Tonight the population under the Great Lawn had trebled even as half of the subterranean residents had fled in terror. Vampires and Monsters and Weres, oh my!
Except there were no Weres: they had been sent away.
Just as well. If I was to believe my beloved's dire warnings, I could well be fighting a battle on two separate fronts when they returned.
Our entrance to the cavernous ballroom went unnoticed. The lights had been dimmed and images were playing out on a large screen at the far end of the room.
Familiar images.
The monstrous creature with the steel fangs was frozen in mid stride, bashing its way into my dining room. A small readout of numbers designating the date and time was displayed in the lower left-hand corner. It was a freeze frame from my home's video security system.
"Best estimates put the creature's height somewhere between eight and nine feet," a woman's voice was saying, "its weight somewhere in the twelve to fifteen hundred pound range." Her voice emerged from speakers all around the chamber so it took me a moment to locate her up on the dais, standing behind a podium to the right of the screen. "A cybernetic organism, or cyborg, it appears to be a reengineered human. Surgical enhancements are confirmed. Genetic enhancements are presumed though we are waiting to obtain tissue samples for confirmation."
There was something about the woman—even at a distance—that seemed strangely familiar. I moved forward to get a better look, pushing at my forward guard to break a path through the crowd.
"In addition to steel and Kevlar implants and skeletal augmentation, the creature may have had its strength and reflexes artificially enhanced. As you can see from selected portions of the security video, it is as fast as it is strong."
On the screen a series of herky-jerky edits showed it selectively taking out my security personnel as well as my home's structural architecture.
"Even though the creature killed one vampire and three humans and injured another vampire with ridiculous ease . . . your Doman managed to defeat it single-handedly . . ."
I was pissed off to find security video from my home being shown to a bunch of strangers, some of whom were heavily invested in getting rid of me. And I was grieved to see a replay of the deaths it had caused, particularly that of The Kid.
And I was majorly annoyed that Deirdre and Suki's parts in the battle were largely left out.
But I had to admit I was impressed with the spin.
The editing of the video and the narration worked to underscore the monster's invulnerability and then my parts were intercut to make me appear heroic and invincible. Either Kurt had just discouraged the next assassination attempt or he had convinced my enemies to multiply their efforts by ten.
"And so," the speaker was concluding, "there is an unknown entity in the game, which has moved against the interests of New York. We are fortunate to have a Doman who has experience in dealing with what even we would call the unusual and extraordinary!"
The audience response to that seemed evenly split between the mutterers and the murmurers.
"The Doman has authorized a one-million-dollar reward for information leading to the identity and location of this mysterious Dr. Pipt."
Deirdre leaned toward my ear and whispered: "Does that include me? I've done some more research."
"Research?" I whispered back. Given the background noise, whispering was easier to hear than muttering or murmuring.
"I've read more of The Patchwork Girl of Oz."
"And?"
"Am I eligible for the reward?"
I shrugged. "I didn't even know there was a reward until just now. But I don't see why not."
She nodded. "Well, I found out that this Dr. Pipt gave away a whole batch of his Powder of Life to Mombi the Witch in exchange for a Powder of Perpetual Youth. Only the Powder of Youth was a fraud. It didn't work."
"Of course."
"So Pipt had to make more powder—Powder of Life, that is, since he had given it all away to the old witch."
"And what did she do with her portion?"
"Made Jack Pumpkinhead, for one."
"And how does any of this relate to the real Dr. Pipt?"
She looked at me. "I don't know. Yet. I'm still researching."
"By reading an old Oz book?"
"It beats what you've been doing this afternoon."
I was spared having to come up with a reply by a blaring introduction from the sound system. "And now I'd like to introduce the new Doman of the New York demesne, Christopher Cséjthe!"
Showtime: the queen is dead, long live the king.
The security team hustled me up on stage and I was escorted to the microphone. The podium gave me the illusion of a shield. Likewise the two large bodyguards flanking me to either side. A large, Plexiglas screen served as both a teleprompter and a bulletproof barrier for my upper torso. The only way I could've been better protected was to have addressed the crowd from another room. I looked down at the audience. Anyone harboring thoughts of taking me out right here, right now, could see the futility of making such an attempt. They would either be exposed or need to use something that could harm the other occupants of the room, thus negating the political advantage of such an act.
I pulled the microphone out of its cradle on the stand and stepped around the podium. "Go sit down, boys," I said to my bodyguards, "I won't be needing you in this room."
The guards were in a quandary: Kurt had given them specific orders to be all over me like white on rice. Yet, their Doman was giving them a direct counterorder. And to disobey me in front of the clans was as dangerous to me as it was to them. I helped resolve matters by giving them a little mental nudge. They stumbled out of my way.
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," I said as I walked to the center of the dais. "I think I'll dispense with the teleprompters. If a leader can't speak from his own heart, he shouldn't presume to speak for anyone else, either. And I don't think I want anything to come between me and you. If we can't work in harmony, bulletproof glass and armored barriers aren't going to solve the problem."
Kurt was hovering stage-left looking positively apoplectic. He shouldn't have been surprised. It was no secret by now that I was no good at following other people's scripts.
"I apologize for not coming to New York sooner but I have had other business to attend to." I paused. "Part of the delay has been due to unscheduled visitors interrupting my work. While the mysterious Dr. Pipt sent this most recent emissary, there have been other intrusions as well. Some by representatives of people within this very room."
The mutter-mutter/murmur-murmur volume rose to a new level. I let it build and then pulled the microphone in close for more volume.
"I must admit I was amused by the first seven attempts on my life—" Actually that was a lie but the first rule of intimidation is to never let them see you sweat. My smile turned into a frown. "—but my patience has its limits and I find that I am no longer inclined to be so tolerant. Any further assassination attempts will be dealt with harshly. With penalties assessed for the clan and family as well as the perpetrator." The mutters and murmurs had faded away. "I just want to make sure that we're clear on this point before continuing."
A tall, aristocratic-looking vampire was standing at the edge of the stage, his handsome features framed by a silky mane of chestnut hair that fell past his shoulders. He stood head and shoulders above the crowd and was able to lean an elegantly cuffed arm across the edge of the elevated platform without stretching. "I have a question," he said politely.
I stepped closer and said, "Yes?" And lowered the microphone to make his query audible to the room.
"If I kill you," he said, reaching out and grabbing my ankle, "how will you enforce that?" He yanked and I fell backwards. The back of my head smacked the stage and I was as momentarily stunned as my security team. He dragged me into his embrace and his mouth was on my throat before anyone else could take a single step.
He didn't just bite me; he tore my throat open with hi
s razored teeth: it was his best hope of killing me before anyone else could reach him.
It hurt like hell and probably would have hurt a lot more if I hadn't been coasting on the edge of shock. As it was, the pain seemed to revive me and I began to struggle. Not that struggling was going to do me a lot of good. As I've pointed out before, I'm no match for a full-fledged vampire in either the strength or the speed department. The word had gotten around and this guy knew it. I felt a gush of blood and his mouth was on my wounds, greedily slurping all the high octane Doman blood he could suck down.
Maybe he was too greedy: he started to choke on the third swallow. As his mouth came away, I licked my palm and slapped my hand over the bloody gash on my neck. My assailant released me and it was all I could do to keep from falling to the floor like a sack of spilled groceries. The stage was against my back and helped to prop me up. The crowd pressed in on either side, cutting off my escape routes and providing additional support. And my attacker was in front of me. I wasn't about to fall down because I had no intention of getting any closer to him than I was now, total exsanguination or not. I locked my knees, kept a tight grip on my neck with my left hand, and waved at the thickening haze with my right.
Then the screaming started.
It started all around me but it was the loudest just in front of me.
I waved my hand all the more, trying to fan the smoke aside to see what was going on. My attacker stumbled against me and it was suddenly obvious why there was both smoke and screaming.
His face was gray and black, his mouth a bubbling ruin. White-and-gray fumes issued from his lips, vented from festering sores on his throat, and leaked from a growing red-and-gray stain on his shirt above his cummerbund. His eyes were bulging in their sockets, reflecting a kaleidoscope of confusion, fear, and pain beyond imagining. His hands gripped the folds of my jacket. "It . . . burns . . ." he wheezed, more noxious vapors issuing from his scorched mouth.
Powerful pairs of hands grasped my shoulders and hauled me back up onto the stage. My attacker held on with a death grip and came along for the ride. We were pried apart and he fell back on the stage where he writhed and moaned.
Kurt pushed through the semicircle of security people and threw an arm around me. "Let's get you out of here."
I shook my head. I had lost a lot of blood but I could feel my accelerated healing factors kicking in. I might still pass out but I probably wouldn't bleed to death now. "Not yet." I nodded at the dying vampire. "Who is he?"
"Yuler Polidori."
"The Polidori Clan?"
He nodded.
Oh great. I carefully bent down and retrieved the microphone cord, pulling the mike toward me. It wasn't easy using just one hand. A bodyguard assisted. "Yuler," I said, kneeling over the writhing vampire, "Yuler Polidori. Who is your master?"
"No . . . man . . ." he gasped, "no . . . man . . . is my . . . master . . ."
In other words, not some fangless wimp who was a pretender to the throne of the New York demesne.
"Then who is your Sire?"
He shook his head. "I acted . . . alone . . . saw . . . my chance . . . took it . . . no plan . . . kill me . . ."
I looked at Kurt. "Can he be saved?"
Kurt stared down with a face of stone. "What would be the point? This one would not talk."
An alpha vampire with close-cropped gray hair shouldered his way through the crowd and leapt onto the stage. The security team moved toward him but Kurt waved them back. "Friederich," he said.
"Domo Cséjthe," Friederich Polidori said, inclining his head to me.
I gave him a slight nod in return. I was afraid that if I moved my head any more than that, I would reopen my jugular.
"I am mortified, my lord. Yuler has always been wild and headstrong but I never suspected him capable of treasonous behavior. Had I had any inkling, I would have killed him myself."
Funny. It was a nice little apology but curiously flat in the sincerity department. An accomplished liar might have put too much emotion into the speech, punctuating his sentences with exclamation marks. Polidori recited the words without any inflection, as if reading cue cards in an emotionless monotone. Then I got a look at his eyes and felt the prickle in my parietal lobes: ole Freddy was trying to glamour me. He was putting all of his efforts into sugarcoating the message telepathically.
I turned to my seneschal, who looked a little unfocused himself. "Isn't that a little odd, Kurt?"
"Hmm? What?"
"That a Sire doesn't know what his Spawn is thinking?"
"That is true," he answered, his gaze hardening.
I turned back to Polidori. "A clan leader knows he has a hotheaded Spawn who has positioned himself right next to the stage where the new Doman is going to speak? A Doman who has been the target of repeated assassination attempts by powerful foes within the enclave, itself? Who then attempts to use mental domination on the Doman and his First while trying to offer an embarrassment of an excuse?"
"It appears to have all of the markings of a conspiracy," Kurt growled. There was apparently no love lost between the Polidori and Szekely clans.
"On the other hand," I continued, "it may be nothing more than a series of errors in judgment. Of course, for the head of a clan, so many mistakes and misjudgments could spell ruin for the families that follow him—even if he was loyal and true."
Polidori scowled. He was angry that a member of his family had been caught in the act of trying to assassinate me. Perhaps he was angry that the attempt failed. He was certainly unhappy to be dressed down in such a manner. But what probably pissed him off the most was the fact that the microphone was still on and our little exchange had been overheard by everyone in the room.
Perhaps he was tempted to attack me, himself.
And perhaps the grisly result of the last attempt that smoked and bubbled at his feet was giving him pause.
"My lord—let me be the instrument of your vengeance."
"What? Oh, I see. You wish to prove your loyalty by killing one of your own who is suffering and likely to die anyway." I shook my head. "That is no gift to me."
"Doubtless it would safeguard any secrets you might wish to keep," Kurt observed.
Stay out of this, I sent to my majordomo.
He glanced at me, a flicker of surprise appearing and disappearing across his stony face.
"Here is my gift to you and your clan, Polidori: I give Yuler back to you alive. I give him to you with the charge to keep him alive." If "alive" was the proper term for an undead. "Heal him as best you can. That will be your apology and gift to me. Your clan's atonement is to heal Yuler."
Friederich Polidori was aghast. Well, technically, he was a "ghast" anyway. But this was so outside the pale of his expectations that he didn't know how to respond.
"I shall expect a progress report when we meet again tomorrow night."
"Tomorrow? But our appointment is for to—"
"Tonight. I know. I'm rescheduling you for tomorrow."
"But we are first! This is an insult!"
There was no way I could outdominate a master vampire. The best I could do was take a tone with him. "No, Fred; this is an insult," I said, pointing at the gurgling, hissing Yuler. "And he's going to occupy your attention for the remainder of the evening. Now, do you need help getting him back to your domicile?"
He seemed to come to a decision. "No."
I almost said: "No . . . what?" but maybe I needed to cut Polidori some slack. And maybe I also needed to not push my luck past the breaking point.
He turned and his clan moved as one toward the stage. As Yuler was lifted down and carried toward an exit he turned back to me, clicked his heels and executed a short bow. "Until tomorrow, Domo."
"Buh-bye, Fred." Well, some pushing is instinctual . . .
As he strode away, head held high, a haughty expression frozen on his aristocratic countenance, Kurt leaned in and whispered, "We can reschedule all of tonight's appointments."
"Don't be sill
y," I murmured. "Just push back my appointments an hour or so. I need to clean up and replace a couple of gallons of blood, that's all."
I walked back to the podium with Kurt and a half-dozen security personnel hovering around me like the Marines bent on raising the flag on Iwo Jima. "Sit down, gentlemen," I said pleasantly.
They looked at each other as if I had just asked them to do headstands.
"Sit down," I said pointedly. I had to make the fact that I was still on my feet work for me or I would be resting permanently before the night was over.
They returned to their seats and the standing posts just offstage.
"Now then," I said, turning back to the audience, "where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?"
"You were saying," answered a woman's voice from the floor, "that 'any further assassination attempts will be dealt with harshly. With penalties assessed for the clan and family as well as the perpetrator'."
There was a ripple of nervous laughter that turned to murmurs (no mutters) as I turned away from the podium and went down the steps from the dais back to the floor again. A conga line of bodyguards scurried after me as the crowd hurriedly parted and I made my way to the dark-skinned woman who had just spoken. She appeared to be a mix of Eurasian and Negroid stock and her accent suggested that she might be a recent immigrant to these shores. She stood her ground as I arrived, refusing to take a step back as I walked right up and into her face. Neither of us spoke and the room fell silent. I removed my hand from my throat. Blood oozed in a sluggish trickle from tears that were already on their way to forming pink weals. Reaching out, I cupped her chin with my right hand and put my left behind her head.
"What—" she finally said, and I suddenly wrenched her head from her shoulders before she could speak a second word.
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