Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  Stefan Pagelovitch didn’t exude a tenth of his actual menace—which made him all the more dangerous. So I wasn’t happy about inviting him across my threshold. And I wouldn’t even consider letting any of his enforcers inside. Even after he assured me that my red-eyed, cell phone-wielding vamp hadn’t been one of them.

  “So,” I said, “what you’re telling me is that there’s another group of fanged enforcers in town.”

  Pagelovitch nodded. “New York has had a presence down here for some time. I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed until now.”

  I shrugged. “We run in different social circles.”

  “I, of all people, should know better than to confuse you with your legend.”

  I unfolded my arms. “My what?”

  “You shared blood with the legendary Dracula and then took him out.”

  “Well, we never actually dated—oh, I see.” I looked over at Deirdre. “People been making up stories about me?”

  She looked very small and despondent huddled on the couch. “It’s well known that you killed Kadeth Bey and Lilith. And that you then destroyed Vlad Dracula. Is it surprising that the tale has grown with each telling?”

  “Dracula is—” I stopped myself. Bassarab wanted the rest of the enclaves to believe he was dead and gone: we had set it up that way. I was already on the docket for a half-dozen vampire fatalities, what was one more?

  Pagelovitch shook his head. “The Impaler, the four-thousand-year-old Necromancer who hounded him throughout the last five centuries, and the traitor who compromised the security of my entire enclave—any one of them might have made you a legend in death. Overcoming all three and then turning up alive—well—” he walked over to the drapes shielding the picture window, “—we all believe in the Boogie Man. You seem to have moved up the list to the number-two position.”

  He didn’t say who topped the list at number one. He didn’t have to.

  “Is that why you let Deirdre leave? So you could follow her and find out whether I was a living legend or a musty myth?”

  Deirdre’s face tightened into a mask of misery.

  “She didn’t betray you,” he said, pulling back the curtains to give us an unobscured view of the grounds. Or, more likely, to give his people an unobscured view of the interior of my living room.

  “You mean not consciously,” I said, unmoved by the stricken expression on Deirdre’s face.

  “We didn’t follow her, if that’s what you mean.” He leaned back into the sofa and crossed his legs, putting a pair of Traversi alligator shoes on display. “I don’t know how she found you.” He hesitated and looked thoughtful. “Although I understand that Dr. Mooncloud was helping her with some sort of focused dream-trance-interpretation something. . . .” He shook his head. “No, my dear Christopher, it would appear that you have betrayed yourself.”

  “Okay. Mind telling me how?”

  “You are familiar with the FBI’s ‘Carnivore’ software?”

  “You mean the computer setup that intercepts and reads mass volumes of email, scanning for key word combinations?”

  Pagelovitch nodded. “We have something similar that we use to keep tabs on various government and law-enforcement communications. As you might imagine, we’ve added your name to the key words and phrases for which we maintain a constant alert.”

  “And my name is being bandied about by the local constabulary?”

  He nodded again. “It turned up. It seems there was a—how would you say—ruckus—at a local funeral home. . . .”

  I almost slapped my forehead. “Damn! I signed the guest book as Christopher L. Cséjthe!”

  “It didn’t take long to hack the City Hall computer databases to see who had appeared in town about the right time. From there it was a matter of narrowing the list of suspects.” He smiled wolfishly and steepled his fingers. “This house was our first stop on the list.”

  “Lovely. Now what?”

  The Doman sighed and placed his fingers against his lips. “Christopher, you place me in a very difficult position.”

  “What about my position?” I growled.

  “Christopher, you are rogue. Not only that but Lupé and now Deirdre have followed you into exile. Under the law you all must either return to my demesne or be destroyed.”

  I moved my eyebrows up for maximum effect. “Your demesne? Under the law we are required to ally myself with some demesne. I don’t recall the wording that gives you unequivocal rights to our persons.”

  “The law,” he observed placidly, “requires me to destroy you if you are not allied with some demesne. So, if not us, then who?”

  “We have a demesne,” I said. “My Doman knows where I am, I have his approval, and we,” I glanced back at Deirdre, “are under his protection.”

  “And your Doman’s name is . . . ?”

  “Christopher L. Cséjthe.”

  Pagelovitch didn’t bat an eye. “Christopher,” he said patiently after a long pause, “you know that is unacceptable. I need a real answer, a final answer.”

  I stared at him. “Only Regis Philbin gets a final answer.”

  He stared back. “Not if you’re the weakest link.”

  I blinked. “How much time do I get to give you a final answer? Fifteen seconds?”

  He smiled patiently; the teeth remained hidden. “You’ve been gone for better than half a year; how much time do you need?”

  “More than fifteen seconds.”

  “What if I give you a day?”

  “I need more than a day. How about a week?”

  Pagelovitch shook his head. “I don’t think you have a week.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He sighed and rose to his feet. “It means if your signature led us to you, it will lead others to you, as well. Sooner rather than later.” He put his cold hand on my shoulder. “Come back with me and help me rule the Northwest. You’ll be a colleague, not a prisoner. If New York claims you, you’ll be a prisoner—or worse.”

  “You think they’d actually kill me?”

  He shook his head. “There are worse things than death, my friend. You know who rules there?”

  It was hardly a guess by now: “Elizabeth Báthory.”

  It made sense, of course.

  When Vlad Drakul Bassarab V had retired from the neck-stabbing politics of ruling the New York demesne, he found it necessary to disappear. The new Doman of the East Coast was very jealous of her then-and-future power-base. She put her own hounds of hell on the old voivode’s trail, forcing him to go into hiding—in Kansas, of all places.

  At the time he had told me of his need for anonymity and I had briefly wondered who could put the fear of death into history’s number-one bloodsucker. Other distractions had prevented a follow-up question at the time but it certainly made sense now. Off the battlefield, the Countess Erzsébet Báthory-Nádasdy was actually scarier than Transylvania’s crown prince, a regular Torquemada of the Damned.

  Pagelovitch nodded. “Then you know how terrible the consequences can be should you fall within her bloody grasp.”

  I just looked at him working hard on a nonplussed expression—heavy emphasis on the non.

  He sighed finally. “I will give you a day. Maybe two if all remains quiet. But I will need an answer by then. And do not presume upon my friendship.” He took his leave then with a promise to return the following night.

  I gave him a few minutes to quit my property and then peeked out the window. Not all of his minions had departed with him. I now had extra security. I wondered what their reaction would be if any additional plaintiffs turned up for this evening’s session of night court.

  Returning to my library in the den, I turned on my laptop.

  “What will you do?” Deirdre asked from the doorway.

  “I don’t know,” I said, browsing one of the bookshelves while the computer booted up. “I’m not ready to leave, yet. It’s not just a matter of freedom and personal choice. I think—” Actually it was best if no one kne
w what I was thinking just then. “I need you to do some research while I’m gone.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To see a client.”

  “What kind of client?”

  “The kind that may have answers that I can’t get anywhere else. I’m not blowing town when a cure for my condition might lie right here, in my own proverbial back yard.”

  “Every night you remain here you run a risk.”

  I shrugged. “Every day, every night, is a risk for me as long as the virus continues to mutate in my body. In the meantime, I’d like you to look up everything you can find on Elizabeth Báthory. Do you know how to do online searches?”

  “I’m undead, not brain-dead,” she said archly.

  “Good. I have some reference material on the shelves, here, but you’ll have to do a little digging. Print out anything you can find on the Internet. She was Hungarian so remember to try alternate English spellings of her name.”

  “I am yours to command.” Soft, a little breathy, like a half-hearted attempt at Marilyn Monroe.

  “Good. Whatever I end up doing, you’re going back to Seattle with Pagelovitch.”

  “Why?”

  “Do the research. It will answer your question better than anything I could say.” I went to the closet and brought out a black, hooded sweatshirt. “Now, one more thing. I want you to put this on, pull the hood over your hair, and run out the back door and into the woods.”

  “I’m your decoy?”

  “Pagelovitch left two of his watchdogs behind. Just get them to chase you for about thirty seconds—that’s all the time I’ll need to get the car started and out onto the main road.”

  She stood there, looking thoughtful.

  “You think they might hurt you?”

  She shook her head as if she were shaking off a thought. “No. I know Stefan and I know his lapdogs: they will kill when it is necessary. But he is patient in most things and particularly long-suffering when it comes to you. They will not like the deception but they will not harm me as long as Stefan considers you to still be under his protection.” She pulled the oversized sweatshirt on over her head. “I will do as you command—”

  “Request.”

  “—and neuter the watchdogs. After which I will do the research for you.”

  “Actually, the research is more for you than for me,” I said, thinking of Countess Báthory’s proclivities toward the fairer sex. I hoped she would understand the warning.

  Clutching my car keys so they wouldn’t jingle, I took up a position next to the door where I could watch the front yard without being seen. A minute passed and then the back door opened and closed noisily. The watchdog vamp in the front went tearing around the side of the house and I eased the front door open and slipped out onto the porch. Running lightly down to the car, I slipped behind the wheel and pulled the driver’s door to the almost-closed position.

  I smiled as I inserted the ignition key: One of the advantages of driving an antique car was the absence of buzzers and alarms for doors, seatbelts, and ignitions. While I had spent a fair amount of money upgrading the engine, drive train, brakes, and wiper/reservoir system, I had kept the stealth configuration of the Fifties. I turned the key and closed the door simultaneously. As soon as the engine caught I popped the transmission into reverse and went careening down the long drive backwards instead of wasting precious seconds swinging around the concrete circle in front of the house.

  At any moment I expected two very irritated vamps to run back around the house and come charging down the driveway faster than any human could run.

  It didn’t happen.

  I spun the car out onto the cul-de-sac, slipped into drive and hesitated: still no pursuit. At least not from the house. Apparently Pagelovitch didn’t think two watchdogs were enough: as I drove away, I picked up a tail at the end of the block.

  I drove out to BioWeb with the black Suburban in my rearview mirror all the way. There seemed to be no point in trying to outrun or lose my undead babysitters as long as they weren’t trying to stop me. A high-speed car chase, on the other hand, was just the thing to get additional unwanted attention.

  I took my time, whistling “Me And My Shadow” as I crossed over the Ouachita River by way of the Endom Bridge.

  * * *

  I had some time before I was supposed to meet Chalice Delacroix so I gave my watchdogs the nickel tour. I drove around Monroe until it was patently obvious to even the outtatowners that ninety-six percent of just about everything was closed down by ten p.m. Even the mosquitoes packed it in around midnight—there just wasn’t enough food out and about by that time to make it worth their while. In terms of the public nightlife, Monroe wasn’t a swell place for the Big City vamps to visit. Since I lived here, I could almost feel sympathy oozing from the vehicle behind me as we motored down another darkened thoroughfare: pickings would be mighty slim for any night feeder.

  Fate was with me on this particular night, however. The lights were still on at St. Mark’s and I pulled up in front of the church with deviltry in mind. By the time my tail had pulled in behind me, I was out of my car and running up the steps with a forty-two ounce Citgo “Big Swallow” cup I had rescued from the cup-caddy on the passenger side. I heard doors slam behind me as I ducked inside and then nonchalantly walked into the narthex and scoped out the holy water font at the back of the chapel.

  It was nearly empty.

  Great: when do they fill these things, anyway?

  “Can I help you, son?” A man approached from the candle-lit altar at the front of the chapel. He was middle-aged with a dusky, dark complexion that looked odd in the lowered lighting of the chancel.

  At first I thought he was the priest but, as he limped down the steps and came down the center aisle, I saw that he was dressed like a workman. Faded jeans that raised doubts about their original color were peg-legged over weathered brown work boots with bits of green vegetation snarled in the climbing Xs of tan laces. The sleeves of his chambray shirt were rolled up to reveal forearms corded with lean muscle and camouflaged by indecipherable tattoos. A ring glinted on the third finger of his left hand. His brown hair was shot with threads of silver and his deep-set eyes seemed to glimmer like the votive candles behind him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Calm down, I told myself. Relax. “I—I was looking for the priest.” Oops, wrong answer! All I wanted was a quick in-and-out, not a prolonged, excuse-making conversation with the resident padre.

  “He doesn’t seem to be around at the moment,” the dusky man said with a sad smile. “You look like a man in search of an answer.”

  More like a man in search of liquid ammo. But I said: “Actually I was just passing by and I wanted to ask a question about something in the Bible.”

  The man stared at me as if he were reading the truth in my statement.

  “The Book of Revelation says something about the ‘Whore of Babylon’ . . .”

  He nodded. “ ‘And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication; And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.’ “

  There were unexpected goose bumps on my arms. “Who is she?”

  That sad smile again. “Now that has been the subject of endless debates. Some Protestants will tell you that John the Revelator was writing about the corruption of the Church Catholic. Others say it is America . . . a secret organization . . . a nation yet to rise to prominence . . . some now say it’s one of the terrorist organizations. Take your pick or make up your own.” He shrugged. “The Book of Revelation doesn’t come
with a Rosetta stone or Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. It’s more like a Rorschach test for the rabidly religious.”

  “So,” I said, “this Prostitute of Perdition isn’t a real person or thing. She’s really just a symbol, representing a group or organization.”

  “That’s what the theologians believe.”

  “Theologians.”

  His smile was a little less sad. “You say that like a conservative fundamentalist.”

  My turn to smile. “Isn’t that redundant?”

  “Not at all. True fundamentalists are radical, back-to-the-basics kinds of folks. Conservatives are—well—conservative.”

  I chuckled. “While theologians are lawyers with Divinity degrees.”

  “And,” he said, seeming to read my mind, “they tend to discount the supernatural.”

  “Meaning,” I elaborated, “that they couldn’t possibly buy into the interpretation of the Whore of Babylon as an actual person.”

  “If one could properly call a demon a person,” he finished for me.

  “So, laying theologians aside . . .”

  “You lay the theologians, they’re not my type.”

  I grinned. “ . . . who would this Strumpet of Doom most likely be if she wasn’t a metaphysical metaphor? Any likely candidates?”

  He stared at me as if trying to decipher the intent behind my question. “There was an ancient demon—or demoness, actually—who fit the profile for the Revelator’s visions. In ancient Sumer she was called Ereshkigal and the Greeks knew her as Hecate.”

  “What about the Babylonians?”

  He shook his head—a twitch more than an actual gesture. “They wouldn’t have recognized an actual demon if it had bitten them on the ass. Which happened rather frequently if you’ve studied what passed for their culture. No, the Whore of Babylon was best documented by the ancient Israelites. They knew her as Lilith.”

  The name shook me: I had killed a vampire named Lilith back in Kansas who had seemed as evil as any undead I had yet met.

  “Does that name have any significance for you?”