"Your disposition is cranky as usual."
I ignored that. "Try to make the meeting as late as possible. The closer to sunrise, the less recovery time everyone will have for a while." I turned to Wendigo. "We'll be leaving shortly after the meeting. I need for you to arrange transportation."
"To the airport?" she asked.
"No. We'll be driving, or have you forgotten?"
"Oh."
"A large, windowless van would be preferable." I got up and went over to rummage through my drawers. "Tinted windshield and movable seats. Curtain enclosures if possible. And sunblock. I'm going to need lots of sunblock." I handed her a black plastic card. "Charge it."
"I can steal the van. No paper trail."
"I can afford to buy it. I can't afford to take it."
Wendy looked at Suki. "It's a metaphysical thing," the vampire said inscrutably. Wendy took the card without a word.
"Now, we need to pack and be ready to leave quickly . . ."
"So this is a retreat," Suki argued.
"A strategic withdrawal," I said. "I'm walking away, not running. And I'm still going to be Doman. At least for a while. If I survive."
"It sounds like you actually have a plan for once."
"I do."
She shook her head. "Now I am scared!"
* * *
I slept, trying to grab whatever additional strength I could find before the night's showdown. Unfortunately my bed proved less restful than the Wendigo's jet stream redeye. I tossed and turned as a dark and terrible shape drew near in my dreams, a juggernaut of pain and death and fear that seemed close enough to reach out and pull me down into the cold dark depths of Cenote Camazotz now. It had stalked me through my dreams since I'd left Louisiana. I'd been free of its nightmare travails while out of my body but, now that I'd returned, it seemed to have homed in on my location and closed the distance rapidly. I awoke with the feel of its gory footprints tramping across my doorstep.
Was it real or imaginary?
The palpable despair that accompanied each of these sleeping visitations felt too vivid, too painful, to be the product of indigestion or unresolved issues in my subconscious. It felt . . . external. And it kept coming closer.
I sat on the edge of the great empty bed in the dark room and weighed the darkness and emptiness in myself. Did it matter? Nothing was changed except the heaviness of my heart. I had to stay and do what I had to do whether there really was a bat-headed demon with a grudge or not. I could hope to pull everything off and buy myself another six months or a year. That might be enough for the generations of humans who might otherwise die—or worse—if I took any of the easier ways.
But if this thing was real? I knew, instinctively, that I didn't have a chance against something that old and powerful and consumed with rage and death.
"Give me time," I prayed to the darkness and the emptiness. Not "let me live" or "escape." What I needed was to be gone from New York before I met my fate or the plan would collapse like a house of cards.
Just give me enough time to do what's important.
"Time, my lord?" asked a familiar voice.
I looked up. Someone was standing across the room. My tired, aching eyes switched over into the infrared spectrum and contemplated the human-shaped rainbow of yellow, orange and red.
"Deirdre?" I croaked.
"It's Bethany, my lord."
"Bethany?" My mind was fuzzier than my eyes; it took a moment to click. White-blonde hair, Lutheran on the wine list. "Who sent you?"
"No one, Master. I felt your presence. I sensed your thirst."
"My thirst." It suddenly occurred to me that I had taken nothing in food or drink since reacquiring my body. And the last time I'd sat in the driver's seat I'd found the bloodlust to be a constant buzz in the back of my head. Was the silver in my system dissipating and lowering my dependence on fresh infusions of hemoglobin? Was it a Zen thing, more physical mastery as a byproduct of astral progressions? Had an infusion of Michael's "blood" healed more than a pesky little bullet lodged in my heart?
Or were tens of thousands of microscopic nanobots retuning my tissues to a different pitch, a different state of being? What were those little buggers doing inside of me, anyway?
"Are you not thirsty, my lord?"
I didn't feel thirsty. I felt tired. But staring at the human-shaped candle flame in the darkness I realized that I needed more strength if I was to prevail over my opponents this evening. And that Bethany's blood might be just what the doctor ordered.
"I have your teeth, here," she said. And walked toward the bed with her arms out, trying to feel her way through the lightless void.
"Bethany," I said, taking her by the hand, "you once told me that the money was very good for serving in the wine cellar."
"Yes, Master." She pressed the box into my hands as we sat back down together. "Enough to pay all of my debts, college loans, and live very, very well."
"Ah." I set the box aside for the moment and clasped her hands in mine. "So you're a college student. What are you studying?"
"Architecture and design. At—at least, I was."
"You've stopped." It wasn't a question and I could feel her nod in return without actually looking at her. "Well, it obviously wasn't for a lack of funding . . . poor grades, perhaps?"
"Four-oh average." Her voice was proud and yet wistful.
"Sorry, I had a feeling you were honor roll material. The thing is," I squeezed her fingers, "a perfect grade point requires more than intelligence, it requires drive. You were motivated." Again, it wasn't a question but I let it hang in the air between us like one.
"Yes," she said finally. "My lord, I am ready. Slake your thirst with my body."
"In a moment," I said. "I'm just curious. You seem bright, capable. Why waste your talents on something boring and dreary like architecture?"
"But it isn't!" The colors in her head, neck, and chest burned more brightly. "It's the perfect fusion of art and science! The utilization of space and materials, matched to human need in all axes: physical, emotional, psychological . . . spiritual . . ." She lapsed into a ten-minute lecture on the aesthetics of redesigning environments and their impact on the human condition, ranging from the individual to whole societies.
"So," I asked when she finally paused to collect herself, "when did you finally fall out of love with it?"
"I—I—realized there wasn't any point . . ."
"Becoming a bloodsucking creature of the night has derailed many a budding career," I agreed.
"Will I be changed soon, Master?" Her voice had lost its vitality and gone dead, not with dread but with lack of purpose.
I turned and fumbled with the inlaid box in the dark. "We'll see." I slipped the exquisitely crafted fangs over my own dull teeth. "Give me your neck, child."
She tilted her head back and I caught her upper back with my left arm. She was all unwrapped and ready: a dinner table from head to toe. Her throat arched toward my mouth but a neck wound always runs a high risk of bleeding out so I lowered my mouth to her shoulder. She sighed as my faux fangs pierced the trapezius muscle and, as her rare essence began to enter my mouth, I entered her mind.
It was different, this time. I wasn't storming in to take over her flesh. I wasn't pushing her consciousness down the cellar stairs and locking it in the basement of her hindbrain. And Bethany and I already shared a psychic connection from my previous feeding and reward session.
I was, however, doing something far more intimate this time than diddling her to a physical orgasm. I eased into the master bedroom of her subconscious and began to discreetly rearrange the furniture.
* * *
Friederich Polidori entered the council chamber late.
Not just fashionably late: the other family representatives had pressed Kurt to hear their grievances without waiting any longer and Christopher Cséjthe's seneschal was well under siege when the head of the Polidori clan entered the soundproofed room draped with red satin curtains. It wa
s the same room where I had received the heads of the various clans and families just a couple of nights before. The great throne was symbolically empty. Kurt Szekely sat in the large chair to its right. Suki was perched on the chair to its immediate left. The various representatives, numbering between fifteen and twenty-five, sat in curving rows of chairs facing the throne on the raised dais.
Polidori moved up the center aisle and found an empty chair on the front row but created scarcely a ripple in the debate with his passing.
"He's dead and that's the long and short of it," Silvanio Malatesta was insisting. "We cannot wait any longer. A new Doman must take his place." Heads nodded and voices murmured agreement around the room.
"He's not dead!" Suki stood up from her seat near Kurt. "I have knowledge of his continued existence and his instructions for the Council!"
"My dear," Carmella Le Fanu cooed, "even if we could trust something as tenuous as a blood-bond in this matter, you've admitted that he neither sired you, nor you, him. Unless you can produce the Doman in the flesh, some purported psychic connection is just not something that we can seriously consider."
"The fact of the matter is that he was all but dead when he was abducted," Malatesta elaborated. "He had no chance for survival in the hands of his friends and he's been two days, now, in the hands of powerful enemies. He is either dead or as good as, for our concerns. A new Doman must arise and arise quickly!"
Kurt stirred from his position deep in the right-hand subthrone. "You seem awfully anxious, Silva. Could it be that you have designs on that role, yourself?"
The Bloodfather of the Bava opened his mouth but Dante Inferno jumped in. "We have good cause to be anxious, Szekely. These unnatural edicts from your half-human puppet need to be rescinded! The Lupin are restless and need to be reminded who holds power."
"It's not just that," Valentine Le Fanu added. "There are rumors that the Doman got a wolfbitch with child."
"What?"
"Abomination!"
"Impossible!"
While the majority of the room's occupants were unanimous in expressing shock and outrage, Valentine moved to the back door and opened it. More Le Fanu clan members entered, flanking a tall, rangy man. A very familiar-looking, tall, rangy man. The shaggy widow's peak, the angular ears, the overall impression of wax-resistant body hair—it was the man from my sewer dream, the one Lupé had called "Grandfather."
Carmella stood as the older man was escorted up to stand next to her and the room quieted. "Why deal in rumor and gossip," she announced, "when we can get a firsthand report?"
It was plain from the expression on his face that Kurt was caught off guard. He started to protest then realized that he wanted to know as much as anyone else. "Is it true, Silas?" he asked the older man. "We've heard stories that the Garou woman is pregnant with our Doman's child. How is such a thing possible?"
Gramps, who looked like he'd been fed a regular diet of prunes and they were affecting him at both ends, shuffled his feet and growled: "I do not know . . ."
"The law . . ." someone hissed.
"We did not break faith!" he barked back. "She did! It was our intent to bring her to you for judgment!"
"Liar!" someone cried.
"Then where is she?" someone else asked.
"Dead," Silas said.
"My, how convenient," Blackstar Sabertooth purred. "Wouldn't you say, Friederich?"
Friederich Polidori made no response beyond a silent impression of Yuler, after drinking my silver-laced blood.
"So where is the body?" Kurt queried. "You don't expect us to take your story at face value without any evidence."
"We could not—recover—the body." The words came out of his throat, bitter and difficult. "Five of us died. The rest—barely escaped with our lives!"
"It sounds like," the head of the Aluka said after a moment's silence, "she put up a hell of a fight . . ."
His Oneidan counterpart nodded. "If we are to believe your account."
"You know nothing!" the old werewolf roared back, additional fur beginning to carpet his cheeks and jaw line. "It was a demon! A monster from Hell come to punish her for her sins! It was our ill fortune to come between them when it attacked!"
And he launched into a detailed, horrific account of how a bat-headed demon plowed through a pride of were-warriors as if they were mere puppies. How it ripped a two-story house to shreds with its scaly, clawed hands to reach its ordained victim. And finally, after tossing two full-blooded vampires into the river as if they were newborn infants, how it carried Lupé Garou and her unborn child down into the bowels of the earth to meet the fate of those who break with the ancient laws and ways.
When he was done, no one seemed inclined to challenge the depth of horror and shame that radiated off of him throughout the telling. No one believed that it was a lie.
Kurt turned to the assemblage as the old man shuffled back out with his vampire escort. "It would appear that our problems with the Lupin are in abeyance for now—"
"But there is still the matter of Cairn—what is his part in all of this?" Carmella retorted. She still had not sat back down.
"And one cannot help but wonder where your young hound Darcy has gotten to, Szekely," Valentine drawled on his way back from the closing door. "Are the rumors true? Has she flown the nest? Does she seek to ally herself with the wolves? Or has she been working for this cursed Cairn all along?"
Kurt stiffened in his chair. "How dare you!"
"How dare I?" Valentine waved a limp hand. "How about how dare we? The gossip has gone throughout the five boroughs and beyond."
Silvanio made a stab at playing the statesman. "If it's true that she shot Domo Cséjthe we are hardly prepared to condemn her. Each Doman rises to power by eliminating his or her predecessor. Perhaps she was acting on another's behalf. Yours, Domo Szekely?"
"You presume too much!"
"Do we? Because if she did not attack our Doman on your orders one must ask who she is working for."
"And whether you can adequately serve any Doman," a tall, black man wearing a green suit, added, "if you can develop such a blind spot."
"It is a fact that your brother perished the same night as Domo Cséjthe was taken down, n'est-ce pas?" This from a small, dark woman in lavender taffeta.
"Your point?" Kurt grumbled.
"Well," said Valentine, "whoever becomes Doman might be well advised to appoint a better advisor."
"Perhaps it is better for you if the half-blood does not return," Dante mused. "He might blame you for the misfortunes that have befallen him."
Blackstar chimed in with: "You've been the obedient lapdog, Szekely, but would you willingly bare your throat for him?"
They were all ganging up to back him into a corner but Kurt showed he had lost neither his political nor street fighter's instincts as he steepled his fingers and said: "Assuming we were to agree that we are, once again, without a Doman . . . how would the families come to an agreement regarding a replacement?"
That did it. Too many clans would lose big in the one-vote-to-a-member model. The squabbling commenced with Kurt watching the various family heads while Suki watched Friederich.
Polidori ended up just staring at the floor.
Eventually there was a lull in the threats and oaths and half-baked plans. Carmella had joined Suki in regarding Polidori's contemplative mood and took the opportunity to address him. "You have been silent, my lord Friederich. What are your thoughts on these matters?"
"I thought," said Kurt, "that we were here to listen to a message from our Doman through his representative here."
"She's not his representative," someone called from the back, "she's Pagelovitch's proxy from Seattle!"
"Nonetheless—" Kurt began.
Suki reached over and touched his arm. "I'll gladly yield the floor to Master Polidori."
Friederich seemed to shake himself from his reverie and slowly rose from his chair.
"My lords and ladies," he began after a mome
nt's meditation, "I have held my tongue while you have discussed these matters of import and now I ask you to cede me the floor for a few brief minutes that I may make my thoughts clear to you. I ask that you listen to what I have to say without interruption so that I may finish quickly and succinctly—then you may discuss my words and decide as you will." He looked around the room. "Are my terms reasonable to the rest of you?"
Heads began to nod but Carmella smirked and said, "You worry me, Polidori. It is not like you to 'ask our leave.'"
"Ah, but it is like you, Carmella, to interrupt and so I ask your indulgence just this once."
She disliked that comeback but closed her mouth and nodded.
"Let me begin with a simple statement. Your Doman, Christopher L. Cséjthe, is alive and well. And he is anxious to address the heads of the clans and families on several key issues."
No one kept their word: the room erupted into a cacophony of shouted questions and half-muttered oaths. Polidori made no attempt to answer any of them or be heard over the din. Eventually, he sat down and waited. Eventually the room grew quiet as the rest of the representatives realized they would learn nothing as long as their own mouths were open.
"I know the questions you have and those questions will be answered if you will just be patient and listen and—" Polidori's voice became very quiet so that the others had to strain to hear his words, "—pay very close attention.
"As I was saying, your Doman is alive and has several key issues to discuss with you. But first you should know of recent events. He has faced and defeated The Mangler, also known as Doctor Pipt, also known as the Nikidik, better known to history as the infamous Nazi doctor, Joseph Mengele. It was he who sent the cybernetic creatures against our Doman's homes here in New York and back in Louisiana. Cséjthe's victory came at a terrible cost but it has also resulted in enhanced powers and abilities that he did not possess previously. Among the Northern Wilderness Clans, he is now known as Chixu Manitou and is called 'Bloodwalker.' The reason for this shall shortly be obvious."
Cries of "Where is he?" and "Why should we take your word for it?" interrupted and Polidori made as if to sit down again but the room quickly grew quiet.
Habeas Corpses Page 42
