Nightlord: Orb (33 page)

Some of the Phrygians are also against the Elders’ policy of quiet living.  Their powers are well-suited to manipulating people; why not manipulate the whole world—and rule it?  From the shadows, fine, but rule it nonetheless?  Many of their younger members and even a few of their older ones lean toward that idea.  There’s even a theory the Elder Phrygian
does
rule the world and allows the rest of the tribe to complain so no one will suspect his influence.

The Thessaloniki don’t, as a rule, want to interfere with humanity or the status quo.  They’re more watchers than anything—although peeping toms, spies, and busybodies are also good descriptors.  While some of them wouldn’t mind being part of the ruling class of the planet—or, for that matter, merely accepted as real people—the vast majority can’t be bothered to care too much.  They’re enjoying being themselves without interference.

At least, that’s how Antonio described it.  He may be biased.

The way this applies to me is the political changes I can cause.  I could be Eldest and form a new policy.  I could form my own tribe and maybe adopt others into it.  Or I could be eaten alive, so to speak, and someone else could start a vampire rebellion, or stage a coup.  Under normal circumstances, vampires are basically judged on their age.  The older they are, the more powerful they are.  Drinking the blood of a more powerful vampire hastens the drinker along, making them more powerful by some fraction of the age of the donor.  A brand-new vampire created by a thousand-year-old specimen is measurably more powerful than one created by a vampire only a century old.

As an aside, one other way to expand one’s vampire powers is to switch tribes.  Someone’s adoption into a new tribe generally upsets the original tribe.  They say all the tribes are supposed to be at roughly equal numbers to avoid the appearance of favoritism, but it seems unlikely.

When someone switches—rare, but it happens—they spend a decade or so as a probationary member of the new tribe to see if they really do have the right temperament.  If so, the applicant gets to drink blood by the gallon from his or her sponsor in the new tribe, which starts a secondary vampiric change.  The applicant starts to gain the powers of the new tribe, slowly, and spends another decade or so getting used to them.

Joining the Thessaloniki tends to drive people insane, though; Phrygians even worse.  It seems to have something to do with the mental and perceptual powers of the tribe.  Joining the Constantines isn’t usually that hard on the mind, but they never seem to reach that state of eerie gracefulness most Constantines display.  Adopted Constantines tend to be just as strong and tough, but somewhat clumsy in comparison to their brethren.

Grabbing me, pinning me down, and pumping blood out of me could provide a tribe, or a faction within a tribe, with an enormous increase in their powers.  If they could keep me prisoner, feed and drain me repeatedly, the effect could be extremely far-reaching.  A dozen vampires guzzling ten-thousand-year-old blood would rapidly become more powerful than any but the Elders, themselves.

“The Elders won’t like that possibility,” Antonio finished.  “Now do you see the problem?”

The incumbents never like political change.  Universal truth.  Interuniveral truth.

“I’m guessing,” I mused, “if you sponsor me for residency, everyone will assume I’m helping you by feeding you older-than-civilization blood?”

“Probably.”

“So, really, I’m kind of screwed.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” he protested.

“Yes,” Mary disagreed.  “That’s exactly right.  You are.”  Antonio glared at her and she shut up.

I swiveled my chair away and looked out the window for a while, watching the rain slide by on the glass.  I thought about my situation.  Once again, I feel a certain amount of control over my life slipping through my fingers.  It’s like holding on to mud.  Get a grip and it slithers away.  Just when you think you’ve finally got the stuff under control, you’ve tracked it all over the carpet.  And then comes the occasional, unexpected rock, or bit of broken glass.

Am I bitter?  No, I don’t think I am.  Tired, maybe.

Still, I should be fair.  It isn’t my problem alone.  My life goes pear-shaped with remarkable regularity, and I should accept it’s going to.  When you live forever, it’s really a case of
when
it will happen, not
if
.  Antonio was doubtless in a similar boat for different reasons, both of us paddling madly to keep abreast of the current.  We both had the same political problem—me—but from opposite perspectives.  He was being amazingly decent about it, working with me on it, rather than throwing me to—

Hold on.

I swiveled to face them again.

“So, where are we going?” I asked.  “Or are we riding around for the privacy?”  Antonio became uncomfortable; Mary’s mood moved into scared and excited.  Neither of them had a big reaction, but it was there; I was watching closely.  Physical expressions can be controlled.  The way the spiritual energies inside someone—even a vampire—move around are another matter.

“I had hoped we could—” Antonio began, but Mary interrupted.

“Tony?”

“Yes?” he asked, startled.

“I believe him.”

“Believe him?” Antonio echoed.

“He meant it.  When he said he was sorry.”

“So?”

“So, I can’t do it.”  She turned to me.  “Please pardon me, but I have to talk about you rather than with you for a minute.”

“Go right ahead,” I encouraged, interested.  We were out of the city by then, cruising on a secondary highway.  If we slowed down to make a turn onto a driveway or rural road… well, until then, I felt I could afford to listen.

“I believe him,” she continued, to Antonio.  “Everyone says they’re worried about him being one of the original monsters.  He’s not.  The cruel and terrible creatures they tell us they remember… A monster like that wouldn’t even
say
he’s sorry, much less mean it.  He wouldn’t apologize without a compelling reason; he wouldn’t apologize merely because it was polite or appropriate.”

I had a momentary flashback to sitting in front of a candle and hearing the Goddess of Fire apologize to me.  A dozen thoughts ran through my head in short order, including the idea she might have been sincere.  I know I was when I apologized for frightening Mary.  On the other hand, a simple apology for infant sacrifice doesn’t seem to cover it.  Not to me, anyway.  I think it has something to do with the severity of the offense.

Maybe I should talk to Sparky again and see how sincere she is.  Then again, maybe I should ignore her forever and pretend she doesn’t exist.  Difficult, if I ever want to talk to my daughter or granddaughter again.

Urgh.  My eldest daughter.  My body was busy while my consciousness was imprisoned.  I’ve been trying not to think about that.

“What are you trying to say?” Antonio asked, lips twisting toward a scowl.  I caught a glimpse of extended fangs.  Mary also saw; her fear increased slightly and her excitement skyrocketed.

“What I’m saying is… I can’t do this.  I’m saying I won’t.”

Antonio sighed again.  Sometimes you have to, dead or not.

“Then what do you want to do?” he asked, exasperated.  “Jump out?”

“Is that my only alternative?” she asked.

“Jump out and start running,” he clarified.  “Forever.”

“Halar?  I know you have no reason to trust me, but—” Mary began.  Antonio suddenly reached for her with both hands.  He choked off her words, then drew one hand back as though to strike her.  I grabbed the hand, twisted it around and down and up again into a hammerlock.  Hard.  I think a human might have lost the arm.  His shoulder made an interesting sound and so did he.

“Let go of her,” I told him, quietly.  He did, but only to struggle with me, trying to twist out of the lock.  I seized the back of his neck and jerked him up, denting the roof with his head.  With a jerk and a twist, he wound up on the floor between the seats with me sitting on him.

“Mary?” I asked.  “Would you like to finish what you were saying?”

“Don’t!” Antonio shouted, muffled by having his face shoved flat into the floor.

“I think we should get out,” Mary said.

“Here?  Now?”

“Yes.”  She overrode the window control to lower it in the rain and gestured for me to go.  I had a bad moment deciding whether or not to trust her on this.  Still, from the conversation, things were not going to go well if I reached the vehicle’s destination.  We were well outside the city proper, so no one should be around to witness the sudden bailout… and she did say “we.”  The worst thing likely to happen was some ruined clothes, a startled cow, and an uncomfortable walk.  Possibly an interesting apology and explanation, too.  Why not?  This could be interesting, indeed.

“If this is a mistake,” I told Antonio, “I apologize.  Please forgive me if I’m being misled.”

“You’re doomed,” he said.  “Doomed, I say!  A thousand drinkers of blood will seek you out—”

I punched the back of his neck, breaking it.  Since he was a corpse, anyway, it would just take a while to regenerate.  It shut him up, at least, since the discussion was obviously not going well.

“Even I’m not
that
cliché,” I told him.  His lip curled in a sneer, but without control of his diaphragm, he couldn’t speak, which suited me perfectly.  Boring conversation, anyway.  Now, if we could just avoid having company…

I glanced at Mary.  She nodded at me and led the way, leaping gracefully through the window.  She reminded me of divers coming off the springboard at the pool.  Very smooth, very neat.  I, on the other hand, managed to get out through the window without catching on anything, which I regarded as an accomplishment.

I tucked, rolled, and bounced like a beer can on the freeway, only bigger and with less clattering.  It’s not really dangerous for an undead to do that—well, not counting traffic—but it still hurts.  So, undead beer can—blood can?—skipping and flipping down the road and off onto the shoulder. At least I didn’t hit anything more material than long grass and a big shrub, much to the detriment of the shrub.

When I finally came to rest, I lay there for a moment to take stock.  Lots of abrasions, but those vanished almost as soon at they came off the road surface.  No broken bones, which was slightly surprising.  My bones are obviously stronger than I thought.  Had I encountered a lamppost or road sign, on the other hand, I feel sure neither of us would have enjoyed it.  Maybe I should get a sledgehammer and test my bone strength.

Or maybe I’ll skip that.  Yeah, I probably will.  It’s one thing to get a knife in the hand or a bullet in the body in order to make a point, but charting the level of force to break multiple bones out of curiosity is a little beyond even my obsessive need to know.  On the other hand, if I use a spell to block pain nerve impulses….

I sat up, brushed myself off, climbed to my feet.  I was already soaked from puddles and the rain; my clothes were rather torn and worn.  Pity.  I liked that jacket.  Genuine, vat-grown suede.  Ruined.  Utterly ruined.

I hiked back up the road to look for Mary, pausing to put the shrub back and tamp it into place.  It wasn’t happy, but it ought to survive.

Mary was in the ditch and clawing her way up onto the road shoulder.  I helped her up.  Her dress, once glamorous, would make a dry cleaner gasp in horror.  Her left arm bent at an odd angle, presumably broken during her tumble.  Along her track, I saw a sign with a nasty bend in the post, which explained the arm.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Mostly,” she admitted, wincing as she cradled her broken forearm.  “We have to go.  He may decide to come back.”

“One second.”  I took her arm gently, pulled suddenly, and set it in the proper alignment.  “Healing goes faster when you make it easy,” I told her.  “First aid, setting bones, even stitches will accelerate the process.”

“I know that, but I don’t know how to set a bone.”

“Really?”

“I never needed to know.”

“I’ll show you in more detail, sometime.”

“Why did you break Tony’s neck?” she asked.

“Why did we bail out?” I countered.

“Because he was taking you to a place where the assembled tribes of the city could pass judgment on you.  I think it wouldn’t have gone well.”

“Execution for the overall good of the city and vampires in general?”

“Probably.  Almost certainly.  Now, your turn,” she said.  “Tony?  Neck?”

“Oh.  Since it’s his car, you and I probably couldn’t override the autodrive—I presume that’s why you wanted to bail.  But that wouldn’t stop Tony from stopping and turning around on manual.  Or, for that matter, phoning ahead to people who might be willing to come out and help him.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted.  “If he’s conscious when he arrives, they’ll probably come looking for us.”

“I’m fairly sure he won’t be able to talk until his neck un-breaks.”

“Ah.  Then we probably have a bit of a head start.  I like that.”

“Think we can risk calling a cab?”  I checked my skinphone; it was still working.  It’s a small, tough little bracelet.  They’re surprisingly sturdy.