Rock Paper Sorcery

by L. J. Hayward

  And I’d treated her like she was Roberts’ car.

  Charles was right (horror of horrors). I was an unsalvageable bastard.

  Leaving the house, I got back into the car. Pulling out my phone, I turned on the tracking program. It searched for a minute, looking for the tracker nestled under the skin of Mercy’s hip, and came up skint. It worked on the same principle as the phone itself, meaning it bounced signals off phone towers and the program triangulated and transpondered and… okay, so I didn’t really know how it worked. That was Roberts’ deal. Apart from being a registered Ladies Man, he was a techno-gizmo-whizzo and helped me with all my techno-gizmo needo… needs. He’d recently had to set me up with a new phone and I was still working my way through the instruction manual. Roberts had given me a tutorial, but one of his tutes was like listening to Stephen Hawking talk about the universe—full of indecipherable catch phrases and words that were supposedly English but clearly weren’t and about as much fun as slowly peeling off the world’s largest Band-Aid. I’d got as far as working out how to change the ringtone—no more socially suicidal songs thanks to Roberts’ terrible sense of humour—but as for the tracking program, I had no hope of fiddling with it to see if I could find Mercy.

  I’d have to do it the esoteric way, then.

  I ran through a quick calming technique my shrink had taught me. When the self-loathing had dropped to manageable levels, I reached.

  The wall was still in place, but this time, it wavered and a faint impression leaked through. Music. A piano, passionately played, and a soft, crooning voice hinting at a song that felt incredibly familiar. Behind it, a gentle hum of chatter.

  It felt like a pub, maybe a small restaurant or bistro, or, I shivered in horror, a wine bar. But somewhere with live music. I searched for live gigs in Brisbane. There was quite a list but only one announced a piano player. I’d not heard of The Caesitas Club before, but the website promised a small, intimate setting with a quiet atmosphere and live music every night. It was in West End, just across the Brisbane River.

  An hour later, I was standing outside of a narrow entrance tucked away between a boutique dress store and a jewellers. A small, non-descript plaque over the door announced it as The Caesitas Club. A black door with a tarnished copper handle dared me to go in.

  Whatever lay beyond the door, I was certain it would be a place Mercy would never have ventured into on her own. I’d taught her too well to stay away from temptation. There was nothing about it, from where I stood, that would have attracted her. I could admit there was a small spark of worry. What if she wasn’t here by choice?

  On most days, there wasn’t much in Brisbane that had a hope of making Mercy do anything she didn’t want to. Me included. Of course, if something had managed to drag her through this door without her cooperation, then we were in for one hell of a ride. Once, I’d thought dealing with a vampire Primal—think uber-mega-super-vampire with none of their usual weaknesses—was about as disastrous as it could get, then a Demon Lord had come to town.

  Yet, despite Mercy’s reluctance to let me in through the link, I didn’t think she was in trouble. If she was, would she be keeping me out?

  Besides, it was just a bar. I was being an idiot. Just go in.

  But a bar meant people. Possibly drunk people with lowered inhibitions. People who might, all innocently, push the wrong buttons. Hadn’t I already lost it once tonight? Should I put myself in temptation’s way?

  I reached again. Still no go, and she certainly wasn’t going to come out to me.

  My hand was on the handle when it turned, opened from within. I jumped back, going for the nightstick riding in my back pocket.

  A young couple stepped out of the doorway, holding hands and laughing. They were classily dressed, as if they’d come from an exhibition or play or something similarly snotty, and both smiled at me as they passed.

  All right. Not a pair of raucously drunk hooligans. I could do this.

  I went in. Beyond the door was a long, narrow corridor, faintly lit by sparse, weak lights. Strains of soft piano music wound around me, inviting and soothing. I followed it to a set of stairs, leading down. No wonder I hadn’t been able to get a signal off Mercy. She was underground.

  The trepidation returned as I descended but the music swelled and caught me up so that when I reached the bottom and stepped out into the wide room, I was relaxed and ready to mingle.

  The Caesitas Club looked pretty much like any other, slightly upmarket bar you’ve been to. Soft, golden light reflected in a myriad of mirrors; tasteful potted plants, real not plastic; dark red upholstered booths with smooth topped tables; a central, circular bar, a pyramid of glass shelves in the middle holding a colourful array of alcoholic beverages. The place wasn’t quite packed, but it was running a decent trade. As promised, the general air of the place was subdued, with conversations kept at a low level, not having to compete with an overwhelming sound system. The bartender moved from customer to customer with a ready smile. He was perhaps a handful of years younger than me but had an air of calm and balance about him that seemed both odd and perfectly right.

  I circled the bar, getting an upwards head-tilt, raised eyebrows combo from the bartender as I passed. Just an acknowledgement, friend, it seemed to say, I’m here if you need me. Even that little gesture reassured me I was in a good place.

  The piano was in the back, tucked away in a shadowed corner. It was a grand, lid lifted part way. As I got closer, I could see pictures painted onto the dark wood in earthy tones of old gold, brown and yellow. At first I thought it was a pattern of twinning cords, but it resolved itself into a line of cavorting Eastern dragons. The player sat in the deepest shadows, just a darker shade in the shape of a man, shoulders swaying, head bobbing as he coaxed a delicate instrumental piece from the keys. There was no microphone, but I knew it wouldn’t be necessary for him to be heard in this place.

  “Can I help you, sugar?”

  I found a waitress beside me. She was dressed in black pants, pale blue top and long black apron. A tray with empty glasses rested perfectly balanced on one hand. Her pretty face was split into a wide, welcoming grin. Her attention warmed me in a pleasant way.

  “Um, I’m just looking for someone. Smallish, cute-ish, black hair. Perhaps a bit skittish.”

  “Oh,” the waitress said, nodding. “Over there, honey. You just let me know if there’s anything else you need.” She pointed, then went about her rounds.

  There was a booth next to the piano, also mostly in shadow. Now that I looked, I could see a Mercy-shaped shadow huddled into the very back of it, curled up on the seat. A glass of water had been put on the table, but it was untouched.

  She didn’t look up as I slid into the booth. Her gaze was locked on the piano player with a singular intensity usually reserved for a bag of blood. It wasn’t hunger, though. At least not a hunger for food.

  “Merce,” I whispered.

  No reaction. I followed her line of sight and sighed.

  In her life before turning into a vampire, Mercy had been the lead singer in a small rock group. If they’d just managed to keep it together for a couple months longer, I have no doubt Nasty Kitten would have found fame beyond the local pub and festival circuit. But dissention within the group had driven them apart. Then Mercy had disappeared. I didn’t know the exact details, but she’d somehow ended up in the clutches of the Primal of the Violet vampire clan. Turned and then, also for reasons I didn’t know, abandoned.

  That was when I found her. Or more accurately, she’d ended up in my hospital, on a night I was on call for the lab, and the rest was history in progress.

  One of the victims of becoming a vampire is memory. Mercy remembered nothing of her previous life. At least, she didn’t remember details, or faces, or places. As far as she’s concerned, her life began in a locked bedroom in my old house, with cardboard taped over the windows and chains around her wrists and ankles. Her first memory is of me, of digging her fangs into my neck and
finally realising just what she needed to quiet the raging hunger inside.

  We’d come a long way since then. A new house, a cool car (when it wasn’t being ransomed out to conniving friends) and a business that paid most of the bills. Mercy didn’t look at me as food, much, and to all intents and purposes, I was her Primal. The be all and end all of her vampire existence. And yet, there were echoes of Susan Grayson in Mercy Belique, shadows of the human the vampire used to be. The big loves of her life had come through the transformations unscathed. Namely, singing and dancing.

  I watched her now and saw a strange expression on her sweet, heart-shaped face.

  Longing.

  She drank in the piano player as if he was a big glass of O positive.

  I’d been wrong. There was something here to entice her in.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, for what felt like the hundredth time that night, but it was the most honest one of the lot. Whether I was apologising for taking over her body or for everything she’d lost in the transformation, it didn’t matter. She just had to know how sorry I was for everything.

  Slowly, she faced me. Her dark eyes were luminous in the dim light, large and capable of swallowing me whole.

  I brushed her curls back from her face. “Will you ever forgive me?”

  The fact she didn’t bite my hand was answer enough.

  “Come on, baby, let’s go.”

  She came with me, not touching, but close.

  Chapter 8

  My phone rang just as we got back to Shamu the Killer Car. While I answered it, Mercy grabbed the keys from me, unlocked and crawled in. She sat in the passenger seat with arms crossed and scowl aimed in my direction.

  “Night Call,” I said, trying for professional and getting as far as weary politeness.

  “Hawkins, it’s me,” Erin said, sounding slightly distracted. “Did you get Mercy up to the roof of that building yet?” There was a loud rustle of paper.

  “No. I only just found her. She went a bit AWOL.”

  “A bit?”

  “Yeah, no trouble, just a new form of sulking.” I looked at Mercy through the windshield. Her super-hearing caught my words and she poked her tongue out at me, though it seemed a little less frosty. “She might not be up to a recon tonight, though.”

  “That’s okay. Oh, damn.” Something dropped on her end of the line. “Why the hell did Ivan decide to go on holiday now? I can’t find anything in this mess he calls a filing system. I talked to Courey and he said their teams found nothing on the roof. No sign of anyone having been up there recently. It’s probably a dead end.”

  “What about a window? Could it have come from someone inside the building?”

  “It could have, but there was no break and entry anywhere, so it’s not that likely.” She sighed and I heard her sit down, weary. “I admit, I don’t know what to think about it at the moment. It looks accidental, but also far too coincidental. I just can’t help thinking if you want someone dead, there are easier ways to do it then dropping a brick and hoping.”

  I agreed with a grunt. “Listen, I’ll see if Mercy’s up to it anyway. She’s doing better now.” If pulling faces at me was any indication. “You should go home. Sleep on it. Things will look better in the morning.”

  There was silence for a moment, then a soft chuckle. “Glass half full, huh? All right, I’m going home. But call me if you find anything.”

  “First thing in the morning,” I said cheerfully, then hung up.

  In the car, Mercy had the radio tuned to Triple J, the national, non-commercial station. Tonight’s program was indie-electro-alternate-rock, or some other attempt at pigeon-holing. Vastly different to the mellow piano music of the club, but soothing in its own way.

  “Erin wants something?” Mercy asked.

  “Up for a little light climbing?”

  She shrugged.

  Bracing myself for her reaction, I told her what we wanted. She just shrugged again and, taking that as a cautious okay, I headed back to Queen Street. I let Mercy out a couple of blocks back from the scene of the crime, then cruised past it slowly, directed around the clean up by a bored policeman.

  Further down the street, I found a park I could manhandle the Monster Mobile into and waited. Ten minutes later, Mercy appeared and climbed in. I pulled out and we headed home, again.

  “Find anything?” I asked.

  “Birds and cats and rats, a snake.” Her little nose wrinkled in distaste as she added, “Lots of fresh cop smells.” She held out her hand, fist closed around something. “And this.” Opening up revealed a few small chips of stone.

  “What’s special about them?”

  “These were the only bits like it up there, all from where the stone fell from.”

  Frowning, I asked her to keep them safe, then tried to ponder the meaning of it all.

  It was after midnight when we got home. The party was still going next door and Mercy wandered out to the backyard to have a look. Sue noted her, calling to Charles that she was back and okay. Charles’ response, thankfully, wasn’t heard by me.

  I put Mercy’s stone fragments in a jar and considered them for a while, coming up with nothing. Mercy came back in and I heard her rattling the kitchen cupboard that hid the blood fridge.

  “I’m hungry,” she yelled.

  Usually, I would have argued with her, but guilt still gnawed at me so I went and got her a bag of O pos. She snatched it out of my hand with a fang-filled snarl and headed to her bedroom.

  Right. Not yet over the Matt-hate. I followed.

  Tossing the bag of blood on the bed, she began undressing, uncaring of who watched.

  “Merce,” I said, a touch of command in my voice.

  She glared at me and kept peeling off clothes.

  “You know I am truly sorry for tonight, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” It didn’t exactly sound promising.

  I had to wonder if she really understood. I’d thought we were square about the whole body-borrowing thing, and look how that turned out.

  “All right.” I sighed. “I’m going to bed. If you want to watch your movie, can you keep the volume down?”

  She nodded, and now naked, went to her shower.

  I left, but not before locking the door of her cage. Feeling doubly shitty, I went to my own bedroom and showered.

  It was getting hard to ignore it. My little outburst to Erin earlier about Mercy’s attitude wasn’t solely based on tonight’s little fiasco. Lately she’d been trying my patience like she had a death wish. Nothing big like tonight, no running off and refusing to link. Just little things, like attacking a migrating malignity (official collective noun, I swear, but it fits. Oh, how it fits) of goblins.

  We’d been there just to make sure the little critters moved on and didn’t linger. Everything had been going swell until one of the goblins looked at Mercy wrong. Then it had been on for young and ugly, despite my best efforts at reeling the rampaging vampire in. She did for a several of them before they scarpered. I was furious and Mercy was unrepentant (not that she ever could be repentant, being a state of mind she simple didn’t comprehend). In the end I hadn’t been able to stay angry with her. The goblins had, after all, been responsible for a series of fender-benders on a certain stretch of road that had been increasing in severity. Thus moving them on before it got to the point of serious injuries, or fatalities. Still, she’d lost her shit for no big reason, ignored me and not apologised after. That wasn’t something I could just forget.

  Then there’d been the time she left me alone to go head to head with a lavellan. Think big, ugly, sort-of-aquatic, noxious (both venom and breath) rat, but bigger and uglier (rats… shudder). There I was, giant, smelly, vicious rat-thing charging me and Mercy takes off to chase away a herd of curious teenagers. I’m not keen on teenagers, especially those with phone cameras capable of capturing images of me going toe to toe with a mutant Splinter (and, yes, I get the irony of a mutant Splinter). However, I’m even less keen on huge, fuck
ing rats. To make it worse, the entire time I was bludgeoning the lavellan to a hard and putrid death, I could feel Mercy’s sparkly joy at scaring the living crap out of the teenagers. She came back dreamy and content to find me covered in rat-gore, bleeding, blurring from the lavellan’s venom and incredibly angry.

  Then she had the nerve to tell me to build a bridge. I mean, it was a giant, smelly, poisonous RAT that she left me to deal with on my own and she expects me to ‘get over it’.

  Then there was the boat stealing incident.

  I swear, there were days, lately, when I could just… just…

  Forget about it, Matt. Let it go. Deep breaths, long exhales. In with the calm and serenity, out with the (ir)rational frustration at the vampire. She couldn’t help being the way she was. Though lately, she seemed to be not able to help it less than usual.

  A little mellower for leaving my troubles to swirl down the drain, I made the decision to go a bit easier on Mercy. Tonight’s incident was all my fault, after all.

  I was just crawling into bed when Mercy shouted for me.

  All my grumbles vanished in an instant. Heart racing, I pounded into her room. She stood at the bars of the cage, hair wet, the top half of her My Little Pony PJs buttoned up wrong, pale legs bare. When I skidded to a stop, searching for anything threatening, she just reached her arms through the bars.

  I went from heart attack to heartbroken in an instant. I stepped up and she hugged me, the steel bars between us a hard and solid reminder of our relationship. She held me tight for a long time, then let go. As if nothing had happened, she turned and jumped onto her bed, the uneaten bag of blood bouncing high. She caught it in midair, landed and bit into it.

  Smiling, I went to bed.

  The ringing phone woke me. Sunlight streamed in through my bedroom window, the whirling ceiling fan’s efforts starting to be beaten by the rising temperature. I rolled over, sheet tangled in my legs, and fumbled for the phone. It stopped ringing just as I found it. Peering at the screen, it announced the missed call was from an unknown number. It wouldn’t dial back.