeah. Met Mike covered in blood from some kinda monster something out in Sonoma county in…’ she sucked her teeth as she thought, ‘ ’07? ’08? Somewhere around there. Picked her up on the side of the road just before the thing reached the edge.’

‘And she says you can’t know stuff?’ Aix was shocked. He figured once you had a run-in with a monster, you got to know.

‘Ahhh, so this is that kind of stuff. He’s that kind of goth.’ She glanced over at him enough to wink. ‘Gotcha.’

‘He’s. Been an actual whore. Back when it was legal,’ Aix said, massively relieved. He could avoid saying ‘vampire’ or anything specific, he just couldn’t avoid René being immortal. ‘This woman was… in Mike’s profession. And was the one for Baltimore. So uh. So when she died, someone had to take her place. And that’s me.’

She showed Aix that she was sitting with the cats in the bunk, tucked well back from the edge. She knew how to travel in a vehicle like this, she’d done it a lot during the times she’d been with a show. She was immensely happy to be around not just Little Brothercat but also Mr Christopher Monday. Aix made mental note that perhaps they needed more than one cat.

‘Cos I’m a witch,’ Aix said. ‘Because I sort of lied when I said she shot herself.’

Amber laughed like a wildfire. ‘Well, shit, son! Remind me never to get on your bad side.’

The radio crackled, and Aix didn’t catch everything, but a man’s voice said something over the radio, and Amber reacted like it was addressed to her.

‘Hold on—10-4, King Coyote. Play dead for a minute.’ She looked over at Aix. ‘So, we headed to Manhattan?’

Aix understood that intellectually, but creature comforts had become his anchor, his coping mechanism. And he… didn’t like that, really. He didn’t like that routines and specific objects had become something he relied on, even though he understood why. He didn’t like it, it wasn’t very Adventurous of him.

However. There was one object he really needed, if he was really leaving, even for a night. ‘We need to stop at Nepenthé. I need to grab my plushy. I lost her once, I’m not going through that again. It’ll only take a second.’

‘Oh! That’s good, yes. It won’t be Mike, she’s busy distracting the pigs.’ Aix got out his phone and was already typing to George, though, because he knew George was the perfect person to ask. It was odd to think he had a cell phone, but he used it specifically for this sort of thing.

Aix: Peelers need avoiding again, I’m headed to nyc. Can you pack a bag that includes laptop, my pillow, and my black pegasus stuffed animal please?

George: Your things will be packed entirely and waiting. Shall I await you or send Lance to meet you elsewhere?

Lance was the bouncer, Aix had met him briefly. ‘Where should someone meet us?’

Aix stared at the message, realising he always assumed nobody cared, and just got on with his life about it; but it felt… it felt really good, to have someone ask.

Aix: I’m safe. In a big truck with Mike’s friend the trucker. She’s good people. Mike and V are heading to René to help him.

George: Very good. I shall inform Mr Gold of your predicament, he will understand.

René was very good at hiding his negative emotions; centuries had given even more practise, and he was older than the country he lived in, and had watched its laws be written. He knew his rights and how to press his advantage, particularly since the first cruiser hadn’t shown up until it was dark enough that Cameron could put the parasol away in the car.

With Heeren gone, with his master gone, René was more powerful than he’d ever been. What cared he for the spoilt mercenaries of the crown, after all? He’d seen a hundred of their like, they never changed.

Are they? Cthulhu could tell René was a human… capable of cruelty, capable of violence; all the vampires were, but unlike Dmitri, unlike many of the humans Cthulhu understood were called ‘soldiers’, who genuinely gained pleasure from hurting others, René approached violence differently than Cthulhu had encountered before. He never started it, but he had experienced a life where others threatened and attacked him often, expecting him to cower; but he had grown up knowing his worth, and fighting with steel and taking with force, and even his cruel vampiric master could not beat this strength out of him.

That is what this has always been about, chéri. The old huntress kidnapped our Aix because of you, and these men are continuing her quest.

There was a strange mix of emotions under those words—tightly-held anger at Cthulhu and the police both, annoyance at how utterly frivolous this encounter was, worry for Aix, even as he felt sure Aix was in safe hands…

After sending Aix out of the room, René had told Cthulhu all of what happened, and given context for it as well, and Cthulhu had understood what horror was, in that moment. René made no politeness, not like Aix—he blamed, and he wielded guilt like a weapon, and yet he was right too, in asserting that Cthulhu deserved Aix’s anger, that Aix was righteous in it, because of all that had occurred, that Cthulhu had caused and then abandoned him. Not on purpose, but intent didn’t matter when it came to harm one did due to neglect of one’s duties as a lover.

Cthulhu had not put together, foolishly, that the great loyalty and love his human had given him was not free, that it was expected in return. He had defended Aix from the wolves, and he had helped with the Voivode, but that was easy—the harder, more important thing was to continuously be there, not only be there in emergencies. It was alien to Cthulhu, and he couldn’t shake the horror of knowing he had memories Aix did not; but René had made clear that it was expected he either set it aside and make new memories to bond with, or leave—Cthulhu could not have a human’s love and not tend it properly. Languages were more than words, they were behaviours and patterns too, called ‘culture’; and once René pointed that out, explained it, Cthulhu felt eager to learn and do more of that, to become more fluent in this one type of human, rather than trying to learn all of them at once.

And now these ‘police’ were interfering, were harming Aix and driving him away again, because they were like the soldiers, they wanted to kill everything beautiful about humanity, because of reasons Cthulhu could not understand. They were part of the violent group that Victoria and others had explained, that was called ‘fascism’ and ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘imperialism’ and ‘hatred’.

He was angry with them, now; angry like the other humans he’d spoken to. He understood, now, not simply by having it explained in theory, but now it was in him, it was personal.

They were supposed to be leaving to look at places to live. They were supposed to be doing something enjoyable. There was no cause for the police to be here, to be interrupting them!

Cthulhu opened the door to the car, and emerged all at once, towering over all the humans, even the very tall policeman. He didn’t know how to be frightening, not really; but luckily, just looking like this was frightening enough.

‘Well?’ he said, having been working since the night before on making the organs necessary to make sound. He saw their terror, their guns pointed at him all at once, and saw how frightened they were, and how they wished him to be punished for frightening them, and he understood, now, why everyone he had met was so angry at them. ‘You wanted to meet me. Here I am.’

It was a simple matter to make certain molecules set alight, guns were very dangerous machines, and there were crashing explosions from them as they went off in their owner’s hands, burning them and causing the police to drop their weapons, melted from the plasma Cthulhu had made the gunpowder into.

René enjoyed their screams, their fear, smiling. ‘Did you not wish to know if he was here, mignons?’ he called liltingly, over their screaming. ‘Why are you so upset? Is this not what you asked me to do?’

René watched them for a while, and then turned to Cameron. ‘Start the car, Cammie.’ After Cameron turned to obey, René glanced up at Cthulhu, a smile playing on his painted lips.

‘Impressive dramatic timing, chéri. Well done. Is it true, about your people being able to induce helpless madness?’

Cthulhu thought about this. The human brain was something he was learning more and more about, the more minds he encountered, but… there was something he wanted to try.

I call upon Pan, god of madness, to afflict these police without killing them, and to lift it at your leisure.

He didn’t know exactly how ‘praying’ worked, but he knew one didn’t expect any tangible or immediate response.

He got in the car, and René followed. Almost immediately, René picked up the car’s telephone, dialling a number.

‘Hi, I’m in Sparks with Amber, we’re waiting for Lance to bring me my stuff so I can go up to New York for a while until the cops lose interest.’

As much as René wanted to tell him to come back, he knew things would remain this way for some time—it would get worse before better, the living were still young enough to hate change.

‘We will join you when it is closer to the date of our flight out to Bucharest, yes?’

‘I know, chou-chou.’ René said, pursing his lips in sympathy at Aix’s disappointment, ‘I’m disappointed as well; but they will still be here. The important thing is that you are safe.’

‘Can you tell Erastos and St Croix what’s going on? I texted Victoria and Mike, they’re apparently playing detective and on their way to you—are you okay?’

‘Ooooh, that sounded villainous,’ Aix’s voice sounded eager and had a wicked laugh beneath it. ‘What did you do?’

There was a long pause. ‘…oh my fuck you’re hot. Jesus. I need to lay down.’

Cthulhu glowed with pleasure, his skin brightening with colour and flirtatious patterns. ‘I am happy you like it, little one.’

René chuckled, just to add to Aix’s arousal, and enjoyed his strangled moan. ‘Tell Lancelot to remain with you, chou-chou. I would have you watched over. I can give your contact information to Mr Gold, and he can help you take a first look remotely?’

‘Oh, yeah, that would help me have something to do, thank you. Um, who is… paying for the house?’

‘It is compensation for causing Heeren’s death, petit. You shall own it, I will arrange it with Erastos so that doing so does not give cause for the government to harm you, never fear.’

‘Okay, thank you. Because… yeah, if the house is in my name that’s an asset, meaning I will be expected to sell it in order to qualify for… anyway, it doesn’t matter, Erastos knows I want to get off SSI anyways. Thank you, René.’

‘De rien, chou-chou. I should be thanking you. Give my regards to New York.’

① This was markedly odd, because the ‘twelve’ in ‘Packard 12’ indicated the number of cylinders in the engine. To have it pull up as silent as that meant they’d replaced the engine with an electric one—anathema, if you collected cars. Amber thought it was intriguing, though.

② Aix decided that was the least dignified version of events, and robbed her of competence, which was the most insulting thing he could think to do to her memory.

Chapter 26

Pigs Ruin a Gift

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