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

popped up on the laptop.
“Which I choose not to disclose at this time.”
    “What is this bloodsucker to you?”
    “He is nothing.” Rainford held the snifter up
to its nose and sniffed the brandy. “Less than nothing.”
    “What do you want in return?”
    “Only to talk.”
    “ Only .”
    “Later I will have a request, one I sincerely
believe you will be eager to comply with.”
    “Don’t fuck around with me, Rainford.”
    “Said the fly to the spider.” The Dark Lord
smiled at him, bemused. Boone grumbled and looked down. The fuck
had a point.
    When he looked back up, Boone put it out
there: “How do you know I won’t just cut and run?”
    “I do not. Which is why I am not sending you
alone.”
    “Great. I gotta listen to more of your
Russian stories today?”
    “No.” The Dark Lord lowered the snifter,
still smiling. “Not today.”

 
14.
12:00 P.M.
     
    Dickie was in the line at the dining hall,
Carlucci standing next to him, Bianchi and Nicky close by, other
guys with them too. Dickie heard one black guy say to another, “Hey
dawg, I catch a ride?” knowing the guy was asking for drugs. Dickie
catching on, picking up on the slang.
    He was still drawing looks, from the C.O.s,
from the cons. Nothing hard, just respect, like, hey , you know who that is …? Because
people did know who he was, what he was. Not just any other fish. A
big man on the outside, big man on the Inside too. Dickie inside
not even a week and already back to doing prison like he’d never
left it.
    Only Werner standing there, a smug look on
the screw’s face.
    Dickie had pegged the guard from day one,
noticed how he didn’t have any friends, even among the other hacks.
Guy might be on the payroll, but Dickie knew they couldn’t trust
him.
    “This is the fourth time in six months it
swelled up on me like this,” Bianchi was telling Romano and
Palumbo, “doctor don’t want to aspirate it no more,” the younger
men listening to him tell it, “don’t want to put too much
hydrocortisone in it or somethin’. That’s when they stick a needle
in, drain it,” Bianchi clearing up what aspirate meant in
case the other two didn’t know.
    “Doc says can’t I just live with it like
this?” Bianchi talking, Dickie and Carlucci exchanging looks,
amused. “Sure I can live with it but thing is I don’t want to. I’m
a make another appointment, go see him again, he won’t do it, I’m a
do it myself, with a needle,” Bianchi looking to Nicky, “maybe you
help me?”
    Stepping forward to take a tray from the
stack, Dickie heard a commotion and turned just as Renfeld gripped
either side of his shirt by the collar, jostling him, speaking fast
in a whiny voice. “The master wishes—”
    “ Whoa - whoa - whoa !”
Carlucci making to drag the man from Dickie. “Back the fuck up
buddy.”
    Dickie took Renfeld’s hands off him, saying
to Carlucci, “I got it Cheeks,” to the men surrounding them, “Let
him talk.”
    “Dickie—” Carlucci tried, cut off by Bianchi:
“No, Boss, you don’t understand. He’s—”
    Dickie’s raised hand silenced them.
    “Say what it is you wanted to say to me.”
    “The Master wishes to speak to you.” Renfeld
shifted his nervous, beady eyes to Carlucci and the others like
him. Other prisoners trying not to act like they were watching.
“Alone.”
    “Not a good time,” Dickie told him, Nicky
literally spitting, “Fat chance of that you Jamook!”
    “You can come one night—”
    “Okay,” Carlucci pulled Renfeld by his neck,
trying to draw him away from Dickie, “Hey’d you get a chance to
look at them potatoes yet, huh?”
    “—or he will come and see you,”
Renfeld promised before Bianchi smashed a handful of mashed
potatoes into his face.
    “Know it don’t taste as good without your
roaches or whatever,” Bianchi standing there with a full tray he’d
snatched out of some inmate’s hands.
    Werner stood off on the side, not moving to
intervene.
    Renfeld scurried