Underground Vampire (23 page)

Petru slid from the limousine,
stepping into the wet darkness of the downtown alley.  He stood for a
moment watching the limo pull away from the curb, returning his Mistress to the
mansion on Queen Anne hill.  It disturbed him to be away from her; so
strong was his allegiance, separation caused him physical distress. 

As was her wont, she had first
taken him as a lover and, treasuring his violent nature, turned him instead of
killing him when her passions turned to another.  Servant, soldier,
herald, spy, he did as she instructed without question.  He kept the peace
and enforced her rules.  Usually, his authority and personal power were
sufficient to suppress any threat.  On the occasion when a Vampire
directly challenged him or flouted his authority, he was decisive.  What
he lacked in subtlety he made up with sheer ruthlessness and a penchant for
unique ways of destroying his rivals, a vestige of his Balkan heritage, no
doubt.

Partial to chaining Vampires to the
ground so they could watch death approach as the sun advanced from the east,
most considered him a sadist and were terrified of him.  Sheltered in the
shadows, he would watch as the early morning rays burnt  the feet
then  the wretch's legs then the naked torso, all the while raising welts
and pustule sores until the screaming, doomed Vampire spontaneously combusted
and burned like white phosphorus in the pure morning light.  The exercise
always made him happy.

Tonight might lead to such
pleasures, for his Mistress had charged him to patrol the streets thwarting
Oliver’s Vampires access to topside.  Arabella by day Petru by night;
simple and effective. 

An old school Vampire, he did not
trust Humans; when the lion lays with the lambs, the lambs get ideas. His
medieval roots and life since taught him that survival was a series of widening
concentric circles with the Ruler at the center.  The next circle was
those, like him, made by her, the mother.  The third circle was those they
had made, and so on.  Each circle owed its existence and allegiance to the
previous; while the system did not guarantee permanent loyalty, it served to
knit the community together, making dissent difficult. 

Arabella was not in a circle; she
was independent, a free floating self-contained comet that at any moment could
smash into the cosmology and just as quickly flee, leaving death and damage.
Petru was not offended by her petty insults.  He was offended by her very
existence and longed to terminate her as expeditiously as possible. 

He had no illusions about Arabella
and was sure he could defeat her in single combat, but she was vastly
experienced as a hunter killer and would be a formidable opponent.  And,
most disturbing, she’d managed to leverage the Oliver problem to establish a
private force within the Clan.   Comprising Humans, it was an unknown
quantity in a chaotic time.  First he would dispose of Oliver, then he
would deal with Arabella.

However, he had no intention of
tackling her alone.  When the time came, and it would be soon, there would
be more than enough who would volunteer to be able to say they were present
when the legend was captured and destroyed.  Her Humans could be disposed
of at the same time.  They knew too much and were becoming too successful at
Vampire slaying.  But tonight he was not here for her; that would come
later.  He was nothing if not patient; living for six hundred years had
taught him that the wheel turned, and with it the revenge he sought.

Tonight his route took him along
King Street and into the International District.  He turned off King and
circled around to the Blue Anchor.  He walked past the doorway and spotted
the old man behind the bar.  “Remarkable,” he thought, “this one looks
exactly like his forefathers.”  The Big Indian was playing shuffleboard
with a couple of Vampires tasked with guarding the basement.  He glared at
them and they abruptly ran for the stairs.  The Indian acknowledged him by
raising his beer.  He looked forward to eating that one when the time came. 

He planned to return just before
the 2:00 am closing time, which gave him a couple of hours to reconnoiter the
neighborhood.  His route took him the long way, but allowed him the time
and freedom to inspect the streets and alleys, doorways, nooks and crannies. 
It had been too long since he’d patrolled the streets, and he’d forgotten how
much he enjoyed abusing Vampires.  The recently made did not appreciate
his power and he took pleasure in forcing proper obeisance.  Perhaps when
this was over he would spend more time in public; he found that he missed
making inferiors grovel.

Ambling along, he spotted a group
of young Vampires lounging under the umbrellas of Hing Way Park.  
Veering off Maynard and into the park, he marched directly to the group, his
manner an open challenge.  The Vampires shifted uneasily, which Petru
accepted as his due, Vampires and Humans should be discomfited if not
terrorized by his presence.  As the bodyguard to his Mistress, he was used
to deference and expected respect as a matter of right.  There was nothing
like a bit of the old bowing and scraping to make a Lord happy and to remind
the commoners where their noses belonged.

The young Vamps rose, a bit tardily
thought Petru, at his approach.  “Respect is eroding,” he thought, “I
really must teach them some manners.”  Into their midst he strode, as
arrogant as the Lord enjoying droit du seigneur with the prettiest maid in the
village, and looked each of them in the face establishing the hierarchy. 
They were under the tile-roofed pagoda erected in the center of the brick shod
park.  He went up the two steps between the red columns and stood in the
middle, as unconcerned as a dominant Vampire could be. 

Turning, he realized that he didn’t
recognize any of them, which startled him.  “Recite your lineage,” he
ordered, expecting to hear the name of their maker and his maker and so on back
to the Queen. 

“Oliver,” a youth sneered, “I was
made by him.”  “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver,” they chanted “Oliver, Oliver.”

“Silence,” he barked, infuriated at
the insolence, “Impossible.  He is gone and I know all his progeny,
identify yourselves now or I will punish you.”

“We were made before he was taken,”
said the one he took to be the leader.

“If you were made by him, where
have you been, how have you lived?  Answer me truthfully or I will kill
you now.”  To emphasize, he reached out grabbing the throat of the leader,
squeezing just enough to cut off the air but not hard enough to break any
bones.  Hard enough to let them know he would not tolerate dissent, that there
were consequences, painful and sometimes permanent consequences. 

He thought that he would be coming
down here often, he so enjoyed the consequences part of his duties; perhaps it
would be better to kill this one now to make his point.  If he did, the
others would be so much more compliant.  Raising his arm he lifted the
young Vampire off the ground and shook him a bit to get his attention.  He
thought about asking again who his maker was, but realized that might be taken
as weakness on his part, so he let him dangle while he considered crushing his
throat.  “While you are thinking of your answer, you might also explain
what you are doing above ground.”

Distracted by his thoughts, blinded
by arrogance, he did not sense the movement behind him as the group flashed
forward, wooden stakes appearing from concealed pockets, the stakes plunging
into him.  The sharpened oak punctured him all over and he dropped the one
he was holding, shrinking from the unexpected pain burning in ancient
muscles. 

Astonished at the temerity of his
attackers, he lashed out with his nails looking to savage as many as possible,
but they were relentlessly stabbing him, forcing him to the ground so that he
found himself on his back, his arms and legs uselessly flailing about penetrated
by the staves.  The leader, a youth affecting a leather jacket over a
black t-shirt with The Ramones printed in white treacle stood over him, rubbing
at the blotches on his neck.  Petru realized with a shock that he was
incapacitated.  “Release me,” he said, struggling like an insect tortured
by children, “Do you know who I am?”

The leader leaned forward and spat
into his face.  “Be quiet,” he whispered, “we know exactly who you are and
what we are doing.”  Turning to the circling Vampires he whispered loud
enough for Petru to hear, “If he makes any noise cut out his tongue,” then he
disappeared into the shadows. 

Two of the Vampires retrieved
backpacks hidden under the pagoda, bringing back chains and cuffs. 
Working silently, the Vamps drove the stakes through the muscles of his calves
and thighs so that he could not move, then pulled the stakes pinning his legs,
forced his legs together, cuffed his ankles and wrapped the chain around his
legs, securing it to the cuffs.  They repeated the procedure with his
arms, after first driving stakes through his biceps, triceps and chest
muscles.  When they were finished, he resembled a caterpillar wrapped in a
chain cocoon. 

A police car cruising down Maynard
stopped when the officers saw the group.  Turning on the light bar, two
uniformed officers exited the car and walked toward the group, flashlights in
one hand the other resting comfortably on their guns.  Two of the Vampires
quickly walked to them, stared into their eyes until they were in control and
said, “Nothing is happening here, go back to your car, turn off the light and
leave, nothing is happening here.”  The officers did as they were told,
remarking as they left, “That was nothing.”

As they drove off the leader
returned, escorting Oliver.  Petru locked his gaze on Oliver and
concentrated his stare, willing Oliver to bend to his will.  Unperturbed,
Oliver walked up to him, held out his hand so a Vamp could hand him a stake,
bent over the chained Petru and pushed the stake through his cheek then forced
it between Petru’s jaws and out the other cheek.

“Hello, Petru,” he said
conversationally, “it must be terribly difficult to talk with that thing in
your mouth.  Would you like me to remove it?” he asked, like Petru had a
tiny splinter in his finger.  Petru gave a short nod and Oliver pulled the
stake out an inch or two then pushed it back and forth sawing away at the holes
in Petru’s cheeks.  “I don’t know, if I take it out, you will want to tell
me that I don’t know what I’m doing, that the Queen will fly into a rage when
she learns how you were treated, that this is treason, am I right?”

Petru hissed and gurgled the blood
and spit in his throat, he’d managed to get his tongue around the stake and the
bloody red tip protruded over his lower lip like flaccid obscene flesh poking
from unzipped trousers. 

“I really can’t understand a word
you’re saying,” smiled Oliver, giving the stake a twist, “so there is no point
in letting you talk, it would be so boring.”

Petru continued hissing, blood
bubbling from the holes in his cheeks, popping in rhythm with his ragged
breath.

“It’s time to go, Petru, are you
ready?  We’ve picked out the perfect spot for you.  I wanted to put
you away in a box for a very long time, but my friends pointed out that I came
back and we can’t have you coming back now, can we?”

Petru came to the realization that
they meant to end his life.  Vampires, though certainly not immortal, can
live for a very long time.  After a few hundred years, they begin to
believe they will last forever.  Some succumb to a great lassitude at this
time; depressed by boredom they cease to feed and in effect waste away. 
Others, like Petru, come to see themselves as eternal masters of life,
indestructible.  As they become more powerful they are accorded great deference
among the People of the Night, which reinforces their self-image of
invincibility.  With this self-image comes hubris, which for Vampires,
like Humans, results in a bad and usually violent ending.

Petru’s demise was slow, painful
and legal, conducted fully in accordance with the Protocols of Procedure for
the Destruction of Vampires enacted at the Fourth Symposium of the Central
Committee of the Worldwide Vampire Congress.  Chained to a cedar tree in a
high alpine meadow on the dry side of the Cascades, he looked into the deep
blue of the Eastern sky and watched as the Dog Star and Crescent Moon faded
into light for the last time. 

One of Oliver’s minions read the
charges, which consisted of terroristic threats to the order of society, a common
catch-all, which allowed whoever was in authority or claimed authority to do
whatever they wanted without explanation.

At the conclusion, Petru was asked
if he wished to make a statement and he nodded his assent, still unable to
speak since they had sewn his lips together to stop his infernal hissing, which
was deemed disrespectful to the proceedings.   It would take a moment
for one of the young Vamps to remove the sutures from his lips, so the Court
adjourned the proceedings and the Vampires retired to snack upon Humans they’d
brought along for just this purpose.  Observing the proprieties, the
Magistrate stood off to one side sipping from the neck of a Human provided for
his own use, so no one could question his impartiality.

Once they pulled the stake from
Petru’s cheeks, the hearing resumed and, predictably, Petru demanded to see
those who spoke against him so that he might hear their accusations and
question them.  It was difficult to understand him because rather than
remove the sutures, the Vampire ripped them out, tearing both his lips to
shreds so, as he tried to speak, his lips fluttered like red ribbons in a
breeze, causing his pronunciation to suffer, to the delight of all
present.  

His request was denied on the
grounds of state security and the stake was reinserted into his mouth and his
lips were again sewn shut, as it appeared he had no other evidence to produce
and the Court found the slobbering disgusting, annoying and unproductive.