Half the Blood of Brooklyn

  —No, no. I’ve had my hands in plenty of open wounds. I know well enough what they feel like. But let’s take a look in any case.

  He picks up the candle and holds it close to the crusted bullet hole. He hums and taps the side of my head and I tilt it away from the wound and the scabs crack and ooze.

  —Well, I won’t say I envy you, but it will heal.

  He points at the knee.

  —This could be more of a problem. The bone will knit, but it won’t reform itself. You’ll have a nasty limp.

  I look at the swollen purple mass.

  —Care to take a crack at it?

  He sets the candle down and places his hands on the knee and probes it, and waves of pain and nausea roll over me and he digs his fingers in and shoves and presses, and chips and flakes of bone scrape and snap into a new arrangement and he takes his hands away.

  —Not as designed, I’m sure, but a little better. Maybe.

  We sit.

  Around us the Enclave are moving about. The blood is being passed up and down a seated line of them. Some taking a slight drink, others fasting. A few push big brooms across the floor. I pick up my crumpled cup and toss it into the heap of dust one of them is moving down the length of the warehouse. A couple of them descend the steps from the loft that runs the back of the building.

  Somewhere up there, that’s where they took Evie.

  —So how about it, Daniel?

  He’s picking at an old spot of dry paint on the concrete floor.

  —Hm?

  I dig a finger into the wound on my neck. Feel it hurt me.

  —How about we go take a look at my girl?

  He drops his head far back and stares up into the darkness above us.

  —There are skylights up there. We painted them black, of course. But we never covered them over. It was discussed. Common sense suggested we should lay some sheets of plywood over them. Tarps at the very least. But someone, it may have been me, argued against it. Our home is so ordered. Disciplined. By necessity. We starve ourselves to the edge of reason. Beyond. Without structure, rigidity of manner, it would devolve to chaos and bloodshed here. Very quickly. But it’s not natural. Proper, yes. But not natural. An element of the random, danger, no matter how remote, seemed like a nice touch.

  He rises, still looking up.

  —So every once in a while, a bird dies in midflight. An owl, of all things, once shattered two panes and landed at my feet just a few yards from this spot. Snow and ice built up another time and brought down an entire skylight. A bullet someone had fired into the air. The wind. A flaw in the glass suddenly exposed. All these have happened. Each time we’ve repaired or replaced the broken glass, painted it black, and left it uncovered. Each time it causes great excitement. Most every other physical aspect of our lives being all but utterly predictable.

  He looks at me.

  —And you know, not once, never, have any of the accidents occurred by the light of day.

  He looks up again.

  —I don’t know what that means. But I find it a bit of a disappointment.

  He bends at the waist and puts a hand alongside his mouth and whispers.

  —There have been more than a few Enclave over the years who I would have given my eyeteeth to see hit with a sudden blast of sunlight.

  He straightens and looks around at the white figures bustling about.

  —Prigs most of them. Unseasoned. So little sense of proportion. That’s one of the dangers of the cloistered life. An expansive sense of the universe, sure, but try having a conversation about art or music or a woman’s legs and they have nothing to contribute at all. You’ve been around. You’ve seen a thing or two.

  A strand of tendon in his neck starts to jump and he claps a hand over it.

  —Hm. Yes. Seen. Things.

  He takes the hand away. The tendon is still.

  —Do you remember, do you remember the Wraith, Simon?

  I look elsewhere.

  —I was out of my skull, man. I don’t know what I remember.

  —Don’t lie. It’s beneath you.

  I almost laugh at that one.

  He does laugh.

  —Alright, yes, lying is far from beneath you. Little is beneath you except the floor. I surrender. But. The Wraith. Something for you to think about. It came from somewhere.

  —If you say so.

  —I do. It came from somewhere. I know. We asked it here. From somewhere else. But, Simon, that doesn’t mean I know what it is. I do have a theory.

  I get my good leg under me and lever myself to my feet.

  —Daniel.

  —Yes? What?

  —You’re acting kind of weird. I mean, even for you. Are you OK?

  He spreads his arms wide, lets them drop to his sides.

  —Simon, if only I had the time to answer a question like that.

  —Well, if you’re done spacing out here, how about we go look at Evie?

  An Enclave comes near, hovers just off Daniel’s shoulder.

  Daniel looks at him, holds up a finger. The Enclave stays there. Daniel brushes at him with the finger. The Enclave takes a step back, but doesn’t leave.

  Daniel nods, looks at me.

  —I’m sorry, you asked what?

  —Evie. My girl, Daniel. I need to know.

  He raises a hand.

  —Right, yes. The girl. You want to know who she is.

  —No, I know who she is, man, I want to-

  He lays a hand on my chest. It burns.

  —Simon, you want to know who she is. Not her name. Not where she was born. Not what her parents do or where she went to school or if she ever wore braces. You want to know who she is. What she is.

  He raises his hand and cups my chin, the heat from his skin is intolerable.

  —You want to know if she’s like you.

  The Enclave shuffles his feet.

  Daniel moves his hand to my cheek.

  —What will you do, Simon? What the hell will you do?

  I swallow some spit and the muscles contracting in my neck pull at the wound.

  —I. If she. I’ll, I’ll save her, Daniel. She’s dying and I want to. So.

  He drops his hand.

  —That’s not what I meant.

  The Enclave moves closer again and Daniel nods. He tugs my sleeve.

  —Come on, I’ll help you.

  He moves next to me and I put a hand on his shoulder and we walk.

  —Thank you for coming by and telling me what you’ve been up to, Simon. Your stories always serve as a reminder. Of how pitifully banal most of the world’s concerns are. And how hilarious the contortions most people go through to make themselves believe any of it matters.

  —Sure. My pleasure.

  More Enclave are coming near, clustering, walking behind and around us.

  The door is in front of us.

  We stop.

  I take my hand from Daniel’s shoulder.

  —Daniel, I’m not leaving, man. I’m not going anywhere until you look at Evie and tell me.

  He takes a step toward the door, places a hand on it, runs his fingers across the even white paint that covers the steel.

  —You, you are well seasoned. You I could talk to about a woman’s leg. But I wish you had some little of the other, a concern for things larger than yourself. It would have made our conversations more fruitful. You might have learned something. You might have. Well. Who cares, really? Not you. Not even me. Not anymore.

  I look at the Enclave arrayed around us. All of them.

  I tug at the waist of Axler’s pants.

  —Daniel, I’m not going out there without her.

  He puts his other hand on the door, lays both palms flat and leans his forehead between them.

  —If you’d ever listened once. If you’d ever observed for the slightest moment what happens here, you’d know what an ass you’re making of yourself.

  I reach for him and I am pinned suddenly to the door and it takes a moment to r
ealize that Daniel has taken me by the throat and snatched me to his side.

  —Look, Simon, look around and what do you see? What do you ever see here?

  I look. I see Daniel. I see Enclave.

  I try to move. His grip tightens, threatens to tear off my head.

  —Yes. You see always one thing. Enclave. In here. Always the same. Enclave. Nothing else comes in. Nothing else leaves. Only Enclave.

  His fingers loosen.

  —And you ask if the girl is like you. She is as much like you as I am or any of us here.

  He takes his hand away.

  —You are Enclave.

  Tears, viscous and white are filling his eyes.

  —As she is here, as I let her in, so she is Enclave too.

  I break for the stairs.

  And am in the grip of Enclave. Held fast.

  Daniel wipes the back of his hand over a cheek, smearing the tears. He shakes and his teeth chatter and he clenches his fists and a bone breaks in the back of his hand and juts from his skin and he exhales slow and stops shaking. But the tears keep coming.

  —As for leaving. She’ll have the chance to make that decision for herself.

  He looks up at the black skylight.

  —For the moment, I’m the only one going out.

  He turns to the southward-facing door and takes the handle and pulls and it slides open on well-greased tracks and the light washes in and the Enclave rustle back from it and Daniel walks out onto the loading dock and steps off and drops to the street and walks across the cobbles that peek through the worn tarmac of Little West 12th and the sun crests the tops of the tenements at the east end of the street and hammers him and he turns into it and lets the thin white robe fall off his shoulder and to the ground and the light reflects off his white skin and he smiles and his head turns our way.

  And watching him there, smiling in the sun, for a moment I believe.

  Then purple blossoms like the ones that cover Evie climb over his face.

  Cancers boil out of his nostrils and his ears.

  His eyes swell and puss drains from them and steams.

  The Enclave release me as they scuttle farther from the sunlight and I tear a white shawl from one’s shoulders and the bones Daniel shifted in my knee come loose and I drag my leg outside and into the street and wrap the shawl around my head and when I grab Daniel’s wrist the skin slips off the bone and I get my arms under him and scoop him off the cobbles and for the second time I lurch into the darkness with a diseased and wasted thing in my arms.

  But no one takes this one from me.

  Noises come from the misshapen clot of tumors that used to be his face and I put my ear to a bloody and bone-rimmed hole and he reeks poison.

  A mass that used to be a hand touches my face. —Be seeing you, Joe.

  And he laughs and coughs his throat out on the floor and he dies.

  The room is quiet except for the sound of the door rolling shut. As the light is cut off, glass breaks, and a large black bird falls dead a few yards from us, pinned to the ground by a shaft of morning sunlight.

  —OK, man, now that was just plain freaky.

  I look up and watch as the Count comes down the stairs, dressed all in white.

  —I don’t know about you, but I have had one weird fucking night. I mean, no shock there, right? Not in this place. I’m guessing nothing that passes even remotely as unweird has happened in this joint for a loooongass time. But look who I’m telling. Oh, oh, man, do they always do that?

  I watch as the Enclave that has placed the bucket under Daniel’s hanging corpse slits its throat. Nothing comes out of the gash.

  I pat my pockets. Find my cigarettes. I put one in my mouth and try to find my lighter. Stop looking. Watch as the Enclave begins to cut Daniel open from crotch to neck.

  The Count leans over and snaps a Bic in front of my face.

  I flinch. Blink. Lean in and light my smoke.

  He takes the lighter away.

  —Are your hands shaking, Joe?

  I put the cigarette in my mouth and tuck my hands into my armpits.

  —I’m cold.

  He feels his own skin.

  —Tell me about it. Like an icebox in here.

  The Enclave begins pulling viscera from the corpse.

  The Count turns his head and whistles.

  —Oh, man, that is rude. I mean, who needs to see that shit? Nasty.

  He takes a seat on the floor next to me.

  —But that’s the way they rock it here. One of them dies, doesn’t matter what they were before they went out, they get gutted and nailed to the wall. Some kind of lesson thing. That’s what the guy told me when I asked.

  —They’ll boil his bones and eat the marrow.

  He looks at me.

  —No shit?

  I pull a hand from my armpit. It’s stopped shaking. I take the smoke from my mouth.

  —Yeah. That’s the deal.

  —Whoa. Man. Can’t say I’m looking forward to that.

  He nudges me with his shoulder.

  —Then again, check this out. You know the bones, that’s where blood gets made. In the marrow. Like, by the time we’re adults, it’s only made in a few places. Your spine, sternum, pelvis, some little patches in your upper arms and legs. That’s where you get your good old, controversial pluripotential hematopoietic stem cells. Try saying that shit five times fast. Stem cells manufacture blood cells, determine that they will be blood cells. So think about this. Drink another Vampyre’s blood and get sick as hell. Unless it’s super freshly infected and has been made into anathema. In which case you get high as hell. So what happens when you eat a dead Vampyre’s marrow, man? His stem-cell factories?

  He licks his lips.

  —I’m guessing you get some weird deep Amazonian Carlos Castaneda shaman fungus high.

  He shakes his head.

  —I’m not saying I’m gonna be thinking about where that shit came from, but I’m dying to try me some of that soup.

  The Enclave pulls a wad of tumors from Daniel’s body.

  The Count turns his head again.

  —What say we move this conversation?

  He stands.

  I watch pieces of Daniel hit the floor.

  I stand. The Count reaches to help me and I pull away and stumble, but I keep my feet.

  He raises his hands.

  —As you wish, man. Just trying to help.

  I follow him.

  He limps on that foot I ruined for him. I limp on the knee Daniel tried to fix for me.

  —Wanted to thank you, by the way. I don’t remember too much about what went down at my place. But from what I can put together, probably would have been easiest thing just to waste me.

  He grins.

  —’Course, knowing I still hold the purse strings on my trust fund, that was unlikely. I mean, experience has taught me you can knock me around if it amuses you, but Terry would be steamed if you ever kacked my ass before he can get his hands on those accounts.

  He stops, blinks a few times, takes a couple deep breaths.

  —Sorry. Whew. Shit I went through the last twelve hours, wrung me out, man. Going cold turkey on the anathema. Bleeding the Vyrus dry. That was some extreme shit. I mean, I knew I was asking for trouble, but damn.

  He snaps his head from side to side.

  —Whammywhammywhammy! Shit had me on the ropes. Oh, check this out.

  Ahead of us two Enclave are sparring.

  A whirl of blurred white limbs.

  Crack of bone on bone.

  The Count makes karate hands and chops the air.

  —That’s the shit I’m really looking forward to. Getting my kung fu on. I know I’m not the kind of guy you expect extreme patience and discipline from, but if it means coming out the other side with moves like these guys, I will meditate until my ass bleeds. I mean, whoa that shit is badass.

  The stairs are close by. I turn and look at them.

  The Count comes over.


  —Me, I’m a little surprised they can get it up to do that shit. Losing Daniel, way I gather it, that’s like a major setback, yeah?

  —I guess.

  —Guess nothing, man. You’ve been hanging out at this place for a few years now, right?

  —I come by sometimes.

  —Sure. So he was the man. I mean, I only spent a couple hours with the guy while he was helping me get straight last night, but even I could see he was righteous beyond the ken of normal men. If you follow.

  —I follow.

  —So now, the way he laid it out, one of them is always on point, leading the way toward what he tried to do. Toward the whole transmutation thing they’re into.

  —Something like that.

  —And he was way ahead of the pack. He was, like, the best hope they’d have for, like, forever. Now, man, it’s like they are at square one or something. Got to pick up with whoever’s been fasting the longest. What I hear, the dude in second place is way back from where Daniel was. But here they are, carrying on, doing their thing. And on top of that, they’re getting ready to eat their Dalai Lama’s marrow. Telling you, these are some well-adjusted citizens.

  —Count.

  —Yeah.

  —You’re talking a lot.

  —Well, I do do that, don’t I?

  I face him.

  —I have something I need to do. So get to the point.

  He scratches his head.

  —The girl. Right.

  He points at the stairs.

  —Come on, I’ll show you where.

  He starts. I don’t move. He looks back.

  —C’mon, man. Not like it’s a secret or anything. Place isn’t that huge. There’s a sick girl in the house. Everyone knows it. So come on up.

  He leads me up.

  —Daniel kind of filled me in. Not that he was gossiping or anything, but he was just talking. He always spacey like that?

  —No. He wasn’t.

  —Was last night. Don’t get me wrong, man was like a fucking magician with me. Like, I don’t know what, like Zoltan the Mind Master or something.

  He stops on the stairs and looks into my eyes.

  —Dude locked eyes with me, put a hand on me, was like he, man, went into me. Which I know is just the gayest thing you’ve ever heard, but that’s what it was like. The Vyrus, it was tearing me apart. Eating me. Was like he told it to chill. Got me to balance with it. And I did. A-fucking-mazing. Only lasted for a couple seconds maybe. But I was there. This perfect point where the Vyrus was kind of at its most pure and raging, and I was, I don’t know what, riding it or something. Talk about a high? That is something I will feel again.