by Varian Wolf
“Hells bells, Annie, were you raised in a barn?”
I turned.
“Yes, uh huh. And my mother was a pig. And she had a litter of stinky little pigs. That’s what I am, a pig, an angry American tusker, with no manners and no interest in you or any of your crazy little ideas, you crazy little limey dwarf. So why don’t you take that thing that you cleaned out of a drain somewhere and get it and your ballet ass out of my sight before I put it back in a drain and give you a good old dirty American swirly?”
She shut up. I put my shirt on, thinking finally the mad Brit would go back somewhere she belonged and leave me alone, but I was wrong.
“You have a dreadful sense of humor,” she summarized. “But I will not hold that against you. I live at Minster Club near the Tulane campus. It’s easy to remember because I’m from-“
I threw the bar of soap at her, causing the monster to explode in her arms. Then I picked up a razor…
“I’ll look forward to seeing you,” she said as she ran. “Good day! Cheerio!”
I was exhausted, bruised, and swollen when I pulled up to our parking space on Royal Street. The Old Man was sweeping his broom down to nothing, as usual. He could be found doing that at any or every time of the day or night. He didn’t look up as the McLaren growled into place beside him.
“Hey, Old Man,” I said, not expecting a response and not getting one.
He kept on with his endless labor, the weird urn cradled in the crook of his arm.
Somebody oughtta get that old guy a new broom, I thought.
I went up to the room to hit the sack. The fight had wiped me out, and I needed to get those Zs if I intended to be alert enough to guard Miguel during the day. I know he had said the scrying would take a while, but I wasn’t entirely comfortable with that prediction.
I collapsed into bed like I’d been tossed there, no concern for where I fell and no particular side up. I was a weary warrior, a bear turning in for a long winter’s nap. I yawned…
Suddenly, I was pinned to the bed by hands of iron. I let out a yell and tried to fight back, but there was no even turning to glimpse my attacker in the darkened room, such was his –or its, immense strength. The position I had been trapped in was acutely painful, not only twisting arm and spine into the extremity of their range of motion, but smashing my bashed face into the pillow. And believe me, pillows aren’t that soft.
Then, there was an arm brought to my face, and a voice spoke to me, one word.
“Drink.”
It was a hard, merciless voice. I was too panicked and pissed to respond with anything other than a string of curse words.
Then the voice said again“Drink, Annie, or you will die.”
Oh, shit.
I obeyed, biting hard on the arm, digging my teeth in and not letting go. I sucked blood, but not to the extent that my attacker demanded. I sucked a mouthful and spit it out in rage.
“Miguel, you jerk! Let me go! What the hell is this?”
Instantly, the hands were gone. I flipped over and sprang into a crouch, eying the dark figure before me with venom.
“This,” he said in a voice so casual and ordinary you’d think he was there to bring me coffee, “was practice. If it had been real, you would be dead.”
“What? You lay in ambush for me, wait until I get all cozy in bed and then tackle me like Royce Gracie on steroids? Do you know what I’ve been through tonight?”
“Yes. You brought yourself into as close a physical approximation of the state of near death you will experience prior to the change as can be managed without damaging you overtly. You will be poised on the very precipice of death’s chasm, and you will have to drink. You must be certain that you can do this.”
I glared at him.
“I don’t think surprising me is the best training method. I’m going to see you coming when it comes to that, aren’t I?”
“Yes. On that night you will see it. I will not deliberately take you off guard, but believe me, death takes everyone off guard, when it finally comes stealing.”
“How many more times are you going to do that to me?”
“As many as are necessary.”
Great, I had to watch out for pussies and vampires. Was this his evil method of keeping me frosty?
“I’m hungry,” I said, my nap killed. “I need fried chicken.”
Miguel obliged me. We went down to the café on the corner, where fried chicken and grits could be ordered right alongside sea scallops or escargot. New Orleans is that kind of town. We got in the door just minutes before they locked it.
I should have been sticking to my fighter’s diet, like I was trying to stay in my weight class, but Miguel’s little training session had me wanting the fried stuff, and I would settle for no less.
Miguel sat with me while I wolfed crispy, greasy, meaty goodness and succumbed to the state of bliss only fried southern bird can induce. I forgave him after I’d eaten two breasts, a wing, and a thigh on his dime.
After, we went down to the Riverwalk to while away the remainder of the night. There was nobody else out there for once, which was nice.
We were about to enjoy that rare moment alone with the smell and the sound of the water, when Miguel’s cell phone rang.
We looked at each other. There were only two people who had that number, and one of them was me.
Miguel answered it.
“Andy,” Miguel said.
I listened nervously.
“You know better than that. I need your assistance…It is of the utmost importance.”
What was that noise on the other end? Was that…steel drums?
“This only you can do…No…No, not that…”
There was a long pause. I could just faintly hear this Andy’s voice –not enough to distinguish words, but enough to catch his tone when it rose with emotion. He was not thrilled by this contact from his old friend.
“No,” said Miguel, “No, I remember. No, you may keep them…”
There was a long spell of chatter on the other end. Miguel waited with what seemed like galactic patience.
“No, you may keep those too. You were always better with them…No, I am not trying to butter you up.”
More chatter over the music of steel drums and occasional rise and fall of the voices of many happy people.
“It is more serious than that….No…”
Miguel kept his voice polite and level, with no hint of strain. His decorum was impressive considering the sounds coming from the other end.
Finally, he said, “I am being scryed.”
There was an instant change in tone of the other speaker. All of the high tones were gone. In the background, another outburst of crazy laughter. Then, Andy shouted something that even I could hear four feet from the phone.
“Shut your pie holes, you sycophantic skank hos, or I’ll dismember every last one of you!”
Absolute silence resulted. Not even a tap on a drum followed the outburst. The party, wherever it was, was over. Vampire Andy had spoken.
“It is the cedars…I am certain…More than one. Yes, they must be cut down, but first I must secure the windows. I need your help to do that.”
Cedars? Windows? Home improvements?
“I have some idea how this occurred. It will not happen again…And you should know before you come…”
Here it comes.
“…I am not alone.
Dead silence.
“She cut down three cedars singlehanded after a limb had fallen on me…You heard me…She saved me, Andy…I would not stand for that…I have no intention of concealing anything from you…I do not wish to argue either…You will have to be moved by you own conscience…”
Miguel held the phone for a second in silence, then put it back in his pocket. I was smart enough not to say a word.
But only for a minute.
“Is he coming?”
“I believe he will.”
“When would he get here?”
�
�In his own time.”
“Soon I hope.”
“Soon.”
Did I really hope so? I’d almost rather fight evil cultists at the door than meet this Andy. I didn’t have much of a choice one way or the other, so I didn’t voice any of my thoughts on the matter.
“So what was the deal with the trees and windows and shit?” I asked instead.
“That was code. One never knows who might be listening.”
“Like, tapping your calls? Like the government?”
“One never knows.”
Great, vampire intrigue.
“Do I get a decoder ring when I become a vampire?”
Miguel looked at me with what I thought for a second was going to be one of those looks, then a smile flickered across his face before retreating into that immortal opacity of emotion.
“How can anyone so fierce be so goofy?”
“You should have seen me before all the gang rapes in prison.”
Miguel leaned toward me, ever so slightly, and inhaled through narrowly parted lips. He exhaled and opened his eyes.
“One thing is certain,” he breathed.
I waited, hoping he’d dive in for round two on the previous night’s kiss.
“Andy is definitely going to loath you.”
Another night fell, with another gym workout and run for me and hunt for Miguel.
I ran through the congested French Quarter and down St. Charles to where the old and new money lived in grand mansions bigger than I had ever imagined a house could be. Was this what the rich folk were hiding up in Grosse Pointe, that mythical land of green grass and greener money that I had never seen, or did they grow them bigger down south? Everywhere I saw structures being renovated. Construction barricades attempted to conceal bare earth in front of homes, heavy equipment parked in tiny side yards, facades of mansions being completely rebuilt. People here were in the process of forgetting about the storm. Time enough had passed for them, and money was wiping the blemishes of a bad memory away.
I ran and ran, and Miguel went his secret way, to wherever an old vampire goes to kill.
After, we convened and strolled as usual through the Quarter, at once so crowded with movement and merriment and steeped in some kind of timelessness I’d never sensed in Detroit. To be fair, maybe it was being with a vampire that made the difference. It was the feeling that you could do anything down on these streets, live your life, die, and the world would go on without you, unnoticing. I have since heard the feeling of being in an historic population center described as quite the opposite: a feeling of connectedness, importance, being part of something big. Both feelings speak of immortality, but to me, an ex-con with all kinds of baggage best left in a former life, the sense of being lost to the world was wonderful. Except when random people tried to stick “Good Mister Goodwin” stickers on me, the French Quarter gave me that.
I asked Miguel why we never strayed outside this area, and he said it was so Andy could find us. What about the witches? Wouldn’t they be here soon? And couldn’t they find us too? I had the feeling that a piano or anvil was about to fall on my head. Soon, yes, he said. They would be coming, and as soon as Andy arrived we would change our daytime resting place, but by night they would not touch him, he said. By night they would not dare.
Okay, I thought. Vampire knows best. I let my worries pass into the labyrinthine streets of New Orleans, to pester someone else with pianos and anvils. I was on vacation. This was an open city, vampire Disneyland. We were here to have fun, to drink a little blood. I was determined to be just as naïve as Miguel let me be.
We were sitting at one of the outdoor tables of the bearably elegant Café Poisson Jaune, discussing the pros and cons of subsisting on blood as opposed to human foods like, say, Neapolitan ice cream –or rather Miguel was fencing with my bullish inexperience and lack of real direction on the subject, when Miguel suddenly and thoroughly stopped paying any attention to me whatsoever and let the unreadable mask steal over his face. I was smart enough not to take this change as a lack of interest in our scintillating conversation, but as a signal that something wicked, like, say, Satan, had come up behind me.
And so it had.
He was six-foot-something, pale as pearl, and built like an Olympic swimmer, as evidenced by the egregiously unbuttoned white linen shirt he left slouching to reveal two lean, perfect pecs. The buttons on the shirt were abalone set in silver. The cuffs were rolled up almost to the elbows, just so. The beachcomber khakis fit his narrow hips just so. He stood with a casual grace that belied his formidable height and disguised the terrible power that must be in those limbs. He seemed no more than twenty in age, judging by the perfection of his skin, but I knew he must be many times my own age. His hair was pale gold thread –short, but allowed to fall softly in his face just so. His face was striking, with very high cheekbones, a long, masculine, clean-shaven jaw with a sharpness to it, and eyes pale and blue as a cold northern sky that sparkled… just so. He was just so…gorgeous. He was impossible –an Adonis.
An Adonis who, when he opened his mouth to speak, flashed huge white canines that would have made a Siberian tiger cringe. I made certain not to cringe.
And the voice that came out of his mouth cut like claws.
“Tell me you’re not still working that understated-but-posh-bourgeois-intelligentsia-far-from-home look.”
“Thank you for coming, Andy.”
“The eternal man of nowhere and everywhere. That map-of-the-world look just won’t fly anymore. These days you have to affiliate. I could see you working the first-generation Cuban American mystique –caro like Miami, but with that son-of-a-refugee, I’m-exiled-from-my-roots pathetic dignity. A starched collar with three buttons undone, a rich, not-quite-black suit, slicked-back coiffure –Think Andy Garcia or Vago Nuñez, only thinner. Sweet Mary, the people I would kill to see you in an Armani suit!”
“Now who the hell could wear a suit out in this weather?” I said, unable to ignore the idiocy for one more second.
The imperious undead fashion Mafioso looked down at me from over those high cheekbones. Way down.
“Tell me this gender/ethnically-confused urchin is not the creature that saved your life.”
“That I will not.”
“You’re joking. You’re killing me. Tell me you work for ABC, and you’re interviewing the wretched thing for Extreme Makeover. Tell me something sane!”
“I would never lie to you,” Miguel replied.
“Where did you find it? In a sewer? In a thrift store? In a…” he paused, thinking of a particularly odious metaphor for my origin, “public restroom?”
I started to get up. Miguel laid a hand on mine, gently, but strong in its warning. I waited.
“Better,” said Miguel, “Jail.”
“Don’t tell me you decided to keep your dinner as a pet.”
“I do not expect you to understand.”
That seemed to really piss Andy off, which made me happy. He made a smug expression that made his chin seem even more like a hatchet, but he had no answer. I didn’t get the joke, if there was one.
A skinny waitress with eggplant-colored hair and a tattoo of a fleur-de-lis on her arm sidled up to Andy the way a cat does to a leg.
“Are you dining with us tonight, sir? Can I get you a menu? ...Sir?”
After an initial attempt to deny the girl’s existence, Andy snapped back with Category 5 irritation, “Do I look like the kind of person who eats on the street?”
The girl fled, looking for other legs to rub on.
I noticed that my vampire was sitting very still –inert, like the dead guy he was, but he was gazing so relentlessly at the other vampire that I could imagine he was burning a thousand calories a second just on sustaining that level of attention.
The other seemed to soften a little after a pause –one that I suspected was laden with all kinds of meaning I didn’t understand. The blonde undead Marcus Schenkenberg pulled out one of the iron chairs and sat down at
our table. There was something extremely weird about having him this close to eye level.
“I suppose,” he said, inspecting his perfectly manicured nails, “that some time with me would do you good. Maybe getting you away from this little half-trash gold-digger for a few will get you to see things clearer. After you’ve had a little of what I have to offer you might just gain a little fashion sense, or a little sense in general, and forget all about your unfortunate little episode of mortal slumming. Did you tell her about that? What it means to us to share blood?
He looked at me for a few seconds. Then he threw back his head and laughed. It was an easy, wicked laugh, as of someone very amused with himself, as of Satan having tricked someone out of a soul.
“She doesn’t know anything, does she? She doesn’t know about the blood bond or the ecstasy or the fugue? I bet you haven’t even told her about the thirst. Has he told you,” he said, speaking directly to me for the first time. “What you mean to us? What you taste like to us? How it feels? You come to us through the air. You don’t even know it. You don’t even have to try, but you’re begging for it –begging for us to take you, every one of you. Every moment.”
He leaned back in his chair –all six-and-a-half feet of him, arms behind his head in a gratuitous use of airspace.
“You must have told her a little about the Covens, considering she supposedly killed a quarter of one, though I think it’s more likely she’s one of them.”
He searched my face again.
“If you’re looking for a traitor,” I said, “you’ll have to look in the mirror.”
A wave of fury passed over his face like the flash of a drawn pistol, but it was as suddenly consumed by another wave of that lofty, demonic laughter. When he had tickled his own funny bone enough, he answered me.
“She hasn’t noticed the mirror thing yet! You are so dense! See, little strumpet, my fashion-challenged old friend doesn’t believe in telling humans anything about what’s really going on in this world. He’s only told you anything at all because he had to –and then only just barely enough to keep himself alive. If he wasn’t in trouble, and if he hadn’t found some gullible little street thug in such desperate need of romance she’d tag along on this little escapade, he never would told you anything. In fact, you’d be lying in a ditch somewhere decomposing as you should be.”