Habeas Corpses

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  Before I could find out about the benefits there was another knock at the bedroom door and Deirdre started to come in. "You forgot to pack your—" She stopped as she took in the tableau. Her face colored in stark contrast to the feminine snow sculpture lying across my lap.

  "I thought you might need—that is, I brought . . ." She walked quickly forward and handed me a familiar inlaid wooden box. "Here. Bon appetit." She turned and left as hurriedly as decorum would permit.

  I opened the box as the door closed behind her.

  "What is it?" Bethany asked.

  "My teeth," I answered as I pulled the fanged dental appliance out of its velvet-lined case.

  "They told me that you didn't have—that you weren't fully transformed. There's a small knife in the bedside drawer if you would prefer."

  I looked at the ivory points in my hand and then down at Bethany, her head thrown back, her neck a creamy arch of pale flesh and blue veins, her small breasts pulled taut and flat like a boy's.

  What the hell was I doing here?

  It was hard to think when I was so very, very thirsty!

  Her snow-white hand took the fangs from my untanned but darker palm. She began to hum as she drew the twin points across her throat. Her skin was not broken but two faint, parallel red lines followed in their wake. She turned her head and drew the teeth up the side of her neck . . . and then back down again.

  "Bethany . . ." I said hoarsely.

  She dragged the incisors down over her chest, across her breasts until a sharpened tooth caught on a nipple. It rose, tumescent, a pinkish pencil eraser, and a drop of blood formed, like crimson mother's milk.

  I snatched the fangs back and hurriedly set them in my mouth. To delay now was to risk a dangerous loss of self-control: I slid an arm beneath her and raised her snowy neck to my icicled mouth.

  * * *

  Bethany was subdued when she left. I soon found out why.

  Chef appeared as I was cleaning up. He knocked hesitantly and I found him standing nervously, fingering his white hat, as I emerged from the bathroom. "Yes?"

  "Did the master find his selection to his taste?"

  "What?"

  "You ordered AB negative."

  "Yes. Bethany. Well." To my taste? The truth of the matter was I had not yet come to note the differences in blood and donor types to be any kind of a gourmand. Part of me was still not over the ick factor. And, until recently, I had only required small amounts of blood on an irregular basis. But Bethany had tasted . . . different. How much of that was the blood and how much the vessel?

  "Bethany is one of the rarest flowers in our hothouse," he continued.

  "I know. AB negs constitute only one percent of the population."

  "Oh, she's rarer than that. Bethany's also a Lutheran."

  I was trying to figure out what her religious affiliation had to do with anything when the antigen association clicked into place. "LU-a or -b?"

  "A."

  I whistled. "That makes her a double neg!"

  "Then you know what I'm talking about?"

  "Hey, when you find out you have a rare blood disorder, you tend to do the research. Lutheran, Kell, Lewis, Duffy, Kidd, Fisher—even some of the antigen classifications that just use the alphabet. LU-b is rare enough; LU-a drops her off the population charts and onto the Endangered Species list."

  He nodded. "All of our consensual donors are precious to us. We treat them well and make sure the symbiotic relationship is a rewarding one. I think you can see why an exotic like Bethany is particularly special in our eyes . . ."

  "And upon our palettes," I said. "Now, I know I'm the new boss and most of the staff is anxious to mind their p's and q's—but you really need to stop beating around the bush and get to the point. What seems to be the problem?"

  "Well, that is . . ."

  "Come on, I don't bite." I felt a bead of moisture at the corner of my mouth, touched it with my finger, and looked at the remnant of Bethany's blood on the tip: I had missed a spot.

  "Well, it's just that she seemed dissatisfied as she was heading back to her quarters."

  "Dissatisfied?"

  "Master . . ."

  I flinched inwardly. It was a hateful appellation and far too reminiscent of really bad, two-a.m.-on-the-telly monster movies. I forbade anyone to use it in my presence back home. Kurt, however, had repeatedly impressed upon me the need to establish my dominant status here. Reform, he argued, was best administered from a position of strength.

  " . . . it is just understood that the donor will be pleasured in exchange for the wine of their body."

  I stared at him. "Pleasured . . ."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You mean, have sex with her?"

  "Only if you wanted to, master."

  I frowned. "Well, I didn't want to. So, I didn't. So, what's the problem?"

  "The problem, sir, is that she didn't enjoy it." He bowed his head. "I'm terribly sorry, sir."

  "Well, why should she enjoy it? I put my teeth into her flesh and drank her blood! Being on the receiving end is not my idea of a good time. But I did try to be as gentle as possible and stop that bowing and cringing! I'm not going to kill the messenger." Unless he continued to drag this conversation into further obfuscation, that is.

  "Well, some do engage in physical coupling while feeding . . . and there are some donors who relish the pain, the restraints, the slow, excruciating—"

  "Yeah, I get the picture. So what does Bethany expect in return? What's her kink?"

  He looked up at me, his face blank with astonishment. "Didn't you read her?"

  "Read her what? A menu? A bedtime story?"

  "You entered her throat without entering her mind?"

  Oh.

  "Master?" he inquired after a painfully long silence.

  "Chef, please send for Bethany and tell her to return to my quarters. Tell her I was . . . tell her I will . . ."

  "You cannot drink from her again, this day, unless you mean to bring her over."

  "I won't." Another file drawer opened in the back of my head. "Chef," I asked as he turned to go, "does part of Bethany's contract include the promise that she will be turned someday?"

  "But of course," he said, hesitating at the doorway, "and therein lies another reason to treat the donors with special care. For if you mistreat them while they are still human, what sort of monsters will they be when you finally give them like power over others?"

  * * *

  Nearly a half hour into Bethany's orgasm there was a knock at the door.

  "Come," I called, careful not to take my hand away from the small of her back.

  Dennis Smirl walked into my field of view. "What are you doing?" the Chicago shapeshifter asked, looking first at me lying on the bed and then at Bethany sitting primly on the side, fully clothed and facing away from me.

  "Tipping the waitress."

  He circled around where he could see her vacant, empty stare. He took in the perspiration that misted up from the white flame that burned beneath her skin, the tremors, the clenching and unclenching of her hands, and then listened to the soft gasps and quiet moans that punctuated the paragraphs of silence.

  "What is she seeing?"

  I shrugged, careful again not to break physical contact. "I'm not a mind reader, yet. I can make suggestions. Force them, if necessary, through mental domination. And my psionic influence is greater if there's a blood-bond, even if it's only a one-way sharing. I'm not really privy to Bethany's fantasy life. I just probed a little to find her pleasure centers and she seemed happy to have me stimulate them."

  He grinned. "Probed, huh?"

  "Talking above the eyebrows, Dennis. What are you doing here?"

  "Do you mean here in New York or here in your bedroom?"

  "Both, actually. Though it looks like you're attempting psy-coitus interruptus at the moment."

  "Well," he said, pulling up a chair, "as you may have heard, a new Doman is being elevated to the throne of the New York demesne
and all the other enclaves are sending representatives to the ceremony—"

  "Or bloody coup."

  He nodded as he sat. "Obviously, whoever sits on the throne when the dust settles will be a power to reckon with. So, there're going to be a number of ambassadors lining up to reckon, negotiate, and curry favor. I'm just presuming on our friendship to push my way to the front of the line."

  I nodded. "And?"

  "And," he reached inside his suit coat and pulled out a thick envelope, "my Doman sends this with his compliments. He hopes you will find the information useful and will remember Chicago favorably in any future business dealings."

  "What is it?"

  "Intel on your enemies."

  I broke contact as I reached for the package. Bethany fell back across my lap with a gasp as I took the envelope and opened it. There were thirty or forty pages, typewritten, all on very thin, slick-feeling sheets.

  "Flash paper," Smirl said as Bethany heaved and thrashed a bit. "A match, a candle flame—and the evidence is all gone." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that!"

  Bethany sat up, startled at her emergence from the interior world to the exterior.

  "Just in case I don't come out on top," I observed.

  "Might be safer for you if your enemies don't find it in your possession."

  "Yeah, that's Chicago, the city of altruism."

  "I wouldn't be comparing urban reputations if I were you."

  "Where am I?" Bethany gasped.

  "New York, New York," I said, "it's a hell of a town."

  Chapter Ten

  I read over the material and tucked it away before Kurt returned for my briefing. If I could trust the intel—and there were at least a half-dozen reasons why I shouldn't—my best hope lay in playing the various families against one another. The pages contained psychological profiles of both known and suspected leaders as well as lists of closeted skeletons, literal as well as figurative. It was a blackmailer's dream.

  This wasn't what I signed up for, however.

  I wasn't risking my neck to be monster-in-chief like Vlad Dracula or Elizabeth Báthory. Maybe it was a fool's pipe dream but, if I had to rule through terror and bloodshed, I might as well turn the reins over to the rest of the fiends. Unfortunately, idealistic missions to change the system all too often end with the system changing the idealist. What shall it profit a man that he gain the whole underworld but lose his own soul?

  But then, I hardly thought of myself as an idealist any more.

  Kurt, ignorant of my Chicago cheat-sheet, provided much of the same background material, drawing most of the same conclusions in terms of viable strategies: undermine the strong, elevate the weak, divide and conquer. And the iron glove for my hand of power would be the Szekely Clan who had historically served as the demesne enforcers and was presumably loyal to me.

  Through Kurt.

  Who was most concerned with my positions on the issues. He kept pressing me for details on what I would tell the various clans and ambassadors when tonight's meet and greet began.

  He was not alone in his concerns. By signing on as the new ringmaster for this circus of the damned, I was gambling that mostly human me was still the best chance for the rest of humanity. Better, anyway, than something whose blood had cooled to below room temperature. But mostly human me wasn't as human as I'd been a few months ago. And getting less human as time went on. How much longer would I remain a preferable choice to the other monsters?

  What would happen when my blood cooled sufficiently?

  "You understand," Kurt was saying, "that you simply can't order an entire species to voluntarily starve itself to death."

  "There are blood banks."

  He shook his head slowly. "It has worked in isolated situations, serving a few here and there. You are suggesting soup kitchens to serve hundreds on a nightly basis."

  I planted my elbows on the table and rested my forehead against my palms. "Supply and demand would be problematic. And the volunteer wine cellar—"

  "Even more impractical," he finished for me. "And it's not just logistics and delivery issues. We are, by nature, hunters. Predators. It is our nature and cannot be permanently denied."

  "Yeah, yeah; it's your inalienable right to keep and bare fangs. But the demesne system has managed to restrain that so-called nature. There are laws. There are rules. The demesne sets limits on the hunters as well as on the hunt. You're not even allowed to sire more family members without the Doman's permission."

  "Which the Countess granted quite liberally as long as she was assured of clan loyalty. The rumor is that you intend to impose a policy of zero population growth."

  I rubbed my chin. "Now there's an interesting idea: undead birth control. What other rumors are making the rounds?"

  "Almost anything that you can imagine. The more popular ones suggest you are a 'Sin-eater.' That you will return the dead to life, that you will teach us how to walk in daylight—pseudo-religious nonsense and wishful thinking. The more troubling ones claim that you will take away their rights to hunt and reproduce, that you will free the lupin from their servitude, and that you will trigger the great Apocalypse between the People of the Day and the Clans of the Night."

  "Which reminds me," I said, sidestepping several issues at once. "How come I haven't met any lycanthropes, yet? Are they all on vacation?"

  Kurt's eyebrows raised a couple of millimeters. "How do you know that you haven't?"

  I looked him in the eye, waited the requisite six seconds, and said: "I know." I didn't add that, when you're marrying into the family, you learn to pick up on a number of things the furophobes don't.

  His shoulders twitched in a negligible shrug. "The first three nights are scheduled around meetings with the families, private audiences—nothing pertaining to the underclasses. It was deemed less volatile to send them away until basic issues get sorted out."

  "You mean safer than putting them in the position of having to choose sides in the event that my coronation suddenly goes south."

  Now it was Kurt's turn to give me the long stare. "I think I know you better than most but there is a great deal that I still do not know. I know that you resist violence and abhor killing. I believe that you still feel a greater loyalty to the living than the undead—though I expect that to change with time. I know that you do not seek power and that the only reason that you are here must be to protect the living as best you can.

  "Be careful, Domo. Many are glad that you are not the monster the last Doman was. But even they will turn on you and destroy you if you seek to deny them their nature."

  "Nature, red in tooth and claw? Tennyson spoke of animal nature. Are we not men and, therefore, may rise above animal nature with will and reason?"

  "Are we truly men, Domo? We possess the teeth and claws of the predators. Man does not but even he may echo the poet, red in bomb and bullet. No, my dear Christopher, you may be a kinder, gentler ruler but you must content yourself with what accommodations the clans are ready for. Do not expect evolutionary leaps: you are Doman but you are not God."

  * * *

  The meeting ended with little resolved beyond the fact that long, involved policy decisions should wait until the clans and I had become better acquainted. For Kurt that meant I might be better persuaded of the futility of my vision. For me it meant a chance to peruse the battlefield and scout the enemy for weaknesses.

  For both of us it meant avoiding major unpleasantness for just a little bit longer.

  To that end, I put off asking more nosey questions, such as how the enclave acquired its immense wealth.

  No question I had stepped off of the high ground and was wading into a moral morass. If there was a path between losing my life and losing my soul it was a very narrow and convoluted one. Too bad I hadn't the opportunity to have said a proper goodbye to Lupé before coming here to play the part of Napoleon Custer at the Little Waterloo.

  As I adjusted my cummerbund and checked my tux in the mirror I felt something brush
against my leg. I looked down and saw a tan-and-brown cat. It might have passed for a Burmese breed except for one thing—if its possessing two tails counted as "one" thing.

  I reached down and picked her up. She was heavy for a cat. "Hello, Suki; long time no meow." She purred as I scratched her behind her ears. "Let me guess. You have nothing to wear?"

  "Actually, she thought she could serve you better in cat form," Deirdre said from the doorway. "She'll dress if you prefer." Deirdre wore a green satin gown which, with her red hair, made her look all Christmassy and like an elegant present ready to be opened on an intimate holiday eve.

  I set the two-tailed cat down on the bed. "A man always feels that he has more status if there are two beautiful women on his arm." The cat purred loudly. "But I fear I would be twice as distracted and I am already distracted enough."

  "Oh my." The redhead sauntered over and took my arm. "You're very good at this diplomacy thing! You honey-tongued devil, you!"

  "That's silver-tongued devil," I corrected as we started toward the door and a waiting army of bodyguards. The cat jumped off the bed and padded along behind us.

  "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Chris. I know a sweet tongue when I taste it . . ."

  I had no comeback. As far as Lupé was concerned, I was a silver-tongued devil.

  And all of the connotations were negative.

  * * *

  A phalanx of security types—some even human—escorted us to an underground ballroom several city blocks away. My best guess was that we were under Central Park now.

  Over the previous century and a half some eight-hundred-and-forty-three acres between 59th and 110th Street had been repeatedly dug up and laced with a succession of conduits, tunnels, chambers, and underground passages for channeling a succession of lakes, lagoons, aquifers, flood plains, water supplies, fountains, telephone cables, electrical conduits, and maintenance access routes. As new landscaping projects were developed, old drains and tunnels were closed for new channeling systems. At present there were more forgotten and unused channels under the park and museum than there were official passageways on the current city blueprints. Stories were told and legends grew about what might creep through the subterranean paths beneath the city. Truth be told, the stories averaged out to be half right. There were few beauties but many beasts. And, while there were no such things as Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, there was a monster under Greenwich Village that the inhabitants had nicknamed "Shredder."