CHAPTER 46: CHAPTER 46: MARIE KIDNAPPED MIKE

Two blocks away Gezza slowed down the Benz to a crawl with the engine rumbling like an old smoker in the stuffy night air.

Hoodie pulled it up and over his greasy hair and the Playbook was wedged in his spine like a bad tattoo that was itching to be peeled.

"Told Marie I’d bail on this gig. Yeah, right. Liar, liar, pants on fire."

The street behind The Vault smelled like a urinal after happy hour, the damp, urine-impregnated bricks mixed with the grease of the fryer which had stuck to his nostrils as unpleasant perfume.

The sign overhead flickered pathetically with neon, the "V" lifeless, the AULT stuttering like a stilted heartbeat in some of the cheap-skate horror movies.

It was not only dark in the alley, it was also a crippling blow of urban decay, graffiti bleeding down the walls like open infections, piles filled with water that reflected the neon in rainy rainbows that smelled slightly of motor oil and utter desperation.

The hoodie that Gezza was wearing adhered to the back and the Playbook was unnaturally hot so that his skin crawled.

Every protracted siren cry made his teeth inflame cops? Cult creeps? Or only the city suckling a other loser like that? Rather, he pressed himself flat on the wall, to breathe shallow and sour, and stare into the open mouth of the alley.

Then they spilled out.

Mike, whose arm is sheer muscle, and whose head is the size of a lump of bread--had his arm around Marie as though you are his crutch, both of you, stumbling around like you drunk the entire bar.

Mike roared with laughter, which was deep and drunken, and was unable to distinguish karaoke track. "One more round, babe—c’mon, light me up".

Marie didn’t twitch. Simply drove him further back into the shadows, beyond the overflowing dumpsters that reeked of putrefied takeout, her hand spread across his chest as though she was marking her possession of it.

She shot a glance back once. Right at Gezza’s hiding spot. Black eyes, like black holes in the flickering neon that naught.

She knows I’m lurking. Creepy much? But basement, habits are hard to die.

Mike fell over himself, and his face crashed through her neck, and his paws tore like a mutt at swine-meat. Marie let it slide. Then—bam. A glint of silver. Syringe? Shiv? Who cared.

Mike became like a deflated balloon, with his mouth open and his drool dribbling down on the broken asphalt like some pathetic abstract art.

Marie didn’t even blink. What a blow to his yap, with duct tapes that were ripped across it on a single vile jerk of the zip-ties.

She was dragging him by the collar, his boots scratching together like nails on a chalkboard, directly in the direction of the black van lurking at the ass-end of the alley- Light off, engine running low and mean.

Doors flung open like the gaping jaws. She threw him in, closed em down with a bang that had flown through Gezzas gut.

Screech of tires, bolting of vans, red specks of taill lights on the dark like trails of blood.

Gezza smiled, that grin of his was oily, winning, despite the fact that his pits were soaked through his shirt. Bookworm has caught herself a bully. Atta girl.

The Playbook thumped him against his spine runes flaring violet in his mental eye his voice slithering down his skull like a worm: SHE WILL LEAD TO YOUR END.

Screw that noise.

He slunk back to the Benz. Victoria hung in the passenger car-seat, half-blinded and stumbling with her eyes four or five times, cum drying on her thigh like a forgotten frosting on a cake in a shop window.

Mumbling something unintelligible, her hand pawed his arm.

She moaned and her lips opened in that doped-out manner that made his blood hum.

Engine growled to life. He hit the gas, wheels screaming, running after the phantom of the van in the congesting arteries of the city.

Gezza fancied his imagination with the Benz devouring the asphalt, Streetlights flickering across the road like bad acid flashbacks. Marie—hell, i had no idea she had ever been so fiery.

When he first spotted her name in the library, she was nothing but the librarian with her tight bun and glasses that screamed untouched.

Hours after, and bam, she is a perv in need of sex. But now?

Let’s see where you are hiding him Marie. Daddy’s curious.

His Playbook shouted in his heart, with deep and guttural laughter: I STILL WARNS SHE WILL SHATTER THEe.

Gezza grinned, his knuckles bleaching on the wheel, and the flop sweat of the neck dribbling down.

"Not on my watch, you cursed rag."

Gezza turned off the engine, which was outside the laundromat, the neon sign CL closed buzzing like an irritated hornet in the hot air.

Victoria changed her posture, still sitting next him, skirt still scrunched like a bad choice, her eyes so cloudy and shimmered with lust.

"Keep still, he said to himself", wiping the moisture off his patchy beard, the sort that proclaimed the slogan I tried No-Shave November and failed.

She was nodding all flabby and meek, and her cum-streaked fingers were twitching with the memory of the highlights of the night.

He crept out, his hoodie covering his face, his Playbook aching against his spine, like a second-heart with anger-related problems.

The place struck him as straight as a wall--bleach stinging enough under his eyes, rust coating the nails as old blood.

The air reeked of a new creation out of detergent pods and stale towels, silver and mute machines that stood in the dim light of a winking vending machine that housed old fashioned candy bars.

Sneakers of Gezza were skidding on the floor--leak soda? Blood by some unknown fight? With this Playbook beating like a heart, Playbook hummed, promising and threatening at the same time.

So pitch dark in there. Gezza muttered.

Then a ray of flashlight cut through the darkness.

Mike, fell back in a shaky metal chair, with his wrists tied up, his head hanging in a half-cocooned manner by the side of his head just as he might have, had he missed a spit-take competition, lost it.

Still sloshed. Still a joke.

Marie towered over him, holding a pipe in one clenched hand as a kind of improvised baton, a flashlight in the other, making her features lean and jagged--librarian into wolf, hood dark, hair pushed back, eyes fierce beneath the hood.

Gezza crept nearer; sneakers rubbing over the broken tile which smacked gritty feet.

"I cannot believe you dragged that off," he said, his voice low, his sleaziness, his bad habit creeping over his face like a crawler.

Marie didn’t glance his way.

"Start believing, Gezza, what I can do."

She shot the light in the mug of Mike.

"Wakey-wakey, asshole."

A bottle of cold water dripped over his face, and followed down his shirt in rivulets.

Mike awoke with a jerk, and his eyes were blinking sleepily, bloodshot and confused.

"Who the... hell’re you?" and he spoke drowsily, boozily, budding panickingly.

"Let me go, you freaks--"

He bowed back, and his chair moaned as it sympathised with his woe.

Still hammered, Gezza snickered and leant forward to a dryer that whirred on a bit of residual heat.

The pipe was thrust in by Marie into the chest of Mike--slow, slow, like she wanted to know whether it had ripened.

"Got a gun to your heart, punk," she snewled, and her voice dropped till it was ice and out of place, not her.

She leaned forward and the flash light made his face look like a ghost.

"Please—uh—please—I haven’t got cash--" Mike gawed, secretion on his forehead like a sickly pimple.

"I don’t want your chump change."

The voice of Marie was a sharp, cutting, sound, As brash as broken glass.

"You know about the Sixen Cult?

"What?"

"The Sixen Cult—ring any bells? Rune and ritual Old as dirt, soul-robbing with ink.

Mike shook his head wildly. "N-no, sounds like bullshit!"

Marie smirked. Bullshit,

"Ever hear of the Playbook? Stolen from us. Some witch pointed you out as related.

"What? No—I—ain’t involved."

"Clueless?"

"I—I meet this— this dumb witch, she said some cheap louse took my girl with a dime magic book--that’s all, swear!"

Marie Looked at Gezza then back to Mike she pressed the pipe, to his bones.

"She said you the one with it." Marie pressed on,

Gezza could only watch, he didn’t want Mike to recognize his voice.

And Marie seemed to handling it herself.

"What No she lieing! I promise—I promise, ma." Mike said, and his voice splintered like a teenage boy.

Gezza could see Mike nervous, an ugly replica of his basement days when he was desperate fool.

But now the Playbook had got him hooked, the soul chips in the cash check to the flesh. And this Sixen Cult? Like the bill collectors, sounded like his karma being due.

She tilted her head into Gezza, whispering as she did under the fluorescent hum:

"Not gold, but nuggets."

"Then—snick."

In one of the faintest cuts she cut outh the zip-ties with a pocket blade.

"Scram."

Mike heaved to his feet his chair overturning in a crash--drunk and desperate, bursting out of the door into the night as with a nightmare being blown out of existence.

Marie switched off the flashlight.

Darkness gulped them down.

Gezza looked at the vacant seat, heart rapping like a caged rabbit, the tile ice cold puncturing through the soles of his feet.

The Playbook burnt--runes burning warning red in his brain:

"SHE KNOWS TOO MUCH."

"PUNISH."

But he stood still, with legs aching, sweats in his armpits.

Marie turned, her eyes, upon seeing a sliver of streetlight through the grimy window, gleaming like concealed knives.

Sixen Cult she had said, and she uttered it in a murmur. Those are after your book, Gezza.

And they got your name scraped in.

By passing over him, her pipe swinging loosely at her side, she was near enough that he smelled her--books, and something different and colder--revenge.

"Pick your queen—before they crown you."

Gezza was standing there, now the hum of the laundromat made fun of him. He remained in the cold, the door jingling overly in its dingy way as Marie disappeared into the night.

He dropped his hand to the Playbook and his fingers were reeling his runes which seemed now to have become brands upon his flesh.

He saw a vision, hooded beings who sang and had glowing violet eyes and his name written in blood. "PICK HER asked his voice, which hissed. BREAK HER. OR THEY BREAK YOU." Wiping his clammy palms on his jeans, he shuddered. Time to add another name? Or burnt the curse thing before it burnt him.

The Playbook laughed--he laughed, low and ravenous, in his skull.

Not tonight.

But damn soon.