‘Oh thanks for that.’
‘And hands off. He’s got a girlfriend.’
‘I know,’ Pat replied, licking her lips. ‘You left out “hot.” He’s got a hot girlfriend.’
‘So no nibbling.’
‘It’s in our nature. I can flirt some, can’t I?’
‘Try to avoid it in front of Leanne. I think I’ve got her thinking I’m gay and I want to keep that delusion current for as long as possible.’
‘Doesn’t he get shirty about you flirting with her?’
‘No, because I explained why I was doing it. Anyway, I told him his grandfather was a vampire, murdered by other vampires, which was how I’d met his mother when she was six and knew he was probably a sensitive. He looked a bit like someone had shown him compelling evidence that the world was really flat.’ Dione drank coffee and looked blankly at the local news broadcast playing out on Pat’s TV.
‘Well, three or four fairly major shocks in one go will do that. Oh, speaking of sensitives, I think we have another one. She’s showing all the signs. Said she just knew somehow that the club was full of vampires. And she wants to be a supplicant. I told her she needs to consider that carefully and, if she still wants to try, she should come back on the fourth.’
‘Who?’
‘That blonde that came in with Mike and Leanne, Lisa Tully. I’d imagine you’ll need to feed by then; you’ve been busy the last couple of months. You haven’t been keeping it regular.’
‘I’ll take care of it. She’ll need to be talked to.’
‘To be honest, she seemed to have a pretty solid head on her shoulders. She said she’s been saying that vampires are real for years so if she just carries on as normal, no one will think twice.’
‘How on Earth does someone like that get on with Leanne Drake?’
‘Opposites attract? She’s a nice girl. Friendly. I gave her the talk about being careful around people with fangs. We’re not all cuddly monsters. There are some real monsters out there. It’s safest to refuse any offers outside the club. Usual stuff. She looked like she understood.’
‘I’ll have Mary run her. I don’t like coincidences.’
‘No, but she seemed like she was genuine.’
‘Hmm.’ Dione flicked a finger at the screen. ‘Anything gossip worthy?’
‘Nothing much. Everything’s been kind of quiet since you wasted that tranny prick in Harlem.’
‘That’s something. It’d be nice to have a quiet Christmas.’ Dione bent and put her empty mug on the floor, and then she straightened, leaned a little toward Pat, and reached to gently circle a finger around a nipple.
Pat let out a soft moan. ‘Don’t do that unless you mean it.’
‘Don’t want them teased, you shouldn’t leave them lying around like this. And who says I don’t mean it?’
‘You haven’t… oh… um, been inclined recently.’
‘Even succubi can get the blues, love, but the blues pass.’
‘Mmm… Praise Aphrodite.’
Dione chuckled softly and bent to brush her lips over Pat’s. ‘Indeed, and a small devotion before lunch wouldn’t be a bad thing.’
~~~
Mike knocked on the door of the computer room and got no answer. This he had expected, because Winthrop had said there would be none, and he opened the door and walked in anyway.
‘Doctor Winthrop asked me to bring in your coffee.’ Mike lifted the mug for emphasis and then placed it down on an NYPD mat sitting on Mary’s desk.
Mary stared at him for a second. ‘Thank you.’
Thinking it might be best to just leave, Mike paused briefly and his eyes fell on the game controller. ‘You, um, game?’
‘When I’m not busy.’
‘Of course. I didn’t mean to imply–’
‘My main gaming centre is in my apartment.’
‘Xbox?’
‘All of them. You can’t get all the best games on just one platform.’ She said it as though that was obvious and she was talking to a moron, but she was no longer scowling at him.
He pressed on. ‘I don’t get much time to do it these days. A-and I could only afford a three sixty. Haven’t upgraded yet.’
‘You should.’
‘Maybe… Christmas and all… Uh, what’s your gamer tag?’
‘She Wolf Alpha.’ She stared at him as his jaw dropped. ‘That’s rude.’
‘You’re She Wolf Alpha?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘I’m Mike Blue twenty-eight. You’ve kicked my ass in Combat Zone Seven so many times…’
Mary pursed her lips, swivelled her chair around, tapped at keys, and moved a mouse. ‘Forty-three times. Eighteen head shots. You got me fifteen times. That’s pretty good.’
‘Fifteen to forty-three is pretty good?’
‘I,’ Mary stated, ‘am very good.’ Her eyes narrowed a little. ‘It’s all a matter of tactics with CZ. Everyone hates sniping, but it’s the only way to win consistently. It’s why they keep nerfing the rifles.’
‘Damn, I know. Every time I get one I like, I come back and it couldn’t kill a mouse at point blank. It’s not even remotely realistic.’
‘You need to get a new console. Bravo Nine Kilo is where it’s at now and they don’t nerf. They make the combat zones so you can’t just find the right spot and snipe everyone, unless they’re stupid. I… I could maybe get you on my fireteam. If you want.’
Mike smiled. ‘I’d like that.’
‘It doesn’t mean I like you. Yet.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But you can bring me my coffee again.’
‘Thanks,’ Mike said, turning to leave. ‘I think.’
~~~
Dione walked through into the lab and, as expected, heard Winthrop’s voice.
‘The virus which initiates vampirism and supports it once established is, quite frankly, fascinating. Look at this. The isn’t even an electron micrograph. It’s a beast! Eight hundred nanometres in diameter. Three point four megabases. It’s one of the largest viruses ever discovered, if not the largest.’
‘And I’m pretty sure most of that went right over Mike’s head,’ Dione pointed out as she rounded the corner.
‘Oh,’ Winthrop said, coming to a halt. ‘Has any of this actually gone in, young man?’
‘Some,’ Mike replied, his cheeks colouring a little. ‘Uh, it’s good background, but I’m not sure knowing that the virus is huge is something I need to know. I, uh, haven’t a clue what a megabase is.’
‘And, as you point out, you don’t need to. It’s very big and it carries a lot of genetic information, more than most viruses. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘And there are three common variations,’ Dione said, ‘plus one semi-common one and a few oddities, like me.’
‘Succubi and valentines are not odd,’ Winthrop said, ‘merely an uncommon species. The succubus virus is actually one of the oldest surviving species. My molecular clock analysis dates them to some twenty-eight thousand years old. The nubians seem to have split off from the common ancestor around twenty-six thousand years ago and the carpathians only date back eighteen. Only the corvus are older at thirty-two thousand years.’
‘What about the han?’ Mike asked.
‘Oh, so you did read the briefing notes,’ Dione said, grinning.
‘I said I’d got the basics down, and the three big groups were the nubians, the carpathians, and the han.’
‘Quite,’ Winthrop said. ‘The han are quite young, around two thousand five hundred years. They wiped out or chased away more or less all of the other species in the region. The Japanese daimyo are actually a little older and from the same parent species, but they are vastly outnumbered by the han and none of the original parents survived, that we know of.’
‘Okay, so I’ve met a succubus and a valentine, which is a subspecies of succubi, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘And I’ve met a transylvanian, unfortunately.’
&nbs
p; ‘A subspecies of carpathian.’
‘And you’ve met a carpathian,’ Dione said. ‘Eddy Ross is one. Don’t forget you need to talk to him.’
‘I won’t,’ Mike confirmed.
‘The bouncer on the door at the Candle, Tony Diols, is a nubian. I know the name implies black skin, but the virus doesn’t care. Which reminds me, could you make sure you have Wednesday evening free? I’ve been asked to introduce you to the leader of the Concilium. That’s the Princeps, for reference.’
‘I’ll check, but Leanne should be working.’
‘Good. And you’ve also met a wolf.’
‘Originally classified as a subspecies of han,’ Winthrop explained, ‘though we believe they are actually another offshoot of the parent species. They’re the only surviving lineage native to North America.’
‘And Mary’s one, if a rather atypical one.’
Winthrop gave a slight shrug. ‘Many of the typical characteristics are there, she just expresses them differently. When she trusts you more, she’ll probably explain her story.’
‘I know some of it,’ Mike said.
‘And,’ Dione added, ‘it would appear you’ve found a way to get inside her guard sooner than expected. I stopped in to talk to her before coming in here and she didn’t complain about you once.’
‘We both like first-person shooters.’
Dione gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘I can’t stand the lack of peripheral vision. She’s tried to get me hooked, but I just can’t get anywhere with them. Good, however. Things will go a lot easier if she’s not trying to avoid you constantly.’
‘We have a mutual “you don’t bite me and I won’t bite you” thing going at the moment, but it’s a friendly sort of stand-off.’
‘For the first day, that’s excellent. Did you get your blood and all the security details, Winthrop?’
‘All done,’ the old man said. ‘I’m running the sequencer now.’
‘Right. Mike, come with me.’ Turning, she marched out, turned left out of the lab, and went to the, as yet untried, middle door of the three on that side. She pointed. ‘Thumb plate. Let’s see if it works.’
Mike pressed his thumb to the glass plate beside the door and the plate lit up, and a second later there was the sound of heavy bolts being withdrawn and the door hinged aside on its own.
The room behind it was smaller than Mary’s computer room, but it held racks and racks of equipment, mostly weapons and ammunition. There were flashlights, boxes that looked like field kits or toolkits, and a number of other things Mike could not identify, but there were also handguns, shotguns, rifles, grenade launchers, and even a couple of light antitank rocket launchers.
As if detecting Mike’s surprise at the array of lethal armament, Dione said, ‘Sometimes you just need a bigger gun. You should try to get time to familiarise yourself with at least a basic subset of this lot.’ She walked in and lifted a thin, sleeveless jacket off its hanger. ‘And this is yours, while I remember. We had it tailored to your size after you agreed to come on board. The latest design, thin enough to wear under clothes. Hardened scale construction, so it’s flexible, but it’ll stop a rifle bullet. It’s not as good against maddened transylvanians punching you in the gut, though, so try to avoid them getting in close.’
Mike took the jacket from her and looked it over. You could feel the jointed structure beneath, but it seemed kind of flimsy. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
Dione nodded and picked up a box of ammunition. ‘Nine by nineteen parabellum, right?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’
She gave him a look. ‘You use the Smith & Wesson Model five nine four six your father used. They were the latest handgun to be accepted for use by the NYPD when he bought it. He never fired it in anger and, until you unloaded it into a vampire, you had only drawn it on three occasions. I told you, we do very thorough background checks.’
Mike frowned. ‘I feel like saying “you know all of my history and I hardly know any of yours,” but I guess it would take a while to cover two and a half millennia.’
Dione’s lips twitched at the corners. ‘Wednesday night you’ll hear plenty of war stories, at least for the last couple of hundred years. Leo loves to tell stories when he’s got a receptive audience.’
‘Leo? That’s the Concilium leader?’
‘Yes,’ Dione said, her tone casual, ‘Leo Darius. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He runs several clubs, an import-export business–’
‘Drugs, prostitutes, one or two other things we’ve been trying to nail him on for longer than I’ve been a cop.’
‘Hmm, yes. Two things. You’re going to have to learn to put that aside working here. We have to work in both worlds and Leo is an important part of one of them. He will do his absolute best to avoid exposing you to something which compromises you as a cop, but you’ll see things you want to tell vice about, I’ve no doubt. You need to consider the bigger picture.’
‘Okay, I guess. And the second thing?’
‘Give him a chance. I’ve known him a long time. We’ve saved each other’s unlives. I worried about him fighting in the trenches in the First World War, and on Pacific islands in the second one. I picked you for this job and he agreed to back my choice, and that means he will go to the wall for you if he has to. So… give him a chance. Get to know him before you condemn him.’
‘I… Well, I guess that’s fair.’
‘Good.’ Dione flashed him a smile and then walked down the rack a little before pulling a shotgun free. ‘You will definitely want to familiarise yourself with this. Tac Ops Clandestine twelve, twelve gauge, unchoked fourteen-inch barrel, four-round capacity plus one in the chamber, with a sound suppressor. Take one home, go over the controls. You’ll get time to go to a range and try it out.’
‘Explosive rounds. You said you used armour-piercing explosive rounds.’
‘Practice slugs are here, combat rounds here. The pistol ammo is high-powered hollow point. Practise headshots. The extra power means you don’t lose too much energy punching through the skull.’ She grinned. ‘If you can hit them in the eye, even better.’
Mike decided she was teasing. ‘No explosive pistol rounds?’
‘Getting them to trigger is a bitch, apparently, but those’ – she pointed to a pair of huge sniper rifles on one of the racks – ‘fire fifty-calibre armour-piercing explosive incendiary rounds. To be honest, they’re more use against vehicles, but if we ever have a vampire elephant rampaging through New York, I am so going hunting.’
‘Vampire elephant? Can you even get vampire elephants?’
Dione shrugged. ‘Well, there’s always a first time.’
~~~
Mike watched the big rear end of Dione’s car roaring away from him, and then turned and walked into Ross’s Groceries. A short, pretty blonde girl was working at stacking shelves. He had never caught her name and Eddy Ross did not go in for uniforms or name tags. Eddy himself was behind the counter and he smiled, following Mike’s progress through to the cooler where the milk was located.
Mike felt the flush of sensation that told him a vampire was nearby and, this time, focused on it. There was no sense of direction, but it came as soon as he walked in the door and it did not matter where he looked. Mike had never believed in extrasensory perception, but this had to be something related.
‘Evening, Mike. Back at work now?’ Eddy said when Mike walked up to the counter.
Mike put the milk down and, beside it, his SCU ID. ‘Yeah, but I got a new assignment and I’m supposed to… mention it to you.’
‘Ah. They said she was getting a new partner. I didn’t know… Right.’ His gaze flicked through the shop. It was just about five and there were no other customers in, but there would be soon as businesses turned out workers. ‘Delia! Come mind the till for a bit. I need to talk to Mike in back.’
The blonde appeared from among the shelves and strutted across to them. ‘Yes, Eddy,’ she said, her accent strong but not local.
‘Oh!’ Delia held out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He took her hand and shook, and she added, ‘Little nervous too. Was that her in the black monster outside? She won’t be coming in for groceries, will she?’
‘Uh, it was, and I have no idea. Maybe. Why nervous? I’m just–’
‘The Hunter’s partner.’
‘Come in back,’ Eddy said. ‘Business will pick up real soon and we don’t want ears wagging.’ He led the way into a room at the back which seemed to be a combination of storeroom and office. ‘Sorry for the accommodation, but it’s private.’
There was a chair behind a desk set against the wall, and another which was presumably there for staff breaks. Eddy turned the desk chair around and sat down, leaving the other to Mike. Then Eddy continued.
‘You’ve been doing this a day, I guess, so you won’t be used to the reaction. The Hunter’s a bit of a mixed bag for most vampires. Now, Dione’s a real good one and no one’s ever had any complaints about her, but the Hunter’s got authority to end any vampire they deem it necessary to eliminate for the good of the community. That puts the fear of God into most on its own, but then you add in that your partner is one of the oldest living vampires… Meeting her is something like coming across your favourite rock star, who happens to be your girlfriend’s father, while he’s holding a shotgun.’
Mike thought back to the vampire he had scared off in the Black Candle with just a mention of Dione’s name. ‘I guess I can see the point, but I’m just a cop who works–’
‘Not to us. She’ll make sure you’re known to the people who need to know. It’s why she told you to come see me. Once your face is known, there isn’t a vampire in the city who won’t treat you much the same as her. The Agreement may be an arrangement with humans, but Leo and Dione have made it quite clear they’re behind it, and that makes you as good as a vampire to us.’ Eddy grinned, showing a little fang. ‘Honestly, my area’s going to go up in people’s opinions having you living here. I get a little reflected respect out of it.’
Mike grinned back. ‘Glad to be of benefit. What is it you do? I know you’re the local rep for this area, but… I’m still learning all this stuff.’
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