by Lori Titus
“You’ve supplied us with good subjects before,” Ulia continued.
“Of course. And last time you were here you asked for a younger Wolf than the ones you’ve purchased from us before. We’ve obtained one that we think you’ll like.”
I glanced at Chris. He gave me a look that said, hold on, there’s more.
Henry went to the door of the conference room and opened it. “Art?” he called.
Art was a dark haired man with horn-rimmed glasses. He wore a black turtleneck and jeans. He wheeled in a steel cage covered by a blanket.
Henry pulled the blanket aside. I covered my mouth to keep from gasping.
The creature inside was naked; he stood like a man, but this was an animal, covered with thin fur. He shivered as if he were cold. He covered his snout with his paws. I couldn’t stop looking at his powerful claws, and the slightly bent legs that were made more like a wolf than a man. How fast could he run if he were set free? I was sure those claws could slash open an artery in one good stroke.
Art patted the top of the cage, which elicited a low growl from the werewolf.
“Lovely,” Ulia said, and stood up. She was a tiny woman but she wore six inch heels. I thought it strange that a vampire would still be self-conscious about her height. She couldn’t have been more than ninety-nine pounds soaking wet but I sensed that she was a strong, old supernatural, despite her unlined skin. The older these creatures got, the more they stood out. Too perfect, too quick, too unconcerned with anything but their own pleasures to be human.
“How old is the Wolf, in human years?” Ulia asked.
“He’s only twenty,” Henry said. “A newborn, and a bastard, of course. We don’t know who his maker was but he was abandoned. He was captured wandering the beach alone a few weeks ago. Left quite the trail of dead bodies in his wake. From the killings in his area we think he was probably feeding for about a month, moving under cover of darkness.”
“I see,” Ulia ran a fingertip along her lower lip. She took a step back, swaying on her heels. “What have you been giving him to keep him calm?”
“The usual medication you requested,” Henry said quickly. “As you see he’s only partially phased. The last dosage he had will keep him in this state for the next forty eight hours.”
Ulia nodded. “Well that will be fine. I’m sure he’ll be dispatched by then,” she gave Henry a smile. “How much are you letting him go for?”
“Seventy thousand dollars.”
“That seems fair. We will get good use out of him.”
“How’s the testing going so far?” Henry asked.
“Very well,” Ulia replied. “Every day the staff is moving towards new advances.”
I wanted to ask what could that be, but I knew better.
She turned around and looked at me. “Oh, that was you who thought that, witch,” she stared at me. “We’re studying ways we can keep their minds and physiology controlled,” she said. “It should come as a win-win for your species as well. Without population control, you wouldn’t believe how many of the things run rampant.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks for the explanation.”
“Of course,” Ulia’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Are these two going to be permanent employees?” she asked Henry.
He smiled. “Appears so for now.”
“If you’re ever thinking of discharging either one of them, please toss them my way, darling,” she said.
“Either?” Henry asked.
“Well both really, I like them as a pair. Though if you could only spare one, I’ll try not to be greedy.”
Henry laughed. “We both know that would be against your nature but, whatever you say. I think we need to give them their full trial period before we discuss it.”
“Whatever happened to Monica?” Ulia asked. “I quite liked her. You know, I had a snack from her one day. I don’t care what people say about these vegans. Nothing tastes like well-fed woman who eats steak and drinks wine now and again.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stuckey make a fist.
“There won’t be any of that,” I said. I could feel everyone in the room turn to stare at me.
Henry looked stunned, but he didn’t speak. “Excuse me?” Ulia took a step toward me. She leaned over as if her preternatural hearing had failed her.
“I just want to let you know, that while we’ve done a lot to be here, and we’ll certainly do other things when asked, there will be no ‘snacking’ on either of us. I’m sorry bitch, that’s one step too far.”
I saw two things at once: Chris jumping to his feet and the blur of Ulia’s movement to my left.
Next thing I knew her cold hands were resting on my throat.
“Uh, one step forward and I’ll snap her neck,” the vampire warned Chris. He looked from her to me. In that moment, I saw that he had changed into soldier mode. He was assessing the threat.
“It’s okay,” I told Chris. I trained my eyes on him. “Don’t move,” I whispered. I used all my will to hold him there. I hadn’t done anything like that in years but I could see it was working. He was shivering, trying to fight against my spell but it held him in place.
If he made any move to help me either she or the others would kill him. The vampire moved too fast for me to shield myself from her.
I held my breath as Ulia’s long, sharp nail slowly made its way down my neck. I winced as her cold tongue traced a line down my skin.
One, two thr—-
Ulia dropped to her knees and started screaming. “What was that!” she cried. I looked down and I could see the steam coming off her lips and her tongue. “Holy water?”
I looked away from her and lifted my hand; snapping Chris free of the spell to keep him from moving.
“I told you.” It was a simple trick I learned from Daddy. Always drink holy water when you’re going to be around anything that is evil.
Still screaming in pain the angry vampire got to her feet.
“Ulia,” Henry snapped. “You’ve had your fun. Time to pay your cash and go.”
She hissed at me.
Henry drew a gun on her. “You know we consider this office to be neutral territory, but there are people we can notify about your actions if you get out of hand.”
This whole time the rest of Ulia’s crew, including Gael, sat watching this drama play out. Now he stood up slowly, along with the other two males.
Art had a gun at the ready. “We can shoot you with silver bullets,” he said quietly. “Or we just let Nevil out. He won’t eat vampires but he will kill you.”
Gael put his hands up in a posture of surrender. “No worries then. Ulia. You heard the man.”
The vampire who winked at me earlier placed two large wads of cash on conference table. Ulia left with two of the other vampires. Art followed out, pushing Nevil’s cage with him. Only Gael remained.
“You can ignore her, Mr. Pollard,” Gael said with a smirk. “The rest of us do. I hope we can continue business. As you see she isn’t good with handling negotiations. Or controlling herself in general.”
“Of course,” Henry said. “You might not want to bring her here the next few times though. Let her cool off. I can’t have my employees threatened.”
“I suppose you can’t. Saving that honor for yourselves, I suppose. Well. Tell old man Victor I said hello.”
And with that, he left.
Once the door closed behind the vampire, Chris was the first to speak. “You knew that was going to happen. The whole thing was a fucking test?”
Henry nodded. “Well, if you hadn’t passed it, you would be dead.”
Christopher Stuckey
“Let me take you to dinner.”
Natasha looked at me for a moment like I might be crazy.
We were in the parking garage. She was at her car and ready to get in. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t ask her when we got on the elevator. Maybe it was because we were both shaken up.
We spent the afternoon in the fir
m’s secret library. I was supposed to be reading The Book of the Others. Natasha was given an old grimoire to research. I don’t think either of us got much done. Most of the time, we both sat in opposite sections of the room. I wasn’t absorbing the words and if I had to guess, she wasn’t either.
“Well, I guess that counts as our first day,” Natasha said.
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m hungry. You might not want to eat but you’ll need something.”
Natasha took a moment to think about it and I looked into those big brown eyes of hers. Over the past days I had tried hard not to let her see how much I stared. If she’d noticed, she didn’t give any hint.
“Oh alright,” she said. “I’ll follow in my car. Where do you want to go?”
We ended up at a little steakhouse I favored. The place was small and dim, with candlelight and good drinks. I figured she might not want to talk but it would be a good place to be still for a while. If she did eat, she would enjoy it.
It occurred to me this was better than the coffee I suggested taking her out for before.
I ordered my usual: steak, potato, and salad. Natasha took her time with the menu. Meanwhile the waiter brought us a bottle of white wine and a bread basket. We both had some. I remembered that now I could drink without the need to drain an entire bottle. It was odd. The wine had no effect, not even a subtle burn in my throat. It was like drinking from a kid’s juice box.
“Did your Mom say anything else about how your Dad knew mine?” I asked. A weird question to start with but I needed to know.
Natasha pretended to be busy buttering her bread. “Oh, she didn’t really want to talk about it, but I did ask her. She seemed to think it was odd that I knew you. She insinuated that maybe I sought you out. That you and I might be doing the same kind of work my father used to do.”
“Work? Being a minister?” It had been a long day, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, she doesn’t have to worry about that. I’m atheist.”
Natasha took a very long drink of wine. She batted her eyes as she put the glass down, her finger lingering on the stem.
“It’s okay. Anything you want to say, I guarantee that my parents have said something more insulting,” I told her.
“It’s certainly your right to have your own world view,” she said carefully. “I don’t exactly fit all the boxes when it comes to beliefs, so I get it. Sometimes I wish I didn’t believe. It would make my life a lot easier.”
The waiter circled back, and Natasha finally gave him her order. Once he was gone, I asked her. “What do you mean by that?”
Natasha shrugged. “I have guilt about what I—what we did—with Ramshead, because everything I was taught growing up is so against this. And you might as well know, my dad was more than a minister. He was an exorcist.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. He was a Catholic priest, a trained exorcist. At some point he broke a rule. Something having to do with who he was allowed to give the sacrament to. There’s an actual process they expect people to go through before they even get serious consideration by the church. In some cases it can take months or even years to convince the church that someone is in need of an exorcism, and certain people have to acknowledge there’s a problem.
“Anyway. Daddy was never the kind of person to sit around and wait for instructions. Somehow the church found out he’d performed rituals without their blessing and he got in trouble for it. They ordered him to stop performing exorcisms. They gave him the choice to work as a parish priest or to leave the clergy altogether. He decided it was best to leave the church. He never regretted it and didn’t look back.”
“He met my mother a few years later, and they got married,” Natasha continued. “Only thing is, he never stopped performing exorcisms. He would go around the country working cases. He’d stop for a year, or six months, and then he’d hear about someone who needed help. Once he knew about it, there was no way he was not going to do something about it.”
“My father,” I said carefully. “Is a very old-fashioned preacher. There were always strange things going on in town, and people seemed ready to blame most of it on demons or some other kind of evil thing. I can imagine him calling an exorcist.”
“Your father knows you’re atheist?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you two still talk?”
“Not really. He considers me a lost cause, which I always think is funny, considering he’s always talking about god’s supposed forgiveness.”
Once our meals arrived we ate in companionable silence for a time. I wasn’t sure if we were both exhausted or both preoccupied. I was trying to remember if I’d ever met someone who might have been Natasha’s father. My dad knew a lot of people. There was always someone having dinner at our house, and of course he was friendly with everyone in his congregation.
“What was your Dad’s name?” I asked.
“Ezekiel,” Natasha said with a sad smile. “His friends always called him Zeke.”
I couldn’t remember anyone called by that name.
“You’re a practicing witch.”
“Practicing again... now. I haven’t in a long time. When I need it, I can tap into it. I can teach you a couple things to help protect you. But it may be difficult for you.”
“Why?”
“It takes a modicum of belief.” She said it softly and though I was aware she probably meant nothing by it, I felt judged. I was irritated with myself. Why did I care so much what she thought about me? We were two strangers in a bad situation together. Nothing more.
“I get why they want you,” I said. “I don’t have any power like that.”
“Maybe they think you’ll make them look legitimate to any prying eyes,” Natasha said. Something in her expression told me she had another theory. It was one she wasn’t ready to share yet.
I had other questions I wanted to ask her—about what she could do, how she learned, and how a former priest must have felt about a daughter who was a powerful witch. I wondered if it would be prying to ask.
She surprised me by what she said next.
“You know,” she said, picking up her knife. “It’s too bad you and your dad aren’t closer. I think Ramshead’s interest in us has something to do with our fathers. My dad didn’t tell my mom much about the jobs he took because she was angry with him every time he left town to work. But maybe your father remembers something that could help. How do you think he would react if you took a quick trip out to see him?”
Chapter Seventeen
Natasha Taylor
Chris and I parted after dinner in the parking lot. There was this moment when I was almost sure he was going to kiss me.
He hugged me, and for a moment, I held him too. He felt so good. Warm, and strong and maybe safe even. He rested his chin on the top of my head.
I felt him move. His hand was on the back of my neck.
I pushed him away. Not hard. My hands lingered around his waist for a split second before I let them drop.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, don’t be,” I tried for a smile, but the expression died on my lips. “It’s just been a long day.”
“Got it,” he nodded, slipping his hands into his pockets. He took a step back. “See you tomorrow morning.”
He headed to his car, and I watched him go. I got into my own car and watched him leave the parking lot.
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t want to be involved with a coworker, and Ramshead’s office came with so much more than any normal workplace. I didn’t think it was a good idea. They might use us against each other. We might end up hating each other and then get stuck working together for the next seven years.
Ronnie always told me that I was good at making excuses when it came to men. I don’t look at it that way. There are reasons why it’s not always a good idea to be involved. I liked to think of myself as a person who wanted a strong relationship, but I hadn’t been able to manage that kind of connectio
n. I could say it had been a long time since I really had that closeness with someone. The truth would be more like—never. I’d had a handful of boyfriends over the last few years but I always pushed them away before they got too close.
When I pulled up to my house, I noticed that the lights were still on. Over the last couple of years, I had grown used to my mother going to bed early and sleeping through the night, or at least staying in her room and watching television. I’d nearly forgotten that when she was healthy, she was often up all hours of the night. If she didn’t have anything particular to do, she found a way to amuse herself. Either crocheting or working on some household task she hadn’t done earlier that day.
I opened the door, and found her in the living room, reading a book. She looked up at me, and I was reminded of what it was like to find her in that same spot on the couch back when I was a teenager who’d broken her curfew.
“Hi Mama,” I said, taking off my jacket and stepping out of my heels.
“Come here, I want to talk to you.”
I approached carefully, my stocking feet cold against the polished wood floor. Something in her tone told me this was not going to be a pleasant conversation.
I sat down in the chair across from the sofa. “How are you feeling, Mama?”
“I’m fine. Which is the problem.”
My throat felt like it was closing. “What do you mean?” I asked.
She stood up. “You know, Zeke and I weren’t the best but we did try to bring you up with a sense of decency. Some people might think that we didn’t really have morals ourselves but to hell with that.”
“Mama, is this about Chris? Look, I promise you I’m not involved with the guy. I’m sorry if you feel I disrespected your house—”
“Oh, he’s only the tip of this iceberg.” She walked across the room, pacing. Then she stopped and leaned over the couch, her fingers digging into the cushions. “I want you to tell me the truth, about why he’s here, and what you’ve been doing.”