Blood Oranges (9781101594858) by Caitlin R. Kathleen; Kiernan Tierney Page B

spiffy as the great deals to be had just across the street, lined-up safe behind chain link and razor wire, but it usually ran and was all I had. It tended to get me where I needed to go. Most times.
    Must have been about six or seven ayem when I smoked my last cigarette, got bored, and decided to take a stroll down the street, to the shade below the cavernous I-195 overpass. It’s not at all like most highway overpasses. It’s more like, I don’t know—like someone
had
to build an overpass when they actually
wanted
to design a Gothic cathedral. It’s like that. Sort of. Oh, by the by, that crap you hear about vampires bursting into flame if they’re caught out in the daylight? Utter nonsense. Just a lot of twaddle concocted sometime around 1922 by a German director named F. W. Murnau when he made
Nosferatu
, a loose adaptation of
Dracula
(which promptly got him sued by Bram Stoker’s widow for copyright infringement; she won). You may recall, Stoker’s count doesn’t have too much trouble with the sun. And, take it from me, vampires sure as hell don’t sparkle . . . or glitter . . . or twinkle, no matter what that silly Mormon twit may have written, no matter how many books she’s sold, and no matter how many celibate high school girls have signed themselves up for Team Edward. Worst it ever gets, I might feel a prickle on the back of my neck round about noon. Oh, and naturally it’s best to feed after dark, but mostly that’s so you’re less likely to be spotted. Common fucking sense. But that’s it. No fiery conflagrations, and no fucking glitter.
    It’s not far, the walk from my apartment to the overpass, but far enough that along the way I had time to think about how I could have at least changed my clothes and maybe washed my hair. I suppose I’d been too distracted, what with all the retching and cleaning and retching and all. The stains had made the fabric stiff and had gone sort of the color of raisins. My dinners would get a little less messy later on, but that morning in August I was still too entirely stupefied by the curveball the universe had thrown my way to worry overly about hygiene. I just hoped no one noticed, like Hector (or Hugo or et al.), and walked faster. But not too fast, because I was feeling paranoid and thought maybe walking too fast might attract as much attention as the bloodstains. And the two together, doubt anything short of dragging a dead body behind me would be more conspicuous and likely to get me noticed, right?
    It’s actually pretty nice there under the interstate on hot summer days. You can sit on a plastic milk crate, say, or a cardboard box someone’s mashed flat and spread out across a patch of gravel. The traffic roars and rattles by fifty feet or so overhead, but the roadway and those immense support arches of concrete and steel absorb and muffle the worst of the racket. Even after I got smacked with the double whammy of the loup and Mercy, after my senses went all cacophonous on me, it was peaceful enough. And sometimes there were other people to talk to, maybe a homeless woman or a couple of boys with their skateboards headed for the park at India Point. And, of course, Aloysius. He’s a troll. Yes, I mean the sort that lives under bridges (and in culverts and beneath railroad trestles), just like you might have read about as a kid in the “Three Billy Goats Gruff.”
    Of course, Aloysius isn’t his
real
name. Trolls are fairies, after all, and fairies ain’t so free with their true names. Same as demons, they let that intel get out and they’re screwed. You know a troll’s name, he’s your servant for life. Though, it’s a risky business, binding a troll, and it rarely ends well for the one doing the binding. It occurred to me that morning, standing below the interstate and calling out for Aloysius, that an awful lot of folks (or what have you) were