The Big Smoke. Jason Nahrung
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about Kala, or the things that had been done to her.
'Don't go,' Danica had told him, even though she admitted there was nothing more for her to teach him. 'Killing Mira will resolve nothing.'
Fresh is best. Straight from the vein
Taipan, as though he was saying it for the first time.
So much for a dish best served cold.
He was Taipan's child. That was true. And an orphan twice over. Taipan had also died. And maybe he had found the peace that eluded him in preternatural life. But both Mira and her right-hand man, Hunter — Kevin always thought of the man by his rank, not his name — had survived.
While Kala, Danica and he had escaped — skulking at the arse end of the country, living like leeches in the mud and tropical heat — it did not feel like victory. Not while Mira was free.
Kevin turned off the radio and covered himself with a coat as he laid his seat down, lacking even the strength to crawl into the back.
Dawn came, thin lances of sunlight glowing in the dust. The hunt would begin at sundown.
FOUR
Blood.
Ink. Sweat.
Fainter: bourbon. Fainter still: marijuana.
Overriding it all, though, there was blood. Kevin's vision blurred as the smell triggered his hunger. His gut ached to be filled.
'Yeah?'
Kevin blinked, focused. Night three, tattoo parlour number eight on his list.
He was leaning on a glass counter; the cabinet was filled with trinkets covered in silver skulls and marijuana leaf motifs. A book of flashes lay open: pegasi and tigers, rainbows and skulls. From behind a curtained doorway, a tattoo gun buzzed. In plastic chairs along one wall sat two lads no older than him, short hair and thick necks, tattoos dripping down biceps.
And behind the counter, the girl, slightly younger — late teens, perhaps — pierced through eyebrows and nose and lip, dreadlocked hair, her nipples misshapen with rings where they pushed against her tight singlet.
'Hello?' she said, waving her hand in front of his face.
She stared with red-rimmed eyes from under pencilled brows. Pale skin highlighted the montages on her upper arms, the Asian script on her forearms, the purple veins pulsing under skin and ink.
'I'm lookin' for the Needle,' he told her, his voice low and rasping, his throat dust dry with thirst. He'd drunk nothing but water for a week.
'We got lotsa needles.'
'A person. A tattooist. Called the Needle. Does silver tatts. Know him?'
'Silver tatts?' A blink, a flinch. He smelled — felt — her rush of adrenaline. Veins pulsed in her throat. She stood back, crossed her arms. Physically, she reminded him of Kala. Flat, bare belly, framed by hip bones; a dangling chain sparkling with gems at her navel. Jeans so low her pubis bulged above the clip.
The flesh there would be soft. There, and inside her arms, on her throat.
His gums throbbed. His fangs ached in their sheaths to tear into that skin, to free the sustenance his body craved.
She backed up against the wall, her eyes never leaving Kevin, and rapped on the thin sheeting beside the doorway.
'Flash?' she called.
The lads looked up, more curious than threatening. Kevin was in blue jeans and an AC/DC shirt. They wore black and ink. Not that different to the eye. They avoided his gaze, huddled over a piece of paper and continued to talk about colours.
The tattoo gun stopped.
A bearded face emerged from behind the curtain.
'What's up, Jen?'
Kevin didn't give her a chance to answer. 'I'm lookin' for a bloke goin' by the name of Needle.'
'Who's askin'?'
Kevin licked his chafed lips, his tongue like sandpaper. 'A friend recommended him. Silver tattoos. Egyptian.' The man's veins stood out under his throat, in his upper chest. There was a smudge of blood on his white surgical glove.
How long had it been since Kevin had eaten? Really eaten?
'I can ask around,' the tattooist said. 'Where can I reach you if I find this fella?'
'You know him?'
'Silver tatts, that'll stand out. You sure he's in Brissie?'
'Pretty sure.'
He jerked a thumb at the girl. 'Give Jen your number.'
'I'll come back.'
'We open at noon.'
'After dark.'
'We close at seven, unless you want a job done.'
'I'll be here at sundown.'
'Suit yourself.'
Kevin stepped out and leaned against the nearest wall as he willed his body back under control. Hunger uncoiled inside him, a balled python in his guts reaching up and up, making his throat clench.
He had tried normal tucker and succeeded only in making the hunger worse. He could eat regular food — should eat, in fact — but he needed blood. Maybe the Needle could provide some baggies or decant.
A moment surged through his weakness; Taipan feeding him:
Fresh is best, fella: remember that
He forced the phantom back, behind the doors in his mind that Danica had taught him to use. A way of controlling the lives he'd absorbed, the experiences he'd been gifted by his maker. To prevent him from being overwhelmed.
Kevin pushed off from the wall and headed for base.
The city knotted around him like lantana vines, thick and barbed. Traffic, the rhythmic bass of night clubs, the constant burble of voices and hyena laughter, the scents of booze and colognes and the melange of foods, stale water, rotting trash. Bodies flashing hot — arms and legs, chests and bellies — naked and glistening in the humid February night. And underneath it all, the drumbeat of hearts, the pulsing of blood, the warmth within that thin, vulnerable skin.
He had to get off the streets. The last thing he wanted was to hurt any more innocent people, and with his hunger running rampant, he doubted he could stop at just a sip. As bad as the cravings were, he had to hold on one more night. Always, just one more night.
FIVE
They'd got lucky with the room: third floor, and a viable angle onto the tattoo parlour on the opposite side of the street, and no awnings blocking their view. But then, empty offices in this part of the Valley weren't hard to find.
Reece stared out the Venetian blind, absently wiped his dusty fingers on his trousers. The street lights had recently come on, glowing jaundiced in the dusk, dotting the footpaths with light and shade. His red-eye vision rendered the scene in hues of grey, but pulled fine details from the gloom. Litter in the gutter; a prostitute hugging a doorway, her face illuminated by the flare of her cigarette; two youths in baggy pants and backward caps sauntering toward Wickham Street as though they owned the place. Kings of the jungle. Huh.
Behind him, Felicity, sitting on a plastic milk crate, sipped coffee from a travel mug, then asked, yet again, 'How reliable is your snitch?'
'As much as any junkie I pay for information.'
'Wow, that much.'
She was on edge, understandably, since he'd convinced her to keep Bhagwan under wraps. At the time, he'd thought it might offer them a valuable secret, but with Mira in bedlam and tensions running high inside Thorn as recriminations flew over The Debacle, it'd become necessary to dust the bloodsucker.
Everyone