Chapter 8: Morning Audition
The neon from the street below pulsed a sickly red through the barred window, painting shifting sores of light across the ceiling. The apartment held its breath, the only sounds the distant wail of a siren and the dog’s slow, steady panting from its nest of towels.
In the bedroom, the air was thick with musk and cheap laundry detergent.
Ashanti’s face was buried in a thin pillow that smelled of Logan’s hair. Her body was a taut arc, supported by her knees and her elbows. James was behind her, a solid, unyielding presence, his hands gripping the soft swell of her hips. He drove into her with a steady, relentless rhythm, each thrust a deep, claiming piston stroke that shoved her forward an inch on the mattress.
The wet, solid sound of their connection filled the small space.Slap. Slap. Slap.
Her white dreads were a tangled river down her back. One of James’s hands left her hip and fisted a handful of them at the nape of her neck, not yanking, just holding, anchoring her in place. A low groan vibrated in his chest.
“That’s it,” he muttered, his voice a gravelly rumble against the shell of her ear. “Take it. Just take it.”
She moaned, the sound stifled by the pillow. It wasn’t pleasure, not purely. It was release, a momentary obliteration of the spreadsheet of disaster scrolling behind her eyes—the mold listings, Mr. Henderson’s clammy hands, the dog’s hollow eyes. James’s cock was a brutal, grounding truth, stretching her, filling the empty panic with something blunt and physical. She pushed back against him, meeting his drives, wanting the friction to burn away the fear.
The bedroom door, never fully closed, creaked.
Logan stood in the frame, already dressed in a black hoodie and jeans. His eyes, adjusting instantly to the gloom, swept over the scene: the flex of James’s back, the gleam of sweat on Ashanti’s spine, the rhythmic clench of her ass with every push. His expression didn’t change. It was just another function of the apartment, like the dripping faucet.
James didn’t stop. He glanced over his shoulder, his pace never faltering. Slap. Slap.
“Headed to Southside with Jackie,” Logan said, his voice flat. “Need cash.”
Ashanti flinched beneath James, a small tremor that made him tighten his grip in her hair. Her eyes, visible for a second, flashed toward Logan—a complex mix of shame, defiance, and exhaustion.
Logan’s gaze held hers for a cold beat, raking over the sight of her spread and used. Then he looked away, digging into his pocket. He pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, stepped forward, and tossed it onto the chipped nightstand where it fluttered beside a spent matchbook and an empty glass.
“For breakfast,” he said.
James grunted, a sound of acknowledgment that turned into a deeper groan as he picked up his pace, his hips snapping harder, faster. “Don’t get pinched,” he managed, breathless.
Ashanti’s whimper was swallowed by the pillow as James’s new angle hit something profound. Her fingers clawed at the sheets.
Logan watched for a second longer, his jaw a hard line. There was no jealousy there, only a weary assessment. Another resource being managed. He turned and left, pulling the apartment’s main door shut with a quiet but definitive click.
The sound seemed to spur James. His control frayed. The intellectual calculus of their situation—the debt, the dog, the impending homelessness—melted into pure animal urgency. He pounded into her now, the bedframe slamming against the wall in a brittle tattoo.
“Gonna come,” he growled, a warning and a promise.
“Do it,” Ashanti gasped, lifting her face from the pillow. “Just fucking do it, James. Fill me up.”
The vulgar permission shattered his last restraint. With a final, brutal drive that lifted her knees off the mattress, he shoved deep and held, his body rigid. A hot flood pulsed into her, jet after jet, a visceral claim. He groaned, long and low, his forehead dropping between her shoulder blades.
Ashanti clenched around him, a secondary, smaller climax rippling through her, less about pleasure than about completion, a sympathetic seismic tremor. They stayed locked like that for a minute, breathing in ragged sync, the smell of sex blooming thick and salty in the air.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out of her. A trickle of his release followed, warm on her inner thigh. He collapsed beside her on the damp sheets, one arm thrown over his eyes.
Ashanti didn’t move. She stayed on her knees, forehead now resting on her folded arms, feeling the cool air on her sweaty back, the sticky evidence between her legs. The momentary void was gone. The numbers rushed back in, louder.
“He’s right,” James said finally, his voice hoarse. “We’re fucking broke. That twenty might be the last cash in the place.”
“I know.” She rolled onto her side, facing him. Her body felt used, hollowed out. “My shift’s at four. Henderson will have a ‘bonus’ if I close up with him.”
James turned his head to look at her. In the neon half-light, his eyes were dark pools, unreadable. “You don’t have to.”
“Yeah,” she said, sitting up and swinging her legs off the bed. “I do.”
She walked naked to the bathroom, her gait slightly uneven. The dog’s head lifted as she passed. Its tail gave a single, weak thump. She paused, crouching down, and stroked the bony ridge of its skull. Its good eye watched her with a preternatural calm. “Hungry?” she whispered. It licked her wrist, a dry, rough gesture.
In the bathroom, she cleaned up with quick, efficient motions, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror. She used a washcloth; the water from the sink was icy. When she came out, dressed in simple jeans and a tank top, James was in the kitchen, staring into the empty refrigerator as if it held answers.
“There’s oatmeal,” she said.
“The dog ate the last of it.”
They both looked at the creature. It was sitting up now, a skeletal sphinx, watching them with an intelligence that was unsettling.
“It ate oatmeal?” James asked.
“It licked the bowl I left out. Seemed to like it.” She leaned against the counter. “James… what are we going to do? Really?”
He shut the fridge door. “Logan and Jackie are hitting up a poker game in Southside. Low stakes, but Logan can smell a bluff a mile away. Might scrape a few hundred together.” He ran a hand over his face. “I’ve got a lead on a van. Old delivery vehicle. Could sleep in it, if it comes to that. Store what little we have.”
“A van.” The word tasted like ashes. “We’re talking about living in a van. With a werewolf, a succubus, a witch, and a… whatever that is.” She nodded toward the dog.
“It’s that or the shelters,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. “And they check for magic in the shelters. They’d take one look at Jackie’s aura or feel your gris-gris and we’d be in a city holding cell. Or worse.”
The truth of it lay between them, cold and heavy. The underbelly of New Vol had its own rules, and they had broken too many to expect mercy from the surface world.
Ashanti pushed off the counter. “I’ll go to work. Get Henderson’s money. See if any of the regulars need a tonic for ‘performance issues’ or a charm for luck. I’ll skim what I can.”
She gathered her things—her pharmacy smock, her purse, a small velvet bag of emergency herbs. At the door, she stopped. “Don’t let the dog out. And if Logan and Jackie aren’t back by noon…”
“I’ll go looking,” James finished. He was staring at the dog again, a deep furrow between his brows. “Something’s not right with that thing, Ashanti.”
“I know.” She paused. “But it’s ours now.”
She left, the door closing softly behind her.
James stood in the silent apartment. The dog held his gaze. Then, slowly, deliberately, it stood on wobbly legs. It walked to the center of the room, to a patch of floor where a slant of morning sun cut through the grimy window. It sat and lay down to sleep.
It sat and lay down to sleep. James watched the ribcage expand and contract, a slow bellows under mottled skin. The silence in the apartment was a physical weight, pressing down on the smell of sex and stale takeout.
He needed to move. The helplessness was a cage. He pulled on his boots, the leather cracked and stained, and grabbed his keys from the hook by the door. The dog’s ear twitched at the sound but its eye remained closed. “Don’t shit on the floor,” James muttered, not expecting an answer. He locked the deadbolt behind him.
The hallway of the building was a study in decay, the carpet sticky underfoot. James took the stairs two at a time, the echo of his footsteps a hollow drumbeat. Outside, the city air was a greasy slap of exhaust and fried food. He walked three blocks to a rust-streaked payphone, its plastic shell warm from the sun. He fed it coins, listening to the dial tone hum.
“Darnell.” James’s voice was low. “It’s James. That van. I need to see it today.”
A pause crackled through the line. Darnell’s response was a wheeze, the sound of a man who smoked too much. “Two grand. You got two grand, James?”
“I’ll have it. Where?”
A muffled address followed, somewhere in the industrial docks. James committed it to memory. “Tonight. Sundown.” He hung up before Darnell could ask another question. He didn’t have two grand. He had twenty dollars and a fading warmth between his legs.
Ashanti pushed through the pharmacy’s glass door, the bell jangling a too-cheery announcement. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, bleaching everything a sterile white. Mr. Henderson looked up from the prescription counter, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. His gaze traveled over her, slow as syrup.
“You’re late, Ashanti.”
“By three minutes.” She tied her smock, the polyester scratchy against her arms.
“Time is money.” He smiled, a thin stretching of lips that didn’t touch his eyes. “We’ll discuss your… scheduling… when we close up.”
The hours dragged. She counted pills, restocked antiseptic, and nodded at the complaints of aching joints and sleepless nights. Her fingers, deft and unseen, dipped into the controlled cabinet for a vial of potassium chloride, for a packet of senna leaves. Her purse grew subtly heavier. An old woman with cataracts clouding her eyes pressed a twenty into her palm for a “blessing.” Ashanti whispered a few words of grounding over a sprig of rosemary, and the woman’s knotted hands relaxed.
At closing, Henderson flipped the sign to ‘Closed’ with a definitive snap. The silence that followed was thick, anticipatory. He turned, leaning against the counter. “The deposit’s in the safe. The bonus… is more flexible.” He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “You look stressed, Ashanti.”
She felt the weight of the dog, the van, the empty refrigerator. “I need five hundred,” she said, her voice flat.
His eyebrows rose. “Ambitious. That requires special attention.”
He led her to the stock room, between the towering shelves of toilet paper and incontinence pads. The air was cold, smelled of cardboard and dust. He didn’t kiss her. He unbuckled his belt, the leather slithering through the loops. “On your knees. You know how this works.”
Ashanti knelt on the linoleum, the hard floor biting into her skin through her jeans. She took him in her mouth. He was already half-hard, soft skin over a thickening core. She worked him with a practiced, clinical rhythm, her mind floating somewhere near the ceiling, watching the scene from a distance. His hands settled on her head, not in her dreads, but pushing down with insistent pressure.
“Use your fucking tongue,” he grunted, his hips beginning a shallow thrust. “Earn it.”
She hollowed her cheeks, applying pressure exactly where she knew would work, a mechanical skill. His breath hitched. His fingers tightened. He was talking now, a stream of filthy, predictable praise. “Yeah, suck that dick, you hungry bitch. God, look at you.”
Ashanti closed her eyes. She thought of the oatmeal. She thought of the dog’s single thumping tail. The sounds he made—the wet clicks, his escalating groans—were just noise. He came with a sharp gasp, his body stiffening, a bitter pulse flooding her mouth. She swallowed automatically, the act as routine as counting pills.
He sagged against a shelf, zipping himself up. He pulled a folded wad of bills from his pocket, peeled off five hundreds. He held them out, but pulled them back as she reached. “Next week. I want the other thing. The back room.”
She knew what he meant. The cot where they unpacked shipments. Where he could lay her down. “Fine,” she said, snatching the money. It felt unclean, warm from his pocket.
She left without another word, spitting into a gutter outside. The taste of him lingered, a metallic shame. She walked quickly, the five hundred dollars a hard rectangle in her pocket, a tiny brick against the tide.
Back at the apartment, a strange quiet greeted her. James was on the floor, cross-legged, facing the dog. The animal was awake, sitting upright. Between its front paws, on the stained carpet, was a small, neat pile of coins. Quarters, dimes, a few pennies gleaming in the low light.
James looked up at her. His face was stripped of its usual cynicism, etched with pure confusion. “It threw up,” he said, his voice hushed.
“What?”
“It started coughing. Then it… retched. This came out.” He gestured to the coins. “It licked one. Then just looked at me.”
Ashanti knelt slowly, her knees protesting. She reached out a hand. The dog watched her, its tail giving that single, weak thump. She picked up a quarter. It was cool, ordinary. Not magical. Just a quarter. There was about two dollars in change on the floor.
“What in the actual fuck are you?” she whispered to the creature.
The dog yawned, a startling display of sharp, needle-like teeth in its pink maw. Then it lowered its head back onto its paws, its good eye fixed on the pile of coins as if guarding treasure.
James met Ashanti’s gaze across the small fortune. The hopeless arithmetic of their lives shifted, not into clarity, but into a deeper, more profound weirdness. The dog had eaten oatmeal. It had vomited sixty-three cents in change.
A wild, reckless thought flickered in Ashanti’s mind. She thought of Henderson’s greed, of Darnell’s van, of the deep, endless hunger in the city’s gut.
“What,” James said slowly, voicing the unimaginable, “if we fed it something bigger?”