by J. D. Horn
He had made the mistake of ignoring his gut in Hollywood. But unlike Frank, Bayard learned from his mistakes.
The memory of the day they’d spent in Los Angeles burned in him, and he suspected all the whiskey in the world wouldn’t put the fire out. He’d left Frank in the room where the King woman, Myrna, had put them. Twenty minutes had passed in that fancy movie star cage without a sign of her. While Bayard had spent the whole time pacing, Frank had just sat there, nearly as still as a statue. Contact with the actress had left him acting like he was drunk. Useless. He barely even nodded when Bayard told him he thought they should investigate instead of just sitting around. Realizing he’d have to take care of things on his own, Bayard had slipped down the hall, moving real quiet like he did when he sneaked into houses to watch people sleep.
He made his way down the shadowy hall in the opposite direction from which they’d entered it. He moved from door to door, poking his head around the casements of those he found open, trying with a cautious twist the knobs of those that were closed. Then he realized his cautiousness would make him look more suspicious if someone were to catch him. Not that that seemed to be an issue—the whole damned place was deserted. He could make as much noise as he wanted, he decided, and if anyone stopped him, he could just say he was looking for a place to piss. He couldn’t wait to find his boss’s daughter and get them all the hell back to Conroy.
But then he found the white room. Even after all these months, every time Bayard closed his eyes he saw the room, with its glossy tiles that covered the ceiling and walls. The floor was concrete and sloped a bit inward toward a large drain at its center. He realized in an instant all the possibilities such a room could hold. Through his fantasies, he’d come to associate the bleach smell of the room with a feeling of happiness.
It was there in the white room where he’d found Ruby, bound to a gurney by thick leather straps, straps that looked way sturdier than what you’d need to hold down a slip of a thing like Ruby. He crossed over to get a better look at her, drawing his knife to cut the straps as he did so. Her eyes were open, but they were all glassy, the black spots at the center way bigger than they ought to be. He waved his hand over her face, but she gave no reaction. She was alive, he could tell, but they had her on something. That much was for sure.
He raised his knife to start cutting through the straps, but his eyes landed on another gurney that had been pushed into the corner. This one was empty. It was bent in the center, warped like it had been twisted in some kind of vise.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Myrna said from behind him, her voice still sultry. He forced himself not to react, even though her silent approach had thrown him. “They can be so unpredictable when they reach this stage.”
“What the hell have you been doing to her?”
Myrna didn’t respond to his question. Instead she looked at him and smiled. She drew near and held out her hand, palm up. “May I?” she asked, looking at his knife.
Without a second thought, he held the handle out to her. She took it and held the knife’s sharp blade to the light. She weighed it in her hand, seeming to admire its perfect balance. “Very nice,” she said, then handed it back to him. He took it from her, a sense of amazement filling him. The thought hit him that he could love this woman.
“So you’ve come in search of this little chickadee?” she asked, crossing her arms and tilting her head as she did. Bayard felt his head nodding in reply. “Well, this is indeed a first.” She turned to the gurney and traced a finger along Ruby’s jawline. “Then this was a mistake on my hunter’s part. I insist that only those who are alone in the world be brought to me. It helps us avoid so many complications.” She looked back at Bayard. “Don’t worry, the hunter will pay for his error.” Her eyes sparkled, as if the thoughts of just how she’d make that happen excited her. “He’s supposed to bring us the broken ones. The addicts. The penniless. The ones without family. Perhaps it’s time for me to consider replacing him. He’s artless in all this, you know.” She raised her hands and motioned around the tiled room. “To him this facility is just a functional setup, a place to administer treatments and dispose of the . . .” She paused and seemed to search for a word. After a moment, she gave a girlish giggle and a slight shake of her head. “The empties, if you will.”
She left Ruby’s side and came closer. “But for an artist such as yourself, it could function as a veritable atelier.” He didn’t understand her ten-dollar words, and she seemed to read the confusion in his eyes. She traced her fingers down his forearm, across the back of his palm, along the flat side of his blade. “A place,” she explained, “for you to work your art. To create your masterpiece.” She raised her eyebrows, posing a question without saying the words. Somehow she had read him all the way down to the roots of his soul, and she liked the darkness she saw there. “It’s even soundproofed, you know. As long as the door’s kept closed, no one’s gonna hear a peep. No disturbances, no need to creep around. You could conduct a symphony of your own creation.”
“What kind of treatments?” Bayard asked. He never lied to himself, especially about himself. He was strong, but he didn’t have much in the smarts department. He knew he would be willing to do anything she asked of him, but he worried that he wasn’t mentally equipped to rise to the challenge. He felt now that he’d rather slit his own throat with the knife he held than disappoint her.
“Do you find me beautiful?” she asked, ignoring his question. Of course he did. He found her so beautiful he couldn’t even form the words to tell her. Her smile told him that she understood. “Time is the thief of beauty. Every rose must fade.” She turned and took a few steps away, and the separation physically pained him. She glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Or at least I used to think so. But I made friends who showed me it wasn’t necessarily so.” She spun around to face him. “Tell me. Do you believe in the supernatural?”
He shook his head, not in denial, but to show he didn’t understand.
“Ghosts, witches,” she said, the words very nearly reminding him of the dread he’d felt before stepping into this room, “vampires?” Her eyes widened as she said the last word in a breathless whisper.
“I don’t know,” he said, a part of his brain telling him he needed to shake it off, grab Ruby, and get the hell out of here. There wasn’t much a man like Bayard feared, but his mama had scared him at night with stories of the witches who’d come and take him if he didn’t stop pissing his bed. “Maybe,” he said, realizing his grip had tightened on the handle of his knife.
“Your girl there.” She motioned toward Ruby. “She came here oh so willingly. She was excited to taste a little opium. Ecstatic at the thought of participating in a scandalous little black-magic ceremony.” She looked up, her excited eyes meeting his. “She has quite the taste for the outré, you know. Of course, in Hollywood, she and her beautiful boy are hardly unique. Finding young people looking to sell their souls to become stars is quite an easy thing to do. No, really. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. A never-ending stream of fresh, bright faces for your pleasure.” Her eyes narrowed as her lips pulled into a thin smile. “She flung herself at us. Oh, but she thought she was so clever. She thought she’d worm her bumpkin way into our lives, turn our secrets to her profit. Thought she could control us through her petty homespun machinations. She didn’t realize we could see right through her small-town schemes and tiny ambitions.” She cast a glance at Ruby. “Now did you, dear?”
“It don’t make no sense to shoot fish,” Bayard heard himself protesting, but he wasn’t sure if he’d said it out loud. If so, she didn’t seem to hear, or perhaps she chose to disregard him. All the same, a small part of Bayard’s brain had begun to protest. This woman was working on him, just as surely as she’d charmed Frank.
“I assure you, all of the purportedly imaginary creatures I’ve mentioned are quite real. Even vampires.” She gave him a moment to consider what she’d said. “In fact, your young lady here is ha
lfway on the path to becoming one. My associates, you see, have managed to reintroduce a being that had been hunted to extinction, wiped, as far as we can tell, from the face of the earth.”
Bayard felt a cold shock jolt through him, then his armpits began to dampen. He cast a wary glance at Ruby. It was true; she didn’t look quite right. Her skin shone a silvery blue and looked kind of waxy. The weirdest part was her eyes. Besides being too big, the black bits in the middle were dotted with tiny specks of blue, looking like they were about to break free and rise to the top, like bubbles in water that was nearing a boil.
“The movies don’t get much right when it comes to vampires, but they are correct on one point. They can live forever, unchanged, immune to the ravages of time.” Myrna returned to Ruby’s side. “To ingest . . .” she began, but then chose a more familiar word, “to drink a vampire’s blood can turn you into one of them, allowing you the gift of eternal, healthy youth.” She winked at him. “Of course, there are drawbacks. First of all you fall utterly under the creature’s thrall. Were I to taste the blood of a true, full vampire, I would be turning my will completely over to the beast.” She reached her hands up to her temples and wiggled her fingers. “It allows them to get in here. To take control of your thoughts and actions.”
She lowered her hand, and leaned in toward him as if she intended to share a secret. “And if that weren’t bad enough, were you yourself to turn, to develop fully into a vampire in your own right, you’d combust at the touch of the sun and be forced to spend your ‘life’ as a leech, a captive to your own hungers.” She reached over and ran her fingers through Ruby’s dark hair. “Some might be willing to make such a trade-off, but I’m not one of them.”
She tapped her index finger on the tip of Ruby’s nose. “I’m just not one for extreme measures, now, am I?” she asked as if there were a chance Ruby might answer. “But my friends have stumbled upon a happy medium. Just as how they’ve learned to re-create the vampire, they’ve also rediscovered the method that allows one to reap several of the benefits of vampirism, without many of the worst drawbacks.” She looked away from Ruby, returning her gaze to him. “The allure of eternal youth and the ability to influence those around us made any risk seem acceptable.”
“Why’s she so blue?” Bayard asked, wondering aloud at the unnatural tone of her skin. It seemed unlikely a body with an ounce of life in it could have that color.
“It’s a rather lovely color, I think. I’m considering redoing the drawing room in a similar shade.” A smile curved on her lips that made him wonder if she was only pulling his leg. When he didn’t react, she shrugged. “A person exposed three times to the blood from a full vampire will most likely become a vampire themselves. But by employing certain measures, this transformation can be slowed down.
“We take advantage of the vampire’s innate allergies, certain metals, like silver in its colloidal form—the cause of the bluing of her complexion—and natural phenomena, such as sunlight.” Bayard didn’t understood a word she was saying, but his eyes followed when she pointed to some kind of opening in the ceiling above Ruby. She flipped a switch on the wall. “These things help to keep it in a weakened, manageable state. A few moments a day beneath this skylight, in heavily filtered sunlight, helps keep the beast at bay,” she said as a panel lowered, exposing a window covered by a red shade that was thin enough to let a dim light pass through.
The dull light bathed Ruby’s body, and she began bucking up and down against the gurney. “The poor dears do detest this part so.” Ruby never seemed to wake from her stupor, but still she squealed and strained against her restraints. The King woman flipped the switch, and as the sunlight faded, Ruby fell still.
Bayard had never seen such a beautiful thing in his life.
The King woman stood there, taking in his reaction. Their eyes met, and she smiled. “In rare cases,” she said, her brow rising and her eyes taking on the look of a tent revival preacher’s, “the process can be held in stasis.” She balled up her hands in frustration, seeming to realize that she’d lost him once again. “It can be put off. Stopped, leaving the infected in a type of bardo, a state between living and undead. The blood we take from the beings in this in-between state is the trick to enjoying the benefits of vampirism without the extreme drawbacks. This in-between blood, it doesn’t change us. It merely fortifies us. We aren’t anywhere near as fast or strong as full bloods, but then again, we don’t have to die or lose control of our own will, so it seems to me more than a fair tradeoff.
“Under some extremely rare circumstances, the infected person doesn’t turn, but instead becomes a living, breathing fountain of youth, if you will.” She glanced back at Ruby. “I believe our girl here may very well be one of those exceptional cases. Of course, if she does prove to be special, she will be sent off to someone much higher in the pecking order than I am.” Her lips pursed, and she shrugged. “There is a hierarchy to all this, after all, an organization much larger and more well connected than you’d perhaps believe. In spite of my movie star status, I guess I’m what you might consider middle management. So, even if she is one of the special cases, I would still have room for you in our little enterprise.”
“And if she ain’t?”
“Then she will have to be destroyed long before she completes the change. We’re being extra careful with her.” She pointed at the warped gurney. “We were a tad too slow with her pretty boyfriend. He, too, had shown promise, but . . . Well, suffice it to say that if he hadn’t been so beautiful to look at, we might have moved sooner. We just had such high hopes for him.”
“You killed the boy?” A sense of disappointment flooded Bayard. He would’ve liked to see what the kid looked like on the inside.
“No. I’m afraid his change came too quickly. He overpowered his keeper. Drained him as dry as a nun’s knickers, and escaped.” She turned on him, one eyebrow raised and her eyes narrow and angry. “The boy surprised us all. It usually takes them much longer to regain full control of their bodies. It isn’t like there’s a prescribed timetable for any of this.”
It sounded to Bayard like she was trying to defend herself, like she thought he’d been finding fault with her, but then her gaze softened and fell away.
“Still, it’s odd that his case was the first time our precautions failed so completely. I’ve been left to wonder if the boy’s keeper himself didn’t play a role in the escape. Love does lead one to do the craziest things.” She held up her hand as if trying to silence a protest. “Not to worry. He will be caught and captured. And when we do, he will be disposed of quickly. It’s a bit of a shame, though. He’s probably the first unattended vampire in two, perhaps three hundred years. Part of me would like to see what he’d get up to. But no, he’s fully turned. It would be too dangerous to play with him.
“However”—she licked her lips and looked at him through sparkling eyes—“when they are in this halfway state,” she said, motioning toward Ruby, “they’re so helpless. So compliant. You can take your time with them, you know. Before they turn, they’re a bit disoriented, graceless. Their muscles simply won’t do what their brains tell them to do, because, well, because they are dying, leaving the poor dears incredibly strong, but incapable of harnessing that strength. Still, they can survive trauma most ordinary people cannot.”
She drew a step or two closer. “Imagine it. As long as you leave her heart and head intact, you could take your pretty miss apart piece by piece, and she could be there with you as you did it. Of course, she needs her head to feel your passion. And leaving the heart untouched will let her body react to stimulus. You wouldn’t want her to just lie there.” She winked. “Or then again, maybe you would.” She paused just beyond his reach. “Of course, as I’ve said, she may be bound for greater glory, but we could build you a new toy for your games. I’m afraid your friend the deliveryman has already been extinguished, but we could have great fun with your other pal.”
Bayard felt his pulse begin to pound as a por
tion of his blood supply headed south beneath his belt buckle. He’d often wondered just which part of Frank he’d cut off first, if he ever found a reason to start cutting. Her eyes fixed on him, making so many promises. She had seen into the darkest recesses of his soul, and was tugging the twisted roots of his desires out into the light of day. “Shall we go fetch your friend?’ she asked as his mouth went dry.
He wished now that he hadn’t hesitated when the door to the white room eased silently open behind her back. He wished his mouth had opened to warn her. He should have gone with his gut, but he’d stalled like an overheated car. “No need. I’m already here,” Frank said from behind her. She spun toward the door, and Frank put a bullet deftly into each of her eyes. The second took the back of her skull clean off, and her exquisite body fell dead to the beautiful concrete floor, where it continued to twitch for much longer than it should have.
FORTY-THREE
Bayard stood with his head cocked back and tilted a little to one side. His cheeks were flushed as he watched Frank through barely open slits. His tongue hung limp over his bottom lip. Frank had only seen his partner look at him like this once before—that day in Hollywood, when he knew Bayard had nursed some serious thoughts about killing him. Frank sat stock-still, trying to figure out just what his next move should be. He tried to focus on the situation at hand, but the memory of that day in California kept pushing its way into his mind, like it had some kind of answer to give him.
Frank had come to, snapped out of whatever spell Myrna King had put on him. When he did, Bayard was gone, and Frank didn’t have a clue what had happened to him. Deep in his gut he knew that Crane was dead, and he suspected his partner might be too.