“A drink you may have,” said the pale-haired demon. “Your business?”
“I am chased by vampires,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
The demon nodded. “Come inside.”
My feet had ceased working. How strange is that? In my mind I took a step toward the little house, but nothing happened, and then I was falling.
I AWOKE IN a strange but comfortable bed, with the brown-haired demon sitting in a chair to my left. A pitcher of water and a glass sat at my right on a small table.
The demon held a book in his hands, on its cover a picture of a demon who looked a bit like him, astride a horse, titled in a language I did not recognize.
“You’re awake,” he said, proving himself a master of the obvious.
“Unless I’m dreaming.” I filled the glass with water and drank. It was cold, somehow. I filled it and drank again. I had never tasted anything as good.
That seemed to interest him. “Your people dream, do they?”
“Sleep, and imagine things that have never happened,” I said. “If that’s what you mean by dreaming.”
He nodded. “We do the same.” He folded over the page he’d been on, which made me wince, and put the book down. “My name is Georges. I’ve been sitting with you to help you get better a little faster.”
That was a sort of magic I’d never heard of, or he was deluded.
“Why are the vampires after you?” he continued.
“I don’t know.”
“Family business?”
I stared at Georges. “Excuse me?”
“I’d never seen a vampire before,” Georges said. “We don’t normally have them in Hell. But they look like you.”
I had to remind myself he was a demon, and uncivilized. “I am golden skinned,” I said stiffly.
“Oh?” He looked me over in an insultingly familiar way. “I suppose. The ones outside are paler.”
That froze me. “Outside?”
“Oh, we’re surrounded,” he said cheerfully.
THEY STOOD ABOUT a hundred paces away from the house, encircling it front and back in a ragged line, motionless except for the constant swiveling of their heads. Mouths open, needle sharp teeth visible. When one of us moved on the porch, a portion of the crowd would turn their heads to follow.
The straw-haired demon sat in a chair on the porch, a long gun across his lap, smoking a cigar which smelled nothing like flatweed – almost a pleasant odor.
I bowed slightly. “Forgive me, sir, I have not had your name.”
The demon grinned at me. “Well, you fell over. Not your fault. I’m Callista.”
“And she’s female,” said Georges mildly.
“Forgive me,” I said again automatically. “You are the first demons I’ve ever spoken to. I meant no offense.” Callista didn’t look female to my eyes – thinner than Georges, but otherwise I saw not much difference between them outside of their hair and eye color. And her name threw me a bit – almost no women have names starting with a hard consonant, among people.
Callista raised the long gun to her shoulder, and fired it. No witch had charged that weapon: it made a sharp cracking noise, and what I assume was a projectile hit the ground ten paces in front of the crowd of vampires.
They swayed, and moved backward slightly.
“I keep having to reason with them,” she said. “They’re crowding us more than I like. I wish they spoke.”
“Vampires don’t speak,” I said. “Not even the smart ones.”
I was wrong about that.
We stayed on the porch that entire day. Callista smoked, and I tried one of her cigars. It didn’t suit me, made me dizzy, but I liked the taste. I snuffed it out after only a few puffs. She seemed unoffended, and took the mostly unused cigar back and stuck it a shirt pocket. “Not losing a whole cigar over a little angel spit,” she said.
In context it was clear that I was the angel. “I’ve never heard that word before. I’m a person. We are people.”
She laughed. “Yeah, so’s everyone.” Then she shrugged. “It’s just the word in our language for your kind. It’s not an insult.”
“For a demon, you speak our language well.”
She smiled a bit at that. “Georges and I are old. We’ve been around some.”
AT MIDDAY GEORGES watered the dramfer and the goats, pulling up buckets from the well and filling the dramfer trough, and then the goat trough. The goats took a lot more water than the dramfer – it’s why people keep dramfer, even in the deserts of Middle Earth, never mind Hell itself.
CALLISTA NEVER LEFT the porch, and I stayed with her, sitting on the long bench with my heater in my hand and my spare charges beside me.
Georges went inside and made lunch. He came back with three plates and three cups. “You should be able to eat this, though you may find it strange.”
I remembered my road rations for the first time. But I imagined father’s response to my failure to accept hospitality, even from demons, and thanked him and took the plate and cup. The cup held a cold, tart drink, the plate a thick flat chop of some vegetable I did not recognize – not flesh, no, some plant material, interestingly seasoned. Corn I knew, and some ground mush that was sweet to the taste –
I’d cleared the plate before I knew it.
“Seconds?” Georges asked politely.
I TOLD THEM the story of Tajan, of Harleton, of my flight down the Naranja. I was not able to read their expressions much: they went quiet when I related the deaths of the children, and stayed that way until I’d brought them up to the moment we first saw one another.
“And you don’t know why they’re chasing you?”
“No.”
Callista raised the long gun – hesitated, then handed it to Georges. “I’ve got a call. Keep an eye on the vampires.” He took the long gun and she held her left hand out, palm up.
A blue flame sprang up over her palm. She stared into it. I heard – I strained – a vague whisper, as of a conversation just too far away to make out words.
Callista: “How many?”
Whispers.
Callista: “When?”
Whispers.
Callista: “We’ll do our best.”
The blue flame flickered out. Her palm appeared, unburned. Georges handed back the long gun.
“More vampires?” Georges asked.
She gave him a sharp look. “You know I think you understand the Final Fire perfectly.”
He smiled. “Just a guess.”
“That’s as may be. But yes. More vampires coming.”
I took note of what had happened. A kind of fire magic that let you talk over distances? That would be useful: the Fourth Republic of Potsdam had fallen due to slow communications, from the lack of such a technique.
THEY TRICKLED IN off the desert in groups of four and ten and twenty, in no particular formation, and the circle grew deeper.
By evening there were somewhere around seven hundred of them.
“We should have kept more weapons at the house,” Callista told Georges at one point.
“Wouldn’t have helped with this,” Georges said. “Only four hands between us, and I’ve never been able to shoot well with two hands at once anyway.”
The sky darkened to blackness. Nothing as obvious as a sunset, it just grew dimmer and dimmer and then there was no light except the slight illumination from the house, casting o
ut into a circle perhaps forty paces across.
We could hear the vampires in the darkness surrounding the house, a vague shuffling noise, and twice one of them screamed, and then all of them screamed, and it lasted several minutes both times.
It’s not a thing I’ll ever forget: sitting on that porch, with only the light from the house behind us, surrounded by infinite darkness, with the shriek of seven hundred monsters rising and fading as we waited.
I practiced seeing how fast I could flip the charge case out of the heater, and flip a new one in, until Georges told me to stop it, in the same amiable voice he’d used when asking if I’d enjoyed my meal.
At one point there was a sudden rush of movement from the back of the house, squeals from the goats that didn’t last long. Georges held out a hand to me – we stayed on the porch. “They’re just thirsty,” he said. “The goats will distract them for a bit.”
AN HOUR LATER a voice called out out of the darkness, “Hail the house!”
THE TWO OF them seemed to have been waiting for it, or at least it didn’t appear to surprise them.
“Come on forward,” Georges called out.
The voice’s owner came and stood at the edge of the light. He was a vampire, or I’d never seen one. Tall, though, for a vampire. Big, for a vampire. I doubted he could fly fast, or perhaps at all. White-haired, pale skinned, surely silver-eyed, though it was hard to tell in that light.
He was dressed like a lord at court, all in monochrome except for a red bow tie. Black breeches, a clean white shirt, his long white hair brushed til it glowed even in that dim light. Cufflinks of some bright metal at his wrists, boots shined.
Georges stepped off the porch and walked forward a few steps.
Callista and I aimed at the well dressed vampire.
“I’m Georges Mordreaux,” Georges said. “Perhaps you know me.”
The vampire nodded. “I’ve heard of you. Lost in the Great War, didn’t you?”
“Which Great War?” Georges asked, obviously amused. “There have been so many.”
“The Breaking.”
Georges nodded. “Ah. Indeed, lost that one. You are well informed.” He paused. “Or merely old? No, not that old, I think. And who are you?”
“I want the boy.”
“I want a name. Which of us do you suppose will get what he wants first?”
“You may call me Micheline.”
Callista said softly, “Micheline, half uncle of Santine.”
Georges nodded. “The boy is your grand nephew, is he?”
The word burst from me. “What?”
“Be silent,” Georges said, without looking at me.
The vampire stepped forward. He licked his lips once. “Yes. Mine by right of blood.”
“Not much blood,” said Georges patiently. “Seven-eighths angel, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Look at him,” the vampire snarled.
“Oh, I have been,” Georges said. “All day long. You can’t have him.”
They rushed us.
I CHARGED DOWN off the porch, all planning forgotten. I’d planned to stand at the edge of the porch and fire at them, but instead I found myself running at Micheline in a blood lust, my alleged relative, firing at him, heater in left hand, knife in the other.
Behind me Callista was doing what I should have been, standing on the slight rise of the porch and firing down into the crowd of vampires as they came forward.
I closed on Micheline, shot him twice and then was upon him, struck at him with the knife –
He was gone abruptly. I didn’t see where, and then half a dozen vampires crowded me, and I felt teeth tearing at my flesh. I kept the heater in close, firing into the crowd, striking about with the knife. They fell, and there were more, I took bite after tearing bite –
And healed.
Georges Mordreaux stood motionless while Callista and I fought, while the vampires crowded past and around us, and yet I could feel Georges, his attention hard upon me. Terrible pains struck me with each bite, and then vanished almost as quickly as they’d come. I kicked a vampire off me, reloaded, and shot eight of them in quick succession before they rushed me again, bore me to the ground beneath their weight. Then it was knife work, stabbing up into their bodies –
And then the dragon came.
I HAVE SAID that no one can fly in Hell. And surely this is true, by any wind magic. But dragons have wings.
It blasted fire down into the dusty yard, enveloped the vampires, enveloped me and Georges Mordreaux. I felt myself burning….
And then I wasn’t. I was whole again, and naked, my clothes burnt off me and my knife and heater vaporized in the heat, as if a piece of the Sun had been released upon us. I had a fragmentary memory of the heater exploding in my hand, blowing my arm off at the elbow, but that could not have happened, I stood there now alive and unharmed, with vampires fleeing back into the darkness, and Georges Mordreaux, as naked as I, his clothes drifting ash at his feet, shaking himself as though coming awake.
The dragon alit in the empty yard. It spoke in a voice like a bass drum. “I came as soon as I could. We’ve killed a few dozen and scared the rest, but they’ll be back.”
I heard a rumbling noise in the distance, an odd noise, constant but with punctuations to it, louder moments of –
Georges looked over at Callista. “Did you have word of this?”
“No.”
“Sounds like artillery,” Georges told me. “I think your father is here.”
The Army of the Republic of Potsdam had come to Hell.
I HAD NEVER met Lord Dreesun before, though I knew who he was; and hadn’t expected to do so wearing only a pair of a demon’s trousers. (It turns out, having seen Georges without his pants, that demons are shaped in that part of their bodies much like people. The things you learn, in this life.)
They were horseback, carrying field lamps with them, brightening the yard until we could see out to the spot where the vampires had originally stood. They unmounted and approached the small house.
“Would you like something to drink?” Callista asked.
“Take these two and shoot them,” Lord Dreesun instructed a man with the badge of a minor house. The man gestured and a dozen of his troopers stepped forward, heaters drawn.
“You will not,” I said, reaching for weapons that had been vaporized. They ignored me and then from the darkness my father said, “Belay that,” in a voice that was not very loud but which produced the effect of freezing every member of Lord Dreesun’s patrol.
Father and his steward, Anteho Sanrissi, rode forward into the light.
Father is a tall man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, dressed on that day in military fatigues, the dusty green and gold of the House of Five Statues. Anteho, riding just behind him, wore the same black outfit she wore every day.
Father glanced at me without changing expression, then at Lord Dreesun. Then he turned to Georges Mordreaux.
He spoke as to an equal. “Forgive us for intruding, sir, but we were rushed.”
The demon grinned at him. I hadn’t seen him show his teeth like that before, but his were like those of all demons, flat in front and vampire sharp on the corners. (Cattle teeth in back, rumor says.)
“Ah well, no need for apologies,” said Mordreaux mildly. “Your man doesn’t know me.” He glanced at Lord Dreesun and the smile widened slightly. “And your son wouldn’t have
let him shoot us.”
Father nodded. Dreesun stood rigidly at attention. I think he was afraid to breathe.
“Dismount,” Georges said. “Come inside.” He looked at Dreesun. “Not you.”
“HAVE YOU ANY coffee?” Father asked. “I remember it fondly.”
“We do,” Callista said. “You’ll have to take it black, I’m afraid. They killed the goats.”
“Black will do nicely, thank you.”
Looking back at it, all these years later, I suppose I was in shock. Certainly I took drinking coffee in Hell completely in stride. It’s a terrible drink, don’t let anyone tell you differently, even worse than whiskey. But I sipped at it to be polite.
“We came as quickly as we could,” Father said. “The wind witch Tariq sent arrived only yesterday.”
“You made excellent time, then.”
“We took the third exit to Hell,” Father explained. “It’s been a while since I’ve been down this freeway, but I still remember how to get about.”
“The fourth is a little faster, to this house,” Georges informed him.
Callista turned to Georges. “We will have to do something about our defenses. Vampires in Hell!”
“We’ve grown lax,” Georges agreed.
Father looked me over. “You seem unharmed.”
I’d had my arm blown off twenty minutes prior. It may be what made the coffee drinkable. “I believe so, sir.”
Father turned to Anteho. “Can we find the boy some clothes? I’d hate to have him shot because someone looked at those trousers and thought him a demon.”
I stared at him. That was almost certainly a joke, and to the best of my recollection, the first one he’d ever made in my presence.
Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories Page 29