by J. F. Lewis
I chugged the rest of the bottle. It’s easier to do when you don’t have to breathe. “Lord, this is nasty! Plus, you really don’t want to get me drunk. The last time I got drunk, there was hockey and werewolves.”
“You’re the guy who killed the Void City Howlers?” she asked.
I opened a new bottle, wondering where my buzz was. “This shit doesn’t have any kick at all,” I complained.
“Let me see.” Beatrice reached for the bottle, examining the label. “It’s the cheap stuff.” She went through the other bottles until she found one with some guy named Duke Gornsvalt’s name on the label.
“Try this one. It’s the real deal. Lady Gabriella buys a bottle of his champagne every year for New Year’s Eve. When he’s done with it, it doesn’t even look like blood anymore.”
“Really?”
“I heard that he once made a run of blood vodka for Lord Phillip. It took him thirty years to make five bottles.”
I opened the bottle. It was a white wine. I hated white wine when I was alive, but the taste…it was very different from blood. It also had more kick to it than I remembered wine having. Another swallow and I remembered John Paul Courtney. “Oh, and I forgot…I’ve got a ghostly cowboy hanging around in my pistol.” I reached into my jacket pocket and flashed her the gun butt.
“And you say you were obliterated?”
I nodded.
“How?” she asked.
“Blessed explosives.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” She took my arm and the warmth of her cut through my mood. Body heat will get a vampire every time. “I became a thrall because the world of the vampires was supposed to be mysterious and exciting and so far it’s been mostly politics. This is as close as I’ve come to mysterious and exciting.”
Great. Another groupie.
“One thing first, Bea.” I held my hand out for the bottle and she slid it back to me. “You don’t, like, want to hump me or anything, do you?”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “Um…no. Not to offend you, but ewww. You’re dead and I’m not a necrophiliac. If I become a vampire someday, then maybe but—”
“Good,” I interrupted. “Then you can come along.” I stood up and thought about draining the bottle. I wanted to go charging across town to the Pollux, see if I could help, but didn’t see the point. If they were gone, then they were gone. Grief welled up and I felt it die, cut off, like water from a spigot.
“Rachel’s alive,” I murmured.
“Hmmm?”
“Never mind.” I put the bottle on the table and gestured at the hall. “I have to wake up Phil,” I said tiredly. “If we’re lucky, he’ll just fucking kill me and put me out of my misery ’cause the Bend Over Festival is starting to wear very thin.”
31
ERIC: STONED
The grain of the wood ran from purple to black on Phillip’s door; it was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Dennis came through the open doorway carrying an empty platter that smelled of burgers, fries, and orange soda. I got out of his way. Beatrice grabbed a chair in the lobby and waited for the excitement to begin.
“The children are safely ensconced within the Lady Tabitha’s suite, Lord Eric. I have one of the Highland’s day-care workers upstairs with them now to make certain they don’t get into any trouble while their mother rests.”
“Thanks.” It’s like thralls were stray dogs and I was every mutt’s sucker.
“I see you’ve been admiring our door,” he offered. “It’s—”
“Brazilian rosewood, I know,” I interrupted. “My parents had a bed veneered with it. It’s still around somewhere; I’m just not sure what happened to it. Roger would know.”
Dennis nodded. “How interesting. Is there anything else I can do for you before I retire? Lord Phillip’s sleeping schedule is very erratic and I need to be rested when he awakens.”
I grasped his shoulder. “How long is Ebony going to be like that?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Did you really break her thralldom by force?”
“Yeah,” I said in an aggravated tone. “I guess that’s what I did.”
“I’ll summon the nurse and have her take a look.” Dennis headed for the door expecting me to release his shoulder, but I didn’t comply. “Was there something else?” he asked.
“Get Phil’s happy ass out of bed,” I told him. His expression told me that there was no way in Hell he was going to obey that request. It wasn’t a request. I knew that I was pushing everything and everyone too far, but I had nothing more to lose. If I stopped to think about everything, I was afraid I’d be paralyzed by my emotions. Maybe that was Roger’s plan. Blow up the Pollux and hope I got myself killed when I rampaged through the Highland Towers…or maybe he just wanted me to feel like I had nothing left to lose. Marilyn was gone, everyone I knew and cared for had been eliminated…That didn’t feel like a plan Roger would have come up with, it was too subtle, but a demon…
“Look, I know you don’t want to and I know that he’s going to be angry. You probably think you’d rather die or something, but I promise you”—my voice became a whisper—“if Phil doesn’t get his ass in gear, then I’m going to kick in that door and take what I’m looking for.”
“The wards here will cut you to ribbons,” he told me.
Shoving past him, I walked up to the inner door and twisted the handle. A sensation similar to the one I’d felt upon entering the Highland Towers washed over me and I heard that same ghostly voice from before, the one that let me in the lobby door. “You are expected.”
The door opened easily, no sign of a shock or any wards in place, and I stepped inside the room of someone who read way too many books. I smelled blood and death. Three bodies total, I was guessing, very likely the girls I’d seen earlier when I’d done the mental peeping tom thing.
“You may not—” was all Dennis got out before another voice cut him off.
“All is well, Dennis. Do not hinder that which cannot be hindered. I am awake,” came a voice from behind a large velvet curtain. The bodies were behind that curtain, and the bed. “Integer vitae scelerisque purus. Heh, not exactly, but in a way, I suppose.”
“Untouched by life and free of wickedness?” I said by way of translation. “Not exactly, but I really don’t give a shit about your delusions. I’m just here for—”
Although he was fat and short, Phillip could move. He appeared before me grinning and in his dressing gown. The curtains didn’t even rustle. His smile reminded me of Scrooge’s in that movie when he realizes that the ghosts have done their work all in one night and he still has time to make it all right before Tiny Tim gets dead. His whole appearance seemed false. He held a finger next to his nose and dashed across the room and around a corner.
“Aw, I really don’t need this crap today, old man. I just…Jesus Christ!” A vampire in a glass case stared at me from across the room, a stake through his heart. He was supported by a human-size metal doll stand, only instead of clasping over his clothes like the ones Greta’d had for her Barbies, it snaked beneath the rear of his tweed jacket. The vamp’s colorless eyes stared blankly through gold-rimmed spectacles with round lenses. They didn’t move, but I felt like he was watching me…aware. His expression had been frozen in the midst of what was either a smirk or one of those you’ll-never-change-will-you looks that I often get.
He’d become undead past his prime, but his good looks hadn’t been eroded. The crow’s-feet around his eyes made him look distinguished rather than old. I had him beat there, though. No wrinkles. He had to have been a good ten years or so older than me, physically. With the stake through his heart, there was no way I could tell how long he’d been a vampire. I hoped the bulk of it hadn’t been spent in the case.
“My dear Percy, who serves as a remembrance to all that I do not bluff, I do not make empty threats, and there are indeed worse fates than death,” I read aloud from the plaque at the base. “You are one twisted dude, Phil, but don’t think that
means that you can’t—”
Phillip reappeared and pushed something into my hand, cupping both of his hands around mine. His earnest gaze met mine and he seemed both utterly at ease and pleased with himself. “The Stone of Aeternum? Yes? Here it is. I wanted to get this out of the way first thing so that we can enjoy our conversation. Would you like some wine? I believe you’ll find I have a much better stock than Lady Gabriella. Ah, I almost forgot! How could I forget; I had it made just for you. I hope you’ll like it.”
He sped past me, through the open door, and out into the hallway. “Dennis! Go down to the cellar and bring up the special black case, the one from Duke Gornsvalt. Be very careful with it, it took him”—he looked me up and down—“fifteen years to manage it correctly. Oh! Oh! And have Brigitte prepare the special menu. Two for him and one for me. Oh, this will be marvelous.”
Infectious as his excitement was, I still noticed the way Beatrice’s breathing changed when he entered the hallway to speak with Dennis. Her heart rate sped up, not out of control, but different. I looked at Percy and wondered what the poor bastard had done to become a knickknack.
In my hand, I held a small black stone that might or might not really be the Stone of Aeternum. There was no label and it didn’t seem very special. It didn’t glow and it didn’t hum; it just sat there like a rough lump of coal. It was an interesting dilemma; how would I know the real stone? Could I take this guy’s word on it?
“So I’m just supposed to believe that you’d give me this powerful magic rock without a fight when guys like…” I struggled to remember the name properly, “J’iliol’lth would kill for it?”
Phillip walked back into the room and looked down at his dressing gown. “I haven’t even dressed for dinner,” he said with dismay. “Just a moment.” Darting past me toward the bodies I’d smelled, he slipped behind a large burgundy-colored curtain that hung from floor to ceiling. Several minutes later he emerged dressed in a business suit that was so well tailored it made even him look a little dashing. “That’s better. I do hope you’ll pardon the delay. One makes preparations well in advance and then when the happy moment arrives, it’s always rush, rush, rush. You were saying?”
“The Stone of Aeternum.” I held it out to him. “How am I supposed to know it’s the real deal?”
“That, I will leave to your own good judgment. Which, if you’ll pardon my saying so, you are quite lacking. Good judgment, I mean, and therefore, hopefully you may rely on mine.” Nearly floating as he walked, he moved to a large overstuffed chair and sat down. “By all means, be seated. Dennis should be here shortly with our order.”
I sat down in the only other chair I saw, giving it a surreptitious kick to see if it was really an orange-scaled demon that was going to grab me. It smelled like Tabitha, though I knew she hadn’t been here in days. “The Stone,” I said, “seriously—”
“Come, come, Eric, my friend, if I wanted to give you a fake stone, I could have done so. I could have made it quite impressive, with an eerie glow and a subtle hum, a palpable sense of electricity gently pulsing through it, and fixed it up so that when you gazed into it you would have felt a sense of the infinite, the eternal. You would have known, just by looking at it, that eternity was confined within and you would have felt comforted by that fact. I chose, instead, to bestow upon you the actual item. Why should it be so hard to believe? I often bestow items of value upon interesting new vampires when we meet. Like the necklace I gave your…the one I gave Tabitha.”
“The diamond necklace?” I asked.
“The very same. It has quite a history.”
Yeah, I didn’t like this guy. He seemed sincere enough, but it seems a lot of clever bastards use truths to tell their lies. Like the chair that still smelled like Tabitha. A guy like Phillip wouldn’t have accidentally done that. He wanted to see how I’d react—more High Society bullshit.
32
TABITHA: I’LL KILL HIM
Rough hands touched my shoulders while I slept. The nicest little dream I would never remember left my mind as I was rolled over. Gasoline and butane mixed together in a noxious chemical odor. I stretched and opened my eyes, expecting somehow to see Eric toweling off in the sink and griping about some new accident with his car. We’d make love and then…But the hands did not belong to Eric. A hard-looking mercenary in Void City Police Department SWAT gear crouched over me with one hand on my breast. My heart was still beating and I woke the rest of the way with a start.
“Get off of me!” I shouted, immediately attempting to change into a cat. Nothing happened. There was a barely perceptible tingle, almost as if the part of me that controlled my powers was asleep and trying to wake…. So I responded the old-fashioned way, with a knee to the groin. In most places it’s not wise to assault a cop, but in The Void, you do what you need to do and if you’re in the wrong, then you pay the Fang Fee and move along.
He fell back onto the concrete with a grunt and I pulled myself up and took in my surroundings. A large 3-B stenciled on the wall let me know that I was on the third level of the parking deck, but it didn’t tell me where Talbot had run off to or why he’d left me here. Two more cops stood behind me. One had an assault rifle and the other had what looked like a flamethrower, not standard equipment for a task force that is usually cleaning up after vampires, not gunning for them. Both wore headsets and identical crew cuts; neither wore a helmet like the one the man I’d knocked down was wearing.
“Alpha-One to Big Top, we have a possible human bystander here.” He paused, listening to someone on the other end, while the friend of his I’d kneed in the groin stood up slowly. He was wearing a headset, too. “She’s got a heartbeat, Big Top.” He sniffed the air loudly. “Plus the nose knows, you know?”
Didn’t the blood on my shirt and the big hole in my chest clue these morons in? Then again, if they were real VCPD, they wouldn’t assume. “Possible human” left room for the chance that I might be a shape-shifter. Living doesn’t guarantee mundane, not in Void City. I touched my chest, then looked down. I had already healed. There was lots of blood, but it might have looked like I’d been attacked—if you were an idiot.
“Understood. Detaining subject for ID.”
“Like Hell,” I told them. I saw another three cops sweeping the uphill slope of the deck. The two groups I could see were organized into three-person teams: one man with a spear, another with an assault rifle, and a third with a flamethrower. One would run the spear under a car while the others would line up to shoot anything that came out from under it.
The other team was only one car away from the Le Baron Greta was under and I couldn’t tell if there were more on other levels. Eric’s parking deck was old school—narrow, circular parking levels wrapped around a central spiral for ascent and descent. Where the heck was Talbot? His powers had been working just fine the last time I’d seen him.
A gunshot would hurt, but fire could do worse, so I charged the one with the flamethrower first, much to the surprise of all three men. Did they think I was going to just stand there—even if I wasn’t a vampire—while they called for backup?
On that note, I screamed, “Rape!” When I’d turned thirteen I’d gone from having almost no breasts at all to having the D-cups I have now. One of the first things my mother had done, almost before taking me to buy bras, was to enroll me in a self-defense class. My instructor had said to yell “Fire!” but I figured the fire was old news.
The one with the assault rifle dropped it with a curse and reached out to grab me, but I was already barreling at the man with the flamethrower. He also looked surprised and tried to hold up his hand to ward me off. I kept screaming “Rape!” and kicked him solidly in the knee. A loud snap let me know I’d done real damage and he went down to one knee.
I screamed “No!” and “Rape!” again, as I turned on the nearest man. He grabbed my left arm and I grabbed his right ear. My defense class instructor had told us that it only takes eight pounds of pressure to tear off the human ear. He
was right.
Assault-Rifle-Guy grabbed the side of his head and screamed. Those self-defense classes were worthless against vampires, werewolves, and Talbot, but the basic principles worked just fine against humans.
“Fuck!” yelled the man with the spear. “What the hell is wrong with you, lady?”
The second team headed toward me and I went for the assault rifle. I had no idea how to fire it other than the point, aim, and pull the trigger lessons my dad had given me at age eight. I guess that was Dad’s southern version of gun safety. My hand had just touched the butt of the gun when the man with the spear stomped my fingers and hit me in the temple with the butt of his spear hard enough to cross my eyes. I fell to my hands and knees, a boot on my back between my shoulders.
“Ma’am, we may be moonlighting, but we’re still cops. Calm the fuck down. Nobody is raping anybody here.”
“Bitch ripped off my ear!” the more injured cop yelled behind me. “I’m gonna kill her.”
I heard him charge, his feet slapping the concrete as he ran. A scuffle started behind me between the guys who had run over to help and the cop who’d lost an ear. A third team headed our way, coming from a higher level. I flinched when they passed Greta’s hiding place. “What the hell are you guys doing over here?” yelled one of the newcomers. “We ran into two civilians. Our team managed to deal with them without this kind of shit. Mirror test. Pulse. Move on. Mirror test. Pulse. Move on. How complicated is that for you assholes?”
“I woke up and one of them was on top of me,” I said with as much false panic as I could muster. “He ripped up my top and he had his hands on my breasts. They were trying to shove something in my mouth to gag me. I don’t know what’s going on here and I don’t want to know, just get them off of me! Don’t let them hurt me anymore. I’ll do what you want, just stop hurting me. You can have my wallet, my keys, you can even…h-have sex with me if you want, but…I don’t want to die,” I said as I sobbed convincingly.