HUNTSMAN, WHAT QUARRY?

 

In which, for one of the very few times in his orphan life, Richard Blaine gets into trouble by minding his own business.

HUNTSMAN, WHAT QUARRY?

“But she was not made for any man, and she will never be all mine.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

When Calogero Minacore – that’s Carlos Marcello to Mafia aficionados everywhere – walked into the library at St. Marok’s, I was reading the Bible.

Don’t jump to any conclusions. I was looking for a loophole. At least that was what I called it.

Honest.

The Voice had been murmuring at me incessantly all day.

I could tell she was literally screaming at me but at such a low volume it was like someone had left a radio program on in the next room.

Also, I felt disconnected from myself … as if someone were trying to take control of my body as when Not-I had killed “Bent” Murcham.

I would just have to ride the bucking horse that was my unique form of insanity as best I could.

Only a few years from becoming the Godfather of New Orleans, Marcello was perhaps the most dangerous man in all the Crescent City.

He was currently the lieutenant of  Sam “Silver Dollar” Carolla. But the don’s ongoing legal problems made Carlos pretty much the boss of everything dark, dangerous, and lethal.

So, the million-dollar question was:

What was such a pivotal figure in the Mafia doing here in this very well stocked library in an otherwise obscure orphanage?

 He was short, stocky, with a bullet head. Though he was woefully uneducated, he was an excellent reader of character which made him the master of intimidation and swimmer through the shark-infested waters of New Orleans’ politics.

So, again, what was such an important man doing here?

He had foresworn his beloved polka-dot bowtie for a garish long tie … but not his two deadly bodyguards: Ice and Easy.

The platinum blonde and redhead walked on either side of him as if they were spring-loaded. The blonde preferred the ice pick as a weapon.  

The willowy redhead killed very easily … at the drop of Carlos’ right hand … hence, her name.

Ice pulled out the chair opposite me to which Carlos thumped as if he had walked forty miles in this air you could wear of New Orleans.

“I ain’t got time to chit-chat, punk.”

“And I had such hopes.”

"You got a death-wish, boy?"

“Every day I awaken here at St. Marok’s comes as a surprise to me. I live in the moment, sir, for I might not have another.”

A cultured woman’s voice with a slight British accent spoke from the open doorway:

“And so, he could be said to be the most fully alive individual in this room, for all of us are playing the long game as it were, focused on the future which well may never come.”

I looked at the slender, short woman in the silk gown some centuries out of date and forced a smile,

“Or at least not in the way we hope, Mrs. Adams.”

Her cold eyes narrowed, and I tried to ignore the way winter visited my blood.

 “I have read every book in this library. Some of them were on American history.”

I turned to Carlos. “You’d like some of them, sir. The ones with pictures.”

He went red in the face. “Ice ….”

“Dead, the boy will not be able to give you that invitation to Morton’s that you so lust after,” murmured Mrs. Adams.

Her head whipped around to me. “Boy, why are you goading him to kill you?”

I shrugged. “”To cut to the chase. Even if I had the invitation ….”

Marcello snorted, “Which you don’t. The librarian broad has it. But you could convince her to give it to me.”

I sighed, “If I hated you, I would do that. Mr. La ….”

Mrs. Adams snapped, “Do not call that … thing by that false name.”

“It’s phony?”

“Both first and last. But if you must designate him by some utterance, call him Morton.”

As I slipped my fingers into the Bible at the recessed page at which I had been digging, I said to Mr. Marcello. “Mr. Morton would have you as the main course, sir.”

He snorted, “I’d have Ice and Easy with me.”

“Oh, please,” groaned Mrs. Adams. “They are not up to Mr. Blaine here, much less that one.”

Mr. Marcello raised his right hand. A gentleman would have waited for it to drop. I didn’t survive St. Marok’s by being a gentleman.

A chill shroud swept over my mind. 

Not-I took over.

Snatching the knife from the hole I had cut into the book of Job, Not-I sprang up, 

and Mrs. Adams cried out, “Use the hilt!”

Yeah, right.

Not-I drove the silver blade up to the hilt in Easy’s heart, In the same movement, my left hand seized the butt of her Police Special at her hip.

Not-I spun and shot Ice between her dead eyes. 

The ice pick clattered to the tiles. 

Her head rocked back. Her body reeled forward to sprawl on the floor alongside what I heard had been her lover.

I sighed. I didn't like killing. Especially, when Not-I killed. It always caused ... complications.

Once more fully me, I kneeled over Easy, closing her eyes and murmured,

 “She is happy where she lies

With the glaze of death upon her eyes.”

Carlos Marcello stiffened as Not-I aimed between his own wide eyes.

Mrs. Adams said coldly, “I said ‘use the hilt.’”

I smiled crooked. “I thought you said: ‘up to the hilt.’ Silly me.”

As Marcello swallowed hard, she asked, “Why are you hesitating? Finish the job. Kill the kine and be done with it.”

Kine.

Kine was what Jacques St. Germaine told me that midnight beyond the gate vampires called their human victims.

I was still alive because I had won that dumb game of Scissors, Paper, Rock. It amused him that I had shown no fear of losing.

At. St. Marok’s, death was nothing to fear. Living was the true horror.

Marcello gasped, “What are you, Lady?”

“Look at her shadow, sir.”

“Ya 'iilahi! She ain’t got no shadow!”

“That’s right, Mr. Marcello. I am what you kine call a vampire. I was turned in the gardens of Versailles.”

“The what?”

“Sir, she was the First Lady to the second President of the United States.”

“That ain’t possible!”

Mrs. Adams turned irritated to me. “Why is he still alive?”

I locked eyes with the terrified, confused man. 

Killing him would be too much like shooting a deer blinded by a car’s headlights.

“Mr. Marcello, would you like to buy your life?”

“Yeah, anything! I can make you a rich orphan.”

“Don’t want money. Give me your word of honor that you will leave me and mine alone.”

“What do you consider yours?”

“Think wide there, sir. Think wide.”

“What about the bodies?”

Mrs. Adams said, “My ghouls will take care of them.”

“Gh-Ghouls?”

She exposed her very sharp teeth and snapped them twice.

“Oh Dio!”

Mr. Marcello sprang up from his chair so fast that it toppled over. 

He ran so quickly out of the library that I expected to see after-images left behind by his body.

Mrs. Adams sighed, “Are you so naïve that you believe he will keep his word?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

She studied me with her pale blue eyes. “You kill very easily.”

“I learned from those who died that dawdled at it.”

Mrs. Adams snapped exasperated, “Where is your librarian?”

“Miss Mayfair is not mine,” I said, trying to keep all emotion from my voice.

I still gave myself away as Mrs. Adams shook her head.

 “There will be no conjoining with her, Mr. Blaine. Her nature forbids it.”

I forced a smile. “Conjoining? You sure take all the romance out of a dream, ma’am.”

Her nature? What did she mean by that? 

Were my hopes destined to die?

That would teach me to dream in a place like St. Marok's.

“No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this lonely place.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay