by C. T. Phipps
“You have no idea,” I said, not about to try to explain we had an Archdemon on our asses.
Mina rolled her eyes at my narration. “The Texan vampires are here, looking for a reason to start shit.”
I took a deep breath. “Are they up here too?”
“Yep,” Mina said. “I swear their leader thinks it’s the Wild West and is just looking for an excuse to start shooting up the place. Killing cops seems to be just his style, and I don’t think he’d mind it would ruin our relationship with the Feds.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Because you’re not an idiot,” Mina said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Well, that makes one of us,” I said, uncomfortable at the prospect of looking at Dead Debbie’s remains. She was old enough she was probably just a skeleton or dust, but it was still going to be uncomfortable as hell.
Yukie, Sam, and David held back. A pair of police officers walked up to them and intercepted them before they moved further. Both Yukie and Sam looked utterly revolted by the bloody mess surrounding everything. David? David was sniffing the air.
Jesus.
Mina bit her lip. “Uh, this may not be the best time Peter but—”
“Yeah,” I said, distracted.
“Could you maybe ask what’s the hold up with me and Thoth? I’ve been waiting a while here.”
“What?”
“You know,” Mina said, moving her head around.
“No?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“Vampirism!”
I gave her a sideways glance. “Really, Mina? You’re asking about being created now?”
“We worked together as his security, Peter,” Mina said. “Things like this remind me I’m not getting any younger.”
Thoth had recruited me not long before the Reveal, back when people in New Detroit were already cottoning to the fact vampires were real. I’d served as his Bloodsworn for five years, and I’d always assumed it was standard to change you after a time. Only later had I found out Thoth was practically unique in changing his servants but even then “farmed out” the process to other, weaker, vampires. Given what I’d learned from my vision, I wasn’t sure Thoth would ever turn her.
“You’re not getting any older either. Have you considered asking him to use someone else? Barry did that. You could ask him.”
Mina sneered. “Yeah, that’s what I want to do, get stuck with some creator like Barry. Someone with no pull. I want to be someone in this society.”
“Wait two hundred years.”
“Says the bellidix.”
She had me there.
“I mean, has he said anything?” Mina asked.
I wondered if I had sounded like this. “No, Mina.”
It occurred to me Mina and Thoth were probably sleeping together. Old Ones tended to have sex with humans like putting ketchup on French Fries. The thing was, having sex with a Bloodsworn was probably going to make his complicated set of relationships even more complicated. Especially if Lucinda was coming back into his life. I thought about asking Sam, but I doubted that was going to be a fruitful conversation. She was the only Bloodsworn I knew who didn’t want to be a vampire.
“Ah,” Mina said.
“I’ll ask,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We’re friends after all?”
“Maybe,” Mina said. “Are we? You haven’t exactly been hanging around the Apophis offices since you joined the other team. You’ve been undercover outside the city.”
I opened my mouth then closed it. “Undercover?”
“Yeah, why else would you work there instead of security somewhere?”
I laughed then walked past her.
Mina looked confused. “You’re damn weird, Peter.”
“Says the girl who renamed herself after a Dracula character and thought no one would notice.”
“I really am named Mina Murray!”
“Yeah, right!”
The massacre in the Cristabel offices hadn’t been limited to Dead Debbie as we passed the headless corpse of the receptionist and stepped over the rib cage of some other poor schmuck Enil had torn to pieces. Enil had killed just about everyone in the Cristabel radio station, which meant he’d come here directly after the massacre at Jackson’s mansion.
I looked at the walls of the radio station and noticed they were covered in lots of photos as well as a few framed paintings. Dead Debbie hadn’t been afraid to show off her immortality, and there were B&W photos from the Civil War to full-color ones from last year. Debbie seemed to want as many photos as possible before she stopped showing up on film. There were also a bunch of horror and exploitation film posters from the sixties and seventies. That was back when Dead Debbie had worked as a film director.
I passed a painted poster for the Hammer Horror version of Vampirella that had starred a pale-skinned brunette vampire named Lucy Marcos. My eyes widened further when I noticed Thomas Ibis was the poster artist. That caused me to look at some of the other photos and, sure enough, Thoth was in a few of them alongside Lucinda at Studio 54, Paramount Studios, and at the foot of the Eiffel Tower on V-E Day. I didn’t question why Thoth and Lucinda were visible on camera, but I made note of the fact they’d been close friends with Virginia Dare.
I hadn’t known that.
“Do you think this is our fault?” Yukie asked, surprising me.
I overheard a BOSS agent mentioning there were fourteen bodies total and that made me curse. As bad as this was, I’d seen worse, but these things were usually kept from the public. The more people pried into vampire affairs, the more likely they were going to all herd us someplace and set us on fire along with all the people we cared about.
Yukie came up behind me, and the two of us soon arrived in the recording studio of Dead Debbie’s show where there was a pile of dust on the ground. Thoth was holding his cell phone and texting rapidly.
“Where’s David?” I asked, looking over at Yukie.
“Trying not to lick the walls,” Yukie said. “Sam is talking with the BOSS agents.”
Thoth and Yukie stared at one another, a heavy presence hanging over the pair of them.
“Hello, Yukie,” Thoth said. “How are you doing?”
“She knows,” I said, not seeing any reason to dance around the subject. “I kind of spilled the beans about the whole complicated mess.”
Thoth gave the most ever so slightly perceptible twitch. It was his equivalent of screaming his head off and throwing me out a window. “I see.”
“Why did you hide your relationship from me?” Yukie asked. There was pain in her voice that couldn’t be described. “You and Lucinda? You could have been my family, my friends, but you chose to act like strangers, so I can only assume it was because you wished to be neither.”
Thoth put his cane on the top of the desk. “Do you know why vampires don’t have families?”
“Vampires do have families,” I started to say. “T, I don’t know—”
“Be silent,” Thoth said, his voice using a compulsion on me for one of perhaps three times in our relationship. “Listen.”
It didn’t work, and in that moment, I knew I’d become stronger than my creator, but I decided to stop speaking anyway.
“No,” Yukie said. “I know vampires who have dhampyr children, though. They send them away to be cared for by Bloodsworn and keep their distance.”
“Or sell them,” Thoth said, simply. “Doubye kept me as his servant, seeking a vampire who had a talent for the mystic arts since only one in ten thousand has any proclivity, and he wished to overthrow the Council of Ancients. I had no interest in sorcery, though, as long as I had a family to return to. So, he finally let me return after two decades of learning from him in the marshes. When my brother was now a grown man, married, and with children of his own.”
“I don’t see how this has—” Yukie started to say.
“A month later, he returned and staked me, leaving me to grow wild and insane with hunger. Then he compe
lled my brother’s family to find me. I had hidden what I was from them and when they found me—I killed them all. In the end, the Need dominated me more than my love for my family.”
I’d heard this story before, usually as part of a lesson as to why vampires couldn’t get too attached to mortals, but this was the first time I’d ever heard the sorrow behind it. That Thoth was trying to convince himself as much as anyone.
“I’m sorry,” Yukie said.
Thoth looked down at the ground. “Any vampire who forms a bond with mortals makes them a target. Lucinda is an undine or shapechanger among our kind. She was born a Duke’s heir of Spain but wanted more than anything to be a woman and artiste. That enraged her father, also a vampire, and when she was forty with a dhampyr child of her own—he compelled her to eat the babe in her arms.”
“Jesus,” I said, blinking. “I hoped she buried that guy alive.”
“Revenge is not the cure for your ills, but it is one of unlife’s few consistent pleasures,” Thoth said, looking at Yukie. “As you know, granddaughter. Your mother was a target by Magog because of her relationship with Lucinda. Despite all the precautions she’d taken, despite how much she’d loved your mother, and despite my begging her to only make a child of an adult who could defend themselves.”
“Why did Magog target her?” I asked, interjecting myself into a conversation I probably shouldn’t have.
“The Thirteen,” Thoth said, simply. “After I killed Doubye, I spent a hundred years avenging myself on slavers as well as people who reminded me of him. Lucinda found me and showed me a better way. We both joined the Thirteen, an alliance of monsters that dedicated themselves to destroying demonkind and their servants. Vampires are parasites, Peter, but the human stomach is full of parasites that serve a benign function. Humans can’t digest without them. We fought the Elder Gods during the Great Wars because if we couldn’t be good then at least we might give back as much as we took.”
“Do you?” Yukie asked. “Or are you just deluding yourself that your presence isn’t something that makes reality objectively worse?”
“I don’t know,” Thoth said. “I do know that Lucinda loved your mother and loved you more than blood.”
That made me a little misty-eyed. “That was beautiful, T.”
Yukie looked down. “If she’d really loved me, she would have helped me destroy Magog.”
“You have a chance to life for its own sake rather than devoting yourself to death,” Thoth said, meeting her gaze.
“Death is all I’m good at,” Yuki said.
“Not like a vampire,” Thoth said. “Be more than we are.”
“Things are getting a bit Louis and Angel whiney here,” I interrupted. “Can we get to the fact I time traveled back to the party you guys killed Magog at, got speared by tentacle porn, and talked with an evil caveman?”
Yukie and Thoth both looked at me like I was crazy.
“Is he always like this?” Yukie asked.
“I blame David’s influence,” Thoth said. “Also, the internet.”
I explained my vision as best I could as well as took time to show Thoth the burns on my arm.
Thoth examined them. “Well, that explains a few things.”
“Is that all you’re going to say?” I asked.
“An archdemon is one of the few beings capable of enslaving an Ancient like Enil. Gog has also tried to bring about misery on an unparalleled scale throughout human history. Magog was the only being he ever cared for and destroying him was always going to make him an eternal enemy. I just hoped I’d have more time to prepare.”
“Do you have any plans for dealing with a second archdemon?” I asked.
“Would it help if I lied?” Thoth asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then, yes, everything is under control,” Thoth said. “This has gone beyond the matter of a dead novelist.”
“No shit.”
“BOSS is very interested in using this investigation as an excuse to invoke Article 37 of their mandate and remove all the special protections of vampires in Michigan. Furthermore, Wyatt wants your head.”
“Wait, what, my head?” I asked, blinking.
Thoth nodded. “Just because we have a much greater threat to worry about, doesn’t mean the Texas vampires aren’t a threat. Wyatt is Dallas’ bellidix and voivode Forsyth’s right-hand man. Once, I would have called him a friend, but his ultimate loyalty is to whoever pays him. Forsyth sees you as a way to strike at me.”
“Where is the asshole?”
“Outside,” Thoth said. “I’m afraid without Jackson, we have no one to blame Rebecca Plum’s death on.”
“Except me,” Yukie said. “I’ll take the blame.”
“Like hell you will,” I said. “You are part vampire, and the most important thing about being a vampire is you never take responsibility for anything. No heroic sacrifices, fair punishment, or atonement. It’s all about the perks and getting away with murder.”
“I see I’ve taught you a little too well,” Thoth muttered.
“So, what does this Wyatt got, anyway?” I asked, wondering why we should worry about him at all. “I mean, that we should actively worry about him while the Devil’s little brother is knocking on our door.”
“Wyatt is one of the vampires who helped kill and bind Magog,” Thoth explained. “His posse has also killed a thousand vampires.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Wyatt’s posse has killed a thousand vampires?” I said, repeating what Thoth said. “That seems a bit much.”
I’d learned in Iraq that it didn’t matter if a roadside bomb, gun, or friendly fire dropped on your head—dead was dead. Even if I was concerned about a world-destroying demon, I couldn’t not pay attention to a bunch of vampires coming after me for failing to protect Rebecca Plum. Dead was dead, even if you were a vampire. Especially if you were a vampire.
Thoth frowned. “I am not speaking figuratively. When I say they have killed a thousand vampires, I mean they have killed a thousand vampires. After the Reveal, there were a vast number of young and stupid fools who wanted to be changed into the undead. They did not put their faith in God or the Devil and wanted to live forever—as if it were that easy.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked, shrugging.
Honestly, I kind of wondered if vampires trying to restrict expanding their numbers was a good idea. Was it really such a bad thing to have hundreds of thousands of vampires rather than tens of thousands? Yes, being a vampire was going to probably make you a murderer. Yes, the more vampires concentrated in one place, the more likely they were going to fight for territory. Yes, the more vampires, the greater the likelihood that all the propaganda that we were just another persecuted minority and not horrifying monsters would fall apart. Yes, wait, what was my point again?
“Yes, Peter, it is that easy. That’s why I’m putting you through all the tests I am because immortality is easy. Because it shouldn’t be. Only a small subset of people are emotionally, spiritually, and physically capable of surviving immortality. Misnomer as that may sound like.”
Yukie got a foul look in her eyes. “I remember the early days. Every week was another contract put out on vampires who had turned their mortal families after being turned or just killed them all due to their misunderstood hunger. Everyone was terrified of another Oakley, Montana. So the voivodes purged their city’s numbers extensively and are still hardasses about creation.”
“Oakley, Montana?” I said. “Never heard of it.”
“Nor will anyone unless fools talk,” Thoth said, sounding angry that some apparently were. “In 1971, Gog and the Order of the White Worm turned an entire town of over thirteen hundred individuals. It was meant to reveal us to the world and cause a revival of the Secret Crusade.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“We took care of it,” Thoth said, cutting me off.
“This seems like a story,” I said.
Thoth closed his eyes. “They turned
infants, Peter. We took care of it. Never ask about this again.”
“Right,” I said, uncomfortably. I had to wonder why Gog and Magog were so dead set on screwing with vampires. As a general rule, vampires weren’t fond of demons and vice versa. There was even an edict in the city about not turning demonkin. Honestly, I never quite got it since vampires were some of the most selfish and murderous assholes I’d met in my life.
And I grew up in Detroit.
Being the defenders of humanity against Lucifer, Azazel, and Cthulhu (who I hoped wasn’t real) didn’t fit with my image of them. I could buy Thoth as wanting to give back by being the protector of mankind (as well as its lord and master) but just barely. Everyone else? I didn’t think Ashura had ever thought of humans other than what she could get from them. Which, in order, was blood, money, and sex. Not that humans were much better in that regard—vampires just one-upped them on it.
Thoth, reading my thoughts, said, “Vampires are still at least partially human, Peter. In that respect, they will never be as bad as a demon. As a human will think of want, greed, sadness, or sorrow but a demon will spend all his time on his purpose—destroying and debasing man. They are no less focused or determined as they were servants of God in Heaven, merely devoted now to the opposite of their charge.”
“Say what?” I asked.
“Demons are worse than vampires,” Thoth explained. “Also, vampires are smart enough to keep other predators away. There’s no point in destroying the world like Satan’s forces want. What would we eat then?”
Okay, that made sense at least. “Gotcha. So, back to Wyatt and his peeps?”
“Wyatt and his team are trained vampire hunters,” Thoth said, getting us back on topic. “They are dangerous, powerful, and not all of them are vampires.”
“And yet Wyatt helped you against Magog?” Yukie asked.
Thoth nodded “Wyatt and I used to be friends. There’s just one thing he loves more.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“Money,” Thoth said.
“Can’t you just bribe him?” I asked.
Thoth opened his mouth to object then frowned. “Yeah, but that’s going to cost me.”