I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) by Tony Monchinski

this
Faust guy wants? Faust admitting to Mephistopheles, I gathered up and piled up high / In vain the treasures of the human mind …./ My stature has not grown a whit ,/ No closer to the infinite .
    His stature?
    Is that what Faust wanted—greater fame?
    Was that it?
    Gritz couldn’t imagine.
    Yeah, maybe he’d give Cath a call. Who the
fuck was he kidding?

 
Saturday
17 October 1998

 
13.
10:15 A.M.
     
    He dreamed of a bleak landscape, bereft and
forsaken, burnt and ash. Human bones pooled thigh deep, layered
atop one another, brittle. Dun clouds against a darker sky, a red
sun burning. Something reared up from the bones, exploding in a
shower of skulls and vertebrae, rising into the air and blotting
out the sun as its wings unfolded and enveloped the firmament. Its
mouth parted to reveal row upon row of razor sharp teeth, its head
undulating from its body on a serpentine neck, fire bursting from
its maw to obliterate the world—
    Boone woke up with Pomeroy and Halstead
standing over him.
    “Do you know you whimper in your sleep?”
Halstead had its arms crossed, chin in its hand.
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “No. I don’t.”
    “You do,” Pomeroy confirmed. “Troubled
conscience?”
    Boone opened his mouth with a comeback, but
before he could utter a word Halstead had uncrossed its arms and
stuffed a ball gag in place. Boone roared “You fuck—do that again
I’ll bite off your fingers!” at it, which came out sounding like
“ Mmm fmmk — mm mm ahmm mmm mmm - mm mm mmm !” He couldn’t believe the
sneaky bloodsucker had fooled him, got the gag in his mouth like
that.
    “You can’t believe I gagged you so easily. Is
that it?”
    Just to be contrarian, Boone shook his
head.
    “Believe it,” Halstead told him. “You’re not
as smart as you think you are.” Halstead spoke his next few words
for Pomeroy’s benefit: “Or as good looking.” Pomeroy emitted an
amused little titter.
    Boone told Halstead he was an
ugly-dead-freak-fuck but none of that came out sounding the way
he’d hoped, what with the gag. He was already immobile, fitted out
in a straight jacket and strapped down flat. When they got behind
him and lifted him, he found he was on a wheeled gurney.
    His whole body hurt.
    Colson had not been going easy on him in
training. Each jounce of the gurney brought a new grumble through
the gag.
    Pomeroy looked down on him as they navigated
dim hallways Boone did not recognize. “It’s from my personal
collection,” the vampire told Boone, meaning the ball gag. “You
should see where else we can put it.”
    They rolled Boone through darkness and shadow
to another part of the facility. Pomeroy pressed a button in the
wall near a folding metal gate and they waited, the two vampires
and the bound man, Pomeroy humming audibly to itself—“ Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmm ”—until a bell dinged
and an elevator door opened. They pulled the metal doors apart and
turned Boone around on the gurney, wheeling him into the
elevator.
    On a raised stool in the corner of the cab
sat an elevator operator unlike any Boone had ever seen. Pomeroy
and Halstead greeted it with nods, drawing the metal door closed
behind them. Boone couldn’t take his eyes off the thing.
    It was short, about the size of a dwarf Boone
had tossed in a bar one drunken night. Its face was puckered up
with an oversized mouth and a pug nose; its protruding eyes would
look cute on a doll or a stuffed animal but looked downright
bizarre on this thing. The creature was dressed like it was the
1940s: it wore a navy blue suit and pants with a peaked cap, blue
with a gold band. Large, pointed ears jutted out of either side of
the hat and the suit pants ended at its shins, pulled up further
because its knees were drawn to its chest on the stool, revealing
claw-like feet.
    One of its feet reached out and pressed a
button on the wall.
    The elevator started its ascent.
    “Boone,” Pomeroy worked the gag free,