by C. T. Phipps
The third member of the group was a spectacularly beautiful Indian woman with long, silky black hair and features that put me in mind of a Bollywood actress. She was dressed in a conservative powder blue suit that contrasted strongly with her fellows. That was Samvrutha “Sam” Mitra, a former history teacher and sorceress whose husband had tried to sell her to cover his blood debts. Sam had promptly killed her husband, offered his blood to Thoth, and then took up a position as their hench witch. Sam was a Bloodsworn, but both Thoth and Ashura treated her almost as an equal. I suspected they were planning on turning her sometime in the future. I didn’t think Sam was too keen on that at all, which was surprising for a human servant.
“You’re late,” Thoth said, checking an honest-to-God pocket watch that kept perfect time because there was a demon inside it. I mean, damn man, just use a cell phone like the rest of us.
“Yeah, well, we got a little held up,” I said, shrugging. “An elderly couple thought I was Blade. I’m not sure whether to be insulted or complimented.”
Neither Ashura nor Thoth was amused.
“Hi, Peter,” Sam waved at me.
I waved back. “Hey, Sam, how’s the kids?”
“Very good,” Sam said, cheerfully. “Leslie is on an O-positive diet but reading at a college level.”
“That’s pretty impressive for a four-year-old,” I said.
Dhampyr kids had superpowers. Sometimes it was being strong like Blade, sometimes it was being crazy smart.
Sam nodded vigorously. “Dana is a bit slower but actually can stomach real food and sunlight. You should see her zip around the house and turn over the couch, though.”
“The smart one and the athlete. Ain’t that how it always is,” I said, trying not to be creeped out.
I wasn’t sure if Sam’s two daughters were her husband’s, Thoth’s, Ashura’s (yes, that was possible, no don’t ask me how to explain it), or some other vampire’s. I was betting on the later, personally. They were, however, dhampyrs, and among the few I’d seen both Thoth and Ashura become violently protective regarding. Knowing them, it could be because they saw an untapped resource or would slaughter anyone who threatened their family. That was one of the few things the two had in common, aside from both being ex-slaves and powerful vampires. Which, come to think of it, was actually a lot in common.
“I’m sorry,” I said, addressing Thoth and Ashura. “I hope I didn’t miss all the fun.”
“You didn’t,” Thoth said. “Mrs. Plum’s plane hasn’t yet arrived. So we’ve been waiting here this entire time.”
Ashura narrowed her eyes.
It took me a second to process the fact two of the most powerful vampires in America were being forced to sit around waiting for a romance novelist.
Something wasn’t right here.
“No love lost here, I take it?” I asked, looking between the two.
Ashura looked away with a disgusted look on her face. Given she could put on a polite face with mortal enemies, I had to wonder if she didn’t think Rebecca Plum was worth it or there was some history here I wasn’t aware of. Personally, I couldn’t imagine what a hack paranormal romance novelist could have on a four-hundred-year-old Ottoman concubine turned vampire queen.
Thoth, however, ground his teeth. Which hurt when you were a vampire. “Me? I despise this woman. Her ridiculous trash is a stain on the honor of all vampires—”
“Hey-hey,” David said, coming to the defense of our guest. “Rebecca Plum is an awesome author.”
Thoth raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I loved Samael and Cupid’s torrid love affair with Becca. Plus, Wynessa’s love confession to Duchet was awesome. Sure, they killed the only vampire of color in the second book, but you can’t tell me you wouldn’t bite any woman in the film series except, maybe, ironically, the star.”
Thoth just looked at David like he’d grown three heads.
So did I. Did he not pick up Rebecca Plum was not popular around here? Had he completely lost his ability to read a room with his pulse? “Really, David?”
“Err, or so I’ve heard,” David said, coughing into his fist.
“Who is this mortal?” Ashura asked. “Can we kill him?”
“Zombie, not mortal,” Thoth said. “So no.”
“Pity,” Ashura said. “I’d have liked to have vented my anger on something maimable.”
David stepped behind me.
“Classy,” I said, looking over my shoulder. “Real classy.”
“Sorry,” David muttered.
“Hello, David.” Thoth said, dryly, “How are you holding up?”
“Good, no rotting,” David said.
Thoth nodded. “Any…appetites?”
“Should there be?” David asked, suspiciously.
“You are a new kind of zombie, David,” Thoth said, shrugging. “One created with vampire blood and other ingredients. We have no idea what could happen.”
“Oh,” David said, blinking.
“You didn’t mention that,” I said, frowning.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” Thoth said, patting David on the shoulder. “So, any of you see Black Panther?”
Wow, Thoth was trying to make small talk. He had to be tremendously bored. Mind you, this was usually his orgy and dark ritual time.
Ashura interrupted. “Not that I don’t enjoy listening to grown men, no, worse still, fucking vampires, prattle on but does anyone know when this goddamn harridan of the page is arriving? Kings and Presidents have waited on me. Robert and John F. Kennedy had a fistfight over that one of them could sleep with me first. I am not made to wait.”
“You waited for Elvis,” Thoth said.
“He was the King,” Ashura said.
I wondered if any of that was true. Vampires were natural megalomaniacs and tended to inflate their past deeds to the point every major event in history must have been positively teaming with the undead. Still, I wasn’t about to contradict her on this. Ashura had a hair-trigger temper and while she probably wouldn’t kill me for insulting her, Thoth being her husband and all, she might rip an arm off.
“She’s making you wait?” I asked, delicately. “Does she really have that much juice?’
Ashura shot me a glare. “The voivode of Texas certainly thinks so.”
“Ah,” I said, regretting speaking up. “This is an international vampire politics thing. Well, interstate, thing.”
“Yes,” Thoth said. “She is a white elephant.”
“A what now?” I asked, staring at him.
“An old colonialist colloquialism,” Thoth said as if that made any sense to me. “In Southeast Asia, one of the greatest gifts to give to your enemy was a white elephant. It was a sacred animal that showed your foe had divine favor, but white elephants were expensive to maintain, could not be used for labor, and were impossible to give away after presentation. They just ate your food, took up space, and wasted your gold keeping a staff to care for it. Some rulers were ruined by them.”
I blinked, processing that. “So, this Rebecca Plum lady is a real bitch.”
“Yes,” Thoth said. “Though there’s more than that.”
Ashura gave the barest hints of a smile. “We must care for her because she is a vital part of our propaganda efforts, no matter how rude a little worm she is. No matter what her debased and perverse eating habits are.”
“Right,” I said, wondering what that meant. I often walked in on Ashura in some pretty, uh, baroque circumstances. She was a vampire who liked to play with her food if you knew what I mean. I’m not sure I did since I didn’t know what half of the equipment in her literal dungeon back home was. “So we’re just wining and dining Mrs. Plum while she’s here?”
“Accent on the whining,” Ashura said, showing her fangs as she talked. “Which is what she does at the slightest provocation. I have met actual fucking princesses less spoiled. We’re to cater to her every whim and smile the entire way. The Council of Ancients has been most clear we’re
to take care of her as if she was Lamia herself.”
“Where do I come in?” I asked.
“We want you to make sure she’s not killed,” Ashura said, her voice was low. “You have a history of punching above your weight class. Should any vampires, mages, vampire hunters, mercenaries, professional assassins, or shapechangers try to kill her, then we expect you to stop it.”
That was an oddly specific list.
“Thanks,” I said. “I think. Do you expect there to be an attempt on her life?”
“With any luck, yes,” Thoth said.
Okay, I was clearly missing something. “Why do you hate her so much? This can’t just be a case of her being extra bitchy.”
I mean, let’s face it, most Old Ones were sociopath self-entitled shits. The longer you were a vampire, the more you got used to everyone waiting on you hand and foot. It was one of the perks of being immortal. There was something going on more than her being obnoxious.
“Is it because Naomi didn’t end up with Duchet?” David asked, apparently still under the impression anyone here had gotten past the first few chapters of her books. I mean, yeah, I’d seen the Eternally Yours movies, but Melissa had made me.
Besides, the cast was gorgeous.
Ashura looked away. “It’s complicated. Dealing with it will prove to be a fairly difficult challenge for you, Peter.”
Oh crap, she used my name. This was serious. “What kind of challenge?”
Ashura finally said, “She’s a Bleeder.”
My blood ran cold.
“A what?” David asked.
I stared at Thoth then Ashura before looking back at David, shaking my head. “Bleeders are the worst of vampire kind. They’re usually destroyed when they’re found out. It means she kills everyone she feeds on.”
Chapter Four
“You might want to repeat that,” I said, not at all sure I’d heard that correctly. “Rebecca Plum is a vampire serial killer?”
“Aren’t all vampires—” David realized who he was in the company of just a second too late.
Ashura didn’t seem to notice. Probably because she already had a focus for her ire. “I find this entire story depressing, Sam. Would you be a dear and explain for me?”
“All vampires are killers, yes,” Sam said, picking up the slack. “Rebecca Plum, however, has no control over the Need. She ravenously tears into her prey, drinks until their deaths, and gorges before pulling away.”
There were only a few kinds of people that vampires didn’t tolerate among their ranks. You could be an assassin, warlord, slaver, and bathe in the blood of your enemies without getting much more than an upturned nose. Most vampires hated those who preyed upon children or were needlessly sadistic to their prey but even that was a regional thing. New Detroit was one of the few places where there were any laws against abusing mortals. Which was a practical thing anyway, as Thoth explained it, since tourism was the lifeblood (ba dum ching) of the city.
The only vampires who weren’t tolerated anywhere were Bleeders and Plague Rats. Bleeders could depopulate regions and brought out the torch-wielding mobs within a week or two even in metropolitan areas. Plague Rats were those who spread disease with their bite and served as Typhoid Marys for everything from AIDS to hepatitis. It was hard to say which vampires hated worse. I’d destroyed two of the latter as bellidix, including a sixteen-year-old girl who didn’t understand how she’d infected her entire family with terminal illnesses.
Sometimes being a vampire just sucked.
I blinked repeatedly. “No one’s tried to help her feed properly? Not go directly for the artery? Not chew and lick wounds?”
“Rebecca Plum can’t be helped,” Thoth said, coldly. It was with genuine loathing, this time, as only one who has been forced to kill for centuries can have of those who like it. “Rebecca Plum refuses to feed on animals, blood bags, or even in long intervals. Instead, she insists on eating a person a week and sometimes one a night.”
I did the math in my head. “You can’t mean—”
David stared in horror. “She’s killed over a hundred people since she’s become a vampire?”
That was a lot of damn corpses. Contrary to some movie depictions, most vampires didn’t kill all that often and when they did it was because they hadn’t eaten in a while. The first thing you were taught by a responsible creator was how to feed lightly and from multiple sources. The few vampires who did regularly kill tended to do so of people that society was better off without. Thoth had a love of white supremacists, rapists, and hunters. Even then, it was more a treat he preferred to indulge in rather than something he’d made a lifestyle. Ashura, sanely, forbid the killing of mortals without cause and inflicted severe penalties on those vampires who harmed the tourists. That was my primary job, and I’d knocked out more than a few fangs teaching Youngbloods to behave.
“Closer to two hundred,” Asura said. “She is the absolute worst of our kind, the creature that we have evolved from and should be left in the dustbin of history.”
“Only one in a thousand vampires do not possess a basic level of control and usually have the decency to commit suicide after their first few nights,” Thoth said, sounding as disgusted as most mortals would be in his situation. “Or they’re helped along. Apparently, Mrs. Plum was a high functioning psychopath in life. Now she’s not functioning.”
David, thankfully, didn’t make a joke. “I don’t think I like her books anymore.”
“It’s how I felt after I found out about Marion Zimmer Bradley abusing her children,” Sam muttered, referring to the fantasy author turning out to be a pedophile married to another pedophile. “The Councils of Ancients have been very clear that not only is Mrs. Plum not to be destroyed, though, but she’s also to be...catered to.”
It occurred to me what they’d dragged me here for and why they were paying me fifty grand to play babysitter. They wanted me to find her food every night and make sure she stayed out of the papers. I was to be her drug dealer. Except instead of drugs, I would be delivering her people.
“Oh hell no!” I said, opening my mouth in disgust. “I am a monster, but I am not that kind of monster.”
“The sacrifices have already been provided for,” Thoth said, cutting me off. “The absolute worst of the U.S. penal system and several people who couldn’t be arrested due to technicalities. Also, several individuals we were saving as tribute to the Council of Ancients. She is only to eat once a week, and any additional meals are to be from receptacles like blood bags or chalices. We are to treat her with every courtesy, but this goes beyond a normal indulgence for our kind.”
“A lot of guys in prison don’t deserve it,” I said, repulsed by what he was suggesting. “They’re in there for crimes they didn’t commit.”
“Trust me,” Thoth said, his voice lowering. “They’re all guilty of crimes worth death.”
“So is she,” I said, unsure I could do this. Even for the money to keep my mom comfortable for another year. “You guys are letting her get away with mass murder because she’s a popular writer? Have you no fucking self-respect?”
That was when I noticed David had stepped out from behind me and was now behind my jeep. Uh oh.
Seconds later, I was being lifted a foot off the ground by Ashura as she plunged her perfectly manicured nails into my neck. The Old One only needed one hand to lift me up. “I am not letting her do anything. This sick would-be Elizabeth Bathory was indulged by the voivode of Texas for years before her rebirth. Voivode Forsyth provided her with people society would not miss. Why? Because she pays him. Billions of dollars from merchandising, movies, and more to go into his pockets. Money he sends up to the Council of Ancients. He was not a rich or influential Old One before and changing that was worth as many human lives as he could provide her.”
Ashura dropped me, and my neck healed over instantly.
I took a moment to process that. “And that’s what we’re going to do?”
“Yes,” Ashura said. “I
might even be willing to risk staking her for the sun if not for the fact there’s five or six would-be voivodes who would love to take New Detroit for themselves. You would not like their style of governance.”
The sad fact? She was probably right. Despite the fact Ashura let people get away with literal murder all the time, she really was the lesser evil in this town. There were places now in America, particularly Texas, where the casualties resembled Baghdad during the height of the war. Part of the reason we needed those damned books, I suppose.
“Time will catch up with her,” Thoth grumbled. “Eventually. As soon as those books stop making the fortunes they’re currently raking in, she will have outlived her usefulness to the Council.”
I stood up and stretched my neck to make sure it still worked. “Okay, I got the score. But…”
But what? What could I really say? Even if I didn’t participate in this, it wouldn’t result in the situation improving. Hell, they’d just get another vampire to do it, and he might not care if she did go on a killing spree and take down someone who didn’t deserve it.
Hell, I didn’t even know why I was so angry. I knew vampires killed people, by accident or design, all the time. They tried to keep it to a minimum, though, and were ashamed of it when it happened. Was it really such a big difference we were dealing with someone who didn’t? Emotionally, yeah, apparently it was. The whole premise of letting a Bleeder live pissed me off and I could tell it did Ashura and Thoth too. They were just willing to put their own political and social position over it for as long as she was with us. Could I? Was I capable of being that much of a bastard?
“But what?” Ashura said.