– Ammonia’s overpowering most of it. You?

I shake my head. I’ve been sniffing around like a hound and can’t get one good trace of whoever did it. The mess spilling from what used to be Solomon’s belly, the ammonia and the basement overstock are killing the subtler human traces of sweat and skin. If I’d had some blood today the Vyrus might be running strong enough to peak my senses, but I didn’t. And Sol’s is making me damn hungry.

I toe the head on the floor and watch it rock back and forth.

– When’d you find him?

Christian is skirting a spill of intestine.

– Swineheart and Tenderhooks rolled over here right after sundown looking to score. They didn’t know the shop closed for Sabbath and rattled the gates for a while before they went round to the alley side and banged on the trap. Smelled the blood. Twisted the lock off the trap and came down here. Saw this shit and freaked out. Came and got me.

I poke around some boxes, shifting them, looking for God knows what. Moving the boxes releases sugary pink smells.

– Swineheart and Tenderhooks got freaked?

Christian points at the corpse.

– This shit? You bet they did. Who wants to fuck with a Van Helsing?

The answer is no one.

Fuck with some kid who stumbled onto the wrong scene at the wrong time and managed to get out alive and declares a war on the undead and comes after you armed with holy water, garlic, and a crucifix? Sure, no problem. Holy water’s just gonna get you wet, garlic’s just gonna make your breath rank, and a crucifix is just a stick with a guy nailed to it. Nothing special. A Van Helsing like that comes after you, all you got to do is get him someplace dark and give his head a twist. After that, it’s all a matter of how much of his blood do you drink right away and how much do you drain off and mix with an anticlotting agent so you can drink it later.

But a real Van Helsing? That’s a different matter. A real Van Helsing knows that you bring a Vampyre down the same way you bring anyone down; only more so. A well-fed Vampyre won’t like taking a bullet in the leg, but it won’t stop him, not unless it hits the femoral artery and he bleeds out before he can stick a finger in there to plug the hole while it heals. And it’ll heal. Fast. A Van Helsing that knows that? Knows to put some large-caliber rounds into a Vampyre’s face, neck, chest? Or maybe to cut his or her head off? Or strangle him long enough to starve the brain of oxygen? Or has a handy tub of cement around to plant their feet in before dumping them off a bridge? Or has a big truck to run into them and roll back and forth over the broken body before the bleeding wounds can close and the bones knit? A Van Helsing who knows how weak we can become when unfed? Or how vulnerable to the sun? One who knows to look for the signs of feeding, the high mugging rates, the mysterious disappearances, the rumors among the squatters and the winos? A Van Helsing who really deserves the name? No one wants to fuck with that.

I put a couple boxes of Sugar Daddies back in place.

– Yeah, no one wants to mess with that. Funny, though.

Christian is looking in the hole in the guy’s chest.

– How’s that?

I start up the stairs to the shop above.

– Funny a Van Helsing gets all old school with the evisceration and the beheading, and the guy he’s carving up ain’t even infected.

He follows me.

– Yeah. Thought about that myself.

He jerks a thumb back at the corpse.

– Old Solomon never was a lucky one.

I reach the top of the stairs and push the door open and the smells of roasted nuts and dried fruits and caramel and chocolate and high-fructose corn syrup and red dye number 5 and pure cacao and refined sugar and gelatin and all the other stuff that goes into the stock of the Economy Candy Store hits me in the nose.

– Yeah, but he ran a great fucking candy shop.

Christian walks past a counter, reaches into a glass jar, grabs a jawbreaker and tosses it into his mouth.

– No lie there.

Bottle Caps, Big League Chew, Pop Rocks, Almond Joy, Gold Mine bubble gum, candy cigarettes, Pixy Stix, 100 Grand bars, Chunkys and a couple hundred other varieties of packaged candies. And in barrels: roasted and raw cashews, peanuts, almonds, brazils, hazelnuts, pistachios and filberts. And in plastic buckets: dried cherries, apricots, apple rings, peaches and pineapple. And laid out on wax paper inside the glass cases at the front of the crowded shop: bricks of dark Belgian chocolate, turtles, white truffles, chocolate-covered pretzels and strawberries and orange slices.

He bites down on the jawbreaker; his perfect teeth, polished and hardened by the Vyrus, crush it like an eggshell.

– Before I got infected, ’bout half the teeth in my head were ready to fall out because of this place. Growing up off Water Street, my mom used to bring me and my sister up here after church on Sundays. Give us a buck to split between us.

He rips open a Fun Dip packet, licks the white candy wand, dips it into the sugar powder inside and pops it in his mouth and sucks on it.

– Still got that sweet tooth, man. When I first found out the business old man Solomon ran in the basement, the real moneymaker, I was a little disillusioned. Got to say. Kiddies upstairs getting fixed on sugar, Vampyres in the basement scoring. That’s kind of jacked up. Even in my book.

I pick up a necklace, beads of pastel candies strung on a choker of elastic.

– You got over it.

He takes the candy wand out of his mouth.

– Hey, get hard up enough, who isn’t gonna come see the Candy Man? Telling me you never darkened his doorway?

I drop the necklace in the side pocket of my leather coat.

– I was a Rogue. I didn’t have a Clan or a gang backing me up if I went off my home turf. Coming down here before I hooked back up with Terry, that wasn’t an option.

He waves the wand.

– Shit, Joe, we would have had your back.

I go behind the counter and poke around in the drawers and the register.

– Yeah, and that would have cost me something.

He dips up more of the purple powder.

– Never said nothing in life wasn’t free.

I find the hogleg back of the counter and put it next to the register.

– Never said you did.

He points at the sawed-off double barrel.

– Loaded?

I pick up the gun and crack the breech and show him the two 12-gauge shells inside.

He shakes his head.

– Imagine keeping something like that around in a shop fulla kids.

I snap it closed and tuck it into my belt at the small of my back, letting the coat fall over it.

He takes a look.

– Pretty good conceal. Long as you don’t start doing jumping jacks it won’t show too bad.

I find a half-full box of shells and put it in the pocket with the necklace.

Christian drops the remains of the Fun Dip in a wastebasket and wipes the back of his hand over his purple-stained lips.

– Makes you wonder, though.

– Huh?

– Why he kept the gauge up here with the kiddies instead of downstairs where the real dangerous types were coming in.

I walk to the stairs.

– Solomon wasn’t stupid. Some junkie walked in here looking to clear out the register, he could handle that just by showing him the gun. Downstairs? Any infected stupid enough to try and knock out the only dependable dealer south of Houston would have to be stone strung out. Shotgun wouldn’t have been worth a shit. Hit a burner with both barrels, take his head off, his fucking body will walk across the room and rip you in half.

– Know that for a fact, Joe?

I’m half down the stairs. I stop and look back up at his silhouette at the top.

– I know it.

He starts down.

– Still and all.

– Yeah?

– Shame he didn’t have it down here today.

We hit the bottom and look at the corpse of the Candy Man.