Interlude 3—Vampire Huntress
Location: Goldman house
Time: January 02, Merge Plus 3
Evan Von, aka Elronmesa of Amonre leaned back in the chair so that it was balanced on the back legs. He shook his head and said, "I won't be bailing you out." Elronmesa was a half-elf wizard and acrobat.
"I did not ask you to," Sandy said.
"I won't bail you out either, Sandy," Bill said. "In fact, I will testify for the prosecution at your trial for premeditated murder."
"Me too." Leroy Johnson leaned forward across the table. Placing his left hand on its surface, he lifted his right hand with one finger extended. "First, we don't know for certain that Alice Blake merged with Jane Alexander. Yes, it's likely, given what we know, but it's not certain." He extended a second finger. "Second, even if she did, we don't know that the curse came across." He wiggled the second finger. It was a perfectly normal finger, but before the Merge it had been missing its tip. "The Merge cured my hand, and from all reports it cured pretty much any disease anyone who merged had. People were popping up from persistent vegetative states all over the world three nights ago. There is no reason to believe that it didn't cure vampirism."
Sandy put both hands on the table and leaned across it to put her face a bare foot from Leroy's. "Vampirism is a curse, not a disease. The vampire is a corpse animated by a demon."
"Not according to The Vampire Compendium IV. It's a disease, granted with aspects of a curse, but at least part disease."
"Which might well make it worse. Leaving the vampire with all the strengths, but without the weaknesses natural to their kind."
"And third even if she is a vampire with the disease, she is still a human being entitled to all the rights of any other person."
"And what of her victims' rights after she has turned them into her slaves or sucked their blood to sate her unnatural appetite?"
Evan Von let the chair fall forward to the upright position. "I imagine you won't respect those either. Look, Sandy, I know you're suffering from delusions of righteousness since the Merge. I'll even concede that the fact that you seem to have caught a mental aberration from your player character indicates that it's at least possible Alice Blake did too. But we don't know that she did. She may not be a vampire, and even if she is a vampire, she may be a perfectly nice vampire, who's living off cow's blood and perhaps an arrangement with the local blood bank.
"We have no right to act against her if that's the case. And even if it's not, we aren't the cops. And you know as well as I do that the reason you want to do this yourself is because you're afraid that if the cops do go after her, it will mean we get outed as merged.
"So here's what I recommend. We have Leroy give her a call and find out if she merged. And especially if she merged with Jane Alexander, or if she played a game with someone else's group. which is not beyond the realm of possibilities. And if it turns out she did merge with Jane, that still doesn't necessarily mean she's a vampire. The Merge may have cured her, leaving her with only the memory of being a vampire, and whatever else she gets out of merging with a twenty-something ninth-level party girl. If it turns out she is a vampire, we'll talk about it again."
Grudgingly, Sandy agreed.
Location: Roselli House, Houston, Texas
Time: January 02, Merge Plus 3
Alice Blake changed the bag of saline for Carl Roselli. He was asleep with no sign that he was about to vacate his body. The connection was there and the heightened senses. She'd had to more than double his intake of morphine over the last three days as the bond and the increased effect on his sensory input had formed just as they were supposed to, but the agony and confusion hadn't happened. It was that agony, that utter distrust of all sensory input, that forced the spirit from the body. Alice was now convinced of it. Just pain wasn't enough, else the cancer and cutting off his pain killers would have done the job.
Alice went back to her chair and carefully put her body in a comfortable position. Then she stepped out of her body and assumed Jane Alexander's form, complete with the pearl-encrusted ball gown that Jane was buried in. She returned to his sleeping form and, using her connection, examined him.
She could tell which were cancer cells, Alice was almost sure that she could. They were the most active, most alive, cells in his body. In the last three days she had learned that she could feed off Carl's life force at will. That decreased the amount of blood she needed, but increased the amount Carl needed in the form of intravenous feeding. She was just about ready to do an experiment when her cell phone rang. Not the room phone, her cell.
She picked up and saw it was Leroy Johnson. Sighing, she answered and heard Leroy's voice. "Hey, Alice. I'm calling to see how you're doing?"
"I'm fine." There was a pause.
"Alice, are you there?"
"Yes, of course, I'm here."
Another pause than Leroy apparently talking to someone else. "She answered, but I'm not hearing her. Wait. There's a beeping in the background. Can't be the phone."
Alice hung up. Because in that moment, through a combination of Jane's memories and what she had read in The Vampire Compendium IV, she knew what was happening. Vampires in projected form could be seen by anything living, but not in mirrors or, in all probability, by devices like cameras. And apparently their voices worked the same way. Heard by the living, but not picked up by microphones.
The question was, what should she do now. Get back in her body and call Leroy back? Call him back and say what? It was pretty clear he wasn't alone. So probably Bill and Evan were there. But were they Bill and Evan or Sir William Deforest and Alan van Helsing? Did they want to talk or drive a stake through her heart?
She looked at her body, then over at Carl. The thing about Carl was he was a bit of an asshole, but he was a smart asshole, at least in terms of business and law. He was just the guy to give her advice. If she could get him into a condition so that his pain wasn't clouding his mind.
What had been a slow, careful project was now urgent. With resolve, she walked back over to Carl's bedside and, using the link between them, reached in and fed off his cancer cells. She ate their life. They didn't die. That was part of the magic. As long as the spell was in effect, Carl—and presumably his cells—could not die. Which Alice realized meant that chemo was no longer an option. But the cancer cells could go dormant, so after she fed off their life force, she forced those weakened cells to go to sleep.
It was the best she could do for now. At least the cancer wouldn't grow.
Then she woke Carl and fed him some marijuana based brownies that a friend had smuggled in from Louisiana. They were a better option than the opiates, especially when it came to thinking clearly.
"I think we are going to need a lawyer," was Carl's response when she explained the situation. He must have seen something in her face, because he laughed. "Hey, there's nothing illegal about being a vampire. We may even get a discount since now we're blood-suckers too.
"Look, Alice. Lawyers are actually good about client confidentiality, especially when the confidential thing isn't illegal. And, to the best of my knowledge, there is no law against being merged, being a vampire, or even sucking blood, as long as it's consensual. Let me call my lawyer. She's business law, but her firm will have criminal lawyers. And I can ask about the legal ramifications of the Merge and even about what happens if you merge with a bad guy like that chick on the news who merged with a bad elf.
"But first I'm gonna need a bed pan and some privacy."
✽✽✽
Half an hour later, the buzzer buzzed and Alice went back into Carl Roselli's sick room. "Okay. I talked to my lawyer and she charged me triple for the after-hours call, which is coming out of your pay by the way."
"Take it out of the million dollar bonus you're giving me for turning you."
Carl laughed. "Not a chance, but we'll deal with that later. For now, here's what my lawyer says. There have been a lot of cases arising out of the Merge, but most of them haven't gotten up to the appellate courts yet, much less the Supreme Court. So while the general trend is that you can't discriminate based on the fact of the Merge or who you merged with, that could change. On the up side, there is, in fact, no law against being a vampire and no legal justification for staking you or even making you go out in the sunlight." He held up a hand. "That doesn't mean that some town clown won't bust you for some made up charge and drag you out into the sunlight on your way to jail."
That wasn't good news. On the day after the Merge Alice had, as an experiment, put her arm in front of direct sunlight. It wasn't quite like shoving her arm against a hot iron, but it was bad enough. Her best guess was that exposure to sunlight while in her body wouldn't kill her, but it would damn sure hurt her.
"It also doesn't mean that some nut job vigilante won't stake you for the good of humanity. They might think you're worse than abortion doctors—" He shrugged. "—or maybe not.
"In spite of that, my suggestion is that you fess up to Leroy and even agree to meet him. Make the meeting away from here and leave your body here. That will limit the damage they can do to you. Hell, go as Jane Alexander. Not just in projected form, but in Jane Alexander's form, not Alice Blakes. You don't want to encourage them to make a mistake. You want to keep this as non-adversarial as you can manage."
Alice could take either Jane's form or her own pretty much at will, but mostly from habit it was easier to go about as Jane. She called Leroy Johnson and admitted that she had merged with Jane Alexander, and that she was part vampire. "The disease didn't come with the Merge. Just the magic." She evaded on the subject of needing blood by saying, "I can feed off the life force that my body generates. It mostly means I need to eat more."
Leroy sounded skeptical, but didn't push the point. He did want to meet, and he confirmed that Bill had merged with Sir William, but Evan hadn't merged with Alan van Helsing.
Location: Papa Joe's BBQ, Houston, Texas
Time: January 03, Merge Plus 4
On Carl's advice she wasn't here alone. She was with Lionel Mercader, a lawyer from the law firm he used. It wasn't his lawyer. This one specialized in personal injury and criminal law.
He opened the door and followed her in. Papa Joe's was in south Houston, only a few minutes from Leroy's house. And as it turned out, Leroy wasn't alone either. Evan was there, and so was Bill, along with a woman in a severe dress.
They clearly didn't recognize her as Jane Alexander. Just the description from the game wasn't a lot to go on and she wasn't dressed in the pearl-encrusted burial gown, but in a pantsuit. She walked over to the table and said, "Hello, Leroy, Evan, Bill," giving each a nod. "I'm Alice Blake and this is Mr. Lionel Mercader, my attorney." She waved at Lionel, then looked at the woman at the table. "And who is this?"
"Dame Sandra of Corinth, Sword Virgin, and Knight Templar." The woman gave a slight dip of the head, but like a martial arts bow, her eyes never left Alice.
Alice also noted that Bill winced when Sandra introduced herself. She thought Bill's wife was named Sandy. Could she have merged? Then she remembered "sword virgin." Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy. That whole hammed up murder attempt after they killed Roderic still rankled.
"Well, Evan, do you still want to stake me?" Alice asked.
"Not me," Evan Von said, and his hand flicked at Sandra of Corinth. "But it might be better if everyone had a seat and we spoke about this in calmer tones."
Once they were seated, Leroy asked, "Why are you here in projected form, Alice? Or is it Jane now?"
"It's still Alice, though I am, of course, influenced by Jane's memories and personality. But I'm sure you know what that's like, Leroy. In fact everyone at this table knows what that's like."
"Not me," Lionel Mercader volunteered. "But I am curious. I know about Alice's merge but not about the rest of you. Well, I imagine that Sandra of Corinth is the player character. Who's the player by the way? I don't recognize you from Alice's description of the game."
Hesitantly they identified themselves.
"Thank you all. Now, Mr. Johnson, you called this meeting. What did you want to talk about?"
"She is a vampire," Sandra said.
"Not entirely. Besides, being a vampire is not a crime. And in any case, Ms. Blake didn't volunteer to be a vampire."
"It's not about blame," Leroy said. "It's about public safety."
"As I am sure many would say about all the merged. About each of you." Lionel Mercader paused, looking around the table, then focusing on Bill and Sandra, added, "And, I dare say, your children as well. There was a report today about a teenage boy named Kenneth Harper. It was flashed all over social media that he had merged with a vampire. That boy was murdered, a stake driven through his heart." He looked around the table again. "My client has no desire to be murdered, because someone finds out that she merged with a vampire. No more than Kenneth Harper did. No more than you or your children do. Everyone merged is in danger from unreasoned fear. You folks don't want to increase that danger. And in this case, there is no reason to."
They talked some more and it was pretty sure that Leroy, Bill, and Evan were willing to live and let live. But Sandra of Corinth . . . not so much.
Alice, of course, didn't eat, because the only thing she could consume in projected form was blood. But she did order a doggy bag of ribs and potato salad.
As they were getting ready to leave, Alice asked, "So Bill, what do you think is going on with Sir William?"
"Assuming that Alan paid off the cabbie, we ought to be in Casablanca or maybe headed into Central Africa."
"So you don't think that getting your memories will have changed things?"
Bill considered. "Maybe if I, ah, William, can convince Alan that he's not possessed and that the memories mean Jane isn't a demon. But I wouldn't count on that."