Kings of Midnight
“Alright alright settle the fuck down, look at you sad motherfuckers...think you had to muscle me the hell around - oh I get it, you’re that unrare variety of shithead that goes after people who can’t fight back aren’t you. Think I’m afraid of you, you sorry fucks?! I ain’t afraid of nobody, least of all you pansy pussy ass - ”
The sounds of uncompromising violence, of the snap of bones and tear of flesh, of wolven-snarling and bestial struggle fill the alleyway.
” - AAAAGHGHH, fffFFFUCK I SAID ALRIGHT ALREADY, LET GO OF MY LEG! Christ...Christ, you didn’t have to...said you wanted to know about the Kings? Yeah I know em, anyone down here in the Jungle's heard of em...but yeah I guess whoever steered you my way was right. Knew them, I guess, you can’t really know them anymore, not after...y’know. Jesus, give a guy some space to regrow my fucking foot? You think I just got spares kickin’ around - no that wasn’t a joke you ogre-looking bitch...yeah you tell her to back off. Christ...”
“So, the Kings of Midnight...What like, far back as anyone knows, back to the beginning? Shit nobody remembers anything about them before they just...showed up here, all glam and balls, tipped everything over and rocked out in its ashes cuz they could. Not really the sorts to create order but...I guess at the time, those were the kind of leaders Ashland needed, y’know? Course you spring chicken shits don’t know, you little twerps were barely a squirt from your daddy’s nuts back then...yeah I’m old so what the fuck of it? Old enough to handle you punks if you didn’t catch me deep in that whore. You owe me seventy bucks...’less you wanna finish the job - ”
The sounds of uncompromising violence, of stupid swill-drunk monsters who don’t know when to keep the piss in getting boned like a fish; the passage of fifteen tense minutes waiting for him to regenerate enough to speak, of chiding the youngest member of the pack for her ill-kept temper; the splash of a bucket of dirty water over the old monster to stir him from unconsciousness.
“BLBBFH BBLLBLEH, aagh...ahh...can’t you...fuckin’ kids take...a fucking joke?! Lord! Believe it or not these were my good pants...ok, I’ll talk, just stop carving me up.”
“Listen closely, cuz I ain’t gonna repeat any of it, and strap yourselves in for a wild story about the two baddest, craziest sons of bitches to ever run this town. It’s a story that’s got it all - obscene violence, gratuitous sex (that means you better plug your ears you boy-lookin’ girl-child), drugs and guns and rock n’ roll, and of course...brotherhood. A loyalty tested by the most morally depraved villains, temptation that could harden up a eunuch (that’s right I’m lookin’ at you cueball), and of course some good home grown badassery.”
“Think you can handle a tale like that, or would you rather watch TikTok videos and paint your pretty little nails? Alright alright, I’m just sayin’, it’s not exactly a short story...lemme just sit the fuck down on that milk crate. Phewph...a’right. This all starts in the distant past when I had color in my hair, in the year 2000...”
𝕐𝕦𝕤𝕦𝕗 𝕄𝕚𝕫𝕣𝕒𝕙
“Galen check this out.” I took a breath.
“Eight lance-legs impale the sun,”
“Gory guts strewn past our knees,”
“Saber-fangs drip ichor bright,”
“Howl my triumph against the sea,”
That was part of the second verse, some lyrics for our newest (as yet unnamed) song. It painted a picture of our capstone conquest.
“Hm,” he responded with little commitment.
The fading echoes of my voice were replaced by the indifferent, bustling hum of Ashland awakening. My lungs worked like bellows, my heart glowing hot like a furnace. The Spider-Ogre’s blood slicked my fangs; I licked them clean and regarded my world, painted dawn-bright.
Wound-fires burned where the monster’s teeth and spear-tipped legs had gotten the better of me, but my flesh already closed the rents and tears.
This was what winning looked and felt like.
“Think the others are gonna believe us?” I spray painted a bright red crown on the east-facing brick wall, and it turned this awesome shade of ocher you didn’t see anywhere but at this time, on these bricks.
I thoroughly enjoyed vandalizing this hard-won wall with the sigil of my brotherhood with Galen; let all who see it feel dread.
“’bout what?” he had that Fulton-boy accent; somehow everyone around here could tell he was from Atlanta, I could barely hear a difference in their drawls.
He dug a pair of cans free from an ice chest; I let my imagination run wild for a bit and pretended they were twin horns of foul mead, torn from like, the head of a troll or something gnarly like that.
“’bout what, dude…obviously about last night’s brutal victory. I mean come on.” I put that finishing touch on a seven-pointed crown, all precise with the lines (much as I could be with a spraypaint can). My first time tagging something with our sigil for real. “We were on fire, it was legendary.”
The prize had been this grimy little spit-pot of urbanity; I let myself see a great, gothic-spired city put to the axe in the path of our rampage, conquered to their knees, thousands of people throwing themselves at their feet and screaming for mercy.
I sprayed a swatch of red across my hand, pressing it into the center of the crown, smiling with serene bloodlust. “Smooth as satin.”
“Smooth as satin, this fuckin’ guy…Yeah, I guess we were pretty great.” The way he talked made me think of locust-buzzing peach orchards, steamy streets roiling with protest. “You embellish everything so much they’d probably think you’re just full of it - catch satin-boy.”
I turned and snatched the Michellob from the air. “Well this time I wouldn’t have to embellish shit cuz it’s un-fuckin’-believable what we pulled off, don’t gimme that ‘hurr I guess’ bullshit. Come on dude, look at him, he’s a beast out of legend…a total giga-toss.”
Galen had set himself comfortably on the bulbous abdomen of the giant arachno-centaur-freak we’d murdered. The Spider-Ogre outclassed the Aerostar our band had toured around the Gulf in, all splattered with gore and dripping ichor. I took a moment to admire the handiwork we’d put into kicking the shit out of it, all splayed out on the gravel rooftop of Penn’s Point Station. Bad enough that a spider that big could exist, the nature of the Curse meant in place of where a normal van-sized spider’s head was a human torso. It was hanging limply to the side, the mandibles around its mouth twitching occasionally.
As ugly as it was tasty, paradoxically.
“Mmm she’s a beaut alright,” Galen chuckled as he patted its armored carapace, all torn up and marked by our claws and teeth. “Probably the biggest one I ever seen’t, heard they get real chunky like this if they’ve been eatin’ others of their kind, or us, so...probly why we ain’t seen any others.”
Shivers ran down my spine when we cracked the imported beer open. Everything about this moment was perfect…the foam on my lips, the bitter chill of the pilsner. Sharing it with my best friend in the whole world. The good times had just started to roll, and the first lines of our saga had been carved into Ashland’s guts. Finally the gloom-and-doom rhythm of our old world had given way before the war-fires of the new.
We were quiet for a bit, he and I; it wasn’t ever uncomfortable. Galen and I had been buddies long enough that the silence was never awkward unless one of us was being pissy or dramatic…nah, we just surveyed our domain. Honestly Penn’s Point was just a rusty pit of land at the mouth of the Red Rock River, basically like someone had trash-compacted a few city blocks together and dumped them on this little island. To us though, it may as well have stretched as far as the sun could reach.
I smelled the ripe kill steaming behind us; my body was still raw with the adrenaline and occult chemicals that flooded our veins when we took the War-Form; my fingertips ached from razor-sharp talons punching through, hooking into chimeric flesh and tearing it open. My shoulder still stung from where it’d bitten me, where the lingering necrosis of its venom was gradually clearing. As usual, Galen could walk through Dis and come out photo-shoot ready, and as usual he looked like he’d somehow gotten through this fight without a single spatter of blood on him.
How the fuck did he do that?
More importantly… how the fuck had we pulled this off? The wonder of it all hit me as I touched the edge of the beer can against my teeth, still sharp for tearing spider-meat.
“We did it man,” I breathed. “Our very first Hunting Grounds, taken about as fair and honorable as any could be.”
“It was never fair brother, who’re you kiddin’?” Galen took a long pull of his beer and slid down the hideous girth of the Spider-Ogre’s abdomen, looping an arm around my shoulder and rasping his knuckles against my scalp like he was my big cousin or something. “They had to face us both at the same time...you know what Celais said.”
How could I forget?
When I’ve finished hammering you from dull little jackknives into steel-barreled war machines, Prey will run themselves ragged against your calamity; armies will die screaming before you like pigs in a slaughterhouse; you’ll have any woman you desire and they’ll all howl in ecstasy to be yours, even for a moment. When she returned from her own Hunt we’d have far more to give her, better turf with a prime place to offer.
We took Penn’s Point in a trio of lightning-conquests; bam-bam-bam, one after the other. The Prey would gossip, and amidst the bullshit and warped perspective, alpha predators like me, Galen or Celais would pluck forth the truth. Werewolves don’t exactly show off their Hunts on Myspace or get cable news coverage so we have to get it straight from the mouth of the Prey, and Prey always talked if you knew which buttons to push.
Galen and I were gloating over the third of those conquests; you know, that big pile of spider-nasty twitching on the gravel. It thought of the station as an extension of its web, got all fat and confident snatching the occasional commuter. Probably was once part of a little broodlet, got big enough to eat its buddies…but that didn’t make it any match for two Werewolves running it down under moonlight. That made the station ours.
Well, I guess not quite ours in the way it belonged to the district, but we could pretty much come and go as we pleased. More important and vital to our having-money, dealers and gangs ran narcotics through here. Galen and I could usually figure them out real quick, and they were used to the idea of a percentage of their profits slipping away to ensure they didn’t end up splattered across the pavement.
I recalled the hunt in high-def detail, every scar on my desert-darkened skin connected to the nerve-base of memories. The memory came in flashes of -
- subway lighting, clinking like little ghost-lit bells on their cables as the eight-legged monstrosity thundered along the tracks. It clutched the bloody stump of its right arm, clicking cadence of its mouthparts overlaying a drawn out keening of terror. I was close on its trail, exquisitely sharp talons of my wolf-shape tossing sparks on the concrete. I howled its doom, echoing in the tunnel. The world glowed in the light of the metro-train in hot pursuit; it careened past as the Ogre went sprawling onto the platform, smashing signs into broken glass and bent metal. I punished its gracelessness by clamping saber-teeth down on a leg; I shook, and the chitin shattered like broken porcelain. The beast screeched and lunged forward, tearing away the leg in exchange for a few more moments of doomed life.
Glorious.
“Galen, get over here and paint your crown,” I hassled him, pressing the spray paint can to his chest with a grin I only wore around him. “Doesn’t work if I do ’em both.”
“Keep yer pants on Banksy, damn. Can’t a guy just savor the sweet smell of victory?” he shoved me real brotherly like, pushing past to complete the tag; two seven-pronged crowns, interlinked by their sides.
I watched him work with warm pride. My pack bother was almost as handsome as me, looked like he could be the frontman of a glam-metal outfit. He kept his corn-blonde hair cropped short, tips frosted, with a distinct point to his hairline that made me think of some Varangian raider-prince. The guy had that long-and-lean vikingr look, the kind of cable-muscled limbs that could swing a battle-axe with ease. Wiry and tall as a harpoon, I could see how women and Prey were easily drawn in by his good looks…strutting side-by-side made the other look better too (but everyone knew I was the sexier of us).
My thoughts drifted to the state of our new Hunting Grounds. “G, you remember Angel Ramirez?” I pounded the rest of the Michelob, crunching the can against my chest and fishing a second from the ice box. He knew I liked those.
“Yeah, course I do, dumb sumabitch didn’t make it out of Baton Rouge last I heard.” Galen shook the paint can - faster than any mere moral, that drummer’s arm practically a blur.
“Nah, he didn’t, rest in peace, Angel… but back when all of us were in up in Kentwood - ”
“Aw hell you mean with that seedy-ass motel where Kendra got all up in Mac’s shit? What was that about again, the uh, uhh - ”
“She said she’d caught that Skitterling first - ”
“That’s right! Man who the fuck argues about catchin’ ratses? More embarrassing than anything to Hunt ’em - ”
“That’s what I said, shit… Galen what were we talking about - ”
“Angel Ramirez, his dead ass.”
“Ah right, yeah… rest in power, Angel.” The two of us let a moment of quiet respect for our lost brother pass before I cracked my second lager. “So anyway there was this night, up in that seedy ass motel in Kentwood. She came to my room so I devastated her - ”
“You too boy? Shiyit.” Galen held his fist out for a tap.
“Yep.” Our knuckles met. “So she told me this one night after I banged her - ”
“Was it a Saturday? They had that wine festival uptown - ”
“Bro… did we bang her on the same night?”
Who had hit her first? Who was the bearer of sloppy seconds? Some questions were never meant to be fully answered.
“So. Angel’s girl, uhh, uhhhh… Marah I think - ”
“Moirah?”
“Morgan? M-something, she was going on about Angel boasting and jabbering… you remember that off-kilter Firstblood Celais tracked down in the Bayeux before we Hunted those lunar-twists?” I accompanied the words with a sort of unspecified wrenching gesture that seemed to… capture what the moon-freaks did to us.
“Yeah.” Galen tipped his beer can toward me in this totally affected manner, like he was oh so fuckin’ cool before slugging the pilsner and looking with anticipation at the Spider-Ogre’s gravid corpse. “She called him a Chymist or somethin’, said it was cuz of him we aren’t all stir-crazy from looking at that… Moon-Demon, thing.”
“Yeah so, Margie - ”
“Margot!”
“Yeah that’s it, Margot! Okay so, Margot said there’s a Chymist in Penn’s Point. She lives alone, keeps to herself if Margot’s not just spinning yarns...” I caught the way he was looking at that Spider-Ogre, like he could barely resist digging into its body and fishing out the treasures it held. I loped toward a backpack sitting near the roof access, digging around inside. “So let’s save the best parts for her to work with.”
“What makes you think she’ll do anythin’ for us two wild coyotes?” Galen daintily took a steel carving knife from my palm with a flourish, the blade flashing effortlessly between his fingers as he circled the ichor-spattered body.
“Well...” I carefully withdrew a razor sharp bone saw, treating it with far more care and awe than Galen with his knife-twirling, “we could always give her a reason to.”
The implication hung in the air like a stormcloud; holding either the potential of soothing rains, or catastrophic gales.
We took our time butchering the Spider-Ogre’s unholy flesh and extracted the good stuff Celais showed us; here, an ethereally light web gland...there, an anterior neural cluster that controlled those eight legs...within, the muscular red tube of its hemolymph-squirting heart. We put them with painstaking care in some glass mason jars and laid them back into the ice box to chill with the rest of the beer.
We made good time; we had to. Under the sun’s rays the parts of the beast that marked it as anything other than human would bubble-hiss away, leaving a savaged and fucked up person on the rooftop. He’d feed the pigeons until Ashland PD dragged him away.
Victory had put Galen in good spirits and we heckled each other on our way down to his Rover. Maybe you remember having a bud in high school you were really close with, and you were constantly shit-talking the other. It was all good fun and even when lines were crossed you settled it quickly. I can see why people say those kinds of friendships are fleeting, in our lines of survival it’s not hard to trip up and end up someone else’s lunch. What we did to the Spider Ogre was a mutual predation, the two of us just stood higher on the food chain.
“ - just sayin’ Yusuf, yer mom’s the kinda lady I’d take out dancing and call the next day - ”
“Yeah yeah I understand, you wanna get with my mom you sick deviant, let’s get back on track here for a sec.” I unfolded a well-worn paper map of Ashland with its distinct prow shape, thrusting out into the Gulf of Mexico. Penn’s Point’s dense streets had this enlarged section, it was so knotted and choked it needed its own little box. “Operation Thunderfist - ”
" - Ooooperaaaation THUUUNDEEERFIIIST - ” Galen metal-growled it out there; he’d come up the name and insisted it was the title of our next song.
" - was an earthshaking success, but we’re not yet done shaking this earth. So here like, if you take Baxter Northbound we’ll just turn right next to that ‘restaurant’ - ”
" - totally a whorehouse brother - ”
" - and boom, we’re at DoomKnight’s.” I drew my fingernail along the pink line of Baxter Avenue, Penn’s Point’s main thoroughfare that crossed the straits, hooking left to where Galen had scrawled a childlike skull wearing a sallet.
“Hell yeah...you’re sure the keys to the new place’re there?” Galen peeled out into traffic with practiced hazard, cutting off a Lexus as he joined the sun-bedazzled traffic. “Could use a nap a’fore we see Tanner and Lora.”
Yeah no kidding. I could use a bit of shut-eye myself, and that miserable little cur of a wolf we’d beaten up the night before at DoomKnight’s Arcade had given me the up-down, swearing he’d be out of the upstairs apartment by sunrise. “Yeah man. I instructed him to stick them under the fridgelet in the bar, and that if he didn’t you’d string him up by his balls.”
“Rude! Never string a man up by his balls Yusuf,” he admonished, squinting into the sunlight. “Here I took you for a man of culture, Boss-lady said you always hang em by their guts.”
That did sound like something our Alpha would say, and Celais - though prone to exaggeration and embellishment - never said something she didn’t mean.
Galen took the moment of quiet that rumbled between us as a chance to slide a disc into the Jeep’s stereo. Bathory’s Blood Fire Death...good choice.
I put an elbow on the windowsill and watched our new territory roll by. Galen kept a pair of spare shades in his center console, so I slid them on. Helped me to better take in the details of the concrete hive. I couldn’t wait to check it out from all angles, like a new girl you were dating whose body you were hot for.
See the Humboldt Docks; a Mortal might observe a bustling, if ugly, collection of corrugated warehouses and garishly orange cranes… Therids like us saw warrens crawling with Spider-Ogres, docksides patrolled by Lamprey-Men, and rooftops surveyed by Nachten. In other words, Hunting Grounds ripe with Lesser Shifters.
See the white refrigerated van parked out in front of the abattoir; Luka’s Fine Cured Meats looked inconsequential enough but I knew they were a front for a local Bratva cell. They were violent meatheads who butchered weaker men for their wealth and, if they’d been wrung dry, their organs. I wondered if they’d quietly vacate after hearing what we’d done to their comrades the night before, or if they’d foolishly seek vengeance.
See the cruiser, blue like a suffocating man and white like Jim Crow. I watched a portly cop slick with morning sweat harass a car full of teenagers. Murderous hatred boiled like heartburn for the police. I wish I could scare ’em out of the district...definitely in the ’not happening (yet) category for now, but maybe someday they’d come to dread entering my domain.
All Cops Are Prey.
Penn’s Point was small so the drive was brief. We reached DoomKnight’s Arcade and parked under the hanging sign – neon wiring in the shape of a fanciful knight in spiked armor carrying a shotgun. The building housing it was a square, three story structure of brick and mortar that had been here since before the New Deal. It was an ugly shell, but what it surrounded was far more interesting to us both.
“Yusuf, I’ll kick your ass in Dead Sol a few rounds,” Galen offered as he punched a security code into the automatic lock, pulling the door open as lights flickered to life inside. Most of the buildings in this part of the US didn’t have basements, and this one was no exception. Still it still felt like we were descending into the bowels of a dungeon. A short corridor led into the arcade, and above the threshold was a freshly carved set of claw marks. I recognized Galen’s hand by the slightly shallower ring-finger indentation. That was where his claw was eternally chipped after an encounter with some Hard Prey he wouldn’t get detailed about
“We’re still on the Hunt bro, we don’t have time to dally. Come on,” I chided him.
It wasn’t open yet, since most people weren’t crowding to play video games on a Sunday morning, but DoomKnight’s never really looked closed. The games were left running and we’d replaced the old country-music lineup at the stereo with one of my mixtapes; Gorgoroth roaring over the speakers was the atmospheric keystone for this place.
A desk to his immediate left where customers paid for entrance was still smashed in the center. I remembered: it was because of -
- my fingers digging into Gomez’s mohawk, slamming his face into the plywood countertop and listening to it break like a plate. I tossed the lesser Werewolf to the ground with a cracked skull and a concussion, just in time to take a lead pipe in Donahue’s hands against my shoulder. The bone broke but reformed almost instantly, and I shot under a return blow. Donahue’s throat ruptured against my claws; I pulled back and ripped his trachea out with a festive crackle. While Gomez was pulling his face from the countertop-wreckage he took the form of a massive wolf the size of a pony. His scarred muzzle was gonna snap around my thigh but Galen vaulted onto his back, driving a pair of broken bottles into his eyes; the other Werewolf’s startled shriek had been glorious…
“Galen we really gotta get this place fixed like, quick as possible...this isn’t great.” I nabbed a chunk of counter and pretended to break it over his head.
“A’right well, you get them keys and I’ll look for a yellow pages - boy get that shit outta here,” Galen shoved my improvised cudgel out of the way with a laugh as he hunted for a phonebook.
I turned around to have a look at this sunken little corner of my new kingdom; it was all atmospheric in here, bathed in the eerie glow of black lightbulb and purple strobes. They’d designed this place well, the fans actually pulled the heat generated by all the arcades and shot it out into the atmosphere where it belonged. It was surprisingly comfortable for Ashland.
At the back of the arcade was a small bartop of corrugated steel with little wooden barrels instead of stools; cute. Against the dream-light cast by the lights and screens, all those low-rail spirits looked like potions and tinctures.
Hopping behind the bar, I did a brief inspection and discovered a few interesting items in the chaos of glasses, swizzlesticks and sinks. Exhibit A, a loaded handgun - Galen would recognize what kind - just sitting there out in the open. I popped the clip and cleared the chamber. Second, a small black notebook noting unpaid tabs and other money owed the owner. Interesting , I mused.
Third, and really what we’d come here for, was the keyring under the dirty-ass fridge unit…not like reaching under there bothered me, I’d been elbow-deep in Spider-guts not an hour earlier. A few seconds under some hot water and some Barkeeper’s Friend would clear the gum off the keys. “Found ’em,” I called to Galen who, of course, was at the Dead Sols machine. Typical.
From the sounds of it, he was winning… not so typical. A disturbance in the force that had to be corrected.
“Yeah jus’ gimme a couple minutes here, I’m beating the shit outta Fat Magnus - DAMMIT YUSUF you know I can’t talk and play at the same time!” Galen cursed.
“Bruh remember we’re still on the Hunt?” I wandered over to watch pixelated violence explode across the screen and fed the machine a couple quarters.
“What’re you doin’? I was about to fuck him up,” Galen complained, pounding a fist on the ‘heavy punch’ button.
“I’m going to speed-run handing your ass to you so we go back to the important stuff,” I explained calmly, finding my favorite character - the golem, of course, with the feathery headdress and diamond nipples, cuz...a golem just had to have them. True to my word, I thrashed the ever-living shit out of the dual-scimitar wielding desert princess Galen had been using these days. Tossing her back and forth across the screen, countering her strikes, I leveled my grin his way, savoring his defeat with a final combo.
“That, my friend, is a fatality.” Diamond-nipple Golem tore falchion-princess’ arms off in twin sprays of pixel-gore, beating her with them until she was quite still. ” Mizrah, WIN! " I pumped my hands in the air, beating my chest with resounding thuds.
“Man fuck yer shit,” Galen threw his hands down at his sides in disgust. “Fuckin’ party-pooper, ain’t fair at all.” To a certain extent he wasn’t wrong; my mom had been the doting sort who didn’t mind throwing down on a PlayStation to keep me from fucking around on the streets and getting in trouble...I still did those things, but I also managed to find time to get good at fighting games.
Galen’s history, still mostly an enigma, was one I knew to be defined by poverty and deprivation. The guy never had video games until we started to hang out – well, until we were thrown together by the Curse.
He was acting all surly, so I joshed him a bit more until he was laughing again, and we locked up the arcade. It was a couple-block haul North in the shadowy protection provided by apartment buildings facing the water. They’d have been much more expensive if the water itself wasn’t congested and oily like a clogged artery, crowded with maritime traffic.
“Says it’s...9C, so ninth floor, apartment C.” I mumbled to myself while we parked in the shade. We had to brave a moment of merciless heat before entering the darkened interior of the apartments. The lobby was abandoned; even the security guard wasn’t on duty, and given that there was no particular scent-mark concentrated behind the main desk, I had to assume it was there for looks rather than utility. Ashland landlords were some of the stingiest of stingy motherfuckers.
Case in point: “Bro the elevator’s broken,” Galen complained.
God, fucking Luddite. “You’re not doing it right.” I jammed the ⬆️ button four times. “... okay, it’s not working.”
“So we’re going up nine flights of stairs every time we wanna go back, or when we forget somethin’.” Galen glared at me flatly. “Yusuf, if I’m bringing a chick back here do you think she’s gonna wanna walk nine flights of stairs just to fuck?”
“She will if it’s me doing the fucking,” I retorted cockily.
We shared a laugh and ascended the nine flights of stairs; by the fifth story we were slicked with sweat, not because of the exertion but the stifling heat. The vents must have been jankity in this part of the building. There was a bit of trash strewn in the corners and it looked like someone hadn’t come through here with a mop or a broom in years; yeah, we’d be having a word with that landlord.
When we finally got to the ninth floor we were a shining, stinking mess…just salty and disgusting. The keys worked in the apartment door at least.
“A’right King G… make yourself at home.” I followed Galen in, and we both proceeded to strip off our clothes - we didn’t give a shit about being naked around each other anymore. “I get to shower first - ”
Galen made a bee-line to the bathroom, locking the door and leaving me to marinate in myself. That was fine. I’d have a look around first.
It smelled like it’d been inhabited, but not often or consistently. Gomez’s cigarette-stink was only partially detectable here. The main room was appreciably expansive with a high ceiling; a test-flick of the switch activated the ceiling fan which, thankfully, actually worked. A circular dial…I twisted it, and the AC grumbled and ’hrrrm’ed to life, shaking in its window. The cool air was immediate, exquisite. “Ohhh my God…Galen the AC works, we finally have air conditioning and it’s ecstasy! "
There was a whoop from the bathroom, but I knew Galen wouldn’t be in any hurry to leave the luxury of running water, so I just let myself gets all sticky and salty in front of the air conditioner. I caught sight of a mirror hanging by the window and stepped in to look at his own reflection.
I looked like shit.
I had my dad’s hair; black as oil, and after being out in the humidity it got disturbed and gritty. Same with complexion; neither of us burned under the sun, but that wasn’t saving me from sweat-roast. Sometimes I wondered which Celais preferred, Galen’s thin, corded body or the muscle I’d worked to pack on. I could probably compete in the heavy weight boxing circuit.
The door opened and Galen marched out, smelling of generic brand shampoo and some harsh bar soap – an improvement over the sour pungency of perspiration, the iron bite of blood, or the mark of whatever woman he’d fucked that day.
“Aaahhhhh…at first I was gonna ask if you were airin’ out your balls but now I don’t need to ask,” he sighed with delight, standing proud before the air conditioner and thrusting his hips out. My eyes strayed in a totally unintentional, non-gay manner toward his dick; unlike me, Galen Drake was uncircumcised, and the jury was out on who was bigger, according to the girls we’d fucked.
“You said you never had it before right?” I made for the bathroom to have my turn with the running water and get away from Galen’s dangling cock.
“Never had what? Sex? Nah that’s all you boy, heh.” Galen could be such a bastard.
“No dumbass,” I called dryly as as I set the shower on max-spray…transcendent bliss as the first layer of grime and a whole week of being endlessly hot washed off. “I mean air conditioning.”
“That’s right lil’ bro.” What the fuck, I was three weeks older. “Didn’t live all nice and soft like you, Prince Avimalek.”
“Dunno how the fuck you survive,” I spat through the water, drizzling shampoo from an unmarked bottle into my hair - amazing, all the grit that washed out, turning the water a dirty grey. I must have smelled so damn rank - there’d been this one Spanish girl in my life who adored when I didn’t bathe for a few days; a strange contrast to her intense hygiene. I missed Pipa…
She used to do this thing where she trailed her tongue over my abs, down the Apollo Belt I’d worked to keep, before taking me in her mouth. She was particularly fond of my Prince Albert, but certainly didn’t complain about the frenum ladder.
“Dunno how I did either, it’s like Winter in here!” He sounded genuinely happy. Usually with Galen there was just a bare crack in that happy-go-murder facade, and all that unresolved anger and sadness he hauled around with him roiled beneath. Galen only ever owned up to it when he was truly drunk and probably didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. Like any good friend, I pretended to forget about those hints of former victimization, because that wasn’t the face Galen wanted the world to see.
A good life, a stable ego was the least I owed him.
Even though it did nothing for us in terms of sustenance, we ordered an extra-large pizza. Half pepperoni and sausage with caramelized onions, the other half gyros meat and mushrooms. Galen eyed my food and I just knew the guy was itching to tease me about keeping dietary laws while we scarfed down giant spiders and cat-people. Or man-bat monstrosities. Or people-people.
I couldn’t really explain it and didn’t want to defend it, so I was relieved when he turned his attention back to the ugly box TV. It was playing The Northmen , an oldie and a (vaguely racist in that middle-20th century way) goodie.
“So,” I interrupted, riveted and wincing as a cavalry charge onscreen met a wall of hairy, shield-bearing men. “Tanner and Lora.”
Galen nodded, chewing on a strand of cheese. “Tanner and Lora.”
“Lora I can see having it together by tonight, but you think Tanner’s gonna be kitted out?” I tore my eyes from the TV to give my attention to Galen, since this was an important topic.
“Lora yeah, just gotta light a fire under her ass but Tanner, shiiiyit...” We both gave each other a knowing look, one born of shared experience with the less-than-reliable Tanner. The guy never ran away or abandoned us like other unmentionables had, but he’d been fighting a heroin problem for a while now. “I swear to you Yusuf, if he zombies-out on stage again I’mma tear his heart out his ass.”
I couldn’t really comment or defend him, cuz I’d been tempted myself to rip Tanner’s head off. He was a good guitarist though, and he hadn’t been scared off by some of the bizarre shit that went on around us. We let a tense minute loaded with anticipation of some sort of solution pass before I spoke up. “I’ll talk to the guy.”
“Talkin’s ‘bout as good as shittin’ into the wind Yusuf.”
“I’ll talk to him, as in like...” I made a somewhat undefined pushing motion.
“As in what?” Galen wasn’t having any non-particulars it seemed.
“Man I don’t know, what the fuck should I do with that guy?”
“You’re Mister Personality, remember?” Galen reminded me with a pointed look; I couldn’t help but sigh at his unhelpful response. “Look, tell him he’s in or he’s out. We’ve been pussy-footing around the issue for a long time and it’s getting to be not-worth-it - bro we can just Enthrall someone - ”
“No.” I made a slicing motion with my hands, fixing Galen a challenging look. “Never.”
It was a rancorous issue between us. Enthralling a Human kept their free-will about them but it was far too close to mind control for me to tolerate. Enthralling a Hisser or a Bat, even another Werewolf was one thing; they were Monsters with a capital M. People though, especially if they were going to be in your band… it was just wrong.
“Then you gotta do it the hard way Yusuf.” Galen yanked my slice from my plate and took a bite, nodding in appreciation. “Oh damn this isn’t actually bad at all.”
“Guess I do. I just feel bad man, like…cutting him loose like that with the burden he’s facing. I thought we were helping the guy out, and he’s a good second-guitar.” My voice got all tight with apprehension; hunting down and murdering other Therids, asserting dominance over other monsters? That was easy to make myself do, if not find succeed. This human shit was hard, and I knew it just got harder as the years went by.
“Hey.” Galen paused the movie, still chewing loudly and turned his body to face me. “Bro. Look. You’re being a ‘good guy’, and I love you for it. Seriously, there should be more Humans like you, but you know that shit doesn’t roll in the Jungle.” His voice had softened near-imperceptibly; it was a big leap for Galen, for whom the idea of consoling others had once been inconceivable. “And I’ll tell you what man, addicts aren’t like normal people you can help - they’re like the Brood. All they know is want, need, they’re desperate and they’ll drag you down cuz it’s all they care for.”
Intellectually I knew this; in my callow heart it was still difficult to accept. There was still so much about me that was Mortal - read: weak. I can’t lie, I often envied Galen his ability to just discard these unhelpful thoughts. Celais had made a point that such softness would lead us to ruin, eventually. There were all sorts of stories that drove that point home, tales we’d exchange around the campfire, around the bloody ruin of Prey, or during quiet moments of intimacy.
“Alright… shit. I uh, I guess let’s give him this chance to not fuck-up,” I suggested, rasping my nails through the itchy scruff of my beard; Celais told me I did that when I was uneasy. A ‘tell’. I’d have to go find the guy before the show and make sure he was good. Galen was giving me this mealy eyed, dismissive look… like he knew I’d just end up throwing him a second chance, just like the time before.
Thankfully Galen didn’t grill me on that this time. Instead post-gorging drowsiness began to overtake us. Galen was the first to pass out, so I tossed a scant quilt over him and made for one of the bedrooms. It was barely furnished, nothing on the walls to suggest it belonged to anyone. At the least there was a folded blanket on the bed that smelled only slightly of cigarette smoke, so I got comfy with it.
This was the first time I’d slept in an actual bed after months of living in a fuckin’ car, or roughing it outside as a Wolf or just foregoing rest. The bed was glorious. Usually sleep didn’t ever come easily for me, and exhausted yet comfortable it still eluded me, like a rabbit slipping my jaws. My thoughts raced like they always did.
Was there really a Chymist here, and would she be someone we could run with? We talked a big game but claiming territory hosting lone wolves was shaky business.
Was Tanner a lost cause, or could I actually do something for him? Could he return that favor? A second guitarist alongside a lead could turn a song from a crackling stormfront to a thundering gyre that swept away the fans.
Celais… she’d beaten us into deadly war-machines, specialized in Hunting and conquering our own kind. Would it be enough? Would we be enough? I never once doubted that she’d be able to return to us, holding high the Banner dripping with Prey-gore.
A Deity of War clothed in accursed Wolf Flesh, howling a battlecry that would summon the other Banners across the whole state… maybe even all the Old South.
We had to be just as invincible as she was, or we’d be left behind… footnotes in her saga. If anyone could do that though, it was us: the Kings of Midnight.
“And that, you little shitheads, is how it started. Now if you’re all fuckin’ done wasting my time I’ll just headin’ on my waaay hooo-okay then… you’re gonna bite off my other foot if I don’t keep goin’ aren’t you. Well buckle up buckaroos, cuz this here’s just the first bite...”
