Generation V

by M. L. Brennan

  “Okay, better question,” I said when she wiggled back into her seat, holding a black women’s suit jacket. “Why are we stalking this man?”

  “We’re not stalking,” she replied, pulling on the suit jacket and smoothing out a few wrinkles. Then she flipped down the sunshade and began to use the vanity mirror to arrange her hair in one of those smooth uptwists that professional women on television always seemed to be wearing, and that I’d rarely seen in person outside of my senior prom. “We’re providing customer service.”

  “Green Willow Escorts does door-to-door customer service?”

  “Green Willow Escorts charges five thousand dollars as the flat nightly fee, and this particular client is the CEO of a Fortune Five Hundred company. That means boatloads of personal income, and even a little more if he likes to cook the books at work. So not only do we do door-to-door customer service, but we also send our clients birthday presents.”

  “Like a stripper-gram?”

  “Like monogrammed ties, Fort. Ashtrays if they’re smokers.” A quick application of eyeliner and she gave me an urgent gesture. “Come on, time to go.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled, getting out of the car. “But can you at least make this quick?”

  “I’ll do my best, but artistry can’t be rushed,” she responded.

  As we walked across the street I realized how different Suzume looked. It wasn’t just the jacket and the hair, though they did make an impact. But she wasn’t walking with the long, almost strutting steps that I’d become used to. She’d shortened her steps almost to a mince, and her posture became completely straight rather than casually slouched. Her head dipped a little, and her eyelids seemed heavier. There was something weirdly…submissive about her suddenly.

  “Suze,” I asked, feeling very disturbed by the change. “What’s going on?”

  She looked over at me beneath those heavy lids, and gave me a quick wink. “Just roll with this, Fort. It’ll be fun.” She rang the bell, and I had to swallow what I would’ve said, which was an observation that every time she said that, what followed was never fun.

  “Will he have a butler?” I whispered as I heard footsteps approaching. “If he spends that much money on hookers, he’s got to be loaded.”

  “No,” Suzume said, her lips barely moving. “This guy likes privacy.”

  Sure enough, it was the man we’d seen on the street who opened the door. He didn’t look happy at all to see us, but before he could say anything Suzume gave a formal head dip that almost looked like an abbreviated bow, and held out one of the Green Willow business cards she’d shown me earlier.

  “Mr. Delaney,” she said, and I almost jumped out of my skin at the change in her voice. It was as soft as if she were whispering in my ear again, but something about the tone was wrong. It was higher, almost girlish. “It has come to my employer’s attention that there was a difficulty in your appointment last night, and that it was possible that we had failed to meet all of your needs. If you have a few minutes to spare, I would like to discuss this with you.”

  A lot of emotions had gone across Delaney’s face while Suzume talked. At first he seemed a little worried, but as she kept talking, he relaxed a lot. By the end, there was that look of smug superiority that I tended to associate with people who worked in high finance and didn’t like waiting in lines to order their coffee.

  “I was planning on going out, so I don’t have much time,” he said.

  “I understand that you are an extremely busy man,” Suzume said, almost seeming to shrink within herself while somehow remaining perfectly poised. “But the topic is a”—her voice became hushed—“delicate one, and if my driver and I could just step inside…?”

  Delaney looked over at me for the first time, and I tried to follow Suzume’s lead and look submissively nonthreatening. It probably wasn’t too much of a stretch. Delaney looked me up and down, sneered, and dismissed me as useless. Even though it was what I’d been aiming for, it pissed me off.

  “Fine, come in, but this will have to be quick.” Delaney stepped back, and we both entered the house. It was decorated like a photo shoot from Esquire magazine—all dark leather sofas, parquet hardwood, oil paintings of English hunting dogs. All it lacked was the pop star pinup model in the middle of the room.

  Delaney started up as soon as he had the front door shut. “Your service was highly recommended to me, but I have to say that I was extremely disappointed by the quality of what I received last night. I might consider using you again, but only if I receive a personal apology, a full refund, and a steep discount on any future transactions—”

  He was interrupted when Suzume slammed her fist into his throat. One minute she was nodding, and the next she was moving. I stared. She was slower than a vampire, but that still left her a lot faster than a human. Delaney gave a strangled sound and started turning purple, instinctively clasping both hands to his neck. That left him wide open for what she did next, which was to slam a booted kick into his left kneecap. There was a very audible crunching sound, and if Delany had had enough breath he would’ve been screaming. As it was he gave a low croak as he collapsed onto the floor. She approached him fast, and he swatted out with his right hand, trying to ward her away. One quick move of her hands, a sharp snapping sound, and his wrist was hanging at a wholly unnatural angle. She repeated the action on his other wrist, and Delaney was able to let out one loud howl of pain before she’d slammed him onto his back and crouched beside him like a demented gargoyle, one knee wedged up and pressing on his abused throat.

  I was frozen in the spot I’d been when the assault had started. “Suze?” I asked, incredulous. “What the hell kind of customer service is this?”

  “The very necessary kind,” she crooned. Her voice and body language were all back to normal, but her bright dark eyes never wavered from Delaney’s purpling face. “Mr. Delaney,” she said, “you were less than honest when you described your needs to us. You told us about your need for power, and for a woman’s submission, but you neglected to also mention how you needed to elicit pain and fear.” Suzume pulled a short black rectangle out of her pocket, and with a quick flip opened it to reveal a very long, very shiny knife. Delaney’s struggling doubled when he saw it, but all Suzume had to do was increase the pressure on his throat and his struggles stopped. “Oh, none of that, Mr. Delaney. We were very concerned about what your escort, Shauna, told us about your requirements. She needed a number of stitches, Mr. Delaney. That’s not the way we prefer to do business. We were also less than pleased when she told us how you had threatened her.” Suzume pressed the flat part of the knife blade against Delaney’s face and gave a long, almost tender stroke, removing a small section of afternoon stubble. He whimpered, and a dark puddle began to form on the hardwood beneath his legs.

  “Suzume,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I meant to do, or what I even wanted her to do. Delaney had hurt that woman, and probably hurt her a lot worse than Suzume was suggesting. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her kill this guy.

  “My companion counsels lenience,” Suzume told Delaney. “It seems that you are very lucky today. But I do wonder.” And the knife turned, so that those long, slow strokes were now just cutting his skin, leaving very thin lines of red behind. Delaney’s eyes were open and staring, driven past fear into some kind of animal stasis. “How many have there been before Shauna? No.” She shook her head at him. “You don’t have to answer me. You were very practiced at what you did. There have been quite a few. You’re a monster who hides behind good looks and money. I won’t kill you today, but I think I’ll make it a bit easier for people to see the monster in the future.”

  Suzume smiled widely. Her mouth wasn’t human anymore—that was a fox’s jaw and teeth that weirdly warped her face. Delaney screamed at the sight; then he screamed again when she struck.

  He was rolled up in a corner when we left, his hands pressed against the ruin of his face.

  “What an unfortunate car wreck you were in, Mr. De
laney,” Suzume called brightly as she shut the door. “Just as unfortunate as the one you told Shauna that she had been a victim of. It would be quite sad if you found yourself in another car wreck. The next one would quite certainly prove fatal.”

  * * *

  I drove. Suzume tossed her jacket into the backseat and took down her hair, letting it blow around her face in the wind from her open window. She closed her eyes and basked in the late afternoon sun. I watched the road, not sure where I was driving, just making certain that I put a lot of distance between us and that brownstone. Neither of us spoke for a while.

  “Well?” Suzume finally asked.

  “Well what?”

  “You’re a very puritanical sort of vampire, Fortitude,” she said, not opening her eyes. “Am I a monster now to you?”

  I thought about it for a minute. We sat in rush-hour traffic, but for once I didn’t mind. Despite the poorly merging drivers all fleeing their jobs and determined to cause as many automotive close calls as possible, it felt like Suzume and I were wrapped in an untouchable, strangely lazy bubble.

  “What happened back there?” I asked quietly.

  “We screen all of our clients. It makes the service a little more like an elite country club, so the clients are willing to pay even more, but it also is supposed to help keep the escorts safer. My sister, Keiko, is in charge of meeting the clients, figuring out what they want, and if they should be someone we do business with.” She paused, then opened her eyes. “She fucked up.”

  “And Shauna?” I asked.

  “She’ll live. We’re paying her medical bills, and Keiko said that the plastic surgeon is optimistic. But we can’t take the memory of last night away from her. And so I don’t know if she’ll ever be okay. I hope so. But I don’t know.”

  Around us horns blared as a Mass-hole driver attempted to force his SUV across three lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. Curses were screamed out windows and many insinuations about his mama were made. But our car felt peaceful.

  “Don’t think I did it for Shauna,” Suzume warned. “Don’t believe that I’m a defender of wronged women. It kept my sister’s error from being brought to my grandmother’s attention. It made good business sense to frighten him badly enough that he wouldn’t cause the family problems later down the line.”

  “Okay,” I said. I looked over at her. “Would you do what you did to Delaney to Luca?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation. “You and my grandmother have made a deal, and I’ll hold up our end of the bargain. If I can make him suffer, I will.”

  I nodded. “You’re not a monster,” I said. “You’re no angel, but you’re not a monster.”

  Those dark eyes brightened a bit, and a small smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. “So we’re okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” And I realized that it was the truth.

  “Okay.” Energy returned to her face, and she began wiggling in her seat. “I have to call my sister. Then we have to wait until it’s dark until I can track your vampire, so let’s get out of this traffic cluster fuck and get some dinner.”

  My increasingly limited funds eliminated Suzume’s first three restaurant selections, and we finally settled on a corner pizzeria that was trying to hold the tide against the pressures of having both a Papa John’s and a Domino’s within a block by dropping their prices through the floor. It was mostly pizza by the slice, but they also had some rickety tables and stools set up in the back for anyone willing to brave their uniformly sticky surfaces and questionable hygiene to eat in. Even though they actually still had a pay phone in the back, Suzume conned the teenage, acne-ridden worker to let her use the staff phone by the simple method of blatantly flirting with him. What was sad was how little it took—just one of those lazy, naughty smiles and reading his name tag in a husky voice and he practically shoved the phone into her hands.

  “That was cruel,” I told her when she finished and came back to the table where I’d been waiting. “Poor little guy. It’s probably going to be years before he has sex. You could’ve at least flashed him or something.”

  She grinned at me, then made a big show of looking slowly over her shoulder at the guy. The moment she made eye contact, he froze like a deer in the headlights. Suzume winked at him, and he dropped a stack of pizza pans onto the floor.

  Suzume looked back at me. “I’m not sure he could’ve handled a nip slip,” she said blandly.

  “So mean,” I said, shaking my head.

  For my wallet’s sake, we ended up splitting a pizza. Vegetarian on my side, meat lover’s on hers. On a few bites I got forbidden mouthfuls of pork that were so good that I almost moaned.

  “Come to the dark side.” Suzume taunted me with her slice. “We have pepperoni.”

  I turned her down and returned to mine, reminding myself that zucchini on pizza not only tasted good, but had less morally suspect farming practices. My brain agreed, but all body parts below my neck seemed determined to want things that they shouldn’t.

  We’d both built up appetites, and practically inhaled the pizza. Soon all that was left was one last, lonely piece of the meat lover’s. Suzume swore that she was completely full, but from that gleam in her eyes I knew that she was just taking another opportunity to torment me. I adjusted the beer list so that it blocked my view of the slice. Out of sight, out of mind. Suzume smoothly bumped the serving platter with her elbow, moving the slice back into my line of vision. I glared at her and moved the beer list again. This time she knocked her knee against the edge of the table, knocking the list completely over.

  “Are we really going to do this?” I asked.

  “Do what?” she answered, giving me those huge, innocent eyes, which were completely negated by that wide, canary-eating smile. “I’m just sitting here, making pleasant postdinner conversation. You’re the one getting all worked up. Self-denial isn’t good for you, Fort. There’s science on that.”

  I snorted. “Oh, really? I’d think that the average waistband in America would suggest otherwise.”

  “I’m not surprised that you’re taking such a poorly nuanced approach.” Sitting up straight, she tilted her head in a way that made me know, just know, that somewhere in her house she had a pair of nonprescription glasses that she kept around for the days when she wanted to look pseudointellectual. “As a student of history”—and here I almost choked on my soda as she blithely continued—“I can point you to clear evidence of this. Just look at the Shakers. Complete nutters for self-denial. No booze, no fun, no sex. Just a lot of furniture construction. That reminds me of a certain fellow I’ve been hanging around with lately.”

  “The beer is five dollars a bottle, Suze, I told you that before,” I protested. The shop might’ve been practically handing the pizza away, but they were charging an arm and a leg for the drinks. Sneaky bait and switch.

  She was having far too much fun, and just ignored me. “Ah yes. You, Fortitude. You probably have some illicit stash of woodworking tools back at the apartment, right in the spot where your porn should be. But brace yourself, because I’m about to lay some truth on you that will blow your mind.” She took a significant breath, which did things to her chest that I absolutely should not have been noticing.

  “The Shakers died out,” I cut in.

  She shook her head. “Not even close to the lesson.”

  “Huh?” Okay, now I was confused. That was always the lesson when someone mentioned the Shakers.

  Suzume repeated her significant breath and pause. I swear, this time she even added a completely gratuitous wiggle, just to mess with me. Well, me and the table of frat guys to our left who’d been staring at her since she sat down. She’d made at least four unnecessary pork jokes, probably the reason why two of them had suddenly untucked their shirts in unison. As for our unfortunate pubescent worker, his manager had banished him to the back room after it became clear that he was going to be unable to safely handle any objects with Suzume in the vicinity.

  Her rich dark eyes locked
with mine, and she lifted one eyebrow. Unwillingly fascinated, I leaned closer.

  “The Shakers died out,” she said, completely straight-faced.

  I threw my napkin at her and she laughed, bright and happy that I was playing along.

  “So, this sister of yours,” I hinted.

  “Yeah, Keiko.” Suzume picked up the pizza and made a big show of biting into it. Like an opening shot of a porno show. One of the frat guys actually whimpered. Suzume rolled her eyes at the sound and muttered, “Dude, pathetic.”

  “Okay, Keiko,” I repeated.

  She shrugged. I huffed a little. A few hours ago I wouldn’t have pushed it, but after the shared mutilation of a sexual sadist, I felt like we’d bonded. I nudged her with my foot under the table. “When you were calling the police commissioner, your grandma mentioned that your sister was her choice for heir, something like that. Is this the same one?”

  Suzume made a small sound of annoyance and a bigger “yakky-yak” gesture with her hand, but scrubbed her mouth harder than necessary with a napkin and gave in. “I only have the one sister, so, yeah, she’s the same. She’s six minutes older than me, which is one of the reasons why she got the inheritance nod.”

  I paused, feeling a sudden pang. There’d been several times today when I’d wished that Suzume would either disappear or completely drop dead, but I hadn’t wanted her hurt. “Sorry, is that a sore subject?” I asked.

  Suzume blinked for a second, surprised, then laughed out loud. She opened her mouth to answer, but was overcome by a wave of snorts and giggles so extreme that she could barely breath. It took a few seconds of gulping air before she could finally edge her answer out. “Oh man, no. Hell no. Believe me, I’m grateful as fuck that Grandmother picked Keiko instead of me.” She dabbed her eyes, then waved her napkin for emphasis. “Being heir means getting all the shitty jobs and having to behave all the time. Definitely not for me. I like being the heir’s sister just fine—I get to have fun and kick ass all I want.” Another spurt of laughter, then, “No, really, I appreciate you trying to be all sensitive, but that’s not the problem.”