by J. F. Lewis
“Good evening, Lady Tabitha,” Dennis greeted me with a polite incline of the head.
Esteban bowed low, eyes on mine as he moved, forever smiling. “Lady Bathory,” he said using the more archaic address for a female Vlad. The satchel from our previous encounter was by Esteban’s feet, near the desk behind which Dennis stood.
“Haven’t you delivered that already?” I asked.
“My mistress wishes to have it delivered to the Lovett Building.” He gestured to Dennis. “And Dennis was kind enough to call me a cab.”
“You don’t drive?” I asked.
“I’m not allowed to drive at the moment.” He shrugged, but a look of genuine regret touched his features. “I was…insensitive.”
He took the satchel and left when his taxi arrived. The bag jerked toward Talbot as Esteban passed, and Talbot raised an eyebrow in response to the metallic clinking within.
“Sorry about that, Talbot,” Esteban called over his shoulder.
Talbot stared after him but didn’t say anything.
“He actually said your name.” Most people at the Highland Towers acted as if Talbot wasn’t in the room and refused to speak directly to him.
“He’s not a vampire yet,” Talbot murmured. “It pays to be polite when you can’t protect yourself.” He slapped his hand down on the desk in front of Dennis with a loud slap. “How are you doing tonight, Dennis?”
“I’m doing quite well…Highness.” Dennis choked on the word, but he got it out.
“Highness?” I asked.
Talbot offered no explanation and neither did Dennis.
“My date wants to go somewhere exclusive and fun.” He leaned over the counter, nose to nose with Dennis. “I think she wants to pick a place that will cause a stir, create a scene…She wants to get noticed.”
“But…Highness.”
Talbot patted Dennis gently on the cheek. On the first pat, Talbot’s hand was human, but with the second pat it transformed. A white glow washed along his skin leaving a covering of thick sable fur in its wake. Each digit on the altered hand terminated in a metallic silver claw.
“I’ll make the reservations right away,” Dennis stammered. “There is an exclusive engagement at the Iversonian club tonight. Lord Phillip was invited, but his sleep schedule is at its most erratic this evening, and it seems as if he might sleep straight through. I’m certain he wouldn’t mind…”
“Sounds perfect.” Talbot removed his hand from Dennis’s cheek and I held it up to mine, rubbing the fur along my skin.
“It’s so soft.” I felt a warm tingle. “Does it…?”
“Cover everything?” Talbot completed my question. “Yes, but I’m not sure you’d be up for the…full Talbot.”
“Why not?”
“Mousers have a lot in common with domestic cats and cats require stimulation to ovulate,” Talbot said carefully.
“Huh?”
“During sex, a female cat only produces eggs after the male cat withdraws and the…spines scratch the walls on the way out.”
“Spines?” Ow.
“Barbs might be a better word.”
“Barbs?” Double ow.
“I’ll show you later,” he promised as he led me to the car.
7
TABITHA: LASTING IMPRESSIONS
Talbot drove us to Northside, past the trendy shops and the office buildings, into the portion of Void City with an average of one specialty coffee shop per block—occasionally two. We passed Jimmy Chew’s where Eric had taken me to dinner for my last pre-vampire birthday.
I didn’t need vampiric supersenses to tell that Talbot was stressed out. I just didn’t know what was bothering him. His threat to Dennis had been out of character, but even after that, he’d opened up, given me info (even if it had been icky info) about being a mouser. That wasn’t like him at all.
Spotlights cut through the night sky, highlighting the garish white walls of the Iversonian on the block ahead of us. Cars lined the street and their occupants weren’t human, their heartbeats wrong or absent altogether.
I’d asked for exclusive. Talbot had delivered. He cut around the other cars, forcing his way into the front of the line. The valet didn’t even want to let us park. He glared at the two of us through beady-black doll’s eyes, gnashing his razor-sharp teeth, the blood-slick cap on his head leaking a tiny stream of wetness into his hair.
“You aren’t Lord Phillip.”
Talbot lashed out with his claws, leaving streaks of raw burnt flesh on the valet’s face. Screaming, the valet fell away from the car.
“And you aren’t getting a tip.” Talbot had his seat belt undone and the car door cracked open before the valet could respond.
“Park where you want,” the valet cried, crab-walking away from the car. “Park wherever you want.”
Talbot slammed the door and peeled out into the parking lot. He kicked the Jag into a slide and came to a halt straddling two parking spaces. My door was opening, his hand on the handle before I could blink. Angry masculine scents poured off his skin and he pulled me to him, nuzzling my face with his like a cat.
“You want attention, right?”
“What’s gotten into you?” I asked. “You could have maimed that…valet guy…thing.”
“He’s a redcap. They eat people.” He sniffed me then shook his head. “You really want to make an impression?”
“I want excitement.”
“If we go inside,” he spun me around and began licking my hair, grooming me between words, “you’ll get it.”
“What’s going on, Talbot?”
“You have to show fey who’s boss up front,” he said between licks, his voice deep and resonating.
“Stop.” I pushed at him, but he tightened his grasp, forcing me against the car with his weight. I felt his teeth on my neck as he growled in my ear and grew. Light from his transformation washed over me and I was being straddled by a leonine beast with soft black fur. A low pounding drum beat against my back, the rhythm of his heart, and then he was off of me, diminishing.
“That should do it.”
“What the hell, Talbot?” I whirled on him, claws out, but there was no need. He held out his hand to me, humanoid once more.
“You need to smell like me if I’m going to protect you.” I took his hand as he spoke. “There are more than just vampires here.”
“I’m a Vlad,” I protested. “I can take care of myself.”
“Vampires can be destroyed, Tabitha.”
“What, and mousers can’t?”
“We can, but it’s harder to keep us that way. And anyone outright killing me would have to answer to my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“You wouldn’t know her.”
“Talbot,” I said plaintively.
“It won’t mean anything to you anyway, Tabitha.”
“Just tell me her name.” I cupped his face and kissed him. “Please?”
“Sekhmet.”
“That’s an…interesting name.”
Talbot chuffed. “It’s Egyptian. You should hear my given name.”
“It isn’t Talbot?”
“No,” he said patiently, “I just like The Wolf Man. C’mon.”
We walked across the wide parking lot toward the club. Tiers of neon spelled out the name of the club in staggered wedges: IVER SON IAN descended from the roof, hanging like daggers over an open oval through which alternating bursts of red, green, yellow, and blue light pulsed, casting twisted shadows of the two suit-clad heavies manning the door against the white-layered facing.
“Unlike us, the owner of this club, Iver Richardson, is a true immortal. He can’t be slain in the normal sense of the word. They call him ‘The Iversonian,’” Talbot whispered in my ear.
“Why?”
We set foot on the sidewalk leading up to the main doors, and the concrete beneath us lit up, pinpoints of warm light marking the surface below our feet. A line wound around the building, but Talbot and I headed for
the doors.
“It’s a pun. He likes to collect things and the joke is that once something winds up in his collection, he never lets it go—like the Smithsonian.”
“What sort of things does he collect?”
Talbot bared his fangs at the two doormen, flashing them our invitation. Up close, their knotted green skin was dry, but shiny like a snake’s.
“What are they,” I asked, “trolls?”
“As a matter of fact, they are,” Talbot answered out of the side of his mouth. The trolls parted, displeasure clear on their gnarled faces.
The music hit us, a wave of bass, shaking my body as it thumped. Men and women, or rather, males and females of varying stripes, moved about the medieval decor, doing high energy versions of classic ballroom dances, but to a punishing techno beat. Creatures I didn’t recognize flittered on gauzy wings about the old-fashioned candlelit chandeliers. A fully transformed werewolf with a disco ball hanging from his collar did a hyperfast waltz with a thin-limbed androgynous creature that shimmered, opaque one beat and translucent the next.
I sensed a Master vampire, newly risen and clad in leather bondage gear, having sex in the bathroom with something squat and toadlike—an image I could have done without—but the other vampires gave me no reading at all, meaning they were all Soldiers or lower.
My ears slowly adjusted to the volume of the music, but the scents hurt my sinuses. A bald man in a pinstripe suit, which looked like it had been custom made on Saville Row, cut through the crowd toward us. His overlarge eyes bulged under bushy brown eyebrows that reminded me of the wizard from “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in Fantasia. He stood six foot nothing, and he was not smiling.
“You wanted to make an impression,” Talbot reminded me, gesturing at the oncoming person. “Here’s your chance.”
“He looks angry.”
“That’s because we don’t get along.”
“Why?” Talbot’s muscles tensed under my fingers.
“That’s the Iversonian. He’s always wanted to own me and he’s always wanted to own a Living Doll.”
“What?”
“That impression?” Talbot straightened his tie as the Iversonian closed with us. “You’re about to make it.”
“Talbot!” A crocodile grin flittered across the Iversonian’s lips and stuck as if it were trapped there more by habit than a conscious effort. “How nice of you to come uninvited.”
The Iversonian’s hand jutted out in an offered handshake, which Talbot spurned. “This is Tabitha.”
“And she is quite beautiful,” the immortal replied, adding a brief bow (or maybe he was just staring down my top) before continuing, “but what makes you think you would be welcome with or without a lovely companion?”
“Two reasons.” Talbot held up two fingers. “The first? She’s Lord Phillip’s newest…special friend…and she’s here using the invitation that you sent to him. It allows a guest. I’m hers and therefore his.”
“And the second reason?”
“She’s an extremely rare type of vampire, a Living Doll, and I know how much you’ve always wanted to meet one.”
“You wanted to flaunt her in front of me, is that it?” The Iversonian closed his eyes and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. An electric hum rose from his body, only discernable over the music because it was more a feeling than a sound. A short utilitarian sword coalesced in his hand as if the metal were being formed of smoke rising directly from his skin, held together by sparks of lightning.
“A gladius?” Talbot mocked. “Are we in a Ridley Scott movie now?”
“I am not in any sort of movie, Talbot. I haven’t attacked you yet, I’m merely preparing to defend myself.”
I touched Talbot’s arm. “What’s going on? I said I wanted to go somewhere for dinner and dancing.”
“My bad,” Talbot growled, upper and lower fangs extended. “I thought you said you wanted to go where there was dinner and dancing.” He indicated the long wooden bar at the back with a toss of his head. The inhabitants ate dishes I didn’t recognize, some of them odd colors and others just plain odd. “You can get both here.”
“I will not attack first,” the Iversonian interrupted.
“Wrong,” Talbot spat. “We had a deal. You were to keep the Chains in your collection.”
“I never said that.” The Iversonian held his sword at the ready. “I only ever said that I wouldn’t use them against you.”
“Iver, do you honestly expect me to believe that you, Iver Richardson, the immortal who never gets rid of anything, sold the Infernal Chains of Sarno Rayus, a unique artifact for which, I might add, you spent centuries searching, because you didn’t want them anymore?” Talbot leaned in close, his lips brushed the immortal’s earlobe as he spoke. “Or is it more likely that you sold them because you wanted to get back at me for picking a new person?”
“I was good to you.” The Iversonian blurted the words in a whispered rush.
“It’s been eighty years, Iver,” Talbot said, his eyes pitying the immortal. “You got clingy. You thought I was your pet. But I keep telling people, mousers don’t have owners. We pick people who interest us and we hang out. That’s it. No guarantees.”
Have you ever had one of those moments at a party where you’re speaking really loudly, close to shouting, so you can be heard over the noise, and then there’s a sudden quiet and you embarrass yourself? That’s what happened when I said, “Maybe we should go?”
The music died. Half of the dancers were confused, but the other half, the vampires and the fey, were staring at Talbot, the Iversonian, and me. A finger snap broke the silence and we were fighting.
Talbot seized the Iversonian’s wrist, bones crunching as he squeezed. The gladius fell from the immortal’s hand and Talbot caught it, impaling the immortal in one smooth motion. Metal flashed in the club’s lights as the blade drove straight through Iver’s sternum and broke the skin on the other side. He went down and Talbot kept pushing, pinning him to the dance floor, the hilt of the gladius protruding from the immortal’s chest like the head of an eccentrically fashioned nail.
“Stay put,” Talbot snarled at the downed immortal, then tossed me a savage grin. “Impression time!”
I kicked in the speed, but the fey were faster. Three elves, pointy-eared Orlando Bloom wannabes, with street clothes modded out to look like they’d been made by the costume designers from that movie about a magic ring, charged me, drawing swords from underneath their jackets like the guys in those immortal movies. They left long thin gashes in my shoulders and across my belly, whirling about me in overlapping circles.
More cuts appeared, but they were in the wrong places, not inflicted to do damage so much as to look bad, to hurt. They twinged when I moved, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.
Talbot had already gutted two Soldier-level vamps, dust trailing from his claws where he’d ripped out their hearts. “You’ve got to admit this is better than dinner and dancing.”
“I do not. Ow!” One of the elves flayed my cheek with his blade and I caught his wrist with my claws, pulling him to me. He rammed the blade into my chest with a sound like ripping fabric. A stab of explosive pain flared and died in my chest as I tore out the swordsman’s throat with my fangs. Mouth open in a silent scream, the elf went down as blood gushed from the wound. I expected the blood to taste different, but it was the same. I spat out the meaty flesh on the floor as one of his friends ran me through.
The one on the left drew his sword out, going for a decapitation, but I pulled the sword out of my chest and parried, forcing his blade into his fellow elf instead. It only worked because I was stronger than he expected and the whole pulling-the-sword-out-of-my-own-chest thing had really caught him off guard.
Quicker than all of us, popping from opponent to opponent like popcorn in an old-style popper, Talbot danced in and out of other fights, one moment rending a troll into flaming green chunks, the next hurling a wailing faun through the ceiling tiles
overhead.
Once I orked the third elf, Talbot and I worked as a team. My wounds healed as we fought and by the time the last of the immortal’s minions fell, I was sweating blood and glaring balefully at my escort.
“Dinner and dancing,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe next time.”
Noncombatants, human and nonhuman, fled the club as sirens blared. The VCPD rounded up the humans and took them down to the station to have their memories altered “just in case.”
“I’d hate to see the size of the Fang Fee for this one,” Talbot said.
“Sir?” One of the police officers came over, pad in hand. “Are you Talbot?”
He nodded.
“Then Captain Stacey says this is for you.” The officer handed the ticket to Talbot. Crumpling the paper into a ball, Talbot walked over to the Iversonian, who was still stuck to the floor.
“If you pay half the Fang Fee,” Talbot offered, “I’ll pull the sword out.”
8
ERIC: FANG
Dawn rose over the ruins of the Demon Heart, casting everything into the brilliant light of day. It was the first dawn I’d been able to really watch for over forty years. The sun doesn’t take kindly to vampires.
Even though my eyes were only spectral approximations, I was determined to enjoy it. In ghost vision, the sun twirled and danced as if rendered by an invisible painter constantly forced to repaint it in oils of yellow, orange, and burnt umber as it moved across the sky.
Each change was distinct, unique, a succession of masterpieces, each surviving for less than an instant. I’m not a big painting guy, but the scene mesmerized me. The sun vaulted over the Pollux, rumbling through the sky and crashing down on the other side of the Demon Heart in a splash of red, pink, and violet. The canvas changed from day to night—stars, planets, and constellations swirling through the air. Each star pattern I recognized burst into greater focus, writhing and dancing in the night. All too quickly the cycle began anew. Sunrise, sunset, night, disrupted only by the weather, circled in the air with increasing swiftness. Soon the sun zoomed through the air in a smear of color.