Tall, Dark & Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  I waited, not breathing, for what seemed like an eternity. I even entertained the idea that the soldier boy who’d spotted me might have had some kind of crisis of conscience and had told his fearless leader that there was nothing to see here, move along. Then, quite suddenly, the couch was heaved up and over. I lay exposed on the floor surrounded by a perfect rectangle of dust, a set of keys, and sixty-two cents in change.

  Sixth House

  KEYWORDS:

  Stress, Cleanliness, Weakness

  I looked up to see three priests in black suits and collars with heavy weaponry, all of which was pointed at me. Including, I realized, a redheaded guy holding a bow so slender and long I had to assume it was the longbow Sebastian had talked about earlier. The redhead regarded me warily over the fletching of his arrow. I thought I recognized his gray-green eyes as those that had spotted mine under the couch.

  Just as I pictured in my mind’s eye, I found Sebastian pinned to the oak window frame by a huge arrow sticking out of his chest.

  Something about the way he hung there, unmoving, made Sebastian seem more than just skewered. The slackness in his body reminded me of Parrish’s earlier behavior. I wondered if the “transfixing” Leader Guy mentioned was a kind of magic keeping Sebastian immobilized, but he was able to flash me a weak smile when he saw me.

  The machine gun had ripped up a space next to his feet and there was plaster dust and wood splinters everywhere, not to mention a ragged hole in the wall.

  I was so never getting my security deposit back.

  Especially considering all the bloodshed about to come.

  Wary of the guns trained on me, I sat upright very slowly. Leader Guy stepped forward. Or, at least, I assumed it was him from the machine gun he toted in his beefy hand. Plus he looked the part: silver hair chopped into a flattop, perpetual grimace, steely gray eyes. All he was really missing was the stub of a cigar sticking out of the corner of his mouth; otherwise he fit the whole sergeant-of-a-secret-armed-religious-force to a T. I was happy to notice the rake of Barney’s claws across his cheek.

  “Where’s the book?” He growled at me, or, at least I think he did.

  I put a finger in my ear and wiggled it, trying to kick-start my eardrum. My hearing was returning, but there was still a nasty roaring sound that overlaid everything.

  “If you’re talking, I can’t hear you,” I said, or, I imagine, shouted, since I could hardly make out the sound of my own words.

  He brought the barrel of the machine gun level with my nose. “Listen carefully, miss. I’ll ask you once again. Where is the grimoire?”

  Lilith uncoiled in my guts, searing me with a whiplike sting. I clutched at my stomach, fighting not to double over. One of the other priests, a black guy with a gorgeous knot of short dreads, had the sense to take a step back and sight his weapon. I wondered if he was their sensitive. The fear I saw growing in his eyes made me fairly certain he was. It’d be such a shame to bury him; I hoped he was smart enough to run.

  “Safe-deposit box,” Sebastian volunteered quite suddenly. “I have the key with me.”

  “You’ve decided to talk?” Leader Guy sounded as incredulous as I felt.

  “I hate seeing a damsel in distress,” Sebastian said. He tried to shrug, but the arrow’s spell, or whatever magic kept him pinned, made the motion more of an awkward jerk.

  Lilith slithered back to watchful sleep. My stomach unclenched, and I took a deep breath. Sensitive, however, kept his eyes and his gun trained on me.

  Leader dug into Sebastian’s coat pockets until he came up with a set of keys. “How do I know this is the real deal?”

  “You don’t,” Sebastian said. I had to admit I was impressed with his ability to keep cool in this situation. Unable to move, Sebastian was vulnerable. Leader Guy could deal him the Final Death pretty easily. “Let me suggest you not kill us in case it’s not. You’ll want to be able to harass us again if I’ve led you astray.”

  Leader Guy actually laughed. It wasn’t precisely a pleasant chuckle, more like an appreciative snort. “Interesting bargaining point. You want me to believe in the possibility that the safe-deposit key is a trick so I don’t just take it and finish you off.”

  “More or less correct,” Sebastian admitted. “Question is, what’s your primary agenda: to kill us, or to bring home the book?”

  “What if the answer is both?”

  “Then you’ll have to let us go for now.”

  “We could take you with us as hostages,” Leader Guy said. “Throw you in the back of the van until we find out if this grimoire is the one we’re looking for.”

  “Yes, that sounds excellent.” Sebastian said with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. His hand shook with the effort, but he crooked a finger at Leader Guy. “Come here and pull this arrow out. Maybe we could do a little one-on-one, hand-to-hand. Wonder which one of us would win, mortal?”

  Leader Guy took a step back. “We could take your girlfriend.”

  Sebastian didn’t even hesitate. “You’re welcome to try.”

  Leader Guy seemed a touch unsettled by Sebastian’s dark smile. He turned and graced me with the what-the-hell-does-that-mean once-over. Then he glanced at Sensitive, who shot back a very serious shake of the head, which I interpreted as Let’s not screw with her. Apparently so did Leader Guy, who shoved Sebastian’s key ring into his own pocket.

  “Which bank?” Leader Guy asked.

  “Wells Fargo. Downtown.”

  He checked his watch and frowned. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was well after eight. The bank was closed for the day.

  Leader Guy glanced at Sensitive again, who shook his head more vehemently. Sensitive never took his eyes off me.

  “Well, why the hell not?” Leader Guy asked. “She’d make great collateral.”

  Lilith rippled across my stomach. I put a hand on my belly to hold her back.

  “No, Monsignor, she would not.” Sensitive had an accent of some kind. I couldn’t place it but thought it might be Caribbean. “We’ll all be dead.”

  “Let me get this straight. I can’t take the vampire with me because if I remove the stake, he can kill us all. Now, I can’t take the girl because she’s… what? Some kind of ninja Witch?”

  Sensitive didn’t bother to reply. Or maybe he didn’t know the answer.

  “You can’t counteract her long enough for us to tie her up or something?” Leader Guy wanted to know.

  “Too powerful,” Sensitive said with a wave of his hand. “Not my kind of magic.”

  Leader Guy looked really pissed off. I wondered if he would shoot me out of frustration.

  “Magic more powerful than the Catholic Church,” Sebastian mused. “That’s kind of heretical thinking, now isn’t it?”

  “Soon the Church will be more powerful than any of you,” Leader Guy said, gracing Sebastian and me with a meaningful glance. To his soldiers, he said, “We’re going. For now.” Turning his attention to Sebastian, he added, “If this key turns out to be a fake, we’re coming back for you. Both of you.”

  “I have no doubt, Monsignor,” Sebastian said.

  To make his point, or maybe just because he was a jerk, Leader Guy removed a small handgun from somewhere under his suit and shot Sebastian right in the stomach. I saw it coming in enough time to cover my ears.

  “Good,” he said. Motioning to his team, they backed out, their guns flicking back and forth between Sebastian and me. That is, all except Sensitive, whose eyes never left mine until he closed the door.

  “I wonder if I should have mentioned that they’re looking for microfilm,” Sebastian mused, after the sound of jackboots in the stairwell had faded. He tried to sound light, but I could hear the strain in his voice.

  I ran over to where he was pinioned to the wall. A dark red stain spread on Sebastian’s white shirt where the bullet had punctured his stomach. Blood. My blood. He was going to have to hunt up a transfusion as soon as I could get him unstuck from my wall. “You’re going to
be okay,” I said, wrapping my hands around the arrow. It was thick; the shaft had a diameter about the size of a dime. I gave it a pull with all my might. It didn’t budge. “Oh crap.”

  “The bastard had good aim,” he said. “And for a bunch of Christians they know a lot about gypsy magic.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, while tugging on the arrow using both hands now.

  “A stake through the heart. Immobilizes vampires.”

  I had to admit I fell into the same camp as the Vatican agents when it came to this sort of thing. “So, it doesn’t kill you?”

  “No, the killing is done by decapitation or burning. Although I understand you can do something with removing the heart, or maybe it was the liver…”

  “You’re babbling, Sebastian. I think it’s shock.” I gave another heave-ho, but my hands slid uselessly over the smooth wood. “I’m going to need reinforcements.”

  * * * *

  I waited outside for my friends to arrive. I’d tried to stay with Sebastian to comfort him, but he needed blood so badly that my presence was clearly driving him crazy. His fangs dropped, and his eyes intently watched my every move like a wild cat. I felt stalked. I had to leave.

  The concrete under my butt felt cold and clammy. Gnats swarmed around the porch light globe. Clouds covered the moon, and the night felt hazy. The street was dark. I tensed every time I saw the red brake lights of a car, but none stopped.

  Finally, William showed up twenty minutes later with his girlfriend in tow. She introduced herself as Feather, which I first mistook for Heather, but she politely corrected me. “No, as in bird feather,” she said, pointing to the dyed-black goose feather in her hair.

  As we sat on the stoop outside waiting for Izzy, I couldn’t see how either of them would be much help. Feather was taller than me, but thinner. Her shoulder-length blond hair had pink and blue streaks, and she wore a T-shirt that showed a cartoon cat sleeping on a pile of books which read, “So many books, so little time.”

  William had changed denominations again. He was in full Druid mode as far as I could tell, including a heavy wool cloak, complete with hood and carved staff. He had the most muscles of any of us, but that wasn’t saying much.

  All I could think was that I hoped Izzy thought to bring her tools.

  Izzy pulled up to the curb with a honk and a wave. I jumped up and met her on the sidewalk. “You going to tell us what this is all about?” Izzy asked as we walked back to where William and Feather sat. “You were awfully cryptic on the phone.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to explain this,” I said, once they all found a spot on the stoop. I remained standing, anxious to get the rescue under way. “I have a very weird problem. My boyfriend is upstairs and he’s… uh, well, there’s a huge arrow sticking him to the wall, and I can’t get it out. Oh, and he’s been shot. He’s losing a lot of blood.”

  My friends sat in silence, looking at me. Then they glanced at each other. Izzy spoke first. “You’re serious?”

  William put his fingers on his temples, rubbing them, as though he suddenly had developed a splitting headache, and who could blame him? “Why is he not dead? Or is he dead? You’re not asking us to aid and abet a murder, are you?”

  “He’s a vampire.”

  I took a step up toward the door. I looked back at my friends. Feather chewed on her fingernail. William went back to rubbing his head. Izzy gave me a sad, pitying look, like she just now realized that her best friend was completely insane.

  Most people, even magically initiated people, didn’t believe that real vampires existed. Why would they? After all, vampires were relatively rare. I’d asked Parrish about it, and he’d said something about predators and sustainable food sources. Basically, what I got was that there weren’t enough of us to feed a lot of them, and the slow, stupid vamps starved to death.

  Of course, everyone had come across a fictional version of vampires at some point in their lives, but most people assumed that bloodsuckers were the stuff of folklore. Even I, who’d dated a real one, had my Hollywood assumptions.

  Vampires liked things that way. They preferred people not to know the real deal was out there. They had a good reason for secrecy: it made scoring a meal a lot easier, for one.

  Feather cleared her throat. “How much blood has he lost?”

  Izzy glanced at Feather and then at me. Izzy’s eyes were full of disbelief, but she had a look on her face that told me she’d decided our friendship was more important than the temporary insanity of this situation.

  “A lot,” I said. Glancing up toward the apartment, I took another step up. “He was shot in the stomach.”

  She nodded sagely. “He needs to eat. Can you keep him from killing me?”

  “Yes,” I said with more certainty than I felt.

  “Okay. I’ll feed him.”

  William had pulled his hands away from his face when Feather started talking; now he frowned deeply at her. Glasses I wasn’t sure he needed glinted under the streetlights. “What are you planning on feeding him, exactly? Chicken soup?”

  We all stared at her, waiting to see what she would say.

  “Ah…” She started, giving me the help-me glance. I shot back the you’re-on-your-own-for-this-one shake of the head. “Well,” she continued, “I was thinking blood, actually.”

  William raked his fingers through his lanky brown and green locks. “Where are you going to get blood?”

  Now we all stared at William; even Izzy was starting to give me the oh-please-help-him-out-even-I-get-it look. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and said, “We need to get upstairs.”

  I turned and led the way upstairs, hoping the others would follow.

  The open door to my apartment revealed the sight of Sebastian, head bowed, hanging limply where the arrow pressed him between the windows. Black blood soaked the lower half of his shirt and pooled on the floor beneath his feet. Everyone stopped at the doorway and fell silent, but I noticed Feather’s breath quickened when she saw Sebastian’s fangs.

  “Wow,” William breathed. “There’s plenty of blood here.”

  “Has anybody called the cops? The place looks chewed up by bullets,” Izzy asked. “Are your neighbors deaf?”

  “Just drunk,” I said. In fact, my neighbors’ total inability to notice weirdness had made renting this place so appealing to me. I did wonder why the cops hadn’t shown yet. Maybe they were on their way. All the more reason to hurry. “Look, can we focus on the task at hand, please?”

  “How are we going to get all this blood back into him?”

  This time Sebastian cracked an eye open to join us in staring incredulously at William.

  “I think I have a handsaw in my trunk,” Izzy said, as she turned to head back outside. “That ought to help with the arrow.”

  I suspected Izzy beat a hasty retreat in order to catch a breath of fresh air and to chew on all this craziness. I’d noticed in the past that she often resorted to physical labor when her brain stopped functioning. I envied her. I tried not to gag at the close, coppery smell. I had an urge to open the window, but I still worried the Vatican might be prowling around with snipers.

  “Hospitals have blood. I think he needs a transfusion. I’ll call an ambulance.” William reached into his cloak for his cell phone. I grabbed it before he could finish punching 911.

  “William, he’s a vampire. He can’t go to the hospital.”

  “He’s going to die, Garnet. Look at all that blood.”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “That’s pretty harsh.”

  “No, I mean, he was dead before the arrow hit him.”

  William opened his mouth for another protest, and I pushed him toward the doorway gently. “I think Izzy needs help, don’t you?”

  “Oh, okay,” William said in his beta male acquiescent way.

  When I turned back, Feather had crept up close to Sebastian. Her hands caressed the contours of his body under his trench coat, and she stood
on her tiptoes to lean her lips close to his ear. I couldn’t hear the words she murmured to him, but his gaze dropped to the pale outline of her neck, and his jaw twitched as though in anticipation. Her fingers touched his face, his hair, as she slowly drew his mouth to her body.

  “Hey,” I said. “What the fuck is this?”

  Feather jumped away guiltily. “Oh. I thought you’d left. Uh, with William, I mean.”

  Obviously.

  Sebastian shot me a dark, almost angry look. No, there was nothing almost about it. He was pissed.

  “I thought you understood,” Feather said, the cat and the books of her T-shirt smudged with Sebastian’s blood where she’d pressed against him. “What I offered, that is. If you’d rather do it… I mean, he’s yours.”

  I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to recoil in horror at the thought of Mine? or to shout, Damn straight, he’s mine! Anyway, I could tell Feather’s offer was lip service; she could barely keep her eyes off Sebastian’s fangs she wanted the bite so bad.

  I was spared the need to respond by the arrival of Izzy, William, and the handsaw. Izzy, still needing to do, rather than think, crossed the room to Sebastian in four quick strides. “You might want to brace yourself if you can,” she told him. “I’m going to try to be as steady as possible.”

  My eyes daring Feather to move, I rushed over to help hold the arrow and to keep Sebastian in place.

  With each ripping jerk of the saw, Sebastian looked a bit paler. “Sorry,” I told him.

  “You never answered her question,” Sebastian whispered.

  I ignored him, concentrating instead on watching Izzy’s quick, even strokes.

  “Are you going to fight her for the privilege?”

  Izzy raised her eyebrows but continued to work on the arrow. We were almost through.

  “You can have her,” I said through gritted teeth. This conversation was reminding me far too much of ones I used to have with Parrish. “I’m not interested in the privilege of being your food.”