Half the Blood of Brooklyn

– Oh, did I say something out of line? Pardon me, let me be clear so I can make that up to you.

She shows her own teeth.

– You are on the ass end of the world. You are all alone out here and someone has your back against it. And you are so fucking terrified you call us for help to get out. Joe’s right, isn’t he? This is it, just a half dozen of you? The way you pathetic, self-destructive dysfunctions live out here, you couldn’t sustain more than six members. And now, now you get a chance, a shot at getting off this sandbar and joining with a real Clan, having some stability, being a part of something real, and all you can do is swing your dick around and try to act like you don’t need the help you’re screaming for.

She shakes her head.

– Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

She straightens.

– You’re right, Joe, they’re assholes. Let’s go.

She starts for the exit.

Stretch takes a step after her.

– Hey! Hey, now! Now wait a second.

Lydia stops and turns.

– What?

Stretch licks his lips.

– You got a mouth on you, lady. Some mouth. Come on a man’s turf and talk that way. Some mouth. Takes, know what that takes, takes balls. You got some balls on you. I like that. That’s OK by me. You come back in here and let’s have a beer and we’ll do the swap and get rolling. We’re all introduced now, so let’s do some business.

Lydia creases her forehead.

– Asshole, you missed the point. We don’t want you. You people are a mess. You’re going to have to stay out here where you belong. Until you get kicked into the ocean.

She turns again.

Stretch snaps his fingers.

The Strongman’s eyes narrow behind the headman’s hood. Harm sets the mason jar aside and rests her hand on her sledgehammer. Vendetta’s fingers tighten on the iron poker. Hatter opens his dictionary wide and a derringer drops from the hollowed pages into his hand. Glasseater licks his lips.

Stretch folds his arms over his little barrel chest.

– Tell me, you uptight Manhattan snobs think you can talk to me like that and walk out of here in one piece?

I pull the hogleg from my belt and put it against his forehead.

– Tell me, do you think you clowns can stop me if I decide to blow your stomach open, rip your guts back out, stretch them across the boardwalk, and run my van over them a few times?

Lydia raises both her hands, opens her mouth to chill the situation, and something slaps the stiff canvas of the tent, whispers through the air and imbeds itself in her neck.

I blink.

– Jesus fuck, is that an arrow?

A heavy rain hits the tent, sharp reports followed by chorused sighs.

Fletched steel shafts sprout in the sand. Pepper the table and the corpse. Bristle from the Strongman’s back as he scoops Vendetta and Harm together and bends his body over theirs. Glasseater gnashes his broken teeth on the one that springs out of his mouth, and finds it inedible. They chase Stretch as he crawls under the stage. Hatter pulls one from his foot, turns and runs into a flock of them that pelt his chest and face.

I drop to the ground. One passes through my right biceps and into my side, pinning my arm to my torso.

The storm stops.

Something black flutters at the entrance of the tent. I see the Wraith in my memory, stop breathing, roll onto my left side, fire both barrels of the hogleg, the recoil jerking my arm back, the shaft of the arrow tearing flesh, the barbed tip twisting between two ribs.

The black shape in the entrance sprays a cloud of blood and explodes back into the night.

A man, a man in a cape. Only a man.

I breathe. Smell the Vyrus thick in the fresh blood.

Not a Wraith, but not a man. More are out there.

I get up. Lydia has the arrow in her neck, more in her legs and abdomen. I grab her and drag her toward the rear of the tent, kicking the brazier from its stand as I pass it, spilling flaming coals over the grease-stained carpets and under the dry boards of the stage and the bleachers.

Fire wastes no time, begins to eat the tent and its contents.

I reach the back of the tent, drop Lydia, grab the canvas at its base and heave it up, tearing long iron stakes from the sand. I look back, see more black shapes beating at the entrance, leaping across the flames, the trailing wings of one catching fire.

The Strongman rises, porcupined in steel, and takes his broadsword from the edge of the stage as Vendetta and Harm worm beneath the platform, over the coals scattered there. Two of the caped silhouettes jump, the broadsword arcs, dividing one of the shapes into two bleeding halves and imbedding in the other before it slams into him and drives him onto his back. The heads of the arrows burst from his chest and stomach and he grabs the wounded attacker and pulls him close and fire is reflected everywhere in blood.

I wrap my fingers in Lydia’s hair and duck under the edge of the burning tent, hauling her through the sand, jerking to a stop as something grabs her and she’s torn from me; dropping the fistful of her hair, snagging her wrist and digging my heel into the sand as she’s pulled back into the tent.

– Pitt.

Lydia, rasping over the arrow in her throat, reaching to me with her other hand.

– Gun. Gun.

I drop the hogleg, force my right hand across my body, ripping the hole in my biceps wider, twisting the barbs deeper. I tug the Docks Boss’ gun from my jacket pocket and toss it into the sand as the things holding her legs heave and we’re both pulled toward the flaming canvas.

She scoops up the huge revolver.

– Let me go. Go.

Three arrows pierce the tent and fly into the darkness behind me.

Lydia twists her arm to free herself.

– Go. Just fucking come back.

I let her go and she’s dragged screaming into the tent and I snag the hogleg and I run into the darkness below the boardwalk, trailing blood, the sound of the revolver crashing behind me.

Lydia, filling the blazing night with lead.

Burrowed deep in sand where it piles up high under the boardwalk, I break the hogleg, drop the spent shells and replace them. I face back on my trail and wait for something that I can blow in half.

Nothing comes.

I watch the tent burn. I watch the fluttering silhouettes hack the lines, tumbling it down so that it burns faster. I watch them gather bodies and parts of bodies. Three of them carry the Strongman and the smaller corpse pinned to him.

I listen.

– Don’t leave anything.

– I’m not leaving anything, Axler.

– We need it all.

– I never buried anyone? I never sat Shiva? I don’t know we need it all?

– Just don’t leave any of Chaim on the ground.

– It’s too late. He was sprayed all over the tent. And half of Fletcher burned before we could get to him.

– Burned. Fuck. Will the Chevra Kadisha be able to do anything?

– Ask your papa.