Straight Outta Fangton

by C. T. Phipps

  “That's like saying the Illuminati are real and little green men! Or the moon landing was faked! It's a conspiracy theory!” I was appalled she believed that bullshit.

  “Like vampires are secretly—” Melissa started to say.

  “Could we focus on the ambush!” Eaton shouted, black blood drooling out of his mouth. “If Renaud leads his people to the conference, it could kill half of the Vampire Nation's leadership! Our entire ruling body would collapse overnight.”

  I shrugged. “Don't overstate matters, Eaton.”

  “Overstate matters?” Eaton said, appalled. “Do you understand what's at stake?”

  “Renaud hasn't exactly wowed me with his Magnificent BastardryTM if you catch my drift. Blowing up the Apophis would have worked if he hadn't changed Melissa and thus given us a warning it was going to happen. Then he left the Human Rights League people aware of the connection to the Network, which was followed up on. His operational security is shit and as soon as I tell the voivode about the coming attack, it's going to be moved.”

  “Well then, I had best make sure you don't tell them, shouldn't I?” I heard a thick, generic European-accented baritone voice behind me.

  A cold chill passed over me as I turned around and saw the figure of Renaud standing behind me. My earlier description of a redheaded Kurgan was pretty accurate, though he was better-looking than Clancy Brown (no offense, Clancy) with softer features than in Melissa's vision.

  If I had to give a weird description, it was like someone had grafted Kurt Cobain's head onto the Kurgan's body. I wondered if that was an illusion like some older vampires created, making themselves better looking to avoid being treated like they were sixteen or missing teeth like they were in life. Melissa, certainly, remembered him differently.

  Standing beside him was the french-fry-eating fast food clerk who was holding a cellphone in his hand. I stared at him, stunned by the fact that I'd completely forgotten about him as well by the fact that he was a mole of Renaud's.

  “Bastard,” Melissa hissed at him, pulling out a grenade she'd hidden in her blouse.

  “Drop it,” Renaud commanded.

  Melissa did, thankfully not having removed the pin yet.

  Eaton started screaming for help.

  David just stared at the vampire knight.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, trying to figure out a way to deal with this guy, given David had just wrecked our car and running would just mean we died tired. Even Melissa's super-speed couldn't help us. I tried to use my time powers, but of course, they didn't work. That would have been too easy.

  “This,” Renaud said, chuckling. There was a brief shuffle and in less than the blink of an eye he was holding Eaton's severed head in his hands. Blood dripped from the bottom of the man's neck before he dropped it on the ground. I couldn't say I was particularly displeased, but Renaud then said something else. “Look to your servant.”

  I turned to David and saw him clutching his throat as it was pouring blood.

  Renaud had severed his throat.

  Melissa, unable to control herself, launched herself at his neck and bit down on it.

  “No!” I shouted, trying to stop her, but Renaud grabbed my arm and held me back.

  “First he dies,” Renaud whispered into my ear. “Then you do, Little Vampire.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I could only watch helplessly as David had all of his blood drunk down by Melissa. I watched his arms flailing about before finally collapsing in rapturous joy as he became unable to resist the ecstasy of the Bite. I wanted to separate them—was willing to break my arm to do so, or rip it clean off—but something about Renaud's presence smothered me like a shroud. It was like his very presence drained away my strength and left me as weak and depressed as I had been in my mortal days.

  Finally, after a seeming eternity, Melissa dropped David to the ground, and I felt our connection break. There was no life remaining in my friend. He just looked at me with cold, dead eyes. His face was a mixture of pleasure and terror, having died knowing he was being killed but still feeling immense pleasure the entire way through.

  Jesus Christ.

  I fell to my knees, my left arm still held by Renaud. Bloody tears welled in my eyes as I reached out with my other hand. “Why? Why, you sonofabitch? Why?”

  Renaud finally let go.

  “Because he was a servant to the race, which is accursed before God. Because he was a homosexual. Because he was a Jew on his mother's side. Because he was a product of this godless secular age. Take your pick of a hundred different reasons why your slave was worthy of death.”

  Melissa seemed to come out of the trance she'd been under when the Need had consumed her, perhaps aided by Renaud, perhaps not. She looked at her blood-covered hands, then down at the corpse of David before screaming.

  Renaud let out a hearty laugh. “I applaud her misplaced sense of guilt and atonement. It is a sign I have chosen well for her to be one of the few to stay behind and torment mankind for its sins once we have been purified in the blood of the Nephilim.”

  I drew out my bone knife and launched myself at Renaud, stabbing him through his armor thanks to the enchantment on the knife. The knife sunk into his chest and into his heart. I started to twist it, only to have him grab both my hands.

  “You know, that actually stings,” Renaud said, delivering a vicious headbutt before looking into my eyes.

  “Stay,” Renaud said, his eyes possessing the power of hypnosis.

  I couldn't help but obey.

  Melissa went for the grenade again, only to have Renaud stare at her. “Stop.”

  Melissa froze in place, crying tears of blood every bit as thick as mine.

  “Persistent, aren't they?” the french-fry-eating clerk said, stealing David's wallet and going through the contents.

  “Silence, Charles,” Renaud said, his voice dismissive. “I want you to get all of the evidence from their car and burn it.”

  “You got it,” Charles said. “I'll smash the laptop too.”

  Renaud proceeded to wrap both his hands around the bone dagger in his chest before slowly removing it. His face was contorted with agony as he did it, the first sign he was vulnerable at all, before he tossed the weapon to one side and the wound slowly healed up. There was no way he should be moving after being staked, but I'd been warned he didn't suffer any of the traditional vampiric weaknesses.

  I just hadn't believed it.

  “How?” I asked, trying desperately to move but paralyzed completely.

  “A combination of factors,” Renaud said, patting me on the head like a child. I hadn't imagined it possible for me to want to kill him more, but that act made me hate him more than I hated Eaton. Another thing I hadn't thought possible until the moment he did it. “Lamia's blood was stronger than the majority of our kind, so I awoke with the strength of an Old One. I was not truly immune to all of God's curses, though, until I met the First of the Gibborim under Jerusalem. The son of Lucifer and Lilith gave me a sword manufactured from his bone and gave me the power to drain the strength of other vampires as well as bestow that power unto those with whom I share my blood.”

  I actually managed a perverse chuckle. “Pal, I don't know what you've been smoking, but we've got this thing called the fossil record. There wasn't a Garden of Eden.”

  Renaud gave a dismissive wave. “The details of certain holy books may be inaccurate, but there are some literal truths that are worth believing in. Azazel, half-brother of Cain and Abel, gave me his tooth to drink of the flesh of vampires and restore his strength so that he might one day walk the Earth again to judge humanity for its sins.”

  “Dude, I met a vampire who was eight thousand years old once. He believed in Ra. Judeo-Christianity struck him as a fad.”

  Renaud's eyes narrowed. “To think I was going to offer you a chance to join my army of reborn and drink from the chalice of redemption.”

  “Your idea of redemption sucks.”

&nbs
p; Renaud gave a half-smile. “As you wish. Melissa, come to me.”

  Melissa struggled to resist Renaud but ended up marching robotically toward him. His blood ran through his veins from her creation, even if he hadn't stayed to finish the process, and his will was immensely powerful.

  More powerful than mine.

  “I hate you.” Melissa spit blood in his face.

  Renaud didn't react. “Love me.”

  Melissa looked like she was screaming inside. “No … no.”

  Renaud's eyes blazed as he looked genuinely angry for the first time during this conversation. “Love me.”

  “Ah!” Melissa cried out.

  “Love me!” Renaud repeated for a third time.

  Like a puppet with its strings cut, Melissa dropped her arms and slumped over. “Yes. I love you.”

  “You fucking crypto-Nazi rapist!” I shouted, throwing myself at his control.

  “I will not touch her,” Renaud said, chuckling. “Not until she's had time to come terms with the price of her defiance. I have broken the wills of many women and men before and in time, they come to appreciate the power that comes with serving me. In time, they even come to love me of their own free will.”

  “Yeah, they call that Stockholm Syndrome now, you sick freak.”

  “Truth be told, I fully expected her to become a draugr and slaughter her way through the city,” Renaud said, looking down at me. “It would have served as an excellent distraction for my plans. I didn't think a vampire would show compassion.”

  “So, why my place?” I really regretted missing this guy at the counter. I must have been stocking the freezer.

  “My other mistress, Elisha, really hates you. She wanted my distraction to be in a place that would make you a figure of infamy until greater news overwhelmed you.”

  I was really starting to dislike my ex. “Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint your whole terrorist plan.”

  Renaud shrugged. “Fertilizer and other components of a bomb are hardly rare. Tomorrow or the next day is as good a time to do it as any. It's not like the Human Rights League's membership isn't replaceable. I'll do it in the morning this time, though.”

  I couldn't do anything but hate him in that moment and wish to God—yes, the God who burned me with every utterance of his name.

  “Time to die,” Renaud whispered, stretching out his hand. His sword flew to his hand. It was a twisted, curved scimitar-like weapon that vaguely resembled a giant vampire fang.

  “You should frame him,” Melissa said, her voice sad and empty.

  Renaud swung his sword down onto my face, only to stop a few inches from my eyes. I couldn't even move to dodge, just let him bring down the weapon.

  “Interesting,” Renaud said, chuckling. “Frame him for what?”

  “Killing Eaton,” Melissa said, staring down at me. “Working with the Network. Covering up their crimes. Working with you to destroy the Council of Ancients. When they ask him what happened here tonight, you can leave a command in his mind for him to confess to being your catspaw.”

  “His master will see through that.”

  “Not if you have him implicate his master too.”

  Renaud chuckled. “Thoth is hosting the conference. Yes, that would make things most complicated for their defenses.”

  “You're never going to win,” I said, shaking his head. “You can't wipe out dozens of Old Ones and Ancients. I don't care if you've got a magic tooth.”

  Renaud smiled. “This is where I could tell you why all of those vampires are going to be extraordinarily weak while my knights will be extraordinarily strong, isn't it?”

  “Yeah, if you don't mind.”

  “I do,” Renaud said. “Sorry.”

  That was when I saw in Melissa's mind as she saw in Renaud's mind. She was trying to read him and then project into my mind.

  I saw a desecrated Baptist church with numerous bodies hanging upside down on hooks, their throats slit and draining blood down into a series of baptismal fonts and garden fountains that had been spread about the place. The place was covered in spray-painted hermetic diagrams and crude Kabbalistic perversions.

  Through Melissa's eyes, I recognized all of the people being sacrificed as the family members of the Humanity First Members who had gone on to conduct the terrorist attack against the Apophis. Renaud had used his influence with the congregation to summon them all for slaughter like animals, using the massacre to fuel some kind of spell.

  Shit.

  Renaud wore a Catholic Cardinal's robes, blood stains almost invisible against its crimson, as he stood before a congregation of the Network's members I'd seen in The Razor. They were all standing in line, lifting up plastic wine glasses of the blood drained around them before holding the glasses to their mouths.

  Elisha was among them.

  Goddammit, Lisha.

  Renaud addressed the crowd before him. “You have heard ‘blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh.’ This is true. I have dropped a thimble full of my blood into each of these fonts and worked the rights to invoke the power of the One Who Sleeps.

  “There are those of you who do not believe in the Nephilim, believe him to be one of the Elder Gods which came to this dimension long ago and became trapped, but I say thee nay. Know the power I give you is divine. It will render you immune to all of the weaknesses of vampires as well as allow me to bestow upon you a portion of my strength without diminishing mine.”

  “Will it be enough?” one rather stupid biker asked in the back of the crowd.

  Renaud smiled, though I could tell he was furious about being interrupted. “The power from this sacrifice will make you every bit as powerful as the Old Ones. The Ancient Ones will also be crippled, I can assure you.”

  In Renaud's mind, I knew he fully expected the Network soldiers here to die. They would be as strong as he said, but they were cannon fodder while he drank the power of the Ancient Ones and slaughtered them. He only needed them distracted long enough to kill a few of the oldest of the vampire race and he would be unstoppable. The worst-case scenario would be having to flee and leaving them to their fate. He would regret leaving Elisha behind, but she was a whore, unlike Melissa, and unworthy of anything but the basest attention.

  God damn, this guy was an asshole.

  Melissa and I both tried to probe deeper into his mind to find out what he was doing to the Ancients to make them docile. Instead, I got images of him screaming out as he was tortured in prison and subjected to every form of nightmarish abuse imaginable. From hot pokers to rape to daily beatings, they tried to get him to confess to demon worship in order to frame the Templars for diabolism.

  Vampires were among the torturers.

  I saw Lamia, only the indistinct outline of her, but easily the most beautiful woman in the world, bite into his neck. Not for release, but because she found his persistent faith in God amusing. I saw his wife deny him at his trial for witchcraft before he was burned alive, regenerating to feast on a host of innocents thereafter. Totally insane for years thereafter. Sleeping in barns, killing those he encountered, and living like an animal until his mind returned.

  Somewhat.

  I saw Renaud struggle to live off vampire blood and protect the innocent, only to be rewarded time and time again with betrayal as well as horror from those he wanted to protect. I saw him end up feeding on the innocent over and over again because he could not control his hunger when denying himself the blood of humans.

  I saw him seek a cure for vampirism in Jerusalem.

  I saw the outline of a thing that was so terrifying that the creature inside my body, the monster that animated my form, leapt out of our connection.

  Shit, that was fucked up.

  Renaud's eyes flashed and he grabbed me by the throat with his free hand. “Have you been in my mind, newborn?”

  I coughed. “Uh, no. I didn't see you riding the misery train.”

  Okay, why did I say that? That wasn't going to help me.

  Renaud looked at M
elissa before shaking his head and holding his sword to one side. “What did you think of what you saw?”

  “I think you got a raw deal. However, I also know plenty of other people who suffered almost as bad. Gina the mage was in a goddamn camp in Serbia, for example. He didn't turn into a fucking psychopath. So … what's wrong with you?”

  Renaud sliced across my chest with his sword and it felt like someone was pouring napalm into the cut.

  I screamed.

  Renaud dropped me. “The Tooth of Azazel will not kill you, but it will make you wish for death. You will call to your creator with your blood, and then when you are interrogated by the City Council, you will condemn him before it as well as confess your crimes. You will even believe this yourself when they ask you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  Worse, I meant it.

  Thoth had never used our bond to influence my will, preferring words, and even voivode Ashura had avoided using anything but subtle glamours against me. This was the first time I had someone reach into my mind and then TWIST it into obedience. It was a nightmare I wouldn't wish on anyone.

  Let alone myself.

  “Come, Melissa,” Renaud said, holding out his sword as it levitated back into the sheath on his back.

  Which defeated the purpose of a sheath, in my opinion. If the damned thing required magic to use, then why have it?

  Melissa reluctantly complied. “I would like to say it was a pleasure meeting with you, Peter, but I would be lying. This was a most unpleasant experience all around.”

  “Ditto, babe.”

  Renaud then took her by the arm and leapt into the air.

  The two of them went flying off.

  “Oh hell no!” I shouted up in the air. “You do not get actual flight too! I do not care how old you are or how many demons you've screwed!”

  But he was gone.

  The wound on my chest festered, and I couldn't help but look over to the dead body of my best friend. It was a living nightmare and I wanted it to end. David was dead because I'd brought him into this demented, horrifying world. This was the second time in my life I truly regretted accepting Thoth's offer. If I hadn't, I'd probably had gone down in a hail of violence trying to avenge my brother, but David would be alive. Hell, it might have even impacted this bullshit wannabe parody of every vampire-hunting-vampire-ever-made's plans.