Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) (5 page)

But I don’t roll like that and I made up my mind years ago not to alter my values for mere self-preservation.  Besides, she’d spent all her smoke-and-mirrors tricks and I still stood.  I thought I could take her down because the next engagement would be on fair terms.  Other than the sexy pose…and the painted-on clothes.  No way for me to match those two assets.  Make that four assets, counting what I saw above the waist.

Soyla must have understood further conflict wouldn’t go her way because she didn’t attack.  Something else worked against her too.  Against both of us. Our natural vampire repellant.  First it would disorient us.  Then it would kill us.  If we let it get that far.  She spoke.

“You offer sanctuary?”

Uh, oh
. 

Deer in the headlights.  I didn’t see that one coming.  Providing Sanctuary means protecting someone engaged in a blood feud.  My first and best hint as to why Sparky showed up.  Offer of Sanctuary demands both responsibility and exposure. 

If I responded yes, then killing Sparky
OR
me would satisfy the feud.  Satisfy, yes.  But experience showed it rarely stopped with the death of the target…or the protector—hypothetically, me. Here’s another tidbit for your notebook: once sanctuary is offered the feud becomes official and can’t end until somebody actually
does
die.  The Seven wrote that law.  Probably to get rid of the hotheads by natural selection.

All I wanted was a beer with the gang.  Now this. Almost made me miss the good old days—thirty minutes ago—with Super Rumble.

So old Sparky showed up for more than a social visit.  Given his disembodied arm lying at my feet, it seemed safe to conclude the same about Soyla
.  What had those two knuckleheads gotten involved in?
Did I want to know? Would I allowed myself to be dragged in as knucklehead number three?  More warnings from dear old dad.

Have I told you Soyla wasn’t wearing pants? Blood feud. The matter at hand.  I didn’t appreciate Sparky bringing me into this as-yet anonymous mess and I didn’t appreciate Soyla employing nudity as a strategy to maneuver me into a position I was sure to regret.  Let’s not forget that. 

Nudity?  More than willing to forgive. Outwit me by using my natural tendencies against me?  Never. But the word strategy implied a plan and organized thinking.  Not Soyla.  Before I stepped into the protector role I wanted at least one piece of information.  I asked the only question tradition bound Soyla to answer.

“Primary or Centurion?”

Soyla smiled.  “Centurion.”

Crap
. 

Soyla as the hired gun.  I’d hoped for Primary, meaning the person bringing the feud.  The slim possibility of defusing the mess existed with Soyla as Primary.  Just throw some cash her way or maybe I could promise her something of a more personal nature to smooth the whole thing over for Sparky.  If I haven’t already told you this, it’s important for you to know she wasn’t wearing pants. 

But Soyla as Centurion meant involvement by one or more others. Since those others would show themselves only after Soyla, and/or whoever else they might have hired, swept away the dirty work—me—it was a sure bet that the death train had already left the station.  No delaying it.  No turning it around and sending it home. Heaven forbid she represented The Seven. 

You might have noticed I didn’t know much about what was going on.  I did know one thing, though.  This feud would run its course and one vampire, maybe more, would depart life.

I could make sure I didn’t end up that one dead vampire by not declaring Sanctuary for Sparky.  I didn’t know why Soyla attacked Sparky or how many other Centurions or Primaries he faced.  No way to gauge my odds for survival if I took the incredibly stupid road.  Maybe I should restate that last sentence so you understand my thought process.  No way to gauge odds, if any existed, for my living to next Friday. 

You’ll recall I said earlier that a sane vampire avoids engagements without the associated 411? Declaring Sanctuary without the names and number of Primaries and Centurions would represent one of the greatest in a long line of stupid decisions for me.  I refused to be manipulated by Sparky or Soyla.  No way.

I heard myself say “I, Gaius, Prince of the Teutoberg Tribe declare Sparcius Germanicus in Sanctuary.”

I dub myself: Sir Knucklehead.

Soyla smiled.  Don’t know what I expected out of her so a smile seemed as reasonable a response as any.  Except.  The smile looked neither surprised as, “I never thought you’d actually bite and now I’m in big trouble because I’ve threatened Gaius Teutoberg,” or hungry as, “I can’t wait to rip out your heart and use it to start the fire over which I will sauté your eyes.”  No, that smile came across more like the automatic sort you see between married people who say, “Love you,” and “Love you too.”  Automatic.  Expected. 

I didn’t know what to think about the automatic part, but expected made me uneasy.  Either way, I saw no need to worry about my stress level.  With Sparky’s bloody stump of an arm lying beside me and a gorgeous Hungarian warrior-woman who tended toward psychotic standing mostly naked in front of me?  I thought the blood pressure cuff might already be pegged. 

But I’d think about all that later.  The fuzz creeping into my brain told me it was quittin’ time at Tara.  Soyla needed to attack or she needed to leave.  Otherwise, we’d both get loopy…and if the standoff went long enough, we’d melt away.  And I knew I was losing it because as I tried to concentrate on Soyla standing in the mostly-darkness and silhouetted by the lights and spires of Wiesbaden below, I could have sworn she wasn’t wearing pants. 

Soyla moved her hand and I tensed for the attack.  But she blew me a kiss, curtsied, and sprinted her bare, but painted fanny toward the Wiesbaden High School football stadium and into the darkness.  It took a couple of sicky-feeling minutes for the smell to recede.

As my head began to clear this one preeminent thought pushed all others aside.  Oh I’d think about Sarah Arias and our freaky talk, and I’d analyze Sparky and his knife trick.  Soyla and the Blood Feud?  Icing on the cake.  Yeah, I’d do the mental wire brush on that one until only the clean, shining truth remained.  Later.

As I stood there in the adrenaline-kick of a deadly battle come and gone and with my heart still beating, one thing, and only one thing demanded my full attention.  Do you know how crazy-sexy it would have been if Soyla had used skin-tone paint instead of black?  A voice spoke up in the back of my mind. 

“Pig.” 

I couldn’t tell for sure if that voice came to me sounding like my dear wife Nellie.  But a guy who hears voices in his head seldom controls who speaks with them.  Trust me.  And that time? Almost certain it didn’t come from my Nellie. I ran through my mental contact list and the card it stopped on gave me chills.  Sarah Arias.

How’d she get between my ears?
 

Another entry in the list of things to think about later.  Right.  Truth? I never revisit the things I promise to think about later.  With death on the line, I promised myself to work on that minor flaw.  Maybe I’d start on Monday.  It was time to collect what was left of Sparky and get home.  If Soyla killed him?  Then I had a new Jaguar.  The British version.

Dissed by one beautiful chick.  A death feud with another hot but murderous, nearly-immortal chick, an uninvited houseguest who remained alive only because I offered up my own life on what would likely turn out to be a suicide mission.  And despite all that, Sparky was certain not to make his bed for however long he decided to stay.

I needed a beer.

Chapter 7

I found Sparky in the obvious spot, lying beside his Jag.  Maybe I shouldn’t have looked so hard.  You know, pretended like I couldn’t find him and just gone home alone.  He’d brought the confusion, no doubt. So typical for him, I suspected he wouldn’t waste our time trying to deny it.  But to do that, leave him bleeding, would take a harder heart than I ever hope to have.  I’d also need to take the stairs down the hill and avoid the parking lot.  Pretty obvious. 

Now I could wax a bit poetic here about Sparky’s armless, crumpled body compared to the gleaming, perfect red Jag, but I felt sorry for the guy so I shut down my meager metaphor machine.  It looked like it hurt—a lot.  Good.  Maybe he would think twice before knifing his only freakin’ friend next time. 

No, he wouldn’t.
 

I saw blood everywhere.  On his clothes, the ground, and splashed on the lower parts of the Jag.  He’d stopped the bleeding, so I assumed he capped the arteries and set the regrowth process underway.  That would take at least a week.  On the positive side, Sparky could use the situation to break himself of the morning scratching rite.  Chicks would dig him more.

Where to start when lifting a man fresh from an arm ripping?  The other arm.  I helped Sparky into a sitting position.  He looked like heck. Kind of reminded how a guy would look if you stuck a knife past his backbone and into a lung.  The bastard. But apart from the obvious, Sparky didn’t look as bad as you might expect. 

Soyla hadn’t spent enough time with him.  The good news.  You already know the bad news.  A few more moments with the Hungarian assassin-babe would have closed out poor Sparky’s account.  Maybe she sensed me nearby and thought she’d incapacitated Sparky enough to finish him after she dealt with me, though something about that scenario didn’t taste quite right. I’d puzzle that one out later.  Another entry for the list of never-to-dos.

Pain in Sparky’s face.  Here’s another vampire-related secret. Sure, we can regrow our various bits.  That doesn’t make us immune to the agony that accompanies the loss of a body part.  Try this home-lab exercise: Get a friend to rip off your arm or rub your face in some gravel or maybe stab you in the back.  If you want extra credit for the experiment, do all three.  Does it hurt?  That’s what a vampire feels. So it didn’t surprise me to see Sparky puke his guts as soon as I moved him.  No problem.  I used my super-reflexes to dodge the chunks. 

We sat there like that—Sparky leaning against his car, me up on the sidewalk beyond hurl range—for several minutes while Sparky marshaled the necessary strength and focus for speech.  Heaven knows he’d need max brain cycles devoted to healing for days to come.  Sparky wouldn’t be his normal, talkative self for a while, so at least some good came from all the bad that night. On the other hand, for the first time in our multi-millennia friendship, I actually wanted to hear what Sparky had to say.

And saying was what he struggled to do.  He took in hesitant, raspy breaths.  I knew the drill from experience.  Suck in a big breath and then spit out the words between waves of pain.  I’d used the same technique many times. Mostly when speaking to Sparky.

Cool air blew off the tiled German roofs below and I could see the Friday evening traffic down the hill.  Germans on their way to some restaurant or festival.  Maybe starting a quick weekend getaway to Budapest or Brussels.  Headlights snaked in perfect Hessian order along the roads lining the Rhine.  I could see aircraft safety lights atop the ruined medieval watchtowers up the ancient and sacred paths of the Taunus—towers that did not yet exist the first time I beheld the magnificent river below as I sat on my father’s shoulders. 

I should be dust mixed with the ashes of my family, my friends—my comrades—who died years before Jesus walked across the sea.  But then, there sat Sparky.  His chunk-blowing appeared over, and if I allowed myself a few more feet down this sentimental journey I’d end up puking myself.  I’m allergic to sentimentality.

Another deep breath from Sparky and I bent closer so he didn’t need to strain.  He struggled through a couple of false starts.  I put my ear close to his lips.  He managed a hesitant sentence.

“Did you notice,” he said, “Soyla wasn’t wearing pants?”

He did the coughing-laughing thing.  I just stared.  Easy for him to laugh. He got the joy of committing whatever hare-brained, and as yet unknown to me, act that caused the whole Blood Feud thing.  We’d talk about this right after I got him into the car.  And I wouldn’t forget to circle back around to get the facts.  I opened the passenger door and lifted Sparky into the seat.

And as I closed the driver’s door he said, “Try not to get blood on the seats.”

“Like heck,” I said. 

I made sure to lean hard against the desert-tan leather and to snuggle-rub my bottom into it the bucket seat a couple of times.  Maybe vampires can regenerate our bodies, but we still haven’t found a way to repair and clean our clothes.  I’d just lost my best ratty sweater and only Crimson Tide t-shirt. 
Someone
needed to pay.

I’d leak until he’d need a safety pin to remove dried blood from those little holes in the seat…the ones that let cool air flow out so rich butts avoid getting moist. I looked over to enjoy the horror on Sparky’s face as I ruined the interior of his expensive car.  No luck. Sparky sat crumpled, eyes closed, passed out.

“Not believing it,” I said. 

Sparky knew he owed explanations and he’d faked unconsciousness to weasel out of them.  About two hundred years ago he shot himself in the head for the same reason.  No way I’d fall for it again.  I brought my fist down on his nose.  The loud crack came back to me as sweet music, though I couldn’t detect a musical lilt to Sparky’s yell of pain.  It sounded more like a person who just broke their nose.

I started the engine without putting in the clutch.  The Jag jumped forward and smacked the “For Expecting Mothers” sign before the engine died.

“Oops,” I said. 

Sparky didn’t reply.  He was too busy trying to teach his good hand how to fish a handkerchief out of his back pocket.  I started the car the correct way and rolled it backwards. I popped it into first.  The gears made a noise that sounded like putting a piece of sheet metal through a radial arm saw.  Sparky groaned. 

That got the smile from me that wouldn’t come after Sparky’s childish comment about Soyla and no pants. 
Really.  Some people never grow up. 
I headed for the autobahn that led to my little flat in Bad Homburg. 

Since buckling up was the last thing on Sparky’s mind I took full advantage of the two decent curves between the Commissary and the autobahn.  I managed to bang his head on the gearshift between us and his window.  I could get used to playing pinball with Sparky’s face.  We made it to the autobahn and I sped up to two hundred kilometers an hour.  122MPH in the USA. 

The bad news is that Bad Homburg is about twenty five minutes from work, a bit more at rush hour because of the Frankfurt traffic.  There’s usually a Stau—traffic jam—because invariably some idiot will think it’s safe to drive two hundred kilometers per hour—remember, that’s 122 MPH in the USA—and end up bending expensive metal or doing the dune buggy thing into the median.

The good news is that Bad Homburg is about twenty five minutes from work and the distance keeps down surprise visits.  Contrary to my interrogation plans, I was too mad at Sparky to say anything to him on the drive home.  Freakin’ Blood Feud? I didn’t trust myself to say anything, but I got my message across by the way I drove.  I’m happy to report we came close to both of us needing to regrow some new parts.

I pulled off the A661 at the Bad Homburg exit.  The hard drive from Wiesbaden did a lot to calm my anger and allow my brain to work at connecting the dots.  Sparky, Sarah Arias, and Soyla. All of their names began with the letter S, though I dismissed that as coincidence.  Super Rumble’s name also began with an S, but I refuse to think about her after work so I ruled out any connection there too. I turned down the Kaiser-Friedrich-Promenade and into the gravel drive beside the early-Victorian era house where I rented an apartment.

My nosy German landlords will merit memorial statues should a park dedicated to nosy German landlords ever open.  They do build monuments to just about anything in Germany.  Fortunate for me Herr and Frau Scrooge thought I was an American. The passport helped.  My two Germans think all Americans are barbarian descendants of exiled members of an alien race.  They never said it specifically, but I could read it on their faces and the knowing smiles they’d exchange after a couple of seconds with me.

The weirder I acted, the happier it made them.  Germans think they invented the concept on being right about everything and I think some long ago Kaiser banished the word flexibility from the language. If I ever acted like a normal German?  It would put them in their sickbeds, holding their heads and muttering endless loops of “This is not how things are done.”

My strangeness paid off as I pulled one-armed Sparky out of the Jag and supported him as we crunched across the gravel toward the back door.  Sure enough, I could see the retired Herr Doktor standing at the window. 

I pointed at the Jag, pointed to me, and mouthed, “Ich parken.”  I don’t know if that means anything in German but it seemed good enough for Herr Doktor because he raised a hand and nodded.

I pay 150 euros each month for a parking spot I never use. I don’t own a car. So even though I know the Doktor and Frau saw me pull up in the car, and even though the Doktor knows I know he saw me pull up in the car, the Jag would be towed away by morning if I’d not personally alerted him to the irregularity of me using the spot I paid for each month.  Why? “Because it is how things are done.”

The blood splotching our clothes dried so I didn’t worry about getting it on the carpet leading up the stairwell.  As far as the stains on the car and those mottling the interior?  I’m certain the Doktor would see it all and consider it the normal stuff of American weirdness.  I paid my rent on time.  That much made him happy.  Old coot and Frau probably danced naked around a fire chanting gibberish to some pagan god every time the dough showed up in their account. 

No, Herr Doktor wouldn’t raise the alarm with the authorities and threaten his gravy train.  Now if I happened to park
another
car in the precious little lot? That would run counter to the way things are done. He’d call in a battalion of Luger-waving, leather jacket-wearing Gestapo.

We made it through the door.  I loved the building’s musty aroma of oldness.  Bad Homburg was once the playground for much of Europe’s royalty, and tradition has it that many of them summered in my building.  Four floors…each a single apartment.  Herr Doktor claimed he had the documents that proved the Prince of Wales preferred my suite back in the 1800’s.

Speaking of whales, Frau HorseGlue didn’t show for my homecoming affair. Probably inside creating a poison apple.  Sparky could pretty much walk on his own.  Give the boy credit, missing arm and broken nose didn’t slow him much.  My front door was the original, about ten feet tall and half glass. The cold breeze hit me as the door swung open and I knew immediately what waited for me on the other side.