Blackout

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Spike was partial to all black these days. Colors made him ill.

  Still and all, the evening wasn’t a total loss. He didn’t see the Ramones, but at least they’d be around come Friday. Spike figured his business in the Big Apple would take at least that long.

  And I got a nice meal out of it. Two birds in their prime—home delivery, no less. He looked down at the orange-carpeted floor, which now had some red mixed in with it, seeping out from the two corpses piled unceremoniously in the center of the living room—not a lot, of course, as Spike had taken most of the blood from the “two Ps in a pod” for himself.

  I almost bit them right then and there in CB’s after they talked in unison like that. But it was so much more fun to take the girls away from their men, especially given that the men in question were such ponces. Apple bloody Corpse indeed. Oughtta track them down and kill ’em just on general principles. Not even drain their blood—wouldn’t want any chance of their stupidity infecting me. Just snap their necks. Or maybe rip their guts out.

  It had been fun to watch the look on Penny’s face when Spike vamped out and drained Phyllis. Or was it Penny he drained first? He couldn’t remember which P was which—and, upon reflection, didn’t really give a toss.

  He lit a cigarette, dropping the match onto the fake-wood coffee table. Now that he was satiated, and had had some fun in the process, it was time to get to work.

  I’ve got me a Slayer to kill.

  Chapter Five

  New York City

  July 7, 1977

  9:15 p.m.

  Moses “Reet” Weldon looked at Izzy and shook his head. “You disappoint me, Izzy.”

  Reet was seated behind the oak desk that he’d had for as long as he’d been running the Harlem rackets. Izzy was standing on the other side, shaking. One of Reet’s lieutenants, Curtis, stood behind Izzy.

  “Look, Mr. Weldon, I ain’t jivin’ you, it’s been rough, and I had to—”

  Slamming a hand down on the oak, Reet said, “You had to skim? Is that what you’re saying to me, boy?”

  Izzy stood up straight. “Aw, look, don’t be callin’ me ‘boy,’ Mr. Weldon, that ain’t right.”

  “ ‘Boy’ is what men call their younger inferiors, and you, Izzy, are both. You’re younger by about a hundred years, and inferior by virtue of being human.” Reet stood up, straightening the jacket of his charcoal pinstriped suit. “We’re barely clearing a profit on weed right now, Izzy. That means every dollar counts. So when I find out that one of my men is taking more than his fair share, I get displeased.”

  “Look, it’s just a loan, Mr. Weldon, honest! I ain’t jivin’ you, brother, I just—things been a little rough, you know? Times is hard, man. But I promise, I’ll pay you back—with interest! Just gimme some more time, man, okay?”

  Reet shook his head. “I’m sorry, Izzy—but I’m not your brother, and time is one thing you don’t have. This is the fourth time you’ve been caught skimming. Now I like to give people second chances, but we’ve gone beyond that. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to make an example of you.”

  Izzy’s shaking got worse. “Naw, man, look, I’ll be good, okay? I’ll pay it back—right now, I promise, Mr. Weldon, just lemme—lemme get to my pad and I can—”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s too late, Izzy. Curtis?”

  Curtis smiled.

  Looking over at Curtis, Izzy said, “Aw, no, please, don’t—”

  “Quiet,” Curtis said.

  Then his face changed.

  Curtis grabbed Izzy by his Afro and yanked his head back, exposing his neck. Then he bit down and fed off Izzy while his worthless body convulsed.

  Before Izzy completely shuffled off this mortal coil, Curtis looked up, blood on his mouth. “I’m sorry, Reet, did you want some?”

  Shaking his head, Reet said, “No thank you, Curtis, I already ate. Besides, I doubt he would agree with me.”

  Laughing, Curtis finished feeding, then let Izzy’s corpse drop to the linoleum floor. When Reet had bought this Lenox Avenue building fifteen years ago, the room had shag carpet, but it was damn near impossible to get bloodstains out, so he’d pulled it up and replaced the floor. His cleaning staff had been grateful.

  Reet was less concerned with the monetary angle of Izzy’s skimming. The decline of the hippie subculture had meant a steady reduction in demand for marijuana. Heroin and cocaine were the drugs of choice these days, and that was where Reet made his money, along with the numbers and gambling and prostitution. No, taking care of Izzy was more a case of cutting off a dead branch to keep the tree from getting sick.

  “I’ll get the boys to take care o’ this cat,” Curtis said, his face reverting.

  “Good. Is there anything else? Martha’s singing at the club tonight.”

  “We got three new places under our protection—deli on Tenth and Forty-fifth, fruit and vegetable stand on Fifty-seventh and Ninth, and an auto parts joint on Amsterdam and Seventy-third. Figure we oughtta be scorin’ three bills more a week at least.”

  “Good,” Reet said. While “protection” scams had a certain simple vulgarity to them, they were often very profitable. Besides, there were times when Reet liked simple vulgarity. “I take it those places were cleared by the Gambinos?”

  Curtis nodded. “Yeah, the guineas’re cool with it.”

  “Good,” Reet said again. For his operations in Harlem, Reet was left alone, but any expansions south of 110th Street had to be cleared with the Italians. Reet had learned the hard way to respect the Cosa Nostra. “Anything else?”

  “Marv and Gene brought Mikey in—along with Mikey’s new pal.”

  Reet sighed. He’d forgotten about that. “All right, once you’ve removed Izzy, send them in.”

  Curtis nodded, picked up the phone on Reet’s desk, and dialed four numbers that connected him to another line in the building. “It’s Curtis. Get Hobie and Georgie up here.”

  Once those two—who had been quite strong even before they were turned into vampires, which was why Curtis often gave them the heavy lifting—took Izzy’s corpse away, Reet pushed the button on his intercom and told Marv and Gene to bring Mikey in, but not the other one.

  Mikey Gitlin was white, and pasty-looking even by vampire standards. He’d been working for Reet for the last ten years or so. Marv and Gene, two of his human employees, each held a cross and stood on either side of Mikey to make sure he didn’t go anywhere.

  “Mikey,” Reet said, “how many times have I told you, you don’t turn somebody without checking first?”

  “I’m—I’m sorry, Mr. Weldon, I dunno what come over me. I wasn’t—I wasn’t thinking, man, I just—I just—”

  Reet held up a hand. “Mikey, we have rules here, rules that I know you’re familiar with.” He opened the humidor on his desk and took out one of his Cubans. “You see, I provide services to our community.” Of course, some would view the drugs, gambling, sex, and enforcement he provided to be something other than “services,” but those were merely the opinions of humans. Reet hadn’t cared about what humans thought since the end of the Civil War. “I do this with a network of vampires. But we creatures of the night are—unpredictable.” He ran the cigar under his nose, closing his eyes and pausing a moment to enjoy the olfactory delight of a well-made Cuban. Of course, it had been illegal to import cigars into the United States since Castro took over Cuba eighteen years ago, but Reet had plenty of extralegal sources at his disposal.

  After clipping off one end of the cigar, Reet walked around the desk, keeping his deep voice at an even tone. “The way I’m able to manage things is to keep a strict limit on the vampire population of the city. We are demons, after all, cohabitating with the remnants of the personalities we had in life. It’s hard enough to maintain a racket without having unexpected demons gumming up the works. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mikey?”

  Mikey was shaking even more than Izzy had been. “I—I know, Mr. Weldon, I’m sorry, I just—”

  R
eet raised an eyebrow. “Just what?”

  Mikey kept shaking, but didn’t say anything. Reet looked over at Marv and nodded.

  Stepping forward, Marv grabbed Mikey’s right wrist and applied the cross to his right hand. Mikey screamed, stumbling to his knees as his hand caught fire, but Marv maintained his grip, so Mikey’s hand was still at about Reet’s chest level, even with the hand’s owner on his knees.

  Leaning down, Reet placed the cigar into his mouth, sticking the other end into the flames that danced up from Mikey’s right hand. He puffed a few times, savoring the taste of the cigar. Then he stood upright, inhaled the sweetness of the Cuban for a moment while enjoying the sounds of Mikey’s agonized wails, and nodded to Marv, who released Mikey’s wrist and stepped back.

  Frantically, Mikey patted down his right hand with his left, putting out the small fire on his flesh.

  Looking down at Mikey’s whimpering form, Reet repeated himself. “Just what?”

  “It—it’s my brother, Mr. Weldon, okay? He’s sick, and the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him an’ he’s gonna die an’ I had to do something, so I made him a vampire so he won’t be sick no more!”

  Reet blinked. “It’s your brother?”

  Mikey was clutching his hand and wincing with every word he spoke. “Yessir, I swear it is, Mr. Weldon, he was sick before an’ now he’s all better!”

  Looking over at Gene, Reet said, “Bring him in.”

  Gene nodded and went out to the waiting room outside Reet’s office.

  “I promise, Mr. Weldon, you won’t be sorry. He’s a good man, my brother, really—he’ll make a good soldier. He fought in the war, you know.”

  “He was in Nam?” Reet asked.

  “Uh, no—Second World War. Fought in the Pacific.”

  Gene led a stooped old man into the office. He had to be at least ninety years old.

  No wonder the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him—too many things to choose from. Reet had seen what old age did to his mother back on the plantation in Mississippi, and every night before he went to bed he thanked his sire for sparing him that fate. He knew he’d die eventually—he’d seen too many fellow bloodsuckers get dusted, and lately there was the Slayer cutting a swath through his people—but it would be on his feet, like a man.

  He looked down at Mikey, who was still on his knees, clutching his burned hand. “You turned this?”

  “He’s my brother, Mr. Weldon. My baby brother, and I always promised our mama I’d take care of him.”

  Unbidden, a century-old image slammed into Reet’s consciousness: a middle-aged black man hanging from a tree on the Weldon plantation, fresh whip scars all across his back.

  The corpse had been named Abraham, and in life he had been a slave, property of the Weldons, just like his brother, Moses. But Moses had run away, promising that he’d come back for Abe some day. When that day—or night, rather, for Moses had been turned by that point—had finally arrived, it had been too late. The Weldons had meted out their idea of justice on Moses’s brother.

  The old man shook Gene off and stared down at Mikey. “And this is how you take care of me? You turn me into a vampire, you little punk? Bad enough I gotta watch you suck people dry, now you turn me into one of your filthy kind?” He spit on his brother.

  “Joey, how can you say that?” Mikey was crying now. “I wanted to save you—”

  “You call this saving?”

  “But—”

  Reet took a puff on his cigar, then set it down on the glass ashtray on his desk. “That’s enough!”

  Both men quieted down.

  “You thought this would work on me, didn’t you, Mikey? You knew the rules—that no one gets turned without permission—but you figured the boss had a soft spot for people who wanted to save their brothers, and you thought it would be easier to obtain my forgiveness after the fact than my permission before it.”

  “I—I figured you’d understand, Mr. Weldon. My brother, he—”

  Having heard more than enough, Reet nodded to Gene, who pulled a stake out of his leather jacket pocket.

  Joey was dust a second later.

  Mikey’s eyes went wide. “No! You killed my brother!”

  “We have enough vampires who don’t want to be undead. I’ve no use for any more.”

  Collapsing to the linoleum floor, Mikey whimpered, “Can’t believe you killed him.”

  “Believe it.” Reet nodded to Marv, who removed a stake of his own.

  The floor was covered in dust a second later.

  Reet shook his head. “Such a waste. Anything else I need to know about?”

  Marv nodded. “Yeah, boss, Leroy’s outside. Says he’s got somethin’ to say.”

  Sighing, Reet sat back down at his desk. If it were anyone else, he would let it wait until later, but Leroy was his right hand. He didn’t have anything to say to Reet that wasn’t important. “All right, get him in here. I’m missing my music every second we waste with this.”

  Leroy came in a moment later, dressed in a purple jacket covering a white shirt with ruffled cuffs that stuck out past the jacket’s sleeves and skintight pants that matched the jacket. Reet couldn’t help but wince at the getup. But then, he’d never had much use for any fashions. He only wore the suit because it conveyed authority, but he’d just as soon wear the rags he wore as a slave as long as he stayed undead and well.

  As usual, Leroy didn’t waste time with preliminaries. “Our dudes on the fuzz got news. There’s two girls got themselves killed downtown a couple days back.”

  “Girls get killed downtown all the time, especially since that fool with the forty-four started his spree. I’m missing Martha—” Reet started to get up.

  Then Leroy said, “They was iced by a bloodsucker.”

  Reet sat back down. “One of ours?”

  Shaking his head, Leroy said, “Nah, boss. Description the fuzz got is of a honky Brit. Blond hair, all spiky like them punk dudes.”

  Picking up the cigar from the ashtray, Reet took a long drag on it. “Send Heathcliff and Shades—I want to know who this man is. If he’s just passing, we’ll let him be. If he plans to remain a while, then he is to be recruited. I won’t have stragglers in my town. And if he resists recruitment, then he’s dust.” He smiled. “You dig?”

  “I most surely do, boss. I’m on it like stink on cheese.”

  “Good.” Reet took a final puff, then put the cigar out in the ashtray. “Now then, I have a show to attend.”

  Moses Weldon had been born in 1830. His deeply religious parents had given both their children names from the Bible, and they had always believed that Jesus would save them. Moses hadn’t been willing to wait for Jesus to get around to it, however. In 1865, when the tide of the War Between the States had turned to favor the Union, he had run away. His father had been sold to another plantation and died of old age while there. His mother died shortly after getting word that her husband had died so far away from her. Moses had hoped to bring Abe with him, but Abe insisted on staying behind and covering his younger brother’s tracks.

  While on the road, Moses had come across another runaway named Caleb, and they had run together through the night. At daybreak they had both gone into hiding, but Caleb had refused to come out at all, not even to steal food. That night Caleb’s face had changed, and he had pounced on Moses’s neck, his suddenly huge canine teeth biting down. When he finished, he opened one of his own veins and fed Moses with his own blood.

  The next day Moses had experienced a freedom greater than anything he’d ever known or imagined.

  Caleb kept running north, but Moses had power now. The Weldons could no longer threaten him. They had separated his parents, they had treated their human property worse than their furniture, and they had driven Moses to run away.

  Now he could get his revenge. And also rescue Abe.

  But when he returned to the plantation late one night, he found Abe’s corpse hung from a tree. The Weldons had punished Abe
for Moses’s sin of trying to be free.

  So Moses had punished them.

  Reveling in his vampiric power, and furious with his inability to save his brother, Moses had taken his sweet time with the Weldons. Their suffering had been ten times worse than the beatings they had inflicted on their slaves over the years.

  He had given them each the day to recover, while he hid from the burning sunlight. Then he tortured them anew through the night.

  After three days, they had finally died. Christopher, the owner who had sold Moses’s father rather than see two slaves be happy. Annabelle, Christopher’s wife, who had ordered more beatings than all the other white people on the plantation combined, sometimes for so simple an offense as spilling a drop of her tea. William, their oldest son, who had regularly changed the quotas to guarantee that the slaves would never meet them. And their youngest son, John, who had served as overseer and had taken pleasure in every whipping he had been ordered to bestow.

  With the death of his owners and the Union’s victory in the war, Moses had become a free man in every respect. He wandered for many years, eventually winding up in New York City around the turn of the twentieth century. It was there that he had obtained the nickname “Reet” due to his fondness for the music of Cab Calloway, in particular the song “Are You All Reet?” He had seen Calloway at New York’s Cotton Club, and Moses loved the music. That record had been the first one he had ever bought after obtaining a record player, and he played it so much he wore out two needles and three copies of the LP.

  Eventually, Reet worked his way up to the top of the Harlem rackets, using brains and skill—and, whenever that failed, his vampiric ability to kill, maim, torture, and not die when shot or stabbed—to make it to the top of the heap.

  He also slowly took control of a large chunk of the vampire population in Manhattan. Most bloodsuckers were followers; sheep, really, who were more than happy to take the direction of whatever shepherd came their way. Reet Weldon had provided that direction, and he kept things under control—or, at least, he had until the Slayer had come to town.