Fire and Fantasy: A Limited Edition Collection of Urban and Epic Fantasy

by CK Dawn

  “Care,” said Phoebe angrily, “why should I care? She came in here and tricked those two delivery men into taking away your box. Any time I get anything good she tries to take it away from me. That’s the way she’s always been. No, Wally, if anything has happened to her, it’s her own fault.”

  Wally shook his head. “It’s not her fault, it’s the baron’s fault. Don’t be blaming your sister, Miss Phoebe. You ain’t never met the baron so you don’t understand, but there ain’t no one can stand up to him, not if they’re not ready, and Miss Catherine wasn’t ready. She thought she was going on a date with a nice man she’d just met and —“

  “Serves her right,” Phoebe interrupted. “That’s what happens when you let men pick you up in the street.”

  Wally took no notice of her interruption. “It’s his eyes, Miss Phoebe. He can control people with his eyes. Nasty little eyes, but powerful. Don’t never look him in the eyes.”

  “So you think he hypnotized her?”

  “I know he did. Why else would she behave that way? After all, she is your sister. She wouldn’t want to hurt you, not in the normal way of things. You have to help her. She ain’t got much longer. It’s going to happen any day now. He’s going to make her his bride.”

  “Are you telling me that my sister is going to marry a baron?” Phoebe asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s going to be a baroness?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Oh this is really too much,” Phoebe said. “First she steals you away from me, and then she lands herself a title. It’s too much.”

  Wally was staring at her. She tried to read the expression on his face. Was it contempt? Was he contemptuous of her? Surely he understood how unfair it was that Catherine should have everything, even a title, while she had nothing.

  “So you ain’t coming,” Wally said. His voice was cold. “You really ain't coming? You're going to let him marry her?”

  “Yes I am.”

  Wally turned away. He slid the door open. He was going to leave.

  “Wally, don’t go.”

  He turned back, his hand resting on the door frame. “I just want to be sure you understand. He’s sucking her blood. During the day he keeps her drugged, and at night he lies down beside her and sucks her blood. He only takes a little at a time. He’s slow and careful. If he drains it slowly, she’ll weaken and start to want him. By the time he’s finished she won't need the drugs. She’ll live forever, hungry for blood. It’s a terrible, terrible hunger.”

  Phoebe turned away. “That’s enough Wally. I don’t want to hear any more. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “And then,” said Wally “when he’s finished with her, they’ll both come for you. They can’t have no living relatives.”

  She was going to faint. She staggered and grasped the back of the sofa.

  “Wally.”

  He said nothing. He didn’t move.

  She opened her eyes and allowed the world to come back into focus.

  “Wally.”

  “I can’t do nothing, Miss Phoebe. I have to go.”

  “Is he really going to kill me?”

  “If you’re lucky,” Wally said. “Better to die than be like your sister.”

  Phoebe could feel a tear trickling down her cheek. “You have to stop him Wally. I don’t want to die up here all alone with no one to care.”

  Wally kept his hand on the door. “It ain’t up to me, Miss Phoebe. While the baron’s my master, I have to do what he says. I’ve given you fair warning; that’s all I can do. It’s up to you to save yourself. Either you kill him or he kills you.”

  “But I don’t know how to kill him,” Phoebe wailed. “I don’t know how to kill anyone.”

  Wally was by her side now and she didn’t even care about the way he smelled or the dirt on his clothes. Surely he was going to help her. “There are ways, Miss Phoebe,” he said. “Lots of different ways to kill a vampire. You could look it up in books or on your computer.”

  Phoebe scrubbed at her eyes. “I don’t know Wally. I don’t see very well. I have trouble with the small print.”

  “You could wear your glasses.”

  “But they’re so ugly, Wally.”

  Wally took a deep breath and she could see determination replace any trace of sympathy.

  “Miss Phoebe, I know you've always got an excuse. I mean, I know you've got lots of problems and all, and you have a really hard time doing things, but really, miss, ... if you'll excuse me being sort of blunt with you—“

  “What do you mean by blunt?”

  “I mean, if you’ll excuse me being honest,” Wally explained.

  “I’ve never objected to honesty. Say what you want to say.”

  Wally took another deep breath. “It's about the excuses, Miss Phoebe. I understand how difficult things are for you, miss, what with your diabetes, and your bad leg and your eyesight, and all, but the baron, he won't care about no excuses. It won't make no difference to him.”

  He hesitated and she could see that he was waiting for a reaction from her. “Should I go on?”

  She made an effort to sound calm. She needed the information he was about to give her if she intended to do anything to save herself. “By all means, continue.”

  “Well,” said Wally, “if you was to stop eating the choccies and start doing a bit of exercise, and maybe start wearing your glasses, well, you might start feeling a bit better. And if you was feeling a bit better, well then you might be able to help us, me and Miss Catherine. It's sort of up to you, Miss Phoebe, if you'll excuse me for being so blunt.”

  He spoke in his usual mild London accent but his words felt like little needles. She tried not to be offended. She did not want to be offended, not now, but it had to be said. “So you think I'm a fat, lazy, vain, hypochondriac?”

  His hesitation stretched into an uncomfortable silence. She waited to see if he would apologize, or say that he didn’t mean what he’d said. He’d always been so talkative but now he was silent. She turned her back on him.

  “Miss Phoebe.”

  He was going to apologize after all.

  “Miss Phoebe, are you angry with me?”

  Angry? Of course she was angry; so angry that she wanted him to leave. She’d find her address book by herself, she’d learn how to load the dishwasher. She didn’t need him. She refused to look at him or give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had upset her.

  She waved a dismissive hand. “I think you'd better get back before the baron misses you. I don't want you to get into trouble.”

  Wally’s face registered disbelief. “So,” he said, “just to be clear, just so I know for certain, you are saying that you ain’t coming to rescue me, and you ain’t even coming to rescue your sister, your own flesh and blood.”

  His insult was still stinging. She threw his words back in his face. “Do you think you can be rescued by a fat, lazy, vain, hypochondriac?”

  “I think you could anything, Miss Phoebe, if you really wanted to.”

  “Oh Wally, I wish that was true.”

  Tears clouded her vision and she turned away from him. He tapped her on the shoulder. Miss Phoebe.”

  “What?”

  “Here are your glasses. I cleaned them for you.”

  She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and fumbled the glasses onto her face. Her vision cleared and Wally came into focus; smiling confidently.

  “That’s better ain’t it?”

  She nodded her head.

  Wally opened the door to the balcony. “Lock the door behind me, and remember, we’re counting on you.”

  She locked the door and turned back into the room seeking the consolation of a chocolate caramel where none were to be found. She sat in front of the computer screen. Her fingers touched the keys. She typed three words.

  Fat

  Lazy

  Hypochondriac.

  Seven

  WALLY

  Tabita was waiting for
him in the park, her ageless face picking up the pale blue glint of moonlight. Wally looked around for the priest.

  Tabita shook her head. “He’s not here. He knew you wouldn’t talk to me if he was here. I know what happened to you. The baron caught you again. Everybody knows about it.”

  She made a gesture that encompassed the lake, the hillside, the park, and maybe the entire city and all of the pathetic undead servants searching in the cold for a warm-blooded meal.

  “So what are you going to do now?” Tabita asked.

  “I have a plan.”

  “Can we help?”

  “Maybe you can help me,” Wally conceded, “but can you help Miss Catherine?”

  The moonlight showed him Tabita’s puzzled expression. “Who is Miss Catherine? Is she the human that you lived with?”

  “No. That’s Miss Phoebe. Catherine’s Miss Phoebe’s sister. The baron is going to make Miss Catherine his bride.”

  Tabita hissed. It was a sound that was purely vampire, a hiss that could only be produced by a mouth with fangs. The sound echoed around the wooded hollow and when it started to die away, it was taken up by other lips and other fangs from pale ragged creatures who hunted along the lakeshore and through the bushes. As the hunters hissed, their prey scurried frantically away and the hollow was filled with the sound of twigs and branches cracking and breaking beneath panicked feet.

  “Did you have to do that?” Wally asked.

  “A bride!”

  Wally thought that Tabita would hiss again, but she restrained herself and limited her reaction to rolling her eyes and hugging herself with crossed arms.

  “We have to do something,” Tabita said. “I have to tell Father Simon.”

  “And what do you think he can do? The baron is far more powerful than Father Simon’s holy water.”

  “There are other ways.”

  “Not for the baron. The only way Miss Catherine is going to be saved is if Miss Phoebe saves her.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see,” Wally replied. “It’s up to Miss Phoebe.”

  Although it was hard to do and caused Tabita to challenge him every time she saw him, Wally, allowed two weeks to pass before he made another attempt to visit The Atrium. He hoped that he had not misjudged Miss Phoebe. He had been so sure that she would come for him. Every evening he awoke from his daytime sleep and hoped that this night would be different; that this night would bring him rescue and every morning he returned to his bed of dirt with the situation unchanged.

  Catherine was so far gone into the baron’s clutches that very little of her original personality remained. She was a puzzle to Wally. She was far less attractive than the other brides the baron had used and discarded over the years, but there was something extraordinary about her. The baron had been so determined that she was the right one that he had put up with a great deal of sporadic resistance from her. In the first few weeks of her marriage preparation she had made attempts to elude his control. Sometimes she was his slave but at other times her eyes would lose their haunted look and become wide and alarmed, even angry. Instead of finishing her off and draining her blood, the baron worked with endless and unusual patience. Yes, Miss Catherine was something special.

  After two weeks he knew that time had run out. He had to see Miss Phoebe. He slipped out of the back door of the house on the North Side. As he opened the gate and stepped out into the alley he looked up at the imposing mansion the baron had selected as his Pittsburgh retreat. The dark red brick, the lattice windows, the veil of English Ivy, were so redolent of a Hollywood horror film that Wally was surprised that the police had not come to interview the baron just as a matter of principle. Who but a vampire could be persuaded to live in such a gloomy nightmare of a house?

  He could not imagine what would happen if the police managed to step inside and see the box of dirt where Wally slept, the coffin where the baron lay unmoving through the daylight hours, and the iron bedstead where Catherine lay drugged and chained; and there was the other box for the baron’s newest addition to the household. The new servant was still adding to his box of native earth and the weather being so cold and damp and the earth so recently dug up, his box was alive with insects awakened from their winter hibernation while the daily addition of a fresh layer of mud made a home for earthworms. The box and its occupant were not a pretty sight.

  With a couple of quick bounding, leaping steps Wally was on top of the wall and looking down at the new servant struggling to climb the gate. He sniffed in disgust. The newcomer had made no attempt to learn the skills that would make his life so much easier. Worse still was the fact that he had not accepted that his everyday diet would consist of small furry red-blooded mammals scrounged from the bushes and undergrowth. He still wanted the blood of a human and Wally suspected that he was occasionally successful.

  He’d tried to warn him. “Get used to it. Lower your standards. The baron ain’t going to want to be in competition with you for a nice warm body. You get in his way, and you’ll regret it. And wait until she gets going. You won’t be welcome to steal from her. She’s going to be a powerful one.

  Having been given the response that he should “eff off and mind his own business”, Wally now kept his peace and moved lightly away, leaving his fellow servant to curse and stumble around the walled garden looking for a way out. Night vision would come later in his development, but only if he practiced and concentrated.

  Wally wouldn’t have time to hunt tonight and so tomorrow he would be hungry, but he had made up his mind that he must visit Miss Phoebe again. He would go there first and if he had any time left he would find some little creature but food was not his first priority. First he needed to let Miss Phoebe know that time was running out.

  He hopped on the roof of a bus that carried him across the river and delivered him to the edge of the park. He could run from here. He ignored the greetings of the other night hunters. Not tonight. No hunting in the undergrowth tonight. He was already out of the park and moving carefully through the shadowy columns and arches of the Carnegie Institute when he sensed that he was being followed. He turned. She was quick, but not quick enough. She was alone tonight. Most nights she had the priest with her but tonight she was alone.

  “Tabita, why are you following me?”

  “I saw you coming through the park and you weren’t even trying to hunt. So I thought you must be going somewhere. Where are you going Wally? Are you going to see your human?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “No.”

  “I just want to see what she looks like.”

  Wally surprised himself by laughing. He thought he had lost his sense of humor centuries ago but the idea of Tabita wanting to see the spectacle that was Miss Phoebe struck him as funny; and then he felt ashamed of himself for laughing. Miss Phoebe was not a spectacle to be mocked.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Why not? Is she strange looking? Don’t worry, I’ve seen plenty of strange looking people in my time.”

  “You would laugh at her and that ain’t right. She’s had some bad things in her life.”

  “We’ve all had bad things,” Tabita reminded him.

  “She’s been kind to me,” Wally protested.

  “She captured you and kept you as her slave.”

  Wally shook his head as he thought about his time with Miss Phoebe. “She didn’t treat me like a slave. We went everywhere together. She took me to see plays, and operas; she bought me nice clothes. We were more like friends, or maybe even mother and son.”

  “So why isn’t she trying to rescue you?” Tabita asked.

  “Maybe she is trying,” Wally suggested, “but it will take her a long time. She don’t get around very well, She’s kind of … well … fat and she has a bad leg, and I think something awful happened in her life and she can’t, you know, shake it off.”

  “Doesn’t she even
care about her sister?”

  Wally wanted to lie to Tabita and tell her that Miss Phoebe cared passionately about her sister and was moving heaven and earth to rescue her. Unfortunately an inability to tell lies was just another drawback of being undead. Wally could not lie in answer to a direct question.

  “If she could see what the baron is doing I’m sure she’d care,” he replied evasively, “but I don’t know nothing about sisters. It’s a long time since I had a sister.”

  He stood silently for a moment, remembering a little girl playing in the reeds on a faraway, long-ago river bank, at a time when Londinium was no more than a huddle of mud huts. Over the centuries, in servitude to a succession of masters, he had visited and revisited London and seen it grow into a great metropolis. Once, when he’d managed to be free for a couple of nights, he’d gone in search of the place where his family had once lived. He followed the river bank, treading lightly among the flotsam and jetsam of the great city, but he could not even find the curve in the river that had marked his home, or the place where the tributary of the river the Romans named Holburna joined the Thames. He hoped his sister had managed to evade capture. He hoped she had lived a long and happy life. Surely Miss Phoebe hoped the same thing for her sister. But what if that was not the case? What if Miss Phoebe cared nothing for her sister and thought only of her own comfort?

  Tabita was staring at him from the shadows. She was a slight figure, little more than a child, but she stood straight and proud because she was no one’s slave. He could not imagine why she hadn’t already allowed Father Simon to restore her mortality. Was it really because she wanted to help others to be free?

  “You can’t stop me from following you?” she said.

  “You’ll never keep up with me.”

  Wally didn’t wait for her to reply. He leaped out of the shadows and bounded down the sidewalk, careless of the few college students who were still out and about in the cold night air. He passed by café windows where he could glimpse people eating, drinking, socializing. He had not run like this in many years and he was amazed at his own speed. The streets went by in a blur until he was in the parking lot of The Atrium. He glanced over his shoulder. No sign of Tabita. He had outrun her. He was free to make his way to the balcony outside Miss Phoebe’s apartment.