by C. T. Phipps
My hands had mostly healed from where I’d had my hands shot to pieces by Jackson. It bothered me to no end I’d saved that assholes’ life. I mean, I’d only done it so I could place the blame for this mess on him, but it was still galling that vampire was still running around breathing. I only hoped Enil tracked his creation down and finished him before he moved on to any other, less deserving victims. I wasn’t too broken up about Dead Debbie dying because, well, she was one of those homicidal psychopaths I listed among my ex-girlfriends. Her, Elisha, and Gina Gentle were the worst of the six women I’d been with. Melissa and Yukie were still murderers, but at least I suspected they would only kill me for something I deserved.
Like, say, cheating.
Ah, dammit.
“We need whatever you think you know, Peter,” Sam said.
“Assuming you know anything,” David said.
I took a deep breath. “I’ll fix this.”
“Are you sure? Because she seems like a liability,” Sam said. “Even if she did actually wound Enil.”
“That seems less a liability and more, how the hell did she do that?” David suggested.
Sam patted David on the leg. “I like you, you’re my second favorite zombie after Rose McIver.”
David smirked. “You’re my second favorite soccer mom witch.”
“I said I’ll fix this,” I said, stepping out of the car and barely avoiding being run down by a Hummer with two young women in the front.
“Dammit, I can’t believe those things made a comeback,” I muttered before chasing after Yukie. I passed the car that had bent its fender and walked into the back of a gas station where Yukie had resumed her human form. She was leaning up against the side of a concrete wall, a sour expression on her face.
I got the impression Yukie had never really had much of what we might call a quote-unquote mortal life. From the way her life had been described to me, she had been supernaturally talented at birth with none of the buffer period most of us had of high school or a depressing dead-end job. No, instead, she’d had a movie star’s life of being adopted by the Yakuza after her mother had been killed by a demon. Really, they could have made an anime out of her existence, and I would have watched it in my nerdy cartoon-loving years. I had the suspicion that while she was killing people for the Japanese mob, she hadn’t had time to develop a healthy way of dealing with her feelings.
For whatever that was worth.
“Yeah, uh,” I said, trying to think of what to say. “I’m saying you didn’t get the chance to murder the demon who killed your mother.”
“My father,” Yukie said.
“Yeah, fuck that guy,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m sure he’s suffering a lot while being buried alive in whatever bridge of mini-mall he’s now part of the construction of.”
That brought a smile to Yukie’s face. “I know you want to protect your creator, Peter. That surprises me, though. Not many vampires are loyal to those who brought them over to their dark life.”
“Thoth is good people,” I said before frowning. “Okay, not really. He’s kind of evil. However, he’s evil to evil people, so I suppose that makes him good? The people he kills usually have it coming. Rapists, serial killers, and Neo-Nazis. I mean, he sometimes helps other vampires who do kill innocents because he thinks human lives are less valuable, okay wait, let me restart. He keeps the number of innocent human deaths in New Detroit way down. Yes, mostly because it’s bad for business—”
“Wow, you are not good at this,” Yukie said.
I grimaced. “Okay, he’s an Old One. They’re all sons of bitches but he’s my son of a bitch, and I’m worried about him. What if he’s next on Enil’s hit list?”
“Then he’s fucked,” Yukie said.
Probably. “I’d like your help in preventing that, if at all possible.”
Yukie pulled out her sword, and I got a good look at it for the first time. It was made of something other than steel, something that seemed to catch the moonlight. “You know he made me this for my sixteenth birthday. It’s made of moonsilver, meteorite iron, and the remains of a Muramasa katana destroyed in World War 2. It grows stronger with every person it kills. Supposedly, it can cut gods.”
“Uh, good job. I got a wrench for my sixteenth birthday.”
“A wrench?” Yukie said.
“It was my mom’s way of saying I needed to get a job.”
Yukie finally lost the look of betrayal on her face. “Lucinda paid for the Yakuza to take care of me and handled my last few years of lessons. She taught me how to kill every single kind of supernatural under the sunset as well as seven different forms of magic. It makes sense she was my relative. I just don’t know why she didn’t take me to live with her.”
“I get the impression neither Thoth nor Lucinda are the kind of people who think a vampire’s domain is the kind of place to raise a child.”
“Neither was the Yamaguchi-Gumi.”
I was going to assume that was a Yakuza group name. Thoth would probably be angry at me for not knowing it, but I couldn’t tell the Italian mob from the Sicilian from guys doing a bad Joe Pesci impression. “Listen, it may not be a comfort now, but you have a chance to save some of your family. Let it be a comfort.”
“A comfort would be if they’d brought my mother or sister back from the dead like David.”
“Yeah, I got no answers to that,” I admitted. “Still, I get the impression that’s not something Thoth can do casually, or he would have brought back a lot of people.”
Like my brother.
I’d asked him to.
He said he couldn’t.
“Alright,” Yukie said, cutting her hand on her sword before sheathing it. Thoth did the same with his swords, believing they should taste blood before being put away—like their master. “I’ll do this for you, Peter, but you’re going to owe me. Note: I always collect on my debts as well. A promise is a promise to me.”
“I will show you something so awful about me that you will be able to blackmail me for all eternity for knowing it.”
“Oh?”
I nodded and turned into a corgi.
Chapter Fifteen
Yuki covered her mouth, eyes wide as she looked at me. “You—”
“Please don’t,” I said, my usual baritone coming from the adorable Pembroke corgi I’d assumed the form of. I didn’t know why I could still speak English as a dog, but I was able to become a dog, so I think logic had left the room anyway.
“Are so cute!” Yuki said, clapping her hands together. “You don’t have a tail but a little nub.”
“Laugh it up, Foxy,” I muttered.
“That’s not really an insult,” Yuki said. “Or a very good pun.”
I paused. “Chicken-stealer?”
“Okay, now you’re just embarrassing yourself,” Yuki said, trying not to grin.
“No shit.”
I was a black and white dog with little stubby legs and a pair of long triangle shaped ears. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I was a junkyard dog, a pit bull, a mastiff, or something with a bit of bite. Instead, I was identical to the dog my mother had rescued for me the Christmas my father had stepped out on us. Yes, in addition to the indignity of turning into something that looked like the Queen of England owned me, I looked identical to my own childhood pet.
Charles Barkley.
Yuki shook her head. “Can you turn into anything else?”
“Nope,” I said, sighing. “I’m hella strong, though. I can manipulate time, get visions, summon animals, and fly. It’s an odd assortment of vampire powers but it works for me.”
“You can fly?”
“Badly,” I admitted.
“Have you grown your wings yet?”
I blinked. “Say what?”
“You know, flying is about telekinesis, but eventually it becomes part of shapeshift...” Yuki trailed off. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“I’m going to grow wings?” I asked
, horrified.
“Well, how are you going to maneuver otherwise?” Yuki said.
I blinked. “Is that what my problem is?”
Yuki shrugged. “I don’t know that much about vampires.”
“Apparently more than I do and I was a Bloodsworn for a decade,” I said.
“Most vampires don’t turn their slaves, err I mean—”
“Hey, hey,” I interrupted, turning back into a human. “Thoth doesn’t like that word. For obvious reasons. It’s probably why he has contracts with all his servants.”
Yuki got an enigmatic expression on her face. “Do you really think he deserves being helped?”
“He’s probably better than I’ll be in two hundred years,” I said. “What’s the Batman quote? You either die the human or live the vampire?”
“I don’t think Batman said that.”
David honked the horn of my Jeep, clearly telling me to hurry it up.
I looked at her. “Do you have a way to help me remember?”
“Do you think you know what’s going on?”
It was like there was a wall between me and my memories. I knew, in my gut, I was aware of something related to this case. Thoth and Ashura knew the truth of it, too. Perhaps it was why they’d involved me or maybe their lives were so full of crazy that I’d just stumbled over part of it. My gut wasn’t always right. Every major life decision I’d made was testament to that. However, I believed it was my only shot. I also didn’t want to think about Dead Debbie (who might not be dead but probably was). Waking up in a dismembered corpse’s remains.
Or my friends ending up that way.
“Yeah,” I said.
Yuki nodded. “Well, alright. I can maybe turbo-charge your time powers and let you summon the memories related to them.”
“How’s that?” I asked, wondering if werefoxes had a secret vampire upper ability I hadn’t heard of.
“I’m a quarter vampire,” Yuki said. “It’s why I manifested as a werefox even with my demon blood.”
“You’re kind of like if Legolas had a kid with Gimli only to have their child marry a Hobbit.”
“Do you want my help?”
“Sorry,” I said, grimacing. “Really, I used to know this wonderful girl with all sorts of crazy ancestry. Looked like Rosario Dawson only with—”
Yuki shook her head. “Dhampyr blood is the strongest of all and can be used to increase the power of any vampire. Many courts keep dhampyr slaves as part of their voivode’s harem. Even to the point of breeding them.”
“That’s fucking awful.” It certainly wasn’t the case in New Detroit. There were dozens of dhampyrs spread across the city and more being born every day. Ashura had put a death sentence on anyone who harmed one. Enil had chosen to back the decree up for obvious reasons. I wondered if Thoth had also been behind it, since he seemed to have some desire to look after his wives’ progeny. Certainly, if what Yuki was saying was true then there was no other city on Earth that would be safe for Sam’s kids.
“But true,” Yuki said. “My blood can help you do it.”
“Shouldn’t I have already gained it? I mean we, uh, kind of—”
“You didn’t drink my blood last night.”
I blinked. “Really?”
My memories of the experience were kind of hazy, but it was a memory of rapturous bliss combined with a sense of peaceful tranquility.
“Yes,” Yuki said. “I was there.”
“That’s....weird.”
Yuki raised an eyebrow.
I raised my hands. “It’s just, you know, it was really great. Sex without feeding is like sex without climaxing. I mean, I didn’t feed? What kind of weird mind meld did you do to me?”
“I withdraw my offer to let you drink my blood.”
“Sorry!”
“No,” Yuki said. “You’ve made it weird now. All of it.”
“Please,” I said, looking at her with a pitiful gaze. “Don’t make me use the puppy dog eyes.”
David honked the Jeep horn again.
“Alright,” Yuki said, looking at me then up at the full moon over our heads. “But let’s do it someplace private. I don’t want your friends watching.”
“Like in the bathroom of the gas station?”
“Really, Peter?”
I blinked. “The bathroom of the Hardees across the street?”
Yuki closed her eyes. “There’s no way to make this classy, is there?”
“Some hookups are in fancy hotels paid for by serial killer soccer moms, some hookups are in the middle of the streets...or so I’ve heard.”
“You don’t strike me as the street sex type, Peter.”
“I grew up dirt poor after my sleazy lawyer dad married his mistress, but the public library was full of books, comics, and DVDs that spoke of worlds far from my own. Places where a man like me could save the princess and the world. I tried to do that in the Middle East, be the big hero who defeated the big bad terrorists and ended up realizing life isn’t like the stories. So, I’m up for anything now.”
Yuki grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me into the shadows. It was at that moment, the predator inside me let me know how much he wanted to taste her blood. She smelled good and looked good, a quality I attributed to both her genetics as well as the fact she was a badass action girl. I had a type, okay? Women who could throw me around like a ragdoll.
“Do it,” Yuki said.
I didn’t need to be told twice. “Okay.”
Sex and drinking blood were intrinsically linked for vampires. A fact anyone who had seen a vampire movie in the last 100 years probably knew. Well, unless the movie was 30 Days of Night. Seeing the movement of her neck with each breath, hearing the pulse of her heart, and smelling the mixture of excitement with the tiny bit of fear she had at my fangs approaching her throat—well, it was a heady feeling. Put on some Barry White and the moment would have been perfect. For me at least.
Holding the back of her head, I sank my fangs into her carotid artery. I made sure to wet my lips with the saliva and whatever magic inside it that would keep her from dying when I began to drink mouthfuls of her blood.
Her blood...
It was impossible to describe.
I had never done hard drugs. Blood was my first addiction, and it was one I managed to reign in by feeding shallowly, eating animals, and doing my best to be a man rather than a vampire. I’d starved the Need and beaten it down every time it rose to dominate me, except for a few terrible accidents.
I had control.
This? This I couldn’t control. It was like a religious experience. A real one. A shock to my system wasn’t enough of a descriptor. It was like jabbing me directly with a lightning rod before 1 million gigawatts of power ran through my veins. Yuki grabbed me from behind and sunk her claws in my block, which only made the sensation more potent.
Please, Yuki thought to me. Let go.
I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted to take her blood into me, take her life, and become stronger as a result. I could read her blood like I did the dumbass in the bathroom. I couldn’t even remember his name despite killing him. He was a fake.
Yuki was the real deal.
I could see her growing up with a loving mother, a distant father, and a sister she cared for more than anything.
I struggled to let go and stop drinking but I couldn’t.
I could see her witness her father, Hideo, causally stand over the butchered body of her mother. His finely pressed suit splattered with blood as people screamed in the middle of Tokyo’s street.
“Why?” Yuki asked, cradling her dead mother’s body. Foxwoman or not.
“Why not?” Magog asked, wearing her father’s face.
I felt overwhelmed by the pain, agony, and shame of the memories that flowed into my brain like a tidal wave of freezing water.
I saw Yuki murdering her father, Hideo when she was fourteen-years-old. Thoth and Lucinda standing over him.
Not Magog, but the man who�
�d let him in.
I saw her swear allegiance to Moto Yoshi, her Gaki grandfather and one of the pillars of the Yakuza.
I saw the training, the hate, and the desire to protect her sister.
A sister who tried to destroy Magog to rescue her sister and dramatically overestimated her chance of defeating him.
Yuki cradling her dead body, tortured by Magog’s host in horrific ways and left as a gift for his daughter.
The sense of love and loss for her sister was a familiar one, so was the desire for revenge just so you didn’t have to continue thinking about how painful that absence of your sibling was. It caused me to grab her shoulders tight then slow her bleeding. Vampires couldn’t just stop biting someone, especially if they hit an artery, or that was the end of their meal. People bled out in seconds after and you got your food everywhere (really, I didn’t want to phrase it like that, but there’s no other way for a vampire to think about it). You had to heal the injury you left behind, a skill all vampires had for shallow skin-based wounds. It was a magic thing and just one of the very basic powers all vampires possessed.
Yuki stood there, her head down, as I tried to hear her heartbeat. She was still alive, barely. Gradually, though, her shifter healing factor kicked in, and I could hear her heartbeat speed up back to normal. Yuki blinked a few times then took several deep breaths.
“Are you okay?” I asked, feeling giddy and light-headed. My head was bumping and my body trembling with the power inside me. I had felt dead and cold since my creation, same as most vampires felt about everything but the Need, yet now it was like I was alive again. Well, no, but it was as close as I could remember feeling. If this was how drinking from dhampyr felt, I was surprised vampires didn’t eat them all.
Then I realized there were probably a hundred thousand vampires in the world and only a few hundred dhampyr, which indicated they probably did. It was another fucked up quality about our race that underscored we were not the good guys. Not that I’d ever been under any delusions that I was, or we were. Vampires were just my home team now, and you rooted for them whether they sucked, pun intended, or not.Yuki smiled then punched me in the face, sending me flying back about three feet. I was hella strong and could slow down time, so I moved like vampires did in the movies (which seemed a backass way of getting superspeed but whatcha gonna do), but I was comparatively squishy compared to other vampires. Not as squishy as a human, since all vampires could be shot up and not die, but no special immunities besides the basic package.