by J. F. Lewis
“Shit!” said one of the other newcomers. The name on his vest was Stacey and he was older than the others, heavier set, but still in shape. He was bald, with a bushy brown mustache. “I knew it was a mistake to bring you in on this one, Baxter. If her memory needs adjusting, you’re paying for it. I don’t care how much it costs to put that kid of yours into the Ellery Academy, do you understand me?”
“She’s lying, Captain,” said the one with the boot on my back. I tried to pop my claws, but the only response was a sharp pain in my fingertips, a pinprick. “We took her pulse and found out she was human, but they wanted us to hold her for ID. Then she freaked out on us.”
“Edwards,” Captain Stacey snapped. “What the fuck happened? You’re supposed to be keeping these new guys in line.”
“Look, Captain, I had to take a piss,” said the guy who had been holding the flamethrower. “When I came up, Baxter was on top of her with his hand up her shirt and she freaked out. What happened before that I don’t know, but I didn’t touch anybody any place.” His voice trembled when he spoke, somewhere between fear and pain.
“Radio Big Top,” Captain Stacey said to the man next to him. “I don’t like talking to her.”
He complied. “Big Top, this is Bravo-Two, Alpha group has a half-naked bleeding human up here who says they tried to physically assault her. What’s your ETA?”
He waited, listening. I missed my vampire hearing. Why wasn’t it working and why was I stuck seeming human? Was seeming human the only way I could wake up in daylight? It made sense. Ordinarily, I’d have slept through the whole thing…been burned up in the fire. My powers hadn’t almost gotten me killed; they’d saved me the only way they could.
“Big Top’s walking up the stairs now,” said Bravo-Two.
Stacey shook his head. “You guys better hope your story checks out or you’re going to wish that Miss Thang here had finished the job she started on you.”
“He’s hurting me,” I complained weakly. “God, my chest…I can barely breathe.” I started wheezing and choking. Whoever Big Top was, I didn’t want to be here when she arrived.
“Baxter, get off of her and step back.” Captain Stacey spit on the ground. “She’s got two men with assault rifles aimed at her. She isn’t going anywhere.”
“She’s lying,” said the man with his boot on my back, but he did take his foot off of me. I scooted quickly away from them and put my back against the concrete riser at the outer edge of the deck. A small ray of sunshine was only inches from my foot. Could I seem human enough to fool the sun? If I couldn’t, they’d sure as hell figure out I was a vampire when I caught fire.
I froze and then tucked my legs up against me, hugging them and began to rock back and forth. “Just let me go,” I said over and over again, my head buried in my knees. “Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll go straight home and I won’t talk to anybody. I’ll quit my job and I’ll just move and you won’t have to worry about me saying anything, just please don’t kill me.”
“Calm down, ma’am.” Stacey frowned at me as he spoke and I wondered if I’d oversold my performance. “I know this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we’re sweeping this deck for vampires.”
“Feels weird working for a demon, though, Cap,” Edwards whispered.
“His money spends just the same,” Stacey snarled. “Now shut up.”
High heels clicked on concrete and I heard the men step back for someone. I looked up and a woman in an obviously expensive green suit looked down at me. It was Rachel. Behind her, floating in some kind of mystic chains, was Talbot—alive, but gagged. It clicked. “Shit,” I cursed angrily. Esteban had been delivering the Infernal Chains of Sarno Rayus to Rachel. They moved like snakes, twisting and altering anytime Talbot tried to shift, the gentle metallic tinkle as the links clinked together providing further proof they were the same chains that had been in Esteban’s leather satchel.
“Like the chains?” Rachel teased. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Shit,” I cursed again.
“Did she pass the mirror test?” asked Rachel. She smiled knowingly at me as she asked, winking like this was a big joke.
“We didn’t get past the pulse test,” Alpha-One started.
“Idiots,” Rachel hissed. “What am I paying you for? You always check the mirror first. No reflection means the target is a vampire! End of story. Pulse is second, because we don’t want to murder any humans.” Taking a deep breath, I exhaled and then stood up.
Captain Stacey hocked up a bit of phlegm and spit it on the concrete at Rachel’s feet. “You aren’t paying us for anything, witch.” He took a step closer to her. “The demon is paying us to help you find and detain vampires along with the fee to clean up the mess from the fire you started next door.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Captain.”
“Smart?” Captain Stacey walked over to the glowing chains restraining Talbot. He leaned in close, the light from the chains washing the color from his skin, lending him an absurdly angelic glow, and he sniffed the air. “Smart would be if you told me why you’re detaining a mouser on a run where we’re being paid to gather up bloodsuckers.”
“Jill will pay you the extra.” Rachel pulled Talbot farther away from him. “But don’t worry; I assure you that this female is a vampire.”
“Of course he will…it’s still within the estimate.” Stacey spit on the ground again, turning to look at me. “You a Living Doll?” He grinned. “You must have been showing off to the wrong people.”
“Rachel.” I looked past Captain Stacey. “Why are you doing this?”
“Oh, don’t act like you give a damn about me!” she yelled. “You knew all about vampires. You’d read all those books. You’d even already met some of them, found your way past the veil hiding them from everyone. Damn it, Tabitha, you had a passport to immortality in your handbag and you didn’t even try to plead my case. You let me die!”
“This is impossible,” I mouthed voicelessly.
She touched my face. “Says the undead tramp,” she scoffed. “There are ways back, sis. They aren’t pleasant,” she shuddered, “and they change you, but they’re better than the alternative. I do owe you some small debt of gratitude, though. If you hadn’t been Eric’s little plaything, then J’iliol’lth wouldn’t have brought me back at all. He said it made me the perfect bait. A man—a vampire like Eric—J’iliol’lth said there was no way he could resist the wild younger sister. Eric was inside me before we even got back to the Pollux. Easy-peasy.”
One of the cops let out a low whistle at that. Another said, “Shit” and looked away.
“Pardon?” I said softly.
“You don’t understand where I was or what they do to little witch wannabes down there. I thought it would be tough, sleeping with him, doing this to you, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. He’s a very good lover. The power he gives off is intoxicating by itself, but the way he moves—well, you already know about that,” Rachel said as she conjured a blue flame in the palm of her hand. It changed from blue to red to green and back again, then settled on purple. “And of course, the deal came with magic, real magic. Do you know how much I dreamed of real magic?”
She always had been more into witchcraft than vampires.
“I do,” said a voice from behind her. Magbidion stepped out of the stairwell. He was washed, shaved, and wearing new clothes. It took ten years off his age.
Stacey nodded to one of his men and one of the assault rifles shifted to point at Magbidion. “I only want to talk.” Magbidion held up his hands. “I sold my soul for magic, just to taste it, for one real moment. Eric is going to get me out of that deal. He’s killed more demons than you’ve ever met. Let him take care of your problem, too.”
The cops exchanged looks. I think things were getting more complicated than they’d been led to believe. Stacey turned to say something to Rachel, but she stepped around him. “I didn’t have to give up my soul, old man.” She laughed and ran a ha
nd down the outside curve of her body. “Seduce Eric; get him ready for what my employer has in mind for him. And then, when the time was right, use a little bit of borrowed pyromancy to destroy the Pollux. After that, I show up at the appointed place and time, watch the fireworks, and collect my check. I’m free and clear, though I’ll still be on retainer.”
“Really?” asked Magbidion. “Now, see, that’s a lot better than the deal I got.”
“You don’t know how to negotiate.” She chuckled. Six more policemen filed out of the door behind Magbidion. Two of them leveled their guns at him.
“The rest of the deck is clear, Cap,” one of them yelled to Stacey.
“Kill the mage,” Rachel ordered.
Captain Stacey drew his sidearm with speed that had to be more than mortal, placing it in one smooth motion against Rachel’s temple. “You’re past your spending limit, witch. Adding the fee for the mouser took you right to the edge of the agreed-upon estimate. We aren’t taking on anything extra on credit.”
“Damn it, Stacey.” Rachel spoke softly, not willing to give him an excuse.
“Your boss could have given you a bigger credit line,” Captain Stacey said, “but he didn’t. So we’re out. We swept the deck. We found your vampire and your mouser and I have a helicopter waiting for me and my men on the roof.”
“Jill will—”
“Fuck Jill,” Stacey said. “He’s a demon. If he didn’t like the contract, then he of all people should have known better than to sign it.”
“Captain,” I said, “take me with you.”
“Do you have four hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in cash?” Stacey asked.
I shook my head.
“Then we ain’t your cavalry.” His eyes flicked, showing slit pupils. “See you around, Highness.” He patted Talbot’s chained form as he and his men strode past, the men in the rear keeping their guns leveled in our direction.
“Just us, now.” Magbidion made a gesture with his right hand. Rachel did the reverse with her left. Nothing happened that I could see, but Magbidion sighed. “I really should have stayed in the RV.”
None of them had my attention. Eric had cheated on me before. It wasn’t even really cheating because I’d known about it from the start. I was his, but he’d always needed more than one woman. I had believed it. I’d bought into it. He had lots of women, but I was the special one, I was the one that was his actual girlfriend. I knew he’d been sleeping with Rachel…I was even mostly okay with it.
But something else had clicked. “You’re the girl,” I said. “The one he wanted to pick for a threesome?” It was an offer I’d made him once he’d turned me, before I knew about my ability to seem human, to turn on my body heat, my heartbeat. I’d told him he could pick any one human to join us in our bed. Rachel damned Eric with a smile and my heart stopped beating. For him to sleep with her was one thing. For him to expect me to sleep with her…to have even considered it…“I’ll kill him.”
And then I felt them. My powers, like a slumbering beast, a tiger waking from a drugged sleep…the tingling numbness was gone. My jaw popped as my fangs slid firmly into place and I relished the pain when they tore through my gums.
I was awake. All of me. Anger was the key.
33
ERIC: AN EXCESS OF INFAMY
The tantalizing odor of well-grilled beef filled the elevator shaft. Even through the two intervening doors the scent was clear and tempting. Strong food smells still made me salivate on occasion and I carefully closed my mouth and swallowed. A light ting announced the arrival of the elevator and when the doors opened, the aroma overcame all other smells. Phillip tapped his fingers together in guileless anticipation. I stood up to go for the door and the older vampire shooed me back into my chair.
“Let it come to you.” He licked his lips, leaving a smear of blood on them. “Anticipation is a part of it. Deny yourself the expectation and you will have squandered a portion of the experience. Savor it and you will have realized the potential of the moment. The eternal must maximize all of their experiences to the utmost capacity while simultaneously leaving room for minor improvements, perhaps even arranging flaws. One does not wish to create an experience that cannot be rivaled, for fear that all future entertainments of a similar breed will—”
Beatrice opened the door for Dennis, who carried in a tray with three covered metal plates on it. Behind him, a girl who couldn’t have been older than fourteen brought in a cooler and set it down. She opened a concealed closet and withdrew a small table that she placed between Phillip and myself. Dennis set the tray on the table and crossed back to the door. “Will there be anything else?” he asked.
“Thank you, Dennis,” said Phillip. “Now out with you.” Dennis did as instructed. “You didn’t look at the girl,” Phillip observed as the door closed.
“She’s what, fourteen?” I said, lifting the lid off of the plate closest to me.
“Eleven.” Phillip laughed. “Though everyone does guess high. She’ll be astonishing when she reaches maturity.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but I don’t look at them until they are a bit older, you know? Like, oh, out of high school.”
“I’ve offended you,” Phillip stated.
“Don’t take it personally, most undead do. That’s why I have a habit of killing them. So…Now what, we stare at steak and talk about preteen hotties? Because if that’s your idea of a good time, then I’m getting the hell out of Dodge.”
“You may go, if you wish,” he said sadly. “Take the Stone of Aeternum and do with it what you will. Give it to J’iliol’lth. Keep it. It is of little consequence. It will find its way back to me in time for my ascension. I have foreseen as much.”
“You’ve foreseen it?” I asked. “What’re you…psychic, too?”
Phillip sighed. “I had great hopes for our meeting. I’ve prepared for it and planned it; I was just wrong about it. It doesn’t often happen to me, being wrong. You might as well take your steaks; I won’t enjoy mine without you. When I was preparing their enchantment, every thought I spared to them was of my meeting with you when we could dine on them together. I had forgotten your comparative youth and your flightiness. A result of your unusual circumstance, I have no doubt.”
“Unusual circumstance?”
Phillip, who had risen and crossed to the cooler, stopped moving. I didn’t need to see his face; I could hear the grin.
“I suppose we could discuss it, but perhaps while we eat?”
“Eat?” I asked. “As in chew, chew, swallow?”
He removed a pair of small brown bottles from the cooler. “The Disinclined Vintage: each bottle lovelessly prepared by Duke Gornsvalt at considerable expense and with unwilling hands.” Phillip read aloud the inscription on the yellow label and chuckled. “Duke Gornsvalt was quite wroth with me until I sent him one of those steaks. Shall we try ours? They are growing cold.”
I looked back at the steak. “How?”
“I rarely answer ‘how’ questions,” he said as he returned to the table. “I will do so this once because the answer is quite plain: it’s magic. What good is magic, to what purpose alchemy, if it cannot ease our burdens, imagined or otherwise?”
On the left side of the plate, there was a fork, on the right, a steak knife. I cut a piece of steak and as I brought it to my mouth, my fangs extended. After a few tries, I got them to retract so I could take a proper bite. It was over-cooked, barely pink through the middle, but it tasted like heaven to me. Swallowing was a problem, though; I couldn’t seem to get the entire piece of meat down my throat and I gagged.
“You’re not chewing it thoroughly enough.” Phillip demonstrated, cutting himself a much smaller piece. He put it into his mouth and winced when he bit his tongue.
We got the hang of it, though. My fangs remained a problem off and on throughout the meal; the texture of solid food, the excitement of it, brought out vampiric instincts that I’d cultivated for years. Chewing food is not like riding a bike. A
fter a decade or two, you forget how.
“At the end of this meal, do I get presented with a bill?” I asked.
“Why bother?” Phillip set one bottle of the Disinclined Vintage next to my plate and the other next to his own. “I know you couldn’t pay it. The cosmos is insistent on certain things and this is one of them. Vampires cannot eat—not like humans. To turn the laws of our breed upside down in this fashion requires an obscene expenditure of resources. The beer was a bit easier. I could have brought in a more plebian blood brew, but I had Duke Gornsvalt do it because he has a certain talent for exotic beverages and I wanted it to taste like you remember. He did warn me it may cause us to urinate, however, so be prepared.”
“Real pee or blood?” I asked.
“I didn’t ask.” Phillip coughed. “It never even occurred to me. I like surprises.”
He watched as I removed the cap and tasted the beer. I’d expected it to taste like blood. I’d had “blood brew” before—fermented blood that packed the same kick as real alcohol. This did not taste the same. “It tastes like camel piss.”
“Isn’t it supposed to?” Phillip asked in midmouthful.
“Pretty much,” I acknowledged.
“This is much more as I had foreseen,” Phillip said as he patted the table. “Thank you for fulfilling my expectations.”
“Uh-huh,” I answered. The beer had more kick than it should have had and the buzz I wanted moved in, taking the edge off. We chewed in silence. I cut the second steak in half, putting the larger piece on Phillip’s plate. He was the founder of the feast; I figured that he deserved it.
“But I ordered that steak for you,” he said.
“There is no way I’m eating a second steak in front of you, while you have an empty plate,” I told him. “Just eat it.”