100 Miles and Vampin'

by C. T. Phipps

  “Or someone close to him. Vampires are still people,” Sam said. “Just like any other supernatural. No matter how old they get or how powerful, they have motivations comprehensible to mortals. The need for blood, sex, money, friendship, or family. I’ve met vampires ranging from eight to eight-hundred, and they’ve all had loved ones.”

  “You think someone’s threatening Enil’s family?” I asked. That theory had legs. Enil was pretty much the opposite of Thoth in how he treated his progeny versus his mortal descendants. The vampires Enil created were servants, disposable and interchangeable. He’d started a family before the Reveal, though, despite looking like Batboy, all grown up. When I was still Thoth’s Bloodslave, though he’d never called me that, I’d watched him light up when he talked about his human family. They meant something to him. His wife and child were more important than any of his creations. “It fits better than most of what we’d tried to figure out here.”

  “Maybe,” Yukie replied. “You were going to tell me something back at the mansion.”

  I paused. “Yeah, well, it’s not important now.”

  Yukie frowned. “Okay, then. Can we turn on the radio? Like now. I’m not used to losing fights, and if we’re not going to talk about anything useful, I’d like to listen to something pleasant.”

  She was pissed. I didn’t blame her. Our one-night stand had turned into a two-night Grand Guginol.

  “Good idea,” Sam said, reaching for the radio. “Dead Debbie is on!”

  “Oh hell no,” I started to say. “We are not listening to Dead Debbie. We have more important things to deal with.”

  Yukie stared at him. “We all just survived a narrow encounter with an older-than-Egypt vampire. I think we could use something to relax too.”

  David chuckled, knowing why I was uncomfortable. “I vote to listen to Dead Debbie.”

  I sighed, not in the mood to fight. “Fine.”

  I reached over and turned on the radio to Channel 93.5 and Dead Debbie’s Nocturnal Power Hour. Dead Debbie was, in her own way, every bit as important to the public’s acceptance of vampires as Rebecca Plum had been. Her nationally broadcast radio show was picked up by hundreds of stations who adored her in a way I didn’t entirely understand. From coast to coast, people listened to the undead therapist give canned answers to sordid calls about sex and the supernatural.

  Dead Debbie, real name Veronica Dare, was an Old One who had Old One opinions of humanity (i.e., that they were inferior beings useful only for eating or fucking) and yet America couldn’t get enough of her and her less-than-insightful commentary. Hell, the last election cycle had a good 1% of women listeners moved according to her takedown on the Human Protection Act. She also was a member of the City Council and an ally of Thoth, which made her (kinda?) good people in my book.

  “Hi, Dead Debbie,” a caller on the radio said. “I’m Desperate in Detroit. My girlfriend doesn’t want to be a vampire. I have permission from the voivode, but she doesn’t see why she can’t just be human. I’m older than her, almost seventy years, and have been down this road once before. I’m not sure I can endure another incident of watching my loved ones grow old and die. What should I do?”

  Dead Debbie answered in her characteristic style. “Well Desperate, there’s no cure for stupid. The fact it is it seems like this woman isn’t in it for the long haul and maybe a little bit prejudiced. If vampirism isn’t good enough for her then maybe you should question why you’re with her. A lot of perfectly good vampire couples wait years, decades even, for permission to create or never get it all. You should enjoy it while it lasts but start looking for someone you can spend eternity with.”

  “Oh for godsakes,” I muttered, reaching over to change the channel.

  Sam smacked my hand as I reached for it. “Not a chance.”

  David laughed.

  So did Yukie.

  A male caller then called in. “Hi, this is Divided in Dallas.”

  “Ah, a Texan vampire,” Dead Debbie said. “How can I help?”

  The female caller spoke with a light undefinable accent. “Debbie, I sympathize with Desperate in Detroit because I, too, am with a much younger partner. Albeit, he’s a vampire. He was turned in the Nineties and still has all these ridiculous views about how we live.”

  “We call that Lestat Syndrome around here,” Dead Debbie said. “He’s expecting you to be remorseful and tragic, am I right?”

  “That’s the thing,” the female caller said. “He wants us to be monogamous. Feeding from each other and brown bagging it with blood banks and animal blood.”

  “What, really?” Dead Debbie replied.

  The female caller sighed. “I swear, I don’t know what it is about Americans. In Pre-Revolutionary France, we didn’t have men complaining about the fact their wives expected them to fuck other women. As his superior in lineage, I could expect complete fidelity while sleeping with all my other lovers, but do I mind him cultivating girlfriends? No. He just doesn’t want to. It’s so frustrating. He doesn’t even like the idea of my keeping a harem, can you believe that.”

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  “No,” Sam said, glaring at me.

  “Do they share?” David said in the back.

  “Listen, you need to dump this vampchild and maybe only take him back when he’s grown a pair of fangs,” Dead Debbie said, growling. “Vampires have a culture that is more liberated, dare I say more mature, than the silly bullshit regular humans put each other through. Tell him to shape us, get some vessels of his own, then learn vampire couples need their space. No one likes a whiner among the damned. We’re looking for Draculas, not Edwards.”

  “What is it with older vampires hating on Twilight?” I said, shaking my head. “Err, not that I’ve read the books.”

  “You’re not fooling anyone, Peter,” Sam muttered.

  “Didn’t you used to date Dead Debbie?” David said, chuckling. He damn well knew I’d used to “date” her.

  “Oh?” Yukie and Sam said simultaneously, looking over at me.

  “Date is a strong word,” I muttered, remembering her fangs against my inner thigh and neck during my days as a Bloodsworn to Thoth. I remembered her crimson hair, her plump, full-breasted body against me, and also the fact she’d made me feel like a god as long as we were together. She hadn’t been my usual type, but it made listening to her show troublesome.

  “Listen folks,” Dead Debbie said. “I used to date the bellidix of the city. He was one of those vampires who was all whiny and devoted to being as human as possible. Trust me girls, you don’t want to go down that road. Find yourself a vampire who isn’t into being undead and loving it. Don’t weigh yourself down with a mopey Friendly Neighborhood one.”

  “Did she just diss you on the air?” Yukie asked.

  “She didn’t mention names!” I snapped back.

  “Yeah, girls, don’t date Peter Stone,” Dead Debbie said. “Just in case you’re thinking about it.”

  “Damn,” David said, frowning. “Even I think that’s harsh.”

  I grumbled. “Now I’m going to go find one of her competitors and air out her dirty laundry. Her mouth leaks when she feeds. It’s disgusting.”

  My plotted verbal revenge, though, was immediately put to lie because I heard screams on air. There was a savage growling noise, the sound of glass breaking, and more before an emergency broadcast noise interrupted it. I recognized some of the noises on the air and immediately turned the car around.

  “This farce has to end,” Enil’s voice spoke over the radio.

  Dead Debbie screamed.

  I hit the accelerator.

  We needed to get to Dead Debbie’s radio station. That was when I realized I knew who was responsible for all of this. It just popped in my head. The problem was…I couldn’t remember who it was.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I spun the car around and drove toward the Fisher Building. It was one of the few buildings left from Old Detroit in the heart of the new city.
It was an ornate building of the old Art Deco style and a place every Motor City citizen knew by heart. Even it had changed. The former home of the city’s public-school administration had been replaced by the Vampire National Assembly, that was the organization that handled all the undead’s media and social networking. Dead Debbie had been their star attraction.

  “Peter, I’m—” Yukie started to say.

  “This is a setup,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not about trying to take over New Detroit or making humanity turn against vampires, though.”

  “You don’t think?” Sam asked, confused.

  “No,” I said, trying to use my brain. “If someone wanted to turn humans against vampires, they could just have Enil go into a Pistons game and massacre the audience on live television. They’d be rounding us all and putting us in camps tomorrow—much worse places than the tropical islands they want to send us to now.”

  “I don’t know, there’s a lot of sun there,” David said. “Maybe it’s a covert plan to eliminate you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “As for taking over New Detroit, yeah, they could just take the city on Enil’s word. Ashura and the City Council will never have a hundredth of the influence Enil does as the ancestor of half the vampire race.”

  “So what is it?” Yukie asked. “Who is?”

  I pulled us to a stop at a red light, cursing New Detroit traffic. “This is personal, and I know the reason.”

  “You do?” Sam asked, even more confused now. “How? What?”

  I tried to articulate the sense I knew the answer but couldn’t explain it. “It’s weird. The answer is there, but I can’t tell you how or why.”

  “You’ve been mesmerized,” Sam said, jumping to conclusions.

  “Vampires can’t be mesmerized.”

  “They can be by their creators,” Yukie said, looking at me. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so trusting of this Thoth character.”

  I stared at her. “Lady, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Thoth is more trustworthy than any human.”

  “That’s a big claim to make,” Yukie said, glaring at me. “At the end of the day, he’s still a vampire.”

  “Ouch, I guess you weren’t that good,” David said, smirking as he pulled out his cell phone to listen to some more tunes.

  I grabbed it, rolled down the window, and tossed it out.

  “Hey!” David said.

  I put the car in park despite there being cars behind us and turned on the emergency lights. “Apparently Enil had enough juice to just fly up to Dead Debbie’s and kill her. That means he’s not badly injured and he had a whole action movie’s worth of bullets put into him. That means we’re out of our depth here. We have to be smarter than our enemies, not stronger.”

  “Our enemies are smarter and stronger than us, that’s the problem,” David said, opening the door and getting out to get his cellphone.

  “I really don’t know why you put up with him,” Yukie said.

  “Karma for all the horrible actions in my past,” I said, sighing. “Listen, this is going to sound crazy but is there anything you can do to shake repressed memories loose?”

  “You mean like hypnosis?” Sam asked, blinking.

  “Yeah,” I said, frowning. “We aren’t going to know what we’re doing here until I know what I know.”

  “No,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Whatever I can do to the minds of mortals can’t be done to the minds of vampires.”

  Dammit.

  Yukie looked out the window. “There might be something I can do.”

  I looked at her. “What was that, Ms. I’m prejudiced against vampires but not so much I’m not willing to sleep with them?”

  Yukie looked back at me. “That’s not my nickname.”

  “It is now because I’m nicknaming you,” I snapped at her. I thumped a fist against my heart. “It hurts me right here. Like a stake.”

  “Wait, you two slept together?” Sam asked.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” I said, looking at her and ignoring the fact we should have been on our way to Dead Debbie’s. Honestly, I wasn’t in a big hurry to get there since I suspected whatever had happened was already over. Her radio station was off the air, decisively, and there was only a ‘please stand by’ being played.

  I also didn’t want to get any of my friends killed on the off chance Enil was still there too. The encounter with Enil at Jackson’s showed we were completely out of our depth fighting him. We needed some heavy hitters to go after him, and I was not the guy you wanted to talk to if you needed some of those.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” Sam asked.

  “Not the point now,” I said, muttering.

  Yukie looked at me, shocked.

  “Oh please,” I snapped at her. “You were all over me like a corgi in heat.”

  “What an odd metaphor,” Sam said.

  Yukie’s eyes turned predatory, and she lifted her fingers, her fingernails growing like claws. “What?”

  “I found my cellphone!” David said, stepping back into the car with his device in hand. He was starting to look a little corpse-like, paler and sickly with his skin hanging down. I wondered if the rot we were worried about was finally settling it.

  Sam looked at Yukie. “I know Peter is rude as hell, but he’s reliable. What were you saying?”

  Yukie, who had finally regenerated from her earlier wounds, grit her teeth then slowly returned to her normal appearance. “Alright, we have bigger things to worry about than my bruised ego. If I’m ever to get back into the business of being a mercenary for the vampires, then I’m going to have to defeat Enil.”

  I felt tempted to point out if she did kill Enil then they’d probably track her to the ends of the Earth. None of the Council of Ancients would care about the fact he murdered New Detroit’s City Council. They were as expendable to them as Youngbloods were to Ashura. “Isn’t this all just a means to an end of avenging your mommy and sister?”

  “Yes,” Yukie said, slowly. “Vampires have resources I don’t, both in the material and occult worlds. I may have my issues with vampires—”

  “Why is that?” David asked, interrupting.

  “I know them,” Yukie said as if that explained everything.

  And it did. “Go on.”

  “But they are the undisputed masters of the supernatural world. If anyone can tell me how to find Magog or summon him, then they are the ones to contact.”

  I closed my eyes then grabbed the steering wheel. “Listen, this may not be the right time to tell you this, but I don’t think it’s right to hide it from you.”

  Sam looked at me then Yukie. “Peter, maybe you should tell this to her after we find out how she can help you remember.”

  I shook my head. “No, this is important.”

  Yukie blinked. “What is it?”

  I sucked in a useless breath to my dead and decaying lungs. “Your mother and sister have already been avenged. Magog is dead. Not like banished to hell, dead, but dead as in not ever coming back. Ever.”

  Yukie stared at me, opened her mouth, then closed it. The fury returned to her eyes. “You’re lying.”

  “No,” I said, frowning. “Thoth said he and Lucinda did it about a month ago. They managed to destroy the demon then bind its soul to a head that they buried under a thousand tons of concrete.”

  Yukie looked like I’d run over her dog. “Then it’s all been for nothing. How could they do that to me?”

  “There’s more—” I started to say.

  “Peter, these aren’t your secrets to tell,” Sam said, looking very much like she would like to flee the car.

  “Silence witch,” Yukie said, snapping at her. “Tell me, Peter, please.”

  I looked between them.

  Sam narrowed her eyes at Yukie as if she wasn’t afraid of the werefox in the slightest. “Fine, tell her.”

  I shrugged. “You see, Yukie, uh, Lucinda is your grandmother. Thoth is her husband, and that makes you rela
ted in that kind of Spaceballs not-really-related-at-all sort of way.”

  “Polygamy is a vampire thing,” David interjected. “Also Mormon.”

  “Not really,” Sam said. “I’m Mormon.”

  David looked at her like she’d grown a third head.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “But you’re—” David started to say.

  “Yes, a witch,” Sam said. “You can be both. Albeit, not without complications.”

  “No, I meant you’re—” David started to point out her ethnicity.

  “Leave it alone,” I said.

  I wouldn’t have thought Yukie could look more depressed, but she somehow managed it. “Yet they never told me.”

  “I guess they didn’t want you messed up in vampire politics and revenge schemes,” I said, giving a weak defense.

  “Lucinda and Thoth knew I was an assassin for the Yakuza,” Yukie said, her voice quaking with rage as her canines elongated. “That I was hunting for Magog across a dozen vampire courts, shifter sects, penthouses, and back alleys. This is a joke at my experience.”

  “I think it’s more complicated than that,” I said, just guessing about how they must feel. “I think they saw what you were doing, saw they’d lost your sister, and they decided to do this as a gift to you. Were there not this crazy thing going on, I think they both would have told you about it.”

  “Yes, because that’s what vampires are known for,” Yukie said, staring down at her lap. She looked on the verge of either crying or laughing, I couldn’t tell which. “Their honesty. There’s no point to doing this anymore. Let Enil kill the rest of the City Council. This is no longer my fight.”

  “Yukie,” I started to say.

  Yukie, however, opened the side door and turned into a fox before running out the side. A car swerved not to hit her and smacked into a nearby telephone pole. It left me alone in the front seat, David and Sam staring at the back of my head.

  “Great job, Peter,” David said, finally. “That totally helped our situation.”

  “Do you want me to crush your cell phone?” I asked. “Because I can.”