by David Lee
She looked at him and snapped around to Bird Girl, who was busy looking at the crowd, and said to Jesse, “What happened, what’s the matter with you, what’s wrong with your face?”
“Nothing,” Jesse managed to get out. “I’m fine, she took very good care of me,” nodding towards Bird Girl, who smiled back with a goofy dreamy look on her face.
“Did she,” retorted Arabella, taking a closer look at Bird Girl.
“He was a perfect gentleman,” said Bird Girl. “I’ll take care of him whenever you want, it was a pleasure,” she gushed like he was a two year old, thought Jesse.
“You treated our guest to some of our finest and took care of yourself,” said Jason. “May I offer you a nightcap before you leave, perhaps a taste of the same?” He leaned in to Arabella as he spoke and seemed to be whispering in her ear, although Jesse could hear him clearly. For a moment Arabella considered the offer then, abruptly, she stepped to Jesse saying, “Take me home please, my business here is concluded.”
They crossed the dining room at a brisk walk and at the door Arabella thanked Ismaeli, who thanked her in turn for “No problems tonight.” Then she was off like a woman on a mission.
As they passed Drop Dead Chic, the Pomeranian ran out closely followed by its owner who scooped him up, inviting her in to inspect his hidden treasures. Begging off with promises to return at the earliest, she pushed off down the street ignoring the Vampires in the streets, the shops, the bars, the restaurants and, Jesse thought, him.
As they entered the tunnel, the same two guards stepped out and then back as, without breaking stride, she marched through where they had been standing with a curt, “Out of my way.” Jesse found himself having to trot to keep up with her and finally called “Hey, slow down,” to her back as she disappeared around a corner.
As he rounded the corner he almost ran her down as she had stopped and was standing in the middle of the walkway, her arms crossed against her chest. He bumped into her, stopping and putting his arms around her to steady himself and as an excuse to put his arms around her.
Still feeling the whiskey and floating on the Bird Girl’s attention he said, “You know you look gorgeous tonight.” It was true. When he had arrived at her apartment and she saw how he was dressed, she paired a semi sheer ivory silk blouse over a black bra with a pair of fitted black designer jeans and her favorite Louboutin’s of the moment, the leopard platform bootie and covered it with a fitted black leather jacket that showed a bit of ruffled cuff for effect.
“The way you have your hair reminds me of the way Cher had hers in an old Sonny and Cher video I saw,” he whispered in her ear.
“Get your hands off of me,” she said, giving him a push in the chest that rocked him back onto his ass.
“I’m sorry,” he said from his back, “I’ll be sure not to compliment you ever again.” He rolled over and tried to get to his feet with all the dignity he could muster.
“What did I tell you,” she said, visibly struggling to keep her voice calm. “Don’t look into a Vampire’s eyes, don’t relax and get lulled by the voice, it can be hypnotic. Also, remember, we were visiting the bad guys; be aware they will try to play you.” The sarcasm hurt more than the words; definitely overreacting.
“Nothing happened,” he said, all defensive now, feeling both rejected and humiliated. “We just had a drink and talked that’s all. I can’t really say anything, can I, because you haven’t really told me anything, have you, partner?” He was up on his feet now and blazing away like a wronged suitor as she stood with her arms crossed cool and collected like she didn’t know what he was irrationally going on about.
When he was finished she asked conversationally, “So, what did the two of you talk about, anything in common?”
The six ounces of super-premium whiskey followed by the three beers opened his mouth and before his brain could catch up it blurted out, “She wanted to know why I was still a Vampire virgin.”
“You spoke to her, to that bar slut, about my private life?” no longer cool and collected. She was actually kind of scary, he thought.
“She just took it for granted that we were, you know,” he said, realizing that the conversation had spun out of his control.
“No,” she said sweetly, “I don’t know, explain it to me, we were what?”
He could feel the trap closing, he knew that somehow he had blundered into dangerous territory and couldn’t see the path home. He thought about Bird Girl’s breast and the whiskey and the upside down penises and the naked ladies and the way she touched his leg and decided to play dumb, which at the moment was easy.
After dragging it out longer than he felt necessary, she said, “Is there anything else you happened to mention to her while you were blabbing about us? It‘s a good thing I don’t tell you anything important.” The final arrow firmly stuck in his chest, she pivoted on her impossibly high heel and started off down the sidewalk, oblivious to him hurrying behind so he wouldn’t be left lost in the Underground.
The way home was wet, cold and silent. As they approached her building and he was winding up to apologize, she preempted him with a chilly, “Good Night,” and pushed through the door, leaving him in the rain on Second Ave.
CHAPTER 19
Donning the shawl his great-grandfather wore when first they appeared, Finkelstein descended the stairs into the basement of the family business. He doubted that the Blue Anchor would remain in the family after his death. His two sons were culturally Jewish on their Jewish dating site and cared only about sports. Both were majoring in sports management in college and dreamed of running a professional basketball team. His daughter ran a popular yoga studio on Mercer Island catering to the spiritual needs of the community’s affluent wives. None were attracted to the idea of running a downtown bar far removed from the more glamorous nightlife of the city.
Gently but firmly his wife dissuaded him from divulging the glorious secret history of the Finkelstein family; to them it would have been an embarrassment. After her death, he knew he would not go against her memory, so he let it slide day to day until it was only him and the other alta cockers, not even enough for a minyan. To pray they had to either go to a temple where they weren’t welcome or entice males to join the service. That, unfortunately, led to questions about their practices, questions which did not have easy answers. So, the nine prayed alone, studying and seeking, looking always in the shadows for the evil that the prophets foretold.
The first born for four generations each faced the evil unclean to save mankind from disaster. Now, if his studies and his calculations were correct, it was his turn. Once his part was finished, another would appear to manage the upstairs, pray in the basement, study, always study to learn the unspoken names of God, the sacred and profane. Now, it was enough to dream.
Shuffling down the basement steps, he thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing to leave the headache of the Blue Anchor behind and move to the suburbs, live near his children, and join a synagogue in the suburbs concerned with assimilation, not the Vampyra. Of course, he would still come in to pray and study in the basement; that would never change, he had so much to tell the one who would come after him.
For now, the circle of old men who greeted him was enough. Almost enough to maintain the barrier that kept the Night People from crashing into the basement and into the City; enough to draw the ancient diagrams, symbols of the Nameless that protected them at night on their way home; enough to summon the Human who would ally with the Vampire woman to defeat the evil.
After first meeting Ortega he had, it was true, rechecked his calculations, redrawn diagrams and recruited another male to ensure passage of the prayer. It was hard to believe that this Human, this Jesus Ortega, was the result of supplication. Heroes, it was true, came in different forms, different shapes, manifestations not always apparent. So why not a third-generation Mexican immigrant alcoholic prone to violent episodes nurtured by a paranoid police command.
This evening, though, was sim
pler than wrestling with heterodoxy. Now they only needed to strengthen the wall that protected them from the outside. The Vampyra stayed in their portion of the Underground, accessing the City through various points scattered through downtown. An uneasy peace lay upon the unknowing City, enforced by the rigid rule of the Queen. The old checkpoints were long abandoned as the Human souls left from the last troubles died off, leaving few alive with knowledge of the People of the Night. Lately, there had been disturbing signs, barely perceived images flickering in the corner of vision, dreams rife with contagion and death. Even the damn rats seemed disturbed.
Mort, bald headed, stooped, cranky Mort, said he detected something, a feeling he hadn’t felt in many years, dread and fear. The boys would say he felt a disturbance in the force. Abraham Finkelstein didn’t know from any force but he trusted Mort’s feelings. Mort had been keeping the group alive for a long time and he wasn’t about to start ignoring his premonitions now. Mort was the canary; Abraham hoped he didn’t have to be sacrificed, but that was his calling and he was grateful that Mort was still coming to the basement, sitting on his stool by the door waiting for them to come again.
Entering the room, he was heartened that everyone made it. It was becoming harder to assemble the group. Travel for the frail was difficult and their families, most dispersed to suburbs east of the lake, didn’t relish two trips across the bridge so they could schmooze for an afternoon. Most worrisome was the sight of bagels on the side table. “Mort must have something really bad to report,” mused Abraham, “if he made his daughter stop at Kosher Bagels on Capitol Hill on the way in.” The general unease didn’t impede anyone's’ appetite as the group jostled each other for the bagels and cream cheese, he noted.
Abraham got in line behind Moishe, an Israeli-born who had emigrated after two wars. He was the only one of the group with formal combat training and actual battle experience. He often said if he knew what he was getting into he would have stayed and faced the car bombs, it was safer. He nodded his head at Abraham, his glasses on his forehead, and whispered conspiratorially, “it must be bad, he brought lox.” Trained in intelligence, Moishe cobbled together a network of the dispossessed keeping them informed of the bizarre and strange happenings about the city.
Abraham felt his stomach curl at the site of the salmon on the plate. The last time Mort treated was when a deranged Vampire with psychotic visions of redemption tried reenacting the crucifixion utilizing a yeshiva student in an attempt to bind his soul. Mort’s timely warning and a quiet word to Malloy had squelched that problem. Malloy had contacted the Queen, who had put her house assassins on the matter. “You have to hand it to her,” Moishe had said when the Times reported a bizarre incident where a babbling Torah student was found tied to a tree in Woodland Park with a cone of ashes smoldering at his feet. “She knows how to take care of a problem.”
Finkelstein’s eyebrows merged, a bristly white and grey caterpillar squiggling above his eyes, as he observed the eight noshing away at the bagels. To the world they would look like what they were, men at the ends of their lives meeting for a meal, some companionship and prayer. The esoteric symbols and calculations drawn on the walls competed for space with the amulets concentrated on the walls and windows facing the Underground.
Marco the ancient Sofer delicately transcribed one of God’s secret names in square letters that did not touch, surrounding it with names of his angels, all the while reciting precise words as his pen dipped into the dark and correct ink. The purpose of the Amulet was vague, purposefully so, to divert the attention of the ignorant and confuse evildoers. Describing the need for protection in esoteric terms, referring to impregnable walls of stone, it sought protection in this time of need. The passage was important yet cryptic, the universal appeal for help, so prevalent in Torah. The lettering could only be done in the precise ritual as proscribed by the laws known to Marco and would be finished in his own time. Nevertheless, Finkelstein wished he would get a move on; soon, very soon they would need all the help there was.
Mr. Finkelstein savored the three amulets surrounding the door. Each recited his family’s lineage, and the three had served to block entry to the Blue Anchor from the Underground for these many years. The Vampyra had tried many times to breach the shield, but the power of the Nameless One and his Angels had thwarted their siege. He had resisted obtaining his own amulet, preferring to rely upon his father’s, grandfather’s and his father’s for protection. All these years he avoided commissioning a personal Amulet, fearing it as a harbinger of his own death, a silly superstition he kept to himself.
Today they would finish the Tetragrammaton, the symbol that would extend the protection into the corridors, extending their borders into the frontiers of the Unclean. As they worked upon the sacred design, they each felt in their own way emanations from the other side. Or, as Moishe the pragmatic warrior said, “We push, they push back.” They meant to hang it on the old door to the Underground. Once the front door of the original saloon, it now served as the passageway to the darkness, a passageway that the group understood ran both ways.
As Marco, their scribe, leaned over the symbol, softly chanting the prayer for dipping the brush in the ink, then the prayer for lettering the esoteric letters into words, they all stood quietly observing a ritual codified by Maimonides and honored ever since. Their job was to observe the divine process, to pray as required, to protect Marco as he bowed over the symbology, his frail neck stretched like the sacrificial fowl as he carefully wrote the names.
Sensitive Mort was the first, lifting his unseeing gaze from the floor, sliding off his stool to stand one last time, hearing in his quiet place the silent tread of vicious history. Called again he did his duty, warning the men of the danger descending on them. Stepping to the door he opened it to stand in the passage, a beacon in the night, his inner eye focusing down the corridor. “Get back in here,” snapped Finkelstein.
The others fell into an accustomed array, lining up along the windows with Finkelstein at the door, prepared to repel the invaders. They came in a dark and foul cloud like excrement from the sky, staining the windows and blighting righteous souls, for that is what they did when entrance was denied them. They invaded the consciousness to darken and depress, until a crack appeared in the resistance and in false hope of relief, they were invited in.
Marco, undisturbed, continued his lettering, neither hastening nor slowing his hallowed progress. Faces coalesced out of the darkness, pressing against the windows closer than they had ever been before. Finkelstein stifled the urge to tell Marco to hurry; the amulet would be finished in God’s time, not theirs. Now, all they could do was face the past as their fathers and forefathers had before them.
The demons, perverted spawn of golem and the daughters of men, raged at the door. Finkelstein prayed that the amulets would hold; although not made for him, the residual connection of his bloodline to the amulets had always been strong enough to resist any incursion. This time, though, the powers of the night seemed stronger; he could not tell if the demons were more powerful or the amulets weaker. In either event, the demons were closer than they had ever been, pressing their teeth against the windows, their hideous tongues flicking at the panes of glass.
Moishe was the first; his kippahed head thrust forward the righteous energy, forcing a bulge in the Vampire line. As the others shuffled up following Moishe’s lead, a power from the past, one long thought dead, appeared in front of Finkelstein. Known to him from the secret oral tradition he realized that the one they believed banished had returned. The shock of recognition caused Finkelstein to stumble, opening a slight fissure in the line allowing the demon’s arm to snake through the doorway, its taloned fingers locking on to Mort’s neck and jerking him from the cellar into the corridor, where he disappeared beneath a tangle of howling Vampires.
Paralyzed, their numbers reduced by one, the men stood wavering before the onslaught; the only thing saving them from being overrun by the horde was the blood scent distra
cting the undisciplined Vampires from advancing. As Finkelstein struggled to bring his emotions under control so he could rally his friends, he was roughly pushed aside and watched, dazed, as the Indian stepped beyond the shielding amulets and repeatedly drove a wooden stake into the howling mob.
Shocked by the improbable scene, he watched as the Indian, known as the best shuffleboard player ever at the Blue Anchor, methodically drove the howling mob down the corridor. Lying on the cracked sidewalk just outside the door were the remains of Mort, horribly disfigured by the ravenous attack. Around him several Vampires turned to ash, testament to the fighting prowess of the Indian who retreated toward the men.
“Pick him up,” said the Indian, “we need to get inside before they come back.”
Galvanized by his calm voice, they surrounded what was left of Moishe and all together hoisted his torn and frail body into the air, carrying him back into the basement. Marco looked up from his prayers as they laid the body to rest announcing, “I am finished, it is completed.”
Reverently, Finkelstein left his friend’s body. Taking the parchment in his hands, he carried it to the doorway and hung it on the door, belated protection against the evil of the night. Behind him the diminished group huddled around the body, chanting the El Molai Rachamimas as Mr. Finkelstein telephoned Malloy, reporting the tragedy.
Sergeant Malloy, as he had many times before, arranged to have the body retrieved and prepared reports establishing the senseless death of an elderly man on the streets of Seattle. Another tragic and inexplicable homicide without any apparent motive, similar to all the other homicides Malloy had disguised throughout his distinguished career in Special Matters.
Turning to the Indian, Finkelstein held out his hand saying, “We’ve never been formally introduced.” The Indian, a small smile on his face replied, “I’m Lee, my family sent me to help you.”