Low-Skilled Job [Vol. 2]

by Roger Keller

  “So, there’s another dimension where the FBI came after us and you made Mike a vampire,” Misty said.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Heather said. “There’s a lot of weird shit out there.”

  I sat up and saw Misty nod at me. Heather looked back and shrugged. She didn’t care if I heard.

  “What did you dream about last night?” Misty said.

  “I was back in high school and I had to go up in front of the whole class and give a speech naked,” I said.

  “Seriously.” Misty rolled her eyes.

  “He just gave you your answer,” Heather said. “You need to learn to read between the lines.”

  “Oh.” Misty let it drop.

  There a knock at the door and we all jumped. Heather exhaled sharply.

  “Yeah, what?” she said.

  “Madam DeVoss requests your presence for brunch in twenty minutes,” the butler’s voice came through the door.

  “Sure, we’ll be there,” Heather said.

  Heather and Misty got up without a word and headed for the bathroom. I cleaned up the best I could. Though, I couldn’t imagine why I cared if a bunch of vampires saw my dirty clothes and three day beard.

  *****

  We followed the butler through Dominique’s disappointingly normal home. It was the kind of place a pack of rich hipsters would live in, a refurbished warehouse filled with expensive furniture and decorations. Heather was visibly annoyed.

  “That’s all there is, right,” she said as we passed walls decorated with flat screens and printed wood tiles. “It’s just a boring, converted loft.”

  “Looks that way. No dark secrets or creatures waiting in the basement.” I thought about what was in the backpack I was carrying and who I was talking to. “It’s possible that we’re the only scary things here.”

  Heather laughed as we walked into Dominique’s massive kitchen-dining area. Candles lit the room. The other vampires were seated at a strangely long, highly polished, wooden table. Everybody was waiting on us. Any normal person walking in would have thought they were seeing dozens of well armed rich people having an evening dinner party. Well, the handguns would have tipped the normal person, since rich people usually don’t carry their own weapons.

  Heather noticed the guns too and nudged me. “Told you.”

  “Sit anywhere you like,” Dominique said.

  Heather snagged the seat closest to the heavily painted brick wall. Misty and I wound up sitting on either side of Dominique, at the head of the table.

  “Well, I’m going to say something,” a male vampire in a red tracksuit said. “Was it really necessary to destroy Aaron?”

  “Yeah, it was,” Heather said. “Aaron was pretty crazy. He came to our room to kill us.”

  “How did you know he was crazy,” an elegant, blonde, female vampire said. “Maybe he was just trying to defend himself, from your friend here.” She pointed at me.

  “Yes,” an older vampire, who wore a smoking jacket like Hugh Hefner, said, “I always had reservations with employing vampire hunters as mercenaries.”

  “Mike sees things,” Heather said. “Like, things that happened in the past or sometimes things that might happen. Aaron was a serial killer, of humans and vampires, apparently. Mike warned us about him before the fucker broke into our room.”

  “She isn’t lying.” Dominique plucked nervously at her white silk blouse. “She wouldn’t bother lying. She doesn’t care.”

  The coven whispered to each other. The air around them shimmered and rippled like a mirage. Aaron must not have been very popular. They seemed to accept his death pretty quickly. Or maybe we really were the scariest things in the room.

  “Tell me Micheal,” Dominique took my hand, “what do you see?”

  I pulled my hand away, too late. A scene from the past materialized in front of me. I saw an old European street lined with cars from the Thirties. A short-haired Dominique tightened her trenchcoat and climbed the steps to a large stone building. The building was decorated with swastika flags. At the top of the steps, a pair of Nazi stormtroopers armed with MP-40s, demanded Dominique’s papers. She sneered at them. The doors opened behind the stormtroopers.

  “What do you-” Tracksuit said.

  “Silence, you might influence his vision,” Dominique said.

  Back in the Third Reich, a huge, bearded SS officer stood in the doorway. He towered over the stormtroopers. Dominique followed the giant SS man through the occupied house. Loot from all over Europe littered the halls. Paintings in gilded frames were stacked against the walls like garage sale junk. Wool coats and helmets hung from priceless statues.

  A group of vampiric SS officers guarded the last hall with G-43 rifles. They snapped to attention when the giant passed, then leered at Dominique. She turned back, smirked and blew them a kiss. The giant threw open a set of elaborately carved doors. Satanic symbols defaced the antique woodwork. Beyond those doors hundreds of vampires argued in a dozen different languages. Many wore officer’s uniforms, but a lot of them were dressed in business suits. Even seeing the shadow these monsters cast from the past was disturbing. The vampires I’d seen so far, even the revenants, paled in comparison. I had to hand it to Dominique, walking unarmed in to a room like that took real guts.

  A blonde SS officer stood to meet Dominique. He wore a North African style scimitar and his uniform was decorated in gold. Tall, thin and impossibly handsome, he made me think of some rock star from the Sixties that I’d never heard of. He embraced Dominique like her lover.

  I snapped back to the present. Everyone at the table stared stupidly at me, except Misty, who was playing with her phone.

  “So?” Dominique said.

  “I saw World War Two, a huge Nazi with a black beard, a house in, I don’t know Paris, and you met a Nazi with gold on his uniform,” I said.

  Dominique was speechless. She swallowed hard and clenched a shaking fist.

  “A beard?” the tracksuited vampire said. “Fuck me, that sounds like Hector.”

  “Who was Hector?” I said.

  “Hector was, is a werewolf,” Dominique said.

  Misty slapped her phone down on the table and looked up.

  “He was seeing the past, just World War Two, right?” the elegant blonde said.

  “Yes, there is no reason to think Hector is on this side of the Atlantic,” Dominique said. “From what I hear, he hasn’t left his French hunting grounds, in decades.”

  The table was visibly relieved. Vampires sunk in their chairs and exhaled. Some gulped down blood from crystal wine glasses.

  “Werewolves are real?” Misty said.

  Everyone laughed, except Heather and I.

  “My, you must be young,” Dominique said.

  Misty opened her mouth, ready to unload a barrage of cringe-worthy questions. Heather motioned with her hand and Misty’s head swiveled around. The air around Heather rippled like a mirage and Misty got whatever message Heather sent.

  “Why were you hanging out with Nazis, anyway?” Heather said.

  “The Nazi in gold was her brother.” I turned to Dominique. “Wasn’t he?

  “Just how much did you see?” Dominique said, genuinely interested.

  “Not much,” I said. “You look like him. You guys have the same cheekbones, eyes, nose. You’re more Mediterranean and he was blonde and pale, but other than that you could be his clone.”

  “Martin was my half brother,” Dominique said. “I have a lot of siblings. Many of us still exist, far too many. My father was quite the adventurer. He purchased my mother from a slave trader in North Africa, a long time ago. I’m not quite sure what I am. I like to think, possibly, half Egyptian. You are quite observant, hunter.” She turned to Heather. “As for what I was doing with the Nazis, I was working with the Resistance, and the OSS, gathering information. The war was far more complicated than movies would have you believe.”

  “I’ll bet,” Heather said.

  “Who were the others?” I sai
d, “in that room with the pentagram and goat carved on the door?”

  “Oh yes,” Dominique said. “I remember that day. It was Paris. There was some sort of meeting. Even then they knew the war would go bad for Hitler. I recall seeing a few American agents there as well. Not the gallant spies of the OSS mind you, but men from Wall Street and Washington. They came by way of Switzerland I think, flying in by night. Everyone wanted to make a deal for the end of the war. They call it an exit strategy these days. There was much to divide up in Berlin as well. They knew Hitler would not survive the end and many wanted his blood.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” I said. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  “If you can, you really must try to look back at that final apocalyptic battle of Berlin,” Dominique said. “It was far worse than history records, Hitler hiding in his bunker from the entities he once made bargains with, otherworldly armies clashing without mercy before the Soviet tanks even got there.”

  “Were you there?” Heather said.

  “God no,” Dominique said. “I learned my lesson earlier, trying to help the Resistance. I am no warrior. And of course I knew it was madness and wanted nothing to do with Hitler or his accursed blood. Those of us with any sense found places to hide and waited out the war. They say my brother fell there, in Berlin. I know his true end came on the Eastern Front. A Soviet sniper’s bullet caught him in the skull, weakening him enough for a demon to ascend. Martin was already quite evil, even by the standards of his time, but what returned from the front was an abomination.”

  The whole room got really quiet. Dozens of vampiric eyes focused on Dominique.

  “I made my way to Hector’s hunting grounds about five years after the war,” she said. “He survived the end, barley. I asked him about my brother, not out of concern, but fear, a creeping fear that he might return for me someday. The creature that finally took my brother, Hector explained to me, did not originate in this world. I was sort of proud of that.”

  Heather made a face. I shrugged. Misty hung on every word.

  “It was when Martin returned from the front that he first referred to himself as a duke,” Dominique said. “Our father was never part of the noble class or even the middle class for that matter. The Nazis must have thought it was some obnoxious joke, if they gave it any thought at all, with the Bolsheviks breathing down their necks.”

  “That’s weird,” Heather said. “Why would he want to call himself a duke? I knew a guy who got shot in the head with a .357. He lost like, twenty years of memories and some of his powers.”

  “My brother, his memories and whatever soul he might have had left was mostly gone. It was the demon, apparently, who held the title of duke,” Dominique swirled a glass of blood, “in hell.”

  “I wonder if Aaron was possessed,” Misty said.

  “If he was possessed, when you killed him, you would have known,” Dominique said. “I would be able to see it in your faces after you survived such an encounter.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been there before,” I said.

  The conversation went nowhere after that, just a lot of talk about how Dominique remodeled a warehouse and decorated it. I could tell Heather loved the idea and was already mentally scouting her own derelict building.

  I downed a glass of Dominique’s wine and signaled for another. Misty’s phone went off. The look on her face told me she hadn’t programed the weird analog ringtone. I hadn’t heard anything like it since I was a kid. We had this old, green rotary phone left over from the Seventies that sounded similar. When it finally quit working we threw it in a campfire along with a bunch of other junk. The ancient, green bakelite burned all kinds of wild carcinogenic colors.

  “Dammit, I turned it off.” Misty picked up her phone, her eyes narrowed. “It is off. What the fuck?” The screen glowed red.

  “Might as well answer it,” I said.

  “Um, hello. This is Misty. Um, yeah, I’m a friend of Heather’s.” Misty looked at me. “Um, he’s right here.” She pushed the phone across the table like it was radioactive.

  I picked the phone up. It was warm, like Misty’d left it on a hot car seat. “Yeah, Mike here.”

  “Hello hunter,” Marcello said. “How goes your quest?”

  “Uh, fine so far,” I said, “we’re almost there, maybe another day or two.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, “I await your arrival.”

  Misty’s phone went dead.

  All eyes were on Misty’s phone as I slid it back go her. They all picked up on it. What they’d just seen was unnatural and wrong, even by their standards.

  “Gawd,” Heather said. “We’ll get there when we get there.”

  “What, was, that?” Tracksuit said.

  “Some guy we know,” I said.

  “Just, some guy,” Dominique said, “who can control electronic devices from, what I hope, is a very long distance away.”

  “Sure,” Heather said. “We know all kinds of weirdos.”

  “Of course,” Dominique said.

  *****

  After the meal we hung around Dominique’s living room for drinks. It was just like a regular party, except I was the only one drinking alcohol.

  I watched Misty bounce around, pestering the vampires with endless questions. Heather made small talk with Dominique and the elegant, red dress wearing blonde. They left me alone for a while, then Dominique appeared out of nowhere and cornered me.

  “So, about your mission.” She topped off my wine glass.

  “What mission?” I said. “We’re just out cruising.”

  “These days vampires rarely travel for pleasure,” Dominique said. “And no one vacations in Riverton, even humans.”

  “We’re on our way to deliver, something,” I said.

  “To the mysterious fellow who called young Misty’s mobile phone?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, tightening my grip on the backpack. “You might be thinking that what we have has some value, like maybe you should add it to your collection.”

  “Certainly not,” Dominique said, a little offended. “Do you take me for a fool. The very idea that I would steal from someone as clearly dangerous as Heather is preposterous.”

  “I’d be more worried about the guy we’re going to see than Heather,” I said.

  “True, but I was initially concerned that Heather’s master had sent your group to scout my territory,” she said.

  “That’s understandable,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry about it though. We’ve got enough problems already.”

  “I hope so.” Dominique smiled, showing off her teeth

  We stayed way too late at Dominique’s loft. Time slid by like a dream. The hands on Dominique’s grandfather clock jumped forward nearly an hour each time I looked at it. I stood up and the room spun. My wine sloshed on the floor as I made my way over to Heather.

  “It’s four fuckin’ thirty, babe,” I said. “We gotta go.”

  She shrugged my arm off her shoulder. “You’re drunk, Mike. Go sleep it off.”

  “We should have left hours ago,” I said. “The fuckin’ sun’s coming up.”

  The other vampires looked at me warily, not sure what to expect.

  “So, we’ll leave at dusk, tomorrow.” Heather pushed me toward the hall. “Come on.”

  “We shouldn’t split up,” I said as Heather led me into our room.

  “Ugh, just get some sleep,” she said.

  “Seriously,” I said. “How the fuck am I supposed to sleep here, alone?”

  “You should have thought of that before you got so loaded,” she said. “I’ll be back soon. Dominique and her friends are wimps. They aren’t going to try shit. If they do, well, you’ll probably wake up when you hear them screaming.”

  Heather bent down and kissed my cheek. I waved at her with my phone as she left. I’d been meaning to check my texts. I passed out before I even tapped the dead screen.

  *****

  I was in wartime France again, in
a candlelit warehouse. Cigarette smoke filled the air. The Resistance was gathered around a wooden table made of shipping crates. They argued over a map. British STEN sub-machine guns and Lebel revolvers were laid out on the table. They were planning something big.

  Dominique and her servant lugged a wooden crate into the light. The servant wore a thin mustache and a traditional butler’s uniform. Dominique was stylish as always in her tan trenchcoat and heels. The crate had a swastika and eagle stenciled into the rough wood. Dominique pulled two of her perfectly manicured fingernails loose and dropped them in her purse. Claws grew from her raw fingertips. The Resistance fighters gasped. A dark haired man crossed himself. A blonde woman, who looked about nineteen, picked up one of the STENs. Dominique slid her claws under the lid of the crate. Metal and wood squealed as she pulled the lid off.

  None of them, not even Dominique, saw the green eyes watching from the darkness. They made me think of a dog’s eyes, drawing in all available light, but these were much more effective.

  The crate was full of the latest Nazi small arms. Dominique held up an FG-42 rifle. The Resistance fighters smiled. The blonde clapped. “Bravo.”

  The glowing animal eyes blinked and a huge, man-like shape came into view. It looked like a cross between a gorilla and a wolf. The creature stood at least seven feet tall. Massive shoulders and arms seemed to pull it forward, leaving it hunched over. Thick black hair covered the creature. Pointed ears stuck out from the sides of it’s wolfish head. Long human-like fingers closed into fists then opened. It’s claws looked blunt and chipped. Blue, human eyes narrowed under it’s thick eyebrow ridges. I couldn’t understand how something of that size could move without making a sound.

  The creature clicked it’s jagged white teeth together and grunted. Dominique spun around. Black claws split the rest of her perfect fingernails. Her servant drew an archaic Belgian revolver. The resistance fighters grabbed their STEN guns. The creature seemed to smile. A short, dark haired partisan, who wore a ragged green sweater and matching beret, stepped forward and cocked his revolver. He said something in French and laughed. The creature moved with animal speed, not nearly as fast as Heather or Lee, but fast enough. Insanely brutal strength and blunt claws were more than sufficient to sever the partisan’s head.