“Not that old. I was in the Council’s new training programs though. Managing being a vampire and then learning to stay up all day? They work pretty well, if you’re interested. I can’t claim that it isn’t work but if you can get in on it, it’s worth it.”
The man, who had a slightly craggy face which made him look about thirty-five or a bit older, huffed. It wasn’t actually upset sounding.
“Dang. That’s impressive then. Did they send you to take over the area? I haven’t heard about Harriet being replaced or killed. She’s a great woman. Fair and easy going for one of us. Not a master, though.” If there was worry for his friend, and they did sound close from what little the guy had said, it didn’t show in his words.
“Nope. I’m just working public outreach. Being a humble human police officer, for the time being. Except that I’m out. As one of us? I mean, everyone here knows about the annoying vampire police officer and everything. It even says that on my business cards. So, if you need to call in with something, you can. We need to let the whole community know that. Anyway, you and Tabitha, helping out at the picnic? It should go late, so getting there a bit before dark is good enough. We should have a few of our people make a showing but I had to ban the Council from coming. This is for the people here. The soccer moms…” He froze, tilting his head after a moment. “That and the blood drive dads? We need a good name for vampires that sounds plain and not too much like we’re trying to hide what we are. I’ve got nothing, right now.”
There was a slow nod then.
“I guess? Saturday evening? I can get the time off. I’ll ask Tabby if she has time. She might have to work. She strips. Is that… I mean, you were asking, right? It wasn’t an order?”
“Exactly. Still, this kind of thing will work a lot better if we actually have some locals in on it. I could use the help.”
The other vampire stood for a minute, then shrugged. It took him a while to speak, as if he were really trying to think of the best way to put things.
“Okay. I don’t really remember how to cook but if you show me what to do it should be fine. Men didn’t really do a lot of that kind of thing back when I was alive. Then I didn’t need it, after that.”
He actually looked a bit sheepish about it, rather than trying to suggest that no real man would ever deign to prepare food for others. Given everything, it probably meant he was over a hundred years old but not much past that. At least as a vamp. If he was too old, then the idea of doing that kind of thing would have probably set his pointy teeth on edge. Alan was acting like the embarrassment was not having a skill that he didn’t need to, which meant he was young enough to have adapted to the last fifty years of changes.
“We can handle that. It isn’t hard, with a bit of practice. I’ll see what needs to be set up. We have some people helping out with the food already. Avery Rome, the Shifter Line Walker, is paying for it all. She’s helping with preparation as well.”
For once someone didn’t start skipping around or acting like he knew who that was, other than what had been said.
“Really? That’s good of her. Is she local? Also, what’s a line walker?”
The man, standing there in the middle of the room, seemed politely interested. That someone wouldn’t know about that kind of thing. Actually, it made perfect sense. Only a tiny fraction of people could afford the rates to use the nodes. Most Vampires should know what those were but vampires didn’t really use them for anything much at all. Traditionally, you had to sacrifice about a hundred of your own kind to open an existing node, for one-way travel. It wasn’t worth it.
“People who have learned to use the nodes without great cost. It lets them travel to other worlds, among other things.” That was the simple explanation, which had the man smiling. Again, it was a polite thing.
“That’s different. I haven’t heard of that one. Is it new, or just a thing that I’ve missed somehow?”
“New, really. Ten years or so. There was a greater demon, The Line Walker, who showed up a few years ago. He thought he was a human at first, so set up a business, taking people around. Since then, others have learned how to do it. It takes about a thousand years to learn how to do, so not many have mastered it. You get to do it in the void between worlds, and time isn’t exactly the same there. It’s still a long time, meditating and learning, doing nothing else. I think there are six or so people from here that can do it. A few other worlds as well. There are even a few human line walkers. Only one shifter so far, so that’s special. Three vampires… An Alede. That’s about it. Nice people, though they charge a lot for what they do.”
There was a very slow nod then. It seemed very nearly real. Then the vampire whistled.
“And one of them is bothering to come here, just for us? That’s important. We should send her a bottle of wine or something. I’d say we should send some slaves but I’m still young enough I don’t want to bring that up. It could look too much like an offer to the wrong people.”
“Too true!” Troy smiled then, and stood up. “Anyway, I’ll walk you out. Saturday, the fourteenth of June. An amazing day in history for vampires and humans alike. I need a better catch phrase for that… Two in the afternoon to two in the morning. We have some bands, food, drinks. Soft drinks. Everyone is invited. Bring your friends, family and the homeless person that sits outside your favorite bakery.” That last one was not going on the poster, he decided.
“Posters!” It probably sounded a bit schizophrenic but Dunkirk just nodded at the idea, working out what was probably needed.
“A bit short notice for that. You can get things on television? On the computer, as well. I don’t know how to do things like that. Tabby can do it. The Twitter and the Facebooking. All that newfangled stuff.” He seemed proud of his friend for that.
It was a bit like magic, so Troy could understand that part.
“Neat. Ask after that with her for me? I’ll put feelers out to see if anyone knows how to get things on television or the radio… Do people even listen to that anymore?” It felt odd, not knowing that but Troy didn’t. He hadn’t ever really been into things like that at all, so it hadn’t been missed when his life changed. Television was missed a little bit, even if he didn’t have a huge habit that way. The same was true of movies. He liked them but hadn’t even thought of going to one in about four years.
The other vampire actually went blank for a bit, going still, as if there was a threat present. Troy was nearly certain he hadn’t done anything that bad. He’d seemed a bit goofy, perhaps but in a friendly way that Alan seemed to be getting.
Then the man spoke, his words considering, rather than fearful.
“You know… I’m not sure. I think it’s still a thing but kind of like newspapers, it’s slowly dying out. That one, the papers, caught me by surprise. I mean, how else could a person get their news? Now everything is done online. I have to stay on top of things, I guess. The world didn’t used to change as fast. Not even close.” There was a slightly lamenting headshake but then the man moved, since they were headed out. At the edge of the parking lot, near the building, they shook hands.
Troy went wide eyed.
“Oh… Right. Stop getting so many parking tickets. What’s with that? Three inside a year is a lot.”
That got a sigh.
“It’s my neighbor, from across the street. There’s only street side parking on the block but if I park in front of my house, there’s a fire hydrant. So, I tend to park in front of theirs, which means that they call and complain to the police several times a week. Then, if I move in front of my house, they come and give me a ticket. It’s annoying. I understand not wanting strange vehicles in front of your home all day long but there really isn’t a lot of choice.”
Troy shrugged then.
“Take them some cookies and accidently compel them not to be a dick?” It’s what he would have done, if it were him.
That got a snort, however.
“I’m not good at that kind of thing. Taking con
trol of minds. Kind of a high-level skill, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. You have the basic ability to do it though. It just takes practice. All vamps have that one, as far as I know. Still, try the cookies anyway? Bribery is cheaper than all those tickets.”
That seemed to be the simple truth but the man just waved and left then. His car was considerably nicer than the one Troy drove, he noticed. It was a small red sports car, with a fiberglass body. The kind that inexplicably got women to want to take rides with a man, even if he weren’t special in any other way.
Nice suits worked for that too, however, so Troy wasn’t going to call the man on it.
He had to go back inside, since there were some papers that he wanted to take home with him that night. The file from the Vatican and a few other things the day had generated. Then, not having any real reason to rush around at all, he sauntered home. The evening air wasn’t cold but it was cool compared to the burning furnace times the sun brought. At least he imagined that to be the case. The air was scented with a thousand different things. At the moment, the main one was smoke.
Not the pleasant smell of a campfire or barbeque either. He still liked both of those, he realized. No, this came from ahead of him, and while there was the scent of wood in the mix, there were other things as well. Burning plastic. Metal siding getting hot. Vaporizing paint. In short, it was a house fire.
There were sirens in the distance, meaning that it had been called in already. Sighing, he looked up at the situation. Almost everyone was out on the street already. That or in the parking lot. Troy rolled his eyes.
The building he lived in, one of the four wings of the complex, was well and truly on fire. It didn’t seem particularly centered on his apartment but that was gone already. How he’d missed the scent of smoke earlier… Well, that one was a thing he could see. A creature, made of flame and smoke, moved over things rapidly.
An alarm began to sound but it was pretty much too late. For their things. Hopefully the people would be fine.
“Fudge.” It sounded like he was lamenting the loss of this things but that wasn’t the case yet. Troy was far more worried about the fact that the hungry seeming fire ghost, or whatever it was, seemed to be getting ready to move to the next wing of the building.
Worse, he had no clue how to deal with it at all.
Chapter ten
Looking at the flame beast, Troy tried to work out what to do. Running around in a circle to create a cyclone came to mind, since he used to love superhero cartoons as a child. That wasn’t a real thing, though. He could, possibly, move fast enough but that was done by stilling time itself, so it didn't really create a huge flow of air like that.
The fire department was there but he had to doubt that spraying the thing with water was going to do a lot. Mainly because it seemed to be moving with a sense of purpose. That and control. If they hit it with water, it would just jump to a different location. For the moment it seemed happy enough to be there, just eating a few apartments like it was. Consuming them.
Trying magic also came to mind but Troy had no clue what would work for it. When he tried to still his mind, he felt a searing heat from the thing, and a sense of intelligence but that was all. It wasn’t a spell, he didn't think. No, it was a person. After a fashion.
Just one made out of fire.
At a loss, he pulled his phone out. Then he tapped the thing at a pace that nearly broke it. Not quite, thankfully.
“Gibson here, go.” The voice was a bit old sounding. Female but hard. Darlene Gibson then. He thought that was the name, anyway.
He’d used Darla’s number but it didn’t matter. Greater demons didn’t just have one shape. That was the way it was supposed to be. Not just for them, but for him. It felt right anyway. All he had to do was learn how to do it and he’d be set.
“There’s an apartment complex on fire. Mine. There seems to be a creature of smoke and fire moving around, burning it all. It’s intelligent, I think. The fire department is here but the feeling I’m getting is that spraying water at it won’t help a lot.” He was about to explain his thought process on that but the woman made a solid sounding noise.
“A djinn. Probably one set to come for you, personally. That or your home. Call out to it and see if it tries to kill you.” She was kidding. That was obvious from her tone.
Raising his left hand, he gave it a shot anyway. He was fast enough that the thing would have a real race on its hands, trying to get him.
“Hey! Over here! I’m your target. Troy Lopez! Leave that building alone and come for me!” He was loud enough about it that not only did half the parking lot turn to look at him but so did the flame beast. The djinn. Just the sound of the name was off, to his mind. Dirty seeming. Then, he was pretty certain it had already destroyed everything he had there. Not, thankfully, all that he owned. Most of his good clothing though.
That was a thing that, once the danger was past, was going to piss him off. He could feel it starting already but punching the flames in the balls wouldn’t actually do much, he had to figure. The thing turned for a moment, then went back to setting the building on fire. The people in their nice red trucks were moving fast but they didn’t even have water going yet.
“It looked at me but didn’t try anything else.”
“Damn. I was going to have you lead it to me. I’ll be out then, if it isn’t going to let me do it the easy way. We’ll need to put it in a trap. Well, we could kill it but odds are it’s being compelled to take action. Are the people there safe?”
He glanced around. There were tears on faces. A few people seemed to have been burned or suffered from smoke but no one was down or being chased by flames at the moment.
“So far it seems fine that way. Not perfect. Just like a house fire though.”
There was a sense of rushing then. In space, as something, or more likely, someone, moved closer to him. That meant he didn't jump when space ripped open with a blue flash and an old woman stepped out. A few of the others, already ramped up, having lost their entire lives in the fire, jumped. One even yelped a bit. That was a little girl though, so everyone else figured that she was just crying.
Troy caught her eye and waved at her.
“It’s all right. She came to help. She’s a…” He was stuck, for half a second. Then he said what he would have wanted to hear, when he was six, if his world had been ending. “She’s a super hero.”
Mrs. Gibson looked a lot like Darla. Only about fifty years older. With iron gray hair, and wrinkles to spare. The bone structure was, now that he met her in person, the same, though. Very different from Alison, the young teen girl. Then, even if played by the same demon, they weren’t related. Darla and Darlene Gibson were.
“Lopez. Help me here. Take this jar to the far side of the complex. The djinn will avoid me. When it gets near, hold it up with the opening turned toward it. That should capture it. If not, well, it will probably eat your body. Be ready for that. Extra healing, as well as running away at best speed. Just in case.” There was no teasing in the words. Just a steely eyed look, as a large mason jar, with a glass top on it, was passed over.
He didn’t take a lot of time to examine the thing but there were complicated metal and gem structures inside of it. Along with slow moving flows of magical power. Life energy and other things as well. Space itself was bent, inside of it, making a form that folded back into itself. He noticed the idea but actually moved, since they had a plan in place.
The old seeming woman would chase the flame toward him, then either her demon magic worked, or he needed to be ready to heal himself as his body was consumed. At least that’s what he took her words to mean. Vampires could and did heal quickly. With magic, it could be done faster. At least he’d heard of Eve doing that once. Her arms and legs had been burned off. That should have taken her decades to regrow, since a big portion of her body mass was gone. Instead, she’d meditated for a few weeks and regrew them.
The idea wasn’t a thing he’d never
heard about.
That didn't mean he had the concept ready to go, inside his head. Taking the top from the jar, hoping he was supposed to do it that way, he held it up, and focused as he waited. Making sure that he mixed a lack of physical pain in with the idea of healing faster. His crystal battery was in his pocket, so he connected a small link from it to the idea he was holding. One that would allow him to live, as he ran away, hopefully.
Then he waited. For a while he wondered if anything was going to happen at all, until he saw an old woman in a pant suit running through the flames of the complex. Being burned and scorched as she did it. Interestingly, in front of her, there was a smoke blob. One with a heart of flame at the center. It was, as she’d suggested, trying very hard to get away from her.
Not knowing if it was the right thing to do, Troy started the magic flowing from his crystal. Nothing much happened, since he didn’t need to heal at the moment. That changed though, as he stood his ground, the jar held upward, mouth opened and unstopped. As the thing approached, it seemed to notice him there, and tried to avoid the jar.
It should have worked, of course. The jar was big for what it was, being made for something like a gallon of pickles, originally. At least it had that look to it. The mouth of it was about five inches across. A ten-foot-wide smoke monster shouldn’t have had any trouble not hitting it. Something weird happened, though. It was a bit of magic, coming from the old woman, in her half-ruined clothing. A thin line that almost wasn’t there ran to the glass of the container. It set off a vortex of energy.
One that tried very hard to pull the djinn into the container.
That was not, it seemed a popular choice that day. It fought, meaning it tried to grab Troy by the hands, burning them. He didn’t feel the licking of the plasma but he could smell the burnt pork scent of roasting him. Slowly, as parts of his hands tried to fall off, not being connected to him totally, the jar tried to slip from his fingers.
That meant either running away, dropping the thing, or doubling down and holding it with the crook of his right arm.
Hell, In a Troy (Lopez Time Book 2) Page 14