Cherry Bomb_ A Siobhan Quinn Novel - Caitlin R. Kiernan Page 0,4

I ain’t doing this for your amusement and titillation.

Yeah. You.

I’d like to delude myself into believing that I’m doing it for Selwyn, just so there will be a record of her short life left behind—no matter how unflattering—so she will not have been x-ed out without so much as a trace remaining to show she ever was.

So.

The next morning when we awoke, wrapped in those sticky sheets and each other’s arms, she put her lips to my ear and whispered, “It’s beautiful.”

I slapped her.

“Like fuck it is,” I snarled. “You want to be a killer, be a killer. Just don’t ever let me hear you try and romanticize it.”

She rubbed her jaw and stared at the stiff, mutilated corpse beside her.

I continued. “It’s not a game. It’s not a fantasy. There’s no dark gift. There’s murder and horror, and one day we’ll both have hell to pay. Literally. I ever catch you thinking otherwise, I’ll break your fucking neck.”

There was a good-sized tear in Eve’s throat, just below her larynx, and Selwyn slid three fingers inside it, like some grotesque parody of doubting fucking Thomas and Jesus Christ, a story that’s plenty grotesque enough to start with. Yeah, I was raised to be a good Irish Catholic girl, force-fed all that nonsense right up until I ran away to live on the dirty streets of Providence.

“You’re telling me it isn’t a rush?” Selwyn asked. “You really expect me to believe you don’t enjoy this? If so, I’m not buying it, Quinn.”

I wanted to slap her again. Instead, I got up and went to the table where, the night before, I’d left my phone.

“I’m not telling you that at all,” I replied, trying to remember the number I needed. “It’s better than sex ever was. It’s even better than heroin, and I never thought I’d love anything better than smack.”

“You were an addict?” She took her hand out of the wound and sniffed at her fingers.

“Still am. Only now it’s blood, not H. But, Selwyn, what you did last night, that’s no different from Jeffrey Dahmer wrapping his cock in some poor fuck’s intestines and jacking off. If that’s your idea of beautiful, keep it to yourself.”

She changed the subject. Smart girl.

“How do we get rid of the body?” she asked.

“I’m about to take care of that right now,” I told her, and I dialed the number of a janitor over in Red Hook. Back in Rhode Island, I’d had to clean up my own messes. Here in Manhattan, I’d learned there were people who’d pay for the privilege of wiping my ass for me. They were quick, thorough, and they never asked questions. What they did with the refuse, hey, that was their own business, the sick fucks. I called and was told someone would be around in half an hour or less, traffic permitting. There was already a truck in the neighborhood.

“I need a shower,” Selwyn said. “Wanna join me?”

I shook my head. There was a chance the cleaners would arrive early, and if I got in the shower with her, well, I knew where that would lead.

“You go on. I’m gonna tidy up.”

I didn’t bother getting dressed. Eve’s eyes were still open, and I sat on the edge of the bed, staring into them. The shower sounded like heaven. I looked into the blind, blank gaze of the woman who’d sheltered me, but all I could think of was the hot water pounding Selwyn’s tits and cunt. After five minutes or so, I wrapped the body tightly in the bloody sheets. Usually, I let the cleaners take care of that, but suddenly I needed to be busy. The night before, dumb bitch that I am, I’d gone and changed the whole goddamn tried-and-true ball game of my existence, and it was a lot easier to try and figure out what came next if I kept busy.

“You trust these guys?” Selwyn asked. I looked up, and she was standing in the doorway, wet and naked, drying her black, black hair with a white bath towel.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I trust these guys. Put some clothes on.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

She shrugged and disappeared back into the steamy bathroom.

The resurrection men—they never called themselves cleaners or janitors, always resurrection men, when they called themselves anything—came and went. They didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the nude, gore-smeared vampire. I was a familiar enough sight, me and however many other nasties they knew on a first-name basis. These guys, they