Be My Valentine

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Cancel that order. He’s gone.’

  The eyes of several of the other girls looked around to the door. ‘That’s weird,’ one of them offered. ‘Your customers usually stick around for seconds.’

  Connie shrugged. ‘Some people just don’t appreciate good ice cream.’

  ~~~

  Something about Mr Tutti Frutti had bothered Connie for most of the rest of the day, taking the spring out of her step. It was not until she got back to her apartment that she knew her instincts were right: Mr Tutti Frutti was waiting outside her door with a couple of friends.

  ‘Concetta Bergen?’ Mr Tutti Frutti asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We need to talk to you. It’s a council matter.’

  Connie looked them over for a second. They did not look like representatives of the Concilium, but they had her at something of a disadvantage. ‘You’d better come in then,’ she said.

  Her apartment was not a large one, but it did for her. It had a separate kitchen and a spare bedroom. The shower over the bath actually worked pretty well. She had made it hers, started almost from scratch, keeping little from her life before and building up a collection of furniture she liked, the odd picture. It was only about two blocks from Mama’s too, and the journey uptown to the pascua at the Black Candle was not exactly onerous. She liked it, but she rarely had visitors, especially vampire visitors, and she could have done without the ones she had.

  ‘You’re aware of the recent incident with the drug Apollo?’ Tutti Frutti said before she could even take her coat off.

  ‘Of course I am,’ Connie replied. ‘Everyone is. It was all over the news.’

  ‘What wasn’t in the news is that it was a Societas Draconistarum operation. The Concilium appointed a special task force to hunt out any remaining members in New York.’

  ‘Oh.’ Connie hung up her coat and pulled the ties out of her hair. This was normally the point where she lost the stupid costume and put on normal clothes, but she was not undressing in front of this lot. She settled for sitting down to take off her pumps.

  ‘We’re part of that task force,’ Tutti Frutti said when that seemed to be all the response he was getting.

  ‘Well, what are you talking to me for? I’m a daimyo, not a transylvanian.’

  ‘And we all know that daimyo are an accident waiting to happen, just like the trannys. So here’s the deal: you tell us about your Societas contacts and the Concilium might just go easy on you. We can arrange that. Otherwise, when the hammer falls…’

  He was glaring at her, trying to sell the threat, but if there was one thing her foster creatrix had drummed into her, it was the basic laws of vampire society. In fact, the old woman had taught her little else: she had been way big on the discipline aspect of the creatrix–filia relationship. ‘If I was a member of Societas, nothing you said could save me from being beheaded. It’s an edict from the Summus Concilium. I’d be burned, but I happen to know that the Hunter doesn’t do that.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about how they punish Societas members,’ one of the others said. He had an accent so thick with Brooklyn you could have cut it with a knife.

  ‘I had a creatrix who was big on the rules.’

  ‘So why aren’t you in Japan with her?’

  ‘I’ve never been to Japan. She lives in L.A. and I was born in Lake Placid. I don’t know anyone in Societas. I don’t know many vampires.’

  ‘I’d imagine not,’ Tutti Frutti said. ‘Who’d want to associate with a daimyo aside from outcasts and other daimyo?’ Which was true enough; the majority of vampire society thought of daimyo in a similar light to transylvanians: they were likely to go off the reservation at any time, just for different reasons. ‘Why’d they even let you back into New York? Who’d want–’

  ‘You don’t know the story?’ Connie interrupted. ‘They told me it was big news for a while. Winter Olympics of nineteen eighty and Connie Barrett, big skating fan, vanishes without a trace.’ She was aware that there was a bitter edge entering her voice, but she was still pretty bitter about it. ‘They never found her, not even a body. That was because I got bitten and drained, and left for dead. The Concilium did their best for me. The Hunter tried to find the bastard who did it, but he was probably back in Japan by the time she started looking. So, they paid to have me fostered on the West Coast and, when I wanted to come back, they helped me get set up. Mister Darius said it was the least they could do since they never got justice for me.’

  ‘You know Leo Darius?’ The tone was scoffing, with just a little nervousness around his eyes. And there was a change of scent too, a hint of fear seeping through the testosterone.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to think I’m “an accident waiting to happen.”’

  ‘Right.’ He was on the back foot now; they all were. ‘If you hear anything about Societas, you report it to the Concilium.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And if you hear anything about this valentine that’s murdering women, you report that too.’

  Connie frowned. ‘The Valentine Killer? He’s a valentine?’ All she got was narrowed eyes from Tutti Frutti, which was no kind of answer at all. ‘The only valentine I know is Pat at the pascua, and I don’t really know her. I don’t know many vampires.’

  ‘Just Leo Darius and the Hunter.’

  Pressing that button seemed like a good idea. They did not like that. ‘And a couple of the other Conciliarum. To say hello to.’ It was not actually untrue…

  ‘You be careful, daimyo,’ Tutti Frutti said, trying to make it into a threatening growl and not quite managing it. ‘We’ll be watching you.’

  The men started for the door and Connie followed to make sure they left more than anything else. She had no idea why the Concilium was sending petty thugs out to pester anyone they thought might be dangerous, but she had enough street smarts to smell a fishing expedition when it visited her at home. She would mention it to her local Vicarius, except that he might have been the one who sent them her way: old-school carpathians could be real prigs.

  No, as she closed the door behind them, Connie decided that she would deal with this in the same way she dealt with much of vampire society: she would ignore it and get on with the life she had been thrust into. At least humans liked her.

  Part Three: Ghouls

  New York, NY, 6th March 2015.

  Pat watched the traffic flowing into and out of the pascua, trying to keep the worried feeling from showing on her face. She had been hearing mutterings for the last couple of days in the bar. Takings were down: people were staying away, or not drinking as much or staying as long. Someone had let slip that a valentine was responsible for the recent deaths.

  So far, she had been unable to find an original source for the rumours. She had spoken to Dione and had got the news that Mary was monitoring, and trying to counter, some chat on the Sanguine Net. That was more worrying than local gossip since it could spread wider than New York, but it seemed to be reporting rumours heard on the street rather than originating anything. Without a source, it was all pretty difficult to counter. Gossip was a hard thing to fight anyway.

  Absorbed as she was by worries about a repeat of San Francisco, she barely noticed the red-haired man who walked in and stepped up to the desk. He had filled in the form and walked off toward his assigned room before her conscious brain recognised who she was seeing.

  ‘Can’t be,’ she muttered, and stepped up to the desk, picking up the clipboard to check the last entry. Silas Tarrant, valentine… Of course, he had ticked for sex as an option. But there was no way it could be him. Could it? She bolted for the observation room.

  Scanning over the screens, she spotted him. Give or take a whisker, he looked exactly the same as he had done when he had picked her up at Woodstock. Red hair pulled into a ponytail, sharply angled brows set over brown eyes, a slim face with just a hint of ruggedness, accentuated by the beard of stubble he never seemed to be without. He was slim, fit, attractive, actuall
y a little shorter than she was, but Pat was a tall woman. Thinking about it, he was still the scrawny hippy he had been then and she had filled out a little; clearly, Silas had never developed a greater desire for exercise while she had. More than anything, that suggested he was really her creator: he was still stubbornly lazy.

  ‘You know that guy?’ Tony, the vampire on watch, asked.

  Pat watched the screen as Silas began to work his magic on the brunette supplicant he had been assigned. ‘Yeah, I know him. That’s Silas, my creator.’

  Tony frowned. ‘I thought he was ended in the pogrom.’

  ‘Yeah, so did I. So where the fuck’s he been for the last thirty years?’

  ~~~

  ‘Silas.’

  Silas turned at the sound of a woman’s voice as he put his hand on the door out of the Black Candle. His eyes widened. ‘Pat? Jesus Christ on a unicycle! What are you doing here? You here for the gifts?’

  ‘I run the place,’ Pat replied, smirking.

  ‘You run the Black Candle?’ He stepped closer, grinning.

  ‘Uh-huh. I’m a respected member of the community.’

  ‘Well, that makes one of us.’

  ‘Come upstairs, have a drink. I have questions, old man.’

  Silas sagged a little. ‘Yeah… Yeah, I guess you would have. And I never say no to free booze.’

  ‘That hasn’t changed then.’

  Pat took him up to her apartment. Lisa was out so it would just be the two of them, and it was private. Silas looked like he recognised a few of the objects that decorated Pat’s home. Which was reasonable since they had decorated her apartment in San Francisco, but it was nice to see that he remembered.

  ‘So,’ Pat asked, ‘what happened?’

  ‘I got a visit in the night from a bunch of carpies with stakes, axes, and cans of petrol,’ Silas replied. ‘I got out, panicked. I figured leading them back to you would just get us both ended, so I ran. Hawaii first. Spent a decade bumming around out there. Then Europe. Spain, Greece, France. About a month ago, I decided to give the homeland another try. Seems like I picked a bad time.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m staying at the hostel. Carbon Fourteen. I’ve been hearing some rumours.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah… I was thinking of petitioning for a patch around here. That’s why I came here for a gift. Wanted to see what the domestic supply was like. Now… Maybe Chicago.’ Pat made a grunting noise. ‘Or Florida. I could get a job at Disneyland, or World, or whatever it is they got there.’

  ‘Are you turning into an aging vampire stereotype?’

  ‘Hey, Spring Break is still supposed to be great for free-range hunting.’

  Pat rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, if you have no self-respect.’

  ‘Well, New York isn’t exactly looking welcoming. I’ve had a few funny looks.’

  ‘Our Hunter is the best in the business, Silas. She’ll nail this guy soon and it’ll be done with.’

  ‘They said that about San Francisco.’

  ‘This isn’t San Francisco. Dione won’t put up with any shit and Leo, our Princeps, will clamp down on trouble so hard the city’ll squeak.’

  ‘Dione? That’s your Hunter?’ Pat nodded in reply. ‘I think I heard of Dione. She’s an old one.’

  ‘She’s the old one. Now, tell me about Hawaii? Did you learn to hula?’

  Silas grinned his rather languid grin. ‘Got the grass skirt an’ everything.’

  ‘I can see you in a grass skirt and a coconut bra.’

  ‘Don’t sass your creator, girly.’

  ‘My creator vanished for a couple of decades without a word. I thought you’d been ended. I’ll sass you all I want.’

  ~~~

  Dione moved through the Candle at a slower pace than usual. Listening, especially on the ground floor, was useless, but she was paying attention to body language, watching the people out for a Friday night in a club. Things were far from sanguine. The numbers seemed down for one thing. The ground floor was still fairly full, but not quite as full as on a typical weekend. The staff on the middle floor, where the more respectable vampires tended to make camp, were looking bored.

  Up at the top, there were more empty tables than usual, but what caught Dione’s attention was the way Lisa was sitting. The blonde doctor was perched on her usual stool, dressed in a dress with about enough fabric to respectably cover a doll. That was all as usual, but her back was straight, tense, and her shoulders a little hunched. She was clutching her wine glass in front of her chest and her expression was… a fixed smile masking nervousness.

  On the stool beside hers was a scrawny-looking man with red hair yanked back into a ponytail. Dione recognised vampire almost immediately. As she got closer, her nose picked up too much valentine scent for just Pat. And Pat seemed to know him, chatting easily over the bar while Lisa smiled that sickly, nervous smile…

  ‘Evening,’ Dione said. She planted a kiss on Lisa’s cheek and took her customary stool, and Lisa noticeably relaxed.

  ‘Di!’ Pat was obviously not in low spirits. ‘Surprise visitor. I’d like you to meet Silas, my–’

  ‘Your creator? I was under the impression–’

  ‘I get that a lot,’ Silas said. Dione looked around Lisa at him and noticed that his posture had stiffened now. ‘Tales of my demise were greatly exaggerated.’

  ‘He was in Hawaii,’ Pat said. ‘Then Europe. Did he even think to send me a postcard?’

  ‘In my defence, I had no idea where you were.’

  ‘Excuses, excuses…’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see that you’re only as dead as you were,’ Dione said. ‘What brings you to New York?’

  Silas flashed her a quick glance. For whatever reason, he was not the laid-back figure he had been when she had walked in. ‘I plan to settle back in the US. The way things are here, though… Maybe Los Angeles. I heard they’d legalised weed over there.’

  ‘I was there recently. Frankly, the light was enough to make me stay away, though I have a good friend out there. You’ve been hearing rumours about our serial killer?’

  ‘Yeah…’ Silas frowned and looked around before sinking the remainder of his drink. ‘Uh, look, I’ve still got things to take care of so I’m going to–’

  ‘On a Friday night?’ Pat interrupted, frowning. ‘You only just got here.’

  ‘I know. I’m just feeling… I have things to do. Later, kid.’ And he slipped off his stool and started for the door.

  ‘Damn,’ Pat muttered, placing a glass of whiskey in front of Dione. ‘I think he was nervous meeting you. He always was a bit anti-authoritarian.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Dione replied, but that did not explain why Lisa had been so wound up with him there. ‘I’m sure he’ll get used to his once-filia turning respectable.’

  ‘I hope so. I’d like him to settle here. I’m sure the Concilium would agree and New York is safe. It, uh, is safe here, isn’t it?’

  ‘I intend to make sure it is, yes. Things seem a little quiet here tonight.’

  ‘Uh-huh, they do. I’m sure the fact that the owner is a valentine has nothing to do with it.’

  Dione shrugged. ‘The pogrom in San Francisco caused trouble for more than just the valentines. It was chaos. The Concilium there lost control of the situation and the community factionalised. People will be worrying about the same thing happening here, but it won’t happen.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, because they didn’t have Leo and me in San Francisco. We’ll both stamp down on trouble pretty hard if it comes up. Quit worrying about it, Pat. You know I’ll keep you safe.’

  Pat gave a shrug. ‘I know. Maybe it’s not me I’m worried about.’

  7th March.

  It was long after midnight before Dione got Lisa alone. Lisa had decided to spend the night with Dione, or what was left of it, so asking about Silas was delayed until they were both naked on one of the lounge sofas after the first round of lovemaking.

&
nbsp; ‘I don’t know what it was about him,’ Lisa said when asked, ‘but he just creeped me out. I was all happy for Pat and everything, but…’

  ‘I trust your instincts, Lisa,’ Dione told her. ‘Tell me what you felt.’

  ‘Well, I felt vampire, obviously, but in the Candle, that’s like a constant buzz. Can’t get away from it. Wouldn’t want to. Silas seemed nice enough, and then Pat told him I was her favourite and that I lived with her, and he smiled at me. He made some cute comment, but his smile made my skin crawl. I felt like… It was like he was just waiting. He knew he was going to get between my legs, like it was just a matter of time.’

  ‘Predatory.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s a good word for it.’

  Lisa had closed in while she spoke, curling up against Dione’s stomach. Dione opened her back up with tender fingers, stroking and teasing until Lisa was nothing but a whimpering mass of nerves. ‘Don’t worry about him,’ Dione whispered. ‘If he hurts you, they’ll never find the body.’

  ~~~

  ‘I need you to check someone out for me.’ Dione did not come up to Mary’s apartment often, and generally not on a weekend, but there she was.

  ‘Someone is a little vague,’ Mary suggested.

  ‘He was called Silas Tarrant when he was in San Francisco.’

  ‘We’re talking Pat’s creator. He’s supposed to have been ended in–’

  ‘And yet there he was, last night, at the bar in the Candle.’

  ‘You’re not suspecting him of being “Evan”?’

  ‘Evan’s blonde. I suppose it could be a wig, but… No. I just want to know where he’s been for the last three decades. He said Hawaii and then Europe, or that’s what he told Pat.’

  ‘All right, I’ll look him up. How’s Pat taking it?’

  ‘Very well. Lisa isn’t. She claims he’s creepy.’

  Mary narrowed her eyes. ‘And you?’

  ‘Do you think I’d be asking you to check on him if I thought he was entirely kosher?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out.’