The Vampire's Betrayal (9 page)

The only one missing was Otis, who might or might not be human. Us nonhuman types can usually sniff one another out, but sometimes the lines get blurred. Blurred by what, you might ask? Well, maybe genetics, maybe nature, maybe the hand of God or even the fickle finger of fate. It’d always been my hunch that somewhere along the way Otis had gotten fingered.

I poured myself a cup of brackish coffee as the boys greeted me. “So I see Huey’s trying to liberate the Corsica,” I remarked.

“Yeah,” Rennie said as he pitched a quarter into the kitty. “I thought about offering him the backhoe, but I figured that using the shovel would keep him busy and out of trouble for a while. The exercise might be good for him, too, who knows?”

I turned around the chair usually occupied by Otis and straddled it. “Everybody needs a hobby, I guess, but I don’t know if enhanced upper body strength is really what you want in your average house zombie. I must admit, though, he does come in handy in a fight.”

Recently, Huey had given Seth and Jerry and me a hand in a dominance fight with the local werewolf pack. He was strong but a mite uncoordinated. The fight was at the edge of the swamp and Huey managed to fall in. He had crawled out so covered in muck that when he lurched toward them, the werewolves thought they were facing down the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

“Tell me about it,” Jerry said, folding his hand.

“He found his way to the fight just in time.” Jerry still had some claw marks on his face to show for his own efforts. Werewolves heal almost as quickly as vampires, though. He’d be as good as new in a day or two.

“I’ll keep an eye on Huey,” Rennie promised. He threw down his cards as Rufus collected his winnings.

“Maybe the exercise will help him with his stress.”

“Stress? Huey’s got stress?” I asked, astounded.

“He has a nice place to sleep—or lurk or whatever he does in his off hours—plenty of raw hamburger to eat, gainful employment, everything a zombie could want. What does he have to stress about?”

“I don’t know, but he’s seeing things,” Rufus said.

“What kind of things?”

“Little green men,” Rennie said.

“Say what?”

“Little blue men,” corrected Jerry.

“Only his hair is blue,” Rufus said. “According to Huey, that is.” He pointed at his head and made a circular motion with his index finger.

“Who is ‘him’?”

“Huey calls him Stevie,” Rennie said. “I guess he’s like an imaginary playmate or something.”

“Well, what can you expect?” I asked. “Huey barely has enough reliable brain power left to tie his shoes. Hallucinations are probably just a by-product of dead gray matter.”

“Kind of like carbon emissions are a by-product of internal combustion engines?” Rennie observed.

“Maybe Huey needs a catalytic converter for his brain.” Rennie could put anything in terms of auto mechanics.

“Well,” I said, “if Huey needs an imaginary friend to keep him company, so be it. But speaking of friends—Rufus, where’s Otis?” Rufus and Otis were usually joined at the hip. You seldom saw one without the other.

Rufus shrugged and shuffled the cards. “He’s back at Werm’s nightclub, I reckon. Just like every night since they opened.”

Rennie gave me a sidelong grin as he picked up the first card Rufus dealt him. He’d heard the peevishness in Rufus’s voice as well as I had.

“Why is Otis hanging out at Werm’s nightclub?” Jerry asked. “The only kind of nightlife he’s ever been interested in is this here standing card game.”

“He hasn’t decided to start courting that female impersonator who sings down there, has he?” I asked.

“Otis ain’t like that,” Rufus assured me with a disgusted look. “There’s something else going on with him, though. He’s acting…funny.”

I started to point out that Otis often acted funny. Take those Dickies work shirts with other people’s names on the patches. And the fact that he had no visible means of support. I didn’t know where he lived or if he had a job. And then there was the little matter of not knowing what he was exactly. I wanted to ask Rufus if he knew, but the garage was strictly a don’t-ask-don’t-tell zone. People didn’t allude to the fact that I was a vampire, and I, in turn, didn’t bring up whatever they were unless they mentioned it first.

“How is he acting funny, Rufus?” Shape shifters are very intuitive—sensitive, you might say.

“It’s hard to describe,” he said. “He’s kind of nervous, like.”

“I’ve felt it, too,” Jerry offered. “He’s stressed out or something.”

Rufus started to say something else but stopped himself. “What is it?” I urged him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Rufus and Jerry exchanged glances, and Jerry shrugged. “We—that is, you know, folks like me and Jerry here—we’ve been sensing that something is going to happen,” Rufus began.

“Like what?”

Jerry scratched the back of his head. “It’s hard to explain. We just know that something important is coming and…”

“It’s not good,” Rufus finished.

I looked from one of them to the other. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”

“Sorry. I know it’s not much,” Jerry said.

Shape shifters’ animal instincts are nothing to sneeze at. I made a mental note to keep my eyes open. With that in mind, I decided to mosey over to the Portal to check on what was happening with Werm and see if he’d heard any gossip that might shed light on whatever was nudging my frequently fuzzy friends. From the look of his opening night clientele, the club was going to bring together just the kind of assorted oddballs that might know a thing or two about otherworldly goings-on. Heaven help Savannah.

I let myself out the back way to check on Huey’s progress, which was negligible. In fact, he’d stopped digging altogether and was talking to a crow perched in the live oak beside the garage. As far as I could tell, the crow wasn’t answering back, but it looked like it wanted to.

“What’s with the crow?” I said to the little guy.

“He flew up just after you went inside.”

“Shouldn’t he be roosting right now?”

“That’s what I asked him,” Huey said reasonably.

Seeing little blue men and talking to crows. Poor little feeble-minded Huey. “What’d he say?” I asked gently. The crow cocked its head to one side and stared at me with its beady black eyes.

Huey shrugged, leaning on his shovel. “Nothing yet. I think he likes you, Jack.”

The bird hadn’t taken its eyes off me since I’d stepped outside. It was downright creepy. “You let me know if he says or does anything interesting,” I said. “And good luck with that digging,”

“Thanks,” Huey said.

I started to go, but curiosity halted me and I turned to Huey again. “What’s this I hear about this Stevie fellow?” I asked.

Huey waved one grimy hand dismissively. “Aw, it’s just Otis.”

“Huh?”

“Otis and Stevie are the same. Stevie is kind of inside Otis, like that little crow used to be inside a shell.”

The guys were right; Huey was one lug nut short of a wheel’s worth. I already had to buy his weight in ground beef once a week. Was I going to have to spring for zombie therapy, too?

“You’ve started seeing somebody inside Otis?”

“Ever since I came back,” he said.

“Ooh-kay,” I said. “What does Otis have to say about this?”

“I haven’t talked to him about it. I just mentioned Stevie to the other guys and they made fun of me, so I shut up. I didn’t tell them the part about him and Otis being the same guy, though.”

“Uh-huh. If I were you, I wouldn’t mention it to anyone else.” I hoped Huey’s hallucinations would take care of themselves. I had enough to worry about without men in white coats snagging my pet zombie with a butterfly net and hauling him off to the state mental hospital. I would have a lot of explaining to do about his eating habits.

As I pulled away from the building I glanced in the rearview mirror. The crow was still watching me.

Seven

William

As I entered Werm’s nightclub I fought the urge to cover my ears, assaulted as they were by the incomprehensible racket the young people of today called music.

Seth, who was tending bar, motioned me over and I seated myself on a stool. “I called this morning to check on Jack and Connie. Melaphia said they were all right. Congratulations on getting them back.” Being familiar with my drinking preferences, he poured me a double shot of single-malt Scotch along with one for himself.

I clinked glasses with him. “Here’s to their safe return,” I said. The whiskey warmed my throat pleasantly, and the next sensation I felt warmed the rest of my body.

A pair of slender arms reached around my waist and caressed me in a most intimate way. The touch’s familiarity sent a shock wave of recognition through my body.
Eleanor…
I stood and quickly turned toward the woman, whose arms slid around me even more firmly as I faced her. So sure was I that my Eleanor had escaped damnation and made her way back to me that I was shocked to see Ginger in her place.

As I composed myself, I wondered what had caused her to exhibit such forwardness toward me. Her manner hadn’t seemed at all unusual on my first visit to the Portal.

“William, I’m so glad to see you again. I feel like it’s been forever.”

“Why, thank you,” I said. “But I was here only last night, remember?”

“Oh yes. Silly me.” She arched her back and pressed herself against my groin, arousing me immediately, as she’d meant to. “I wonder if you could answer a question for me.”

“What’s that?”

She tossed her head, shifting her mass of red hair to one side, uncovering the creamy flesh of her neck. “I heard a rumor that Eleanor isn’t coming back. Is that true?”

I kept my face a neutral mask. “Oh? Who told you that?”

“A little bird,” she said. She put one palm flat against my chest and peered up at me with long-lashed blue eyes. “So what’s the story? I really have to know.” Her perfume was cloying and familiar.

“You heard right. She’s not coming back. She decided to stay in Europe indefinitely.”

“Ooh, whatever shall we do without her?” Ginger purred. Her hand brushed my swollen cock before coming to rest discreetly on my thigh. “I don’t want you to be lonely, William.”

Her vermilion lips reminded me so much of blood that I felt my fangs begin to lengthen along with that other part of me. The light blue veins in her delicate pale throat seemed to pulse with the primitive rhythm of the music. I basked in the living human heat her body radiated and felt myself reach out to her.

But then I became aware of two blood drinkers approaching on my left. Werm had appeared with another young vampire.

Ginger must have realized my attention was required elsewhere. “Later?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” I said.

She moved away with a pretty pout.

“William,” Werm said, “this is Freddy Blackstone, the guy I was telling you about.”

The vampire, who looked much the same human age as Werm, smiled and offered his hand. He was of average height and weight, with unkempt dark hair and a scraggly beard. His ragged jeans and worn flannel shirt over a faded tee might have been acquired at any charity thrift store.

I shook his hand. “I understand you’re a friend of Tobey’s.”

“Yeah. Tobey and me are tight,” he said.

I looked toward Werm, who offered his interpretation. “They’re friends,” he said simply.

“How do you find our fair city?” I asked.

“I found it real easy, dude.”

“He means how do you like it here,” Werm explained to Freddy.

“Oh. It’s cool, man.”

“That is gratifying,” I said. I was struck by the notion that Freddy was not a great intellect, and that inference led me to wonder how he made it across the continent in one, unparboiled piece. “How
did
you get here?”

“I stowed away in the luggage compartment of a jet that was supposed to land on the right coast of Florida in the middle of the night, dude. Turned out it wasn’t the baggage compartment at all, and I froze solid when we reached cruising altitude. They opened some kind of hatch or something and I got dumped.”

“Dumped? As in, onto the ground?”

“Yeah, man.”

“When you were ‘dumped,’ did some frozen green matter come out with you, by any chance?”

“Yeah, dude. How did you know?”

“Just a lucky guess.” I exchanged glances with Werm, whose eyes had gone wide with wonder. He had obviously come to the same conclusion as I. The plane’s septic system had jettisoned Freddy along with its chemically treated waste. “What a charming anecdote,” I went on. “Where did you, er, land?”

“In some marshland. It cushioned my fall, but I was still unconscious for a while. I’d sunk into just enough mud to protect me from the sun.”

“My, but you are a lucky young man,” I observed.

“Do continue. What happened then?”

“When I came to, I cleaned myself up and followed the smell of food.”

Speaking of smell, I imagined that Freddy would have been somewhat fragrant after being flushed with the waste and then marinating in mud for a spell.

“On the subject of food…” I began.

Werm interjected, “Don’t worry, William, I explained to him about your house rules.”

Freddy held up the fingers of his right hand as if he were about to take the Boy Scout oath. “I won’t kill any humans. I promise. I don’t believe in it, dude. I’m a live-and-let-live guy. You feel me?”

“Indeed,” I said, hoping he didn’t mean that literally. “I’m sure you’re a civilized man if Tobias calls you friend. And if you stay that way, you’re welcome to remain here as long as you like.”

“Thanks, dude.” Freddy smiled, giving the barest glimpse of a mature set of fangs. This blood drinker might seem youthful, but he was no fledgling. I wondered at his background. Since I hadn’t brought him to the New World as part of my smuggling operation for peaceful European vampires, I assumed he was a product of the indigenous western vampires like Tobey. Perhaps I’d ask him one day if he stayed in the city long enough.

“C’mon, Freddy, I’ll get you a beer,” Werm said, and his new friend followed.

When they’d left, I saw Jack’s friend Otis sitting on the bar stool directly behind where they’d stood. He was furtively fiddling with an electronic device, and when I greeted him he nearly jumped off his seat.