by Garon Whited
“You remember that name,” I told Tyrone. He stared at me, whites all around his eyes, still screaming. I couldn’t tell if it was terror or pain from the look on his face. His spirit screamed from both. That also suited me. “Mark Spotznitz is the worst sort of bad medicine. I’m the Dark. I’m his guardian demon. I don’t protect him. I do nasty things to people who bother him. Do you get that?”
Tyrone failed to acknowledge understanding. I seized him by the hair and picked him up. He didn’t have a choice about eye contact with the black-eyed monster on his driveway.
“I asked if you got that,” I repeated, stroking my tendrils through him and leaving cold trails through his flesh. At the same time, I opened my mouth wide enough to swallow a baseball and ran the tip of my industrial-length tongue along one of his cheekbones.
If the loss of sphincter control is any indication, Tyrone understood. I chose to take it as such.
I went back into the house to let Firebrand spray flames up through the second floor and into the attic, enhancing the chimney effect. Then we punched a fiery hole out the back of the house; we might as well make sure it was a fully-involved structure fire.
With a fire engine coming up the street, I stood out back and stuck Firebrand into the rear wall of the house. It cried out in glee and enhanced the flames. Everything started burning hotter. I drained the power from another gem and fed the magic into Firebrand; the roof didn’t exactly blow off, but it did shift and start burning brightly. The dragon-sword pulled fire from the front, drawing it farther back in wild, writhing streamers of flame, shattering windows with the heat and igniting everything on the way to the rear of the structure.
No insurance claim for this place. Some sort of accelerant was clearly indicated.
I ran across the back yard, hurdled the wall, and found Mary already waiting for me.
“You’re late,” she teased.
“I was busy being theatrical. How did I do? Was I an adequate distraction?”
She hopped up and caught the edge of the wall, peering over. I joined her. The house was an inferno.
“I’d say you managed it. Are you always a pyromaniac?” she inquired.
“No, but it tends to happen when I’m angry. I feel much better, now.”
“You need a hobby.”
“I have hobbies. People annoy me by interfering.” I dropped to the ground and she joined me. There was a bloodstain along her right shoulder and a healing wound on that side of her neck, from windpipe to right below her ear.
“How did you get injured?” I asked. She shrugged.
“Soft tissue. When the fire alarm went off, the guard behind me cut my throat.” She rubbed it lightly. “That’s when I killed him. It’s amazing how people stop paying attention to you once they cut your throat. Even mortals can be deadly for several seconds after a wound like that.”
“Anything else unpleasant?”
“Aside from some valuable paintings going up in smoke, no.”
“Alas. So, how did we do?”
“Never count anything until you’ve gotten away,” she replied. “We’ve been standing here and chatting. Let’s go.”
We sprinted off into the night.
Once we were dressed in more mundane attire, we sat in the shelter of a bus stop and dried out a little. An electric bus pulled up and we rode it for a while, drying further. Mary paid by feeding bills into the thing rather than use a credit card or digital stick.
She finally picked a spot to get off and we walked a bit more.
“Why all the walking?” I asked.
“Fewer data points to correlate,” she pointed out. “Every time a bus door opens, it’s logged. Every cab call, it’s logged. It may take a court order to pry it out of the data vaults, but some people can get a court order—or bribe someone, or blackmail someone, or—well, you get the idea. We’re making it harder for the data analysts to build a statistical universe and much harder to prove anything in a court of law.”
“I’ve always tried to do that.”
“Then we need to go over your techniques,” she groused. “You simply don’t understand this modern era.”
“You’re probably right. But how are you doing? You were wounded. Are you hungry?”
“Not especially. I grabbed a quick bite from the one who cut my throat. How about you? You looked as though you had a few dozen holes in you.”
“I also cut several people apart. Remember how blood chases after me? It works on the large-scale spills, too.”
“Eww. Convenient, but eww.”
“I do want to take you with me on a hunt, and soon. I have things to teach you about being a soul-devouring monster.”
Mary had no reply to that.
Eventually, we did get home. We dried out and changed, then repaired to the living room to count loot. I built up the fire and hung Firebrand in the fireplace. Mary was good about not noticing. Then we started going through her satchel. Francine came in, yawned, and plopped down next to the fire.
“I’ll say this,” said I, somewhat later, “one good thing about criminals is the way they love to deal in cash.”
“I’ll say,” she agreed, tapping a stack of bills to straighten it. “I should have gotten a partner sooner. Knocking over mob houses is profitable. Much more profitable, even after the split. Maybe you should kill everyone, next time, without burning the place to the ground? We’d make a much bigger haul.”
“Could work,” I allowed. “Maybe I can afford that passport, now. And maybe a motorcycle, too.”
“Motorcycle? What for?”
“You said cabs are tracked and logged. It’s not like I can ride my horse to a heist; people notice.”
“But the anti-theft system, the built-in phone, the RFID, the holographic layer on the license plate… all that will go into the data vaults every time you go through a stop light, into a parking garage, or pass a public building or traffic control point.”
“Oh. I guess I’ll have to skip the motorcycle, then.”
“I’d say so.”
“How does organized crime manage anything?” I asked.
“They aren’t really my area of expertise, but I can think of two things they have going for them. First, they have a lot of people. If nobody does anything repetitively, or if someone has a good, legal reason to be tagged in a location regularly, the data mining monkeys don’t have anything to work with. Second, unless it’s public data—federal, state, or local law enforcement, mainly—the privacy protection laws require a court order to get it. So the monkeys don’t get to look at most data; they’re working from a much more limited set.”
“Eventually, that set will get big enough to be a statistical universe on its own,” I pointed out. She shrugged.
“So? I don’t know what they do; I was never in that scene. Somehow, they manage. For all I know, they rent data monkeys to hide data, or they have silverback crackers on the payroll to fix things. Which, eventually, we may have to do. You can’t be on record as immortal.”
“Yeah, getting a fake identity is a pain,” I admitted, and left it at that.
“Meanwhile,” she diverted, changing the subject, “would you mind if I asked a few questions about how we did that?”
“Shoot.”
“How did you throw me?”
“Magic. I used a magic spell to make you lighter. Then I used my vampire powers to steer you.”
“Like when I click tumblers inside a lock with my mind?”
“Yes. Although on a larger scale.”
“I got that. I remember you moving stuff. I didn’t realize you could move things that big.”
“Size matters not,” I quoted. “It’s weight. You were lightened, remember?”
“So, magic spells and super-vampire powers,” she spat, disgustedly. “I hope I’m undead long enough to get all that.”
“Give it time.”
“Oh, you’re funny.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
The fire flared
up and changed to a bright yellow. Flames danced higher and higher, rocketing up the chimney. Francine scampered across the floor and hid behind me, crouched and growling at the fireplace. I put a hand on her head and scratched behind her ears. She calmed down, but she didn’t like that fire. Mary grabbed the biggest fire extinguisher and readied it.
A voice came out of the flames.
“Father?” it said, with a rushing, crackling sound. I recognized the voice. In the streams and ribbons of fire, I thought I saw the outlines of a familiar face.
“Amber?”
“Father! I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“You succeeded,” I replied, surprised. “What’s the matter?”
“The Church of Light. I have word it’s trying to recruit magicians again. It might be trying to spread its influence, but I think it’s planning to try to find you.”
“As I recall, it doesn’t much care for Sparky, either. And, by extension, you or Tianna.”
“I know, but I’m here and know more about what’s happening. You’re there—wherever there is—and would be taken by surprise. I wanted to warn—” Her voice cut off as the flames vanished, their fuel exhausted, leaving only hot ashes in the fireplace.
“Well, damn.”
I tried to damp them down, Boss, Firebrand offered, because of how the candle behaved. I don’t know if I helped or not. There was weird magic going on in that.
Divine?
Probably. I’d guess it was a priestess-thing, not a magician-thing.
Thanks for trying.
De nada, Boss.
Mary lowered the fire extinguisher and regarded the dark fireplace.
“I suppose you find that odd,” I commented.
“Actually, yes. I do find it odd, which is odd.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t find it terrifying, weird, freaky, scary, spooky, nerve-wracking, or spine-tingling. It’s just odd, and that’s odd.”
“I see what you mean. Think you’re adapting to the supernaturally weird?”
“I’ve been undead for quite a while, now. I guess it’s about time. Plus, I’m hanging out with an unholy evil from the elder days of the world. That should count for something.”
“Good point.”
“So, who was that?” she asked, stowing the fire extinguisher and resuming her seat.
“My daughter. Her name is Amber.”
“And she’s a… fire thing?”
“No, she’s… well, yes, actually, she is, come to think of it.”
“That must have been a hot night for you.”
“In a manner of speaking,” I agreed, thinking of Tamara and her patron fire-goddess. “No, she was born normally, like any other mortal. She grew up as a priestess to a fire-goddess thing. When she was assassinated, I bound her spirit into divine fire and she lives on that way.”
Mary leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers. She scrutinized me over them while I petted Francine.
“You know,” she said, quietly, “I’m really not sure what to do, here.”
“Hmm?”
“Look, the Elders are probably worried you’ll upset the status quo. When you’re on top and immortal, keeping things going as they are becomes pretty important, I’d guess. I’d sure like to live long enough to find out for myself. Younger vampires don’t want to wait; when you’re immortal and on the bottom, it works the other way.
“As things stand, the Elders want you, in particular, to go away; the younglings want to drink your blood. Thing is, you have stuff going on in the background of your life that makes me think these issues are nothing more than a sideshow.”
“Trust me on this,” I told her. “I take the local problems seriously. Nothing is more serious than the man right in front of you with an axe.”
Mary pointed at the dead fireplace.
“And that? Is that local?”
“No, that’s about as far from here as you can get. But I’m here. I have to take here seriously.”
“Fine. The face in the flames didn’t bother me too much, but you… you scare me. What the hell am I doing here? What do you really need me for? Can’t you go tell the Elders to piss off and leave you alone? Or drain off a couple of gallons of blood and tell everyone who wants it to come and get it?”
I like that first idea, Firebrand commented. Mary’s eyes widened; Firebrand included her.
“You,” I told Firebrand, “are not helping matters.”
“What was that?” Mary demanded. I glared at Firebrand.
“Introduce yourself. Politely,” I added. Firebrand obligingly covered itself in fire.
Hello. I’m Firebrand. I’m the spirit of a dragon the Boss, here, dragged out, couldn’t digest, and upchucked into the metal of this sword. I’m also known as the Sword of Kings, the Dragonsword, and “You jerk,” but that’s a nickname among friends. I kill things by cutting them or burning them or both. Nice to meet you, Mary.
“You… have a… talking sword,” she said, slowly and carefully, as though the words might break.
“Technically, it’s a psychic sword. But yes, it talks. Too much, sometimes.”
Where do I get that from, Boss? Dragons only have conversations when eating you isn’t an option—and eating you is always an option.
“Still not helping,” I replied.
“A psychic, flaming sword,” Mary insisted, “with a dragon in it.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a vampire with a psychic, flaming, dragon-sword.”
He’s also a deposed king, an angel, and has been mistaken for a deity a few times, Firebrand supplied, unhelpfully.
“Shut up, you. She’s having a hard enough time adjusting. It took me years to adjust to being this weird and I took it in stages. She’s getting it all at once. Lay off.”
Mary licked her lips and closed her eyes. Firebrand extinguished itself.
“The evening was going so well,” she remarked. Francine padded over and put her head in Mary’s lap. Mary scratched Francine’s head, absently.
“Look, forget about all that,” I advised. “I’m trying to deal with the Elders, the younglings, and fitting in with vampire society. The rest of it isn’t your problem. Help me solve the political issues and I promise, you can either get the full explanation of who I am, where I come from, how I got here, all that… or you can choose not to find out, ever, and never be bothered with it. Red pill or blue pill, your choice.”
“Red pill? Blue pill?”
Shucks. My cultural references are out-of-date. I’m going to have to get used to that or pay more attention to pop culture. Assuming I ever sit somewhere long enough to do so.
“The choice is yours,” I clarified. “Entirely. All I want is your help dealing with vampire culture. If you would like to help me blow up, burn down, and rob mob boss houses, I’d appreciate it.”
“You’ve got that in the wrong order,” she pointed out, smiling slightly.
“Huh?”
“You rob them first. You blow up or burn down afterward.”
“Ah. Right you are,” I agreed. She smiled more and seemed to gather herself.
“And you mentioned you wanted to teach me some things about being a vampire?”
“Yes… but only if you’re interested. It’s entirely up to you.”
“Well. If It’s entirely up to me,” she said, “okay. Teach me something about being a vampire.”
“Okay. Tomorrow night, when we can get an early start.”
“All right. Do you have a safe?” She started stacking money.
“Do I need one?”
“How about we just put this away somewhere?”
“Good thought. I’ll show you where I hide the guns.”
“The guns?”
“I have a collection. People die while trying to kill me. I get dinner and their wallets. I also take their weapons and other valuables, if it isn’t too inconvenient.”
“Loot the bodies,” she agreed. “I understand.”
We stowed the money and Mary went to the bathroom for a haircut. I saw her down to her resting-place, put various clothes in the laundry, and stowed my damaged outfit in a power circle—the repair enchantments built into it would work much faster there. I made a mental note to check the barn for spiders. Building up a supply of spider-silk in advance might be a good idea.
I stacked fuel in the fireplace again. Firebrand started it going and I watched it for some time. No faces appeared, no voices came forth. Maybe I should set a bush on fire.
As much as I appreciate hearing from my daughter, it seems unfair I can only get calls, not make them. I don’t know a spell for that—at least, not yet. I have some ideas involving the correspondence of flames, which is why I could reach Sparky. It seems unlikely, though, that I have enough power or sufficient focus to reach—or summon?—Amber. Which means I can’t ask her for more details on the Church of Light, Sparky’s claims, or Tort, and I really want to.
I could call Sparky, of course, but I don’t think I will.
I need to finish a gate, even if it’s only a small one.
Eventually, I got up and went out to the barn to carve some letters. There was also a weather spell I wanted to try.
Saturday, November 7th
Saturday was bright, clear, and almost warm. Father Sky wasn’t paying attention, didn’t mind, forgave me, or had no power here. I felt sure if things were otherwise, my little weather-working would have been slapped aside in favor of pouring rain and sleet.
I needed it to be a nice day for the Four.
Gary came back from visiting his father in the hospital; Mark was out of ICU and seemed to be recovering. The brain guy said it looked worse on the scans than it really was. Myrna and Fred said it was a miracle. Gary said he was glad his dad was getting better. I said nothing.
The Four manned the stand first thing after breakfast. I think Fred’s phone call started things off, because shortly thereafter people started lining up. True, there were no pickup trucks with furniture, but there were hundreds of people, each with something. A few cans of food, some clothes, a cash donation—I emptied the bucket twice—or something useful for moving into a new place. Who thinks to donate a mop and bucket? Or a broom? How about a pair of toothbrushes and toothpaste? A box of plastic eating utensils? Paper plates? Aluminum foil and plastic wrap? Duct tape?