Staked

by J. F. Lewis

  It was selfish and dumb and any number of things, but none of that mattered. I needed her. She made me feel like I was in control, or at least in control of being out of control.

  And yet, if I was very still, I could sense an inner conflict. Deep down, I knew that being with Rachel was a loss of control, even if it did seem to bring momentary calming of my inner storm.

  A little voice inside me told me otherwise. It argued that if I could maintain control of my emotions, even if I lost control to Rachel in the process, then I had an advantage. That didn’t make any sense, but the harder I tried to think about it, to analyze it, the murkier it became, as if my thoughts were being deliberately clouded.

  The only reason I could come up with for the werewolves spiking the blood supply in the Demon Heart was that they wanted me out of my mind, needed me to go berserk.

  If I wanted to stop them, then I not only had to maintain control, I also needed the help of a human who could handle herself when it came to the supernatural, someone who could walk around in the sunshine. Rachel certainly seemed like the best woman for the job. I was going to have to be careful not to feed off of her for the next few days, though. I normally had a once-a-week rule for feeding on my girls, to help them stave off anemia, and I’d already violated that with Rachel.

  Before I let myself fall asleep, I checked the time on the wall clock. It was a quarter to four. I shook my head and rolled out of bed. Time was getting away from me and I hadn’t even checked my messages yet.

  I went into my office, took the paper out of my pocket, and followed Talbot’s instructions. I had five voice mails. The first was from Talbot and dealt with the Mustang. There was a message from Carl that told me how long fixing the Mustang would take and how much it would cost. He wanted me to call him on Monday and let him know what to do. I fast-forwarded through the details. The cost didn’t matter. Fixing the Mustang was imperative.

  Message number three was from Roger. “Hey, pal. Sorry about ditching you back at the game, but I’m betting you had it handled. I dropped Rachel off at the Pollux, but listen: a pack of werewolves jumped Veruca and she’s all freaked out. I’m going over there now to see if she’s okay. She’s a slow healer, so I’m going to give her another few nights off. She can’t dance with claw marks all over her. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

  The last two messages took me by surprise. I listened to them one after the other and then sat down at my desk and listened to them again. The first one was from Kyle.

  “No one answered at the club, Pops, so I guess something is going down. Just had a weird feeling and thought I should check in. You didn’t close the club, did you? I think Greta would have let me know, but you know how she is when she’s mad, so if it happened, you know, recently or something, then I understand why she wouldn’t tell me, because you know, she’s busy and everything, being mad and all, but if it isn’t that maybe you could call me back, because I’ve been getting these freaky phone calls from a guy named William. He said he’s coming for me and I kinda want to know what it’s about because—”

  Crashing sounds and shattering glass interrupted him; I could hear a scuffle and growling. Werewolves. Kyle never screamed, but I heard him die. It was a whooshing rush of air. Drones always turn to dust when they die. It sounds just like that. Soldiers usually turn to dust as well, but beyond that it’s all based on power level, as if a vamp’s extra power bought better special effects. Kyle had been a Drone; no special effects for him.

  As I listened to the recording, I could tell when one of the werewolves picked up the phone. “You and your vampire whore have a lot to answer for, dead boy,” he said. “You killed my son. You and your bitch killed eight more out at the lake. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to smell your stench through hers? I was willing to negotiate, but you don’t get that chance anymore. I’m coming for you. I’m going to tear down your unholy family and wipe your allies from the face of the earth. You, your unholy spawn, your den of immorality, even the humans that you’ve tainted with your presence will be wiped clean. Amen.” Damn werewolves.

  The last message was from Greta wanting to know why she’d just had to kill three werewolves. She gave me her new cell number and asked me to call her soon. Greta was a Vlad, like me. Three werewolves were no problem for her.

  Kyle’s death was more of a relief than anything else. Just because I hadn’t killed him myself didn’t mean that I was a big fan. He had just been too stupid to bother killing. What irked me was the part about my “bitch” killing people out at the lake. It couldn’t have been Greta because she’d said three werewolves, not eight; and anyway, she’d have let me out of the sleeping bag. It couldn’t have been Tabitha, because she had been with Talbot, and, well, the werewolves would’ve won that fight.

  I slapped my palm into my forehead. “I am so fucking stupid!”

  Froggy. Veruca didn’t have an alibi for last night or for the night before. She had constant access to the break room fridge, and could easily have spiked my blood supply. Veruca wouldn’t have been fast enough to unstake me and run, but—an image of a frog hopping away from the driver’s side door of the truck flashed up in my mind’s eye—she was definitely fast enough to unstake me, turn into a frog, and slowly hop away while I wandered around like a jackass trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It had to be her, but how had she managed to kill eight werewolves by herself?

  The silver bullets. They certainly would have evened the odds. If Magbidion had been right (and I had no reason to doubt him) all it took was a single bullet to kill a normal werewolf, to steal its soul. With six bullets, she could have killed six werewolves and only had to fight the other two. I may make fun of her for only being able to turn into a frog, but she’s a mean little fighter. She’s fast for a Soldier, and she has claws. She could believably have taken on two werewolves.

  She’d covered up her scent or maybe I’d missed it, but werewolves have a better sense of smell than vampires. William’s phone call meant that he hadn’t been fooled, which put him one up on me. The only thing that bothered me was why she’d left one of the bullets behind for me to find. Had she been in a hurry? Had trouble finding the last bullet? It didn’t seem that way. It felt purposeful.

  I picked up the phone and called Talbot on his cell. When I told him about Veruca, he agreed that it was possible, even likely. I told him about Kyle, too.

  “Sure sounds like he’s dead,” Talbot allowed.

  “Par for the course, I guess.”

  “Are you going to call Roger?” Talbot asked the question carefully, not wanting to imply anything. He knew how long we’d been friends. Just because Roger’s girlfriend was mixed up in all this didn’t mean Roger’d been in on it too. He’d been with me at the hockey rink when the werewolves had attacked. Sure, he had run away, but he’d just been taking care of Rachel. I still hadn’t told him about Brian…how was I going to tell him my suspicions about Froggy?

  “Not yet. Look, I gotta go. Be careful, Talbot.”

  Grunting his assent, he hung up.

  I still needed to call Greta, but couldn’t think of what to say. She hadn’t done anything wrong, exactly, but I had sent her away. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, even though she thought of me as her father. She also called me Dad; one more reason I had come to find her presence disturbing. Greta looked up to me and genuinely cared about me, which always makes me want to push people away. There was also her eating problem. Compulsive eaters make bad vampires.

  I played back her message and scribbled the number down on a piece of paper. The number stared at me. I stared back. My finger finally punched in the digits and to my relief, my call went straight to voice mail. “This is…this is Dad. Head over to the Pollux. I’ll explain about the werewolves and then we can go kill their boss…or talk things over with him…or whatever. Oh, and you may know about your brother already, but they got him. Fuck. I don’t know. Just come to the Pollux.” I carried the handset into the bedroom and
set it on the floor by the bed before climbing under the covers and snuggling up with Rachel.

  Maybe Tabitha and Talbot would end Froggy, tell Roger about Brian, and make peace with William while I slept. That would be nice.

  17

  TABITHA:

  FINDING FROGGY

  Moving on four legs had been uncomfortable at first, but now that I was getting used to it, the warmth and the heartbeat were addictive. I changed into a cat as soon as we got into Talbot’s Jag XKR and stayed that way for the whole trip to West Side.

  West Side is all high-end apartment buildings and high-rise businesses. Roger’s apartment was in the Highland Towers. You couldn’t even get near the parking garage without an ID and a pass card. Talbot parked on the street and I forced myself to get out of the car, abandoning the comfort of the soft leather seats.

  “This is it,” Talbot said. “The trail leads right to the front door.”

  “How can you tell?” I meowed.

  “The eyes of a cat see things the eyes of a human can’t,” he answered mysteriously. “Can’t you see it? It’ll be easier to spot when we get closer.”

  With Talbot leading the way, we walked over to the security gate. Actually, I sauntered. If I squinted and held my head just right, I could see the thin blue line from the bullet, brighter now that we were close to the source.

  The Highland Towers loomed before us. I’d never been to the high-rise before, never even driven past it. Close up, it looked huge and imposing, a building that would have been more at home in Gotham City, very noir.

  “Somebody’s compensating,” I meowed.

  “Most of these people don’t need to compensate. It’s a status symbol to live here. That’s probably one of the reasons Roger picked this place. Roger is conscious of appearances; it’s why he keeps trying to get Eric to close the Demon Heart. His pals in the upper crust probably bust his balls on a regular basis about being a partner in a strip club.”

  I could smell the security guard even before we reached his booth. A few steps later, I paused in the street. Three faces leapt into my brain, and I yowled, hackles rising. No one had warned me about seeing things in my head. At least, I think they were in my head. They hovered like phantoms, or effects in a 3-D movie, right in front of my nose, but when I swatted at the images, my paw passed through them.

  There were two men and a woman. The woman was gorgeous, blond hair hanging down to the middle of her back. Her body was soft and curvy like Marilyn Monroe’s. She dressed like one of those old-school movie starlets and she felt old, lots older than me, like she’d seen the passing of centuries, even though we appeared to be physically the same age. She noticed me, and I got the feeling that my presence irked her. I knew why, too. She was less powerful than me. I can’t describe how I knew; I could just feel it in my gut.

  As my attention shifted, the woman vanished and the first man came into better focus. He was good-looking, but he was dressed more than a decade out of style. It looked good on him, but still, his friends ought to tell him to update his wardrobe. He was old, vampirically, but not as ancient as the actress. I was more powerful than him, too. He seemed startled by my age and power. I actually caught a glimpse of myself in his mind. He saw me as a cat and he couldn’t quite tell whether I was a boy or a girl. It unnerved him, and he seemed relieved when my attention moved on to the third and final image.

  The other man was short, fat, and balding. He felt just as powerful as me. Physically, I guessed he had been in his fifties when he had been turned, but he hadn’t been a vampire very long—maybe thirty years or so. He smiled at me when I sensed him, spread his arms and gave a short bow. “A pleasure,” he whispered in my mind and then vanished from the air as the others had, but before I was done examining him. It was less like I had dismissed him and more like he’d dismissed me.

  I blinked rapidly, clearing my head. I was still standing in my cat form in the middle of the street. Looking up, I saw Talbot, arms outstretched, blocking traffic, so I darted up onto the sidewalk. He followed me and the cars moved on, their drivers cursing angrily.

  “Next time, I might let you get run over,” Talbot muttered.

  “What the hell was that?” I meowed. “Who were those people? What where they doing in my head? What was I doing in their heads?”

  I turned human and grabbed Talbot by his jacket. “Talbot, what the hell is going on here?”

  “What people in your head?” he asked. “Tell me exactly what happened.” Concern filled his voice, but he looked more amused than worried.

  “I saw three people: two men and a woman. They were floating right in front of my face, Talbot, like holograms or something!” I shook him once and then let go of him. “Sorry. I…It’s just…I could feel how old they were and whether they were more or less powerful than me…”

  Talbot looked down his nose at me. “Less powerful?”

  “Well, yes. Two of them were less powerful and one of them was the same as me.” That stopped him for a second and then he grinned. I liked the way his teeth seemed to shine in the dark. It wasn’t anything supernatural, just the contrast between his oh-so-white teeth and his dark skin.

  Both of us were too distracted to notice the approaching guard until he announced himself. I didn’t like him. He was too plain. Even though he was a vampire, he had a semivacant look, like he wasn’t awake.

  Talbot turned to respond, but I brushed past him. “What?” I said icily.

  He recoiled from my question like it had been a slap. I wondered if he would rub his cheek. He didn’t, but he did take a step back. Outraged. I was outraged that he had dared to speak to me. That wasn’t like me. Was it spiked blood again? Or transformation sickness? Was I about to lose it? I didn’t feel like I was losing it….

  Talbot started to speak again but I gestured for him to be quiet. “You wanted something,” I said to the guard. “I know you did, because you walked over in the middle of my conversation.” My voice came out louder than I’d meant it to. “So now that you’ve interrupted me, you might as well tell me what you wanted! What is it?”

  He bowed. “My deepest apologies, Lady Bathory. Lord Phillip wishes to invite you and your servant to join him for a drink, if it pleases you. If you are not inclined to join him, then I am to tell you that it is his great hope that you will accept his offer at a later date. I am to await a response.” The words were nice enough, but his delivery was off. He might as well have been reading from a cue card.

  “Why did he call me Lady Bathory?” I asked Talbot.

  “It’s a polite name older vampires use for the female equivalent of a Vlad. Nowadays most vamps use Vlad, regardless of gender, but you might still run into a few vamps who will call you a queen vampire, or Lady Bathory.”

  “Holy shit!” I looked at the security goober. He was waiting patiently, eyes looking at the sidewalk. “Holy shit.” Leaning in closer to Talbot, I whispered, “But I thought you said I was a Soldier or at best a Master.”

  “I thought you were,” he answered softly. “It’s not an exact science.”

  “How does this guy know when you didn’t?”

  “I’m not a vampire.” Talbot touched my arm and the contact surprised me, my skin oversensitive to his. “Phillip is a very influential Vlad.”

  “How influential is very?”

  “This is his city.”

  “So, with a capital ‘V’ then.”

  “All caps,” Talbot confirmed.

  “Right.” The guard was still waiting patiently, gaze politely averted. “Which one is Lord Phillip?” I asked the guard.

  “I’m sorry, Mistress, but I don’t know how to answer that.”

  I sighed. “Is he the tall good-looking one or the little balding fat one?”

  That time I got an incredulous look from the guard, but he covered it up quickly. “What Lord Phillip lacks in height, he makes up for in stature. He is—”

  Talbot took two steps backward.

  “Impressed that you mad
e the effort, Hollister, but it isn’t strictly necessary.” The light tenor voice seemed to come from all directions at once. Mist flowed through the security gate and the little man who had bowed to me in my mind coalesced before us. “I am indeed the little balding fat one.”

  “I am so sorry about that,” I told him.

  “Think nothing of it, Lady—?”

  “Tabitha,” I answered. He took my hand and brought it to his lips.

  “A beautiful name; it has its roots in Hebrew, meaning gazelle. How appropriate.” He released my hand and offered me his arm. I placed my hand on the crook of his elbow so that I wouldn’t have to stoop. Hollister opened the gates for us as Phillip led me toward the building.

  “My name is actually Phillipus,” he continued. “It means friend of horses, though I’ve never much liked them. In recent days, it has behooved me to accept the name Phillip, which both shortens my name and also strengthens, by meaning, my relationship with horses…from friend to lover.”

  “I guess it had to happen eventually,” I offered, not quite knowing what to say.

  Phillip looked at me questioningly. “Well, you know,” I continued, “sometimes when you’ve been friends with someone for a long time, it’s only natural for the relationship to blossom…”

  “Yes, exactly,” my host said with a chuckle, “exactly so.”

  Two glass doors slid open before us. A tingle spread across my skin as I crossed the threshold. Turning my head, I watched Talbot step through the field without incident. “Pay no attention to that annoying ward,” Phillip explained with mild embarrassment. “The less supernaturally adept tenants insist on it for protection. It’s paranoia, if you ask me, but then again, most are not as capable of defending themselves as we are. Are they, my dear?”