by A J Brahms
And I knew the feeling was mutual.
"Please sit, Ren," Jedediah said and approached me as I did. He handed me the Scotch. "Drink this."
"I'm not—"
"Drink it."
I did. And discovered it wasn't Scotch at all, but something that burned my throat on the way down. I coughed and sputtered and nearly dropped the glass, but Jedediah caught it.
"What…*cough*…the hell…*cough*…was that?" I cleared my throat as the noxious concoction settled into my stomach.
"It's something Ellery used to drink before he performed his duty as Whisper. He did say it burned like a mother fucker on the way down, but it helped calm him, and it worked so he could control the cacophony in his head."
"But…" I was losing control of my facilities as I fought to keep my head up and speak. "You…you said the herbs controlled the…voices…"
Jedediah pulled me up by my arm as the fire cooled and I found myself floating in a sense. It reminded me of being drunk…and that was a memory far removed from my present life. Ghouls couldn't get drunk. "I lied."
But here I was, unsteady on my feet as Aubrey took the other arm and I watched as I was once again led down the staircase into the basement of Cimitir Hall to the scattered bones six feet deep on the bottom floor. They didn't cast me into the bones like I thought they would. Instead, Jedediah and Aubrey helped me sit on the lowest step. Though sit was a relative term. I sort of rested there with a step digging into my back.
And then the room went dark.
The voices returned as I lost the ability to close them out. No. Wait a second. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the whispers and shouts, the moans and sobs and found a light in the center. That's where I went to and opened a door.
Behind the door was a room that looked pretty much like Jedediah's study. It had all the same smells and feels as the original, but I somehow knew this was my room. And it being my room, I modernized it a little bit. I opened the curtain and let the sun come in, changed the wooden bookshelves to something a bit more up to date with shaped shelves on a gray painted wall. I made the desk into glass and chrome and the floor, black tile.
There was a knock at the door and I told them to come in.
I expected Mia's Maker to enter. I hadn't expected a female. She was tall with blonde hair, pale skin and dressed…well the big hair and oddly cut dress with shoulder pads screamed mid-eighties. Was that when she died?
"You changed things," she said and stepped forward, but didn't move into the light shining through the window. "Is this how things look now?" She had an accent I couldn't quite put my finger on. Was it French? It wasn't heavy, just an echo in her speech.
"Yes. More so in my taste."
"Ellery kept things as Jed wanted them. Old." She pursed her lips and smiled at me. I could see her fangs.
"Can you not walk into the light? This is just a place in my head, I believe."
"The potency of the sun is relative to the creator's belief. Do you feel warmth from it?"
"Yes."
"Then no. I cannot." Her expression changed abruptly and her lips became tight. "He gave you wormwood."
I'd been right. I thought about the first drink of blood. "Yes. He put it in your Childer's blood."
"So Jedediah doesn't want you to know the whole truth. Well, then you shall not have the whole truth."
I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but I saw her wince, so I closed the windows and sat my desk. She sat in the chair facing me. "Better?"
"Oui."
"Uhh…this is really my first time at this—"
"Don't be modest, Chevalier (and she pronounce it correctly). You spoke to Ellery. Don't worry. He told us you explained his murder to Jedediah."
Okay. So there was communication between the dead. Good to know. "So, did Ellery talk to all of you…often?"
"In the beginning, oui. But…not so much in later years. We can see the world above us, Mr. Grainger—"
"Please, call me Ren."
"Ren." She smiled again and looked radiant. Even with the big hair. "As I said, we can see the world, we just can't interact with it."
"What…what do you do with your days?"
Now she laughed and I felt a little nervous. After all, I was just a Ghoul, really, and she was a Night Walker. Had been a Night Walker. "Days are not a reality for us, Ren. We exist non-stop as the world moves around us. But this is not why I am here."
"No. It's not." I licked my lips. "It's Mia Tavern. Your Ghoul."
"Ah, yes. My Mia survived. My sweet one. Has she done something wrong?"
Now how do I put this? Especially since the idea of a Ghoul stealing something seemed very incongruent with what I knew about Ghouls and Chevaliers. "She stole something. A relic. From the Mother House in New York. And Jedediah wants me to get it back. He wants you to track her."
"Ah. I see."
"You don't seem surprised."
She shrugged and those big shoulder pads made it look like her shoulders met her ears. "Non. But just as Jedediah has made it impossible for me to tell you personal truths, Ren. I will not tell you lies, either. So, my answers will be short and nonsensical."
Oh-kay. "So, can you track her—"
Her laughter stopped me and I put my hands on my desk.
She stopped laughing and remained quiet. "So you can track her, but you won't."
"Oui."
"How is she acting this way with a Childer still alive? Wouldn't her blood be drawn to your Childer?"
She answered me with a smile.
"I see," I said. "Is she a Chevalier?"
She smiled. "Is she? I will say she is not Third Tier."
I sat back. New word. "Third tier?"
"I see your Maker kept you in the dark about things, Ren. Ghouls come in several varieties. There are the third tiers, those you know as zombies. They do what they're told as long as they're fed often. Their hunger torments them because they are no longer human or vampire." She actually looked sad as she talked about them. "Tier two are better. Not nearly as mad in the head and can function in normal society. They do what they're told and protect their Maker as best as they can. But they don't develop power, Ren. Not like the Tier One, and then the very top…" She focused on me. "Like you."
There were tiers of Ghouls?
"And to answer your next question, the Tier depends on the level of care a Vampire gives to their making. Tier One is the top, and was the preferred level for Ghouls for a long time, before the first Chevalier was made, somewhere in the sixteenth century. You are independent thinking, you act alone, think for yourself and have a will to survive beyond your Maker. Only Chevaliers have this, Ren." She pursed her lips. "Decide Mia's ranking for yourself."
This wasn't going at all the way I thought it would, and I was pretty sure Jedediah wouldn't want me to know these things. So what is it his herbs had actually stopped her from saying? "I thought the powers of a Maker wove into the Ghoul. Like…my Maker could see spirits. So I do too."
"She was also a Whisper, your Elizabeth. Yes, yes, I knew her. But that is not what is important now, Ren. Just know Mia possesses the basics of a Ghoul, plus her animas."
Her animas. Occam was mine. "Did she take the relic?"
"I don't know."
"You can sense her?"
She smiled. "Did your Maker sense you, Ren? Can she sense you now?"
That made me stand up fast. Even my chair scooted back in this make believe place. "You…is she here? She wasn't Talmadge."
"No. She is not here." She stood. "I saw Elizabeth's cruelty first hand, even to her Childers. I know what you went through as her Chevalier." She turned as if to leave the office and then stopped. Her voice was low when she said, "In life I was a Promise Dealer, Ren. Much like the Mórrígan. And I will give you a bit of advice, something the wormwood cannot control." She half turned and smiled at me. "Find out why Ghouls were banned. Discover for yourself the truth of why, and what you are, and when you do, arm yourself. Beca
use not even your precious Jedediah will allow you to live when you do."
And just like that, I found myself back in my body, lying across the stone steps into the bones. I shook with the cold and pushed myself up into a sitting position and caught my breath. Whatever it was that was in that stuff Jedediah gave me, it was gone. Spent. Used up. And the voices were silent.
I made my way up the stairs in a rather ungraceful way and opened the door. Aubrey was there, along with Jedediah. They both looked surprised to see me.
"Well?" Jedediah said.
I called for Occam and discovered she was already outside. And so was Aberdeen. "Well what?" I said as I staggered to the front door of Cimitir Hall.
"What did she say? Does she know where Mia is?"
I didn't answer. I didn't want to answer. Mostly because I'd gotten some information I didn't think I should have had and I didn't want to linger here in this place of death. This house of bones. I opened the front door and stepped out into the dark. I could see my Prius on the side of the road in front of the Hall, the hazard lights on. Aberdeen got out of the driver's seat and I could feel him silently threatening the Night Walkers.
After all, Aberdeen was an instrument of God.
I kept walking away from them, focusing on the car at the end of the walk.
"You must tell me!"
I didn't say anything.
And then he was in front of me, baring my way. "You are bound to tell me."
"And I will, Jedediah. Just not right now. I need time." And I moved around him, waiting on him to stop me. But he didn't.
"Ren, you don't have a lot of time."
I stopped and looked at him, a light in the shaded dark. "For what?"
"Before you'll need blood."
He was right. Their little stunt to injure me used up time. What had been a week and a few days had now been drastically reduced. But to how many days now? I didn't know and that was the real problem. It could have removed four days, or just one. There was no way to tell. "And whose fault is that?"
He smiled, his fangs just showing between his slightly parted lips. "Yours."
I turned away and continued to the Prius. Occam landed on my shoulder and gave me strength, returned a bit of myself to me.
"You'll need me soon, Ren," came a voice in my mind. "And your life will be in my hands. That's a promise."
The female Night Walker's final advice came to me and I stopped and turned to face him. "What's a Promise Dealer? I know the Mórrígan is a Promise Dealer and Mia’s Maker was one too.”
Jedediah looked uncomfortable. "They are creatures with the ability to influence others. Even their own kind. It is a Gift given by the Mórrígan.”
I thought that over a few seconds before I turned and made it to the car. I got in the passenger's side and looked at Aberdeen as he got in too. "Get me the fuck away from these assholes."
"Do you want me to smite them?" Aberdeen put the car in drive.
I knew he could. He could level all of them. But he would only do it if I wanted it. So if Mr. Vamp dude over there was in my mind, I wanted him to know exactly what kind of power I had access to.
There was a sharp pain and then silence, and I knew Jedediah had gotten out of my head. He'd been in there looking for answers. "No. Just take me home."
Four
After a shower and the meaty dinner Aberdeen went out and caught for me, I sat on the couch with him as he went over what he'd discovered about Mermaids. The only problem I was having was the echoing headache I couldn't get rid of. It sort of reminded me of the migraines I used to get as a teenager. But back then I'd just close myself in a dark room and go to sleep.
Too bad I didn't sleep anymore.
Though my Gargoyle friend enjoyed the present day's technology, he had a penchant for examining information the old fashioned way. Yeah he had electronic copies of things, but he'd also made print outs and charts and pulled my white board from my office into the room and tacked a timeline up on the smooth surface.
I sat forward on the couch and studied it. "The first body was discovered two weeks before Jedediah contacted me about Tonya Mulberry's body. The second one the week before, and then the third the week after."
"Yes. But Emmet's body wasn't found until a week after that." He pointed on the timeline. "But the Coroner said he'd been dead for at least two weeks. The third victim had died much later."
"So that makes Emmet the third victim." I compared the dates on the white board with the dates on my phone. "So he was already dead when Jed came to me."
"So it would appear." Aberdeen then flipped the white board and revealed a new set of drawings he'd made. They were extremely detailed, if not skewed as a side-view art. It reminded me of Egyptian paintings in a way, or one could say, renaissance paintings in old books.
But the pictures didn't look like the Hollywood, Fairy Tale sort of Mermaid. Yeah, they had the voluptuous human looking top from the waist up, but instead of tails these things had—"Are those….is that an octopus bottom?"
"Yes. Not as romantic is it? To think the woman seducing you has eight legs with suckers on them. But here is the reality. This is how Mermaids pull their victims under the water and hold them there. They stick their bodies under rocks, or in caves and feed off of them."
"By kissing them with those needles to the back of their tongue." I swallowed, feeling very uncomfortable at the thought of being wrapped up in that and drowned. But honestly, I wasn't sure if I could drown. I assumed I could, since I wasn't exactly a Night Walker. I did know that if a Night Walker ever got caught underwater, they wouldn't die. Just stay there, unable to see or hear but still alive.
I visibly shivered.
"But I saw two problems." He referred to Sheila's reports on the victims. How he got copies—I could only assume he turned on his British charm. "First, all of them have these marks on their necks, and Mermaids don't make these. And second, even though all of them have these marks at the back of their tongues, which is how Mermaids siphon off the fluid, those marks don't go in deep enough," He turned a few of the reports to face me. "The fluid was actually drained from the neck marks, not the punctures in their tongues."
"You mean they were set up to look like Mermaids."
"Yes." And he pointed to the neck wounds.
I sighed rubbed my face before I looked up at him.
Aberdeen leaned his head to his shoulder. "Are you all right?"
I leaned back on the couch. I wanted to sleep. I really, really did. I felt sluggish and lethargic, but I knew why. I cursed Aubrey, Oberon and Jedediah for it. All I could hear were Jedediah's parting words in my head.
"You'll need me soon, Ren. And your life will be in my hands. That's a promise."
"Are you ready to tell me why you were at Cimitir House?" Aberdeen sat in his favorite chair by a smoking stand. The man loved pipes. But he only smoked them when I wasn't around. Not a big fan of them myself. I didn't mind the smell of the tobacco, just not the wreak they left afterward.
I gave him the highlights, and the Ghoul's name, Mia Tavern. I was amazed he already knew about the Tiers of Ghouls and chastised him for never telling me. He seemed very upfront that he thought I knew.
"You are a Chevalier, Renwick. I just assumed your Maker would have told you where you fit in the food chain."
"She didn't tell me a lot of things. I always thought Ghouls who weren't Chevaliers were just zombies."
"No. They actually outlawed making that tier long before Ghouls were outlawed completely."
I stared at him. It took a few seconds before he realized I wasn't talking. So he met his gaze with mine.
"What?"
"Aby—"
"Don't call me that."
"—did your Order learn why Ghouls were banned? I know I've asked you this a hundred times, but you've never answered me."
"So why are you asking me for the hundredth and one time?" Aberdeen drawled.
"Because that Night Walker told me I needed to know,
after she told me she was a Promise Dealer."
Usually Aberdeen's answer to this question was followed by a wave of his hand and a change of subject. Not this time. His expression fell and he sat forward. "What was the Vampiress' name?"
"What?"
"The one you Whispered with. What was her name?"
I switched gears and tried to remember the full conversation. "I don't know. She never said."
"And neither did Jedediah, did he?" Aberdeen rubbed his chin. "Makes you wonder why, doesn't it?"
I knew he'd kind of changed the subject, but not really. And since this reaction was more than I'd ever gotten before, I decided not to push.
Not yet. "Yeah, like why keep it from me? And even she didn't tell me. And I never thought to ask." I chewed on my lower lip. "I wish there was some kind of archive or something that had a list of all the known Vampires and their Ghouls. Like a registry."
"There is," Aberdeen said as the door bell rang. He stood. "But it's in the Vatican." He went to answer the door. "Ah, Miss Wallace. To what do I owe the pleasure of your effervescent zeal?"
Miss Wallace?
Julie was here?
In a quiet panic I stood and straightened the pillows, then dashed to the kitchen to make sure my dinner aftermath was gone. Er…not all of it. There were still bones and guts in the sink. So I ran the water and turned on the garbage disposal. It looked like it was working…until it made a terrible noise.
Aberdeen was by my side in seconds turning the water and the disposal off. "What are you doing?"
"I was getting rid of my mess," I hissed.
"That's not how you do it. Uck," he said, and that's the closest I can come to spelling it. "You made a rather nice mess of this. I'll have to go in and clean it out." He faced me. "She's in the living room. Go talk to her."
I blew on my hand and then tried to smell it. It wanted to make sure I didn't smell like blood or raw flesh. Not that I was sure Julie would know what that smelled like.
"You look fine, Ren. Here, I'll make tea and then I need to go out."