by Frank Zafiro
Upir shook his head. “No. This is my home now. I want to stay here.”
“Then, my fine friend, you are going to have to do some time.”
“Is there no other way?” Upir flicked his eyes to Mason’s.
After a moment, the lawyer looked away. “Of course there is. You can get into your car right now, drive away to Mexico or somewhere, change your name and live happily ever after. You’ve done it before. You’ve told me.”
“I have.”
“So do it again.”
“I can’t this time.”
Mason sighed. “Christ, they are just paintings. You won’t die without them.”
“Yes. Yes, I will.” Upir stood. The motion was swift and graceful and it reminded Mason again of who and what he was dealing with. Upir gazed lovingly at the pieces of art hanging on the walls of the room.
“You see, counselor, I have spent…well, centuries collecting these works of art. I know that is a hard concept for you to grasp. Centuries. Many artists and styles are represented here. Some of these are unknown to the world at large. These paintings connect me with my past. They remind me of the beauty and tragedy of life. I make peace with my past through these framed wonders. And, quite frankly, I don’t think that I could make peace with my future without them.”
Upir faced Mason and caught his gaze. “Do you understand how important that has become? To face the future?”
“No,” Mason answered truthfully.
A hint of a smile formed on Upir’s bloodless lips. “No. Of course not. Well, trust me, dear friend, as I have trusted you with my truths and my life. I cannot sacrifice these paintings, nor the sculptures, nor the musical instruments.”
“And there’s too much to pack up and move,” Mason noted, “Even if your house wasn’t under surveillance already.”
“Precisely.”
A short silenced followed. Then Mason spoke. “Three point one million, you owe. It took me over an hour to convince them not to arrest you this afternoon.”
Upir nodded. “Go on.”
“If you were to flee, everything would be impounded. The IRS would take it all. It’d take years for you to get back every piece in the collection, if you ever could.”
“Yes. And if I remain?”
“You’ll have to pay the taxes you owe, plus penalties and interest.” He swallowed. “And the prosecution is demanding jail time.”
“How long?” Upir brushed a piece of lint from his sleeve with his delicate-looking fingers.
“I don’t know. Six months. Maybe three, with the correct persuasions.”
“Mason?”
“Yes?”
Upir smiled coldly, his fangs gleaming. “Persuade them as best you can.”
Mason sat at the defense table, waiting for the judge to finish reading the deal he had struck with the prosecutor. He didn’t know whether to feel victorious or corrupt after what he had to go through to convince the man at the table next to him to agree to the terms. Reducing the sentence to one month of jail time with the remainder suspended had been simple once he’d conceded that Upir would serve his time in Yannicksville.
Yannicksville was the oldest active prison in the state, and
the toughest. The prosecutor evidently decided that hard time for one month was better than six months at the minimum security facility where most tax evaders found themselves.
Serving at Yannicksville had been Upir’s wish, but Mason had been astute enough to know he could disguise it as a concession.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Prison meant death for Upir, regardless of the address.
“Counselor?” the judge asked.
Mason rose. “Yes, your honor?”
“Do you really think it is necessary to admit your client to the jail at night?”
Mason nodded. “Yes, sir. My client is a very private man, and he wants to avoid a spectacle.”
“Curious demand,” the judge mused, more to himself than anyone in the courtroom. He read further, then looked up. “Is the government satisfied with this arrangement?”
The prosecutor stood. “We are, your honor.”
“Very well, I’ll approve the plea bargain, as soon as the defendant appears before the court.”
“Your honor,” Mason said, “I’d like to request that my client be sentenced in abstentia, due to his medical condition.”
“Which is?”
“He is a hemophiliac.”
On Februrary 27th, the evening Upir was scheduled to begin his sentence, he rose as early as the setting sun would allow. He killed and fed before the stars were out. When he returned to the house and dressed in clean clothes, he found Mason waiting for him in the study.
“Hello, Mason. Early, aren’t you? I thought I had until midnight.”
“You do. I wanted to talk to you for a while.”
Upir motioned for him to sit and Mason plopped gratefully into the leather chair nearest him. He loosened his tie, avoiding his client’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally.
“Whatever for?”
“I failed you,” Mason said, his voice thick.
Upir did not reply. He knew vaguely of the great love that Mason felt for him. There had been others, faithful servants, who had felt the same. He accepted their love, but it did not move him.
“What will you do?” Mason moaned. “How will you survive?”
Upir remained silent.
“When the sun rises tomorrow morning, there’ll be no darkness for you to descend into. You’ll die. And even if there weren’t the sun to contend with, where will you find blood?”
Mason fell into a teary silence, and still, Upir did not reply.
The prison guard moved him along with a prod to the small of his back. Upir was not accustomed to such treatment and it required great self-control to keep him from battering the fat mortal for his actions. Instead, he waited patiently, until there were more witnesses.
“Open the doors, Harry,” the fat guard bellowed. “We got us a new sweetheart to put to bed.”
Harry pushed a button, causing a harsh buzz and the metallic clank of the door release. Upir’s eyes flitted about him. He counted even guards in all. Now was the time.
The door swung open and the fat guard nudged him. “Let’s go, fish—”
Upir spun and struck the guard in the chest with his palm.
The guard’s eyes flew open in pain and surprise and he sailed backward several feet into the wall.
“Hey!” A second guard strode toward him, wielding a night stick. He swung with confidence. Upir stepped aside and snapped out another open-handed strike to the guard’s shoulder, sending him sprawling.
“Harry! Buck! We got us a live one here!”
The guards poured in on him. Upir could have fended them off, or destroyed them. But he struck lightly, doing only minor damage, and after a few moments, he allowed himself to be overwhelmed.
And beaten.
When they were finished, he found himself in the infirmary.
The doctor on night duty seemed a little surprised at his condition.
“They beat you?”
“No,” Upir told him. “I fell.”
“Not very hard, by the looks of it.”
At four in the morning, Upir stood in front of the warden’s desk, his arms and legs shackled to a belly-band. The metal was strong and Upir wondered if he could break free if he had wanted to. Then he turned his attention to the warden. He imagined that most mortals felt very intimidated by this man, as he sat at his big desk, staring down at them in their bright orange clothing in disgust.
Upir had long ago forgotten what if felt like to be intimidated. He stared at the warden’s ruffled hair as the man yelled.
“And I don’t like getting called in here at zero four hundred in the goddamn morning, either, pal!”
Upir said nothing.
“Buck Aldridge may have a fractured shoulder. You could face assault charges.”
Empty t
hreats. If they charged him with assault, then some judge would get to see the videotape of the fight and the long beating that followed Upir’s surrender. There would be no charges, he knew.
The warden picked up a file from his desk and stared at it blankly for a moment. “How long is your sentence, Novak?”
“Thirty days.”
The guard behind him struck him on the back of his legs.
“Thirty days, sir!”
Upir winced and said nothing.
The warden gave the guard an almost imperceptible head shake. “What’s your charge?”
“Tax evasion.”
“Tax evasion? You a gangster? Like Capone?” the warden seemed amused by his own joke.
“No. I am an investor.”
“That’s how they got Capone, you know. Tax evasion.”
“Yes, I know.”
The warden fiddled with the edge of the file. “Thirty days, huh? Pretty light sentence, Novak. Hardly worth the paperwork. You probably got some hot-shot yuppie lawyer to defend you, huh? Paid a big fine so you only have to do a little time?” He leaned forward, his voice sinking to a husky stage-whisper. “Well, it is going to be a hard thirty days, pal. Solitary confinement in The Hole. All of it. The whole stretch.”
Upir tried to appear crestfallen.
It was almost six when they thrust him unceremoniously into the old cell and shut out all light. Upir slept.
Bread and water came. Sometimes a weak stew. Upir measured hours and days by them. He left the food for the rats and when they came, he caught them. Their blood was vile, but it was sustaining.
Every six or seven hours, he rose and flushed the small cracked toilet.
The confinement guards came to check on him every four hours for the first two days. He met their eyes when they peered through the small window with a flashlight, and after a while, they stopped coming for anything other than to deliver his meals.
Upir sat in the dark, staring at the wall. The harsh cell forced him to remember his past.
1571. Bohemia. He had been a strong man. And strong men either became warriors, or they became…
Mučitel. That’s what they had called him. Torturer.
As he sat in the darkness, he could hear the countless screams of his long-dead victims. His heart had been so cold then. Cold enough that when Vaclav took his mortal life and gave him living death, his emotions knew little change.
Emptiness is a great and powerful thing, Upir thought. But it consumed him after a time. Ten or fifteen decades, at least. Until he saw a painting by Michelangelo.
It was a copy, in reality. Another artist had reproduced a small portion of the images on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But even in the crude brushstrokes of what Upir deemed an amateur, he could see the magnificence of the original bleeding through. He traveled to Italy and saw the work for himself, and it drove some of the emptiness away.
Upir smiled in the darkness of his cell, his eyes riveted to the wall. In his mind, his eyes alighted upon every piece of art he owned, collected down through the centuries. He spent all his waking hours lost in memory, admiring the texture, the color, the image.
Time moved on, relentlessly, as Upir knew it would. Thirty days passed and he was released without incident. When the last door clanged shut behind him and there was only open space in front of him, a surging rush of freedom overwhelmed Upir. It took every bit of control he could muster to keep from dashing to the nearby tree-line and bounding away like a deer.
Mason waited for him, his Saab parked and running. He held out his hand to his client.
Upir shook it. It was very warm.
The ride home was quick. Mason zipped through the New England night, seeming to sense Upir’s urgency. Despite the speed, the trip dragged for Upir. He sat in the passenger’s seat, motionless, silent.
“Was it bad?” Mason finally asked.
“I would not do it again.”
Picasso. Three of them. A Chagall. Two Rembrandts, one completely unknown to the public. Van Gogh on the east wall. A Rodan sculpture was in the next room, along with a harpsichord that Bach composed upon, but Upir stopped and stared at these paintings before going any further. He drew in the smell of the canvas, the paint, the aged wood of their frames.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Mason’s voice came from the study doorway.
“Yes,” Upir whispered.
“I think I’m beginning to see why they mean so much to you.”
“They are my past. My present. My future.” Upir turned to face Mason, his eyes cold. “The only thing in existence that means anything to me.”
Mason frowned. “The only thing?”
Upir moved toward him. “The only thing that I have kept with me through the centuries.”
Too late, Mason saw.
It was swift, then slow. Upir’s teeth sank into him in a blur.
Then came the feeding, like a slow, black dance. Mason felt fear, then euphoria, then nothing.
Upir let him slide to the floor, an empty husk. He turned back to his paintings, his tongue still salty, still warm.
Blood And Bushido
by
Frank Scalise
Japan, 1163 A.D.
Yoshi Ishikawa strode confidently, his sandaled feet sure. His stride was inherent to his nature; he was samurai. As he walked, he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, he countenance flat and expressionless. Earlier in the day, he’d passed many peasants and merchants along the narrow roadway. They had bowed appropriately, showing him the respect due his station. As befit him, Yoshi ignored their bows, continuing his steady pace. Had they failed to render him the respect he was due, they would have met with a swift death by his sword. The code of the samurai and the law of the land gave him that right.
It had been an hour since he’d passed anyone, though. Night fell in slow, sure stages and most sought safety indoors. Few travelers walked the roads of Bizen at night. The ongoing war in the province made daylight hours dangerous enough. Common wisdom held that only a fool or a master bladesman would dare the road by night.
Yoshi was both, and he knew it.
He was hatamoto, lieutenant and trusted advisor to his lord and liege, Satake Mori. The Satake clan was caught up in the brutal war with the Niwa clan for control of Bizen. The war had plodded on for over three years, neither side able to break the stalemate. It was fought as much in the political arena as on the battlefield and Yoshi felt that it was the politicians who kept the war from being decidedly fought.
Yoshi was tired of delay, of spending idle time waiting for word to come from Lord Satake that the time was right to make battle.
The wind whispered through the leaves above Yoshi’s head. Strange. Somehow, the rushing noise sounded too louder for the slight breeze. Yoshi did not break his stride, but he listened intently. He heard nothing more than the rustle of the wind.
Lord Satake had sent him to visit the camps of his smaller allies in order to judge their morale and steadfastness. Yoshi found them to be very much of the same mind he was. Therefore, it would be his recommendation to Lord Satake that he attack the dogs of Lord Niwa soon, lest many of Satake’s allies quit the battlefield. One of the allied commanders had made that veiled threat very clear and Yoshi needed to deliver that message.
Now, as he neared the small village Lord Satake had chosen as his headquarters, Yoshi felt a rush of anticipation and excitement. Not at the prospect of meeting with his liege, but of another, darker meeting.
There. The sound again. Yoshi strained his ears, but did not slow his gait. He would be in the village within an hour. He could not afford to pause.
Nothing. Not a whisper.
Yoshi kept walking.
He’d been gone nineteen days. Though he would never think of shirking his duty, it had been difficult at times not to end his tour of the camps and hurry back to the village and wait. For her.
Misaka.
The darkness had seemed empty while on his mission. Meaningless. He fou
nd himself constantly yearning for the soft sound of his door sliding open and the thrill of that first touch of her cold hands. Night after night, he lay awake, staring into nothingness, longing for the feel of her sleek, naked body against his. He missed the firmness of her legs and buttocks, the smoothness of her thighs and belly rubbing against him. The way her breasts flattened against his chest and how her hair hung in his eyes at that fatal moment when she sunk her thin, white teeth into his neck, and drank.
The warm, bloody kiss they shared when she had sated herself.
Now, as he neared the village, his desires became a physical pull, tugging at his weary legs and forcing him to continue walking long after he should have stopped for the night. He would walk forever, though, if he had to, for that one, majestic moment…
There!
Along the tree line, not a dozen yards off the road. Yoshi saw the fleeting shadow as it slipped from one tree to another and then disappeared. His senses had not been wrong. He was being stalked. But by whom?
Not samurai. A samurai would stand in the road ahead of him and meet him honorably in the middle of the day. Even ronin, master-less samurai, would have the honor to do that.
Ninja, then.
Yoshi’s lip curled in disgust. Cowardly assassins sent by Lord Niwa. As hatamoto to Lord Satake, he was certainly a prime target.
Yoshi slowed to a stop. With his left thumb, he pressed the pommel of his katana forward, breaking the seal with the scabbard. From there, he could draw the long sword with unerring speed.
He scanned the tree-line, unafraid. Despite the fear they generated in the peasants, and even some samurai, ninja were not fearsome warriors. Tricksters, yes. Backstabbing assassins. Yoshi despised them and their honor-less existence. In a fair duel, ninja were no match for even a marginal samurai.
But ninja did not do battle honorably.
Yoshi found sure footing on the roadway and brought his right hand to the handle of his katana. He couldn’t see anything or discern their possible numbers but he doubted there was only one. Cowards usually sought safety in numbers.