Stage Fright (Bit Parts) (32 page)

No worries there.  I shut up and kept my eyes on the passing scenery.

We exited off the freeway and drove through a part of the city so desolate it could have been the set of a post-apocalyptic movie.  The burned-out remains of houses stood like rotting teeth, and fields of dead weeds stretched between abandoned store fronts.  The limousine bumped along the rutted road before entering a parking lot at the front of a crumbling building.  My pulse raced again.  If Bertrand Peabody planned to suck me dry and dump my body, this would be the place to do it.

“Now behave yourself,” Rita told me as the limo slowed to a stop.  “Bertie has brought in some very important guests.”

I swallowed.  “Like who?”

“Representatives from the most important grieves.”  She smiled as she ticked them off on her fingers.  “The Stuyvesants, of course.  Also, the Manchesters, the LaFleurs, the Belmonts, the Hoys.”  These names meant nothing to me, but Rita clearly wanted to impress me.  She scrunched her forehead.  “Who am I forgetting?”

One of the thugs next to me grumbled something.

“Oh, yes and the Charbonneaus.  All the upper echelons are represented tonight.”  She grabbed my arm.  A stern warning.  “So do
not
embarrass him.”

As long as Bertrand or his friends didn’t go for my neck, we’d get along fine.

The vampires on either side of me got out of the limo, and I cautiously exited as well.  A short distance away, a bonfire blazed.  Surrounding the fire were several backseats that had been torn from old cars.  A few miserable figures huddled on these, their heads bent against the wind.

A tormented shriek from the abandoned building ripped the night in two.  White light crackled from the broken windows.  The goons didn’t flinch, but Rita frantically stroked the ears of the fox around her neck.

The cry came again, softer this time, but more anguished.  I moaned sympathetically and wrapped my arms around myself.  “What’s going on in there?”

“Grieve business,” Rita said tersely.  She pointed me in the direction of the fire.  “Go make yourself comfortable.  There’s coffee and pastries over there.”

Coffee and
pastries
?  The very idea made me gag.

“Go on,” she repeated, this time shoving me.  “You’ll be called when they’re ready for you.”

The three men sitting around the fire silently watched me approach.  One was wreathed in cigarette smoke: Charles.  Another huddled under a gray, wool blanket: Geoffrey.  The third held a pastry box on his lap and was mechanically munching a crueler: Martin Nowicki.  They looked both bored and terrified, like long-term inmates on death row.

“Welcome to the party,” Charles muttered.  He flicked ash into the night.

Martin laughed hollowly.  “Some party.”  When another scream drifted over from the dark building, all three men grimaced.

I perched on the edge of the seat next to Charles.  “What are they doing?”

“Questioning members of Hedda’s grieve.”

“Is this Marcella’s trial?”

“Marcella’s trial lasted ten minutes,” Martin said.  “It was another two before she was found guilty.  No, Hedda’s on trial to see if she’s worthy to keep her grieve.”

Another horrific scream lifted the hairs along the back of my neck.  Geoffrey pulled the blanket tighter around him.  Martin put a hand over his mouth, burped sourly, and went back to eating.  Charles took a nip from a bottle stashed in his pocket.

“Think they’ll let us go soon?” Martin asked.  “I’ve got a concert booked tonight.”

“Idiot,” Charles snorted.  He took another drag from his cigarette.  “Do you really think Mercury Hall is opening again?”

“Of course it’s opening again!” Martin said.

“The Bleak Street is the only thing that’s closing,” Geoffrey said.  “They’re auctioning all of it off at the Muse.  My entryway is cluttered up with boxes of your crap.”

I nearly jumped off my seat.  “It is?  Can anyone bid on it?”

Charles scratched his chin and studied me like a complicated puzzle.  “Still after that chandelier, are we?”

I glanced away.  “I want a keepsake.  That’s all.”

The scream came again, rising to a frenzied pitch.  I clamped my hands over my ears.  The cry seemed to last forever.  A flash of white, much larger than the previous ones, lit up the entire parking lot.  The afterimages of Charles’s smug expression and Geoffrey’s terrified one burned into my retinas.

“The Widderstrom grieve is coming to an end,” Charles said.  He almost sounded relieved.

Geoffrey lifted his wobbling chin.  “Well, I’ve got nothing to worry about.  I’ve served Luquin exactly as I’m supposed to.  If anyone is in trouble, it’s Martin.  His vampire is the one out of control!”

“Don’t you dare blame me!” Martin shouted.

“Why not?  We all know that this is Marcella’s fault!  She practically tore Victor’s throat out this morning.”

“And mine,” I added, though no one seemed to care.

Martin flung the pastry box into the fire, creating a shower of sparks.  His eyes rolled wildly as he looked for a supporter.  “Even if Marcella
was
making rogues, I had nothing to do with it!  I can’t control what she does.  You both know that!”

“Save it for Peabody’s kangaroo court,” Geoffrey said.  “First they’ll murder Marcella, then they’ll go after us.”

A smile played on Charles’s lips.  “I wouldn’t be so sure.  Marcella can take care of herself.”

“I know she’s been slurping up souls like ice cream,” Geoffrey said, “but there’s at least thirty vamps in there.  Even Marcella has her limit.”

“Besides, even if she takes them all out, the first place she’d come looking for more souls is right here,” Martin said.

Charles gave and offhand shrug.  “Maybe.”  The corners of his mouth curled up more.  “Then again, maybe not.”

A gust of wind made the fire dance.  The unmistakable, bitter stink of decimated vampire drifted in from the old building.  The vampire’s torture had come to an end.

“They’re slaughtering Hedda’s grieve in front of her,” Geoffrey said.  He huddled deeper into his blanket.  “I don’t care what Charles says.  We’re the grand finale.  The afterglow buffet.”

“Stop it!  Just shut the hell up!” Martin leapt from his seat and combed his fingers through his long, white beard as he paced.  “This whole mess is because of what happened at the Cipher!  That’s what got Bertrand all riled up.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Charles said.  “The Cipher was nothing more than a pair of upstarts trying to horn in on Hedda’s territory.”

Martin and Geoffrey exchanged a look.  “
Two
vampires?” Martin said.  “No one said anything about a pair of vamps.”

I leaned forward, eager to hear Charles’s reply.  The director violently crushed out his cigarette.  “One vampire, two vampires.  Christ, what does it matter?”

“Charles is right.  It wasn’t the Cipher that got Stuyvesant hopped up.”  Geoffrey poked a finger in Charles’s direction.  “It was that damn play. 
The Meaning of Mustard
or whatever the hell it was called.”

“
The Scent of Ketchup
,” I muttered.

Martin nodded.  “The minute Peabody heard about the play, he went nuclear.  First, he stopped paying her bills.  Then, he wanted the Bleak Street.  Now, he’s taking her grieve and turning the whole thing into a circus.  There are vampires from all over the US and Canada is in there right now.”

“How did Bertrand find out about the play in the first place?” I asked.

“If I knew, I’d kill the bastard who told him,” Geoffrey said.  “If we’d all kept our mouths shut about it, Peabody would have never known.”

Another cry pierced the darkness.  This time, it wasn’t a scream, but a deep groan, a bottomless, primal sound as if the tallest tree in the forest had been struck by the sharpest ax imaginable.  Only one man’s voice could make the earth quake like that.

Isaiah.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I made it halfway to the old building before Bertrand’s goons caught up to me.  Each one grabbed an elbow and dragged me back towards the fire.  I thrashed violently, trying to break their grips, but it was useless.  When Isaiah groaned again, I wrestled harder and screamed his name.  Getting no reply, I shouted for the other vampires.  “Hedda!  Victor!  Are you there?  Let me in!”

That finally did the trick.  As if my captors had received the same silent command, they abruptly reversed direction, piloting me back towards the abandoned building.

My relief lasted only a moment.  Once I came face-to-face with a ragged, brick hole leading inside and the impenetrable darkness beyond, my courage faltered.  Swallowing, I forced myself into the inky blackness so thick it could have been scooped up and sold by the bushel.  After several feet of blind groping, I turned a corner and fumbled towards a murky light cast by a pair of hissing gas lamps mounted on poles.

When I reached the lit area, my heart nearly stopped.  There were vampires.  Dozens of them.  They stood on risers cobbled from planks of wood and cinderblocks that surrounded three sides of a patch of bare cement.  The arrangement reminded me of a theater in the round.  Or a coliseum in which a bloody circus was about to be performed.

Sitting behind a table in the center of the assembly was a vampire in a gray, pinstriped suit and old-fashioned white collar.  He was beautiful the way deadly snakes are beautiful.  Long and lean with brown hair that had been gelled and combed back in perfectly straight lines, he appeared as dapper as a 1920’s mob boss.  His express, however, was pure evil.  Eyes as black as the stairways to hell peered out from his thin face.  His rosebud mouth sneered.  Bertrand Stuyvesant.

Hedda stood alone, facing the congregation of vampires.  Strain pulled her features tight, but she kept her back ramrod straight.  Marcella, still in the soiled, pink dress she’d worn at the Mercury, knelt in the middle of the cement.  The silver chains draped around her neck, wrists, and ankles raised smoldering, black welts on her pale skin.  She panted in agony, her lips pulled away from her sharp teeth in a rictus of pain.

Fighting against panic, I edged closer to the group.  Not a single vampire moved, but every eye turned my way.  The weight of those cold, hostile stares rooted me in place.  Victor, who stood next to Bertrand, gave me a slight nod of greeting, but Hedda’s eyes remained fixed on her lover.

I might have stood frozen forever, but another of Isaiah’s groans broke my paralysis.  My vampire hunter was bound to a chair by electrical cords that cut into his wrists.  Blood dripped over his hands and onto the concrete.  Sweat glistened on his face, and his dark skin had an unhealthy, dull pallor.  He sagged against his restraints with his shoulders slumped and his head on his chest.  He would have tumbled out of his seat if he hadn’t been tied into it.

I choked back a sob and called his name.  He slowly lifted his head and blinked.  “Cassandra?”  His gaze sharpened, and he sat up straighter.  With a grimace of determination, he squared his shoulders and met Bertrand Peabody’s flat stare.  “I want her out of here.  Now!”

Peabody ignored Isaiah’s demand and instead looked to Victor.  “Are you ready to try it again?”

In his own way, Victor appeared nearly as broken as Isaiah.  He wasn’t sweating or panting, but he blinked rapidly and perpetually ran his fingers through his already mussed hair.  As a human, this hardly counted as a bad day, but it made Victor appear startlingly weak.  “I need a moment,” he said.

Marcella glanced up at me and licked her lips.  Even in her tortured state, a predatory gleam lit her eyes.  “Is this girl going to be my last meal,
Bertie
?”

At her condescending tone, one of the vampire guards moved like lightning, delivering a blow that would have ripped a human’s jaw from his skull.  Hedda hissed as Marcella’s head snapped back.  Instead of crying out in pain, however, Marcella spit a wad of blood in Bertrand’s direction.

Seeing that the lesson hadn’t sunk in, a second guard picked up the hose of a high-pressure washer.

“NO!” Hedda cried.  “I’m begging you, don’t do this!”  When Bertrand ignored her, she fell to her knees, clasping her hands together.  “Please, punish me instead!  I’m the one you really want to hurt.”

Bertrand’s eyes carried the heat of white-hot branding irons.  “Get to your feet, Hedda! You’re making a scene.”  Then he nodded to the guard.

The high pressure hose lashed Marcella’s face and bare arms with razor-sharp jets of water.  She screamed and fell to the side, writhing, as her cheeks and nose bubbled with blisters.  Right before my eyes, the blisters darkened until her skin resembled the blackened crust of a burnt marshmallow.  I turned away, swallowing back my rising sick.  I’d never look at holy water the same way again.

At last, Marcella stopped screaming and lay still.  A soft sob escaped Hedda’s lips, and she buried her face in her hands.  Her anguish melted my heart, and the ill feelings I’d been holding against her fled.  Isaiah had been wrong.  Vampires could love.

Bertrand glanced at Victor.  “Are you ready to continue?”

Victor nodded.  Pushing up his sleeves, he took a seat in front of Isaiah, squaring off as if they were chess players on either side of an invisible table. 

My brain was begging me to run away, but I refused to leave Isaiah.  Digging deep for courage, I said, “What are you trying him for?”

Victor spared me a glance.  “He’s not on trial; he’s a witness.  Once he’s answered the questions to our satisfaction, he’ll be released.”

To our satisfaction.  That little detail didn’t escape my notice.  If Bertrand and Victor didn’t like what Isaiah said, they’d continue to fish for the answers they wanted.  No wonder Geoffrey had called this a kangaroo court.

“Before I begin, I want Cassandra escorted back outside,” Victor said.  “She doesn’t need to see this.”

“I won’t leave Isaiah,” I said firmly.

Victor frowned as if I’d just insulted him.  Which I had.  Instead of accepting the offer to be his blood partner, I’d aligned myself with a vampire killer.  I began to sweat a little more, worried that Victor would take out his anger on Isaiah.