Cajun Gothic (Blood Haven) (2 page)

She patted Ivan’s arm and sat in a chair opposite,
the skirt riding way past propriety, yet she managed to exude naiveté and
chasteness. She crossed her legs.

Jesus.

Licking my lips, I decided to get the party started.

We talked, each question followed by a furrowed
brow, then a carefully worded answer of sorts. I wasn’t scoring much I couldn’t
already guess from the surface crap. I needed to drill deeper for the stuff
nobody would talk about.

“Are you familiar with Fangs and Topaz?” A brief
incline of her head and something fleeting in her eyes. Fear? Concern? I couldn’t
tell. “Did Svetlana ever go to either of those places?” I clarified, “As part
of her job?”

Sasha worried at her lower lip with a taloned forefinger,
considering how much she wanted to give me.

I assured her, “I want to find out who’s murdering
these women, including your friend. If you know something, please… anything you
can tell me will help.”

That was a mouthful even for me, and the girl needed
time to process and convert it into something that made sense. Ivan continued
to murmur behind her, possibly translating on the fly.

Finally, she took a deep breath and spoke haltingly,
“Svetlana was to those places many times. She was, how to say? It was religion
to her.” That sent a frisson of excitement up and down my spine. “She believed
a thing…”

“A thing.” My nosed nearly twitched. I tried to keep
a neutral expression. One look at the mountain gave me the reality check I
needed. My eagerness was spooking her.

Ivan decided on an intervention. He motioned for me
to follow him. I was loath to leave Sasha’s presence, but my curiosity spiked
so I followed the man up the stairs to a miniscule bedroom with bunk beds, a
small dresser and a nightstand. He pulled a drawer open and pointed to the
contents. I leaned around his bulk and peered inside.

What I saw didn’t surprise me. Fake fangs on a variety
of dental appliances, a black wig, a neck collar with spikes—I didn’t have to
touch them to know they were the real deal. The top of the dresser was cluttered
with makeup, heavy on mascara, false eyelashes and all the other accouterments
of the Goth culture. The closet contained the usual assortment of leather
products, some I recognized, lots I didn’t.

When I was done satisfying my curiosity, we left and
returned to the living room. Sasha had vanished into the kitchen. I heard her
moving around, putting something on the stove.

“You seen enough?” Ivan spoke, second gen Brooklyn
boy.

I’d seen but I had more questions. “Did she have any
enemies? In that group, not from her…?” I hesitated to say johns but he knew
what I meant.

“They’re a fucking bunch of freaks. She’d get knocked
around by the johns, but nothing like what those assholes did.” I waited a
heartbeat. “Fucking bloodsuckers. She’d come back bit so bad, it was like a pack
of wolves done her.”

“And she never reported this? What about her pimp?”
Some pimps liked their girls pristine, some not so much. Tastes varied.

Ivan barked a laugh but not because he thought it
was funny. “She fucking
loved
it, man. Showed everybody, even put up
with Boris beating the shit outta her when it got too much. Jesus Christ, you
ever been?”

He meant, had I been to the clubs. Yes, yes I had.

“When was the last time she was… bitten?”

“Uh, couple weeks maybe. Her pimp worked her over
pretty good after, so she had to stay in for a few days. Sasha saw to her.”

I wanted to know more about Sasha but this wasn’t
about her. At least, not yet. My gut told me I’d be making some time to look
into her situation more closely, and professionalism had little to do with my
interest.

“So when did Svetlana go back out on the streets?”

“Two, three days ago.”

“Did she go back to any of the clubs that you know
of?”

He just shrugged. I imagined it would be tough keeping
track of a houseful of hookers.

Her body’d been found sometime in the wee hours this
morning. I’d been in my joke of an office, working on another deadline when the
police report came through and Annie had sent me hightailing it uptown. The Medical
Examiner’s report had only specified the one set of puncture wounds as being
probable cause of… something. The M.E., Chen, hesitated to state it
categorically without conclusive proof, but I knew she believed like I did.
Whatever had attacked her and left her in that tub had sucked the blood clean
out of her.

Right down to the last fucking drop.

There didn’t seem much more to say so I thanked him
and walked myself to the door. Sasha met me there, a pained expression on her
face. It was all I could do not to lean down and kiss her brow.

If I did that, I’d likely not stop there.

She whispered, “You help?”

“Yes.” I said it with all the conviction I could
muster. Then I said, “Sasha, be careful.”

She simply turned away and climbed the stairs. I
left and began the long walk back to the subway station.

Somewhere along the way I picked up a tail.

I hoofed it to Windsor Terrace and picked up the B68
headed north. I’d change at Avenue J and take the straight shot to the
terminals lining the Upper Bay below Red Hook. There was a fetish bar I’d only
visited a few times, but not recently, and rumor had it they now catered to a clientele
with ‘special tastes’.

I sat at the back of the bus and observed who came
and went. After a half hour the entire bus had emptied and refilled. I could
have sworn I had a tail, though whoever it was knew what they were doing and
stayed far enough away so I couldn’t make them.

Why someone would want to follow me was a whole
other concern, though it shouldn’t have surprised me. I was digging into a very
select subculture, one where anonymity was the currency of the day. Unlike the
BDSM clubs that relied on relatively strict and mutually observed rules, this
group was a whole hell of a lot less restrained by normal social conventions.

Not that there weren’t any rules. The so-called
Vampyre scene intersected with Goth, BDSM and other fringe groups with a lot of
mixing of mythologies. The Vamp Havens considered themselves more tolerant than
the rest of their kindred spirits.

Of that I could attest.

And that was something I wasn’t going to think about.

A vision of Sasha, Alexandra, niggled at the back of
my mind. I couldn’t shake how much I’d been drawn to her. How much I still
tingled at the thought of… touching her, caressing her.

Damn.

Staring out at the deepening dusk, I tried to empty
my head again, not something I was terribly good at. The club—Haven—I was headed
for was part of the Court of Gotham that governed all the Havens in and around
the metropolitan center. I’d never been to one of their gatherings, though back
in the day, Trina and I had gone to the Big Easy for their Endless Night Festival.

That was when I lost her.

I licked my lips, remembering the taste and texture
of her skin, porcelain white, lips full of crimson sweetness… and doe eyes the
color of moss: liquid, rich, and mesmerizing.

I shook myself. Where was that coming from? I sounded
like a bad romance writer for Christ’s sake. The problem was, every time I
thought about Trina something deep inside spoke to me. Of things hidden. Things
forbidden.

She’d taken me places a kid should never go. She’d
been my first and, for a short time, my only. I had secrets buried so deep, I
wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to dig them out.

Catrina Constantinescu had gutted me with a rusty
knife, the rips and tears never healing.

No, I didn’t go the therapy route, not right away.
By the time I’d paid for a private dick to search for her, I was tapped out. In
more ways than one.

The Stans had offered a respite from worry. When in
doubt, shoot something, anything. The desert and the sweet-sour smell of
addiction wrapped me up cozy and secure. But never enough to forget.

Ever since then, I’d pretty much kept to myself. I
had my work, trading patriotism for a gun-for-hire shingle. That was good
enough for the likes of me.

Detox had been a bitch. A trade-off. Camos for
adrenaline-soaked leather and a gi that sometimes fit too tight. Skin sliding
over razors, ragged-edged. The dojo offered penance and redemption. Just the
thing for a hard-ass bent on self-destruction.

Sasha somehow reminded me that it could be
different. And suddenly, different seemed to make a hell of a lot of sense.

The Haven was on 25th. It was still early so I found
a pizza joint, chowed down and weighed my options for the evening.

For a change, they looked pretty good. That made me
cocky and careless, a bad combination.

I was thirty-five years old, looking back on nineteen,
meaning to misbehave.

I got more than I bargained for. I got déjà vu.

CHAPTER TWO

Haven

The building, an old warehouse, possibly from when
clothes were still made in this country, fronted on the East River and faced a
motley collection of docks and ramshackle storage shacks, all still in use. The
beehive of activity had shifted elsewhere, sucking the air out of the district.

The lines formed on either side of a solid metal
door, a narrow sluice pouring flash and flesh through the gates of Hell. The surveillance
cameras angled both up and down the four lane on a lazy sweep as tourists
exited a public transportation system intent on seeing to them having an
authentic Goth experience.

Shrugging past the mob, I pulled VIP status with a
generous donation to the Council’s widows and orphans fund.

Management had done an upgrade since I’d last been,
replacing Scandinavian chic with tacky Vlad-inspired accents. Velvet-lined
booths, tasseled pillows, ocher stressed faux paneling, and Dollar Store
battery-operated candles added ambiance and gag-worthy authenticity.

Trina would not have approved, not with her rich
cultural heritage of maniacal despots and schtick you couldn’t buy with
Benjamins.

Asta e un rahat.

The r’s rolled, too guttural and
deep from such a swan-like throat, the veins already ropey, distended. If I
hadn’t known better, I’d have said trans-sexual.

But I did know better.

And that made me hard. Rock hard.

At five-foot-ten and change, she
was no runway model, no Twiggy. But the flesh was spare, shrink-wrapped over
tight muscles and an even tighter cunt.

God damn.

I looked up at her, shitkickers
adding an inch or two or three. Yeah, looked up and liked it, liked she had me staring
at her neck, vein bulging, inviting.

No, she’d said, no plastic, those
tings, shite, you need me pure.

Oh, I needed. Fuck pure. I craved
dirty.

My ‘tings’, the fake dentures and
blunt tips, amused her.

I lived for her entertainment.

She shoved the buckets and mops
into a corner, making space. Backing me against shelves, edges biting hard, the
pain good. Real.

She pricked the vein with a
talon, blood red, pointed, let me lick, teasing me as the leathers vanished and
the flow cascaded down my throat.

At nineteen, I would have sworn
that nothing… nothing… could be better than being fucked senseless.

I was wrong. This was better. Hot
serum coating my innards, then expelling in gut-clenching violence, every
nuanced molecule spewing in garish Technicolor.

Light-headed, empowered, pushing
the platinum-blonde dreadlocks lower, mouth, tongue, spikes piercing, blood and
semen…

Praying to the gods of porcelain,
I’d vowed to man up, keep it down. Next time. Always next time.

The hot sultry stink of et tu fe
coated the walls. She said she would wait in the alley. Round two. If I was ‘up
to it’. A sultry laugh. A sly uptick to the well-shaped brow.

She would see to it.

She liked it public now. Pushing
boundaries. Hers or mine, I couldn’t be sure.

The poseurs paraded past the
alleyway entrance. The door slammed behind me, locking me out. Casting me into
null space.

Gone.

Sixteen years gone.

The music was still the same, in-your-face rap, the
kind moms and pops blanch at when the second-hand rides pimped out in surround
sound pause at red. Those same moms and pops stared google-eyed, toes tapping,
absorbing the performance art that went with the obscene cover charge.