Real Vampires Take No Prisoners (Real Vampires Don't Sparkle Book 3)

by Amy Fecteau

  “You don’t have to come along,” said Matheus. He tried not to look as Joan stripped off the tattered remains of her shirt. By this point, he felt fairly confident about his lack of interest in women, but still―tits. Breasts had something strangely compelling about them. Matheus supposed the fascination stemmed from living in America, with its combination of puritans and pornographers.

  Joan pulled the work shirt on. Her dark hair stood up in spikes around her round face. The sleeves of the shirt hung past the tips of her fingers. Joan had maybe an inch on Heaven, but she had a solid frame of muscle. Matheus didn’t want to be on Joan’s bad side, chainsaws or not.

  “Fuck you, I don’t have to come,” she said. “Those bastards put a big-ass hole in my chest. I want some fucking revenge.”

  “And you think chainsaws are the way to go,” said Matheus.

  “Fuck yeah. I don’t care how immortal your ass is, a chainsaw rips you in half, you’re not getting up in a hurry.”

  “Right.” Matheus shoved his hands into his pockets. He stared up at the ceiling, counting the mold colonies. “Okay. Chainsaws. Get as many as you can. Discreetly, Joan. Don’t go in screaming and knifing people.”

  “Got it.”

  “And make sure people know how to use them before they start running around with them. It’s pointless if everyone slices off their own toes.”

  “Will do, boss man.” Joan saluted, with an anemic lack of irony.

  Matheus pinched the bridge of his nose, counting to ten. When he lowered his hand, Joan had stopped saluting. “Go see Alistair. He’ll get you the money and assign some people to help you. And if inspiration strikes in the hardware aisle, just go with it.”

  Joan grinned. “This is going to be fucking great.”

  “Uh, sure,” said Matheus. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “―call that a block? What sniveling quim birthed such a miserable piece of dog’s vomit?” Quin shouted, his voice bellowing out of Theater Four.

  Matheus paused by the door, listening for a moment. He didn’t envy the people inside. He heard a couple of thuds, followed by “Tears get you killed! If you can’t see, you can’t fight! You like your guts on the inside? Don’t cry!”

  A brief pause followed; presumably, Quin did some actual instructing. Matheus reached for the handle. He knew the kind of teaching Quin preferred: hands-on, in the worst possible meaning of the phrase

  “I’ve seen pus-infected boils with more ability!” Quin yelled.

  Matheus drew back his hand. On second thought, he didn’t want to interrupt. In retrospect, Quin might have been going easy on him during their training. Matheus left him to his torments, turning toward the lobby. He’d reached the women’s bathroom when Thomas appeared around the corner, a gangly boy in tow. Matheus recognized him as the one that Thomas had argued with earlier. The boy didn’t look more than twenty, but that didn’t mean much. He walked with a bouncing, twitchy stride, as though each of his limbs made decisions independently of the others. That, more than anything, made him suspect that the boy had been newly turned.

  “Drew’s had an idea,” said Thomas, stopping in front of Matheus with the finality of a brick wall. He glowered over the thick bush of his beard. Matheus resisted the urge to give the hairs a yank.

  “Has he? Good for him. I’ll mark it in my diary,” said Matheus. He’d repressed the physical urges, not the smart-ass ones.

  The boy, Drew, giggled, and stared down at his feet. Matheus sympathized. Blood-sucking creatures of unspeakable evil didn’t giggle.

  “Can’t you take anything seriously?” Thomas asked.

  “The night is waning, Thomas. Get on with it.”

  Thomas gave Drew a nudge. He looked up at Thomas, then down at his feet. He shoved his hands into his pockets, took his hands out of his pockets, crossed and uncrossed his arms.

  “Drew,” said Thomas, giving him another shove. “Speak.”

  “Umm,” said Drew, his hands once again in his pockets. He hunched his shoulders to his ears. “So, I was thinking, I used to watch these war movies, you know, the ones where the guys sneak up and they’re all covered in that green and black paint, so like, they blend in and stuff, and they have like―”

  “That won’t work,” Matheus said, fearing that now that Drew had started, he’d never stop.

  “Yeah, I know, ‘cause we can all see in the dark and stuff. But that got me thinking about how there are those haunted houses where they shine the really bright lights in your eyes and you get sort of blinded for a minute―”

  “I don’t actually need your entire thought process.” Matheus made an effort to speak as nicely as possible. He guessed he’d been right about the boy’s age. Besides, buried in the pile of words might be a workable idea.

  “He wants to buy flashlights,” said Thomas.

  “Like, really, fuc―freaking huge flashlights.” Drew sketched a circle about eight inches in diameter with his hands. “If we had, like, super dark sunglasses or something, we could shine the lights at the other guys and blind them, ‘cause our eyes are all sensitive and whatever. We could work in pairs, and have one person with the flashlight, and then the other one can go up and stab the bad guys.” Drew stopped, his gaze returning to his feet. He shuffled from side to side.

  “Okay,” said Matheus.

  Drew glanced up.

  “You know Alistair, right? Everyone knows Alistair. Tell him how much money and people you’re going to need. You know where to find the flashlights?”

  Drew nodded, his mouth hanging open.

  “Good,” said Matheus. “Tell Alistair I said it was okay. If you need help, get Thomas.”

  “But―” said Drew. “Me?”

  “It was your idea,” said Matheus. “You’re in charge of it.”

  “But, I don’t… What am I supposed to do?”

  “You just told me,” said Matheus. “Flashlights, sunglasses, pair people up. You’ll figure it out.” He slapped around them, resuming his course toward the lobby. “It’s a good idea, Drew,” he called over his shoulder.

  Milo sat at his bank of computers. Matheus tried to summon the barest of surprise for this, and failed. He paused, watching Milo type lines of gibberish, incomprehensible except to those inducted into its secrets. Matheus wondered if after Milo’s wife died he replaced the people in his life with electronics. Had he been interested in computers as a human? As a black man in the nineteen-sixties, had he been allowed to work amongst the vacuum tubes and punch cards? Matheus wondered a lot of things about Milo. Why did he stick around with them? The money, maybe. With what Matheus agreed to pay him, Milo could buy his own private island and stock the beaches with endangered sea turtles. But Matheus suspected Milo had other reasons as well.

  “How’s it going?” Matheus asked.

  “Slowly,” said Milo.

  “You do realize we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “And you are wasting mine by standing there asking me pointless questions.” Milo didn’t look away from his screen. He continued to type without a break in the flow. Matheus had to admire his ability to multitask.

  “You said you could hack into the police network,” said Matheus.

  “I said, there might be a bug to exploit,” said Milo. He turned, looking up at Matheus with the expression of someone asked to explain the tax code to a four-year-old. “I can get into the system, and change some of the files, but what you want is more complex. I have to create a Trojan to take control of the system, then inset a program to filter the calls, and I have to do it without crashing the entire network. I can block out a certain area with the landlines, but cell phones are a problem.”

  Matheus nodded. In theory, he understood everything that Milo had just said. He knew all the words, and the sentences made sense, but internally, he still thought of hacking as a special sort of computer wizardry. If Milo had pulled out a wand and tapped it against the monitor, Matheus wouldn’t have blinked.

  “Do you li
ke sea turtles?” he asked.

  Milo gave Matheus a look like a record scratch. “What?”

  “I don’t know.” Matheus shrugged. “It seems to fit. You and sea turtles.”

  “Were you born addled, or did you have tragic accident as a child?”

  “I did a lot of drugs,” said Matheus.

  “Hmm.” Milo pushed his glasses up his nose with his pinky finger.

  “Don’t hmm at me. You lived through the sixties.”

  “Hmm,” said Milo again. “I need a favor.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know what it is.”

  “Still yes.” Matheus didn’t care. Milo had demanded money, equipment, solitude, but he’d never asked for a favor. Favors implied something beyond a business relationship. Also, Matheus appreciated the opportunity to rebalance the scales between them. He smiled, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  Milo hesitated.

  Matheus dampened his smile, clasping his hands behind his back and forcing himself still.

  With a soft sigh, Milo pulled a flash drive out of his pocket. He closed his fist around the plastic casing for a long moment, before tossing it to Matheus.

  “Instructions are in the readme file. The password is Saint Mary Magdalene. Lowercase only.”

  “Umm,” said Matheus.

  “Just plug this end into the USB port on a―”

  “I know what a flash drive is. I’m not a total idiot. Milo, what is this about?”

  “My daughter.”

  Matheus’s train of thought missed the tunnel, and slammed into the concrete barrier at full speed. He swayed, blinking at Milo.

  “You… have a… daughter,” he said, absorbing the words as he expressed them. “You have a daughter.”

  “Ada. Ada Louise Carpenter.” Milo slipped off his glasses. He bent forward, cleaning the lenses with the bottom of his shirt. “I check on her, and her children. From time to time.”

  Matheus opened his mouth, then closed it, warned off by the rigid set of Milo’s spine. “All right.”

  “Don’t open the files unless necessary.”

  “I won’t,” said Matheus.

  Milo nodded. He settled his glasses in place, spun around, and the clicking of keys resumed.

  Matheus waited, the flash drive heavy in his palm.

  “Is there anything else you need? Did you want to ask about my feelings on anteaters?” Milo asked.

  “Uhh. Not really.” Matheus backed away a few steps and hurried off.

  He thrust the flash drive into his pocket. The slight weight seemed to triple as the drive banged against his thigh. He needed to find a hiding spot. The steps creaked; Matheus paused at the top, gazing down the long hallway. Farther down, Alistair stood with Thomas and Drew, nodding as he scribbled on his clipboard. None of the three looked in his direction.

  Matheus darted into the men’s bathroom. In the last stall, some of the ceramic tiles had cracked. He pried a couple loose, exposing the floorboards underneath. He wedged the flash drive between the boards, and replaced the tiles. From a distance, the tiles looked untouched, but one nudge and they’d shift. Matheus doubted the stalls got a lot of traffic, but he needed to find another hiding place before too long. Although, Milo had a better chance of surviving the attack than Matheus. In that case, the flash drive would sit there, forgotten, untouched, until the building collapsed to dust.

  Leaving the flash drive to its new home, Matheus made another set of rounds. He checked in with Alistair, approved a half-dozen new expenditures, and offered his opinion on the best way to arrange the new chainsaw and flashlight brigades. After wandering outside, he stopped for an update on the modifications to Milo’s truck. Groups of three or four returned, carrying bags of supplies. Inside, the people lucky enough to escape Quin’s demonic training sat in tucked away corners, crafting fantastic devices of homemade mayhem. The destructive power of the average hardware store continued to amaze Matheus. He felt lost without a project to work on. He offered a couple of tips to the group making Molotov cocktails, but didn’t linger long. All these people working, but aside from directing some people to Alistair, and annoying Milo, he hadn’t done much of anything. He’d agreed to a final meeting before dawn to finalize plans, but he still had a few hours until then. Finding a quiet spot, Matheus settled down apart from the hustle.

  Two nights had passed since Apollonia had raided the abandoned mansion. One night since his Quin returned, and Fletcher was taken. He felt as though months had been compressed into those short forty-eight hours. Matheus closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall. He wondered what he’d do when this whole madness ended. Travel, maybe, to clear his mind. He’d like to see Italy; he’d never been. Quin could show him around, mocking the museums for their inaccuracies and painting a picture of how life had actually been. They’d visit Rome, the ruins, the history, modern and ancient overlapping. He could see where Quin had grown up. Matheus tried to imagine Quin as a small boy, and smiled. He doubted Quin had ever been considered small. In the third century, his height made him a giant. Matheus pictured him, lanky, awkward, wayward limbs, then shook his head. Much as he imagined Quin had never been small, he thought Quin had never been clumsy either. Then again, he had had centuries to gain grace.

  When someone slid down the wall to sit next to him, Matheus didn’t have to open his eyes. “Do you want to go to Rome?”

  “No,” said Quin.

  Matheus opened his eyes, tilting his head to look at Quin. “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid of who I might see.”

  “What? You owe money to the Mafia?”

  “No.” Quin raised his hand halfway to his face before letting it drop. “I’ve never been back. Italy, yes, but never to Rome.”

  He smiled, but Matheus felt the effort behind it. He caught Quin’s fingers as his hand made another journey upwards. “Why? And what does your nose have to do with it?”

  “My nose?”

  “You keep reaching up to touch it, then stopping yourself.”

  “I don’t,” said Quin, even as Matheus held his hand in mid-air.

  “You do,” said Matheus. “It’s not a subtle feature, Quin.”

  Quin laughed easier than he smiled. “It’s my father’s nose. He always used to say he wasn’t sure about my brothers, but I was definitely his.”

  Matheus scooted closer, pressing shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. He lowered their clasped hands, setting Quin’s palm on his thigh. He traced the length of Quin’s fingers, exploring the wrinkles and calluses.

  “You had brothers?” he asked.

  “Four,” said Quin. “Primus, Secundus, Tertius, and Quartus. Want to take a stab at the birth order?”

  “Your parents weren’t especially creative,” said Matheus. “Although, I can’t say much. I was named after my grandfathers. Mattias Adolf.”

  “Adolf is not a name you hear very often anymore,” said Quin, with a grin.

  “Yeah, it was real super when the English kids learned what my middle name was. Lots of fun times.” Matheus frowned down at Quin’s hand. He thought about families, parents and children, the flash drive hidden away in the bathroom. “Did you have kids?” The question leapt out before he’d fully formed the thought.

  The muscles in Quin’s hand tensed. A long, empty moment passed. Quin exhaled, releasing Matheus with only minor bruises. “Yes. Two sons, and a daughter.”

  “You had three kids? How? You’re only twenty-five! And gay!” Matheus knew he might have overreacted a bit, but he’d been expecting a very different answer.

  “The usual way,” said Quin. “I hope you know by now how it works. You’re a bit old for the talk.”

  “But… gay,” said Matheus, weakly.

  “You’ve had sex with women,” said Quin. “You still got off, right? Things were different then, anyway. ‘Gay’ as an identity didn’t exist.”

  “Yeah, but―”

  “Besides, I was fifteen when Cyprianus was conceive
d. I had sex with anything with a pulse.”

  “Fifteen!” Matheus gaped at Quin. “I don’t even… Does anyone else know?”

  “No, just you,” said Quin. He looked down the hall toward Theater Four. “I should get back.”

  Matheus refused to release his hand. “Is that why you don’t want to go to Rome?”

  “Obviously.” A touch of annoyance crept in Quin’s voice.

  “Will you tell me about them? Your kids? And your brothers? Wait, were you married?”

  “Well, after Flavia got pregnant, I didn’t have much of a choice. My father was not pleased. He had a nice noblewoman picked out for a daughter-in-law, but instead he got a merchant’s daughter.” He tugged on his hand. “Matheus, we don’t have time for this.”

  “Later, then,” said Matheus.

  “All right,” said Quin. “Later.” He freed his hand, then leaned over to give Matheus a perfunctory kiss.

  “That’s it?” asked Matheus. “Two days and you’re kissing me like I’m the vicar’s wife?”

  “I do have other things on my mind, Sunshine.”

  “I’m just saying that if you can’t muster up a modicum of passion after only two days, it doesn’t bode well for the future.”

  “Is that a challenge?” Quin asked, a razor blade in his voice.

  Matheus shrugged. “It’s an observa—mphf!”

  Quin pounced, knocking Matheus sideways. Winding his hands through Matheus’s hair, he proceeded to ravish him in the manner of all the best romance novels. Moaning filled the air, bodies writhed and thrust, hands and mouths seeking out the secret, sensitive places.

  “Oh, lord. Will the two of you restrain yourselves? It’s the hallway, for God’s sake.”

  Matheus managed to free his tongue long enough to say, “Fucking Christ, Alistair, go away.”

  “I’m not going away,” said Alistair, looming over them. “If the two of you are going to put on a show in front of God and everyone, I’m going to damn well watch.”