We’d made it to the hotel lobby and were passing the reception desk – I was just going to see him up to his room and then go on to the last one on my list of known vampires – when he said that and the night clerk jerked her head up straight and said, “Oh, Mr. Surrett? Mr. Surrett?”
We both spun on a heel, but she was looking at Roderick. He smiled sweetly for her, as sweetly as he could with that hollow face and the unflattering fluorescent lights. “Yes?”
“I heard you say 'call,'” she explained, digging through some papers and finally producing a hot pink sticky-note. “It made me remember. You had a message earlier, while you were out.”
Roderick crossed the distance to the desk in two long strides – she flinched slightly, it always freaks them out when we approach suddenly, even though they've long forgotten we exist – and took the note in one smooth movement. He looked at it, then crumpled it and stuffed it into a jacket pocket. “Thank you, dearest.” His voice was sweet and smooth. She blushed profusely, then stammered and finally, after long seconds of Roderick staring at her from across the counter, put her head back down to look at some paperwork.
Roderick turned and stepped back over to me, smiling oddly, winking.
“Who called?” It wasn't my business but I asked anyway. I tried to sound casual.
“Emily,” Roderick sighed with a flutter of eyelashes. “She's probably afraid that I hurt someone and I'll be in trouble with you. Tsk.”
I hrmphed and then he laughed, so I laughed, and we climbed into the elevator. It wasn’t funny, but in its own way it was good to hear him acknowledge that Emily worried about him.
“Who's next on the list, Cousin Withrow?”
I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck with one fat hand. “Guy by the name of Blaine. Drives a tow truck. It shouldn't be a big deal. I like the guy, good manners, keeps to himself. We’ve met plenty of times, this is mainly just a social call, make sure there's nothing he needs.”
Roderick and I stepped out of the elevator and walked around the corner to the door of his room. “Well, do let me know if anything interesting comes up,” he said, and we shook hands and I left. I had five hours until sunrise and a lot of driving ahead of me.
Blaine Simmons was young, but not as young as Marty Macintosh. He'd been turned in the '70s, best I could guess. He drove a tow-truck at night for money. It was weird to me, the way the vampires up here didn't have money of their own when they were turned. Usually we turn folks who can take care of themselves, people who can disappear from the land of W-2's and become just another name on a piece of paper or in a database somewhere at the IRS without earning another paycheck the rest of their days. Roderick is luckier than I am in that regard but, like I said, my family did have money and it wasn't long after I'd been taken that I got every penny they had. In the mountains, though, they were all working stiffs, to use the vernacular. That's a pun of which we're very conscious. We use it anyway.
Anyway, Blaine and I had met up briefly at a truck stop the far side of Old Fort Mountain the last time I'd been here. Our conversation had been quick, but he'd been cooperative. He didn’t care when I took over and was cordial every time I came through. It didn’t much matter to him who was in charge down in Raleigh, he said, he'd keep his nose clean and let the politics sort themselves out. That's an attitude I can respect. I may have taken an active hand – a very active hand – in vampire politics in the last fifteen years, but before then I'd seen myself as part of Agatha's extended operation and the Bobs that ran the state – one after another in a line of vampires who were all aspirational idiots in golf pants, fucking golf – could go to hell. I guess I really did believe that, come to think of it, since I personally sent the last one there.
Blaine and I were set to meet at the same truck stop and I'd gotten there twenty minutes early just because that's how things worked out. Given it was Blaine, I tried not to tell myself it was because I wanted to surprise him in case it was a trap, even though counting on a timely arrival in a specific spot was precisely how I'd gotten Bob. Old habits die hard and vampires are creatures of habit.
I leaned on the hood of the Firebird for a while with Smiles poking around here and there a few feet away, checked my voicemail – service out here, I couldn't believe it – thought about calling Agatha and decided against it. Things up here were unusual, and Carla Van Buren had certainly thrown me for a loop with her little display of abilities, but I didn't need to go running straight to mama the first time I saw something I didn't expect. I paused and wondered whether Agatha was thinking of calling me, instead; sometimes it happens like that between maker and made, that sort of synchronicity about little things. Ah well. She'd call or she wouldn't.
Five minutes after he was supposed to be there, Blaine pulled in with his beat-up old tow truck. He cranked the window down and looked, as one might expect, exactly as he had before. “Got a call to go on,” he said over the engine's loud rumble. “You'll have to ride with me.”
“It'll be a crowded cab up there, with me and you and them and Smiles, won't it?”
“Nah,” he said, waving a hand and spitting tobacco juice onto the pavement. Drugs don't effect us, but like I said, creatures of habit. “Just a fix-a-flat gig. Triple A.” I nodded, patted my pockets, checked that I'd locked the Firebird and then walked around to the passenger door. Smiles hopped up and I climbed – eventually – after him.
“You get a lot of the late night stuff?” I buckled my seatbelt – we're immortal, not impervious – and adjusted the strap and settled in. Smiles sat on his haunches on the seat between us.
“Enough,” he said, and then he nodded. “Enough to keep me going.”
“The Triple A stuff must pay well, I reckon.”
He shrugged, waggled a hand up and down. “Good for what it is, usually, but it ain't as much as you'd think.”
“Or as you'd want,” I said, smiling a little. Blaine was a real down-to-earth vampire, real easy-going. It was easy to relax around him. Less money or more boredom and I could have wound up with a job like this. Of course, Agatha wouldn't have turned me if I had. Whatever. “Right?”
He smiled and half-shrugged at me, steering by the enormous wheel those old trucks have. I could hear, deep down below us, the movements of an old-fashioned manual steering system, the thrumming of the gears as he shifted them, the mechanics of forward motion. “I figure out how to make ends meet,” he said.
That stuck, for some reason, and I didn't know what to do with it. It just barely snagged at the edges of perception. It was a perfectly conversational comment, but I still had Carla Van Buren on the brain and somehow the tone he used suggested something hidden, something secretive. I didn't know what to do about that just yet, so I went with the suggestion of secrecy and said, “Say, I hear there's a guy in town not on Bob's old list. Likes the nightclubs.”
“Nightclubs?”
“Asheville,” I said. “Not Old Fort, but up in Asheville.”
He thought about it, turning it over; I could see from his face that he was thinking about it, and then he shook his head. “News to me. I don't get up there much. Most of my calls are interstate calls or backroads around here.”
I nodded; made enough sense, it wasn't like there weren't plenty of tow trucks in Asheville. Out here was where he'd have less competition, people so grateful they wouldn't think twice about a pale guy who smelled of gasoline – and only gasoline – showing up in the middle of the night to get them out of a fix. “Carla confirmed him for me but said she'd never met him, either.”
Blaine blinked, slowly. “You talked to Carla?”
I shrugged a little. “Sure, gotta talk to everybody. That's what making rounds is all about.”
He nodded, reached for a red plastic cup with a bunch of tissues stuffed inside and spit tobacco juice into it with a loud squelch. “Well, she may get into town more than I do.”
I nodded, shrugged again. “Whatever, just curious. I'm sure I can turn him up. Not a lot of place
s around for him to hide, you know?”
Blaine smiled and laughed quietly. “True, true. Still, I'd be surprised if he gives a damn what you've got to say.” He hurriedly glanced over. “No offense, of course, but it's a big state. Raleigh's a long way away. Lots of people up here would just as soon let Raleigh go to hell as be told what to do.”
I thought about that and rubbed my goatee at him. “Fair enough,” I said, “But somebody who screws around up here threatens all of us, everywhere, much less in Raleigh.” I looked over and Blaine made a vague head bobble of possible agreement. “Besides, you know how it is. There’s always someone in charge. Anywhere there's a heap, no matter how much shit is in it, some rat's going to scramble to the top. Might as well be somebody who respects your independence. I doubt Bob was all friendly-chatty when he came around.”
Blaine smiled a little. “I never met Bob.”
I arched one eyebrow. “Never met him? You were on his list, though.”
“Oh, he knew of me, sure, but I never quite managed to meet with him.” Blaine shrugged. “I was a lot busier back then.”
I smiled a little, then frowned a little, then asked as I looked out the window on my side. “Business bad lately?”
“Naw,” Blaine said. I could see him grinning in his reflection in the window. “I just didn't have anybody working for me then. These days, I go out pretty rarely. Special occasions, a shift every now and then to keep my hand in, but truth told, I've got six guys working for me.”
I turned around halfway and blinked at him in silence. “Six guys work for you?”
He grinned wider. “I know, pretty good, eh? Easy money. Two guys on each weekend shift and one on each shift during the week. I just fill in on nights when somebody's sick.” He coughed, quietly. “Not that they get sick often, if you catch my meaning.”
I blinked again, this time very slowly, and worked very hard not to tighten my grip on the handle of the door. “You're... feeding them?” It's something we can do. It makes them strong. It’s what I do to Smiles. We can do it to people, sure, but it makes them, well, different. It makes them all crazy in the long run: dangerously crazy. It isn’t encouraged.
“I'm careful, I'm careful,” Blaine said with a dismissive wave of his hand and another squelch of tobacco juice. “Feel free to smoke in here, by the way.” I told him I didn’t anymore but I rolled down the window a little anyway, grateful for the blast of cold air that ran through my hair when I did. This wasn't like Blaine. Blaine kept his head down. Blaine stayed out of the way and people stayed out of his until they had a flat tire. He drove a beat up old truck from the '70s and ran solitary. Blaine wasn’t the sort of guy to have someone around he had to take care of, much less six of them.
“I know what you're thinking,” he finally said. “That ain't Blaine, you're thinking. Well, times change. We have to change with them. I can't spend the rest of eternity out here on the highway, can I, all on my own? I had to start building up my base, setting myself up to disappear from the mortal world.” He shrugged, as though all this simple eloquence were his natural way. “It's what we all have to do, especially these days. Facial recognition? Retina scans on driver's licenses? What if the government puts out a national ID card? Hard enough getting by on a Social Security number that's fifty years old as it is.” He squelched into his cup again. “Just figured, you know, time to stop pretending I’m one of them.” He waved his hand vaguely at the world outside the cabin of the truck. “I had to start being what I am.”
We finally slowed, coming around a curve, and the conversation died abruptly. Blaine was scanning the side of the road, glancing at the odometer on his truck, then we saw him – a little Latino kid, maybe seventeen, standing by a hatchback with the car halfway off the road, emergency flashers on. Blaine pulled up behind the car, put his own flashers on and then got down out of the truck. “Just be a minute,” he called. Smiles whined when he left but I patted his neck and looked over the car: early '80s Datsun, from before they became Nissans. I was surprised the car had made it this far. The kid was struggling with English, I could just barely hear him speaking to Blaine and Blaine's feeble attempts to respond in Spanish. I actually speak it, so I thought about getting out to help, but really, how many ways are there to tell someone, See that flat tire? The kid and Blaine walked around to the front passenger's side, Blaine came back for a big jack he had in the back, then he lifted the car up with it and started changing the tire with the speed of a very practiced hand. The kid got bored of watching him, turned his back and folded his arms over his chest to try and get warm in the cold night air while Blaine finished up the tire.
Eventually I got bored of watching, too, and started staring off into space, turning over in my head what Blaine had said about it being time for him to recede from mortal affairs and mortal attention. Getting a cut off of six different guys? Owning his own business? Not the Blaine I'd expected at all; not the Blaine of just a year ago, even. He was growing up, growing into his own as a vampire. I had to admire him. I have plenty of money, to be honest, but I still paint. There’s a sense of satisfaction from finishing a work and a validation from selling it that can’t be had another way. I can undo as many lives as I feel like, and I have undone many of them, but that doesn’t feel half as good as having someone appreciate something I’ve produced that reflects my own.
It was out of the corner of my eye that I saw Blaine move once he'd released all the hydraulic pressure on the jack and let the car sink back down softly. He simply turned, grabbed the kid around the chest and upper arms, from behind, and sank his fangs right into the kid's neck on the right side.
I sat up straight in my seat. That was twice in one night someone had let me watch them feed and normally we are, without going into too many details, solitary hunters. I stared, mouth open. Blaine drank and drank. Going in on the right like that, I knew he was going to kill the kid but it still made my guts squirm to watch it happen. Finally he pulled his head back and, I assume, licked the wound closed. The kid spun as he fell so that I could see his eyelids flutter and his eyes roll back. Blaine wiped his mouth on an oily rag he pulled from his back pocket, then walked over to the truck, opened the door and grinned at me. “Pardon the midnight snack but, y'know.” Midnight snack? That was enough blood to keep a vampire going for two weeks. He rummaged around behind his seat and came out with a little airplane bottle of liquor, checked the label, nodded to himself, then went back over to the kid. I saw him twist the top off and splash a little of the hooch over the kid's shirt and face, then pour the rest into his mouth and tilt his head back so it would go down his throat, then stood back up and chucked the little bottle out into the woods off the side of the road. I watched it fly in a lazy arc and disappear into the trees.
Blaine walked back, climbed into the truck and belched noisily. “Pardon me,” he said.
I grimaced into my fist, not sure what the hell to say, and then said, as he put it in gear and started to back away from the car, “You know, I don't know.”
“Know what?” Blaine belched again. It smelled... well, it smelled good. I had gone out the night before to kind of top off at a biker bar outside of town so I wasn't exactly hungry but, y'know, food's food. Sometimes you want the cookie even though you just ate. Smiles made a noise somewhere between begging and revulsion at the smell.
“You said, 'Pardon the midnight snack, but you know.' Know what?” I looked over at him with what I hoped to be a completely blank expression.
Blaine wrinkled up his nose and mouth and waved a hand in the direction of the kid and his car. “You know. Them. Can't stand 'em in my territory.”
“Them?” I knew what he meant and though it disgusted me it didn't particularly surprise me. Still, I was going to make him say it.
“Mexicans,” he said, face still scrunched like the kid had tasted of crabapples.
“There's a Puerto Rican flag sticker on his car,” I said, casual.
Blaine snorted at me. “Whatever. I don't
like 'em on my turf.”
I stopped myself from raising both eyebrows, so instead simply said, “Turf?”
“Well...” Blaine chuckled a little and tried to look sheepish but failed miserably. “It's all really your turf, I know, but still.” He chuckled again, a little eheh-heh-heh, as fake as an aluminum Christmas tree. I was suddenly reminded of Franklin Not Frank Reinholdt from the neighborhood association back home. “I'm the one who actually lives here.”
I sat in silence, debating whether to reach over and tear Blaine's heart out of his chest to make the point that, actually, it really is my state or to simply let it slide on the grounds that he's harmless. I couldn't decide, so I didn't produce any reaction, one way or the other. I just sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Blaine was headed back towards the truck stop – my little visit was over and he was showing me to the door – which started to infuriate me. I couldn't really express why in any conscious way at the time, though obviously I have some, well, let's just say I have some issues about territory and being in charge. I waited until we got back to my car. Blaine pulled into the parking lot of the truck stop, I undid my seatbelt, the truck came to a halt – for a moment I wondered if he expected me to just jump out as we went by and roll the rest of the way to the Firebird – and Blaine held out a hand to shake before I got out after Smiles hopped past me and out the door.
I reached over, took his hand, shook it politely and then ground the bones into dust between my fingers. Blaine started to scream but it came out strangled, his mouth open, his eyes bulging. His other hand started to go for the gun on the dash but I reached out and twisted it like a pipe cleaner. I was so furious that my fangs were out, my eyes dark. The lights in the parking lot flickered for a moment. I was really, incredibly, unbelievably angry.
His turf? This racist pipsqueak reject from the Dipshit School of Tow Truck Driving?
I pulled him towards me by useless hands, which made the veins pop out on his neck. He wasn't looking at me, he was looking away, marshalling the pain into something more useful. I'd pulled a fast one by waiting until we were somewhere sort of almost public. He couldn't do a lot to fight back, not without attracting some serious attention.
Tooth & Nail (Withrow Chronicles Book 2) Page 15