|
CAN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU
The El Royale was a novelty hotel that finally closed its doors before the 1960s were through. Positioned on the border of California and Nevada, the hotel offered its guests the option of which state they preferred to stay in. California was dry but had nicer rooms. The Nevada side let you drink and gamble. In its heyday, the El Royale attracted some of the biggest names in the world; Elvis, Frankie Valli, a few presidents—but like all things it didn’t last. Everything died, even ideas, and the El Royale was nothing more than a decaying skeleton rotting off the side of a back desert highway that no one used anymore.
Little swirls of smoke wafted off the end of the lit cigar dangling from Andy’s lips. She sat at the bar in the hollowed out lobby of the El Royale, her back to the door. A glass of rum sat on the counter in front of her and a machete was beside it. Andy was in one piece, mostly. There was a cut on her forehead that was leaking a little, smearing a bit of red down the side of her face, but it wasn’t anything serious. She puffed at the cigar, savoring the moment as her drinking partner, the Vodou Loa Baron Samedi reappeared behind the bar with a fresh bottle of rum to refill his empty glass.
“This is de ting right here,” the Baron sang the words in his thick Creole accent as her poured, laughing with anticipation of the treat he had waiting for him.
“I never really know what to expect when you come around, Samedi,” Andy said, resting her cigar in an ashtray by her glass and exchanging it for her drink. “But I always know I’m going to be drinking well.”
The two held up their glasses in a silent toast and tipped their heads back to drink. Baron Samedi towered over everything, a truth exaggerated by the fact that Andy was seated, which made her seem small. He was more than a man, but in this realm at least he appeared as a tall man with dark skin and a skull painted over his face. He wore a ratty suit and had an old top hat perched on his otherwise bald head, but the peculiar nature of his dress didn’t matter. The Baron carried with him a degree of power that couldn’t be ignored.
“I like dis place.” The Baron set his now empty glass down and filled it again. “There’s life here.”
Andy looked left and right. The El Royale was a dead place, but that didn’t mean much when someone like Baron Samedi was around. What was usually dark was lit with ghostly light, like the light was slipping through time and arriving there from decades earlier. But the lights weren’t the only ghosts that followed the Baron around. All around them, in the hauntingly abandoned hotel lobby, spirits wandered about. They were drifting wanderers slipped free from time, aimlessly pacing from California to Nevada. They ignored the living—Andy—and otherwise acted as if they didn’t know they were dead. It made this dead place feel alive again, and even though Andy knew it wasn’t real, or at least real in the sense that would make any difference to her, it made for an interesting place to drink.
“This place was a means to an end,” Andy set her drink down—only half drunk—and picked up a napkin that she used to wipe the blood off of her face. “It worked in a pinch.”
“No, chéri,” the Baron shook his head. “I worked in de pinch.”
Andy chortled. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you did.” She tossed her bloody napkin down and finished her drink.
“We’re even now, okay?” The Baron refilled her glass. “Dis right here? Dis is de last favor your gettin’ from me, child. Are we understood?”
“About that…”
“Are you serious now?” The Baron smiled. “And-y Bar-clay, do you not know what bein’ even means?”
“I know, I know, I just need one more thing. One more favor.” Andy held up a single finger. “Your debt is paid. So put me in yours.”
The Loa took a moment to think it through. He reached down and plucked the cigar Andy had been smoking from the ashtray and took it for himself, chomping down and letting the wisps of smoke sting his eyes. After a short while he said, “What is it dat you want now?”
“They’re called The Vision,” Andy said, her face growing serious. “They’re some sort of group, or corporation, or thing.”
“You want to get more specific?” the Baron asked.
“Look into mind, Samedi. You’ll see who I’m talking about.” Andy stared right at him. “These people hurt someone that I care about. I need you to find me something that can hurt them.”
The Baron took a long puff of his cigar and nodded. “It will take some time.”
“I have all the time in the world.” Andy gulped down every last drop of rum that was in her glass.
“What are you going to do about ‘tem over der?” the Baron pointed somewhere behind Andy. She spun on her stool and looked past the wandering ghosts that were sprinkled across the lobby and to the five vampires the Baron was pointing at. They were all tied up—wrapped in chains and bound to a chair—gagged, and stuck inside a voodoo trap known as a Saturday Circle which made them vulnerable in lots of fun ways. The five blood suckers glared at Andy and the Vodou god who helped trap them there, and all but the leader—a woman in the center of the five—muttered muted curses from under their gags. The leader was content to simply stare daggers.
“I can take it from here,” Andy said. “I appreciate the asset, though.”
“I appreciate de drink,” the Baron raised the bottle of rum up and brought it to his lips. Andy blinked and he was gone, though the ghostly atmosphere he brought with him remained, at least for a little while.
Andy shot out a quick breath and rolled her neck, cracking it and getting herself ready for what she had to do. She got up, straightened out the dress she was wearing, and reached for a small personal-sized bottle of rum that the Baron was nice enough to leave behind. She took a swig, set it down, and picked up her machete before heading over to the vampires. The ghosts around them ignored everything, but the vampires… the vampires were zero focused on the redhead in the dress.
Andy stood there in silence for a little while, four feet or so from the Saturday Circles, and she thought about what she was going to say. Eventually, she settled on, “Are we going to do names or should we just skip that part?” The vampires didn’t say much back, and whatever they did say was garbled by the cloth gags in their mouths so it didn’t really matter. “Well, you know my name already. I’m sure of that. Your boss sent you because she knows my name, too. I’d ask how she found out about me but… I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
They had been following her for as long as New Mexico, at least. It could’ve been longer, but Santa Fe was where she first picked up the trail. They had a hundred opportunities to grab her, to attack, but they stayed back. They were watching her, following her, hoping that she would lead them back to Claire. Once Andy clocked that she swerved west instead of going back to Texas and the house there where Claire’s family was safe. The truth was, Andy didn’t know where Claire was. She took off after an incident with her daughter Mollie and her friends and things just sort of slipped away from Andy. She couldn’t stop Claire from doing whatever she did to that other young werewolf, she couldn't stop Mollie from lashing out at her mother, and she couldn’t stop Claire from taking off. There was a lot Andy couldn’t do, but dealing with monsters was not on that list. These vampires thought they could use her; thought they could make a victim out of her. They thought that they could make Andy into a means to hurt the woman that she loved. She wasn’t interested in playing that game.
Andy led the vampires on her tail farther away, all the while planning how she was going to deal with them. Everything sort of fell in to place naturally after that. She led them to the El Royale, a place she had used before, a place she knew would be isolated. She called in her favor with the Baron. It took some doing, but eventually the hunted became the hunter, and the vampires were the ones now who were going to be used.
The lead vampire muttered something under her gag, speaking for the first time since she was captured. Andy yanked out the cloth so she could repeat herself. “Your tricks won’t last forever, witch.”
“Oh, I’m not a witch,” Andy smiled, setting her machete down on a table. “I’m worse. I’m a thingy-ma-bob. And thingy-ma-bobs are more dangerous than witches, you know why? Cause we don’t really have rules… Anyone have a quarter?”
Andy turned toward the vampire who was the first to look away and she dug around in his pocket and fished out a shiny new quarter. She thanked him and made her way over to the jukebox behind the vampires. There was no reason why it would work—this place had no power—but the Baron’s magic was still lingering about so she had a good feeling.
“Your vampire queen is going to learn a very valuable lesson today,” Andy said as she flipped through the music options in the jukebox, her back to the vampires. “She’s going to learn that Claire’s girlfriend is not a damsel in distress OR a pawn in this stupid game she’s playing. She’s going to learn that if she’s going to send some sh*t my way there are going to be consequences. AH, oh I love this one. Perfect!” Andy put the quarter in the machine, pressed play and turned around as ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,’ by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons started to play with his sharp horns and steady baseline.
Andy’s hands flared out dramatically to the sides and even some of the ghosts around the place took note of the music.
YOU’RE JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE I CAN’T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU YOU’D BE LIKE HEAVEN TO TOUCH I WANNA HOLD YOU SO MUCH
“Here’s the thing you need to know about me, I absolutely hate being jerked around,” Andy made her way back through the now swaying ghosts over to the vampires. “I realize that you’re not going to be able to directly pass this message on to your boss, but I have a feeling that the message will reach her regardless.
YOU’RE JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE CAN’T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU
“You’re dead, you know that?” the lead vampire growled, her voice sounding like a mouthful of pennies.
“You bad guys really need more creative threats,” Andy swayed a little bit with the music, and some of the ghosts moved closer to her.
PARDON THE WAY THAT I STARE THERE’S NOTHING ELSE TO COMPARE THE SIGHT OF YOU LEAVES ME WEAK THERE ARE NO WORDS LEFT TO SPEAK
“You better kill us now,” the vampire snarled, “You’ll need your energy for those who come to avenge us.”
“Shh, I’m dancing,”
BUT IF YOU FEEL LIKE I FEEL PLEASE LET ME KNOW THAT IT’S REAL YOU’RE JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE CAN’T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU
The horns came in and Andy, slightly drunk, and moved by the music and her power over the chained up predators she had trapped in the Saturday Circles, danced freely. She shook her hips and popped her hands up, and the ghosts around her did the same, matching her moves and blending into the living world in a way that made the barrier between the living and the dead as thin as it had ever been. They moved in unison until the horn break drew closer to its close and Andy ended up back by the chained vampires. She picked up her machete and danced behind them while the ghosts kept on around the rim of the lobby.
I LOVE YOU BABY!
SH-CLUNK! Andy swung the machete like it was opening day at Wrigley Field and the vampire on the end of the row of five lost his head with a brutal swiftness. It rolled into his lap and down to the floor as a plume of blood sprayed up from the stump of a neck.
AND IF IT’S QUITE ALRIGHT, I NEED YOU BABY
SH-CLUNK! SH-CLUNK! SH-CLUNK! She went down the line, skipping over the leader in the middle, dirtying the lobby with showers of blood and rolling heads.
TO WARM THE LONELY NIGHTS I LOVE YOU BABY TRUST IN ME WHEN I SAAAAAYYY
Andy paced around to the front of the vampires, er, well, vampire now that there was only one left. Both women were coated in thick layers of vampire blood and for the first time the leader vampire looked scared, genuinely frightened. Andy raised her worn blade and rested it on her shoulder so she could feel the cold by her neck.
“Please, please, no, I can keep you safe, if you keep me alive I can keep you safe!” She begged.
Andy just stared.
OH PRETTY BABY DON’T BRING ME DOWN I PRAY OH PRETTY BABY NOW THAT I FOUND YOU STAY AND LET ME LOVEEEE YOU, BABYYYY LET ME LOVEEEE YOUUUUU
Andy wound back and brought her blade through flesh and bone. An explosion of blood blasted her in the face, but she only flinched enough to close her eyes. The song continued, the ghosts kept dancing, but Andy dropped her machete. She was going to burn them, but she needed another drink first. As she made her way back to the bar she could see some of the ghosts fading away. The side effects of the Baron’s magic were evaporating. Even the music was drifting off, but Andy was okay. She sat back at the bar, bloody and a mess, and the lights in the lobby started to dim back down to its natural darkness. She poured herself one more drink and smiled.
There were a lot of things that Andy Barclay couldn’t do.
Taking care of herself was not on the list.
|
