“They’re concerned about the threat from the Children of Judas?” I asked.
Voshki shook her head. “Not exactly. They’re concerned about Robin Shepherd specifically. It seems she may be more powerful than I’ve been giving her credit for being.”
I scooted around in the passenger seat as comfortably as the bucket style permitted. I already was disliking the hell out of even the idea of Robin being powerful, but to hear that Voshki may have underestimated her gave me distinct pause. “How so?”
I liked the whole matter even less after Voshki explained how Robin was apparently a direct descendent of the Children of Judas’s first infernal father, Judas Iscariot himself, a lineage that awarded her extra-special abilities and extra-strength powers. Voshki was as yet unaware of the specifics. I thought about that and fell back on an old favorite. “Wow.”
“Yes,” Voshki agreed dryly. She threw me a sideways glance that started a slow burn in my blood. Hers was still thrumming through my veins, and although I hadn’t fed from her again, part of me wanted to. A bigger part of me was scared shitless that if I ever did so again I would not be able to come back. I had not had sex with Ellis, nor shared any blood with her either since I had fed from Voshki, in part because I simply hadn’t been up to it, but also because I couldn’t quite trust myself to get physical with Ellis yet. Not with even a few strays of those dirty little thoughts about Voshki continuing to roam free in my mind. I really didn’t wish to hurt Ellis, even though I knew she would have understood. Actually, that she would have understood made it worse for me. I had accepted Voshki’s offer of a ride home mostly to see if I could be in such close proximity with her and not break down begging her to fuck me.
Apparently determined to act oblivious to my lustful consternation, Voshki added a little more information regarding Robin Shepherd. “I do know it means she has extreme powers of persuasion over both humans and vampires. Probably why she was able to corral the ginger bastards into a cohesive group like they never have been before. Anyway, the Council are concerned she will be able to use these super-powers to effect a coming-out that will damage us all and have the humans hunting us down with pitchforks and flaming torches.”
“She told me she intended to choose a co-leader when she was ready,” I mused.
Voshki gave me a sharp look but she didn’t say anything to that.
I had never thought about Voshki not being the vampire leader, and trying to get my head around any such eventuality was difficult. I still could not even begin to imagine the vampires being openly welcomed by humans.
Voshki removed one hand from the wheel to reach over and pat my knee. That didn’t help me any with corralling those thoughts and feelings. Nerves ends fizzed and popped. Not all of them in my knee either. “You’ll get over it, Dante,” she said cheerfully.
I feigned innocence. “Get over what?”
A gleam danced in her dark eyes. “The desire to have wild, abandoned, filthy monkey sex with me,” she said.
I flushed brick red. Voshki cackled at my embarrassment. “And whilst we’re on that subject…” she added. I hadn’t known we were on that subject…” To answer something you’ve been wondering: yes, I was once on very intimate terms with Ellis. And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed those years with her. But it was only about the first eighty or ninety years of our acquaintance. So there really is no need for you to be jealous.”
You must get to know someone pretty damn well in eighty or ninety years. No human couples can even hope to spend such a length of time together. I couldn’t hope to spend that kind of time with Ellis. Not unless she did sire me as a vampire. No need to be jealous?
Right.
I studied the scenery going past at 180mph for the rest of the journey and tried very hard not to think about time.
* * *
It did feel good to be back in my comfort zone. I may not be phobic like Lydia about leaving Hollywood’s lunatic confines, but I don’t do so all that often either, and when I do I find myself invariably glad to be home. My life, however, did not settle down to its relatively uneventful pre-Holly Bush Junction and Children of Judas state. Not hardly.
To use one of my father’s favorite quotes, I was already hip-deep in snakes and alligators, and not going anyplace else anytime soon.
I did manage to squeeze in some normal activities. I checked in with the office, took some meetings rearranged by the efficient Roz (who remarked that I was looking quite well after my food poisoning adventure and advised me never to touch seafood anywhere but in Maine), and I powered through a good couple hours of telephoning and emailing. Then I went home and did some more normal stuff there. Swam laps in my pool. Cleaned my kitchen and bathroom. Called my brother and chatted. Normal shit. But the whole time I was thinking about decidedly abnormal shit such as vampires.
This hiatus of normal lasted almost one whole day before my life took another turn right back into Weirdsville when Sheriff Lois Bartlett showed up at my house.
Damn me for not having those high walls and locked gates. Damn me, too, for insisting Voshki remove Samson from guard duty. I told her I would be fine in my own home. Come to think of it, damn Voshki for it being the one time she actually listened to me.
I must have been wearing a really freaked-out expression when I answered the door because the erstwhile sheriff of Holly Bush Junction rushed to assure me that she was not armed, nor was she dangerous in any other way.
“At least I hope I’m not,” she added with a frown.
“Not encouraging,” I told her.
Lois pushed a hand through her Nordic blonde mane, which reminded me that I never got a chance to do that and now never would, and that was still a shame. Despite everything. She peered at me with mixed concern and bemusement. “Dante, I don’t recall much after leaving that restaurant. I know I paid the bill. I know I thought you had left, dumped me, and I know I was deeply saddened and hurt by that. But I have no recollection of where I went next. I…I woke up at a motel in Encino last night. Apparently I checked in there the night of our date, late on, but I don’t remember doing that either.”
I’m an agent, I work with actors and assorted other professional liars, and I could tell that either Lois Bartlett was definitely not lying, or she completely believed what she was saying was the truth.
Also, admitting vulnerability on this scale was hard for her. I didn’t need to be an agent to realize that. Just a human being.
“Dante, I think I might’ve had some kind of breakdown,” she said. Her waterfall-blue eyes beseeched me. “I must have, right? I went home and packed a bag and I drove all the way to Encino, but I don’t remember any of it. That’s got to be some kind of breakdown, hasn’t it?”
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
She blinked. Blushed. “Shit. Busted, huh? I did a bit of a background check on you before our date…” The blush went all the way to the roots of her hair… “I wanted to know more about you. I was interested. Your home address wasn’t hard to get. I’m sorry. That was kind of a creepy thing to do.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said. Then I decided to invite her inside. I don’t know why I took the risk, why I should have been willing to trust that she hadn’t led a squadron of Judas’s red-haired psycho children right to my front door. I just felt I could trust her at least this much.
“Thank you, Dante. Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt,” she said, and gave me a wavering smile.
Mine was none too steady either. “You need to come sit down,” I told her. “There are some things I should tell you and they might come as, well, a bit of a shock.”
“I woke up in a motel, miles from home, with no recollection of how I got there or why I went there…” Lois tilted an inquiring eyebrow at me… “How much more crazy can it possibly get?”
If only she knew, I suspect she might have turned and fled right back to that Encino motel. Holed up there for the next forty years or so.
“By the way,” Lois sa
id as she followed me through to the living room, “you really were remarkably easy to find. You don’t have the multiple layers of paranoid security I would normally associate with Hollywood people.”
“That’s because I’m not an actor or a director or any other of those crazy, paranoid Hollywood types,” I told her. I busied myself at the bar, fixing drinks as I talked over my shoulder. “I’m an agent, and that means I know how to negotiate the shark-infested waters of Hollywood better than anyone else. Because of that, even the nut bags who are my clients respect me enough not to try to harm me or stalk me or anything. Actors might be selfish, insane assholes, but they’re savvy enough to know I’m the one person here who is working for them, not against them.”
I fixed a scotch and ice for Lois, and one for myself, took both drinks to the couch where Lois had seated herself. I was talking a lot because I was a wee bit nervous. If Lois noticed that, however, she didn’t draw attention to it. She smiled as I handed her the drink.
“They know not to bite the hand that is feeding them?”
I nodded. “Pretty much.” I sat down on the matching couch facing her across a coffee table. Then I asked her what she knew about vampires.
She gave me a look that suggested she was already starting to regret her decision to come here, since I was apparently crazier than she thought she was. “Vampires,” she repeated slowly. She shook her head. “I know what I’ve read in books and seen on TV.”
I smiled. “Then forget all that. Hardly any of it’s even remotely accurate.”
Her expression was growing more concerned for my sanity and her safety by the moment. She put her glass down on my coffee table, placed both hands flat on her knees and looked carefully at me, gauging how dangerous I might be. I could have assured her the only danger to her would be from the very creatures I was going to tell her about.
“Vampires are real,” I stated. Best just to rip that plaster right off and get the pain and screaming over with. “You were glamoured by a very powerful one. That’s why you can’t remember shit.”
For several very long and tense moments Lois Bartlett said nothing. Her whole being went very still. Except for her unease. It was all over the place. Finally she managed to say, “Vampires glamoured me? Vampires? Are you fucking with me, Dante? Because I’m not in the mood.”
“Good. Neither am I. Vampires are real.”
“Shit.” Lois shifted on the couch. She scowled at me. Then she shifted her scowl to the wall behind me, and finally she scowled at the carpet. “Vampires, for fuck’s sake, they’re…figments of writers’ imaginations! How in hell can you claim they are real? Dante, this isn’t funny.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed.
She decided to put the matter of vampires being real or imaginary to one side for the moment and zeroed in instead on my mention of glamouring. “You said I was glamoured by a vampire? What’s that?”
“Mind control,” I explained.
“Mind control,” she echoed.
I nodded. “They can make you do pretty much whatever they want whilst you’re under their influence. They, uh, made you think I’d walked out on our date.”
Lois frowned. “You didn’t?”
I shook my head, showed her a rueful smile. “I was kidnapped. By some of the same kind of vampires that glamoured you.”
“You mean there are different kinds of vampires?”
I nodded. “Sort of.”
“Kidnapped.” This word Lois could understand, being a cop, and she latched onto it for dear life. I saw the professional spring into her eyes. “Who kidnapped you? And why did they?”
“The vampires kidnapped me,” I repeated, and the professional in her winced. “To be specific…”
“…Oh yeah, let’s not forget specifics,” Lois muttered.
“It was the Children of Judas that kidnapped me, and they who glamoured you. They aren’t very nice vampires.”
“Oh, so there are nice ones and not-nice ones?”
“Sort of. Yes.”
“And the not-nice ones kidnapped you because—?”
“Their leader wanted me to take a message to Voshki Kevorkian. She’s the leader of the, uh, other vampires.”
“The nice ones?” Lois gave me a faint, bemused smile.
I laughed. Nodded. “Yeah. Voshki isn’t so bad, I guess. And Ellis…” I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as I saw the sheriff’s head snap up.
“Ellis? You mean Ellis Kovacs? The woman who was with you in Holly Bush?” she asked. I heard a note of curiosity in her voice now, as though she were coming around to the notion of vampires being real because she now realized she had met one, in the flesh so to speak. I didn’t want to start thinking about Ellis in the flesh, as that might lead to thinking about Voshki in the flesh and…oops. Too late. I grabbed my glass of scotch and gulped the fiery liquid down in an attempt to quench my overheated imagination. Before any other parts of me became overheated.
Lois sat quietly, turning it all over in her mind. Then she said, “You went to the bathroom and never came back. I seemed to be so certain you had walked out on me. It was like I already knew it. Does that sound insane?”
I smiled. “After what I’ve just told you? Hardly.”
“Yeah. You’re right. But it did seem too… I don’t know, scripted? It’s as though I were playing a part.”
“In a sense, you were.”
Lois gave her head a quick, hard shake. “This is nuts. It doesn’t even make sense, and yet I believe it. Well, almost. Vampires! Next you’ll be telling me werewolves and Bigfoot exist too?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Okay. Let’s assume for a moment I believe you, and I don’t think I’m actually lying in a mental ward after a complete nervous breakdown, doped to the back teeth and hallucinating all of this. Tell me more about these…nice and not-nice vampires.”
I told her a little of what I knew. I didn’t wish to overwhelm her, or she might end up in that mental ward yet, high on Thorazine and raving to anyone who would listen. Whilst I talked and Lois listened, it occurred to me that if Voshki knew I was doing this—taking such an enormous risk by allowing someone into my home that had been under the Children’s influence—she would be extremely displeased with me.
“So where is this Voshki?” Lois asked when I paused to refresh our glasses. She actually looked around my living room as she spoke, as though she expected the vampire leader to magically emerge from out of the wallpaper pattern.
“You probably don’t want to meet Vosh any time soon,” I told her. Lois looked at me, curious and alarmed at once. I tried a reassuring smile, but I’m not sure it came off as I intended. Lois frowned. “You set me up for the Children to kidnap me, even if you didn’t know you were doing it,” I explained to her. “And since Vosh kind of considers me to be her human, she’s not best pleased with you right now.”
Lois’s eyebrows rose. “Her human? What does that mean? You’re like her Renfield or something?”
“Or something,” I sighed. Lois’s eyes widened.
“Oh. Are you…romantically involved with her?”
Obviously she had read some vampire fiction. I shook my head. I thought I might have seen relief in the sheriff’s face. Too bad I was about to blow that away. “I’m not involved with Vosh, no. But I am involved with Ellis,” I confessed.
“Oh. And when you went on our, uh, date?” she asked.
I winced. This was impossible. “Yes. And no. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was with Ellis at that point.”
“I see.”
I really wished she did. I suspected, however, that until you have spent time around the vampires, you would never quite understand how it is with them. I was also too tired to explain it any more to Lois Bartlett.
She pondered a moment before asking me why Voshki would consider me to be her human if I were involved with Ellis?
I sighed and made an It’s complicated gesture. Lois sucked air in, shook her head, blew th
e air out, then went right back to frowning, which was apparently her default expression for now. “How long have you been dealing with this vampire stuff?” she asked.
“Too long,” I told her.
She went with another old standby favorite I had forgotten. “Well, fuck!”
Lois then she told me she was sorry for any part she had played in my being kidnapped and hurt. As she said this, she gestured to the bruising around my neck, still faintly visible despite my feeding from Voshki. I waved it off as nothing. Truthfully, I was never going to tell anyone about that. Except maybe Lydia.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Lois said. She sounded miserable. “I had no idea what was happening. All I know is I wanted to ask you out for dinner and I did, and we were having a really nice time, and then you left and I thought I’d been dumped. After that I have no memory whatsoever until waking up in that fucking motel.” She raised her head and I saw her blue eyes harden in anger. “I’d like to kill whoever put me under that…what’d you call it…glamour? I’d like to kill them slowly. Vampire or whatever.”
Knowing you have been used and tossed aside like a dirty Kleenex will make you feel that way. Unless you live and work in Hollywood, of course, where it will be part of your everyday experience. Like drinking coffee and breathing smog.
Lois shook her head. “I like you, Dante. I really do. I gotta assume I’m not glamoured now, right?” She looked at me for confirmation and I gave a tentative nod. In truth, I didn’t know. I should’ve been scared by that but I wasn’t. Lois threw up her hands. “So at least it must be real that I like you. Why would I do something so god awful horrible to someone I like?”
“The vampires sensed your liking for me and they used it,” I surmised. I was flattered to know that she genuinely liked me, even if I remained a tad suspicious that she might be saying what she thought I wanted to hear to ease her own conscience, or even that she still was acting under glamour. The only way to know that for sure was to have a vampire check. However, that would mean turning Lois in, and I suddenly didn’t want whatever the vampires would do to her to be on my conscience. I didn’t want the vampires to do anything bad to her. But they would. I seriously doubted I could plead leniency for her with Voshki. With Ellis maybe, but not Voshki.
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