"Human or humane?"
"I guess the words are interchangeable."
I shook my head. "Not really. When we are treated like animals, we say: 'Hey, I'm human.' When we behave like animals, we say: 'Hey, I'm only human.'"
She smiled. "Nice. But the question remains. Can you rule a pack of predators who must hunt, who must kill, to survive?"
"I'm not convinced that killing is necessary. A symbiotic relationship—"
She slapped her hand on the dashboard. "There are too many carnivores who will not submit to those limitations. If you try to impose a vegan lifestyle on vampires you will have civil war. At best, they will all rise up and depose you. At worst, there will be a bloodbath as the clans are torn apart over leadership and loyalties—a bloodbath that could well spill over into the human neighborhoods. Weak and ineffective leadership could be worse for your ideals of mercy than having another monster like Elizabeth Báthory rule!"
"And the assumption is my human side will make me weak and ineffectual?"
"So far you're an enigma. You've survived assassination attempts, destroyed two former Domans, and chosen not to form any political alliances, yet . . ." She paused. "Well, there is that little rumor that you're forging ties to the Were community. I'm assuming that one is just as ridiculous and ill-founded as all of the others seem to be."
"That's me: Mr. Urbane Legend."
She ignored that with a shake of her turbaned head. "The point is, my uncle respects you and you have allies in the Seattle and Chicago enclaves. This gives you political clout that no former Doman has had in living memory. And living memory around here goes back several hundred years."
"But there's still that niggling little problem of my humanity," I said.
"So, as I said, we're all watching to see how you do on your first tests."
"Tests, plural?"
She nodded.
"Like Yuler? How'd I do there?"
"The jury is still out. While many feel it would have been more merciful to kill him—points for you—you did imply a death sentence for attempts on your life just before Yuler made his."
"I believe I said 'dealt with harshly' with consequences for the families and clans involved, as well. Ask Friederich Polidori if he and his clan emerged from the evening unscathed."
"Social humiliation is not the same thing as harsh punishment."
"Depends on who you are and where you're from. But, rest assured, ole Freddy and I aren't done yet. Not by a long shot. Now, you said 'tests' plural. I figure I'm in the midst of another exam tonight. I'm assuming it isn't 'open book' since you've avoided any worthwhile explanation of your errand, tonight."
"And then there's the matter of your dead wife and daughter."
Sometimes people light the fuse of my temper and it's a short one. In this case, it was a hand grenade and Darcy Blenik had just pulled the pin. I counted to three: "You want me to take tests? Fine! Sharpen up a woodpile of number two pencils and stack the little blue books to the ceiling! After that, I'll pee in a cup! I guess for every day that I survive around here as the head tooth fairy, there is going to be a fresh round of exams.
"But let's get one thing clear: my family is not a test! And I will demonstrate to anyone who thinks to make them one that they are dead wrong—heavy emphasis on the words dead and wrong!"
She let the silence build in the car before answering softly. "No one wants to bring your family into this, Domo. You know that this is not our doing. But it cannot be anything but an indicator of your priorities, of your loyalties, if you choose to leave New York at this crucial time."
I didn't respond so, after a moment, she spoke again. "You can't afford to be distracted with side issues—"
"My wife and daughter are not side issues." My volatility was downshifting into implacability.
"The lives of two weighed against the lives of many."
"Obviously you never saw Star Trek III: The Search for Spock."
"What?"
I glanced at the side mirror and thought I saw something following behind us in the dark. Should I mention it to Darcy?
No, said a voice in my head.
"Look, I'm not saying your wife and daughter aren't important," Darcy was saying, "but let us handle it. We can send a team. You are needed more here."
"As what? A rubber stamp? Kurt seems to have done all right in my absence."
"He cannot hold things together indefinitely. And he cannot act as seneschal for a Doman who would abandon all of his people for two that have already died."
There was no point in continuing the debate. My wife and daughter were more "my people" than a thousand strangers in an unfamiliar city—strangers who were likely to kill me if I didn't measure up to their expectations. They had all managed their affairs without me to this point while I was responsible for Jenny's and Kirsten's deaths.
And it wasn't just that my poor, dead family was being used, once again, as preternatural hostages. Pipt had sent the Tell-Tale Heart, the Frankenvamp, and the creepy-crawly thing back there in the fish tank. Pipt was now using the twice-deceased Theresa Kellerman as his emissary. She had been tenacious in pursuing me while still alive and after her first death. Now that Pipt was acting as her personal necromancer there was no reason to believe she would back off now. Screw politics: this was my number one priority. And if I couldn't deal with one presumably human madman, I certainly couldn't hope to rule several hundred undead ones.
"So what about Cairn?" I asked abruptly.
"What?" The question caught her off balance and seemed to fluster her.
"I get the fact that the average Joe and Jill Vampire are wondering about my human agenda. I take it this Cairn sees this as an opportune time to make a power grab."
Her face was like stone. "That would seem logical."
"So what's his campaign slogan?"
"What?"
"What's his political platform? 'Vote for me: I really suck?' 'Go Undead, Not Half-Dead?' Has he addressed vampire social issues?"
"The ascension to the throne is not a democratic political process—unless you count character assassination, disinformation, and dirty tricks campaigns." A small smile cracked her frozen façade.
"Yeah, I get that, too. But what about the vamp, himself? What does he promise to those who support him?"
"Power, I suppose, just like any other political movement. As for specifics, you would have to ask one of them. That's assuming you could identify one, capture him, and make him talk."
"It just seems an odd kind of campaign," I mused. "No one seems to know who this guy is or what he stands for. I'm told this Doman wannabe has been taking out the opposition for a half century or so and yet he's still a backroom boy, no closer to the limelight and making a popular bid for public candidacy. That's a long time to keep to the shadows."
"Not if you're an elder vampire," she said, her eyes narrowed against the glare of passing headlights. "Their lives are measured in centuries the way yours and mine are counted in decades. Fifty years is a relatively brief span of time in the bigger political picture. And you forget that Dracula and Báthory were the ruling powers during those years. Any opposition was dealt with swiftly and brutally during that period."
"Maybe," I conceded. "But the door's been wide open these past several months. It's been a perfect opportunity for an established member of the New York community—a political freedom fighter by some accounts—to step forward and challenge a fangless outsider for the throne. The enclave is all abuzz with rumors that I will impose moratoriums on breeding, hunting, and killing."
"Perhaps he prefers to do that from behind the scenes for a bit longer."
"My intel suggests that he's more interested in seeding chaos than consolidating a power base."
Her lips were compressed in a straight line beneath the faux moustache and beard. "Who knows? Insanity is not uncommon among the older vamps."
"And those who serve him?"
"As I said, you'd have to find them to ask them.
Our intel suggests that secret cadres exist which denounce Cairn in public but serve him in secret. And that's as far as we've been able to get."
"Ever try to infiltrate one of these cadres?"
She snorted. "Despite my nickname, I don't have any disguises that good." The car angled up to a curb and stopped. "We're here."
"Here" was a side street lined with old brownstones dating back a century or more. Lights burned in some of the windows dispelling the first impression that the crumbling buildings were long abandoned.
Darcy flashed the headlights twice and killed the engine.
"I still don't know what we are doing here," I said.
"We are here to perform a little surgery. Our demesne has developed cancer and tonight we're going to remove a tumor."
"Really? Why didn't Kurt brief me about this?"
"Kurt doesn't inform you of every little administrative detail. And just as he doesn't micromanage what he delegates, so I don't pass along every little detail of my work, either. He trusts me to do my job so he can concentrate on doing his."
"Sounds reasonable," I said. "Except everyone thinks you're still in your room. So stop dodging the question and tell me what we're doing and why you're running it like a covert ops mission. And why you're hauling the three leg-biters with fangs."
One of her eyebrows went up. "Leg-biters?"
"Leg-biters, shin-kickers, ankle-grabbers, cookie-crumblers, yard-apes, curtain-climbers, thumb-gummers . . ."
"I am taking Tommy, Sindi, and Sassy to see their Sire."
"And that is?"
"Malik Szekely."
"Any relation to 'Uncle' Kurt Szekely?"
"His brother."
"Ah. Kurt never mentioned having a brother."
"He wouldn't.
"Family history?"
"Isn't family all about history?"
I nodded. "And I'll bet the Szekelys have oodles of it."
"You are a quick study, Mr. Cséjthe."
"Yeah? Then how do you explain the lapse of judgment that brought me here?"
"You can wait in the car, if you wish."
"What? And miss the father and child reunion?"
"You are upset."
"What makes you say that?"
"You're working very hard at keeping your face and your voice neutral."
"You think?" I asked calmly. "Maybe I just don't give a shit."
"You prove my point. If you didn't care, you might say that you didn't care. You're not a vulgar person, Chris. When you say you don't give a shit, you are telling me that you are upset."
"Are you?"
"Upset? No. I have grown up surrounded by vampires. One of them was my father. I have served them since I came of age. I understand them. And I know my place. And my destiny."
"How nice for you."
"Yes," she said, "how nice for me. You are still trying to figure out your place. You think you know, but you don't. You think that having more information will make your choices easier. It won't."
"And why is that?"
"Because information is more than just cold, hard facts. It is also about people. And people are about relationships."
"Emotions," I said.
"That too. But relationships are about family. About tribes. Clans. Group identities. Loyalties." She shook her head. "Relationships subvert our greater morality. We defend our children when they are in the wrong. We make excuses for brothers, sisters, parents, lovers, kith and kin. Our country, right or wrong. Our friends and mates, before all strangers. You and me against the world."
"It is only as a man puts off from himself all external means of support and stands alone that I see him to be strong and to prevail," I recited.
"Is not a man better than a town?" she finished. "But it's more than Emersonian morality. It's about how even your enemies begin to transform as you come to know them—from threat and danger to equations of misunderstanding and lapses of tolerance. Evil becomes enigmatic, a puzzle to be dissected and deconstructed, not fought and eradicated. You shake your head as the world burns around you and say: 'Why can't we all just get along?' No, Mr. Cséjthe, the problem with fact-finding missions is they substitute information-processing for action, the illusion that thinking about something or talking about something is the same as doing something. You become Hell's bureaucrat, assisting evil by obfuscation, all in the name of further observation and analysis."
"And that's what you think I'm doing here?" I asked.
"Why don't you tell me what you think you're doing here?" She opened the car door and got out.
I followed suit and leaned across the roof of the limo. "Among other things, to answer your last question, I'm trying to figure out why Kurt never told me he has a brother and why this visit is such a secret."
"How about we make a deal, Domo? You tag along, keep your eyes and ears open, your mouth shut, and I will answer all of your questions when the visit is over. I'll even throw in three complete surprises. Agreed?"
"I don't agree to conditions blindly."
"Try being nearsighted for the next thirty minutes, then. If you do as I say, no humans will die tonight. Interfere, and the blood of innocents will likely be spilled. I don't say this as a threat. It will be the result of our failure."
I looked into her eyes. "You're asking me to trust you. What if I'm wrong? What if you're wrong?"
"You don't know if you can trust me," she said. "But how will you ever know if you can trust me until you have trusted me and weighed the result?"
Damn, now there was a logical conundrum. I gestured in surrender. "Lead on, MacDuff."
Surprise suffused her hirsute features. "Another myth busted."
"What?"
"You're supposed to be Mr. Literary Quote-Master and yet you just misquoted Macbeth."
I shrugged. "I was quoting pop culture, not Willy Shakespeare. You want me to say: 'Lay on, MacDuff. And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"?' I just figured we were on the same side, here. But if you want to invest in the whole Macbeth scenario . . ."
I was suddenly distracted by the sight of the other children: they were almost invisible in the darkness—even in the infrared spectrum. The fact that Sindi, Sassy, and Tommy were cold wasn't surprising. It was the twenty-odd kids—some coming down the street, others huddled on the stoops of the neighboring brownstones—who were giving me pause. It wasn't only past their bedtimes, it was past their lifetimes: these children were beyond cold, they had no body heat whatsoever!
Then I noticed something else. A cat crouched atop a battered garbage can. It, too, was cold. Darcy Blenik and I were the only warm things out on the street.
And I was no longer that warm.
Darcy walked over to huddle with the kindervamps and a spirited discussion developed. Heads turned my way and then back to the huddle. A consensus seemed to emerge. The huddle broke up. The children melted back into the shadows.
"Come," Darcy said. "Remember what I told you. And try to follow my lead."
I followed her lead up the street and onto a stoop another three buildings over. She climbed the steps like an old man and rested a moment before pressing a buzzer.
While we waited I looked around. The kids were all gone. The cat was crouched two steps below. Ahead of us, iron bars backed the glass in the door and the side windows like idealized Belgian waffles. Never mind burglars, an army couldn't get into the lobby without heavy artillery. On the other side of the barred glass, a video camera stared back at us. A little red light came on beside the lens.
"What is it?" rasped an ancient voice from the tiny speaker next to the buzzer.
"It's Darcy, Uncle Malik," she answered sweetly. And raised her hand in a girlish wave.
"What? I don't see any Darcy," the rusty voice grumbled. "All I can see is some kind of Shriners' mascot and a smudgy-looking fellow."
The smudgy-looking fellow would be me. True vampires do not cast shadows or reflections. They have a similar effect on photographic film and videotap
e. As my brain chemistry changed I, too, began to project a subconscious electromagnetic field that affected cameras and recording equipment.
I was still visible for the time being, just not very photogenic.
Darcy wore a voluminous greatcoat of royal blue that looked like it belonged to a Cossack officer of the Napoleonic era. Gray-white pantaloons and the curved end of a cutlass scabbard were visible below the skirtlike hem of the overcoat. Her feet were ensconced in red satin slippers with pointy toes that curled upward.
"Good gracious, girl," the voice growled, "I haven't seen a getup like that since your grandmother was a baby!" I think it was attempting a purr and the vocal cords would only compromise so far. "I know you like to use disguises but aren't you more likely to attract attention running around like that?"
"This is New York, Uncle. If you got out more you'd know I could pass quite handily for a cabbie."
"Did you come here in a taxi?"
"We came in a limo."
"Then you should have dressed to pass for a limo driver. What about him?"
"I'm dressed to pass for a tourist on his first visit to the Big Apple," I said.
"A tourist who forgot to wear his coat in the dead of winter?"
I nodded. "Convincing, huh?"
"Uncle, this is Christopher Cséjthe, the new Doman."
There was no immediate response.
"Uncle Malik?"
"Why did you bring him here?"
"To discuss your petition for amnes—"
The ancient voice cut her off: "Why did you bring him here? Such things are best discussed at a neutral location. Now that he knows where I dwell, what are my guarantees that he will not return with reinforcements?"
"Uh, I've come in good faith," I offered, trying to wing it without cue cards.
"Bah! They always come in good faith! And then they come with the stake and the torch . . ."
"You've heard the stories about this one," Darcy said. "He is not like the others. He is merciful to his enemies. He only kills in self-defense."
Another long pause. Finally: "Weapons?"
"He's clean."
"Also trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, and irreverent," I quipped.
Habeas Corpses Page 23
