I clicked over to my text messages. They were all from Val. Three or four trying to make contact with me and then one about how Ceinwyn had filled her in . . . and how annoyed Val was about it.
The last was: Call me and will come. Love you, stay safe.
Love me?
I typed something in really quick: Still alive, gonna be rich, can’t talk now.
I thought about it but didn’t add “love you too” at the end of it. The idea still scares me too much to mention it, even over something as impersonal as a text.
I’ve almost said the words a hundred times by now.
Still couldn’t.
People I love hurt me. Get hurt by me. They die of madness, they disappear, they end up a werecoyote.
Instead I added: Tell Ceinwyn to stop worrying, I’m fine.
I put the phone away just as Annie B’s dinner arrived, led in by the waitress.
Holy fuckballs.
I used to love ShopsMart as a kid, all the way up until Ceinwyn abducted me to the Asylum. It’s not a store of depth, but if you need something at a moment’s notice then the ShopsMart has it. That’s what is great about the place. Especially for a kid who didn’t ever have to worry about wants, just needs for every hour of the day.
If I had money, then I needed something with it. If I didn’t have money . . . I still needed it, so I stole it. Cigs, candy, chips, drinks, beef jerky, magazines. Whatever you needed to survive the weekend you spent away from home, so you don’t have to deal with your dad belting you when he got drunk.
The ShopsMart back home in Visalia always had a revolving rack of paperback books for sale. Not sure who bought them, know I never gave them a shot—books not being my thing back then—but I used to finger through them when I got tired of perusing the magazines.
These books weren’t fine art of course, just based on the quickest sell possible: a cover.
That’s what I thought of looking at Annie B’s meal—hell, let’s call the guy Meal, even has an ‘M’ stamped on his forehead like a piece of cattle—those books at the ShopsMart. Them romance novels sold for five bucks, cheap as dirt, with a naked dude of bulging muscles strategically placed from the waist up to show off his guns.
Meal would have fit right in.
If you needed someone to play a male sex god . . . he’d be up for the part. Especially since it was real life. Ain’t no edge of the cover to hide the rest of him. And Meal? Naked from the waist down too.
Holy fuckballs.
Literally.
Cuz if those things ain’t fuckballs, then no ball that’s ever been has been a fuckball. And his cock? Not an area of anatomy I’m well studied in outside of my own, but . . . if you wanted to measure it then you’d need to throw out your ruler and find a tape measure, that’s how big this cock was.
Not a stitch of clothing on him, Meal didn’t care. He walked into our private room with a big grin on his face . . . and really, if you had a cock that big you’d grin all the time too. “Sex?” he asked.
“You come at me with that thing and I’m gonna cut it off and beat you with it,” I told him. Mancy knows you could have clubbed a seal with the thing. Fuck, you could have clubbed a whale with the thing.
Meal seemed confused by so many words. He looked to Annie B next. He nodded on seeing her, like it explained something. Maybe he knew Vamps on sight. “Sex?” he asked her enthusiastically.
She still didn’t bother to open her eyes, too tired to bother. “No, dear, just blood.”
Meal nodded again, like that was okay.
Annie B revealed a small silver knife from somewhere.
Meal came forward, took it from her, and sat down in the second chair. “You eat me, I make you better. Then maybe sex.”
I stood from my bench, backing into a corner. I wanted to be as far away as possible from whatever happened next. I couldn’t get over Meal. Not the way he looked—although that thing was large enough that you couldn’t see all of it without turning your head—but the way he acted.
He was a grown man . . . more than a grown man, and yet . . . “What’s two plus two?” I asked him.
“I no understand,” he said, eyes lost. When I didn’t ask a second time he went back to work, cut his hand and then Annie B’s hand with the knife, which he sat down next to him. Blood seeping from his wound, he placed his hand palm up. “Eat,” he told her.
“Is he retarded?” I asked seriously and pretty pissed off about it.
“He has perfectly standard intelligence for his breed,” Annie B whispered. Her hand moved over Meal’s, a bit of blood slime slipping out from her to enter into his wound. Thankfully, she clasped hands with him to hide what was happening. It made her relieved moan of sedation a little less freaky.
“His breed?”
“Moshi’s Stables have a tradition dating back over two-thousand years,” Annie B whispered, pausing to make little noises of contentment occasionally. “The Divine Moshi’s hobby has long been human breeding patterns, but he eventually decided to stop studying and to begin crafting a more suitable replacement. It was an attempt to remove from the Divines the fear of food supply, yet there is artistry to it as well. Sexually appealing, limited intelligence, and a hearty constitution for replacing their blood.
“It took him almost twelve-hundred years to declare victory; even if your species does reproduce rapidly. The need to wait until adulthood to observe the full host of genes in the subjects slowed him down, from what I understand. Since then, it has only been a refinement of his stock. As you can see by our dear guest here: a larger penis than any woman would ever need, higher muscle mass, a pleasant and helpful personality, and . . . the intelligence of a four-year-old.”
I hated her in that moment.
I hated her and the Divines and all of them.
I hated her for myself.
I hated her for Meal.
I hated her for everything she represented.
“Aren’t we pretty monsters, King Henry?” she whispered, still feeding.
Meal didn’t mind.
I suppose he didn’t know better.
It’s what he was made for after all.
After a time of silent feeding, Annie B’s eyes snapped open. She removed her hand from Meal’s grip, patting his forearm. “You’re a good boy, tell your stable master to give you a treat.”
“No sex?” Meal grumbled.
“No sex, dear.”
He pouted his way out of the room, cock swaying back and forth like an elephant’s trunk.
“Do you hate me?” Anne asked.
“Yes,” I told her.
“It is what I am. You do the same to cattle.”
I seethed inside, struggling to keep it invisible to her. I failed. “And if the cattle was smart enough to know about it, they’d burn every Burger King to the ground.”
“Moshi’s stock is only for the Divines, it isn’t something we all indulge,” Annie B explained, finally leaving her chair. She stretched, appearing back at the top of her game.
Blood . . . it does a body good.
“There aren’t enough of them for us all,” she kept explaining, “Moshi keeps the highest quality checks on them. They even have to taste a certain way.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to ask. “How young?”
“Fifteen . . . before that is training and exercise and a careful watch on their diet and growth by caretakers. They work until they’re twenty-five, then five years of breeding. At thirty, they’re either given away to those Moshi wishes to gain favors from . . . or they’re retired.”
Hearing that, I came to a sudden realization.
Healing Anima Madness wasn’t enough.
The world would still be broken.
Annie smiled at me. If only she couldn’t smile like that. I could hate all of them. I could wipe them all out of existence. “Thanks for getting me here,” she said sincerely, “and . . . thanks for not getting me glassed.”
At least she was fed now. I never had
to see Meal again. Poor big-cocked, stupid fucker.
“Feeling better now?” I asked for want of anything else to say.
Her only answer was an open palm strike into my chest that hit me so hard I flew backward and rebounded off the wall behind me. Pretty sure I left a dent behind.
“However, that was for thinking about cutting my head off,” she explained matter of factly.
Yeah . . .
. . . I’d say she’s feeling better.
Session 137
They call it the Great Bank.
I call it the world’s biggest morgue.
Located at yet another floor of the Los Angeles Embassy—the thing was an entire city in its own right I was quickly finding out, perhaps the only bit of permanence to vampire society—it opened into a reception area that had the feel of a 5th Avenue Boutique instead of a doctor’s office.
All those waiting in the seats were pretty and healthy, playing with phones and other high tech gadgetry. No coughing, no stuffy noses. The furniture was equal quality, plush couches of black fabric that in any real, lived in family house with either children or pets would be stained gray and brown within an hour. All colored black and a deep sapphire blue, black carpet, black furniture, blue walls, with blue-tinged lighting not dissimilar to the effect in the Divine Chamber, yet here the effect was of frozen ice and sterile, unchanging death.
“You people think you pay enough on decorators?” I growled Annie B’s way, still pretty unhappy about the last cheapshot.
“One can’t put a price on style, King Henry,” she mocked, true to her words once again falling into the personality of a spiteful ex now that she wasn’t starving to death. “Not all of us put a premium on how many pockets our coat has or a wall’s potential for anima storage.”
“You can never have too many pockets.” A fact I was well finding out now that I was a few years into experimentation with artifacts. Any more additions to my collection and I would either weigh three-hundred pounds or I’d have to make sacrifices. Guess this is why Paine carries around a satchel.
Me . . . I was starting to think about miniaturization.
So posh, the Great Bank was posh, but the waiting room still ended in a line of tellers. They each had a computer, but where a bank brought up account ledgers, these would bring up a client’s list of stored shells. There were passageways to the right and left of the tellers, all to rooms where vampires could make a private switch in shells.
I’d learn all this in a bit . . . since I got a tour.
Lucky me.
A Great Bank functionary waited for us, a tall blond vampire that looked Scandinavian in heritage, of course manipulated to have perfect hair, facial features, and to be built like a viking and not a fisherman. He shook Annie B’s hand but ignored me, like I wasn’t worthy of comment.
You’ve probably seen the prejudice in how adults act towards children or the elderly or—if they’re huge assholes—to other races. This was worse. His eyes never even paused on me. He never said a word to me. I might as well have been invisible.
King Henry Price is many fucking things . . . invisible ain’t one of them.
I bore the treatment with my usual feral grin. Guess I’m just anima-infused scum around here.
“Baroness Boleyn,” the functionary said, “I’m Marquess Jorgensen and I’m to take you on a tour of the facilities before we meet the Divine Eresha in her private bank.”
Annie B disliked this idea. “Despite my philosophies, I assure you I’ve been to the Great Bank often, Marquess, let’s not waste our time on you powdering my vagina.”
Jorgensen barely held back a scowl. “The rumors of your personality are accurate, I see.”
Annie B invaded his space, getting inches from the guy’s throat. “Do these rumors also talk of my tastes?”
Jorgensen backed up a few steps. “Regrettably for both of us, Baroness, this tour has been ordered by the Divine Eresha. I cannot decline and though your special circumstances mean you can, I would urge you not to.”
Annie B came forward some more, making Jorgensen back all the way into the reception counter. Behind us, all the waiting clients got a hell of a show. Not often you see a man with a hundred pounds on a woman cower before her. “Never urge me again,” Annie whispered, “no opinions from you or comments on either rumors or tastes or you’ll experience both from me. Do you understand?”
Jorgensen nodded quickly.
“I’d like a tour,” I said. “Especially since I’m pretty sure it’s me Eresha is trying to impress.”
Jorgensen still refused recognition of my existence even though I was helping a brother out.
There was tittering laugher behind us.
“Something funny?” I asked Annie.
She finally withdrew from punking the marquess, giving him a few feet of space. “The idea of a Divine needing to impress a human is outrageous to them. But . . . you’re not wrong about her motives.”
“She wants me on her side against Inanina,” I pointed out.
“Perhaps . . . you can never be sure with a Divine.”
I glanced at Jorgensen. “What you still standing there peeing your pants for? Get on with powdering my vagina, man.”
[CLICK]
Row upon row upon row of containers. I don’t even know the name for them. Suppose they have to have one. Refrigerators? Casks? Shell holders? No idea what to call them. Sarcophagi maybe? Works best, I suppose.
I saw thousands of sarcophagi as we walked down the public aisles—for vampires without enough cash or enough extra shells to merit their own private bank vault. Those you would see every forty to fifty feet, paths leading off the main rows. They ended in great steel doors emblazoned with the vampire’s name and rank.
Dukes, Duchesses, and Divines mostly. I saw one for the Divine Pwent, whoever that was. With Vamps, it’s hard to assume a sex or an identity until you see them in the flesh and even then they can change it on you, more effective at giving you a sense of dissonance than a girlfriend’s new hair cut. Pwent’s vault door was made of gold. Not plated gold. Not mixed gold. Pure gold. I’m a geomancer, I know these things. Not the most functional at keeping out thieves—if anything it encouraged them, damn if it didn’t encourage me to walk over and take a pocketful—but it made a hell of a point about earthly wealth.
The Divine Pwent . . . in charge of all the money, maybe?
Each sarcophagus in the public hallways was chiseled with identification as well. Each row was stacked three high, altogether ending just above my head. Black metal snug against black stone, a pair of lights marking if the sarcophagus was occupied. If so, a blue LED shown on the left, if not, a red LED shown at the right.
Jorgensen explained the identification system to Annie B, still ignoring my existence. “Name of the shell’s owner first, along with rank.” He pointed at one of them to give an example. “This belongs to Baron Geddon, you see. Next, the identification tag of the shell; here we have 866NorF19MP. This means the body was taken in 866 A.D in Northumbria, that it is female, nineteen years of age, and that the woman was murdered and reclaimed post-death.”
As if he knew every bit of his show pissed me off further and further, Jorgensen unlocked and slid open the sarcophagus. A blast of cold, sterile air hit us, along with the smell of stagnant water. My mouth opened at the sight. Nineteen and a pretty young thing—though I suppose in her time she would have already been expected to have popped out a couple of children—I still couldn’t help but imagine her in a modern setting, walking around a college campus, hopeful for the future . . . not yet realizing how fucked her future was thanks to all those student loans she accepted.
I’ve never liked dead bodies. A natural enough reaction, but for me it all goes back to Mom’s death. Seeing her gone, seeing that hole in her chest. The Gap I called it when I was recovering from the grief. Didn’t like it any more now. But here, outside of not breathing, the girl looked peaceful, sleeping on her side with her hands tucked under her head
and her legs pulled up into her chest.
Jorgensen kept on pissing me off by grabbing her hand to demonstrate how flexible her fingers were. “We use a special injection to hold off cell death that works in conjunction with the cold. Also,” Jorgensen swiped a finger along the bottom of the sarcophagus, it came up coated in deep blue fluid, “as you can see, we monthly bathe the bodies in a hydro-anima infused liquid to rejuvenate any possible wear.”
“Who the fuck supplies you with Slush?” I asked.
Jorgensen ignored me. He slid the sarcophagus closed. “Next is a marker for the body’s name and titles at death. Here we have Aethelswith, a minor noble’s daughter. Given the age and the untouched quality of the shell, but deducting its lack of historical relevance, it could collect anywhere from five to ten million at auction.”
“Who the fuck supplies you with Slush?” I asked again.
“Just answer him or he’ll start threatening to break things,” Annie B tried to reason with Jorgensen.
He refused the kind advice. “This way, Baroness, and I’ll show you the cleaning rooms, then the changing rooms.”
I SDR’d the fucker and he went down like a bag of . . . fucked up vampire shithead, that’s what. I turned him over with a foot as he still shook from the electricity. “I’m an Artificer,” I told him, “you might hate me for being anima-infused or think I’m no better than any of the bodies in these coffins, but you’re a moron to keep turning your back on me after giving me the finger, hear me motherfucker?”
He still didn’t look at me, but he did scowl.
I stomped him in the face as hard as I could. “Hear me, motherfucker?” I repeated.
“Don’t . . . talk . . . to . . . food . . .” Jorgensen snarled through bloody lips as the electricity finally started on the downward slope.
I stomped him again. Yeah, yeah, I’m violent. He works on human bodies and he’s a prejudicial douchebag. He’s lucky I was stomping his face and not his balls. Vampires . . . don’t ever feel remorse about reminding them that yeah, humans taste good, but we ain’t fucking cattle.
Not cattle, nor cog, just a man wants to be heard and all he’s got is a boot!
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 15