Vile Blood Read Online Free Page B

face of a seasoned junkie. Drum knew he was right in his suspicions when he saw a flash of chrome as she palmed a little cell phone and disappeared it into her dirty jeans. Reverend Tincup prohibited his flock from using the things, the only voice he ever wanted them to hear was his.
    Drum entered the cramped trailer in an awkward crouch keeping his head away from the ceiling and his uniform clear of the filthy plywood room divider that sported a faded Sears calendar from 1999. He slid the bag across to her and she fumbled it open tipping three knotted, uninflated balloons onto the table top.
    “Party favors, Holly.”
    Holly untied one of the balloons, her palsied fingers clumsy, and poured black tar heroin powder onto the paper bag. Drum stepped out of the trailer, hovering in the doorway, and fired up a cheroot to rid his nose of the stink, watching Holly at work.
    She ignored him as she went about the business of prepared her fix, the paraphernalia appearing from the shadows: the bent and blackened spoon, the knife, the cotton pellet, a bottle of water, a rubber tourniquet and, finally, the hypodermic. 
    She cooked the heroin in the spoon over the candle flame until it bubbled, mixing in a little water, the acrid smell of La Negra burning Drum’s nostrils. Then she set the spoon down, and lay the cotton pellet in the mixture, drawing the heroin into the syringe through the makeshift filter.
    She pulled up her sleeve, revealing the festered arm of a long time user, the skin a sad tale of scars and scabs and lesions. Holly tied off the tourniquet, pumped her arm and found a useable vein. Gave the hypodermic a tap and sent the needle to the vein, pushing down the piston.
    The effect was almost instantaneous. She relaxed. She sighed. She smiled, and beauty’s ghost flickered across her face.
    “Why don’t you come in and sit, Dellbert?”
    “No, I can’t stay, Holly.”
    “There’s a big old bed through there,” she said, waving a skeletal arm toward the bedroom. “Almost big enough for you.”
    Whatever charms she once had were long gone and Drum just grinned and shook his head. Anyway she was nodding now, her chin slumping to her chest. He’d known her a long time, since she appeared out of the heat haze with Tincup and his little caravan, the preacher driven ever farther south by outraged authorities, until he and Drum struck a deal advantageous to them both.
    Back in those days, the late nineties, Holly had been a big boned blonde with the ass of a cheerleader and the tits of a Playboy centerfold. She and Drum had pleasured one another regularly, Tincup too occupied with his harem to care.
    The sex had come to an end as Holly’s habit took hold, a habit fed by Drum, keeping her on his string. She was his eyes and ears inside Tincup’s court. Or had been until her bad behavior exhausted Tincup's patience and he sent her out here to fester. A scorned woman, no longer the number one wife.
    She was from the city, Drum knew. Still connected up there, he was prepared to guess. A scorned woman vindictive and desperate enough to swap information for money and drugs. She’d been the homing beacon that had drawn that old Dodge down here.
    Drum stooped into the trailer and gently slapped her face. Her head lolled to the side, a slug-trail of drool tracing her cheek and chin.
    Drum grunted and went to work, copying what she had done. Cooking three more spoons of heroin, the sickly sweet, cloying smell sending him to the door for air between batches, and injecting three more syringes into Holly’s wasted arms.
    After the second shot her breathing was labored. After the final injection she loosened her bladder and bowels and died with a sad little whisper. Drum put a sausage-sized finger to her throat. Nothing.
    Surrendering to a moment of sentimentality, he leaned forward and brushed her cold forehead with his lips. Then he found the phone in her pocket and transferred it to his own. Drum used a handkerchief to wipe