“I don’t think the Negro porters who made up your bed shared your nostalgia,” Mr. Crenshaw put in above his bow tie.
“I believe they call them blacks now, dear,” Mrs. Portman corrected.
“African-American,” the mayor sniffed about, blood vessel filled nostrils searching out nonexistent snuff.
They say vampires live a long time. These people were certainly from another era. Not to mention another dimension.
It was somewhere in the middle of all this scintillating conversation I realized the leash had gone loose in my hand. I looked down and found Mitzi gone. Looked around the living room to find her still gone. Uh-oh…
“Well, Ed old pal looks like we blew it.”
I turned to the voice behind me but no one was there, or at least no one was looking at me.
I said: “Uhh...”
And several of the guests turned to look at me, including the green-eyed beauty Clancy.
“No, Eddie, don’t answer me, not out loud. Use your mind, remember? Nod if you understand.”
I nodded.
“I have this really grisly feeling you actually nodded. I can’t see you, Ed. If I could see you I’d be there at the party, right? Now try using your brains for once, and very casually mosey over to the big Grundig console radio circa 1961—the one playing all the orgiastic jungle drums.”
I did as instructed. The other guests went back to chatting among themselves. The only one in the room who seemed to be paying me any mind was the lovely Miss Clancy Cummings.
“Are you there, Ed? Hello? It’s me, Ed, Mitzi.” Her voice was coming from the stereo speakers, not loud, but loud enough for at least me to hear.
“I’m here.” I murmured softly, still no clue about how to use the mind transfer thing.
“Good, now reach down and adjust the station knob, that’s the big one on the right of the dial. Tune it to 912.7. Got it?”
I tuned the knob to the requested numbers.
“Sound better? Loud and clear?” Her voice boomed now; surely everyone in the room could hear it.
“You may be half right, Eddie. Someone in the room can hear me besides yourself. We got a Reader in there. I should have picked it up the second we walked in. Of course, I may have been distracted by your stumbling explanation to the comely Ms. Alicia about returning her dog, finding her house, the whole endless, fascinating adventure. Do you recall anything we discussed in our little briefing?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to be a lot sorrier. They’re onto you. All-the-doors-and-windows- bolted kind of ‘onto you’. Not a non-vampire in the place. This is what I get for bringing a greenhorn along.”
“Where are you?” I whispered.
“Good question. I was standing there beside you sniffing the spilled sherry on the carpet. Next thing I knew a pair of very quick, very strong arms had a muzzle around my head and everything was going black fast. Now, from what I can tell from the closed-in darkness and rocking bumps, I’m in the trunk of someone’s car. Headed, I would guess, for either an open field and a small stake party without A1 sauce, or the nearest friendly neighborhood dog pound and a long needle, full of some really ugly purple colored liquid that kills even vampire dogs. But hey, let’s talk about you.”
I glanced around the small room trying to look nonchalant, smiling. “Who’s the Reader?”
“The least of your problems, Eddie my love. The most of your problems is, I’m guessing, coming toward you right about…now…”
“Enjoying the party?” Alicia crooned, coming toward me, extending a martini.
“Yes, very nice, thank-you!”
“Mmm.” She sipped her own drink, big eyes watching me over the rim. “Mmm.”
A suspicious sounding “mmm.”
“So, Mr. Magee, what is it you do for a living?”
I was all ready for that one, had rehearsed a terrific autobiography: stevedore in my youth, lion tamer in my late twenties, foreign correspondent after that, little time with the Foreign Legion…all kinds of good things—
--when I suddenly realized that earlier I’d introduced myself as a Mister ‘Sutter.’ ‘Bill Sutter.’ Not ‘Magee.’
Uh-oh…
Alicia was smiling at me. “And how is our trusty community newspaper editor Sid Mathers tonight, Mr. Magee? Sid dropped by your house for a visit the last time I heard.”
Caught. Damn. And no talking poodle around to save my butt.
I didn’t see much point in lying, at least not entirely, so I plunged blindly ahead. “Yes, he did as a matter of fact he did drop by.”
“Oh, I know he did, Mr. Magee. I sent him. Your reporting was getting a bit out of hand of late. Terribly.”
I stepped back a foot. “Was it the ‘well’ story?”
“Oh, I think you had ambitions far beyond local interest, Mr. Magee. By out of hand I meant dangerous. To us!”
I was sweating all over except, remarkably, my face: total luck.
I put on my best smile and stayed the course. The other guests were turning toward me now, just the slightest hint of red beginning in their eyes. Except for the mayor, his eyes were bright red. Hungry. My smile was beginning to feel like frozen custard.
“Mr. Magee--?” Alicia asked politely. “Anything to say for yourself?”
Think, Magee, think!
“Well,” and I stalled by pretending to take a quick drink, “Sid did drop by the other night as you said. To deliver some copy, I think. We had a quick Scotch and he was off again. Some appointment, I think. Is something wrong? Is Sid all right?”
Alicia cocked her pretty head patiently, still the perfect, sexy hostess. “Oh, I’m sure Sid’s just fine. Down there behind your furnace wearing that table leg of yours for a mainmast!”
I forced back a gulp, covered it with another drink. I held up a single trembling finger. “Sorry about that, really. Filthy basement. Been meaning to clean it up. Is there ever enough time? But, listen, can I tell you a little secret?”
Alicia smiled sourly; clearly everyone in the room could hear us. “I can hardly wait, Mr. Magee.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t think old Sid was a team player, if you know what I mean.”
Now the guests were crowding around, practically shoulder-to-shoulder, no longer bothering to suppress the red in their pupils or the elongated eye teeth in their pink gums.
“And how was that, Mr. Magee?” Alicia waited on one round hip.
“Call me Ed, please.”
She stared at me.
A few moments passed.
“You didn’t call me Ed.”
“You’re stalling. Ed.”
I knocked back the rest of the drink, mind racing. Think! Think! Where the hell was Mitzi? I glanced at the big console radio speakers. Silence.
“Mr. Magee? Ed? We’re all waiting with baited breath.”
Or ‘Ed breath’, as the scene was about to become. I nodded, held up my hands expansively to the converging guests, underarms streaming sweat. You may have thought those kind of close quarters were stifling in the small room; not a bit—cold as a tomb.
“Well, for one thing, my former boss, a guy I always had tremendous respect for, by the way—and if I may add, whose fondness for me I assumed was equally—“
“Stalling, Mr. Magee.”
“--anyway, my ole friend not only has the temerity to break into my house, wreck the living room and plunge his incisors into my neck, he has the heartless gall to stand there watching me turn while boring me to death with his grandiose plans!”
Something seemed to shift behind Alicia’s crimson pupils; doubt?
“His plans?”
On a roll at last. “Oh, yeah. Major plans. Ole Sid saw himself as the chief honcho, didn’t you know? The sect leader!”
Alicia’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, absolutely, without a doubt! Hostile takeover, no question. Can you imagine? The temerity! Well, I was just incensed. I mean, Sid was a great newspaper man, s
ure, but the leader of the Midwestern Sect? I don’t think so! I mean, do you?”
From the corner of my vision I detected a discernable frown from Our Honor the Mayor.
But Alicia wasn’t so easily distracted. “Sid Mathers told you that?”
“You have my word.”
Alicia watched me a moment. “Why?”
I took another swig. “Why? Why, because he wanted me to join him, of course! Wanted me in on it!”
Gray-haired Miss Portman materialized at my left elbow. “He made you, then? This editor of yours-- he turned you? You’re one of us?”
I conjured up my most confident grin. “My dear Miss Portman, how do you suppose I found the party tonight?”
The others backed off a tad. Not Alicia.
She looked me up and down once, not flatteringly. “You’re a vampire?”
“Proud member. You know, I kind of thought maybe this little barbecue tonight was about my crossing over! Do I flatter myself?” Oh, definitely on a roll.
Alicia’s whole demeanor seemed to change, her eyes brightening with another kind of hunger. “Oh, no, Mr. Magee! You get the full initiation!” she came into my arms, all squishy chest and perfect hips and breathed hotly against my check, “you get to hump the hostess!”
It didn’t help that I starting to get a chubby.
“In front of everyone!” Alicia beamed.
I wasn’t so sure about that part. “Uh—“
“Just one little detail,” her tongue was a warm snake in my ear. “The marks.”
I was a little hoarse by now. “Marks?”
“The puncture wounds from good ole editor Sid. Where are they?”
Oops.
Mitzi, who must have been listening all the time from the radio, echoed it: “Oops!”
Alicia tore back the neck of my shirt with a strength that froze the blood and chased away all chubbies—tore it half off my body with red-lacquered fingers that could have snapped it like a twig, and turned my pale, mark-less neck for all the others to see. There was a collective hiss of disapproval, almost reptilian in its sibilance.
Alicia stepped back from me with another kind of smile. Raised a signaling hand above her slim shoulders. “Drain this little toad.”
The room leapt.
SEVEN
I love movies, who doesn’t?
I like the way they can manipulate things—speed up the action or slow it down right in the middle of the story. Can’t do it with prose, so I guess we’ll just have to live with that, but that’s how things felt next, all kind of slowed down like in a movie. What should have taken the bookish Mr. Crenshaw seconds—even nanoseconds (these creatures are fast, I mean fast) seemed to take a full minute, like he was sort of floating at me through the air, fangs bared, claws outstretched, radar firmly zoned-in on my throat. Even Mrs. Portman, who was right beside me, should already have been making a vanilla soda of my carotid. But somehow I was still able to slam Mrs. Portman hard with my left elbow, gaining a satisfying crack of incisor, take a very surprised Alicia by her creamy shoulders and shove her in the path of the descending Mr. Crenshaw so they both stumbled and fell all over each other across the carpet. What was weirder still was what was suddenly coming from the old console radio across the room:
“—and Ed Magee doing very well early on in this first round against the vampire horde, showing his skill may not be limited to newspaper reporting, even old stories about kids in wells—or is it pipes? Magee showing a lot of promise for an older guy even though his training for this bout has certainly been limited. Frankly he isn’t the favored competitor. Now here comes a chubby but no less agile Mr. Benson charging in to deliver--ohh! a terrific right cross to Magee’s kidneys and—ohh! a quick follow-up jab to the spleen! Magee wobbling, almost going down, seems to recover and kicks Benson in the groin—not sure if that’s Marquis of Queensbury rules against vampires but it does seem to have slowed Benson a bit…but now the incredibly fast, incredibly voluptuous Alicia has Magee in a headlock, the two opponents dancing around the living room, destroying martini glasses and lampshades! Magee, as you know, has had some experience in the living room during his early years, but this looks like a losing proposition…yes, the rest of the sect is on top of him now, fangs are flashing, Magee is down, on his back, and it should be only a matter of time before—
--before Alicia delivered the death blow.
She had those long white but incredibly strong fingers around both sides of my head, linked under my jaw, sort of cradling me in her soft lap there on the carpet. It only felt about half-awful. Face upside down, she smiled down at me, then leaned close. “You know, Magee, in another time, another place, I could have gone for a guy like you…” and she bent further and pressed those bee-stung red lips against mine, gave me the full Hollywood treatment, even treated me to the tip of her tongue—I forgot about the feel of her fangs for a moment—then with disappointingly little effort, she twisted left once and ripped my head from my neck in a sheeting rinse of blood that got a little gasp and grunt from her that was almost sexual.
After that the room was turning over and over (actually my head doing the turning) as I bounced across the rug, hit the north wall, and landed neck-up, staring upside down at a framed Goya print. I remember thinking it was not my favorite painter—I’m a Monet man—not the one I’d have picked as my last sight before the dark curtain descended…
…and then Mrs. Porterhouse was saying. “I believe they call them black now, dear.”
“African American,” the mayor was correcting…and I was back in the living room with the rest of my body, across from the big Grundig radio console, like one of those cinematic tricks where they mess with time to mess with your head and try to be arty or whatever.
“You see what I did there, Ed?” the radio said beside me. “I bought you some time. Maybe thirty seconds or so.”
I frowned at the radio.
“No, don’t frown at the damn radio, it’s me, Ed, Mitzi! This is still Alicia’s house, I’m still locked in a bumpy car trunk somewhere and you’re still very much in danger, the outcome of which will probably play fairly closely to that little head-tearing scenario I just played through your head. Now I suggest—I heartily recommend—you think your way the hell out of that place before Alicia comes over and starts probing you about your fang marks, or lack thereof, capice? And while you’re at it you might look for a near pedigree vampire poodle wearing an exceedingly tight muzzle while crammed into the ass end of what sounds like some sort of sedan. Oh, shit, here she comes now…on your toes, Sport!”
I looked up to find lovely Alicia threading her way toward me with her best smile.
Think fast, Magee!
But I couldn’t think at all. Couldn’t think of a thing beyond the fact I was few mental seconds ahead of Alicia, which wasn’t helping at all.
“Enjoying the party,” Alicia extended the martini glass just as she had before.
No, it stinks! I’m just leaving!
But somehow that didn’t seem the right tact to get me out of there.
“Yes, it’s very nice!”
Great, Magee, repeat yourself-- repeat the whole situation all over again. Next thing she’ll ask is what kind of work you’re in, Mr. Sutter—only she won’t use the name ‘Sutter.”
“So, Mr. Magee, what is it you do for a living?”
Oh, hell, here we go. “Well…”
Now or never, bub.
“…actually that isn’t my real name.”
Alicia was taken aback. “Which? Bill Sutter or Ed Magee?”
I tried my leaning-on-one-hip-nonchalant-look again. “I see you’ve met my editor, Sid Mathers.”
Alicia raised a brow. “Have I?”
I shrugged noncommittally. “Probably sent him over to my house the other night, Probably already know about our little…scuffle. Also know that good ole Sid is now crammed behind my furnace with one leg of my favorite chair through his chest. You have lovely eyes, by the way, Miss
Alicia. But I bet you get that all the time, right.”
Appeal to her vanity. She was vampire, yes, but she was a woman, right?
I think I actually had her off guard a second, she almost seemed to color. “Not nearly often enough, actually. But about Sid Mathers—“
I pretended to smile at someone across the room, as if the present conversation was hardly worth my time. “Not a team player, I’m afraid,” I responded casually.
I could feel Alicia scrutinizing me as I took a casual drink. “No?”
I shook my head. “Tried to jump me, you know. Well, of course you know, you sent him, if I’m not mistaken. Anyway,” waving my hand dismissively, “the point is after he made the initial…bite, he had the gall to stand there and tell me about his plans to take over the sect. About his becoming the number one vampire and all that. What was it he said--you’re methods weren’t progressive enough?”
Alicia went livid.
I looked past her casually, pretending to smile companionably at another guest. Actually I really did smile at someone this time, the stunning Miss Cummings, who was watching us across the room and who might actually have smiled back a little at me. Meanwhile I could almost feel the heat of humiliation emanating from Alicia.
“Sid said that?”
I turned to her innocently. “Pardon?”
“Sid Mathers! He actually said that?”
“Afraid so. Among other…more indelicate things.”
Alicia was beginning to go red-eyed but I didn’t think it was directed at me this time.
“Such as what?” she hissed icily.
I gave the air another dismissive wave. “Nothing important, really.”
Alicia stepped threateningly closer. “Such as what, Mister—whatever your name is!”
I heaved a probably too histrionic stage sigh. But it seemed to work. “It’s a little personal. Hardly a topic for a party. I’m sure Sid didn’t run around town blabbing it.”
B005N1TFVG EBOK Page 5