Sketched

by David Alan Jones

  The phone rang three times before someone picked up on the other end.

  “Hello, Rose.” Emily Walsh sounded as tired as Rose felt.

  “I’m sorry to call so late,” Rose said. “We haven’t stopped moving until now. It’s been a long day.”

  “I know that feeling. Sometimes life on the trail can really suck. Mom and Dad said to expect your call. So, what’s up?”

  “We’re curious how things are going in D.C. after all the trouble.” Though Rose doubted anyone could listen in on her phone—her friend, Moss, had tinkered with it and pronounced it proofed against eavesdropping—she chose to keep her words circumspect. Better to err on the side of caution than mention Society outright.

  “The word chaotic comes to mind,” Emily said with a wry tone. “No one knows how to proceed. Sheila’s told her staff to hunker down and keep quiet. We’re going to let the big dogs fight it out until a replacement steps forward to take the reins.”

  The twenty-four-hour news cycle had already run its course on the Barbara Griffith story. To an agency, even in international news, they had reported her death as resulting from natural causes—a heart attack. Sad, but hardly newsworthy. Whoever Society elites paid to keep the media charmed had done their jobs. That had concerned Rose in the first hours after Barbara’s death. With Society in turmoil—its presumptive leader killed—she worried no one would coordinate the narrative, and some eager reporter would manage to ferret out the truth. Instead, the talking heads on the streaming services mentioned the late senator’s heart attack once every hour for a day before dropping it in favor of the next sensational horror story to move the popular attention meter.

  “Who are the big dogs?” Matt asked. “Anyone prominent making a legit bid for leadership?”

  “A few, but it’s all a lot of yelling and chest thumping at the moment. It’s too early to tell who’s winning.”

  “Some billionaire, of course.” Rose didn’t even try to hide the bitterness in her voice.

  “No doubt.”

  “What about Sheila?” Matt leaned toward the phone as if that would emphasize his suggestion to Emily. “Can’t she make a bid for leadership?”

  “No way,” Emily said, her voice flat. “She’s a junior senator and way too young. The old guard would slap her down hard if she even made a squeak right now.”

  At sixty-three years old, Sheila Isaacson, Emily’s boss and a senator out of Ohio, hardly counted as young in Rose’s book. Considering that most succubi lived well into their two hundreds, however, Rose took Emily’s point. Some of Society’s leaders had held their positions for a century or more, often taking a decade or two off to reinvent themselves, their offices held by human dupes, before returning to prominence. In fact, holding office personally had only come into vogue in the last fifty years. Before that, most succubi in government used human proxies, whom they would exchange every so often, to retain their power and prestige.

  “You know the Order would back her if she changed her mind.” Rose couldn’t hide the eagerness in her voice. “If she steps up, we’ll fight for her. We have the numbers.”

  “I know you have numbers,” Emily sounded cautious, like a friend unwilling to offend and yet compelled to speak her mind. “I don’t know that you can motivate them. Slinkers, and forgive me for saying this, aren’t the sort to march in lockstep.”

  “But that’s what they did when we took down the fear factory,” Matt countered.

  “Once. That’s not enough to prove your merit to Sheila, not with her life in the balance.”

  “We get that.” Rose shrugged at Matt, who shook his head in frustration. “But our people are better organized than you think.”

  “And committed,” Matt said.

  “Doesn’t matter. They aren’t proven, and, frankly, they aren’t respected in Washington. No one’s going to take a chance on them, especially not...” Emily’s words petered out.

  “With us allied to a vampire,” Rose said.

  “Yeah. That. And one who’s proving herself a real nuisance. You know Piper took out that night club in Baltimore?”

  Rose lifted her eyebrows and shared a look with Matt, who frowned and uttered a whispered curse. Two nights ago, unknown gunmen had terrorized a club in the city, killing over a dozen people. Police arrested a suspect, but witnesses had reported more than one shooter.

  Rose curbed her impulse to smack the table. A few weeks ago, she would have blamed her sudden anger and frustration on the unfairness Society elites showed Piper and other vampires, affording them zero trust or respect. She wouldn’t have believed such an allegation. Considering Piper’s antics of late, however, Rose conceded that Emily’s statement might well bear out.

  “We had no idea,” Rose said, managing somehow to keep her voice even.

  “The club was a known vampire hangout. I think she killed the main coven leader and a handful of his cronies, whichever ones wouldn’t join her. We tried keeping it out of the news, but that obviously failed, so the powers-that-be are spinning the narrative to look like a lone gunman. Honestly, it was nearly a fiasco. You’ve got to get her reined in. Society’s too disorganized to effectively cover up these sorts of gaffes.”

  “You’re certain it was Piper?” Matt asked, though he sounded resigned to the expected answer.

  “No question. Cameras caught her and eight of her daughters in the bar and on the sidewalk before, during, and after the fight. Or maybe I should call it a battle. It was an all-out turf war. Three of the victims were human, by the way. Caught in the crossfire.”

  Rose sat up straight, her breath caught. “What’s Society going to do?”

  “Nothing, probably. I heard a few senators and congressmen talk about it in passing today, but things are too insane right now for them to pay much attention. Some rogue member might be daring enough to send a crony after her, but I doubt it. Truth to tell, I think most of them are afraid of her. She’s stitched together the biggest coven kingdom I’ve ever seen in the States. She replaces every reigning vamp she kills with one of her daughters. Those who bow to her swear to serve. Guys, she’s seriously frightening, and I don’t think too many of our kind are paying enough attention to her.”

  “We knew she had taken on a few of the old establishment vamps,” Matt said. “But you’re making it sound like she’s taking over the nation.”

  “Seems that way to me, but what do I know about vampire networks? I have no idea how many there are in the country or where they’re based. Someone must have been paying attention to that sort of thing before now—slapping vampires down when they got too uppity—but whoever that might have been, they’ve stopped. We’re all too busy arguing over who gets to lead.”

  Rose never questioned the rightness of destroying the fear factory; she would do it again tomorrow and a thousand nights thereafter. However, the aftermath, especially over the last month or two, often kept her up at night. Only now, with time and understanding of how succubus Society functioned, did she see the ramifications of what she and the Order had wrought. Though she refused to carry sole blame for the outcome—Society’s dysfunctional organization and corrupt leadership predated her by centuries—she couldn’t deny her actions directly resulted in the turmoil her kind now faced. While the elites bickered, the world changed. She worried those changes might bring calamity.

  “We’ve arranged a face-to-face with Piper in the next few days,” Rose said. “We’ll discuss what she’s planning.”

  “You’d better do more than discuss,” Emily spoke in a low, insistent voice. “Everything she’s doing is playing right into Irish hands.”

  Rose perked up. “What about the Irish? Are they up to something?”

  “Alice McAleese was on the Hill today.”

  Matt cocked an eyebrow. “Speaking before Congress?”

  “No. She doesn’t even pretend she’s here on some official Irish government business. She’s organizing a closed-door meeting with as many elites as she can gather. Some of the
m aren’t even US officials—actors and sports stars have been flying in to speak with her. I think a lot of them are lending her support. They’re leaning on the DC crowd to hear her out, and it’s working.”

  “What the hell does she want?” Rose asked.

  “Control. She’s not saying that outright, of course, but everyone knows what the Irish do when they see a power vacuum.”

  “What are her chances, you think?” Matt asked.

  “Better than they were a few weeks ago. Sheila doesn’t like her, or the Irish overall, one bit. We’ve heard some horror stories out of Europe and West Asia, how the Irish strip locals of all their assets and leave them penniless if they step out of line, but everyone’s saying those are lies. I guess a lot of folks up here believe that, because all indicators point to her getting a meeting in the next couple of days. She’s been using Piper and the rise of a vampire threat to make that happen.”

  “Okay, but what is she offering in return?” Matt looked incredulous. “That American Society be run from afar? I can’t imagine anyone in Congress is taking that seriously. They all want autonomy.”

  “No, they all want stability. You’re not here to see how disorganized things have gotten. Two days ago, the president informed her Secretary of State she’s being manipulated by mind control and that no one in the White House is to be trusted. Luckily, he called in her physician, who happens to be a succubus. She charmed them both to forget, so everything worked out, but can you imagine the President and her cabinet members walking around thinking for themselves? Someone really dropped the ball, and it could have been a debacle.”

  Rose disagreed with manipulating America’s elected leaders, but she understood the necessity. Society long ago enmeshed itself with the U.S. Government so that the one became indistinguishable from the other. She could imagine no force on Earth powerful or delicate enough to untwine them. And though she hated the corruption endemic in both bodies, she knew Society’s governance, repugnant or not, served to protect succubuskind from discovery by the world at large. In Rose’s estimation, charming human politicians fell into the category of a necessary evil, one she reviled and yet accepted as part of the world outside her control.

  “Is Sheila going to this meeting with the Irish?” Matt asked.

  “She’s not planning on it, but if the pressure mounts, she’ll have to. And I don’t imagine this will be Alice’s only run at Congress in the coming weeks, maybe even months. She can’t charm them into siding with her—there’s too many of them, and most are far too powerful—but I’m already hearing people on the Hill repeat her rhetoric. I honestly think Alice has a shot at a takeover. Some people see it as the best way to avoid a meltdown.”

  “Maybe up there, but the slinkers will never follow her.”

  “Maybe not, but does that even matter in the long run?”

  Rose shook her head, her jaw tight. “We’ll make it matter.”

  11

  Alias Ally

  It took three days to nail Piper down for the proposed meeting. Even then, Rose had been unable to speak with her directly, relying instead on Olivia as her intermediary, passing text messages to her mother. They settled on meeting in South Carolina, not too far from Piper’s secluded home. Rose had let the vampire choose the spot, something she was beginning to regret.

  They drove along South Carolina State Road 152, locally called High Shoals Road, on the outskirts of a town named Anderson. Night had fallen several hours before, bringing with it a pantheon of constellations ruled over by a full moon that lit the surrounding forest with a pale light. The lonely two-lane put Rose in mind of old horror movies where the unsuspecting couple picks up a hitchhiking ghost or blunders into a town lost in time. To make things even gloomier, the day had been hot for April with scattered showers in the afternoon, which resulted in clinging fog swirling at ankle height.

  “She did this on purpose,” Olivia said from the backseat of their van. The vampire shook her head in Rose’s rearview mirror. “She wants to creep you out.”

  “It’s working on me.” Watts sat next to Olivia in the back, watching the shadowed trees on either side of the van pass by.

  “I don’t know,” Matt said, “it’s sort of pretty out here, and it’s not like Piper could meet us during the day. She probably picked a spot where we don't have to worry about humans bumbling into us by accident.”

  “It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” Olivia said dryly. “I know Mother. She’s always working more than one angle. Bringing you out into the middle of the woods on a full moon night isn’t something she does by accident. And this fog. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she rented a machine to whip it up.”

  Rose’s phone, mounted on the dash, informed her she had reached her destination. She slowed the van to a crawl, searching both sides of the road for a cross street.

  “There’s supposed to be a turnoff here?” Matt twisted around to look at Olivia.

  She shrugged. “Honest to God, I’ve never been here before.”

  “Didn’t you live here for like the last forty years?” Tanner asked.

  “Yeah, near here, but I didn’t spend my time in the woods. I’m a city vampire.”

  Tanner laughed. “Anderson, some city.”

  Rose pulled the van onto the wide, grass-covered shoulder near the red icon on her phone. She saw nothing outside beyond darkened trees and a bridge a hundred feet ahead.

  “Shall we?” Matt opened his door and slid out, leaving the others to follow.

  The temperature had dropped to around fifty after midnight, chilly for Rose, who preferred summer heat. She slipped into her leather jacket and drew warmth from her votaries to fight the chill. To that, she added drawn sight and awareness. The sight did nothing to alleviate the darkness, but it sharpened her vision so she could more readily pick out shapes in the moonlight.

  Crickets, frogs, and other nighttime creatures sang a raucous chorus that filled the surrounding area with their chaotic chirrups, croaks, and warbles. There had been a time, before her training at Camp Den, when Rose would have hated being surrounded by so much nature; now it soothed her. Though Olivia had a point about the creep factor.

  “Should I text her?” Olivia withdrew her phone.

  “No need,” said a feminine voice from within the tree line to their right.

  Everyone jumped, including Tanner, who looked embarrassed by his own reaction.

  “Grace?” Olivia called.

  A shadow emerged from the forest, growing more distinct as it neared, taking on the alluring curves of a young woman. Grace’s blond hair appeared silver in the spill of moonlight.

  “It’s me, and wow, did I make you all jump.” Grace sounded delighted with herself.

  “Ha-ha.” Olivia gave her sister a hug. “Where’s mother?”

  “On the bridge.” Grace went about hugging or high-fiving each succubus depending on their mutual level of acquaintance.

  Rose, who got a hug from the young vampire, peered at the bridge. Even with drawn sight, she could make out no figures standing there. “Where?”

  “Not that bridge. Crybaby Bridge. C’mon, follow me.” Moving with the agile quickness of a doe, Grace darted into the forest, her moon-silver hair bouncing behind her like a thick ribbon.

  Rose was forced to draw speed and dexterity to keep Grace in sight. The others must have done the same, otherwise the speedy Grace would have left them behind. She led them through the underbrush to an open path wide enough to accommodate four people walking shoulder to shoulder. A thick carpet of grass covered the ground, but the way obviously saw enough use to prevent trees from growing up. The path curved out of sight to the east, lost in a wall of trees and hanging vines. To the west, it opened above a shallow stream almost wide enough to be called a river, and an ancient, rusted bridge.

  “Do I want to ask why they call this Crybaby Bridge?” Tanner lifted one eyebrow at Grace.

  “There’s a legend that a lady drowned her baby up here way
back in like the twentieth century. Well, that or her baby fell off the bridge. Either way, they say if you come out here at night, you can sometimes hear a baby crying down by the water. My sister, Katy, swears she saw the mother walking out here one time dressed all in white.”

  “Katy’s a liar,” Olivia said.

  “Yeah, I know, but it’s a good story.” Grace gestured up the lane. “Look, there’s the mother now.”

  Piper stood alone at the center of the bridge bathed in moonlight, her otherwise black hair gleaming. She wore loose jeans and a short, low cut yellow top despite the chill night air. Fog, lifting up in columns like gray fingers from the river below, swirled about her. Olivia was right; Piper had definitely chosen this spot on purpose.

  “Stop doing that to me.” Tanner playfully swatted Grace’s shoulder, and the young vampire laughed.

  Despite appearances, discernment, bolstered by a rank stench, told Rose there were wights nearby, even though she saw none of the semi-intelligent creatures on the bridge or along the tree line. Piper had brought backup. Neither of them fully trusted the other.

  Maybe that was for the best.

  “Hello, Rose.” Piper spoke with a deep southern drawl that put emphasis on her Rs.

  “Piper.” Rose stepped onto the bridge’s cracked and weather-worn asphalt with wary caution. She didn’t want to fear Piper, but even drawing calm couldn’t entirely quell her sense of anxiety. Things had changed between them in ways she didn’t yet understand.

  “It’s good to see you, honey.” Piper closed the distance between them, her arms outstretched, and enfolded Rose in a tight hug. “I’m sorry I’ve been so hard to reach lately. Things have been pure chaos these past few weeks.”