Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (97 page)

“Oh. Good. I guess.” I'm glad no one mentions that without the campaign, Gideon would still be a happy hermit, and there'd be one less dead detective. “Whatever the reason, thank you.”

David's gratitude—and abject adoration—requires no words as he gazes at Elizabeth. I wonder what her change of heart means for their twisted relationship.

She slows the car and peers through the wet windshield at a group of mailboxes, the only ones in sight on this dark and wooded road. Elizabeth glances at a sheet of paper taped to the dashboard. “This is it, according to our files.”

We bumble up the steeply sloping lane, which becomes gravel, then dirt, as it enters a thicker patch of woods. I see nothing but trees blurred by sheets of rain.

We come to a gate in a high chain-link fence topped
with barbed wire. Elizabeth pulls up to a small white box. She rolls down her window and pushes a button under a round speaker. “We're here to see Gideon.”

After a moment of static, a raspy male voice says, “Front door.” It's hard to tell from only two words, but I don't think it's the same guy as the threatening caller.

The gate swings open, and we continue down the lane, which ends in front of a long white rancher. On the porch sits a single empty rocking chair, nodding in the blustery wind. The yard is about two acres large, with what looks like a playground toward the back.

Several antique and classic cars, including Jim's blue Charger, gather on the grassy hillside to the left of the house. We pull in among them.

Elizabeth leans over and opens the glove compartment. In the process, her arm slides against David's knee. His face goes all blissy. Yuck, just when I thought he was over her, she reels him back in. But at least he still has a job.

She sits up and offers two wooden stakes. David takes one.

“I'd rather go unarmed,” I tell her, “than carry something I don't know how to use. Besides, they're bound to search us.”

“That's the point,” Elizabeth says. “I want them to know we mean business.” She pulls my wrist forward and slaps the blunt end of the stake into my palm. “It's not complicated. One hard jab to the heart.”

“I know, I know.” I want to drop the thing, but her hand surrounds mine.

“That's only half of it. You have to pull the stake out again.”

“Why?”

“Because that's where—” Elizabeth turns her head. “Tell her, David.”

He looks away, out the window. “That's where their life flows out.”

“Don't whitewash it.” Her voice is sharper than the thing I've got in my hand.

“After the stake is pulled out,” David says, “their bodies go through the hole.”

“Where?” I ask.

Elizabeth titters. “That's the eternal question for all of us, isn't it? Heaven? Hell? The never-ending void?”

“No, I mean, do they go through the hole and splatter all over the room, or do they just disappear?”

David and Elizabeth look at each other. His face is etched with guilt; hers, with bitterness.

“Something in-between,” he tells me. “Pray you never have to see it.”

The music hits us even with the door closed. Standing on the porch, we can hear the thumping of a swing rhythm and the high calling of trumpets. Through a bay window to our right, thin curtains show shadows dipping and swaying with acrobats' ease.

Elizabeth knocks hard. A wind gust drenches us with rain and scoots the rocking chair across the porch.

The door opens to reveal a tall dark man, powerfully built enough to make his magenta zoot suit look macho.

“I am Lawrence,” he says in a voice as deep as a foghorn. I notice that it doesn't match the one on the phone or the security gate. Apparently Gideon likes to spread out his flunky work.

He tips back the brim of his felt hat and examines us. “Us” meaning Elizabeth. The look he gives me and David is the kind you give dog shit to avoid stepping in it.

Finally, after submitting her to a gaze more penetrating than an MRI scan, he nods at Elizabeth. His large, dark palm unfolds. “Give up the tree bits.”

I pull the stake out from under my shirt and hand it over with relief. I'd be more comfortable packing an Uzi.

The living room just inside the front door is larger than I expected; the wall between it and the adjoining dining room must have been knocked down to create one huge space. A space filled with vampires.

Some bop and jump to the wild, pulsing music; others stroll the perimeter with drinks of wine or blood, smoking cigarettes through long, silver-tipped holders. Judging by their dress, all are at least as old as Monroe. The epochs mix and mingle: a bob-haired woman in a red flapper outfit fox-trots with a man in a dirt-brown bowler hat and morning suit.

“Excuse me.” A plump young woman with curly red hair nearly steps on my foot. She brushes past in her cigarette girl outfit and edges around the room with her tray, delivering smokes and drinks. I'm pretty sure she's human, judging by the way she wobbles in her high-heeled pumps.

Despite the vampires' aura of cool, they all look faded. They glance at us with empty eyes, moving, dancing, and speaking as if they're going through the motions of an endlessly repetitive existence, the meaning or purpose for which they've long forgotten. I hate the thought of the VMP vamps getting those cold, dead eyes. Better to be weird than catatonic.

“They're waiting for you downstairs,” Lawrence tells us as he opens one of the doors in the hallway to our left.

The stairway is so dimly lit, I can't even see to the bottom. Elizabeth steps in front of me and starts to descend. I grope for the banister and follow, willing my knees to keep their strength. David comes up behind me, with Lawrence bringing up the rear.

At the bottom of the stairs lies what looks like a typical basement family room. The only light comes from a large TV in the corner with a tiny black-and-white screen. My eyes adjust to see Spencer, Monroe, and Jim lounging in a set of armchairs.

Someone's pacing behind the love seat with shaky steps. He sees me, and his hands fly to his mouth.

Travis.

For one moment, as I look into the eyes of the creature who tried to kill me, I wish I had that stake back in my hand. But his trembling fingers and tight face tell me that like most wild animals, he's more afraid of me than I am of him.

Jim stands and takes Travis's arm. “Go on now,” he says, “tell her you're sorry.”

“No time for this jive,” growls Lawrence. “Gideon is waiting.”

Travis jolts at his maker's name. His expression changes to rapture, like someone about to meet a celebrity. I notice he's lost the mustache—for easier slurping, I suppose. He looks younger and halfway cute now.

I look around, expecting to see Gideon in another corner, but we're led to yet another staircase, beneath the one we just descended, and I realize this is no ordinary house.

We descend the stairs to the next level. Though the
basement above held a musty smell, this second one feels dry and clean. I peer down the hallways lined with closed doors. The recessed ceiling lights provide an almost human amount of illumination.

Before turning to descend the next flight of stairs, Jim and Elizabeth stop on the landing and sniff. Her eyes narrow in anger, while Jim looks intrigued. I tap Elizabeth's elbow.

“It's the farm,” she whispers to me and David. “Just like we suspected.”

Odd, it doesn't smell like a farm—no animal manure or straw or ...

Oh. They don't keep animals here.

“Disgusting,” she mutters.

“But convenient,” Jim points out as we continue down the stairs toward the next level. “It's like having room service instead of eating out.”

“You want to live here?” she snaps. “Go ahead.”

“I'm too young for this place.” He lowers his voice. “It's full of squares.”

I glance at David beside me to see if we should worry about turning into livestock. He looks pissed rather than frightened, so maybe these people are volunteers. Food and shelter in exchange for blood might be a good tradeoff if a person came from rough circumstances. But it feels like prison, a reverse image of the Control's vampire retirement homes. I have a strong desire to be somewhere altogether else.

Behind us, Travis mumbles to himself like a toddler. “Ice train. Slowly and carefully. No, I don't want chicken.” At least I think that's what he says.

At the bottom of this longest staircase, our guide leads
us to the right. This looks like the bottom floor—not that I can see much in the nearly nonexistent light.

We head down a narrow stone corridor, past open bedrooms containing writhing, moaning figures in candlelit shadows. Even my limited human nose smells blood. My pace slows until Travis bumps into me from behind. He gasps and leaps back.

Someone takes my hand. David. I sigh in relief and squeeze hard. His skin is warm with life that comes from eating hamburgers and salads and Nutty Buddys, and that's all that matters.

Ahead to the right, near the end of the corridor, firelight dances against the wall. Our guide ushers us through a door on the left, which is flanked by two beefy guards who look like sewer rats on steroids.

A massive man sits cross-legged in the corner behind a campfire, his back to the wall. His face is hidden under the rim of a battered light gray fedora. The flames illuminate what must have once been a high-fashion morning suit and waistcoat. His posture is slumped but so perfectly motionless it gives the impression of rigidity and control.

Lawrence shuts the door behind us, blotting out all sound but the crackling logs and Travis's shaky wheezing.

The man raises his head. David and I step back. The chills skipping among my vertebrae make my first reaction to Monroe seem like one long yawn.

His wide, ink-black eyes wield a movie-star magnetism beneath low, brooding brows. The look reminds me of Orson Welles in
Macbeth,
with just as much sanity. His dark hair, slicked back, sets off the flawless ivory of his skin, the color of piano keys in candlelight.

“Welcome,” he says, without a trace of it in his voice.

At the sound, Travis flings himself on the dirt next to the man who must be Gideon. Oblivious to the fire a few inches away, the detective presses his forehead to the ground next to his maker's knee and utters a rapid, incoherent plea.

In response, Gideon pats him on the head, causing Travis to shudder and moan. Then the older vampire gives what seems to be, from his end, a light shove. This small effort sends Travis tumbling across the room to crash into the opposite wall. The other vamps gasp and hiss.

“Bastard,” Elizabeth snarls to Gideon. So much for detente. “First you turn him and leave him without food, then you reject him? What kind of vampire are you?”

“If I don't conform to your code,” Gideon says evenly, “it's for a good reason.”

“And what might that be?”

“He's an example, a demonstration, if you will.” Gideon extends his arm toward Travis and crooks his finger once. Travis scuttles to him like a broken-legged crab. When he gets close, Gideon flattens his palm in a stop gesture. Travis freezes, staring at his maker with pleading eyes. I want to look away, for fear that Gideon will order Travis to stick his head in the fire. The detective would do it, happily—their connection is that palpable.

“Very nice,” Elizabeth says. “A demonstration of your sadism, like we needed further proof.”

“A demonstration of my power.” Gideon keeps his unblinking gaze locked with Travis's. “And of what will happen again if the chicanery doesn't stop.”

A corner of my stomach begins a cold burn.

“This WVMP foolishness,” he continues, “telling the truth disguised as a lie. Duping people with their own
skepticism. The slickest grift is no grift at all.” He shifts his eyes to me. “Isn't that right, Ciara?”

I stammer, my throat pinned shut. It feels like he's inhaling me with every breath.

“It must end before someone gets hurt,” he says.

“With all respect, sir,” Spencer says as he kneels beside the trembling Travis, “somebody already got hurt.”

“Then help him if you feel charitable.” Gideon waves them away. “The life of any one vampire is not my concern. My duty lies with us all.” He regards David, Elizabeth, and me. “Some humans won't be fooled by your gimmick. They'll come to understand that vampires truly exist. Then we'll have a war.” He spreads his hands. “Or a curious person might want to see what happens if one of your friends meets the rising sun, or gets a taste of fire.” He lifts a log out of the flames and waves the burning end at the vampires, who jump back. “Just to jazz up a Saturday night.”

Maybe he has a point. Maybe this campaign has put them in mortal danger. Maybe things were better before. Safer.

Then I think of Shane's transformation over the last month, the way he's learned to love new music, learned to drive a stick shift—the way he's learned to
learn
again. How he looks happy to exist in this crazy, wide-open, scary-as-shit world of Today. The Today that makes him look forward to Tomorrow.

“You're right,” I say.

Gideon's eyebrows pop up, then scrunch together, as if he's surprised and confused to be addressed by a mere human.

“All of that could happen,” I continue, “despite our
precautions. They could all go
poof,
either by accident or design. But a vampire's life—a human's life, for that matter— is always a precarious thing.” I look at the walls of his cave. “Better to hide in the light than hide in the dark.”

“This is not a hideout,” Gideon says. “This is a fortress.”

I keep my voice soft. “And what's a fortress for? Keeping out the things that scare you.”

“The things that
threaten
us.” His eyes narrow on Elizabeth's face. “I've seen what they do”—his voice shakes with rage—”those Control humans and their vampire whores.”