Chapter Three
Call it paranoia but I was certain that someone had crawled under my SUV and cut my fuel line while I was bartering for a tank of gas to get me home.
I knew it instinctively as the engine began to cough and I realized that I had gone through a full tank of gas since leaving the travel plaza thirty minutes earlier. I didn’t need a flashlight check of the undercarriage: The math was convincing all on its own. My gas stop was some twenty miles behind me and home was another hundred and some on down the road.
And it had been timed to happen around half past midnight. Forget the old saying that “bad luck comes in threes,” I’d just been bumped up to quadratic equations.
Another lifetime ago I might have chalked it up to coincidence—before I died for the first time and awoke with the shadow of immortality in my veins.
You would think I wouldn’t be so unique. Thousands had died over the centuries with vampire slobber on their throats. Hundreds had been granted a second unlife because their fangy sires mingled their blood, bringing both viruses into play. You see, bite-work alone does not a vampire make.
And then there’s me. No bitey: no saliva, no secondary virus. Instead, a sloppy, in-the-field transfusion had loaded my bloodstream with Virus A. But no Virus B. Hence, no super-virus.
So . . . not undead. But not so alive, either. And just unique enough to put me on the iniquitous Hit List of The Damned.
And I couldn’t exactly turn to the “living” for allies: They were likely divided between the superstitious put-a-stake-through-his-heart or the scientific what-might-vivisection-tell-us-about-the-biological-anomalies?
So, as they say, it’s not paranoia when everyone is out to get you. I wasn’t so “Brad and Janet” anymore: Belief in dangerous coincidences was one of the first things to go.
For the moment the darkness was a mixed blessing. On the plus side, I had maybe three hours to go to ground. After that, sunrise would inflict an arcane pyromancy that mere tinted windows could not forestall. But the pine-latticed night skies of northern Louisiana—which might buy me another thirty minutes of cover come sunrise—also concealed me from the eyes of potential Good Samaritans. The predatory gaze of creatures who could see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum would not be so obstructed. And all of the nearby towns would be small, locked down, and closed up for the night.
So I was alone. But probably not for very much longer . . .
Final champagne bubbles of gas got me to an off-ramp. Unfortunately no amount of coaxing could get my chugging, gasping SUV all the way up to the top where the side road slid off into deeper darkness. It died with a great shudder just off the main highway.
The nearest cone of sodium-vapor light was distant enough to screen me from the casual motorist but I still offered a dim silhouette to anyone actually looking for me.
I glanced at my watch to check the time and saw my naked wrist. I’d had to hand my Breitling Navitimer over to a pimple-faced high school dropout in exchange for a tank of gas. If the kid was actually smart enough to get it properly appraised, he’d be able to buy a new pickup truck with customized mud flaps. It didn’t seem an equitable trade for thirty-six dollars’ worth of gasoline, but waiting past sunrise for the banks to open was so not an option.
And now this.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. How much longer?
My phone played the first few measures of “Clair de Lune” in my pocket and I pressed the answer button without checking the caller ID.
“Baby, what are you doing?” Lupé’s voice asked.
I sat up. “Nothing.”
“Shouldn’t you be doing something?”
“What? I don’t—what do you mean?”
“You’re in trouble, aren’t you.” Her voice made it clear that she wasn’t asking.
“How did you know?”
“By the pricking of my thumbs . . .”
Something wicked this way comes.
“. . . You’re always in trouble these days,” she clarified.
“That’s because you’re not here,” I said. “You know what happens when I’m left to my own devices.”
Like becoming a big, insensitive, predatory jerk.
She laughed but sounded sad. “You know how much I want that but it’s just not possible right now.”
“I know,” I said. But I didn’t think I did any more. Damn Sídhe . . . “How are the others?”
The hesitation in her voice was even more telling than Mama Samm’s.
My left hand clenched the steering wheel. “They’re starting to forget, aren’t they?”
She took a breath. “They don’t want to. They’re fighting it . . .”
I took my own deep breath. “They can’t help it. They’re in the Realm of The Fae: Human memory fades and the outside world recedes. I’m surprised that you still remember me . . .”
She laughed a sad little laugh. “Not completely human. Remember?”
“Better than human,” I shot back.
She sighed. “I will hold you in my heart as long as I can, baby. And, when you come, I will remember you again. And so will the others. Which is why you’ve got to do things right.”
I swallowed. “I’ve always tried to do what’s right. I usually make a hash of it.”
“Sounds like somebody is having a pity party.”
“Not for me. I’m thinking of the body count.”
“You’re a warrior, Chris. Collateral damage is inevitable—”
“I’m not a warrior!” I bit back. “I’m an unemployed Lit professor who’s stranded on the highway! Both literally and metaphorically,” I finished lamely.
“So,” she asked after a patient pause, “what are you going to do about it?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know. I thought I’d sit here for a while.”
“You can’t do that, Chris.”
“I’m tired, Lupé.”
“A while longer, baby, and then we can all be together.”
“I don’t think I can wait.”
“You know it doesn’t work this way. Giving up is giving up, whether it is by your hand or another’s.”
“It’s not the same this time,” I insisted. “I’m pretty much out of viable options. And I’m out here all alone.”
“It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone,” she said.
“. . . that I see him to be strong and to prevail,” I quoted with her. “He is weaker by every recruit to his banner.”
“Is not a man better than a town?” she finished.
“You’ve never invoked Emerson before. I’d love to see the libraries you’re frequenting these days.”
“You know you’re forbidden to come here,” she said.
“As long as I am tied to the realm of mortal men and answerable to fate and destiny,” I answered as if by rote. “And you and the others are forbidden to return, having been granted sanctuary by the Daoine Sídhe.”
“Yes.” Her voice was unbearably sad.
“So, how much longer am I condemned to exile?”
“Christopher, we are the ones in exile,” she corrected gently.
“That’s not how it feels to me.”
“Liban and Fand have both said that you may . . . transition . . . soon.”
“Really.” I sighed. “You know that the Faerie have a different sense of time than the rest of us. Their egg timers measure in decades, not minutes.”
“And, yet,” she said, “you are the one who turned back the Wheel of Time and saved New Orleans from its greater fate.”
She meant it as a compliment but it wasn’t strictly true and it didn’t make me feel any better. Funny how the saving of tens of millions of lives had not erased the guilt for the thousands still lost the second time around.
And it was pointless to argue who had really unwound the mainspring of history’s chronometer and turned Hurricane Eibon into Katrina. An ancient, alien astronaut, worshipped as an elder god, had returned to its own dread dimension, folding space and time in the process of facilitating a launch window. My part in that affair and the repercussions that followed fell somewhere in between the flap of a butterfly’s wings and having a sure steersman’s grip on the tiller of the SS Fate. Responsibility and blame, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. And now, years later, I was still locked out of the place between worlds where the Fey Folk had taken my friends and family for refuge against the Greater Darkness.
Porched. On a cosmic scale.
“Christopher . . . this is important.”
My head came up. “What?”
“Liban and Fand were talking about you.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
I could hear the gentle smile in her voice. “Liban . . . still bears you much affection . . .”
“I’m just a curiosity to her. She’s bored.”
I could feel her nod a thousand light-years away. “There is that. She is ancient. And she appreciates your part in holding back The Darkness.”
“Sure. I’m a chess piece with some value.”
“More than a simple pawn,” she agreed.
I smiled in return. “Certainly not a bishop.”
“A knight!”
“In shining armor?” I made a rude noise. “Maybe a castle . . . Hey, I’ve been rooked!”
She laughed again. And sounded more distant. As if she were receding into the sweet oblivion of lost memories.
“Lupé?”
“They were talking,” she said. “And Liban said something. It seemed important: They were both worried. Does ‘empusa’ mean anything to you?”
I had to sift through odd bits of trivia in the back of my head. “Did they just say ‘empusa’ or ‘The Empusa’?”
“I don’t know, baby. Does it matter?”
“Does anything?”
“Are you giving up, Chris? You know we cannot be together if you . . . you give up.”
“Acknowledging the inevitable is not the same as giving up.”
“It is if you don’t go down fighting. And you are a fighter, Chris. You’ve always fought for the right things. And now, tonight, you’re the right thing. The rightest thing I know! I need you to do this! The others, too. We need you to fight for you! Promise us!”
“I’ll . . . try . . .” I said reluctantly.
“Do or do not,” she growled in a curiously ancient voice, “there is no ‘try.’”
I laughed despite my sour mood. “God, I miss you.”
“It won’t be forever, baby. Unless you break The Rule. Now hang up so you can hurry up and get your ass out of there.”
“You’re the best, Lupé.”
“And you’re my Sweet Baboo.”
And then the call went dead.
Just like my heart.
The question of empusa or “The” Empusa nagged at me a little.
In Greek mythology, Empusa was the daughter of the goddess Hecate and the dark spirit Mormo who preyed upon children. Mormo was one of the mythic precursors to the vampire legends that would develop around the chthonic deities down through the ages. Empusa was possibly the first prosopopoeia of those legends.
She was said to be beautiful—in outward form, at least. Flaming hair, alabaster skin, a divine face and form that enabled her to seduce multitudes of young men. Not only did they fall under the spell of her beauty, they were ensorcelled with a form of sleep paralysis, as well. And this demigoddess would then feast on them while they were thralls to her magic. Drinking their blood, even devouring their flesh, she was transformed, in time and mythology, to an entire race of vampiric creatures—spectres, actually. These empusae were Hecate’s minions and would devour unwary travelers on lonely roads. They were cited throughout literary history by such varied scribes as Aristophanes, Lucius Flavius Philostratus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Rudyard Kipling. F. W. Murnau, the director of Nosferatu, gave the name Empusa to the ship that his undead Count Orlok traveled on.
So were Fand and Liban talking about the Greek demigoddess? Or the monsters that closely paralleled the Greek lamiai? Some of the latter would be more difficult to spot as they could take on many forms, even those of animals. As for a certain beautiful, red-headed siren? Later accounts of her legend suggested that she either had the leg of an ass or an artificial leg made out of brass. Well, brass or ass, we were into shorts and short skirt weather so picking her out of a lineup would be a good deal easier.
In the meantime, I needed to move.
I didn’t think too much about the fact that I had to turn my phone back on to speed-dial my business partner while I organized my emergency kit one-handed.
“After Dark Investigations,” she said, answering on the first ring.
“Olive,” I said, “I’ve got a problem and I’ve got to move fast—”
“This is Moira, Mr. Cséjthe. I’m afraid Ms. Perdue is out sick tonight and it’s just me covering the phones.” Moira had been on the job for a whole week, now, and still couldn’t pronounce my name properly. Most of the time it came out sounding like a half-strangled Chinese oath. This time she managed to make it sound like a cross between a cough and a sneeze. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Chay-tay,” I corrected absently, checking my rearview mirrors for movement of any kind.
“What?”
“Call me Chris,” I sighed, and gave her a barebones explanation of what had happened and what I wanted. As she wrote down the highway and the number of the closest mile marker, I asked her to arrange for a tow truck and look up taxicab or Uber numbers for the nearest towns.
“Aren’t you going to wait with your car?” she asked.
“Um, no.”
“Why not?”
Why not?
Because there are things that want me dead—dead again, dead for the third time—that you can’t imagine in your worst nightmares, little girl . . .
“Because someone slid under my wheels while I was inside a busy, well-lit truck stop and cut my fuel line while I was trying to figure out why my plastic is only good for bookmarks, shims, and door jimmies all of a sudden.”
“Gee, Mr. Cséjthe, sounds like you’re not having a very good night.”
I fought the urge to lean forward and bang my head against the steering wheel. “I don’t think you grasp the seriousness of the situation. Someone with that kind of skill and planning didn’t arrange for me to be stranded by the side of the road—in the middle of the night, far from assistance or witnesses—just for shits and giggles. They’re either going to show up right soon or send other sorts that I’d rather not wait around to meet.”
I reached under my seat and pulled my handgun, a Glock 20, from its hidden carrier. Why was I having this conversation? It was wasting precious time that I needed to be putting distance between me and my vehicle. Using Moira as an excuse to get myself killed would be a technical violation of The Rule as Lupé and The Others defined it.
“You’re kidding, Mr. Cséjthe—” It was official, now: The new intern had discovered more ways to mispronounce my name than any three people I knew. “—who would want to harm you?”
I shoved a magazine in the grip of the handgun and put three more in my pocket. “Moira, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
And if I told you, they’d have to kill you.
I squirmed about, trying to meet all of the conditions of my concealed carry permit as I reseated the Glock in my fanny holster. Louisiana summers are hell for dressing comfortably even without trying to keep a weapon the size of both of your fists out of sight.
“I need you to be making those calls now,” I said. Instead of slowing me down with a bunch of unnecessary questions.
“But—”
“Gotta go!” I terminated the call, ending any further protests.
I spent all of two seconds thinking about the sawed-off shotgun and the semiautomatic assault rifle secreted beneath the hinged back seat. Better to travel fast and light, I decided. And if the opportunity to hitchhike materialized down the road, I didn’t want to lessen those already slim odds by looking like an extra from a Schwarzenegger movie. I grabbed the flashlight out of the glove box and the astronomy pointer out of the compartment beneath the armrest. A little larger and longer than a penlight, the laser pointer was a bit long for my shirt pocket but the teargas and pepper-spray pens as well as the colloidal-silver atomizer kept it snug and upright.
All I needed was a king-sized, nerd-worthy, tooled-leather pocket protector.
I was reaching for the door handle when a pair of headlights came up over the hill behind me. Was this someone making their move? Or just another late-night motorist bound for Monroe or towns and cities beyond?
Neither, apparently: A red and blue lightbar bloomed above the disembodied headlamps as it pulled onto the exit ramp behind me.
Against all odds, there was a cop around when you needed them!
I started to reach for the door handle then remembered the Glock. I tugged the semi-automatic out of my fanny holster. Reopening the glove compartment, I swapped it out for my vehicle registration and proof of insurance, then closed the compartment and locked it.
I was hunting through my wallet for my concealed carry permit when the patrol car’s spotlight came on. As the beam traveled around the perimeter of my vehicle, I turned on the interior dome light.
My father had taught me how to handle late-night traffic stops.
Cops don’t believe in vampires or werewolves or alien intelligences that inhabit a shadow dimension pressed smack dab up against ours. On the other hand, they know that with the dying of each day’s light there is a shift in this world’s balance. The majority of the good, the decent, the hardworking, go home. The majority of the hooligans, the troublemakers, yes, and even the occasional human monster, come out to “play.” There are still good people out and about, but you don’t have to work in law enforcement to know that your chances for unpleasant encounters continue to rise as the hour grows later and the landscape grows darker.
“There’s no such thing as a routine traffic stop until it’s over,” my old man often told me. “Every time a cop approaches a stopped vehicle, he wonders: ‘Is this the one? Will this guy have a pistol? A sawed-off shotgun?’” (Good thing both of mine were well stowed.) “So let me tell you something, son,” my father said—this old man who had toted his own badge and gun back and forth to work for nearly forty years. “When a man is walking toward you with his hand on the butt of his gun, you don’t want to do anything to make him more nervous than he already is. You get pulled over after dark; you turn on the dome light and sit there with both hands in plain sight on top of the steering wheel. Not just for his sake but for yours.”
So I did. I sat there with the dome light on and my hands in plain sight long enough to wonder if my license plate had thrown a flag in the NLETS database.
Eventually a door was opened and the flash of the patrol car’s interior lights revealed four silhouettes: two cops and what had to be a couple of perps in the caged backseat getting a detour on their trip to the Ouachita Parish lockup.
The PA speaker crackled to life: “Driver, please step out of the vehicle, keeping your hands in plain sight.”
I sighed. No doubt Lieutenant Ruiz had flagged my license plate in the computer network—an invitation for her fellow officers to give me grief if the opportunity arose. Ruiz was two years gone—transferred down to New Iberia Parish—but the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System had deep memory banks.
I opened the door and stepped down onto the gravel shoulder, shielding my eyes against the glare of the spotlight with my right hand. As I realized that I was still holding my flashlight with that hand, both officers stepped out of the car.
The driver had his hand on the butt of his service revolver. The officer riding shotgun was—well—carrying a shotgun. He held it a bit awkwardly, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it. All other details were lost as they stepped in front of the squad car’s multiple light sources and became silhouettes.
“Please keep your hands where we can see them, sir,” ordered the driver.
Damn Ruiz; I should be getting roadside assistance, not a little ill-timed payback for back when those corpses kept turning up in my yard . . .
“Mr. Cséjthe, our records indicate you have a gun permit . . .”
I gestured with the flashlight, flicking it on and pointing it over my shoulder, back at my SUV. “It’s locked in the glove compartment.” The silhouettes visibly relaxed and I silently thanked my old man’s counsel: climbing out of my car, armed, to greet two officers of the law . . . well, just no way that would have gone pleasantly, even if they were professionals . . .
Professionals who pronounced my name correctly just from reading it off of the little computer screen in the squad car . . .
“Are you sure that we’ve got the right guy?” Shotgun asked the driver. “He don’t exactly look like the Bogeyman.”
And now the back doors were opening on that squad car. Since there are no interior door handles where the arrestees sit, the doors were literally kicked off their hinges. One of the doors went surfing across the road and median and into the opposite lanes.
The “perps” emerged.
I brought the flashlight around and illuminated the “cops” as their “prisoners” joined them. Their uniforms were hastily put together and haphazardly buttoned. Dark stains cascaded from the collars where the former occupants had had their throats torn open. The pretend cops smiled, their parted lips revealing the predatory Vs of elongated incisors.
Vampires.
Dressed up like the long fang of the law.
“I’ve got the camera,” announced one of the “perps,” likewise a vampire.
I spoke without thinking: “Camera? You guys are what—fans? I can’t believe you cut my fuel line for a photo op!”
“Fuel line? Oh, this just gets better and better,” the driver said. He jerked his head at one of the perps. “Check it out.”
The thing that looked like a man moved with inhuman speed. He was back in less than a minute. “The tip was solid, Dwayne. It’s been nicked in three different places. Can’t tell if it’s deliberate or some kind of damage from road debris.”
I looked at the driver. “Dwayne?”
He looked at me. “What?”
I shrugged. “Guess I should know better by now. But I still expect vampires to have names like Boris or Vlad . . . maybe Heinrich. But Dwayne?”
Taunting the undead carries risks. Particularly if they have the advantage and outnumber you four-to-one. I was reminded of that as his handgun was out of its holster, now, and pointed at my midsection. Goading your assassin into pulling the trigger could be interpreted as breaking The Rule—but then I really had no chance of getting out of this alive unless I could provoke these guys into making a mistake. It was a fine line in terms of inevitability: There were four of them, any one of them stronger, faster, able to take more damage and shrug it off. My only chance was to make them careless. Careless and stupid.
“And the camera?” I continued, looking past his shoulder. “Makes you come off more touristy than menacing. Unless you’re paparazzi, in which case I should point out that Britney Spears is from Houma.” I pointed to the southeast. “Another five hours thataway. I hear the sunrise on the Gulf is to die for.”
“I thought he was supposed to be all clinically depressed and borderline catatonic,” the one with the shotgun murmured.
“We need a record for the Demesne,” the driver answered me, “in case you discorporate.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Discorporate?” He meant getting turned into a human-shaped pile of ash but I was more interested in why that was an issue.
“Issues of succession. No body, no evidence of successful termination. The leadership of the New York demesne remains in question until your primacy is fully resolved.”
“Heh,” I said. “Primacy. You guys are really serious about the legalese. Could’ve planted a bomb under my car instead of cutting the gas line and jumping through all the extra hoops.”
They all smiled now. Way too many pointy teeth!
“If someone cut your gas line, it wasn’t one of us,” said Perp One.
“And it’s not just a question of corporeal evidence,” Perp Two said with some emotion. “It’s a matter of payback.” He produced a machete-like sword. “A lot of people owe you a death . . .”
I nodded slowly. “Couldn’t agree more. You just trot on back to New York and tell the rest of the UV-challenged that they’re welcome to die the second death and feel free to start without me.”
“What?”
“He used to be an English teacher, Vern,” Perp One murmured. “You shoulda said ‘he owes a lot of people a death’ instead uh the other way around.” And proceeded to draw a longish, Ren Faire–looking sword from behind his back.
“Whatever happened to the good old days,” I groused, “when the undead just crawled out of their crypts and bit people?”
“We’re not stupid,” the one with the shotgun answered. “We know your touch is poison and your veins are toxic. And we aren’t about to give you a chance to bloodwalk.”
“Oh, darn!” Apparently the reputation that kept most of the undead off my back was finally facilitating a learning curve for the rest.
Vampires are stronger and faster than humans so they tend to be overconfident. Being longer “lived” makes them arrogant as well: They presume the advantage of time makes them smarter and wiser. It was that kind of arrogance and overconfidence on their part that had kept me alive in the face of overwhelming odds so far.
That and plain, dumb luck.
It appeared, however, that I was out of plain, dumb luck. Or handsome, smart luck, for that matter.
Vern the Perp furrowed his brow. “Maybe he’s on drugs. That would explain why he ain’t all suicidal . . .”
I smiled. “Don’t need artificial chemicals in my system, boys. I’ve banished the doom and gloom of these past two years by finding my Happy Thought!”
“Happy thought?” Vern questioned.
“It’s like from Peter Pan,” the other sword guy muttered from the side of his mouth.
Vern looked blank.
“Helps him fly.”
Vern’s expression slowly morphed from huh? to Omygodhecanfly?
The other sword guy just shook his head.
I looked around. Even this late at night there should have been some traffic. “So, how are we going to do this? Do you shoot me or run me through?”
“Nothing so quick,” Dwayne answered.
“Car,” Shotgun announced.
“I’ve got it,” the other sword guy said. He stepped toward the road.
After a good thirty seconds the hill behind us acquired a luminescent corona from approaching headlights. It was another full minute, however, before a car came over the concrete horizon. The headlights wobbled a bit as if the driver was having a momentary spasm, and then settled out as the car went streaking past.
Impressive.
Vampiric mind control is tricky enough in a small room where you can get the victim to look in your eyes. Projective telepaths who can sense minds a mile or more away and put the pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain whammy on a moving target? I was outnumbered, outgunned, and outbrained. “Careless and stupid” hadn’t been a viable edge to begin with and now it was so in the rearview mirror.
“All clear,” Shotgun announced.
For the moment. My only chance would be to make my move when the next vehicle popped up. The distraction would probably cut the odds down from one in a thousand to one in eight hundred and fifty-two. Best case scenario: I could probably take one of them with me before the others “resolved my primacy.”
I believed in focusing on the positives in any given situation.
“Anything else?” Dwayne asked the vamp with the shotgun.
He shook his head. “Not yet. We’re clear to three miles out.”
Dwayne turned back to me. “Now, where were we?”
I shrugged. “Something about payback . . . blah, blah, blah . . . slow and painful . . . blah, blah . . . but nothing about who’s going to hold the camera, who’s going to watch for cars to mind-wipe, and whether there’s enough of you left over to take me down.” I smiled and blinked expectantly. “Blah.”
“Won’t be a problem,” he said, gesturing with his gun. “We shoot you in the knees so you can’t run and then take our time and take turns with the blades.”
I had to force a grin. “Well, that sounds messy.”
Shotgun cocked his head. “He don’t seem scared, Dwayne. Why ain’t he scared?”
“Happy Thought,” I offered.
“He’s scared, all right,” Dwayne answered. “He’s just trying to hide it.”
I raised my hands a bit. “Oh, I’m afraid, all right . . .”
“See?”
“. . . scared that after going mano a monster with zombies, werewolves, master vampires, and creatures from the Cthulhu Lagoon, after facing down an immortal Nazi, an ancient Babylonian demon, a six-thousand-year-old necromancer, and a couple of Great Old Ones—I’m terrified that I’m going to get capped by evil masterminds from the Jerry Springer universe. It’s a good thing that you’re going to kill me because I wouldn’t want to live with that humiliation! Too bad your plan totally sucks for you.”
“Yeah?” the driver scowled, “How’s that?”
“You said it yourself: the Rites of Succession.”
“So?”
I shrugged. “Once I’m dead, the Throne of the New York demesne is totally up for grabs. And tradition usually recognizes the assassin of the old Doman as the new successor. Except your plan is pretty much going to muddle up who actually kills me!”
“If we kill you then our Sire becomes Doman,” Vern’s sword-toting buddy answered. “What we do, we do for Clan and Family, not for personal advancement.”
“When, not if,” I corrected.
“What?”
“You meant to say when you kill me, not if. Or maybe you’re not so confident of the four-to-one odds.”
“You really are some kind of English teacher,” Vern said. I couldn’t tell if his tone bordered on awe or astonished annoyance.
“A professor of literature,” I corrected. “Though I can play the grammarian if the situation warrants. Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.’”
“Yeah?” Vern’s sword buddy raised his blade. “Who said big-ass swords makes a dead man?”
I shook my head. “No one. The Book of Matthew, however, says that he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. But then I’m guessing you guys aren’t all that big on the New Testament.”
“All right,” snapped the driver with the gun, “Enough with the quotage. Unless you have any last words.” He smiled. “Aside from the screaming and begging for mercy.”
I casually moved my right hand toward my shirt pocket and pulled out the astronomy pointer. “How about the pen is mightier than the sword?” It still looked more like a mini-flashlight than a writing implement but it was dark and I kept my hand in motion. “As for any last words?” I turned sideways and struck a fencing pose. “En garde!”
The two with the swords started to step forward, grinning, but Dwayne swept them back, holding out his arms on each side. “There won’t be any on-guarding! Just a bullet—”
He shrieked as the glowing, green line of light slashed across his face. His eyes burst into flaming balls of goo like campfire marshmallows lit for grotesque s’mores.
I ignored the swordsmen for the moment, making the firearms my first priority. Shotgun was quicker than I thought, slide-cocking the Remington 870 while throwing it up in front of his face. Another eye shot was momentarily blocked so I directed the laser pointer where he was gripping the stock, shining the beam on his right hand.
A typical red laser pointer for classroom use is rarely able to push much more than a single milliwatt. As a weapon, they can do a little retinal damage but are pretty useless otherwise. I wasn’t brandishing a typical classroom pointer, however. I was wielding a five-thousand-milliwatt green laser pointer whose weaker cousins were used for outdoor distance scopes. They can also pop balloons, light matches, and sear human flesh at some remove. Shotgun was a good deal closer and not human. His sun-sensitive, preternatural flesh was especially vulnerable to an amplified yet concentrated beam of coherent, high-frequency light.
His hand burst into flame.
“What is that?” Vern screamed as the Remington shotgun clattered to the asphalt. Fire began crawling up his companion’s arm.
I smiled with my teeth. “Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster . . .” I swept the green, threaded beam across the swordsmen’s faces, “. . . a Jedi’s lightsaber is an elegant weapon . . .”
Vern ducked and the other swordsman lost only one eye but it was enough. His sword joined the shotgun on the pavement as he shrieked and clutched at his face. Dwayne had fallen to his knees, flames flickering from back of his empty eye sockets like a candlelit jack-o’-lantern. Shotgun was trying to beat out the fire on his right arm with his left hand and now both arms were aflame.
Vern had better reflexes. He hurled his sword at me and turned and ran for the squad car, sliding into the driver’s seat. By the time he realized that he didn’t have the keys for the ignition, Dwayne and Shotgun were man-sized bonfires and the other swordsman was running blindly down the ramp, his head fully ablaze like the Ghost Rider sans motorcycle. As he passed into a patch of greater darkness he seemed to transform into a will-o’-the-wisp bobbing away into the distance.
Vern looked up, his expression a mixture of fear, fury, and awe as I walked up to the broken-out driver’s side window. “They said it would be easy!” he sobbed. “They said you was gone over!”
“Gone over?” I squatted next to the door.
“They was saying you had lost your mind. That you’d started drinking like you was still alive and wanted to be dead!”
“That or the other way around,” I said.
“They said you had a death wish . . .”
I smiled. Too bad my teeth weren’t naturally pointy. “What? Like I want to die instead of sending all of your New York, undead asses into the Great Beyond?” I leaned against the door’s sill and aimed the laser pointer at his face. “Now why would I want to do that?”
Resignation and hopelessness filled the vampire’s eyes like rising floodwaters. “Because . . . they said . . . they said . . .” His voice faded to a whisper and he closed his eyes. “. . . I don’t know.”
“Go ahead, Vern. What did they say? Tell me what they’ve said about me.”
“That you’re The Bloodwalker. The Daybinder. That . . . that you used to be human and that you . . . never were. That you went insane after your family was killed—”
I held up a finger in front of his lips and he stopped talking.
“They weren’t killed,” I said quietly. “They were taken to a safe place outside of this world. They’re still alive. They’re just not . . . here.”
His eyes peeked open. “See, man; that’s just crazy-sounding. I mean, it’s just another fancy way of sayin’ they died . . . leaving this world.”
“They didn’t die,” I insisted, sounding a little crazy to myself, now. What am I going to say? That they had been taken into the Realm of the Faerie?
Or was Vern talking about the crash outside of Weir, Kansas all those years before that marked the first passing of my wife and daughter?
And me . . .
I bowed my head and took a shaky breath. “Look, let’s say everybody’s right and I do have a death wish. I can’t just stand around and let you kill me. It’s as good as committing suicide—which we all know is a big theological no-no. So it all requires a good faith effort on your part. Capisce?”
He closed his eyes.
I reached through the window and grabbed his arm. “Pay attention, Vern! I’m getting really, really tired of this!”
He shrieked as the silver-laced alkaloids in my epidermis seared his undead flesh. I pulled my hand back but an angry red palm print remained and his arm smelled like rancid pork tossed on a hot grill. “I—I’m sorry!”
“Sorry isn’t good enough, Frakula! You and all the others! Just keep coming down here! You just keep coming and coming and you still can’t do it right! What is so freaking hard about this? I’m just one man! And now I’m all alone! And yet you still can’t figure out how to make it happen!” My voice caught and I couldn’t yell any more. “You let me down tonight, Vern . . .”
“Let you down?” He wanted to rub his arm but was afraid to touch the burn.
“You and your friends. All of you. And the rest . . .” I shook my head. “I’m tired. And alone. And yet you still can’t seal the deal.”
“I-I don’t unnersstand what you’re sayin’.”
“If you can’t be Twilight pretty could you at least be Chris Lee smart? I’m saying bring your A game or stay the hell home. It’s worse than annoying, it’s a tease. You get me all excited about laying down my sword and shield . . . and then you don’t come across. Plus, now I have to kill you. Really, what’s the point?”
“Oh God . . .” His eyes pinched shut and the sound of his ragged breathing was surprisingly loud as he struggled to get enough air into his lungs.
Vern was a newbie. Like all of the recently turned, he had trouble remembering that the dead didn’t actually breathe. Except to talk. And, as far as I was concerned, Vern was done talking. Then scarlet tears began to slide from beneath his eyelids like cherry Kool-Aid and I thought—just for a moment—about letting him go.
Let him run back to the New York demesne with the news of how another quartet of fanged assassins had been beaten by just one half-dead, still-nearly human guy. The tale would grow with the telling and so would my boogieman rep.
Which side of the death wish debate would that fall on?
If I let him go was it an uncomplicated act of mercy on my part and a stratagem to discourage future attacks? Or a Machiavellian ploy to provide the enemy with additional intel and up the ante? According to the M*A*S*H Theme, “suicide is painless” but managing a so-called death wish was giving me migraines.
“Don’t kill me, man!” he pleaded. “I don’t wanna die!”
“Jesus, Vern; you’re a vampire. You’re already dead! You’ve just been getting by on borrowed time. And being a very naughty boy in the process!”
“I’ll do anything, man!”
I sighed. “Anything?”
“Yeah! Anything!” he promised.
“Call your boss.”
“What?” Fear had bested fury, now befuddlement was climbing into the ring. “Dwayne’s dea—”
“Your Sire! The one you bozos were going to elevate to Top Bat by punching my ticket! Get him on the phone!”
“I—ah—” He fumbled about. “Don’t have a cell phone.”
I pulled mine out, hit Speaker, punched in the New York City area code, and handed it to him. “Reach out and touch some . . . thing.”
Vern looked conflicted. Apparently calling that far up the food chain was not going to be a good thing for him. On the other hand, angry boss-man was thousands of miles away and big bad boogieman me was about to turn his wheels into a personal crematorium. He punched in the remaining seven numbers.
“Who is this?” a familiar voice snapped after nearly a dozen rings.
Vern swallowed. “Mistress . . . I . . .”
I took the phone from his shaking grasp.
“It’s after midnight, Carmella,” I said quietly. “Do you know where your children-of-the-night are?”
“What? Cséjthe?” When she spoke again her voice was oozing calm. “How I’ve missed you!” Were I merely human her vocal subharmonics might have mellowed me into a compliant sheep-like state.
Knowing how that worked just annoyed me all the more.
“Yes,” I said, “yes, you have. I could say you’ve missed me four times on this particular occasion alone.”
“Darling Christopher, you misunderstand my gesture. I didn’t send them there to kill you . . .”
“What’s she saying?” Vern whispered.
“That she didn’t send you down here to kill me,” I whispered back.
“That ain’t true!” he said, forgetting to whisper this time.
“Well, of course I told them to kill you,” she said.
“Torture and kill,” Vern corrected. “She said torture and kill.”
“Christopher, I hope you will send that one back to me. It sounds like he’s not yet properly trained.”
Vern’s eyes became very expressive. The primary expression looked like “just kill me now.”
“Carmella,” I said, “I don’t need some undead newbie to tell me what the Le Fanu twins are plotting. This isn’t the first assassination squad you’ve sent after me.”
“But the fact that I told them to kill you . . .”
“Torture and kill,” Vern mouthed.
“. . . doesn’t mean I actually want them to. I just want to get your attention.”
I sighed. I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. “Okay. You’ve got my attention: What?”
“The New York demesne is in disarray. We need strong leadership. There are things—forces—”
The normally smooth and unflappable Carmella La Fanu sounded rattled.
Interesting . . .
“—powers, if you will . . .”
“And principalities?” I coached.
“Don’t mock. Something bad is coming. We need our Doman!”
“During the short time I was there everyone was trying to kill me.”
“Not everyone, darling. If you’ll remember that one night in your bedroom—”
Vern’s eyes widened.
“Nothing happened, Carmella,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Only because your thralls were there to interfere,” she murmured seductively. “Now that they’re gone—”
Up until now I was just pissed on general principal. My anger, which had been running cold suddenly flashed white hot. “You’re right, Carmella, I have been away too long.”
“You wouldn’t have to feed your bloodthirst with cold packets of leftovers from the blood bank. Bethany misses you.”
“Stop!”
“We could . . . we could rule together . . .” Her subharmonics faltered along with her sudden hesitation. Maybe she was picking up on my subharmonics now.
“When I come,” I said, “it will be to end this dance, once and for all. And I’ll be sure to look you up.”
“Christopher . . . I—”
“Because I have something special planned for you, Carmella. Very special.” Grief and anger combined, fueling a rage that seemed to overflow my physical body, radiating out from me like an invisible pulsar. “You know the old song, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’? You might want to learn it. The lyrics are quite . . . you know what? Just wait until I get there. It will be soon. And then I’ll teach you the meaning of every word.”
There was no answer at the other end, snappy or seductive.
“Can you fear me now? Good.” I terminated the call and shoved my phone back into my pocket.
Vern took advantage of that split second of inattention to snatch the laser pen out of my other hand, tuck it under his chin, and press the on switch.
Once again, I had looked into The Abyss and The Abyss had blinked first.
I put my SUV into neutral and pushed it on up the hill to get it out of the likely blast radius of the burning cop car behind me. My strength wasn’t that of a full-fledged vampire but I could still move a two-ton weight on wheels up a mild incline without popping a sweat.
Well, not much of a sweat. Even north Louisiana was humid this time of the year.
Just as I hopped back in to set the parking brake, a little red sports car came roaring up off the highway and up the exit ramp. I popped the glove compartment and retrieved my handgun just as the two-seater MG squealed to a stop right next to my open driver’s door.
The top was down and the driver was blonde, windblown, and looked all of sixteen. She leaned toward me, reaching out with a many-braceleted, multi-ringed hand and said, “Come with me if you want to live!”
Well.
Huh.
This was a no-brainer.
High school cheerleaders don’t cruise the interstate, looking for strange, older men to offer rides to.
Not in classic, two-seater, British sports cars.
Not at one o’clock in the a.m.
And since my quartet of vampire assassins had no reason to lie about cutting my fuel line . . .
I slide-cocked the Glock and pointed it back at her. “Aren’t you out past the Curfew for Jailbait, sweetheart?”
The gun didn’t seem to impress her. Maybe she was aware of my track record with firearms. She started to say something else but it was drowned out by the roar of a large engine. The interior of my car filled with light. Light coming in through the rear window.
I looked just in time to see the burning cop car explode as an 18-wheeler plowed through it at high speed.
Headed right for me.
I had an extra second or two to register that the truck driver was a woman. And, sitting next to her in the high cab, was Moira, the new intern at After Dark Investigations.
Just a second or two.
Not enough time to get clear as the ten-ton truck tore through my SUV as if it were a tissue box and killed me.
Again.