The Fixer: A Lawson Vampire Novel 1 (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  Talya frowned. "‘Anywhere else?’"

  "Yeah." Where was that waitress? "They can draw from anywhere. Neck, arm, chest, back, wherever’s convenient."

  She sat back in her chair. "How do you know so much about them, Lawson?"

  "My job. I did some research. The rest is field experience."

  "But you said you’ve never killed a vampire before."

  Damn her memory. "Yeah, but I’ve chased them before."

  "Cosgrove?"

  "Yep."

  "How many times?"

  I looked out the window, remembering. In the darkness I saw scores of bodies float past in the blink of an eye. Then Robin. Then nothing but November night. "Once…twice…hell, I’ve been chasing him my whole life."

  "That long?"

  "Isn’t it obvious?"

  "I suppose it might be if I knew why."

  "Let’s just say he and I have a lot more history than I’m comfortable sharing right now."

  She paused. "And you never got him before. How come? You don’t strike me as someone easily dissuaded from a goal."

  "He almost got me." The waitress mercifully reappeared with another drink. I took another long drag and sighed. "I was out alone. Out in the cold. No backup. No support net. No Control." I shrugged. "You’ve been there."

  "Yes, but not when I was chasing a vampire for heaven’s sake."

  I nodded. "Well, it all comes down to this. Everything has a beginning. It’s time to write the ending. I’ll get him this time. I have to."

  She put her hand on top of mine. "We’ll get him, Lawson. Together."

  "Stealing my lines now, Talya?"

  "They’re good lines, Lawson. Spoken by a brave man."

  "Spoken by a fool, more likely. If I had any sense at all, I’d run away from all of this shit."

  "But you won’t."

  "I won’t. I can’t."

  She leaned closer again. "Courage isn’t the absence of fear, Lawson. It’s acting in spite of the fear. You are brave."

  That’s what she thought. I finished my third drink and slid a twenty on to the table. I looked at Talya and then got to my feet. "Ready?"

  "For anything." She stood. "Where to?"

  "Club outside of Central Square. I think Cosgrove may just feel like hitting it tonight."

  "Why?"

  "Because it’s in Cambridge and he hasn’t hunted this side of the river yet, as far as I know. Also, Friday is their Goth Night. He’ll blend in easily. Hell, he could kill on the damned dance floor and nobody would even notice."

  "Goth?"

  I smiled. "Think black clothing, albino pale skin, and nocturnally obsessive."

  She looked down at her clothes. "These okay?"

  She wore another ribbed turtleneck, this one charcoal gray and another pair of black spandex pants. The leather boots complimented her feet but I noticed the thick sole could take some abuse, not to mention give it out.

  "Yeah, you’ll have no problems."

  She grabbed my hand. "Then let’s go. I’m kind of anxious to see Cosgrove again. He and I have a score to settle."

  "Still got the ammo I gave you?"

  "Yes. Minus the two poor shots I made."

  "Chalk it up to first time jitters."

  "Bullshit, Lawson. I-we-can’t afford first time jitters. I’m not some green rookie who needs to be let down easy. I missed. It’s that simple. I don’t miss often. And you can bet I won’t miss again." That said, she turned and left the bar. I watched her walk for a moment and the trailed after her.

  ***

  The drive to Manray took just under ten minutes due to the traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. I parked in a garage on a side street and we walked down together. Talya looped her arm through mine. I stopped short.

  She cocked her head. "I figure we should look like a couple, Lawson. Good cover."

  My ass. I smirked just the same, though. We continued down to the club entrance. Since it was still early, we got right in, past the doormen who showed a passing interest in me and a heavy interest in Talya. Hell, she was a knockout. A deadly knockout at that.

  Inside dim lights illuminated little pockets of space devoid of people. The clubgoers stayed in the darkness. Here the atmosphere wafted far different from any of the other clubs we’d staked out so far. This was the place to come if you hated the mainstream. And at least fifty people here were better poster children for vampires than me. I smirked at the irony and guided Talya to the left. We entered the main dance floor room.

  Larger than I would have expected from the outside, a square parquet dance floor sat bordered on all sides by long couches draped in red and purple velvets. Bars at both ends staffed by pale-faced denizens served a lot of strangely colored drinks tonight.

  Gridlocked shadowy packets of gyrating couples, triples and foursomes packed the dance floor. Manray catered to alternative lifestyles more than any other club in the area. Straights, homosexuals, transvestites, hermaphrodites and everyone in between congregated here, unabashed in what they liked to do.

  I respected the freedom they enjoyed. Hell, I was jealous. At least they could love who they wanted.

  I couldn’t.

  A wisp of a woman floated past me. She couldn’t have weighed more than sixty pounds soaking wet. Talya looked at me and frowned.

  "Do they eat?"

  I shook my head. "Now, now, I believe the politically correct term is ‘calorically challenged.’"

  She laughed. "That’s good."

  I guided her to the left side of the room and sat her down next to a pair of purple lipsticked women locked in a passionate embrace. I’ve always loved two women kissing. It’s a beautiful thing in my book.

  Talya smiled. "See something you like, Lawson?"

  They broke apart at that moment and I got a good look at them both. Ugh. Not exactly contestants for a beauty contest.

  "Guess not," I said.

  She looked and sat back. "You’re right."

  I looked at her, visualizing instantly, and tried to stop. But not before an image of Talya, myself, and another hot woman locked in a sweaty threesome floated through my mind and caused a surge of blood flow to other extremities. Damn, now I couldn’t get a drink.

  "Aren’t you going to get me a drink, Lawson?"

  I cleared my throat and purged my mind. "Sure thing. What do you want?"

  She looked me up and down in answer before finally smiling. "The usual, of course. Vodka, straight over ice. Stolichnaya if they have it."

  "Done." I walked back to the bar and ordered our drinks. The total came out to just under eight bucks and I left a tenner on the bar. I always believed that if the help was good, you tipped well. After all, in my profession, you never knew who you might need help from in the future. And if they knew you tipped well, they just might be willing to give some.

  Talya’s feet moved in time to the slow beat of the music when I got back which vaguely concerned me. We were here to hunt for Cosgrove, not dance. But just as quickly as I was concerned, I also knew Talya wouldn’t let her inclinations violate her professionalism. She’d been far too well trained for that.

  She took her drink and fondled it for a second before taking a long sip. She brought it way from her lips and sighed. "It always reminds me of Russia when I drink vodka."

  "Does it?"

  She nodded. "When I was growing up, my mother would always let us have some on holidays. It was a special treat."

  I took a drag of my own drink. "What got you into the KGB?"

  She shrugged. "What didn’t get me into the KGB might be a better question." She took another swig and continued. "In Russia, in my youth, everywhere you went there were signs urging you to join. You could join anywhere. At the train station, the post office, everywhere. It seemed silly for me to consider anything else."

  "That’s it?"

  She got a faraway look in her eyes. "My family was murdered when I was fifteen. I wanted vengeance."

  "Who killed them?"

&
nbsp; "Bandits that roamed the steppes. We weren’t as modernized as other states were. Despite the KGB presence, despite the army base twenty miles from my home, despite being in the Soviet Union, we were still very much on our own."

  "You were spared?"

  "I was not at home when it happened. But it made my decision to enter the KGB an elementary one. I saw the KGB as the way to extract my revenge on them."

  Jesus, she’d had a hard life. The bastard child of a rape victim and then the rest of her family murdered. I shook my head. "Did you get it?"

  She shrugged. "In time. It took me a while to find them, in between the short spans of leave during my training and eventual work. But…yes."

  I didn’t doubt her. Why should I? She’d already shown her competence on several levels I couldn’t even describe. Instead, I nodded.

  "Sometimes revenge is the only thing that makes the hurt go away."

  "Like now," she said.

  I nodded and held up my drink. "For Simbik."

  She clinked her glass against mine and we drank long and deep. I finished my drink then and rested the empty glass on the bar in front of me.

  Talya rested hers there a moment later. "While we’re on the subject, what made you do what you do?"

  I shrugged. "I took a test. The results directed me into it."

  "Destiny, huh?" She smiled. "No romantic notions of James Bond? No fantasy images of saving the world from dangerous hordes of your nation’s enemies?" She smiled. "That seems strange to me."

  It was. The Council had chosen me to become a Fixer, not the other way around. I hadn’t aspired to anything after Robin’s death, except becoming Cosgrove’s executioner. Freedom of choice wasn’t really an option for those of us born into the Profession. We were preordained somehow, sometime long before we saw the moment of our birth. Somewhere else, outside in the cosmos, our existence was decreed. The Council’s responsibility lay with channeling us into the training and from there into our roles as saviors for the vampire community. No romance. No patriotism to speak of. Just an innate understanding of our purpose. An obsession for the Balance.

  Simple, to be sure

  But also pure and total duty to a cause.

  The closest thing it compared to was the feudal Japan samurai commitment to bushido, the way of the warrior. A code so strict, it demanded absolute loyalty to the warrior’s lord. Just as we obeyed the laws of the Balance.

  That’s what I’d become, a vampire samurai.

  It didn’t help that I studied martial arts…

  Talya looked at me funny.

  "What?"

  She shook her head. "You just got that weird look in your eyes again. Like you were a million miles away. Remembering something. Something you’d tucked away a long time ago."

  She was far too perceptive for my comfort and yet simultaneously, I think it drew me closer to her even more. "Just memories. Faraway memories."

  "Do they comfort you as much as they haunt you?"

  I sighed. "Yeah."

  She nodded. "Me, too, Lawson. Me, too."

  Above us, the music changed again, mixed into a slower beat that resonated heavy synth strings over a thudding bass line. It reminded me of a pulse. The pulse of life.

  And of death.

  The only absolute certainty in life.

  A certainty I was a part of. Whether I liked it or not.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Just after midnight my beeper went off. In the dim light the orange glow of the small screen seemed to cast an unnatural light over my hand. I read the number. Zero.

  "Gotta make a phone call," I said. "Be right back."

  Talya nodded and kept watching the floor for Cosgrove. I had my doubts about whether he’d come in tonight. The clubs in Cambridge only stayed open until 1am.

  Downstairs by the coat check, I found the pay phone and punched in Zero’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  "Where are you?"

  I told him. "What’s up?"

  "They’re moving on you, Lawson."

  "What?" I moved my hand to my right hip and rested it on my gun.

  "McKinley contacted Cosgrove tonight and told him where you were."

  "Impossible. I’ve watched my ass for days now. How?"

  "Maybe they put a tracer on your car, maybe a surveillance team, I don’t know."

  "What about the loyalists? What about the pieces of the ceremony?"

  "Cosgrove must have already had the information. I got to the address and the entire place was a blood bath. He’d already been there, you see? The guy was dead. And with him, the location of the next loyalist. Cosgrove knows, we don’t."

  "Which means he can piece it all together."

  "Yes. We’ve got nothing to go on except for the fact that you’re now seen as a threat and they’re going to take you out."

  "But how?"

  "After I discovered the loyalist was dead, I shadowed McKinley. He called Cosgrove from a parking lot in Chestnut Hill. I used a parabolic mike to pick up the conversation. You want to hear the tape?"

  "Not necessary. Are you still with him?"

  "Negative. He shook me. I don’t know where the hell they are now, either of them. Are you alone?"

  "No, Talya’s with me. Upstairs."

  "Stay put, I’m on my way."

  I hung up the phone and watched the empty hallway. Shadows danced and flickered as I made my way down it. To my left grunts and heavy breathing crowded the bathroom area. The dark steps drew me up faster than I’d descended. At the top waves of intense music struck me as I emerged on the first floor again.

  This late in the evening, the only illumination came from candles scattered about the club at strange positions. They flickered and made everything seem alive. Oozing. Mutating.

  In the main room my hair stood on end and I got goose bumps. Something was wrong. I looked for Talya. She’d disappeared.

  Then I heard the laughter invade my head.

  "Lawson."

  I pivoted and saw him. Decked out in all his splendor, complete with a damned collared cape, he looked like Bela Lugosi for crying out loud. But even in the ridiculous attire, he was absolutely lethal.

  And never more so because he had Talya in his arms.

  They had all the appearances of a bawdy couple slowly grinding in time to the music. But he was holding her hostage. I saw the one long nail of his pinkie finger resting over her carotid artery. If I moved on him, he’d slice her open and she’d die.

  "Does she mean so much to you, Lawson? Does she mean so much that you’d not kill me for fear of losing her?"

  His voice floated through even the loudest music. Our hearing gave us the ability to do that.

  I said nothing.

  He smiled. "I’ll take your silence as a yes. Especially considering you saved her the other night rather than kill me. Which reminds me-" He tossed something at me with his left hand. It bounced on the floor and came to rest at my feet. "-have the souvenir you shot me with the other night. It took me two hours to dig the bloody thing out of my right leg."

  I picked it the hunk of wood. It hadn’t exploded on impact. Defective. I sighed and pocketed it.

  "Let her go, Cosgrove. This doesn’t concern her."

  "Doesn’t it? I did kill her fiancee after all."

  McKinley, that bastard had told him all about her background. "She doesn’t know what she’s dealing with."

  "Whether or not that’s true, which I doubt considering she was shooting wooden bullets at me the other night, she still means to kill me given the chance. I should save myself the effort and execute her anyway. Self-defense and all, you know."

  "Don’t."

  He smiled and kept them moving in time to the music. The bastard was hypnotizing Talya. "Why not? You don’t actually love her do you, Lawson? Tsk tsk, that’s not allowed you know."

  "Neither is plotting to overthrow the Council. Or whatever other crazy shit you have planned."

  "Touché." He looked down at T
alya. "She is pretty, Lawson. In a way, she reminds me of Robin." He looked at me with that insufferable grin. "Does she remind you of Robin, too?"

  "Fuck you, Cosgrove. Leave her out of this. I’m the one you want."

  "Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just take this pretty thing."

  "Leave her alone."

  Cosgrove laughed. "Do you think about Robin any more? Did I ever tell you what it felt like to cut her heart out, Lawson? How her warm blood sprayed and coated my hands while I worked? It was delicious. Absolutely delicious."

  I needed to break his train of thought. Rage swelled inside me and if he kept talking about Robin, I might make a huge mistake. "I know about McKinley."

  That surprised him. He stopped moving for a second and Talya murmured something. He recovered and started his hypnotic dance again. "So what?"

  "The conspiracy, Cosgrove. I know about it all. You’re using McKinley and the others in New England to take down the Council. You’ll assume the role of leader of the vampire nation and begin a relationship with the humans."

  "Well, so you know. So what?"

  "I know about the Elder you killed as well. About the ceremony you’re trying to piece together."

  "Pieced together, Lawson. I found out all about the loyalists a long time ago. I’ve known where to look from the start. And the puzzle pieces are together quite nicely. I’m just tying up loose ends now."

  "Loose ends like killing her?"

  He winked. "Well, I haven’t quite decided yet. Perhaps I’ll just take her with me."

  "I can’t let you do that." I hoped it sounded a lot tougher than I felt.

  He kept laughing. "You’re hardly in a position to demand anything, Lawson. After all, I have your girlfriend’s life in my hands. You won’t do anything right now."

  "Don’t be too sure."

  "But I am. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance the other night. Instead, you saved her. You saved her with your own blood, Lawson. I’d say that’s a pretty telling event, wouldn’t you?"

  "Maybe I’ve reconsidered."

  "I don’t think so. If you had you would have pulled your little gun and blown me away already." He shook his head. "No, you won’t try anything here. Not while I have her."