by Ian Hall
I could see the numbers clicking in front of his eyes. “Well, I intended taking my girl out at five; we were going to Applebee’s.”
“Okay, you see, I’m not even up to lifting the PC part. How about you pick her at five, come around to my place, unload my stuff, get it set up, and I’ll give you three hundred. Cash. You can really treat your girl this year. Forget Applebee’s; go to a real good steakhouse, on me.”
The extra hundred did it, and he shook my hand with some gusto.
Vern checked me out, the debit card worked, and he loaded the stuff in the back of the van. With a ‘see you later’, I set off. Cash from the bank, then back to the house to rest. Man, I felt exhausted.
When I got home, Mandy Cross stood over the dining table. “What’s this?”
I was a bit pissed at her, just being there, but I felt too tired to argue. “The Helsing Diaries.” I replied, smiling inwardly at the cool name.
“They’re from Philly, 1957.”
“That’s what it says on the folder.”
She didn’t rise to my sarcasm, but looked up at me, over the table, over the heap of papers.
“Are you investigating Amos Blanche?”
Well, that did it for me. I already felt kinda out on my feet. I flopped down on the sofa, which still gave me a view of Mandy in the dining room. I realized that I was breathing quite heavily. “What do you know of him?” I asked.
“He turned Alan. And Jackson, my fake parents too, Hannah and Barton.” She walked through and sat in a chair opposite. “If you think about it, I’m a Blanche vampire. So were the kids at Gregor. We were all turned by Alan. Alan got turned by Amos.”
“And this interests you?”
“Of course it does.” She swallowed hard. “It’s now my history.”
“So if I’m investigating Amos, you think I’m after you?”
“No, not at all. I’m safe here right now. You don’t have anywhere near the strength to take me. But if you’re investigating Amos Blanche, then you’re also investigating Alan McCartney, and I want to be in at the death of that motherfucker.”
Okay - so it really was Christmas and Lyman had a real nice gift for me…even if that hadn’t been his intention. The envelope marked “Philadelphia 1957” was spread out all over the table. Almost immediately, I found what I’d been looking for.
“So that’s him? Amos Blanche?”
I picked up the black-and-white photo and engraved every feature into my memory. He wasn’t really what I’d expected. Alan had said Amos liked to keep his recruits young, strong. So, I guess I pretty much figured Amos would match that description himself. Not so much.
Amos Blanche was a gray-haired, aging man with a receding hairline, flimsy jaw, and razor-thin lips. He looked gaunt around the cheekbones, skinny at the shoulders. I imagined the rest of him wouldn’t be any more impressive. Like Hannah and Barton, he didn’t live up to that “beautiful vampire” rep from the movies. If I’d seen Amos Blanche on the street I would have thought nothing of him. Certainly not, “Oh that guy’s a big ringleader in the vampire mafia.”
“Pathetic,” I said, setting the picture down before I could no longer resist the urge to crumple it to pulp in my fist.
“Not a fan, huh?” Lyman asked with a geeky snort.
“Not so much.”
He grabbed a clipping from the envelope marked 1963. “Well, here. Wait ‘til you see this.”
“This” was a full-page-sized clipping, all folded up and looking like it could fall apart if someone breathed on it wrong. Lyman took his time unfolding it; partly because it was so delicate, but I think also partly because he enjoyed keeping me in suspense. When he laid it out flat on the table, I could’ve dropped dead right there.
“Alan?”
Alan McCartney stared back from the page, no doubt about it. Except for the bowl cut and suit-with-tie, he looked the same in that picture as the day I met him. His expression reminded me of the Mona Lisa; y’know - that smirky smile that makes you think they’re hiding something.
Lyman snorted again. “So, he was a smug bastard back then, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dude, you gotta stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
I crinkled my nose into a snout and imitated the annoying sound.
“Oh, well…excuse me! I’ve just been sitting here trying to hold my breath this whole time. You need a shower, woman!”
“Looks who’s talking! You smell like extra sour pickles, Helsing!”
Lyman just stared at me, all doe-eyed. After about three seconds, we both broke into this weird giggle. Ice breaker - it felt good.
Then all of a sudden he slid out the nearest chair and sunk down hard. He looked exhausted.
“You okay, Lyman?”
“Yeah; just got myself worn out. Too much, too soon I s’pose.”
I went and hovered over him like some mother hen. Kind of threw me off when his cheeks puffed out ‘cause he tried so hard not to breathe me in.
“Grrr…I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been a little lazy the last few days n’ haven’t showered.” I decided to give him some space and slipped into the chair opposite him. “It’s just been so…blah…lately. Y’know?”
I could tell by his expression that he did know. In fact, I suspected nobody knew better than Lyman Bracks about what I’d gone through.
“Usually you smell…nice…” he said.
That made me smile. He looked pretty dorky, but in his own way, he was also pretty sweet. I started to see what Mary-Christine liked about him. Not that she seemed such a prize…
Before I could say anything nice back, the doorbell rang. Lyman suddenly looked a different person after that. He bounced to his feet like he’d forgotten to be tired, holding up his hands, like giving the “sit, stay” command.
“Oh, shit. That’ll be Vern…he’s delivering my new computer. He can’t find you here, Mandy!”
“Why not? It’s not like I’m wearing a nametag that says, ‘Hello, I’m a Vampire.’”
He twisted his mouth at me. “Cute…BUT! I really need you to hide.”
“Don’t be such a dweeb. I’m not going to kill the delivery boy.”
“He’s kind of a friend of mine.”
“Still not gonna kill him. Just answer the door, Lyman.”
You would have thought I held a gun to his head the way he skulked to the door. He barely opened it a crack.
“Hey, Vern! Thanks for bringing that stuff, man…”
Awkward pause.
Then I heard Vern on the other side of the door, “You wanna let me in, Lyman? This stuff’s getting kind of heavy…”
“Yes, Lyman,” I said loud as I could, “let Vern in.”
Ooh. He shot me a dirty look then.
But, he finally let the door swing open and his buddy in the house. “Sorry, Vern. Yeah, come on in.”
Vern got about ten steps in the place when he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Oh…um…hi…” he said to me, looking like he’d just seen a ghost.
“I know; it’s weird to see a girl at Lyman’s house, huh?”
Humor didn’t work on the guy. Vern just kept real still, his face had no expression.
I went up, stuck my hands out for the box he held. “Why don’t you give that to me? I don’t think Lyman’s in any shape to be lugging it around.”
He just handed it over to me without a word. Geez - talk about your charmers.
“You got the rest of the stuff out in the car?” Lyman asked Vern.
No response.
“Um…Vern? The stuff?”
“Uh? Yeah - one sec.”
Vern backed out the door, his eyes never leaving me for a second. For reasons I couldn’t understand, Lyman looked furious. I just shrugged at him.
“Vampires have that effect on humans. I can’t help it…”
“Don’t you get it, Mandy? He recognizes you! Vern stood five feet away from Alan when you killed him! Vern plays flute!”
<
br /> Oh. Shit. Just because I had Spike off my trail, didn’t mean all the witnesses at Gregor Academy had forgotten me. I felt a tad dumb, right then.
“I’ll fix it,” I told him.
“You sure as hell will not! Mandy Cross…don’t you lay a finger on him!”
I gave Lyman a piercing look over that. “It’s my fangs you have to worry about.”
Vern came back up to the door but didn’t enter. Instead he just deposited another good-sized box on the porch and went back to the car for some more. On his third trip up, I caught him by surprise.
Once Vern stood on the porch, I snatched him inside before he knew what’d hit him.
I pulled my body close to his. I could tell Vern didn’t mind my smell half as much as Lyman did. With my lips right up close to his ear, I whispered the suggestion.
“I was never here. You dropped off the boxes. You left. Lyman was alone.”
For good measure I pressed my pelvis against his. He moaned and I knew I had him.
“Tell me what you’re going to remember…”
Vern recited my words verbatim, “…Lyman was alone…”
“Good boy. Now - is this everything or is there more?”
His face looked blank as he replied, “That’s everything.”
I backed off. Vern slouched against the wall.
“Great. Thank you. You can go now, Vern.”
He wasn’t halfway out the door when Lyman called for him, waving a stack of twenties in the air. “Wait! Vern! Your money!”
Vern never turned around, just stumbled to his car and drove away like he’d been hypnotized.
Lyman was in a tizzy. “Fuck. I didn’t even get to pay him!”
“See? Having a vampire around has its uses.”
“Like skipping out on payment. Real noble, Mandy.”
I ignored him.
“New computer? Awesome. Let’s get it set up so we can get to work.”
Lyman had that same blank look Vern did.
“What, Lyman? What?!”
“If we’re gonna be doing this research together, I want a promise from you,” he said. “Never pull that mind-warp, Obe-Wan-Kenobi crap on me like what you did to Vern just then.”
I grinned. “No promises, Lyman. Not if it comes down to my life or one of your Helsings.”
“Listen,” his voice got stiff, defensive, “if it ever comes down to you or Mary-Christine, I’ll save Mary-Christine. Every time.”
“Interesting to hear you say that,” I told him, my tone matching his. “I wonder if Mary-Christine would be as loyal to you, Lyman.”
He gave me a cold look. Well, I got to work in silence, letting that idea swim around in his head for a while. After my last meeting with Mary-Christine, I felt pretty sure I knew where she stood. That girl was all about her boyfriend. But, it seemed pretty evident to me that Lyman wasn’t all that sure.
And that might be my only means of shifting his loyalty from the Helsings to me.
Well, it didn’t take long for the shit to hit the fan, and it did on Christmas day.
Mary-Christine came around early, and we swapped presents, and some kisses on the sofa.
A bump sounded upstairs, almost directly above our heads. Mary-Christine jumped. “Did you hear that?”
I leant back against the sofa. “Yeah, I was going to explain. Mandy stayed here last night.”
“What?” she leapt to her feet. “Did you two?”
I gave her such a ‘Lyman’ smile, that I could see she melted slightly. “I couldn’t raise my hand, never mind…”
“Okay, I get the idea.”
“Besides, she’s a vampire, for goodness sake.” I motioned her over, but Mandy had come downstairs.
“I thought I heard voices,” Mandy said, coming into the living room. She waved ‘hi’ to Mary-Christine. “I’m sorry about last night, Lyman. I didn’t realize I’d gotten so gross.”
My girlfriend gave me another of those looks. I was getting fed up with this already.
All of a sudden I sat in the middle of a triangle. Mary-Christine glared at me, I looked sheepishly at Mandy, and Mandy looked guiltily towards Mary-Christine. “We were working on the Amos Blanche papers last night.”
“The Helsing Diaries,” I corrected.
“Yeah, whatever, dude. We were working on the ‘Helsing Diaries’ last night, when your mister perfect here happens to drop a hint that I didn’t exactly smell minty, so to speak.”
I felt awkward, and I didn’t know which way Mary-Christine would go. “Where were you working?”
I pointed with my thumb at the closed door. “Dining room.”
Mary-Christine stood at the door in seconds, but she stopped just inside. “Bloody Hell.”
We had newspaper clippings everywhere.
“Mandy and I decided that we needed it sorted better, so we cross-checked all the newspaper files into date order. Most were in the wrong folders. I don’t know who sorted them before, but they were wrong.”
Mary-Christine just stared around the room. “Mom and dad never took it this far,” she said.
Mandy moved to her shoulder, and Mary-Christine flinched. “S’ok, sweet-cheeks, I’m not hungry, plus, I’m not into vinegar chips. Did you sort them before?”
Mary-Christine nodded. “I remember mom and dad going through them a few years ago, but I was too young to care much.”
Mandy walked into the room, and started indicating piles of papers. “Well it seems that the last sorters, whoever they were, had all the clippings by region, trying to tie all the happenings down to one man. It seemed a fair conclusion, but simply not accurate enough. If we separate them by the level of incidents within the regional boundaries, we find five centric hubs. This means five separate and distinctly different vampire communities.”
“All ruled by Amos?” Mary-Christine turned to me, and I smiled. Mandy had worked through most of the night, and it seemed she had been quite thorough.
“Amos is the big cheese in Pennsylvania.” Mandy grinned at her own joke.
I decided to get to my feet, and soon, all three of us stood round the table.
“The other three are in New York, Florida San Francisco, and Seattle.”
I waited patiently for Lyman to get Mary-Christine up to speed. Basically we’d learned that Amos Blanche had a pattern of recruiting young vampires and then putting his seconds in charge while he relocated to go start the movement someplace else.
Lyman’s theory was that Alan McCartney was being groomed as one of Amos’s Lieutenants and might have eventually been given a piece of the territory in Pennsylvania to oversee.
Personally, I found his theory to be full of doo-doo. If the clippings told us anything, Blanche liked to keep his foot soldiers young and good looking - send them out to the front lines to do the dirty work. His sergeants, on the other hand, were all much older. And they, so to speak, kept the troops in line.
Obviously, Alan had torn a page right out of Amos’s book when he sent Hannah and Barton to look after me. I turned out to be just another foot soldier; he sank farther down in my estimations.
“I don’t think Alan would ever move up in ranks,” I cut in just as Lyman was sharing his ideas with Mary-Christine. “He was a grunt and that’s all he was ever gonna be. If it hadn’t been for Amos’s death, he would have stayed at that level.”
Mary-Christine gave me a pissy look. “How can you be so sure?”
I indicated the table. “It’s all in the papers. Just about all of Amos Blanche’s sergeants were older, most ex-military. All extremely sadistic and power-hungry, even as humans. Alan was just a teenage kid when he was turned; sure - he was probably a prick back then, too, and definitely had aspirations to be a ringleader by the time we all knew him. But, I don’t think he was such a big shot back in the day.”
“What difference does it make anyway?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure. May not make any difference at all…but, if we’re trying to piece together th
e history…”
“We aren’t!” mary-Christine snapped. “There is no WE, Mandy. There’s me and Lyman, my family, the Helsings… and then - way over there in your corner - there’s you. Alone.”
That little bitch. She got real brave when she thought her boyfriend could save her ass.
“Really? ‘Cause I don’t look so alone to me. In fact…I spent the entire night with your main squeeze.”
Lyman made the time-out signal. “We didn’t do anything…”
I shot him a sly look and a wink. “Not that you can remember.”
That got him. I could see his mind spinning backwards, searching for deleted memories.
Mary-Christine went red in the face. To be honest, I loved it.
“For the last time, Mandy, stay away from him.”
“You’re damn right it’s the last time.” I stepped up to her, all big, mean, and vampire-like. “It’s time you stopped being the sniveling little brokenhearted girlfriend and started being the fucking Helsing you claim to be.”
I picked up the picture of Alan McCartney and shoved it at her. “Here’s your enemy, Mary-Christine. Yours and mine. We can claw at each other all day long if that’s what you really want…or we can get to work.”
Mary-Christine turned her back on me, the photo - even Lyman. She issued one final girlfriend-zilla command over her shoulder, “My parents are expecting us for dinner, Lyman. Are you coming with me or staying with…her?”
I could practically see Lyman’s remaining strength drain out of him. He shot me an apologetic look but directed his answer at Mary-Christine.
“Of course I’m going with you.”
Without giving me a backward glance, she stalked off to the door and just waited there, hand on the knob, until Lyman dragged himself up to her.
Okay, so I’m a female dog; but, I couldn’t just let it go at that…
“No worries, Lyman. I’ll be here when you get back…”
A Vampire’s Christmas Dinner
Christmas dinner went well. Even with my thoughts drifting back to Mandy back at the house, I really enjoyed myself. Trouble was, by the time I’d gotten to the ‘forbidden’ glass of wine after the meal, I felt tired again. I flopped on their sofa and let myself soak into the cushions.