Sleight of Hand

by Mark Henwick

  I managed to stifle an impulse to giggle, afraid of the hysteria that hid behind it. If you thought modern subterranean vampire lair, you might well have conjured up something like this.

  The floor was stone underfoot. In the darkness, I got the impression of pale lines running through it. I knelt and touched the floor. It was cold and hard; there was a glossiness to the finish and pale lines spread out like a network of veins through the blackness—maybe polished granite or marble. Slippery underfoot if it came to fighting. A horrible thought drifted through my mind—very easy to clean and not liable to stain. I suppressed that firmly.

  I had thought it was silent at first, but I realized there was an almost imperceptible noise all around, unrecognized, yet tantalizingly familiar.

  When I turned my head to try and locate a source I got a shock. My eyes, now better adjusted, could make out looming figures lining the sides of the room. I froze for a second before getting back to my feet in a rush. They remained motionless. My heart rate gradually returned to more normal ranges.

  I took a couple of steps towards the sides of the room and they remained where they were. Had I just been spooked by a bunch of statues? I peered at them; they were almost human, but misshapen.

  I took a couple more steps. The sound of my boots was absorbed. There were no echoes in this chamber. I could make out statues and chairs along the walls.

  The subliminal noise was just perceptibly louder as I got closer to the side of the room, and I noticed there was something wrong about the walls behind the statues. I couldn’t see, but I got a sensation of cold movement from it. I shuddered and edged closer.

  Water? I reached tentatively through a space between the statues and touched the wall, jerking my hand back as if I were expecting to be electrocuted. My fingers were wet. I sniffed them, rubbed them together. Cold, not oily, odorless and clear as far as I could make out. I was so not going to taste it, but it appeared as if the wall had a sheet of water running down it and disappearing into a gap at the bottom. The noise was the water passing over the surface of the wall.

  Having solved one little puzzle, I stepped back and took some deep breaths, trying to calm down. If vampires reacted to the scent of fear, the best thing for me at the moment was to be relaxed and unafraid.

  Where was the master vampire? Maybe he had forgotten, I thought hopefully, which made me smile to myself. It would seem strange to have me hauled all the way across Denver and then not be here to explain why. Or maybe this was just like office politics—making me wait to show me who was really important. In any event, the wait allowed me either to get wound up worrying or to do some exploring.

  I turned my attention back to the nearest statue. It was the second in the line. It was maybe seven feet tall and in this light appeared to be of black or very dark stone. It had seemed misshapen because the head was not a human head, but a jackal. I was looking at a statue of Anubis. It was seamless, fashioned from a single stone, and the craftsmanship was unbelievable. It was like Michelangelo’s David moved to an Egyptian context.

  The statue to the right was human and shorter, about my height, a samurai warrior with sheathed long and short blades in his belt. Again, the workmanship was superb. The clothing was real fabric, silky to the touch.

  The statue to the left was also human, naked, almost as tall as the Anubis and, umm… well proportioned. An ancient Greek-style helmet with nose and cheek guards was pushed back on the head, revealing a hint of curly hair in the gloom. In the right hand was a long spear, butt resting on the ground. How the hell do you carve that?

  It might have been the darkness, but I was sure I had never seen any work of this quality before. I reached out and touched the arm of Anubis.

  “Impressive, aren’t they?”

  Chapter 24

  I jumped like I had been stung and whirled around. “Don’t freaking creep up on me like that,” I yelled, my fists raised and my body unconsciously falling into a fighting pose.

  There was a brief silence from the darkness at the head of the room, before the voice went on conversationally. “You know, where I come from, you could have been impaled for displaying such a lack of respect.”

  The demon got my voice before I could throttle it. “You know, where I come from, you could have been staked and beheaded and then left out in the sun. A bit old-fashioned, I admit, but we’re traditionalists like that.”

  For one heart-stopping moment, my head managed to catch up with my mouth and snapped it shut. I waited for the master vampire of Denver to step down and kill me. But there was only a wheezing noise which I finally recognized as laughter. Vampires laugh? David did, but he was only on the way to being a vampire.

  “Oh, dear. They did warn me about you, Ms. Farrell. But the trouble is, the more I have learned, the more intriguing you have become.”

  He was sitting on a chair against the wall at the head of the room. A throne might be a better description. It was raised on a dais and had a fanned back like a peacock’s tail. What light there was showed him as a vague outline in the chair.

  “You refused my first invitation—” he began.

  “Your first invitation,” I cut across him, the demon not being quite done yet, “was a gang of thugs who tried to abduct me. As an invitation that counts as pretty damn crude. They were arrogant and incompetent.”

  I could see his head bow. “I’ll grant you that they were overconfident and unprepared. I think perhaps your treatment of them was a lesson and punishment enough in itself. I also offer my apologies, and I assure you that the sending, this evening, of a pair of my most senior and trusted associates hasn’t happened in a very long time.”

  I wondered what a long time meant to a vampire and what the honor of being collected by senior vampires meant for me. My heart rate was inching down on the basis that it was better to be talking than fighting. I completely ignored the thought that maybe it was just that vampires enjoyed a chat before dinner.

  “I should be flattered that you sent your top team? It’s still kidnapping, and last I looked that’s illegal here.”

  “Would you really have come if I’d sent you a written invitation, as you suggested on Tuesday?”

  “You’ve got me there,” I said.

  There was a little silence while I glared at roughly where his face was and he sat unperturbed, as far as I could tell.

  “Diana thinks highly of you,” he said.

  “That’s the tall one or the Vietnamese with spotty shoulders?” My bets were on the tall one. I didn’t think Pussycat liked me.

  “The tall one, as you describe her.”

  “Well, I don’t know what she’s got to base it on. The relationship between a kidnapper and victim is damn artificial, isn’t it?” That was petty, but I was angry. “But what discussion we had included her swearing on her Blood that I would not be harmed.” I didn’t quite have the guts to finish that and ask him if he intended to honor that.

  “She did,” was all he replied. Then he sighed and held up his hands. “My apologies again. I hope we will discover that this meeting is important for both of us, and that might allow you to overlook or excuse the irregularity of the arrangement. If you would permit, I would like to start again. Be welcome to House Altau, Ms. Farrell.”

  I shifted my weight nervously from foot to foot. If he was playing with his food, he played a long game. My heartbeat inched down again.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying for politeness. “If it’s important for both of us, since I’m your guest here, Mr. Altau, maybe you would explain why it’s so important for you first.”

  “I will. But first, I’ve lived in many cultures,” he said, and I shuddered a little. Every time I got to think that he was acting almost human he said something like that. “And I am comfortable with many forms of address. But I’m American now and I should like to follow the local customs. May I call you Amber, and will you please call me Skylur in return?”

  It’s not a local custom to go around kidnapping pe
ople, I thought, but I managed to strangle the demon before he got to blurt that out.

  “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “Skylur Altau? Not from around here, are you? I guess I didn’t think a master vampire would be a home-grown, local boy anyway, but I’ll admit you’re not exactly what I anticipated.”

  He laughed. The creepy thing was that his laughter sounded nice now, and I wondered what he was doing to my head. How was it that I was calmly, well, fairly calmly, chatting with a master vampire in his dungeon and thinking his voice and laughter sounded quite nice.

  “Please don’t project Hollywood onto us. We Athanate are very different from that. And as to being local, Amber, I was here before great-grandfather Farrell boarded that leaky ship in Ireland.”

  I let that sink in a while. He had done his research on me. Finally I went back to the name he’d used for his kind. “Athanate?” I asked.

  “Diana will speak more about that with you later.” He waved his hand. “It is appropriate that you have some greater understanding of us if we are to work together. But before we get diverted again, I should like to address why you’re of such interest to me.” He paused. “I can summarize it simply by asking ‘what are you?’”

  I snorted. “Like it says on my door, Skylur, I’m an investigator. I do commercial and private investigations.”

  “Yes, that’s what you do, Amber, and it’s of interest to me as well. But it’s not what you are.”

  “I don’t follow.” I had an idea of where this was going and it didn’t make me happy.

  “Let me see.” He steepled his fingers. “We’ll come back to the army, but let’s start closer to home. You left the police while you were still a rookie—I believe that’s the term? Hardly six weeks into your rookie placement, here in Denver. Your file is anodyne—apparently it was mutually agreed that you leave. No mention of the incident in the previous week, which is strange in itself, is it not?”

  “There was no need to mention it,” I said, my heart sinking. It was looking as if this was about the issue I least wanted to discuss. “There was a separate report filed about it. I just made a rookie mistake and got into a situation which should have been left to experienced officers. Luckily the SWAT team was on hand in time.” I had that little story down pat.

  “And right there, Amber, you have just tiptoed past the truth.”

  I balked at replying. There was little I could say that wouldn’t get me further into dangerous waters. I really didn’t want to lie. If he could hear my heartbeat and smell the adrenaline spikes in my blood, he was a freaking lie detector. I was sworn to stick to the story and that seemed a good idea to me for all kinds of reasons, not least because I was standing in front of the master vampire of Denver.

  “And the only lucky thing,” he continued, “was that the SWAT team were there in time so that the story you and Lieutenant Morales cooked up was plausible—just.”

  He sat and looked at me from the shadows while I struggled to even out my breathing and heart rate and wondered what my best options were now. Best didn’t seem to describe them quite as well as least worst. He hadn’t mentioned the colonel, so maybe he didn’t know quite as much as he thought he did, though I couldn’t see any way to use that.

  “You made what would have been a mistake for another rookie cop. You went into a building where three men,” he held up a finger to make the point, “three men, who were known to be armed and dangerous, were holding a child hostage. Furthermore, you went in without backup. Against three men, armed with shotguns, who had gunned down two policemen earlier. You had a pistol. And they weren’t just men.”

  What could I say? The truth was, I didn’t know why I’d gone in against those odds. I could remember the smell, crouching down below the window. I could remember thinking vampires. I could remember knowing what they really wanted the child for, knowing that there was a very small opportunity before she died and it all went to hell. And then I heard her scream. After that, what I could mainly remember were the windows, and Emily. I went in through a window on the ground floor, and rolled. It got disjointed after that. The glass shards falling slowly, like snowflakes. Firing, just as I was taught in Ops 4-10—tap, tap, tap—chest, chest, head. The breath of a shotgun blast that missed my face by an inch. The window on the top floor. The last of the vampires went out of that window. It was the sixth floor, and I hadn’t intended to throw him out. He seemed to start falling so slowly. As he fell, I could see his eyes widen, staring at me with sudden realization of what was happening, and then he dropped like a stone.

  I could remember Emily, screaming when she saw me staggering back down the stairs, covered in blood. And then at the end, I could remember she held on to me while the SWAT team boiled through the building like a pack of demented black robots. The rest was blank, except sometimes in nightmares.

  While I was standing there, the level of dread had eased off. Some of the remembered anger washed away the fear. And I reckoned that at rock bottom, I couldn’t dig myself any deeper.

  “You need to keep better control of your vampires,” I spat at him.

  He held his hands up as if warding off my anger. “Amber, they weren’t mine, and I’m not condemning you for killing ‘vampires.’ In fact, I would like to give you my heartfelt thanks for resolving a situation that caught me off balance.”

  “You don’t mind?” I said stupidly. “This isn’t about me killing rogue vampires?”

  “I’m thanking you for killing them. They deserved it. If we’d had more time, some warning perhaps, we would have captured them and found out where they were from and why they came to Denver. I regret we didn’t have that opportunity, but, under the circumstances, it could not have gone better.”

  My legs felt wobbly, and the bastard was probably reading the relief flowing through me. Careful Amber, not out of the vampire’s lair quite yet.

  “I’m sorry for concerning you so. It’s perfectly understandable in the situation, but please believe me, that was not my intention. This isn’t about you killing those ‘vampires.’”

  His pause was barely noticeable. “It’s about how you come to be able to kill them. The point I was trying to reach was that it is not possible for a human to achieve what you did.”

  “But I did.”

  “And thus it follows that you cannot be human,” he concluded.

  “Or your statement is wrong,” I managed. My voice sounded thin. Not out of the lair by a long way yet.

  He just hummed before coming back. “If I were to ask about your time in the army, what might you tell me?”

  Oh, God, more stuff I’m not allowed to talk about. “I enjoyed the army. They taught me discipline, made me fit and confident, taught me enough to do the job I’m doing now.”

  “Again!” He laughed out loud, sounding genuinely amused. “You really are a master of saying something passably true that leaves almost everything out.”

  I tried not to squirm like a schoolgirl in front of the principal.

  “Is it not truly remarkable that there’s so little to show for it? The army records are strangely silent. You were at a training camp. After that, there’s not even a record of your rank and salary, if you ignore that photograph on your desk, until you leave the army as a sergeant on a disability allowance.” He stopped and waited. I didn’t say anything. At least he wasn’t saying I hadn’t been in the army.

  “Something happened, Amber.” He leaned forward. “Something very important happened to you in the army.”

  “Maybe. Can’t say.” I had gotten very short on words by this time. There really wasn’t a lot I could say. I had signed all those rights away.

  It was as if he read my mind. “They’ve made you sign all kinds of documents, I don’t doubt. I suppose if I’m an American, I had better respect those documents. I suspect you won’t tell me now much more about your past than I already know. You will in time. But there are things I need to know about you, tonight. To know if you can work for me.” He stood up. “How st
rong are you?”

  My stomach lurched. It felt as if someone was squeezing my chest and pressing on my eyes. Gray fingers sank into my skull. I stumbled back. I could sense him inside my head. The room had become suffocatingly dark. I wanted to turn and run, but my body wouldn’t obey me. My legs gave out and I slumped down onto my knees. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t tell where he was. He seemed to be everywhere and in my head.

  I managed to raise one hand to ward him off. “No, please.” It sounded like someone else talking, far away.

  “Time to come home, Amber,” he whispered, startlingly close to my ear. I fell over, trying to move away. “Your Blood calls out to us. You’ve been too long on the path. You’re lost. You’re lonely. We’re waiting for you. Come home to us, where you belong, Amber. You’re so close.”

  “You promised no harm,” I gasped. I tried to get my feet under me but they refused to obey me.

  “I wish you no harm, Amber. Truly. I can take away the pain and the anger. Don’t you want that?” He was on the other side now. “There’s nothing left for you out there any more.”

  “No. No.” I fell again, dizzy. A voice inside my head whispered no pain, no anger, so easy, just let go. I screamed and put my hands to my ears but I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it because it was part of me and it wanted what he offered. Such sweet longing. To come home. To rest. To belong.

  “So easy,” he sighed. “Such a little step. Just stop fighting. I know you want to. No more fear. Offer me your Blood and I will carry you across so easily.”

  Let it go, let him do this and it will stop. There will be no more fighting, no more pain, no more fear.

  “NO! NO!” I screamed. I’d faced that lie before. I was sobbing, but I knew that if you had no fear, you might as well be dead. I couldn’t die. I had things I had to do. I had to silence the voice in my head. I couldn’t let the coward inside ever get out again. Never. I tried to lash out with my fists, and struck nothing.