Old Lovers, New Money

by Gabrielle Prevot

  He had been a good maker, if there is such a thing. He paid more attention to me as a youngling than most makers did. He swept me to Kansas City and taught me how to survive, fight and eat. He was a man who liked to talk, and while we roamed the city streets, he would expound on the interesting parts of his three hundred year existence. He said that he loved the human race that it was important that we only took what we needed and never killed unless we had to. Of course, that meaning was something different than the human interpretation. If they struggled or screamed, we killed them. But he was always picky about where we hunted. “The stature of a man in society determines his value to the propagation of the species,” he said. “You kill all of those with intelligence and ambition, and what are you left with? Cows. And what is the fun of that?”

  Even as a young vampire I knew what bullshit was. I pretended to agree with him at the time simply because I needed him and arguing with a vampire so strong never ends well for you. But I was not interested in his views or opinions. The only thing I was interested in was the skills that he taught me, the ways to utilize what we inherit from our gift.

  It was fascinating, learning to see in the dark and run faster than a human can perceive. It was exhausting to learn to fight when strength and speed were so superior to what I had been used to. Learning to anticipate a sword that strikes like a snake is not easy, but I liked the challenge. And, though I hated his long speeches on philosophy and ethics, I did find it interesting how much of our humanity remained after we were turned. The myths that I had grown up hearing and reading had very little basis in fact; out of maybe a hundred guesses, they had less than five facts.

  I turned a corner and could see the address two streets ahead of me. Glancing at my cell phone, I had nine minutes before show time. I took a breath and started to examine my surroundings.

  The building was only four stories, shorter and wider than the buildings on either side. It was run down, abandoned year’s maybe decades before. The first floor windows were covered in plywood that had begun to peel away from itself and the front door had been ripped halfway off its hinges leaving behind only a glassless metal frame. I closed my eyes and focused, listening for anything that might warn me of danger. I heard the rats in the surrounding buildings moving; the pigeons, asleep in the rafters and occasionally fluttering their feathers, a police siren far away, and nothing else.

  My insides tightened. This is why I hated meetings in person. There are too many variables. No matter how good you are, how careful you are, you are out there in the open and they know you are coming.

  I stood there kicking myself for agreeing to it. Everything inside of me said it was a trap. I thought back to the argument I had with them two weeks before.

  It was a Saturday morning and I connected to my secure message server and found a connection open and a message waiting. I had been expecting it; Sigmund had sent word that there was something on the horizon.

  ClientX: Need assistance.

  Server: Code required.

  ClientX: SigmaHotel7Star

  Server: Contact?

  ClientX: Sigmund

  Server: Number?

  ClientX: 1

  Server: Location?

  ClientX: Kansas City

  Server: Timeframe?

  ClientX: We need to meet.

  Server: Impossible.

  ClientX: We need to meet.

  Server: Impossible.

  ClientX: Double

  Server: Meet with Sigmund.

  Sigmund called two days later with the details. It was a conversation that moved along about as well as the messages had, but Sigmund insisted and work had been slow. He said that this one was interesting. I didn’t ask for the details but Sigmund had been my go to for more than twenty years and I trusted him implicitly. If he said that there had to be a meeting, it didn’t matter how much I didn’t want one.

  My eyes ran over the tops of the buildings and every shadow I could see between where I was and where I needed to go. I was hoping for some movement, the change in a shadow, a scent, anything that would justify the fear that kept turning my stomach upside down. Everything felt wrong but I couldn’t justify it. I took a breath and slowly stepped out into the street watching and waiting for something, anything to move. Nothing did.

  In less than I second I had sprinted to the open doorway, three blocks, without a sound. I reached back and pulled both pistols into the open, flipping their safeties with my thumbs, and raising them chest high. I spun on my heels to check behind me. Nothing. I held my breath, blocked out my own heartbeat and listened.

  Seven, I counted. Six heartbeats.

  There was the little metal clink of a Zippo lighter ahead and three faces lit up inside the building. The middle one, taller than the others, was lighting a thin cigar watching me as he puffed and the flame grew bright and dim with each breath.

  Our eyes were locked until I saw him cast a glance to my right and then heard the footsteps. They were lightning fast, rushing toward me from the far side of the building. I thought about moving toward them, but then heard another pair coming at me from the left. The lighter’s flame went out and the three well-dressed vampires disappeared in front of me.

  I took a breath as the first vampire, his fangs bared, his young eyes glowing a faint red, rushed at me with a sword perched above his head. I planted my left foot and waited. In less time than it takes to blink, he had covered fifty feet, and the blade was sweeping toward my head. Leaning back, the blade whipped past my face and headed toward the floor. While the force of the attacker’s body still flew at me, his run unchanged, I turned the end of my pistol up and hit him square between the eyes. His head flew backward, his chin flipping toward the ceiling and his eyes closing. The rest of him kept coming, passing in front of me as he fell. “Lights out,” I whispered.

  From the left, another vampire, this one carrying two smaller, evil looking blades, crossed his swing trying to dispatch my head. The blades scratched along each other a hand’s breadth from their goal. I held my breath, pushed off my left foot and jumped to the right while I holstered my pistols, slid my blade from my thigh, and the finger blade from my forearm.

  He started to move toward me, swinging both blades in a practiced arc, but his partner was already there, in front of me, stabbing at my chest with two small daggers. Stepping back on the sidewalk, I parried the little knives moving in a blur as best I could. One nicked the front of me, I could feel it tear the fabric, ride over the boning, and then slice into me. Shit, I thought, so fucking fast. I took another step back trying to parry and get clear of the thrusts unable to focus on anything else but the whirling steel. Finally I caught one dagger’s edge and twisted my blade, running his edge down mine. I saw the realization in his eyes, and dug my finger blade into his belly while I snapped his blade in two with the hilt of my Italian dirk. He folded over my hand as I plunged the blade in again and again feeling the hot wet liquid spill out of him while he groaned.

  I stepped back and he fell to his knees as the last fighter jumped over him, screaming and swinging the blades as fast as he could. His fangs were long and sharp and his eyes burrowed into mine. I flipped the dirk in my hand, laying the blade backwards along my forearm. He grinned while the steel whistled through the air in front of my face like a terrible machine waiting to catch flesh and bone. I took a breath and focused, timing his swings. I counted while I inched backwards, keeping just out of range. Then I planted my back foot, stepped into a downward arc, caught his blade along the dirk’s edge, spun behind him, and wrapped my arm around his neck. He caught his balance quickly and tried to turn, tried to change the momentum, but I held firm and flipped myself backwards into the air, twisting his neck as I went.

  My boots hit the ground I let go. His body slumped in front of me a few feet from is comrade. His blades scratched along the pavement as they fell from his hands. I took a knee and leaned over him while he gasped, trying to suck air through the twisted flesh and muscle. His was
older than the other two attackers. His eyes carried none of the fear theirs had.

  “You’ll heal,” I said turning his head around toward the front of his body and patting him on the head.

  I glanced over and three sets of very expensive shoes were lined up a foot or two away.

  “Nicely done,” the middle vampire said, sucking in on the end of his cigar while behind him, the stabbed and bleeding vampire struggled to his feet.

  I stood and calmed my breathing. “Glad you were impre…” I stopped mid-word when I heard the little thwang from somewhere deep in the darkness. It was far away, maybe a block or two. But something was suddenly flying, whistling as it came. The middle vampire heard it too. I saw it register in his eyes before he slowly closed them.

  The arrow passed between their two heads. It was pretty as it came, the four-bladed tip twirling, the air rushing along the fletching. I leaned to the left and grabbed the shaft in the middle as it passed by my head. The vampire opened his eyes and I was twirling it in my fingers.

  “We had to know if you were really ready,” he shrugged.

  “Understood,” I said, handing the arrow toward the man on his left who smiled and took it.

  “Thank you for meeting with us.” The middle vamp said, offering his hand to me. “I am Geoffrey,” he smiled, shaking my hand and then pointed at the vampire on his right. “This is James and this is Steven.”

  I nodded to both of the others and then returned my attention to Geoffrey. He was a tall vampire, a good eight to twelve inches above me and the others. I had a feeling he was old, there was just something about the way he spoke, the look in his eyes, the way he carried himself. I had no doubt he planned the perfectly set scene around us. He had calculated the entire meeting and he was perfectly dangerous.

  “Our little concern, the three of us together, governs the city.”

  I slipped my blades back into their sheaths and glanced over at the two quiet vampires who stood staring at me. It wasn’t the first time I had heard of a small council of us ruling territory. The big cities had been doing it for generations, keeping the balance between the species, maintaining some semblance of order, and usually getting fairly wealthy in the process.

  Older vampires especially like to move up through the ranks. Their ambitions change. They like power and influence, order amongst the chaos. It’s all that’s left to them really. Occasionally, they are challenged by a younger vampire, or some older clan with a grudge; vampires have never been the most peaceful beings. But the older the vampires, the wiser they are; and upstarts are usually dispatched before they ever become a threat. I have been the instrument of such arrangements. It has paid the bills for almost half of my second life.

  “We have a problem though.”

  I snapped my attention back to Geoffrey as he reached into his breast pocket and slowly pulled out an envelope. Good, I thought, finally getting down to business.

  “Your account has been funded with fifty percent of what we agreed on,” he said, handing me the packet. “Your target is a hunter; a good one.”

  James and Steven both looked down at their shoes and I could tell that there was bad news coming.

  “Two to three of us a night for the past week.”

  “A night?” I asked, shocked.

  “We have only recently even identified the man,” he said. “Why do you think we drug you all the way out here?” Geoffrey waved around the street. “Everyone we have sent has been killed.”

  A man? I thought. A single man is taking out two to three vampires a night? A little chill ran down my spine.

  Over the years, I had met men and vampires that had given me a run for my money. The vampires are usually the most troublesome, but there have been humans too. If vampires could carry scars from anything but pure silver, I would be covered in them.

  “He uses a number of different weapons, but the bow seems to be his favorite,” James said, quietly, looking down at the arrow in his hand. “We only know he’s human because of the picture.”

  I turned the envelope over in my hands and slipped the photograph out. My insides went cold and my breath caught in my throat. He was older, his hair cut shorter, but it was him, Andrew, seated in a restaurant across from a beautiful redhead that I didn’t recognize. His mouth was full and he was wearing the goofy grin I remembered so well. I stared down at it trying to calm the rush of excitement and fear that seemed to course through me with every heartbeat.

  “We know nothing else about him. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to his attacks. It started with one or two, we weren’t even paying attention then, but then it got serious. He was leaving the arrows behind; they were perfect shots, silver-tipped, straight into the heart and then at least one in the head. We sent word to travel in pairs and he would just kill both. We hired human assassins you’ve probably heard of and they are found shot, or stabbed, or simply never seen again.”

  His words were coming quick now. The fear had taken over and shattered the pure and refined image he had set. He was almost pleading. “We are at are out wit’s end.”

  Although I was listening, my eyes were still glued to the photograph. I couldn’t believe it was him. I couldn’t believe he was capable. I kept going back over every detail I knew about him. Born in upstate New York, liked to hike and camp, like to fish, not a hunter, loved music, loved to laugh, and the list went on. None of it made any sense. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Are you sure this is your hunter?” I looked up at the three of them, Geoffrey’s mouth was agape, his eyes still afraid.

  “Yes,” James said, quietly. “We are sure.”

  “How,” I heard my tone change, something inside of me had snapped. I was angry and I wasn’t sure why. “How do you know? You’ve got a guy sitting in a restaurant.”

  James looked to my right at the vampire whose neck I had I broken. I followed his eyes. He was sitting up beside me healing and, when our eyes met, he looked away embarrassed by what had I done to him. “Go get it,” James said.

  The vampire slowly got to his feet, looked over at the twin blades lying on the concrete and then back at me. He wanted to pick them up, lift them like he wanted to lift his pride. I just stared at him, he was bested and he knew it. He shook his head slightly and then clenched his jaw from the pain. The skin of his neck, having been stretched in the twist, was slack on his neck.

  “Do you know him?” The words came out of Geoffrey and I glanced back down at the picture trying to hide the emotions that were rampaging through me.

  “No,” I said. “But it seems impossible, a hunter that strong.”

  I couldn’t stop staring at the picture while we waited. The memories kept flooding back. I thought of the way he used to smile at me from stage while he sang into the microphone. I thought of the way he always loved to hold hands everywhere we went; the way he would hold open the car door and kiss me before he let me get in. I thought of the way he held me, even after he had fallen asleep, how I loved to be in his arms.

  The vampire returned with a DVD player and showed me the black and white, closed circuit footage while the other three watched.

  Andrew was sitting in the driver’s seat of a black car. Two people came into the camera’s view; they were young, laughing, and talking as they walked down the sidewalk. Andrew opened the car door and stepped out. I could see a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other as he closed the car door. He said something and both vampires stopped on the other side of the car. From the back, he looked stronger than before and the way he stood said he was ready; but neither vampire could see the weapons for the car between him and them. One of them puffed up, I could see his white fangs drop into view on the footage. He took too steps toward the front of the car and Andrew put a bullet in his head. The body flew backwards as the back of his head exploded with the force. The other vampire jumped forward, rushing at Andrew. There was no sound but I imagined him screaming as he came. Andrew swung the sword and the vampire hit the ground sans head, his body writ
hing in front of the car.

  I looked away from the player and the vampire closed the screen.

  “They were young,” Geoffrey said. “They didn’t stand a chance.”

  He was right. Andrew moved with grace and determination. He hadn’t flinched when the second vampire jumped at him, leaping over the car so fast that the camera only caught a blur of motion.

  “He must not have known about this camera. We haven’t caught anything else.” James said, softly.

  It was a quiet drive back to the hotel. Geoffrey had sent me with one of his drivers and I was in the back of a black SUV staring at the photograph and wrestling with a million questions, memories, and emotions. None of it made much sense. I hadn’t seen him in over ten years. I knew the band had dissolved a few months after our breakup, but that was it. I hadn’t searched for him although I often wanted to, even if only to watch him living his life from a distance. But I couldn’t justify actually talking to him. We had both known from the beginning, once I had revealed my secret, that it couldn’t last forever; but the disappointment in his eyes the night he walked out was too much, it haunted me every time I thought of him.

  I slipped the photo back into the envelope and looked out the window. The lights of the city were a red blur through the tears that welled up but didn’t fall. I couldn’t stop remembering the moments we had shared. I was barely holding myself together. What was I going to do?

  I slipped out of the car without a word and went through the hotel’s back door. I walked into my room, pulled off my jacket, and then pulled the photograph out again. There he was smiling, his cheeks bulging with food. I bet he told a joke, I thought, he was always so funny.

  There was a knock at the door and I laid the picture down and pulled a pistol from my waist as I walked to the door and looked through the peephole.