Bloody Acquisitions (Fred Book 3)

by Drew Hayes

  “This accounting stuff is a lot more interesting than I was expecting,” Lillian muttered, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear from her.

  All the voices were swirling around, trying to top the others and clamoring for attention. Rather than try and engage with any of them, I stormed into the room, grabbed the tattered (but not torn) packet I’d given Albert for delivery, and slapped it crisply against my hand.

  “Gerda. Oskar. I want to help you, I do—”

  My words were drowned out under a fresh tidal wave of yelling from each half of the couple, both trying to make their points so enthusiastically that they weren’t even bothering with an explanation. In spite of their aggression, I remained calm, waiting until there was a lull and trying again.

  “I can’t offer any perspective on this unless—”

  Another fresh wave of screaming. I continued to be patient, ready to wait for as long as it took to get them calmed down enough to explain the situation.

  This time, however, they were the ones cut off. Not by words, but by the sudden audible crack of wood being fiercely splintered. We all turned to find that Lillian, still dutifully standing by the entrance, had driven her fist completely through the door with a single punch, and was now carefully brushing the splinters away from her unmarked hand.

  “I believe Fred was trying to say something, before you interrupted him.” There was no threat in her words, yet the hole in the door spoke volumes. Gerda and Oskar both seemed to shrink back, looking at her, and me, with an expression I’d encountered more than once since my transformation, and loathed more with every occurrence.

  Fear. She’d reminded them that we were stronger, and now they were scared of her. Of us.

  “Lillian, go wait in the car.”

  “But—”

  “You are done here. Unless you want to be fired outright, go wait in the car. Now.” It wasn’t often that I found the nerve to be so forceful, but this was something I absolutely couldn’t tolerate. My business, my very life, was built upon other parahumans looking past the reputation that other vampires had cultivated. I couldn’t allow anyone to associate Fletcher Accounting Services with that kind of aggression, not unless it was a matter of life and death. Yelling didn’t qualify. Sooner or later, voices got tired.

  Lillian stared at me for several seconds, then spun around and left, presumably heading back toward the car. I looked at Gerda and Oskar, suitably cowed for the moment, and decided to capitalize on their silence.

  “I am very, deeply sorry for that. Lillian is a new employee; though, one more stunt like that, and that won’t be the case any longer. Fletcher Accounting Services is going to replace your door, and I’ll be doing the next six months of budgetary maintenance for free as an apology. If you no longer wish to do business with us, I understand, and will happily get whatever new accountant you choose up to speed on your situation.”

  Some of the color that had drained from each of their cheeks began to return, and Oskar even took a step toward me. “Nah, Fred, you can’t control what someone else does. We accept the apology.”

  “Thank you, very much,” I replied. “Now, can we please, in calm and rational voices, discuss what in my findings led you to suddenly begin fighting with one another?”

  “A fight? This ain’t much of a fight. Barely even an argument,” Gerda informed me. “Guess it might seem that way from the outside, though. We satyrs and satyresses are just passionate. And a bit stubborn.”

  “What caused the ‘discussion’ was that I looked through your pages and found out she’s been double paying for the cow’s feed,” Oskar told me, his tone beginning to heat up a bit more. “Now, I know that’s her cousin’s company, so she’s probably been paying twice just to squirrel a little money away from me. And the only reason she’d do that is if she was gambling again.”

  “Like hell that’s what started it,” Gerda shot back. “We started a row because you’re paying three times what the fencing costs to your old drinking buddy who runs the company. And so help me god, Oskar, if you’re back on the bottle, I’ll break it over your thick skull. Again.” From the way she was flexing her hands, something told me she didn’t mean it as a figure of speech.

  They were beginning to fume again, which was actually a relief, since it meant they weren’t afraid I’d forcefully shut them down. Plus, now that I knew what the actual issues were, it allowed me to dig through the report and see how much truth there was to the claims. As the satyr couple started squabbling once again, I sat down in the sole remaining chair to dig through my compiled report.

  Even as I worked, though, my mind was out in the car with Lillian. I didn’t regret the choice I’d made in sending her away, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be consequences to it.

  My night might very well end with a fight that would put the owners of the Capra Ranch to shame.

  8.

  It took a while, but I was eventually able to piece together what had caused the errors. Double paying for feed was an innocent mistake—both Gerda and Oskar had thought they were supposed to set up the automatic withdrawals from their bank account and neither had checked with the other, causing the same amount to go out twice per month. As for the fencing, while the cost was exorbitant, it also matched the receipts provided by the company. I recommended that they find a new vendor, as this one was clearly gouging them. It was technically possible that Oskar was funneling cash through a friend to feed a secret drinking habit, but judging from the anger at hearing his friend was ripping them off, it seemed unlikely. That, or Oskar was a far better actor than I could have imagined. Either way, my work was done, and I liberated Neil and Albert, who were both handed cartons of baked goods from Gerda as apology for what she called “the slight inconvenience.”

  I saw both of them back to Neil’s car—an old sedan most likely inherited from a family member who’d purchased cars back when they were made of thick metal frames and came with ashtrays in the armrests. It occurred to me as I watched their taillights fade down the road that I’d never actually met any of Neil’s family. Albert’s either, but that was understandable, as they all believed him to be dead. I knew I was stalling, avoiding heading back to my own car and facing the fuming vampire waiting inside. There was no getting around it, though. Not unless I was willing to abandon my car and run back to town—which was tempting, I will admit, but would leave Lillian for Oskar and Gerda to deal with. And that seemed like bad customer service no matter how I sliced it.

  I rounded the farm house to see my hybrid still in one piece, which I hoped was a good sign. Lillian was sitting inside, staring out her window and away from my approaching form. She was still aware of me, her senses were too good for her not to be, but she was pretending not to notice. That was fine by me, as I would take frustrated silence over fury any day of the week. Popping open the door, I slid into my seat and started the car’s engine. I said nothing as I put on my seat belt, giving Lillian ample time to open the conversation with an explanation or an apology if she so desired. When my silence was echoed, it became obvious that I was going to have to start things off.

  “I’m sorry if my tone was too harsh in there. The situation was chaotic, and I had to try and salvage things as quickly as possible, which meant you had to leave. Still, I do wish I’d found a gentler way to voice that.”

  “Salvage things?” Lillian turned from the window, surprise overtaking the pinched annoyance she’d been wearing seconds before. “Fredrick, I had the situation perfectly in hand. They were silent, willing to listen, and ready to sign whatever you put in front of them. I fixed everything, and you cast me out for it.”

  “You didn’t ‘fix’ anything,” I told her. “You just made my clients afraid.”

  “They should be afraid.” Her surprise was morphing to puzzlement before my eyes. “You are a vampire, one of the most feared and powerful types of parahumans out there. The very fact that they continued speaking when you entered the room was a slap in the face
. All I did was restore the natural order. And without touching a single person, I might add.”

  I think I would have preferred it if Lillian had been at least a little miffed as she spoke. If she were angry, then I could have pretended the words came without thought and forgiven them as such. But Lillian wasn’t mad. She didn’t even seem overly prideful as she spoke of the natural order. The only emotion that came across was confusion, like I was the weird one. Which, when viewed objectively, I suppose I was.

  “Is that what it’s like inside your clan?” I asked. “Vampires are seen as the best, and the other parahumans are lesser?”

  “Not the best, just among the top. We’re aware of our abilities, and our limitations,” Lillian countered. “As for the others, the satyrs and mages and therians, they are our food, Fredrick, just like the humans. A bit more difficult to hunt, but the nutrition is far superior. Or are you honestly saying that you don’t use this job as a way to get in close to other parahumans so you can feed on them?”

  Slowly, I lowered my head until the rims of my glasses were pressed against the steering wheel’s leather. That was what she, what her clan, thought I was doing? Running an elaborate ruse to take blood from unsuspecting parahumans? Everything came into sharper focus now. Lillian wasn’t here to learn about me, she was here to learn about my business. How it worked, and likely how it could be replicated. A blood-stealing venture that flew under the nose of a man like Richard was the sort of thing any worthwhile clan would be interested in.

  “Lillian, I am going to say this once, and only once, so please listen carefully. I do not feed on other parahumans. Or regular humans, for that matter. I buy my blood through the Agency’s supply system. My accounting business is not a way for me to drink from anyone. It’s just an accounting business. Parahumans run businesses, and they sometimes need as much help as anyone else.”

  “I’m sure they do, but if you’re not drinking from them, then why would you actually do this job?” Lillian asked.

  “Because I like it. Because I’m good at it. Because it fills a very needed role in the parahuman community. Why do you think I was looking for new employees in the first place? There are so many of our kind out there who need the help I offer that there’s more business than I can handle,” I told her.

  “Really? I mean . . . we just assumed you were either going to feed on the new employee or you wanted an accomplice to help make disposal easier,” Lillian said.

  “I assure you, that is not the case. What I need is another accountant, someone who can help with the workload.” I raised my head from the steering wheel and looked at Lillian, who seemed oddly at peace with discovering she’d been lent to a real accountant rather than an ingenious blood thief. “There’s nothing hidden about me or my business. What you see is what you get.”

  “That a fact?” Lillian leaned back, taking in my full profile. “While I’ll admit it doesn’t seem like you’re eating people, you can’t tell me there isn’t something going on here. You happen to know one of the preeminent mages in the state, are good enough friends with a therian to care about his health even as he’s attacking, and have what I’m pretty sure was a zombie on the payroll as your assistant. That’s not normal for a vampire, accountant or not.”

  “What can I say? I was left without a clan.” Putting the car into drive, I swung us around, heading away from Gerda and Oskar’s ranch. “I didn’t get a ready-made family, or a template for who I was supposed to hate, so I ended up making friends with anyone I got along with, regardless of their parahuman traits.”

  “So it seems. I am curious, though, since you’ve worked for Richard Alderson, have you ever had occasion to meet the King of the West?” She wasn’t even trying to hide how closely she was watching my face for a lie. The other things were small coincidences, nothing that linked me to the vampire of rumor. If I had a good relationship with a dragon, though . . . well, very few vampires could honestly claim such a thing.

  “I met him on the first night I met Richard, actually,” I told her. “It was one of the absolute scariest experiences of my life, before and after undeath.”

  “He wasn’t nice?” Lillian asked.

  “He was Gideon.” I shuddered involuntarily at just the memory of that night. “Have you ever been near a dragon? Had their attention focused fully on you? That aura of theirs is like nothing else. Your body begins to spasm as your brain loses all cohesive thought, filling only with animalistic screams of panic and terror. It left me so catatonic that I had to be carried from the building. When I went back to work on Richard’s taxes, it was only something I could manage because Gideon wasn’t there.”

  My words, carefully chosen, were all completely true. I just left out the part where Gideon came back to rescue Sally, giving me a drop of his blood so I could bring her home, and eventually filling me with more of it to later break him out of a magical cage. Disclosing all of that would pretty much mean the jig was up.

  “I’ve met lesser dragons,” Lillian said, after soaking in my story. “And even they were impossible to function around. I can’t even imagine what the King of the West’s aura would be like.” She paused, watching the street signs go by as we drove back into a more developed neighborhood. “Do you really think there’s a vampire out there who was able to withstand it? The rumors people have been passing along, about a vampire who won the dragon’s respect . . . they must have a will of absolute iron, if they exist.”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever met a vampire I thought was strong-willed enough to pull such a thing off.” A bit self-deprecating, if honest assessment of my own abilities, but still not a lie. “All I have learned since I became undead is that this is a much bigger, stranger world than I ever realized when I was alive. Maybe there is a vampire out there who can stand up to a dragon’s aura. If one of us can be happy as an accountant, that doesn’t seem any less unreasonable.”

  “Still wrapping my head around that one,” Lillian said. “This is really it? You just . . . do people’s budgets and taxes and stuff? No intimidation, or forced feedings, or any of it?”

  “I’m not sure how you think a business works, but I rely heavily on word of mouth for my clients. If I tried scaring them into doing what I wanted, or, heaven forbid, assaulted them, my reputation would fall apart within the span of a week. Which is why I had to come down so hard on you with Gerda and Oskar.” I pulled onto the small loop that circled Winslow, heading back to Charlotte Manor. After that last stop, it seemed prudent to call it an early night before more could go wrong.

  “No, I get it now. I’m sorry. What I did was out of line. It’s just . . .” She tilted her head back, her dark hair bunching up on the headrest. “I’ve been with the Turva clan for so long. More years by far than I was alive for. They’re all about intimidation and power plays, the dominance of the vampire species. You live with that, surrounded by it all the time, and it’s easy to forget that there are other ways to get by.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing that I won’t be much help to them,” I said.

  “Yeah.” A shadow that had nothing to do with the passing street lamps fell over Lillian’s face. “Someone who could get them parahuman blood under the table would have been a lot more useful than just an accountant.”

  “Do I . . . should I be worried about not being useful?” My words hung in the air between us, the unspoken topic that had been present all night finally beginning to tear its way into reality. Lillian’s gaze wandered out the window again, watching the few other cars out so late zip by as we puttered along at the speed limit.

  “Probably,” she said at last. “The House of Turva is moving into Winslow full force. They’ll play nice with the therians and stick to the treaties, since the King of the West is here, but they’ve never been much for competition. If you had the backing of a clan, that would be one thing; there’s a lot of politics involved when dealing with fellow clans. As an abandoned vampire, though . . . .” Lillian let her voice trail off. There wasn’t anythin
g more that needed to be said. I wasn’t one of them, and without a clan to protect me, I had limited options. Be absorbed or be destroyed; those were my most likely scenarios. Absorption might not even be on the table.

  We rode in silence the rest of the way back to Charlotte Manor. I wanted to press her for more, to ask about exactly what they might do. Part of me even wanted to ask her to lie, but that piece of me was foolish. Sooner or later, they’d realize the truth. Unless I actually started assaulting clients, it was an impossible façade to keep up. There was no sense in dragging Lillian down with me. She, at least, had given me a bit of warning.

  Thanks to Lillian, if I wanted to, there was still time to book a ticket to Boarback.

  That thought was heavy on my mind as I pulled into Charlotte Manor’s parking lot. I was so lost in my musings that I almost didn’t notice the unfamiliar gray minivan parked a few spaces up. It had government plates, and no windows aside from those in the front. Part of me wondered if the Turva clan was moving already, somehow getting the word that I was useless to them. Then, before my eyes, the back of the van was ripped off from the inside, revealing three white creatures with snapping jaws. If I lived a thousand years, I would never forget that sound. It haunted my nightmares, was tied to one of my worst memories. Dozens of those things had surrounded us the night Quinn kidnapped Krystal, the night he almost killed me.

  The night I saw him tear out her throat, before I knew such wounds only made her stronger. Ghouls, that’s what was leaping out of the van. Mindless appetites given physical form, they knew only hunger. And, before I could so much as yell, they were racing right toward my car.

  9.

  A whole lot happened in a very short span of time. I screamed at the ghouls’ approach, while Lillian’s hand dipped into her pantsuit and came out with a knife that looked like it was built to carve bone. The ghouls raced toward my car, their jaws clacking and eyes empty as they endeavored to lock those crooked teeth around our flesh. Gunshots rang through the night, turning two of the ghouls’ skulls to mist and shattering my windshield. Because of the cracks, I could only barely see someone bolt around from the other side of the van, tackling the third ghoul and pressing a weapon to its temple. Another shot, and the monster went limp.