by J. F. Lewis
28
ERIC: LESS THAN NOBLESSE OBLIGE
Bits of plaster mixed with traces of blood on my knuckles as I forced my way through the wall. Beatrice choked out a “Mon dieu!” behind me, but I couldn’t turn to look at her. This had to happen fast. In the movies, when a monster crashes through the side of a building, he gets to do it in one smooth motion. The wall explodes, creating a nice new half oval into which he steps, backlit so that the cloud of dust billowing up about him seems dramatic. No such luck for me. Punches turned to a combination of kicks and shoves with a healthy dose of claws at the end.
Inside, three servants opened fire with crossbows. The first bolt hit a two-by-four on the narrow side and stuck fast. The other two went high and wide, one lancing into my open mouth as I flashed my fangs, then tearing through my left cheek and pinning me for a brief moment as I marveled at an all new pain. None of them got off a second shot before I was all the way in, and by that time it was too late. Their crossbows weren’t made for speed loading.
Three humans versus a vampire.
Vampire wins.
Surprise, surprise.
I ran my fingers over the side of my face, but the jagged tear was gone, healed. I tore the third crossbow bolt out of my shoulder without wincing, then looked for Gabriella. “Knock. Knock.” I found her in the bedroom, half dressed and moving sluggishly. Her skin smelled of strawberries and the scent was pleasant enough that I had to remind myself to stop being interested. I wasn’t here on a date.
Part of what Beatrice said had been true. Gabriella didn’t do so well during the daytime. Some vampires are like me. If something bad enough happens, we wake up and we’re wide awake. The few times it happened to me, I didn’t even go back to sleep. Other vamps just can’t wake up at all until they rise the next night. Lady Gabriella was somewhere in between. Moving in stutters and starts, she reminded me of one of George Romero’s zombies in Night of the Living Dead. If there had been a footrace between the two, I would’ve put my money on the zombie.
Another human servant sprang seemingly out of nowhere, firing at me with a revolver and screaming, “Get away from her!” He was blond and styled, a real pretty boy. I bounced him off the bedroom wall with a punch to the head and he sacked out like a good little lap dog.
“Esteban,” Gabriella croaked.
“Hi, Gabby.” Her bedroom was nice. All gold and red with a huge four-poster bed in the middle of it. Heat poured off the bed through some internal wiring system and it was accurate enough that I had to mentally acknowledge the achievement—it felt like body heat. There was the low steady thrum of a pulse, too.
“Don’t hurt her.” I turned at the sound of the voice, the familiar drawl, exaggerated more by the age of the speaker, the era in which he’d lived, rather than for purposeful effect. John Paul Courtney. “Don’t hurt her,” he repeated. His body coalesced between Gabriella and me, but this time his form was translucent, lit from within by a wavering amber light that cast an angelic hue upon his bobbleheaded self.
“I don’t want to hurt her, you dumb ass,” I snapped. “I just want some fucking answers.”
“What answers?” Gabriella’s voice was thick and slurred. Her face barely moved when she spoke, showing all the expressionlessness of a stroke victim, but on both sides of her pretty face. She stumbled forward, through the specter of my ghostly conscience. As usual, I was the only one who got the dubious benefit of perceiving His Judgmentalness.
Gabriella struggled to stand and I held out my hand rather than let her fall. I smelled more humans nearby. Several of them were women. Their scent was so strong I knew that they had been in the room when I was breaking through the wall. I could feel them in the house, all of those scared little hearts pounding away, all that blood. They had left their mistress struggling with her clothes on the floor and run. I wondered if she had told them to. I smelled two other scents as well: Roger and Rachel. Son of a bitch! They weren’t here, but they’d been here last night, and they’d been together.
“So is anyone going to come out here and help you dress or are they all too chickenshit?” I asked.
She managed a brief shake of the head.
“Beatrice,” I called over my shoulder. “If you’re done catching your breath, get in here and help Gabby get dressed.”
John Paul Courtney smiled.
“Oh, hurrah! I made the ghost happy.” Once Beatrice took my place helping Gabriella, I stepped back. Her eyes followed me as I crossed the room. My hands traced the top of her dresser and I paused when I reached a set of porcelain horses. Her jaw tightened and her eyes were furious, but she said nothing, still working hard at getting the rest of her clothes on.
“Come on, son,” John Paul drawled. “Leave her things alone.”
“Get a grip, you nosy ass. I’m not going to break her keepsakes. Damn! You know why I came here. I didn’t even know Roger and Rachel had been to the Highland Towers until I smelled them. All I wanted was the stupid magic rock from Lord What’s-His-Hype…”
I noticed my audience. Bea and Gabby’s joint dressing maneuver had slowed to a crawl while the two of them watched me arguing with someone they could neither see nor hear.
“Why can’t they see you anyway?” I asked.
“I told you how it works. They ain’t blood,” Courtney told me, but there was a tremor when he said blood that reminded me of someone. The pain, the tenderness in his eyes when he looked at Gabriella.
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” I pointed at Gabriella. She and Beatrice froze, but I gestured for them to continue. “Were you in love with her?”
“Maybe.” His maybe sounded more like “meh-beh” and it was soft and sullen. I smiled. “What, you think I weren’t living afore I was a haint?” Courtney asked. “We weren’t never…Aw h—” He caught the hell that I saw coming and his cigar appeared in his hand.
“You almost said the h-word.”
“I told you we was alike, you an’ me. When I was young, my mouth weren’t any cleaner than the outhouse behind the saloon, but I changed and so can you.” He blew smoke rings at me and smiled, regaining his composure. “Tell you what. I’ll tell you all about Gabby and me some time if you really want to know, but for now I’ll put this in terms you can appreciate. Each time El Alma Perdida finds her way into the hands of my kin, each time certain conditions are met, I can fire her six times in the service of the Courtney line. I can do it, but I don’t have to. You honor my request and I’ll fire one of those shots on your behalf when you need it.”
“What the hell kind of offer is that? I can fire the gun myself, you know.”
“Not always,” he drawled. “Even you need help from time to time. If’n you was staked, maybe, or couldn’t get to the gun in time…or if, say, someone else had aholt of it.”
He had me there.
“Could you keep somebody else from firing the gun?”
“I could do either,” he agreed.
“Wait,” I said. “You said you could appear under certain conditions. What conditions?”
“I told you a few of them, too. You ain’t ready to know yet, but the offer stands. Will you take it?”
“We’ll see,” I said. I should have said “meh-beh,” but I didn’t think of it in time.
When I turned back to Gabriella, she was clad in a high-collared dress that still showed ample cleavage.
“Better now?” I asked, once we were both seated in Gabriella’s sitting room. Beatrice danced attendance on her, a mother hen, clearly worried about her “former” Mistress. Gabriella nodded awkwardly, but with more muscle control than before, a twitch that could have been an attempted smile flickering at the corner of her mouth.
Beatrice brought her a cup of warm blood in a delicate china cup and helped her drink it down carefully. “The blood is the life,” Gabriella said artfully.
I was too busy counting doors to pay attention. There were four. Behind two of them I smelled men and metal. Six women cowered behind another door, the Lady’
s maids, I was guessing. The fourth door seemed devoid of life; it held my attention.
“Good.” I leapt across the table and hefted her into the air by her throat. Beatrice screamed. So did I. “Where the fuck are they?”
“Boy, if I could shoot you…” the ghost of Courtney snarled.
Why can’t you? I wanted to ask, but Beatrice was already speaking. “Please, Master Eric, the rules…,” she begged.
“What rules?” I dropped Gabriella on the couch and looked at Beatrice.
“The Highland Towers has certain codes of conduct,” Beatrice explained. “No vampire may assault another within any of the private rooms or on the grounds, or they face punishment at the hands of Lord Phillip. Of course, one is always allowed to defend one’s self.”
“Oh, well, that’s fine then.” I clapped my hands together. “I’m here to piss him off anyway.” I leaned in so close we bumped noses. “I smell Roger here and I smell Rachel. Where are they?”
“I told you he is not here; neither is the woman,” Gabriella said deliberately. “I have offered you my two most treasured handmaidens. I could offer you Esteban, my lover, but I understand he would be of little interest to you.”
“This is the Gabby you don’t want to hurt?” I asked John Paul Courtney, but he’d gone.
“Who are you talking to?” Beatrice asked.
“Jiminy Cricket,” I answered. Esteban stirred, so I put him out with another blow to the head. That was going to smart. Gabby gritted her teeth. I suppose she didn’t like seeing her entrée treated so roughly. It was time for another tactic.
I tried to clear my thoughts to calm down, but I was offended by the whole damn thing and it came out in a torrent. “Okay, I have to say this. Do all High Society vamps do this whole ‘thralls are slaves to be passed around’ crap? What the fuck is wrong with you people? I’ve got more thralls than I know what to do with already, but they aren’t slaves. They are thralls by choice and if they want out, I’d be happy to let them go. I mean, I know that we’re monsters and all and I eat people, but come on! You keep offering me people like they’re objects. You tried to send me children for a snack. There’s no way I’d ever hurt a kid. How do you not know that about me? And how many warm bodies do you think I need to run a bowling alley anyway?”
“Excuse me?” Gabriella’s features were becoming more animated as the blood she was drinking did its best to overcome the effects of the daytime.
“You had people spying on me and they didn’t tell you about the bowling alley? I’d fire somebody.”
“Perhaps I shall. Even so, I am forced to return to the subject at hand. The one for whom you search is not here and has not been here for some time. He will not return until the game is over and the wager decided. If we lose, then he will not return at all. If you are planning to kill me, I ask that you don’t. I cannot stop you; I’m too weak. My thralls mean nothing to you—”
“Game? Wager?” I stood up, couldn’t stay still any longer, couldn’t just sit there and listen to her talk.
“I told Roger that he never should have taken odds against him,” Gabriella’s voice faltered, then she continued, “but to beat Ebon Winter would have added respectability to his endeavors, legitimized his ascendance, and redeemed him after the Orchard Lake debacle.”
“Does this game involve marbles?” I sat back down. Gabriella’s eyes followed me warily, but if I wasn’t misreading her, Beatrice was amused.
“Excuse me?” Lady Gabriella asked.
“Never mind, just something a guy in a jumpsuit told me the other day.” I tapped Beatrice on the shoulder. “Now you see, that’s funny. Sometimes I can’t remember my own phone number, but I remember what some guy named Melvin was talking about…. No, shit, that would have been like four months ago. Wouldn’t it?”
“Leave my apartments in peace and never return to them again uninvited,” Gabriella said.
“Yeah, that’ll work,” I scoffed.
“You are a powerful being, Eric—I believe you prefer to be called by your given name only, without honorifics?” She flexed her hands as she spoke as if she were willing the blood she drank to flow into them.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Eric’s fine.”
“Keep the gifts I’ve given you. Do not give a thought to the damage you have done to my home, the threats you have made, or the insulting and demeaning way you have dealt with me. You have never dwelt amongst polite society; such lapses in judgment are to be expected, but please do not believe I will be so forgiving if you trifle with me a second time. You may be more powerful than I am, in person, but I assure you I will not be so exposed again.” She stood, giving me the mother of all you-may-go-now looks.
“That’s a nice offer,” I admitted. “It really, really is.” Rising to my feet, I gestured to Beatrice to pour me a cup of blood. She did so and I tossed it back in one swallow. “I even like the part where you threaten me. It’s nice, makes you seem powerful. For the record, I apologize for busting in here the way I did; it was a bad idea.”
“But?” she asked. Gabriella evaluated me, her eyes sizing me up like I was a horse or a side of beef.
Our gazes met and her eyes widened as she felt me slip inside the doorway to her soul just long enough to send a message: You still haven’t answered my question and then withdraw. It flustered her and in that scant second, her mask of composure dropped and I saw a snapshot of the woman she must have been when John Paul Courtney knew her. Then she was back in control; the strange social vampire she’d become was back in force. Tabitha was right. She’d said the High Society vamps all became caricatures of themselves. The human that she’d been had felt nice, wholesome, virtuous, well-mannered. A lady that a guy like me or, if he’d really once been as much like me as he claimed, a guy like John Paul Courtney, could have pined after from afar…afraid that if we touched her, she’d be sullied.
“What time is it, Beatrice?” Lady Gabriella asked.
“Fifteen minutes until one, milady.”
“You said you were going to steal something from Lord Phillip?”
I sighed. “Yeah, the Stone of Aorta or something. I’ll probably have to kill him for it. He’s the fat little bald fucker, right?”
Lady Gabriella had been drinking another sip of blood when I spoke. It shot out her nose, beginning a coughing fit I’d rarely seen a vampire experience. “He is, indeed, as you described,” she said after regaining her composure. “That’s…very industrious. May I ask why?”
“He fucked with my offspring without my permission. He’s got something I want. It’s Christmas in Void City and I want peace on Earth and ill will toward vampires. Pick a reason. And you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m not going to answer your question, Eric.” She smiled when she said it. “So, you aren’t interested in Roger?”
“Oh, no. I’m probably gonna kill him, too,” I told her. “For one thing, he tried to sell me out to a demon…” I let my words trail off. A demon. If Rachel had demon sex magic, then she was supposed to be working for a demon, not for Roger. So why was she with him unless Roger and the demon were still working together?
“Yes?” Gabriella asked, snapping me out of my reverie.
“Since you’re his mommy, I won’t run down the whole list.”
Gabriella looked smug. She’d been smug since Beatrice told her the time. “That is unfortunate. I cared very deeply for Roger. Still, he was an embarrassment for me. In some ways, it is for the best.”
What did the time have to do with anything? I was still rolling around the idea of Roger, Rachel, and the demon. Which demon? Was it Jill? He wasn’t a succubus, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have access to someone that could have taught Rachel the dark tantra. “I could make you tell me, you know.”
“I don’t think you could,” Gabriella said. “You’ve too much of your—would he be your great-great grandfather?—in you. The righteous indignation, the posturing…it’s all very useful when you’re fighting were
wolves, but not against vampires. He learned that the hard way. So will you. I have little doubt that you’re capable of ending me without ever regretting it, but beating me, torturing me, forcing your way into my mind and stripping the answers from my brain…no.” She touched my hand. “You could never do that.”
She was right. If she’d been a man, I wouldn’t have had any issues. Call me old-fashioned, but the idea of torturing a woman, of beating information out of her, made me want to vomit. I’ve sunk low since joining the ranks of the dead, but not that low.
“Come on, Beatrice,” I said as I stood. “We’ve wasted enough of Gabby’s time. She needs her beauty rest.”
Beatrice hesitated, lingering at her mistress’s side.
“I’m sorry, Beatrice,” Gabriella told her. “But I did offer you to him and I’m afraid he has accepted. I’ll have Esteban take your things…?”
“To the Pollux,” I answered, “across the street from where the Demon Heart was. But don’t worry about that yet. I’ll send somebody back for them.”
We left, and as we walked down the stairs, I was greeted by the sight of thirty-seven thralls packed into the courtyard. One by one, they introduced themselves on behalf of some vampire or other and one by one they offered their assistance.
“What the hell?” I looked to Beatrice for an explanation.
“As far as they know, you broke through impenetrable wards just to question a Master. Combine that with your coming back from an explosion many were convinced would be the end of you and your recent destruction of Sweetheart Row and the vampire running it, I believe the inhabitants of the Highland Towers have sent their thralls around to make sure they aren’t next in line for a visit.”
I guess announcing myself to the entire building had been a bad idea, though it had certainly managed to stir up paranoia among the Highland Tower residents. A man walked past us carrying a toolbox like none I’d ever seen. He pushed his way through the crowd, opened his box, and began performing a magic ritual near Gabriella’s door.