The Goddess and The Vampire Page 23

Chapter Twenty-Two

  I HEADED TO the Vampire Consulate and parked in the back. Andy and Jackie both looked up when I walked in. Jackie shuffled paperwork. Andy took the last bite of some fast-food breakfast sandwich that featured a lot of sausage and cholesterol.

  “Nothing new today, Sweetie.” Jackie said and took a deep breath as she looked at me in a way that made me miss a step. “Of course, it’s always good to see you.”

  “Yeah.” I said in a huskier voice than I had intended. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  “No time for that.” Andy said and bounced the wadded up paper from his breakfast off my head. “Fedor and Victoria are waiting for you.”

  “They are?” I said and closed my eyes. “Did I invite them here?”

  “Victoria wanted some place neutral to meet.” Jackie said. “But Fedor insisted that the Vampire Consulate was neutral, being an official Vampire Commission representative and all. They’re in the conference room. And yes, technically you did invite them. I acted on your behalf since you seem so easily distracted these days.”

  Jackie picked up a notepad and a pen and followed me out of the front office and into the rarely used conference room. Jackie took a seat off to one side of a large wooden table where Victoria sat at one end and Fedor sat at the other. There was a third chair in the table’s center where I sat down.

  There was supposed to be a formal introduction of parties and a ritual naming of official titles and declarations of this and that. I sat with a stone face and waited for them to begin.

  “We have already performed the required ceremonies.” Victoria said in my direction. “We know you are not interested in the niceties, but we know you still want all formalities followed.”

  “Oh.” I said and let out a breath. “So what can I do for you two?”

  “I would like your advice on the best place to build my residence in the city.” Victoria said. “I have found that I have a fondness for your little community and I need your permission before I can start looking for a home.”

  I nodded and turned my head toward Fedor, who bowed his head for a moment and then met my eyes.

  “I would like to make a formal petition to make Jackie my primary and exclusive Chosen.” Fedor said and squinted at me. “And I do mean exclusive.”

  Jackie stopped writing and looked up at me. She frowned.

  “You were willing to kill each other over this?” I said and laid my hands on the smooth wooden tabletop. “Because you want to go house hunting and you want to go steady?”

  “Rules are rules.” Fedor said and spread his hands in a placating gesture. “As Master of the City you are free to add Jackie to your stable of Chosen, you have the right to do so. But I would remind you she was mine first.”

  “I don’t want to steal Jackie from you.” I said and looked over at Jackie. Our eyes met for a moment and my mouth went dry with a thirst that could only be remedied by her blood. The bracelet wasn’t doing much good. I licked my lips and swallowed before I could go on. “I’m not sure I can grant you exclusivity, but I see no reason why she can’t be your primary Chosen and be granted all the rights and privileges that go with a position of such honor.”

  “I would like to put my stamp of ownership on her.” Fedor said and leaned forward with power flashing in his eyes. “And I would like you to stop fucking her.”

  “Of course.” I said and nodded at Fedor. “Does that conclude our business?”

  “Yes.” Fedor said and busied himself with a bit of paperwork that he pushed toward me. It was filled with vampire legalese and doublespeak, but seemed to say that I agreed not to have intercourse with Jackie and not to take excessive amounts of blood from her. Fedor in turn agreed not to have me killed in my sleep or locked in the lower levels of the Consulate’s dungeon, unless I flagrantly broke the terms of the agreement. For a contract drawn up by a vampire like Fedor it was unusually loose and stopped well short of forbidding me any contact with Jackie. “Sign here, here, and here. Initial here and here.”

  I did as Fedor wanted and he strode out the door with an air of relief that I would not have expected. I resisted the urge to look at Jackie again. Maybe Sally would like this latest development. I think she was getting used to the idea of sharing me, but I doubt she would ever like it

  “I trust you will not force me to share a home with you.” Victoria said once Fedor had left the room. She tapped her long black fingernails on the table. “While I fully honor your authority, and my property will always welcome you, it will be my property and not our property.”

  “I understand your concern.” I said and tried to focus my mind on Victoria’s request. “Are there any reasons why I might refuse your request to look for a residence in my territory?”

  “Carlo already has substantial holdings here.” Victoria said. “I don’t want you to feel like we are trying to move in on you and vie for control of your territory. And of course, there is the recent unpleasantness, which might give you pause.”

  “Yes, there are a few issues that need to be resolved before I can give you my approval.” I said and tapped my own fingers on the table. “I assume this isn’t a time sensitive issue?”

  “Of course not.” Victoria said with a bow of her head. “I merely wanted to get the ball rolling, as they say, so I will not have to go through endless hoops. I’m only seeking permission to look. I would never make a purchase without your consent.”

  “I’ll give it due consideration.” I said and gave my best powerful vampire face. “Are we done?”

  “Of course.” Victoria said and stood up. She made a graceful bow. “Thank you for your time. Master.”

  Victoria swept out of the room with a swish of her long coat and I felt her as she moved out of the building and got into her limo. I looked over at Jackie, who was finishing her note taking. She peeked up and nodded at me.

  “You might get this whole Master of The City thing down one of these days.” Jackie said as she gathered her papers. “But there’s a lot more paperwork to do, a lot more people want to have meetings. Fedor does a lot of the work you should be doing, but then, he lives for that kind of stuff.”

  We walked back to the front office together and we did a good job of keeping our minds on our work. I felt a bit of hot vampire energy and looked up to see Gerald walking in the door. He had a kind of faded and washed out look. He smelled of catfish and his clothes dripped brown water into the marble floor. His shoes made a soft squishing sound instead of the angry stomp he was going for.

  “You can attack me if you want.” Gerald said and glared at me with power flashing in his eyes. “But nobody steals my car. Lady Blue has won trophies and ribbons all over the country.”

  “Jake tells me the car is fine.” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried.” Gerald said and took a deep shaking breath. “But you need to worry. In addition to Lady Blue, I want you to give me Kilestra. Or I tell Fedor I want Jake locked up. For a long, long time. In a cell with OD green walls.”

  “No need to go over the top.” Andy said and shook his head. “Locking Jake up would be bad enough. Surrounding him with Army olive drab would just kill him.”

  “That’s the idea.” Gerald said and turned for the door. “You’ve got till dawn tomorrow night.”

  “Another day in Paradise.” Andy said to no one in particular.

  “Oh Wil.” Jackie said in a soft coo that sent tingles down my spine. “I had a couple of visitors.”

  “Yes?” I said and looked at her the way a starving man might look at a steak. “Anyone I know?”

  “Yeah.” She said and tilted her head at me. “It was Raoul and Izumi. They said they had a cure for me. All I had to do was help them find Kilestra. Only I don’t know where she is. Do you?”

  “I might have an idea.” I said as her voice did things to me that didn’t involve conscious thought. “I heard there isn’t a cure for humans affected by The Little Death.”

  “They said it was
a charm or something.” Jackie said as she unbuttoned her blouse. “I forget exactly why I wanted it now.”

  I had my shirt off and was rushing toward Jackie when Fedor stepped in front of me. He stopped me with a powerful hand to the center of my chest. He held up the Contract I had signed all of ten minutes ago and held it before my eyes. There was a small clause near the bottom that said he had the right to torture me to death if I had intimate contact with Jackie again. I looked over his shoulder as Jackie bit her lip and fondled her breasts. I weighed my options.

  Andy grabbed me and tossed me out the door. I was really not in top form at that moment. He tossed my shirt into my face and went back inside. The night air did a wonderful job of clearing my head, as long as I didn’t look through the window. When I did look, I saw Fedor lead Jackie into his office and close the door. She was smiling at him and squeezing his arm. That hurt. It hurt a lot.

  I DROVE BACK toward the Mansion with my mind in a fog. I wasn’t leader material, most of the time I wasn’t follower material either. I’m more of a solitary type who likes being with others on my own terms. I parked in my usual spot and sat in thought.

  Kilestra and Jake were both important in my life, though clearly Kilestra was occasionally more important than Jake. Still, Kilestra was remarkably resilient and could easily enough take care of herself, whereas Jake tended to view suicide as the logical solution to all of his problems. So if I could hand Kilestra over to Gerald I could keep Jake around long enough for me to figure out some way of rescuing Kilestra. All I had to do was send out a call to Kilestra and wait for her to answer by stepping out of a convenient shadow.

  That’s when I noticed Raoul and Izumi. Raoul was decked out in full Hunter gear with body armor, holy objects, and a gun aimed at my heart. His hand appeared to be attached to his arm again. It’s the kind of thing I would need a couple of nights to fix. Izumi didn’t appear any the worse for wear, though I did notice she wasn’t carrying a Katana at the moment.

  “You need to come with us.” Raoul said and walked around behind me. “Play time is over.”

  “So what time is it?” I said as I followed Izumi around the house and found the Gremlin parked on the grass.

  “Time for you to shut up.” Izumi said as she opened the door and pulled the seat forward. “After you, Master Walengrave.”

  I crawled into the car and found silver crosses hanging here and there. Izumi had a spray bottle in her hand once she sat down next to me. The liquid in the bottle had that sanctimonious smell of Holy Water. Raoul got in behind the wheel and we headed off into the night. I reached out with my mind and found nothing there. A soft glow rose from a small figurine I hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a lead wizard figurine from a comic book store. It stopped glowing when I stopped trying to reach out.

  “Nifty, no?” Izumi said and pointed at the statue. “It has a fairly short range, but you won’t be moving too far from it.”

  I looked out the window and watched as we headed south and ended up in an older neighborhood. Run down houses turned into run down businesses, which turned into abandoned industrial sites, which turned into vacant lots. We pulled up to a large building with a bunch of cement barriers around its perimeter. Raoul parked the Gremlin and we all got out and hopped over the short barrier.

  “It’s an old incinerator.” Izumi said and pointed up at the building with its two tall smoke stacks and red brick facade. “They used to burn garbage here, can you believe that?”

  “Times change.” I said and tried to keep the quiver out of my voice. “Is it really better to bury all the trash instead of burning it?”

  The walls around the building were blank and the only entrance appeared to be a rectangular hole in an overhang. Izumi led me over to the pile of cement that used to be a stairway. She kept the little wizard statue with her. She motioned for me to follow her and I did. Raoul was busy unfolding a long aluminum ladder.

  Izumi stood close to me with the point of her Wakizashi pressed into my ribs. Once the ladder was in position, Raoul climbed up in a noisy rush. Izumi gave me a nudge with the Wakizashi and I put my foot on the shaky ladder. Izumi floated up beside me as I climbed. I reached the top quickly and Raoul held a gun on me.

  I looked around. The graffiti covered space was illuminated by a scattering of candles. A rusty metal table was here. I saw a lot of shiny medical tools whose normal use I could only guess at and whose intended use here I could imagine all too well. Everything else showed signs of decay, from the rusty locks and doorknobs to the peeling paint. I had no good feelings about this.

  “Normally.” Izumi said and waved a hand toward the table. “With a vampire or a Were or the like we would just kill them and take their head as proof of the kill.”

  “Being a Hunter is a good job.” Raoul said and nodded. “We get a name and we track that name down and we kill them. Simple. But you, people think you are important. You’re just another name to me and I would rather just kill you and have done with it.”

  “But you don’t want me.” I said and looked from Izumi to Raoul. “You want Kilestra.”

  “Killing Kilestra would be good for us.” Raoul said. “We would get a reward from both the Vampire Commission and our private client. And it would be a mark of honor, having her head on our wall, so to speak, would allow us to raise our rates a good deal.”

  “Here’s what we were thinking for you.” Izumi said and floated her way forward, pushing me toward the table. “We set up a direct video connection and maybe have you hold up a newspaper with today’s date on it. That whole proof of life thing. Then we tie you to that chair over there and start to whittle away at you.”

  “You know.” Raoul said and raised his reattached but immobile hand. “Kind of like what your little Elf did to me.”

  “But we don’t have a direct line to Kilestra.” Izumi said and floated in a way that made her white robe undulate. “We are going to have to go a little more old school with you.”

  “Old school?” I said and took a deep breath and tried to look a little less frightened than I was. “How old school?”

  “Well.” Izumi said. “You are the Master of the City. Killing you might be a bad thing. But then, I seem to recall you telling us it was more an honorary title. So maybe no big thing.”

  “Fedor said it would be a great tragedy.” Raoul said and pressed the barrel of his gun against my chest. “If something were to happen to you. Something permanent. But you know, I got the feeling he wouldn’t be broken up about it.”

  “Yes.” Izumi said and drifted around in my field of vision. “Rumor is you’ve been parking your car in his garage and he’s not the kind of vampire who likes to share.”

  “You talked to Fedor about me?” I said and felt my stomach drop. “And he was OK with your kidnapping me and torturing me?”

  “My feeling was that Fedor has not adjusted well to your relationship with Jackie.” Izumi said and nodded. “She is an intelligent woman, I was hoping we could do business with her. She appears to be a bit conflicted about her feelings toward you. Fedor has no confusion at all.”

  “You know it didn’t have to be like this.” Raoul said and reached into his jacket’s inside pocket. “You could have helped Fedor and yourself out, but you didn’t want to.”

  Raoul held three small glass vials in the palm of his hands. He picked one up and held it to the light. I could see a pearl colored liquid swirling around inside. There were small flashes of magic like glitter in a girl’s nail polish. He dropped the vial and it shattered with a small puff of pink smoke.

  “I think that was the one for poor Jackie.” Izumi said and hovered near me. “She doesn’t like you much when she isn’t looking right at you. It’s only when she sees you that she loses all control and becomes nothing but one of your little fuck bunnies. If she had been able to tell us where Kilestra was, we could have cured her. Oh well.”

  I swallowed the dryness in my throat as I watched the magic potion evaporate into no
thing. Raoul took the two remaining vials and sat them down on the table with the torture implements. They rolled a bit on the uneven surface, but stopped before reaching the edge.

  “I could still be persuaded to hand these over.” Raoul said and tapped one of the bottles. “After we’ve warmed you up a bit.”

  “So we’ll start off with a finger.” Izumi said and made a professional slashing motion with the Wakizashi. “Or maybe an ear. Then we’ll move on to something a little more intimate. That would keep you out of trouble. Then we might bring in Jackie and see how she likes you after you’ve been neutered.”

  “My dog was a lot happier after he had his operation.” Raoul said and frowned as he nodded. “But then, he didn’t have some sex spell cast on him. You’ll have to tell us how that feels.”

  Raoul tapped me between the legs with the barrel of his gun and winked at me. I took a deep breath and held it. The tales of a vampire’s ability to regenerate were, like most tales, exaggerations. In order to recover from the kinds of injuries these two had in mind, I would need a lot of blood. I looked around the room again, but didn’t see anyone else.

  “Yes.” Izumi said and leaned in close to me. “We weren’t really planning on allowing you to heal from these wounds right away. And we don’t want to let you feed on us. We have heard of your talent for stealing powers.”

  “I can call Kilestra.” I said and stepped back from the table. “Just get me out of range of your little statue. I’ll call her and she’ll walk right into your hands.”

  “Hmm.” Izumi said and floated close to my face as she squinted at me. “I don’t think so. We can’t trust you just at the moment. You might call that little Elf Goddess of yours, and we really don’t want to see her again.”

  “I’m going to need someone to feed on.” I said, trying to think of some way to postpone the inevitable. “If you let too much blood escape, I might die on you. Then Kilestra would just be pissed off.”

  “Kilestra is always pissed off.” Raoul said and sorted a few of the items on the table, causing them to roll around a bit. I kept an eye on the two vials, but they seemed safe for the moment. “He might be right, Izumi. I told you we should have picked someone up. Maybe his Mother, so we could torture her in between feedings.”

  “Fine. Just not the old man. I like talking to him.” Izumi said in a voice that said she was tired of this argument. “Let’s get our friend into his new accommodations first.”

  “I want you to think about us while we're gone.” Raoul said and smiled at me. “Think real hard about what you’ve put us through.”

  Raoul pointed the gun at me and pulled the trigger. Even without my powers, time seemed to slow down. The bullet slammed into me and burned as it went into my lung and then out my back. I fell onto the floor and screamed. There was nothing but pain.

  They drug me to a small storage room and dropped me inside. The door was heavy and made a loud clang that echoed off the walls. They slid some kind of bolt home and their footsteps receded into the distance. A loud rattle told me the ladder had fallen to the ground below the building’s entrance. I took a breath that only made things worse. For several minutes I couldn’t think.

  Still no outside contact. The talisman was somewhere close to the cell, letting its power wash over me. The door was thick and impossible for me to get past without my vampire strength. In my current state it might as well have been the Great Wall of China.

  No candles in here, but I could see enough of the closet to tell that it had a flimsy shelf and a couple of empty bottles of some kind of cleaning fluid. No windows and the walls seemed solid enough. I patted one of the walls. Cold war era construction designed to withstand a nuclear attack. I wondered what would happen to me once I bled out.

  The shelves fell apart when I touched them and added a nice bit of metal dust to the air. I coughed and almost passed out. There was a scratching sound from overhead. I looked up. The dark shape of a bird flapped around for a moment and then disappeared. I could see through the ceiling into the room above me and possibly the room above that as well.

  A few bits of rusty old steel rebar clung to a few fragments of cement in the ceiling. I leapt up and grabbed a couple of the bars, they held my weight, but didn’t hold their shape once I started to push them apart. I lost my grip and fell back onto the floor. It hurt and now my hands were bloody. I lay on the floor, staring up. It seemed a very long ways off.

  I had no choice. I fell twice more before opening a gap large enough to get through. I pulled myself up and flopped on the floor. I was a bloody mess. The pain caused me to clamp my teeth together. I pressed my hand at the hole in my chest. Blood slowly seeped into my clothes. This kind of injury couldn’t kill me. The pain just made me wish I was dead.

  After a few minutes, I was able to get up and look around. I had no idea how long I had before Raoul and Izumi returned. I was guessing not long. They wouldn’t really take the time to go and kidnap my Mother, would they?

  This room looked exactly like the room below with one major exception; it didn’t have a door. I moved out into the room and found that either graffiti or a poster for some band I had never heard of covered every available surface. The usual mixture of empty bottles and trash you find in abandoned buildings was scattered around. I found the stairs and headed down.

  My power was still being damped by the statue, its range much greater than I thought. I took the risk of heading back to the torture room. It was still empty and the two vials were still on the table. I picked them up and slide them into my coat pocket. I left the room and was out of breath before I found a staircase leading down. But the idea of death and dismemberment kept me moving.

  I found an exit on the ground floor and stumbled out into the night. The place was surrounded by overgrown fields. Dried out plants that sprouted spiky seed pods snatched at me as I moved among them. A railroad track ran not too far away. I looked back at the building with its twin smoke stacks and red bricks. How many other vampires had been held here against their will? Then I moved as fast as I could toward the sounds of people and a busy road beyond them.