The Vampire's Revenge (11 page)

“How’d you find me?” I asked Olivia, who was following us.

“Werm guessed where you were. He said this was your favorite dangling bridge for when you’re interrogating reluctant informants.”

I was getting too predictable.

The little vampire had lost his fedora and sunglasses into the river. All six of his hairs were standing on end and he squinted, even in the dark. Every time I looked at this guy, he just kept getting more unsightly. “Start talking,” I told him.

He looked at Olivia. “Can I trust him?”

“With your life,” she said. “I do.”

He shrugged. “Diana and Ulrich brought me here from England with them as their assistant.”

“And you were supposed to scout out dead troublemakers for me to raise,” I said.

“That’s right. But the plan was abandoned.”

“Let me guess. It was because Werm and I couldn’t give you any names.”

Velki looked insulted. “Believe me, I came up with more than enough material on my own to make the plan a success. I’m quite a talented researcher, if I do say so. And as you indicated the other night, your city has a quite fascinating history of violence.”

“It sounds like you’re playing both sides against the middle,” I accused.

“If I hadn’t tried to gather information for them, they would have done it themselves. At least I was able to report on what they were up to.”

“Why
did
Diana and Ulrich give up on this plan?” Olivia asked.

“Unfortunately for the good citizens of fair Savannah, they’ve come up with a much more diabolical plot. If it’s successful, it will endear Diana and Ulrich to the Council much more than raising a handful of evildoers.”

“I was afraid of that,” I said bitterly. A chill shook its way through me as I exchanged worried glances with Olivia. I thought maybe we didn’t want to hear this, but of course we had to. “Go on.”

“You’re familiar with the Savannah River Nuclear Site?”

I groaned. Now I
knew
I didn’t want to hear this. “Yeah. It was built in the fifties to produce nuclear weapons materials, mostly tritium and plutonium. Now they mostly process nuclear waste. What about it?” I asked.

“Well, now the facility is extracting tritium from materials the Tennessee Valley Authority irradiated in their commercial nuclear reactors. Diana, Ulrich, and Reedrek think they know how to get some of that material as it comes into the plant.”

“And do what with it?”

Mole looked apologetic. “Put it in Savannah’s drinking water supply. And poison the river for good measure.”

“How do they plan to do that?” Olivia asked, her eyes wide with alarm.

Mole shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

“Why am I only now hearing about this?” Olivia complained. “I just this morning found out about the reanimation plan.”

“The information has to work its way through channels,” Mole whined. “I can’t take a chance that word will get back to the Council that I’m a double agent, so there have to be checks in place. You—you can’t imagine what they
do
to vampires who dare to cross them.” I wouldn’t have thought it possible for the guy to get whiter, but he blanched at the thought of the Council’s capacity for cruelty.

“Why
are
you crossing them?” I asked. “I would have thought a cushy Council job would be a plum assignment for an ambitious blood drinker.”

Mole stared at me and his mouth worked like a beached grouper’s for a second before he spoke again. “Are you mad? They’re hideous! Now that I’m out of there, no matter what happens I’m not going back!”

“But your spying is invaluable to us,” Olivia said.

“I’m never going back, I tell you,” he insisted. “If I survive long enough to escape from Diana and Ulrich, I’m not even going back to Europe. I’m staying in Savannah. I like it here.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was kind of flattering, but damn! Why did I get saddled with all the weak sisters? Werm couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper sack, but Mole made him look like a ninja master. I looked down at his sad and wizened little face blinking up at me with rheumy eyes, expecting me to say some words of welcome, and sighed. At least the guy had guts.

“The more the merrier,” I said wanly. “Why don’t you let me buy you a new hat?”

He beamed.

Olivia blinked at the high beams of a passing car. “Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s go somewhere we can talk. I have news of my own.”

Since we were so close to Tybee, we met up at a bar on the lighthouse side of the island and got a table in a dark corner. Olivia drew plenty of appreciative glances from the few late-night drinkers. Mole drew just as many revolted ones. When I went to the bar to order drinks, the barmaid asked me what the deal was with my friend.

“He has a condition,” I said sadly. “It’s fatal.” Hey, it wasn’t a lie.

“Aww, poor thing,” she said. A jolly woman of fifty or so hard years, her vermilion lipstick had bled into the laugh lines around her mouth, making her look almost like a sloppy vampire who’d just fed. Her hair was dyed matte black, piled on top of her head in a neat stovepipe stack, and lacquered into place with some space-age polymer.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Pitcher of margaritas, please. Three glasses, extra salt. Salt’s good for my friend’s low blood pressure.”

When I returned to the table Olivia began explaining what she’d learned from Otis. “Huey has uncovered a nemeton! Can you believe it?”

“Brilliant!” Mole said enthusiastically. “How extraordinary.”

“I thought he uncovered a Chevy Corsica,” I said.

“After he kept digging, silly. He felt something calling to him, and before you know it—”

“Oh, right, I remember now. He said there was something else down there.”

The barmaid came over with the pitcher and glasses on a tray. She poured our drinks and then leaned over to give Mole a little hug with her right arm. Her height was such that she effectively trapped the side of Mole’s face against her ample bosom and laid her cheek on the top of his head for a couple of seconds. “There you are, you poor little thing. You enjoy that extra salt. My name is Sharona. Just give me a shout if you need anything else.”

As she tottered back to the bar on her high heels, it occurred to me that the barmaid had been spending her tips on toddies. Either that, or going the efficient route and guzzling directly from the beer taps.

Mole had frozen in place long enough to make me wonder if he had died of happiness. Those bodacious ta-tas were past their prime but pleasing enough. A man who had been underground with demons for gods knew how long must have felt he’d just achieved nirvana.

“She’s an angel,” he finally murmured, confirming he was still animated.

“You’re a man of questionable taste,” Olivia remarked. “You’re not even drunk yet.”

“Don’t be mean,” I said. “What’s a nemeton?”

Olivia took a sip of her margarita and continued. “It means ‘sacred place’ or ‘sanctuary.’ I’m telling you, I could feel the magic. Otis could feel it, too. And along with this particular nemeton is some sort of spring.”

“So Huey struck water. That’s not unusual, especially this close to the ocean. What’s so special about it?”

“I think it might be a holy well. Wells were sacred in the ancient Celtic world. Mostly in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. A well represents two of the major elements coming together—land and sea.”

“I’m still not following.”

“I think it’s the ideal place to have the gods do their magic. Otis agrees.”

“So you think this nemeton will give—whatever it is those guys are going to do—more umph?”

“What do you think, Mole?” Olivia asked.

“Hmm?” Mole asked dreamily, staring at the barmaid as she winked a blue-shadowed eye at him and pulled the lever of a beer tap suggestively.

“Never mind,” Olivia said.

“So this is all going down as soon as those two god guys get here?”

Olivia nodded. “And they should be here by sundown tomorrow.”

“Saint Patrick’s Day. Not a minute too soon.”

“What are we going to do about the nuclear threat?” Olivia asked.

“There’s nothing much we
can
do without knowing more about how they plan to pull the caper off,” I said wearily. I snapped my fingers in front of Mole’s face. “Buddy, you need to report back as soon as you know what Diana and Ulrich plan, all right?”

“Absolutely,” he promised, shaking off the trance. “I shall stay as close to them as possible until I learn something of use. Then I’ll contact you at the club.” He licked salt off the side of the frosted glass. “The libations here are really most enjoyable.”

“I’m glad you like them,” I said. “Why don’t you go talk to the lady bartender until Olivia is ready to give you a lift back to town.”

Grinning, Mole topped off his drink from the pitcher and sauntered over to do just that.

“Where are
you
going?” Olivia asked.

“I should touch base with Connie.”

“Are you going to tell her what Diana and Ulrich are planning?”

“No. She’s got enough on her plate. Besides, she can’t do anything about it without knowing more either. If she calls the authorities at this point, what’s she going to tell them? That she has it on good authority from one bunch of vampires that another bunch of vampires plan to hijack some nuclear material?”

“Good point,” Olivia said. “On the other hand, it would make me feel more secure if Homeland Security locked Connie away in the loony bin for a while.”

“No straitjacket is strong enough to hold her,” I said. “Besides, I thought you weren’t afraid of her.”

“I’m not. I’m just jealous of how she looks at you.”

“What are you talking about?” I said incredulously. “She looks at me like she wants to kill me.”

“Oh, she still wants you, all right.”

I almost tossed my tequila when Olivia’s foot slid between my thighs. “Hey, now.”

“Are you going to tell her about last night?” she teased.

“Absolutely not,” I said. I was getting uncomfortable with this subject. To my way of thinking, last night had been just fun and games. But was it Olivia’s way of staking her claim on me? Pardon the expression.

I thought about the possibilities. Say for the sake of argument, Connie did still desire me on some level. Could you imagine the catfight between a powerful femme fatale vampire and a demigoddess vampire slayer? And me caught right in the middle.

How hot would
that
be?

When I called her, Connie told me to meet her at the city jail. She signed me in and took me back to see the soccer-mom steak-knife stabber, as she was being called. The woman was lurching around her cell, cursing and throwing herself against the bars.

“That’s a double-dead, all right,” I said to Connie.

“Ya think?” Connie said.

“Why must I be trapped in this frail and pitiful shell?” it wailed.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Victor von Abendroth. I was the most feared fiend in the sixteenth century.”

“Uh-huh,” Connie said, unimpressed.

“Not anymore, you ain’t,” I said. “You look more like a suburban Savannah housewife in a heap of trouble. Who killed you? As a vampire, I mean,” I asked him out of curiosity.

“The Bard himself!” the demon declared. “He staked me while I fed on the lily white flesh of a highborn lady. How was I to know she was a patron of his?”

You couldn’t miss the irony: a drama queen like this being killed off by a playwright. “Good for him,” I said. “So Shakespeare was a vampire killer.”

“Who knew?” Connie asked.

“How did this come to pass?” snarled the vampire in the blond lady’s body. She would have looked cute in that little golf skirt and polo shirt if she hadn’t been possessed by a nasty demon with a murderous gleam in its eye.

The thing thrust its pink manicured nails through the bars toward my throat, but overestimated its reach, staring with horror at its own exfoliated and emolliated flesh. “This is not to be borne!” it screeched.

“Are you sure I can’t kill it?” Connie asked.

“We may be able to get this woman’s spirit back together with her body. Walk with me.”

As Connie walked me back out of the building, I told her the plan for the next night. When we were on the street, she said, “That sounds like a lot of hokum to me.”

“You have any better ideas?”

“You and your polytheism,” she said, scowling. “I’m a Catholic.” She reached into the neck of her shirt and drew out a Saint Patrick medal on its chain. “Saint Patrick is my patron now. He drove the snakes out of Ireland with his staff, just like I’m going to drive the vampires off this planet with my sword. I’ll pray to
him
while your pagans are—are—doing whatever it is they do.”

I ignored the threat, instead concentrating on what she said about the saint. “It can’t hurt. It
is
Saint Patrick’s Day and all.”

Her delicate little nose twitched. She stared at me hard, with that flinty, hateful look in her eyes again, and I sensed she wasn’t thinking about saints anymore.

“What is it?” I asked tentatively.

“You’ve had sex with that bloodsucking bitch,” Connie accused. “I can smell her on you.”

Busted! I started to stammer some lame denial, but it was no use.

Connie jabbed me in the chest with her index finger. “I hope your little scheme works like a charm. The faster we get those double-dead vampires back in hell where they belong, the faster I can send you there with them.”

Talk about a woman scorned. Connie stalked away as I put my hand against the place where she’d touched me in anger. Was it the last time she’d ever touch me except to kill me? Would the next time I saw her really be the last?

I closed my eyes and imagined her killing me the way she had killed William and thought it might not be such a bad way to go. I turned to go, humming that old tune, “Dust in the Wind.” Maybe I really had inherited William’s death wish.

Eight

I woke up feeling disoriented. There was something significant about this date, but I couldn’t remember what it was. When I lifted the lid of my coffin to the sounds of Reyha and Deylaud’s mournful howls, I remembered. Part of me wanted to climb back into my box. The coward part. But I had to be strong for all of them.