Blood Oranges (9781101594858) Read Online Free

“Because I haven’t yet killed you.”
    I tried to laugh again, but almost threw up again. Then the cramps hit hard, and I don’t know how long it was before either of us said anything else. Maybe five minutes, or maybe less.
    â€œWould you like me to elaborate?” she asked, once the pain in my guts temporarily retreated to merely an excruciating throb.
    â€œYou have me on pins and needles,” I wheezed.
    â€œThere’s no single reason, Siobhan—”
    â€œStop
calling
me that. No one fucking calls me that.”
    There was a contemplative
snick-snick-snicking
sound then, and I tried not to think what the vampire was doing to make such a sound or what it might mean.
    â€œAs you wish, Quinn. There’s no single reason. There is, rather, a tapestry of reasons.”
    â€œReason number one?”
    â€œSome time ago, back in the winter, you murdered my lover, and my daughter. Her name was Alice, but I doubt you bothered with introductions. You tracked her to Swan Point Cemetery, cut off her head, then sliced out her heart, which you burned. You filled her belly with bricks, sewed it shut again, and sunk her body in the Seekonk River.”
    â€œYeah, well . . . floaters make people suspicious. Reason number two?”
    â€œI delight in irony, and here I have before me a killer of killers, God’s butcher, an executioner of monsters, who’s just been bitten by a werewolf. And I want to watch.”
    I told her I was trying not to think too hard about that part. The being bitten on the ass part, and what it meant.
    â€œBut, you have to admit, it’s ironic.”
    â€œOccupational hazard,” I replied, eyeing the pail she’d provided, because it was only a matter of time. And the time would be sooner, rather than later. “Is there a reason number three?”
    â€œThere is, as it happens. I need a weapon. There are worse things out there than you, or me, or that dog you had the run-in with last night. There are things you’ve never even glimpsed.”
    I shut my eyes a moment, wishing I had the strength to brush my sweaty, straggly hair out of my face. “Always sort of suspected that,” I whispered. It’s okay to whisper with vampires. Fuckers can hear a pin drop in a hurricane. “This has what to do with keeping me alive?”
    I’m not going to lie. I’d been bitten by a werewolf, and you know how that goes. The old wives’ tales and movies don’t get everything wrong, and I’d rather the vampire finish me off than have to do the job myself. If this made me a coward, so be it. No one gets to be the brave girl all the goddamn time.
    â€œI need a weapon,” she said.
    I laughed again, hard. A deep and wholehearted sort of laugh, which finally cost me whatever was in my stomach. For the next few minutes, the rusty pail by the filthy mattress was my dearest companion. When the hurling subsided and there was only the bliss of dry heaves, she said, for the third time, “I need a weapon.”
    And I replied hoarsely, “Then you’ve got the wrong little black duck. Maybe you haven’t noticed—”
    â€œI know your history, Quinn,” she interrupted. Vampires love to interrupt, by the way, because they never doubt that whatever they have to say is vastly more important and/or interesting than whatever you were in the process of saying. Anyway, she continued. “Your childhood, your parents, the guilt, all those years on the street, what you’ve learned since then . . .” She trailed off, letting the thought go unfinished, and this seems like as good a time as any to insert what comic-book nerds would refer to as my “origin story.” You know, like how Superman was born on Krypton, but his parents bundled him into a rocket and blasted him into space right before the whole planet went kablooey. Or how Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider. Like