Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1)

by Ted Minkinow

  “You were texting upstairs,” I said.

  “Obviously,” Bernard replied.

  The car was a matte black, high-end sports car. One of the newer four-door models for the German who wanted to prove they could afford the two additional handles on top of the exorbitant price. Bernard opened the front door like he owned the car. He did, BTW.

  I don’t know how truth-in-advertising laws run in the European Union, but you’d think four doors would imply a backseat. Not so much. More like a lingerie drawer. I folded myself into it. In comparison, my little pygmy friend’s feet didn’t make it halfway to the floorboard in the suite he took for himself up front. He could be a bastard, too. That’s not a compliment when it comes from an American passport-holder.

  “Who’s the driver?” I said after I’d added knees to the major food groups and got myself situated.

  “He’s safe,” said Bernard.

  Safe, heck. He looked somewhere north of one hundred years old, and I’m not talking vampire years. This guy didn’t look like he could drive a little rascal, much a less five hundred horsepower black rocket. We turned onto the autobahn and he sped up to two hundred kilometers per hour. That’s 120 MPH. Maybe safe is one of those words with different meanings on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

  “Bernie,” Bernard said.

  Was he introducing himself to Speedy McCodger? I thought he already knew the guy. Said he was safe. How could Bernard know if he never met the guy? Or was the pygmy taking our relationship to the next level? We did hold hands. Maybe he read too much into it.

  “Bernie?” I said.

  “Yes,” said Bernard. “Bernie, our driver.”

  I got it. Bernard was introducing Speedy. I hoped the old bat would forego the courtesy of looking back at me during the introduction. He needed to keep both eyes on the road. That way they would remain in his head and not wrapped around a German tree. And by the look of him, his remaining time for watching roads—or anything else—was evaporating by the second.

  “South African,” said Bernard. “Used to be one of those nasty apartheid policemen chaps.” Bernard patted Speedy’s knee and the old guy smiled. “We helped him shed all that. Been with us since.”

  Bernard the little pygmy and his white supremacist driver pal Bernie. Bernard and Bernie. More loon power gathered in a tiny car than at a Las Vegas convention for alien abductees. Lucky me. Like everything else in the last twenty-four hours, I had no choice but to roll with it.

  “Nice to meet you, Bernie,” I said.

  I wondered when I’d given up on life. Was it Sparky? Soyla and her sexual antics? No Face? My chain-smoking guardian? The Seven? Any one of them provided enough excuse to hide in a corner and cut out paper dolls for the next two centuries. But roll on we did. Bernard interrupted my pity party.

  “We’ll need to address your blood lust,” he said.

  Bernie laughed at that. At least I think he laughed because it sounded more like a steam kettle venting. I could only hope the old guy wouldn’t begin venting in the other direction. Small car, confined cockpit and all. The new-car smell wouldn’t last long.

  “Blood lust?” I said. I thought I did a reasonable job of covering it.

  “Come on man,” said Bernard. “Are you going to be able to control it or is it going to be a problem?”

  “Not a problem,” my mouth said.

  “Big problem,” my brain argued.

  And now that he mentioned it, Bernie was beginning to look pretty good to me. Not Sarah Arias good, but good in a way a thirsty man looks at a frozen, one-liter beer mug with the right amount of ice-flecked foam at the top. That worried me. The blood lust was progressing too quickly. Perhaps the unprecedented stress over the last few hours synergized the normal desire. Yeah, chances were high my blood lust would get in the way.

  “Are you sure?” said Bernard. “Because you know it will spoil the lot.”

  Another cackle from Bernie. Just keep it coming out the top side, old fellow. Bernard looked at his driver and grinned. At least two people in the car understood the joke. A rolling psycho ward. And with “ruin everything” came the threat “I can’t let that happen.” Bernard was up front calculating whether or not to abort the mission. Whether or not he should abort me. I needed to change the subject.

  “Sarah Arias,” I said, “our discussion sounded a bit thin when it got around to her.”

  “Your point?” said Bernard.

  Was he really not interested in how a super-natural being might impact his party, or was he just hesitant to discuss her? Perhaps he took the mention of her as a subtle threat. Mess with me and my guardian angel takes you out. Would she? Sarah Arias showed little propensity for intervening on my behalf thus far. I mean, I could have saved stab wounds and various bumps and bruises had she taken her job seriously.

  But maybe it wasn’t in her job description. Bernard called her a watcher. That minimized her role. Not a participant, but a watcher. If I believed Bernard then Sarah Arias would shy away from intervention. That’s how’d she’d played things thus far. Almost.

  She did pitch in once. At least it appeared so. The previous night as the rest of the bagger gang waited outside for me to walk downtown and start our Friday night.

  I’d found Bernard in my apartment. I still didn’t know whether it was an ambush or he was just snooping. Bernard played a little rough with me and Sarah Arias popped in to make him stop. She did allow him to say goodnight by sending me flying out my own window. But no more damage than that. I didn’t know if he wanted to kill me, what I did know is that he didn’t have as much information then as he did now.

  Bernard had no idea what he’d stepped into. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Sarah Arias stopped Bernard from going too far. And it’s not easy to think in the backseat of a toy car with your legs wedged behind your ears

  “She has a part in this,” I said.

  “Who does?” asked Bernard.

  “Sarah Arias.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Good question. Why did I think that? Bernard wanted to dismiss the subject. He’d called Sarah Arias a watcher. But that didn’t taste right. Hadn’t she also given me the dry bones hint? Ezekiel 37, she’d said. And that was after she told me not to give them what they wanted. If she truly didn’t want me to hand over Chucky’s dry bones then wouldn’t the best way to ensure that be to not tell me a thing? Not help with previously indecipherable clues?

  Instead of ensuring I’d fail, Sarah Arias ended up giving me the key—OK, I only held the key, Bernard used it—and made sure of the opposite. She provided the necessary targeting information. “Don’t give them what they want.” She didn’t say not to break into the casket and retrieve the bones.

  The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Sarah Arias wanted something all right. The dry bones. Like everyone else, she wanted the dry bones.

  Would she kill me for them? No. Could I hand them over to one of the “interested parties” or hang them over my fireplace? I thought so, but only because that’s how I imagined a guardian angel would act. A final question orbited around the notion of a guardian. Would she allow any of the bad people to kill me? Maybe not intentionally, I thought. But all bets were off if it all happened while she stood outside the cathedral taking a cigarette break.

  So Sara Arias wouldn’t kill me and wouldn’t try and stop me if things with the bones didn’t go her way. She might even protect me if things didn’t go my way. That made her different from Soyla’s people and different from No Face. It also made her different from my petite partner sitting in the voluminous front seat while I sat packaged in the back. At least I’d be cushioned by Bernard’s mush when his pet Bernie drove us all into the back of a truck.

  “Are you going to respond?” said Bernard.

  “Huh,” I said. “Respond?”

  “Egad, man,” he said. “Do you think Sarah Arias has a part in this?”

  I answered by instinct and I an
swered immediately.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t think of one.”

  I can’t think. Perfect choice of words for the arrogant little twerp who bought that line without even considering the price tag. He seemed to share a common opinion with Herr Doktor when it came to Americans.

  I felt a shiver and knew blood lust was politely knocking at my control room. In about an hour it would kick in the door. Once that happened I wouldn’t be able to think. Not until I’d done my feeding. And here I’ve been chiding Bernard as a murderer and man-eater. Once you consume a human, do varying quantities make you better or worse?

  My answer satisfied Bernard. He turned to face forward. We drove most of the distance to Aachen in silence. The Captain and Tennille up front mumbled back and forth a few times in Afrikaans, and I heard Bernie venting steam a couple of times. Nice to know those two could yuk it up.

  Bernie discovered the brake pedal as we pulled off the Autobahn on a local road heading into Aachen. He found an industrial area outside of town and maneuvered the car into a parking space between two buildings. Some Germans had left their cars there for the night. Fortunate camouflage.

  Bernard hopped out and walked around to the rear of the car. I did my accordion imitation and fell out of the back seat. I paused beside Bernie and motioned for him to roll the window down. He did and I threw a two Euro coin onto his lap.

  “Keep your heart running,” I said. “I should be back in my next lifetime.”

  Bernie rewarded me with a few venting snorts of laughter. At least the man was still breathing. I met Bernard in back of the car where he popped the trunk and pulled out some gear. I usually didn’t bother with helmets or body armor. No way to know how many bullets they’d spray my way so I took the vest Bernard offered. It fit.

  He closed the trunk and waved to Bernie. Old Officer Apartheid gave us a cheery salute, rolled up the black tinted window, and disappeared from sight. He better hope we returned before his pacemaker battery went dead. Bernard led off in a trot. It wouldn’t take us long if we kept a steady pace. My nerves screamed at me to sprint. In the other direction. And my blood lust settled in for the ride.

  We came to the places people lived. Europe isn’t spread out like the United States, so if you’re near a town you’re among the people. I didn’t see any single homes, just one apartment building after the other. These first were the shabby ones occupied by non-German citizens of the European Union. The Germans would live in the more upscale properties closer to the town center.

  We didn’t pass anyone on the streets. Good. Also on the plus side, a thick overcast above fought off any moonlight picking its way to earth. My eyes adjusted to the dark with no problem. If you’ve seen the view through a military-grade night vision goggle then you can approximate what we see. Reflective heat provides nearly the same clarity as the sun in daylight. We can’t pick up colors, so if a vampire needs to wear a tie he should wait until morning to pick it out.

  The streets became narrower as we approached the old town center. Bernard slowed up for a few blocks and then came to a stop.

  “Need to be careful from this point,” he said.

  Glad he reminded me because I was thinking we were on our way to a pajama party.

  I nodded and hoped he couldn’t see how much I fought the blood lust. People everywhere. In apartments above the shops and the restaurants. They lived in ancient buildings converted into multi-million-Euro flats. So many packed in so small an area. I reached out for each of them, tried to distinguish individuals among the multitudes.

  Sometimes I could tell age and estimate height and weight based on the volume of blood and the strength of hearts. But as we neared the original marketplace sheer numbers made distinguishing impossible. Everyone blended together into one sweet song. An orchestra of life…and I fell in love with every member of the band, each voice in the choir. Not in the way a man falls in love with a woman or Bernard with his reflection, but in a way a junkie falls in love with the needle.

  Either Soyla or her masters did their homework. If mercenaries waited in ambush to do me in once I completed the chore, then I would not be able to pick them out through the noise of a thousand beating hearts. We rounded the final corner.

  The Aachen Cathedral sat cold and lonely ahead. Not an overly inviting building in the dark. And they’d definitely not left the light on for me. Engraved invitation or not, I had an appointment with some dry bones.

  Chapter 33

  Bernard used hand signals. Kind of odd, given the likelihood everyone with evil intent already knew we’d arrived. They’d likely followed us, or even more probably watched us leave my flat and radioed ahead for the rest of the guys to hold up on the sauerkraut refills if they wanted enough time to get to the strudel. The patsy would soon arrive.

  They’d also know I brought a friend. That would keep the lines chattering for a while, and I smiled as I wondered what the American National Security Agency would think of those intercepted conversations.

  “Teutoberg and the pygmy are rolling.”

  “Copy all, two vampires on the way.”

  “Wait a minute, command post. They appear to be holding hands.”

  “Confirm last transmission.”

  “The cannibal and the idiot are holding hands. Advise.”

  There’d be a pause while the ambushers passed that bit of INTEL to their handlers and waited for instructions.

  “Roger that, holding hands. Opinion?”

  “Affirmative, command post. Looks like muskrat love.”

  Why did the Captain and Tennille keep running through my mind?

  My temporary lack of focus caused consternation in Bernard. He kept repeating the same hand signal, getting more and more demonstrative. Why didn’t he just talk to me? He started with pointing a finger at the cathedral and progressed all the way to jabbing his arm in that direction and adding quick forehead nods to boot. I considered giving him the palms up, “I don’t understand” signal but I thought he might rip my head off.

  I nodded the “OK. OK. I get it.” I started across the wide, deserted marketplace and didn’t complete one step when Bernard tugged me back. He pointed to each of the buildings around the square and then to the cathedral.

  For the sake of team unity I’d humor him and dash from the cover of one building to the next. It wouldn’t trick the people we wanted to fool, but for some reason it would make Bernard feel better. So yes, I did it his way. Each building in turn. Stop. Look. Listen. Nothing. I was embarrassed in front of myself. Did Bernard think the bad guys’ gales of laughter at my needless tomfoolery would give away their positions? Hardly. But I did the dance and arrived at the same back door the baggers and I used earlier that day.

  We’d discussed the entry point and Bernard thought going in near the demon portal made sense. Well, maybe it did for demons. I wanted to avoid the portal area until I’d retrieved Chucky. Push all potential confrontations to the end. One final big bet. But Bernard said no and I gave in.

  I expected to need my vampire strength to force open the old iron door mechanism that did little more these days than keep the occasional worshipper outside the cathedral. It turned easily in my hand and I nearly snapped my wrist when I applied the anticipated force. I paused before pushing the door.

  Blood lust begged me to get moving. I’d need to hold it back as best I could while at the same time bringing my full vampire forward. Hard to get one without the other. Think inviting the Captain to your party but not Tennille. I’d need to accept both power and blood lust to get either.

  I’m making it sound like I could turn my condition off and on as needed. Not true. Both vampire strength and blood lust always exist. No special ring or can of spinach required. I spend most of my concentration riding shotgun on those urges, trying to keep the sharp edges blunted.

  Imagine a little fish in a big ocean. If the fish ever relaxes he’ll end up chewed and swallowed by something larger. Now think of my control as the fish and my condition as
the ocean. My condition won’t swallow my sanity but the things it harbors can.

  Sometimes I do tap that power. Supercharge it. My teeth extended during my frog-hop from building to building. Good. I thought of my friends in the painting and felt heat from the anger join the blood in my veins. Good. I thought of No Face and his poor table manners while he chewed on pieces of me. Good. I thought of my hands around Sparky’s neck. Kind of good. I thought of new Soyla sexts waiting on my phone. OK, I’d thought enough.

  I sent the blood lust ahead of me through the door. Nothing. No humans inside. I still detected those living in the flats surrounding the marketplace to the degree I had to fight the urge to jump in among them and feed. I don’t remember banging my head against the cold stone wall but I did feel the pain. I’d just need to live from one moment to the next.

  Of all the bad guys I’d face that night I knew the blood lust would be the most potent. It could care less about Chucky’s dry bones. I’d met the enemy and it was me. If I lost to the blood lust then the mission failed and all my friends died. But that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to them. Not by any stretch.

  They could spend an eternity in hell. I make the blood lust sound like an external thing, but that’s just letting myself off the hook. If it overcame me then I would bear the responsibility. I pushed in the door and prayed that wouldn’t happen. The building was a handy place for prayers. It was a church, after all.

  Chapter 34

  I entered the Aachen Cathedral with no expectations. I’d find what waited on me there soon enough and worrying wouldn’t change it. My first scan, visual and blood, turned up nothing. Not a living soul in the place except me. You might think I’d find the cold medieval architecture with the dark vaulted ceilings and chilly stone floors eerie. I didn’t. I was the thing that haunt people’s nightmares so what did I have to fear?