Fiction River: Hex in the City

by Fiction River

  Her hands shook as she lowered the gun and nausea swept up in a burning tide from her belly. Cordite and fresh blood swarmed over the black magic rot. She shoved it all away, closing down the link with Ruby as much as she could. Save the boy. Get the hell out before on duty cops showed up. Think about dead people later.

  “Get Andre,” she said, moving forward and stepping over the still twitching body of the hex-thrower.

  Andre was conscious. They untied him, pulling the tape off as gently as they could. He didn’t speak, but picked up Ruby and pressed his cheek to her fur in a gesture that Verity was intimately familiar with. Ruby didn’t protest, seeming to understand that it was important to let this stranger touch her, something she usually hated.

  “What’s in the crates?” Cord asked as they all picked their way around the bodies.

  Andre shuddered and stepped close to Verity. “Hexes,” he whispered, looking at Cord with worried eyes. “They use my blood to make them.”

  Verity found a crowbar, her ears straining for the sound of sirens. She pried the lid off a crate and gasped. Inside were hundreds of charms, vile things that looked like rope and thorn spiders, all twitching and crawling over themselves as though alive.

  “Think they are safe to burn?” she asked Cord.

  “Safer to burn than to leave here,” he said. “Get the boy to the car, I’ll figure something out.”

  Whatever Cord did, and it was likely magical since his smell changed from cedar to cinnamon, it proved super effective. They drove away with the flames rising behind them, heading back into the city.

  Andre, still holding an unprotesting Ruby, curled up in the back seat with Cord’s coat for a blanket, fell asleep with the kittenish power of the young. Verity watched him as the miles rolled by.

  “What do I do with him?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Cord said. “I know a place in Canada, the kind of people who will keep him safe and hidden from those who might use him. It’s best if you don’t know anything about it.”

  He was right, but it hurt. She felt more engaged in her life than she had in a long time, and now that she was finally doing something that felt wholly right, she apparently needed to do what she had done all along. Let things be Somebody Else’s Problem.

  “I guess you can drop Ruby and me off at home,” she said, still watching the boy sleep. At the sound of her name, Ruby opened her blood-red eyes and bobbed her head at Verity before going back to sleep on the boy’s chest, looking like a pile of dirty snow on a Christmas blanket.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Shower. Sleep. Get up for work. I’m on call for warrant duty tomorrow.”

  “Going back to work? After this?” She didn’t need to look at his face to read what he meant by that.

  “It’s my job.” She shrugged.

  They rode in silence for the rest of the drive. As she gently took Ruby back from Andre, she placed a kiss on the boy’s forehead. He did not wake up.

  She stood outside the car, the door still hanging open, and looked up at the tall shadow of her apartment building. Other than Ruby’s television, she couldn’t remember a single personal thing in her apartment. Somebody else’s life was up there.

  Verity got back into the car, cuddling Ruby close. She’d get her a new TV.

  “Drive,” she said to Cord.

  He smiled at her but kept his mouth shut, putting the car in gear, and they headed out into the maze of dark buildings. Verity did not look back.

  Introduction to “A Thing Immortal As Itself”

  Lee Allred is a soldier. I was sure of that when I met him, and I’m even more sure of it now after reading “A Thing Immortal As Itself” and meeting his main character, Nathan Fairchild. This is the vampire I want to see at the movies. Seriously. I’m one adorable, sensitive vampire away from a tantrum, and Nathan gives me hope that someone knows that vampires are predators. This makes him a Guardian in my book.

  Dubbed the “Master Sergeant of Alternate History,” Lee Allred has sold his unique brand of short fiction to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Baen Books, Fiction River, and numerous other publications. He’s also scripted for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Image Comics. His classic novella For the Strength of the Hills earned a finalist nod for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Lee served worldwide in the US Air Force (including three tours in Iraq) before retiring at the rank of Master Sergeant. He currently resides on the beautiful Oregon Coast. Lee writes:

  “‘A Thing Immortal as Itself’ is part of a series of Stakeholder vampire stories. This one takes a look at the interplay between the vampires’ secret society and human politicians who know vampires exist but feign otherwise.”

  A Thing Immortal As Itself

  Lee Allred

  Two A.M. on a sweltering summer night in Washington, D.C. Nathan Fairchild pulled his rusted-out Ford pickup into the deserted parking lot of the 24-hour franchise pancake house nestled among crumbling brick apartment houses. Light streamed through the building’s wraparound windows, an oasis of light in a dark and darkening world. Fairchild opened the squeaky-hinged door and stepped out into the muggy heat. Police sirens wailed as District patrol SUVs flashed past, heading down Alabama Avenue towards some routine homicide or another. He relaxed slightly. Nothing to concern him. Not yet.

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed his boss to inform him he’d arrived. The Judge wasn’t too happy about Fairchild being pulled off his regular work to run this assignment. Fairchild wasn’t too happy either, but he knew his boss didn’t care about that. Fairchild’s priorities were a little different from the Judge’s and the Rookery’s, but the Judge didn’t care about that, either.

  Fairchild hung up and jammed the phone in his back pocket. He hated being used, but that went with the job. He hated the things the job required him to do, but usually that entailed doing them to members of the Rookery, not to human beings like himself.

  Or rather, like he used to be.

  He walked across the parking lot in the stifling, humid heat. Just in the short walk from his truck to the door of the pancake place, his boot-cut jeans began sticking to his legs. Sweat soaked the back of his t-shirt.

  Good. He’d be counting on the heat later on tonight. That didn’t mean he wanted to stand out in it, though. He pushed the door open and let the welcoming cool air-conditioning wash over him.

  The restaurant stood deserted this time of night, and particularly now with news reports of a mad slasher in the neighborhood. Only a single customer, Fairchild’s contact, sat in one of the back booths. The man wore a three-thousand-dollar suit, a three-hundred-dollar haircut, and a three-dollar cloisonné lapel pin identifying Mark Rinsley as a senator’s aide.

  Fairchild slipped into the booth opposite Rinsley. The gummy residue of blueberry syrup, spilled on the half-wiped seat, smeared blood-black across the seat of his jeans.

  He’d have worse stains later in the night.

  Condensate beaded on the interior of the air-conditioned window panes. A droplet scudded down the window, gathering size as it leeched other droplets in its downward path. Fairchild’s reflection on the window showed a tall, trim blond-haired man. A young man with young gray eyes.

  The reflection lied.

  Rinsley’s reflection was a bit more trustworthy. It showed a handsome man in his mid-thirties desperately trying to maintain the look of a teen idol. It also showed a man uncomfortable with his surroundings and nervous with having Fairchild seated across from him.

  Rinsley gave Fairchild a politician’s warm smile; it didn’t reach his eyes, but it tried, if only in fake sincerity.

  A heavy-set waitress, well past fifty, ambled out from the back kitchen and poured them some coffee. She asked in a thick Bawlmerese accent if she could take their order, all the while giving them the eye for being white-fool crazy enough to be in this neighborhood after dark.

  Fairchild folded his menu and ordered for both of them. “Two breakfast specials, eggs s
crambled, bacon instead of sausage, extra bacon, extra crispy.”

  The waitress carried her pad back to the kitchen, muttering all the way about crazy fools.

  Rinsley waited until she was out of earshot. “Interesting tradecraft,” He said, gesturing with a languid sweep of a hand. “Why a pancake place?”

  Fairchild shrugged. “I like pancakes. And I get hungry this time of night.”

  “Pancakes and blue jeans. Not quite what I was expecting for a vampire.”

  “Unfortunately, you’re exactly what I was expecting.” Fairchild began stirring creamer into his coffee. “Let’s just get this over with. I have more important things to do.”

  “More important than a U.S. Senator? I rather doubt it.”

  Fairchild sipped his coffee. “You have your world; I have mine. Mine just happens to be reality.”

  Anger flashed across Rinsley’s face at Fairchild’s dismissing of his Senator—and thus by extension Rinsley himself—then with a visible effort, he slapped his politician’s bland smile back on.

  The smile wouldn’t save him. Rinsley was a dead man. He just didn’t know it yet. A part of Fairchild, a long-buried part of Fairchild, wished it didn’t have to be that way, but as he’d told Rinsley, Fairchild dealt with the way things were, not the way he wished things to be.

  “Sorry if I sounded a bit skeptical,” Rinsley said. “You must admit, though, the whole jeans and work boot look goes against certain preconceptions.”

  Fairchild drained the last of his coffee. “You were perhaps expecting a silk-lined opera cape? Bela Lugosi accent? The whole nine yards?”

  Rinsley’s checks reddened. Fairchild could smell the extra blood flowing so close to the surface of Rinsley’s clear complected skin. He could hear the blood pulse through the man’s jugulars.

  “I was expecting black motorcycle leathers like in the movies.”

  Fairchild shrugged. “I like to dress comfortably. Besides, I’m not a vampire. Bitten once, yes, actually one, no. Just a staffer, like you.”

  Rinsley drew himself up. “I wouldn’t say I’m just a —”

  “Is that how you became a staffer, too?” Fairchild interrupted. “Did your Senator bite you?”

  Rinsley coughed in surprise. Senator “Matlida the Hun” Gransbury was legendary for her mercurial tirades.

  Famous for something else, besides.

  Boy Wonder staffers with a cum laude PoliSci degree from George Mason were a dime a dozen in D.C. Ones with Rinsley’s Brando hair and DiCaprio smile were not. Obvious why Gransbury had hired Rinsley. And just as obvious as to why Gransbury had set him up for the chop by sending him to meet Fairchild tonight.

  Rinsley hid it well, but he was past his prime. His hairline was edging up and his waistline was edging outward. Gransbury’s indispensable Boy Wonder was about to be replaced by a younger Boy Toy.

  Fluorescent light fixtures hummed overhead as they tried to blot out the shadow of the night outside. There wasn’t enough light in the world to blot out the shadows of the night. The handgun under Rinsley’s jacket would not protect him from the dangers outside the lighted restaurant, nor would that lucky charm hanging around his neck protect him from the dangers within.

  “So,” Rinsley said. “Your side promised a little demonstration. Some sort of vampiric dog-and-pony show I can report back on. When’s it to take place?”

  “Soon.” Fairchild said. “Just waiting on a phone call letting me know everything’s in place.”

  They sat staring at each other.

  The sizzle of their order cooking on the grill back in the kitchen filled the silence. The smell of slightly burnt bacon reminded Fairchild of the crematorium and billowing white smoke from their brick stacks. They’d both be leaving smelling like bacon.

  After a while, the waitress returned with their order. She slapped down two daily breakfast specials and left wordlessly, as if she’d taken one look at Rinsley and his Senate Staff pin and knew for a dead certainty she wasn’t getting any tip.

  The cooking wasn’t any better. Runny scrambled eggs, burnt bacon, half-cooked hash browns, and a short stack of pancakes heavy on the “short.” Fairchild started eating anyway. He’d been quite honest when he’d told Rinsley he was hungry.

  He’d been quite honest in everything else he’d said to the man.

  Rinsley, used to dining at the Four Seasons, stared at his plate and the abyss stared back. He tried a timid bit of the runny eggs and then pushed the plate away. He looked nervous. Perhaps it was how Fairchild’s teeth flashed as he wolfed down his food. Or perhaps he’d finally realized the danger he was in dickering with vampires.

  “Um,” he said as Fairchild ate. “Perhaps some ground rules for our little meeting here? How do I know you won’t—”

  “Fang you?” Fairchild asked. “Drain your blood?”

  Fairchild reached over and plucked one of Rinsley’s untouched strips of bacon. He dropped it perpendicular across one of the remaining strips, forming a cross.

  “There,” he said. “You’re safe.”

  Rinsley’s DiCaprio smile evaporated. “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”

  Faster than Rinsley could follow, Fairchild lunged across the table and snatched the hidden silver necklace from around Rinsley’s neck, broken chain links scattering. He hefted the store-new silver crucifix in the hollow of his cupped hand. Neither the cross nor the silver had any deleterious effect.

  “Now I’m laughing at you,” he said. He tossed the crucifix back at Rinsley. “Any more movie moments you’d like to share? A silver bullet perhaps? Garlic? Running water? A mirror?”

  Rinsley jerked his hand towards the gun under his jacket. Fairchild grabbed him and squeezed just short of the pressure needed to snap the wrist bone.

  “Don’t,” Fairchild said, his voice perfectly level. “You’ll only make me mad. Besides, what would your Senator’s constituents think, the aide of the Senate’s leading gun-control advocate with an unregistered concealed weapon?”

  He let go of the wrist. “Don’t worry, pretty boy. I won’t muss a single hair on your precious head. “

  Rinsley rubbed the bruised area. “So fast. So strong. I thought you said you weren’t a vampire.”

  Fairchild picked his fork back up. “Like I said, only bitten. Some of the bite stuck is all.”

  He waved the fork. “But by all means, let’s talk about rules, the rules our two sides abide by: my side stays hidden, keeps things discrete, cleans up our own messes; your side looks the other way. My side is not happy Gransbury broke those rules asking for direct contact.”

  “They’d end up less happy if she hadn’t,” Rinsley said. “This isn’t the same world anymore. Twenty-four-hour newsfeeds, Internet bloggers, a video camera in every phone. How are you going to stay hidden in a world of cameras on every corner, surveillance drones, and computerized records? You need more than just our ‘looking the other way.’ You need somebody on the inside running interference.”

  “And that someone is Gransbury?”

  “Senator Gransbury. Senate Majority Leader Gransbury come November.”

  “And what’s her price?” Fairchild asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer.

  Rinsley wiped his fingers with a paper napkin. “She wants to switch sides. Become one of you. A vampire. A senator vampire.”

  “Feeling her age, is she?” Fairchild asked. “Wanting immortality enough to join the Rookery?”

  “That isn’t it at all. She’s one of the rare greats. She still has so much to offer this great country.”

  “And of course, her loyal aide has still so much to offer his boss, too,” Fairchild shot back with just as much sincerity. “I take it it’s a package deal then, the two of you?”

  Rinsley’s face reddened. “She’s discussed the matter with me, yes.”

  Fairchild bet she had. The same way the farmer discussed Thanksgiving dinner with the turkey on the stroll to the chopping block.

  “How lucky for yo
u.”

  Mistaking Fairchild’s acid observation for a welcoming handshake into the club, Rinsley dropped his mask. “What’s it really like, immortality?” Rinsley’s sudden almost childlike trust cut Fairchild to the core. Fairchild almost told him the truth out of pity. Pity and the tattered scraps of the conscience he’d had before he’d become what he was now.

  Instead, he continued to do his job.

  “That’s the reason for the demonstration, to show your senator what our immortality is really like.”

  As if on cue, Fairchild’s phone rang.

  Time.

  He stood. “Tip the waitress,” he told Rinsley. “Leave a twenty.”

  Rinsley paused, his wallet half open. “You’re kidding? A twenty? Why?”

  “Because I said so,” Fairchild said. “Because she’s here doing her job at night in a neighborhood the slasher’s been prowling. Because just once in your miserable life you’re going to treat those beneath you with the respect they deserve. But mainly because if you don’t, you can tell Gransbury the deal’s off.”

  Rinsley threw down a twenty in disgust, then a second just for spite. “I didn’t know vampires were such bleeding hearts.”

  “They aren’t,” Fairchild said.

  He slipped his phone in his back pocket.

  “But like I told you, I’m not one.”

  ***

  The two of them stepped out into the soggy air. It hadn’t cooled at all. If anything, it was hotter and stickier. Fairchild smiled wryly. Rinsley would be sorry for that suit jacket, but he couldn’t very well take it off without exposing his shoulder holster. Too bad. Rinsley should have left his toy at home.

  Rinsley held a sleeve up to his nose. “I smell like burnt bacon after sitting in there.”

  Fairchild nodded. He smelt like bacon, too. He stepped away from the lighted building and into the shadows of the night.

  The rest of the entire neighborhood stood dark. Blood-red brick apartments rose above the street like giant gravestones. Not a light glowed in a window. Not a person stirred outdoors.