Kissing Carrion (23 page)

“You grew up with television, Flynn,” she'd snarled at him, once, when his various inanities finally grew too immediate to ignore. “You grew up with indoor heating, refrigeration, medical care, the Bomb. When I was alive, there weren't even roads. I went barefoot for seventeen years. Couldn't read. Didn't know there were
continents
. I wanted to take a crap, I'd up my skirts and squat in the streets. I never saw myself in a mirror, ‘till after I was already dead.”

And Flynn had nodded, lip pooched out, trying his level best to understand. Even though his best would never be good enough, no matter how much of his supposedly eternal life he spent trying to upgrade it.

But: That
look
, or its near cousin. The new note peeling away in a repressed, teeth-grinding growl, like old skin shedding. Eudo, struggling for control he'd lost long before this conversation started—but soldiering gamely on, nevertheless. As though he still had . . . faith . . . that he could eventually make her see things his way.

“If you threaten everything we've struggled so long to build, the Clave will be forced to intervene. Your cadre will suffer—not that you care, I suppose. But you . . . ” A pause. “They can have you exiled. Or even killed.”

A shrug. “They can try.”

Eudo stared down, studying the floor. Then said, quieter:

“I loved you, Elder. Does that mean nothing?”

To which Elder laughed out loud, right in his downcast face. And returned, with total simplicity—

“Doesn't it?”

* * *

Poor Eudo, still mourning the cold and sudden undeath of his long-lost dream-dolly. Because it had all been just so much easier, back then, hadn't it? So much more . . . fun.

Though—not quite for both of them, as Elder recalled.

(But then again, she certainly did still like to play with
her
toys, whenever there was nothing better to do.)

Still, it was only natural—as natural as anything vampiric could claim itself: Time-tested, the proven formula. Youngling to ancient, they'd all been in the same position, once or twice upon an age. Eudo too. Someone had probably dressed him up, steered him ‘round, told him where to go and made him say thank you for the privilege; back before the Crusades, before the Flood. Perhaps he'd “loved”
that
person, too. Or told himself he did.

Always assuming, that was—

—he'd actually had any choice in the matter.

Truth was, though . . . the truth was,
this
had been what Eudo had seen in her eyes, that day. The prescient shadow of this same impossible ambition glowing like lingering atomic residue, like a skeleton of dead light. Stars in her eyes, deep-buried, waiting to burn up and flare anew.

And wondering, at the same time—was it really so very hard to understand, the idea that she just wanted to go as far as she could possibly go? To pit herself against the void like an exercise in sheer willpower, the same way that all these dead bodies around her kept on acting as though they were still alive: Dancing, flirting, fucking, killing, just because they wanted to. Because . . . they
could
.

Hunger, after all, could only take you so far, no further. And there were so many appetites to choose from, once you allowed yourself to think outside the biosphere's blue and fragile box—hungers which might prove to extend far beyond the agreed-upon version of reality, beyond the basic reach of flesh and blood itself.

Things were born in chaos, and they ended in chaos. And the only thing between chaos and chaos was velocity. So the only reason to go backwards, in Elder's eyes—

—was because you'd already reached the end.

Of everything.

* * *

Fast-forward: Fast, faster, fastest. And then it was 2020 or thereabouts, yet more years having passed the same way they always did, quick as insects—hatching and molting, metamorphosing, mating and laying and dying in a single blink of that long-ago swollen Malibu moon. Three o'clock A.M. in what still stood of anti-pollution activist-bombed downtown Toronto, with Ulrike, Flynn and Elder marching straight into the fabled silk-hung heart of the Empress' Noodle house itself, where Grandmother Yau Yan-er was rumored to be hosting a members-only Clave meeting somewhere upstairs. But since her restaurant had been traditionally recognized as neutral ground since the turn of the (last) century, the Dragon-born Lady could well afford to do exactly what she obviously chose to, instead: Make herself conspicuous by her absence, lurking in the opium-scented shadows with her thousand-year-old hands deep inside her brocade sleeves, while Elder used the quote-unquote “anonymous” invitation she'd received earlier that evening—a strangely familiar Mandarin chop, imprinted in scrupulously virus-clean blood on a gilt-edged piece of silk-thread parchment—to get by that persistent knot of ghosts guarding the banquet room's lacquer-red front door.

The sound of her cane against the inlaid parquet floor caught Eudo in mid-rant; he turned, wholly taken aback by such effrontery. Projecting, even from this distance—

Iesu Christo, these AMERICANS
.
So uncompromising. So insolent. So damned, damnably . . . proactive
.

Yeah, well. Welcome to the New World, Fossil-Man.

To Elder's own mild surprise, fifteen years of monitoring and vague, threat-laden menace had elapsed before Eudo's Familiars finally took direct action. They'd started at the top, naturally enough; begun with Darnell, oldest of her NASA moles, whose ashes were (even now) blowing free in the lingering compression vortex created when his lab had gone up in smoke. But the rest of the team had already scattered according to drill, vowing to join Elder later—assuming, always, that she actually survived this meeting—at their alternate launch-site. A resentful bunch even by most vampire youngling standards, though gradually won over by the one-two combination suckerpunch of Darnell's infectious enthusiasm and Elder's undeniable logic: Having a “live” viewer on board the probe
would
be invaluable, in terms of potential information-gathering . . . especially one for whom the idea of a life-support system, under most circumstances, was a strictly optional luxury.

Flynn took west flank position, Ulrike the east. Elder leant on her cane between them, smiling a bit at the thought of how the red-tinged light of the paper lanterns must be making interesting patterns on her sleek, bald, shaved-for-liftoff scalp.

“Gentlemen, ladies,” she said, bowing slightly. Then: “Eudo.”

“You see?” Eudo demanded, of no one in particular. “She has no respect, no loyalty . . . ”

“Not for
you
, no.”

Stung, Eudo managed what looked like a legitimate blush; must've really fed well, to be able to pull
that
off.

“ . . . she . . . ” He began again, with slightly shakier momentum. “Surely you can see how she doesn't think she owes—us—”

(me)

“—anything.”

(
I LOVED you, Elder.
)

But: No.
I
loved
you
. Once.

(Once.)

Elder gave Eudo what was meant to be a last direct glance, cool teal to milky blue. And replied—

“Eudo . . . you did me a disservice when we first met, as we both know, even if you'll never be man enough to admit it.” Raising her voice, then, to drown out his automatic protestation: “But I'm reconciled to that, I truly am. I don't even care enough to want to kill you over it anymore. So—do yourself a favor, monk—”

“—and don't
make
her,” Ulrike chimed in.

Flynn: “Yeah, man.”

(What
she
said.)

Eudo paused, struck momentarily speechless, throat working like he still needed to gasp for air. Elder raised a brow at the spectacle, and asked the nearest Clave-member—she thought his name might be Eater Of Found Things, the one whose low forehead and facial scarring rumor branded him as a possible genuine Missing Link, turned mid-Ice Age by something still older, wiser and even more ruthless—

“I mean, Eudo didn't tell you he just found out about this, did he? 'Cause I made sure to tell him first, the minute I got the idea.”

Old friends that we are, and all.

But: “Yes,” the gold-laden Yoruba matriarch seated across from the Eater said, dryly. “So we read, in your memo.”

“What?” Eudo blurted.

“The memo I sent 'em, magistere. One ‘Rike got that hacker-grrrl she Biblically knows to mass-mail, under
your
sigil.”

“Whah . . . ” A cough, not-so-neatly slurring from one word to another in mid-syllable. “ . . . when?”

The Eater, in his creaky, ice-burnt voice: “Last week.”

Long before you called this meeting to order, or ran your mouth about how I was gonna bring down a new Inquisition on each and every one of us by doing something whose most likely only casualty—if and when any one of a three-page long list of predicted SNAFUs occurs—would be me, and me alone. Long before the Clave just sat there and let you act like you had 'em all in your figurative back pocket, let you
presume
to speak for a coven of vampires whose youngest member (aside from yourself) was either personally present when that Jewish prophet of yours had his moment of doubt and shame, or heard about it first-hand from somebody who was.

My memo. The one that begins: Since you all like history so much, let's take the
real
long view. Imagine the Earth rendered uninhabitable even for us, probably in only a few more hundred years—a dead body marking off millennia, waiting to be engulfed by the sun when it goes nova. Vampires with no alternate food-sources, forced to turn on each other; a Dark Age longer than all previous Dark Ages put together, with chaos and boredom reigning supreme, and the Red Death holding sway over all.

(Unless.)

Unless, unless, unless.

Because: I can offer them what you would never think to,
magistere
; tempt them with an easy way out, lie to them with the truth.
I
can buy their approval by tempting them with a reason—however improbable—

—to
hope
.

Elder risked yet another next-to-”last” peek at Eudo, who seemed caught between synapses—realizing, slowly but surely, how completely the tide of opinion had finally turned against him. He shook himself, half-pivoting her way; she showed him her back, decisively: Just another open insult in a long, long line of the same, nights without end, amen . . .

. . . which was how she—
she
!—somehow managed to miss the exact moment when Eudo's vaunted composure snapped like tinsel, propelling him forward; claws out to knuckle-length, eye-teeth hooked almost double, like a cobra's. Leaping for her with all the accumulated rage of a mentor scorned one too many times, only to find Flynn (of all people)—

—
but who else, really? Not Ulrike, not LIKELY
—

—instantly, automatically, idiotically in his way.

At which Eudo hissed, drove his right-hand index and ring-fingers through Flynn's eyes, his thumb through Flynn's nose—like a particularly gory bowling accident—and ripped Flynn's shaggy head neatly
off
, with one curt upward motion.

Flynn's ashes broke over Elder as she turned: A hot grey wave, burning her eyes, filling her mouth; she coughed them out again, plunging her cane straight through Eudo's shoulder-joint. Eudo's arm fell almost instantly severed, Flynn's skull still stuck fast to his fist, both crumbling to mingled dust on contact with the floor.

“El—” Eudo began. Elder kicked him in the jaw, round-house, and jumped as he spun. Knee to the small of his back, fingers sliding fast down his spine to rip through on either side, grabbing for the floating ribs—

Raising him, hugging him, cracking him. Drawing his beating lungs out through the holes her hands had made, wet as embryonic wings, while the rest of the Clave just watched, impassive.

“You know what the Vikings called this, don't you, my monk?” She whispered, in Eudo's agonized ear. “The blood-eagle. Nasty way to die, last I heard; nasty way to
live
, ‘specially if you live forever.”

So I guess you better get one of your Familiars to push 'em back in for you, before you heal this way.

“I'll still be here,” Eudo hacked, bow-bent in uncontrollable spasm—no air left, without his lungs, to generate a voice anyone but another vampire could hear. “When you come back. Here . . . to watch you
crawl
.”

“Doubt it,” Elder replied. And dropped him.

Somewhere in the shadows behind them, she heard Grandmother Yau clap her hidden hands just once—a gentle sound, yet more than enough to send her ghosts scurrying off en masse in search of a dustpan, a bucket, a mop. Good help being always hard to find, as the old mantra went, and thus better ruled with an iron hand than a kind word, whether alive or dead. Or undead.

Grit under her heels as she moved towards Ulrike, now: Part of Eudo's detritus, grinding even finer beneath her shoes' soles? Part of Flynn's?

Not that it really mattered, Elder supposed.

Taking her dumbfounded “daughter's” hands in hers, meanwhile. And assuring her, aloud: “I leave you in charge, after the launch.”

An open-mouthed kiss, flavored with their mutual “elder's” blood; Ulrike received it eagerly, as Elder had always known she would. Sighing in anticipation: Oh, power, at last. At
last
.

Ambitious little toy
, Elder thought. And smiled, to herself, at the observation's very . . . familiarity.

“We'll wait,” Ulrike promised her, lying badly. “Your name will live forever.”

Elder smiled again. “Just act according to your nature, ‘Rike,” she replied, mildly. “And I'll be satisfied.”

Then she stepped through the ashes which had once been Flynn—part of him, at least—