Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers

by Marion G. Harmon

  “I’ll be there with bells on. Vessy will deliver me to your chambers with your evening paper.”

  He sighed again, gave up the address, and hung up without saying goodnight. Rude. Anyone seeing me through the Cadi’s windows would have caught me smiling, whistling, and tapping on the steering wheel.

  The bats have left the bell tower/ The victims have been bled/ Red velvet lines the black box/ Bela Lugosi's dead. Undead undead undead.

  The happy tune carried me all the way back home. Pulling into the garage and letting the door close, I unpacked everything and put the cases back in the office. I didn’t go up front; I wasn’t staying. Five minutes later I was armed for a visit: needle-stakes in my sleeves, saber sheathed down my back, and my hunting bag slung over my shoulder. And my guns, of course, loaded for vampire.

  Back in the garage, I misted away through the bottom of the door.

  Gareth—and what kind of name was that?—rented a back bedroom in an old home on Royal Street not far east of Esplanade. It had once been servants’ quarters, and was accessible only through the alley into the back. The front of the house was currently unoccupied, which suited me just fine.

  The Midnight Ball owned the property through a dummy corporation, and had put the coffin under the floor while renovating; only vamps who could afford guards and serious room security slept in coffins sitting out where anyone could get to them.

  Gareth could just mist through the vent by the wall to get down to his coffin, but if you weren’t a vamp then even if you knew it was there you had to tear up the floor and then torch your way through a massive iron plate to get at it directly—and the iron plate was bolted into a concrete box surrounding the coffin. Finally, if someone tried to get at him during the day, Gareth could either mist away through the vent network to a secondary buried chamber, or seal the box from the inside and wait for help. And his coffin came with a landline.

  Fiendishly clever, almost impossible to break into. Except I wasn’t going to.

  Being brought all the way back to life by a divine Word of Power meant I couldn’t be as still as I could once; a living body is always in motion, with a hundred little twitches and adjustments every moment. Undead vamps could imitate, well, corpses if necessary, not moving so much as a tiny muscle for hours, but I didn’t need to be that quiet; I was where I couldn’t be—inside Gareth’s home, without invitation. I took the corner by the window, and settled in to wait patiently.

  Gareth didn’t disappoint. Half an hour before dawn he misted through the window. Mist-form spreads your physical senses but also makes them much less sharp; I held my breath, needle stake ready, and when he came together into flesh I struck.

  The African Blackwood stake, barely as thick as a drumstick and steel cored, slid in past his ribs and pierced his heart before he had a chance to react to the pain. He dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and I got to work. Five minutes later, I pulled the stake out and watched the life come back into his eyes.

  “Hello, Gareth,” I said.

  He blinked stupidly, tried to sit up, and only slowly realized that I’d mummified him in duct tape up to his neck. He wasn’t strong enough to break it, supernatural strength or not, and he couldn’t mist away since I’d shackled his feet to the old-style radiator by the wall.

  I gave him a moment to figure it out, then straddled him and sat on his chest. “I’ve checked the house and the neighbors. Gareth. With all the brick, nobody’s going to hear you scream.” And I smiled.

  Vamps can’t go paler than they are, and if he was alive he’d have pissed himself. He did lose control of his voice for most of a minute; I might not have been introduced to him, but he’d obviously had me pointed out. Or he’d heard the stories.

  “That’s right,” I whispered in his ear. “I’m Death, Gareth. I’d love to see every wayward bloodsucker in the world ashes in the wind, and you’ve royally pissed me off. You’ve been a very bad boy.” Patting his cheek, I sat back and waited for him to find his voice.

  “Y-you can’t do that!”

  So stupid. I rolled my eyes. “I’ve talked to Sabrina, Gareth. She told me about meeting you at Sables. She told me about your following and charming her afterward. She told me about her inviting you in, about your visits and your wardrobe and decorating suggestions. She loves you, you little molesting creep, because you’ve got her so addicted and enthralled that she can hardly think of anything else.”

  I ran a finger down his nose, tapped his cheek and watched him flinch like I’d burned him. “And that’s bad enough, Gareth, but she’s a minor. That makes it all not just mind control but statutory rape.”

  That finally shocked him into more coherent speech. “I love her!”

  “I’ll bet you do, in your twisty little black heart. Do you think that a jury will care when they learn how you made her your Mina, your adoring little blood doll? Of course they’re not going to hear any of that, because there isn’t going to be a jury. That would be bad for our community. No, I’m going to take care of you, and then the Master of Ceremonies is going to let the rest of the Midnight Ball hear just how stupid you were. Your ashes will look very nice in their urn on his mantle. Or he may want to keep your fate quiet. His choice, rumors can be good, too. You learned the rules when you came to town. You know the penalties. You. Knew. About. Me.”

  And there went his voice again. Really, this wasn’t any fun.

  Sable and his vamp thugs had nearly killed me, before I’d learned that some vamps could actually fight. But most of us were no more fighters than most living were. MC, Leróy, a couple of others I knew of actually practiced to train their Vamp-Fu, but I was to the average vamp what a special-ops soldier was to the average citizen. And even if he’d been a fighter, this didn’t do it for me; going up against a monster out to take my head in return was therapy—terrorizing a scrub of a vamp like this, with no steel in his spine and no chance to fight back, was just sickening.

  The worm was crying. Yes, we could. Dead or not, we stayed hydrated. In life he’d been a skinny, Ichabod Crane kind of dweeb and undeath hadn’t improved him. Maybe that’s why he’d gone vampire-goth; without some kind of glamour or mystery, most girls wouldn’t look at him twice. Maybe his actual vamp breakthrough had given him delusions of entitlement; with the power to influence and enthrall, it could be easy. Maybe he’d learned his lesson now. Well he still had to be a lesson to others.

  Time to get it over with.

  “So here’s what we’re going to do. First—”

  “I know something you need!” He screamed it, gulped for air. “I know something you need.”

  Well that was new.

  “And what do you know?”

  “There’s some people in town. They’re looking for a—a vampire they say has to be here. They want her.”

  “Hunters?” Shit, that was something I’d know about if MC did. And he’d have known if they were any of the usual suspect groups.

  “I don’t think so. They’re not interested in anyone but her. I think they want to take her.”

  “And how do they know you?”

  He licked his lips, swallowed convulsively. “They’re paying me. To listen. They don’t— They don’t want a war.”

  Which meant they wouldn’t go around randomly or even specifically grabbing vamps to question forcefully; the Midnight Ball kept close track of everyone, and only partly for policing and politicking in-house. We watched for hunter activity.

  Grabbing his chin, I looked into his wide wet eyes. “I didn’t think it was possible for you to sink lower on my maggot scale, but it looks like you’ve managed. Who are they looking for?”

  “No! I’ll tell you if you promise to let me go!”

  “No deal. I promise not to kill you. That’s all you get, and if you don’t take it, well.” I smiled again. “I’ll make it slow and get what I need somewhere in the middle. What’s her name?”

  He told me. I asked more questions and he babbled like I’d hit him
with truth-serum, detail after detail. He finally wound down, eyes darting like he was looking for more information to give me, anything to make himself more valuable.

  I sighed, patted his cheek again.

  “Congratulations. You get to live. I’ll decide the state you get to live in later.” I ran the stake back into his heart, watched the light go out of his eyes.

  Then I called MC. Actually I called Vessy; it was dawn, and MC would be in his jammies and dead to the world. Vessy would be, too, but being the boss’s number one meant that you got to take his daytime calls.

  He answered on the tenth ring. This number wouldn’t go to voicemail. “What do you want?”

  “Always the charmer. I need a daytime pickup for Gareth, Vess, nice and quiet and right now. And I need you to wake up your boss.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “It is. You know why? Because if I show up tonight when he does wake up, and tell him what you didn’t wake him up for, you are going to be sleeping for a long, long time. Wake him up and send the freaking car. Now.”

  I hung up and prepared Gareth.

  “Were you going to kill him?”

  The library at Lalaurie House had a fully stocked bar, and MC poured himself a drink. Bourbon. He’d had time to feed before his delivery boys brought Gareth and me back to Lalaurie House. That didn’t make him one-hundred percent—no vampire not me was one hundred percent in the daylight hours—but he was functional. Built like a husky pro-wrestler, he looked ridiculous in his dressing gown but I managed not to smile. He needed to keep some dignity in front of his people, even if right now that was only Vessy.

  I lounged in my deep leather armchair. “I was going to leave him staked, wrapped, and stored away for a decade or two.” Long enough for Sabrina to forget him after I’d gone back and used my own dark vampy powers to deprogram her of his manipulations has much as possible. “I’d have told you where he was, and you could have stolen some ashes from somewhere to display on your mantle.”

  “And now?”

  “He changed my mind. We need to take him out of circulation without it looking like we’ve taken him out of circulation. So I’m going to give everything to Lieutenant Emerson and the NOPD is going to arrest his ass for rape and mind control.”

  He surprised me with a nod. “Clever. And I think it is time for the city to see justice done in the day.” He waved away Vessy’s protest. “So vampire-haters will get some ammunition. Our turning one of our own over, voluntarily, will go a long way to building community trust.”

  The words were right but his expression said something else. However the Midnight Ball spun it, Gareth’s public trial was going to be an absolute public relations nightmare for the vampire community. It was going to be hell for Sabrina, too. We were not being kind.

  He swirled the dark liquid in his glass before looking at his right hand man. “Vessy, wake and clean up Gareth. I’ll be down shortly to explain what he will tell the police when they arrive.” He waited until the door to the library shut, dropped into the leather chair beside mine.

  “And now, dear Jacqueline, who are these not-hunters looking for?”

  “Claire. Leróy’s Claire. Our very own Sleeping Beauty.”

  He nodded, completely unshocked. If it had been anybody else, I wouldn’t have woken him in the morning for it. I’d have arrived with his evening paper, after I’d gotten Gareth to tell me how to directly contact the not-hunters and visited them myself.

  “So someone knows.” He took another sip.

  “Gareth gave a perfect description of her, too—these people showed him pictures.”

  “If they think Gareth is still useful, they will try and get to him in jail.”

  “I’m counting on it.” I knew I was wearing my evil smile. “Gareth told me that they contact him through a burner phone regularly—they think Claire’s buried deep in our little society here, supported by a secret harem.”

  “Why?”

  “They didn’t explain anything to Gareth—he’s their tool, why would they? But I’d guess it’s because both she and Leróy disappeared after the attack on her in Canada, and she’s never surfaced anywhere while he’s here under an assumed name. They know she was a new vampire, and young. Because of her illness she’d never been self-supporting, never really been on her own—she’d depend on Leróy or someone else to keep her safe and hidden.”

  “So.” MC set his drink on the end table between us. “They learned of Claire, but why would they know she’s special? These are obviously not the spirited but unprofessional hunters who attacked her in Canada.”

  “But when she disappeared up north Leróy did, too. So what if the original hunters found Leróy, here? His fencing school makes him pretty visible. They’d be shocked to learn he’d been turned, but might have decided to steer clear of New Orleans. Only somebody learned about their hunts, and understood what Claire actually turning Leróy meant.”

  “That she is very likely a master vampire.”

  “Exactly.” I slumped a little in my chair. “I might not have helped, either. I showed up here, with no real history, and turned out to be as much an odd vampire as Leróy.” Also not hung up on the lifestyle or vulnerable to the usual vamp phobias and compulsions, Leróy was just like me other than not being a daywalker. “That’s two super-vamps in one place, obviously not the result of traditional vampire breakthroughs.”

  He nodded. I’d never asked why he had decided to help hide Claire. Altruism? Maybe. MC liked to be on the side of the angels when the situation let him. Which wasn’t as often as either of us would like; vamps tended to be as self-centeredly amoral as cats, and keeping a couple of dozen vamps in line made it tough. Or he could be keeping Claire as a secret weapon; if anyone really came gunning for the vamp community, an attempt at extermination, he could wake Claire and use her to turn dozens or hundreds of new vampires.

  And that was what made Claire so dangerous; Claire Rideau was a potential weapon of mass-destruction, the seed of a vampire apocalypse. MC didn’t even need to ask—he knew that these new hunters were almost certainly some government’s agents. Or they could just be mercenaries who wanted to capture innocent Claire and sell her to the highest bidder. She’d be worth billions; whoever controlled her could make a nearly unstoppable army or make any terrorist group too terrifying for words.

  Which would probably get out of control and eat everybody.

  “So, Jacqueline.” MC stood and straightened his dressing gown. “You already have plans for Gareth. What do you intend to do about Claire?”

  “The only thing we can do. We’re going to have to kill her.”

  I made sure that MC knew what Gareth would need to say if Claire’s hunters got to him in jail (I was counting on that), and left Lalaurie House. Scarhead—Raphael, MC’s big, bald, scarred, and tatted omnipresent punk-vamp bodyguard—showed me out. Feet on the street, I walked. It gave me time to think.

  The only way to stop Gareth’s owners from hunting Claire was to make it so that they believed she was dead. That would take some doing; being undead meant we could take a lot of damage and get better pretty quickly. Stake us through the heart, and we were up and coming for you the second the stake came out. Decapitate us, and we’d heal and wake up given a few quiet hours of reattachment; minutes once, in my case—but I’d had help. (Being a living vampire, I didn’t know what would happen if someone staked or decapitated me and let necrosis set in before reviving me. I’d probably come back undead again.)

  For any of us, the only way to make sure we were dead-dead was to cremate us. Well, possibly dissolving us in lye, or mincing us up and feeding us to bears, or something else that extreme would do it. But fire was the traditional and easy way, so why experiment?

  The biggest problem was that we couldn’t simply move Claire, bury her somewhere nobody else knew about. She was low-maintenance, but her hunters would eventually get less subtle and try and come directly at the one person they were sure knew where she was. L
eróy. They’d take him and torture the shit out of him if they could. Even if they didn’t succeed, eventually their efforts were bound to draw the attention of the DSA, and the agency would want to know what the hell they were looking for.

  The DSA would find her. And they’d probably kill her. It was the sanest thing anyone could do.

  Wait. Could we move her? I almost walked into a curbside tree pot. It would solve the question of how to get the hunters to go the right direction; to attract attention, you break cover. The possibility opened the next step beyond the one I’d planted with Gareth.

  But first things first. Stepping through my front door I nodded to Kimi and Dave, my Beantown morning staff, and locked myself in the office. The call to Paul wasn’t fun, but the drone contact records Shell had left me, added to my over-the-phone recorded testimony of my conversation with Sabrina, was all he needed.

  Gareth waiting and gift-wrapped for him (supposedly I’d gone and had a conversation with him, convinced him to turn himself in and taken him to Lalaurie House to await the police), tied up that loose end. Paul would get the warrant, nobody would ask me if my favor had involved any crimes, Paul would get me what I needed, everyone would be happy except Gareth. Well, Sabrina and her parents wouldn’t be happy either, but her age would give her some shield from the media-circus and with Gareth pleading guilty the trial wouldn’t take long. And Sabrina had made the initial bad choices that ended with this; at least she’d survive her stupidity.

  But stupid wasn’t bad, and she deserved better.

  That done, I connected with Shell again. It didn’t take much to sooth her mad over my cutting her out of the action last night, especially once I explained what was going down and told her who I needed to get on board.

  “Yeah, he can do it. He’s free and, knowing him, he’ll love it. He doesn’t get nearly enough opportunity to do this kind of thing, he’d do it just for the art.” She lounged virtually by my desk, and this time she wore a t-shirt. It said I’m with stupid. I pretended it didn’t exist just to bug her.