Bloody Acquisitions (Fred Book 3)

by Drew Hayes

  I finished running down the list, pages of more detailed notes summarized into these simple bullet points. I’d spent all night and halfway through the morning talking to Gideon, cooped up in that windowless office as he went through exhaustive explanations of every vampire clan he could remember. It had been a disheartening affair, yet I pressed on regardless, sure that it would be the next clan he mentioned that would finally fit my needs. Eventually, he ran out of things to share, and I had Krystal come pick me up, since her truck was fitted with enchanted windows to block out the sunshine. Back at Charlotte Manor, I’d taken a big meal and spent hours reviewing the notes, looking for something, anything that I’d managed to miss.

  “To be fair to all the respective houses of vampires out there, it looks like the core of Gideon’s knowledge came from when the treaties were being drawn up, and that was over two hundred years ago,” Krystal said. “There were a lot of unpopular opinions held by humans back then too, which have changed with the times. I’m sure some of these have grown at least a little.”

  “Enough to where it’s safe to petition them for membership?” I asked.

  “Oh hell no, are you kidding me? Jumping in bed with a clan you know next to nothing about is freaking crazy. Even if they’d make room in the quota for you.” Krystal, unlike me, was still eating, having decided that since she might be leaving Charlotte for some time, it was a good excuse to avail herself of as much cooking as possible. Currently, she was working on a half-devoured piece of chocolate pie, though I had no doubt it would fully vanish within the next few minutes.

  “Right, the quota. You and Arch mentioned that last night. What’s the deal with quotas?” Even as I asked, I remembered another term they’d used, one which stuck in my head. “And for that matter, what does ‘conversion rate issue’ mean?”

  Krystal set the fork she had partially raised to the side of her plate, my first clue that I’d touched on something more serious than I realized. “Quotas are straightforward. The treaty limits how many vampires a clan is allowed to have at any given time. This is based mostly on how long a clan has existed, though it does cap out at a certain point. It’s part of how we ensure that the need for blood never outpaces the supply. Conversion rate . . . well, that’s the reason vampires didn’t manage to take over the world before the treaties. The truth is, being turned into a vampire is far from a foolproof thing. Of the humans that vampires attempt to turn, a shockingly small amount actually make it over.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Since actually testing it clinically would require killing a lot of people, the Agency has never done formal research, but based on what we’ve learned from the older clans, our best guesses put it at a little less than one in every ten,” Krystal told me. “No one knows what makes the difference; it goes across all genetic markers that we can find, and seems to hit male and female equally. Just a lottery that gets played with someone’s life on the line.”

  “Wait . . . that can’t be accurate.” Already my memory was whirling, back to when Lillian had told us a small bit of her history with the House of Turva. “Lillian said she was turned just to seduce some politician. Why would they do that if there was a good chance she’d die?”

  “Because they didn’t care.” Krystal’s tone was so blunt it could have fallen from her mouth and cracked a wineglass. “Vampires are allowed to try and turn a certain amount of people each year—that’s how they reproduce, so it was well worked into the treaties—but that comes with knowing about the failure rate. And back then, things were messier, less organized, so not everyone kept to their numbers like they should have.”

  I sat in silence for a long moment, staring at my stack of notes, waiting for some solution to pop out at me. “Just when I think I couldn’t possibly want to be affiliated with these people less, I learn more about them, and suddenly, it’s all I can do not to run screaming into the night.”

  To her immeasurable credit, Krystal resisted the urge to say that she’d told me so, picking up her fork and turning her attention back to the pie instead. I let her eat as I perused the notes, slowly realizing with each turned page that my hopes were growing dimmer. Logically, my best bets were the four newer clans, formed after the treaty, but if membership was limited by seniority, then my odds of getting in with them were all the slimmer. Not to mention, I was assuming they would be more akin to my way of thinking, since they were newer, but I also had the smallest amount of information about them, which increased the risk of me choosing poor allies.

  “What’s the quota for new clans?” I asked. It was a pointless question that would lead nowhere, yet I asked it all the same. Some part of me, it seemed, was determined to examine every avenue of this idea, regardless of how fruitless I already knew it to be.

  “Not a hundred percent sure,” Krystal said. “I’m pretty sure it’s ten to start, then ramps up for the first few decades, and after a century, the rate slows down a lot. You can always check the books, though. That would definitely be in them.”

  She had me there. I was just being lazy with my desperation. Slipping my laptop out of my briefcase, I woke it from hibernation mode and pulled up one of several saved PDFs on the hard drive. Though Charlotte Manor now had excellent Wi-Fi, I’d been left without signal one too many times not to keep these tomes saved locally. To a layman, these documents merely looked like material for the most boring role-playing game on earth. Spells, Swords, & Stealth: Modern Justice was ostensibly a court-like tabletop game notorious for its insanely complex rules about parahumans living in the modern world. In truth, it was the actual bible of treaties, laws, and revisions which governed the parahuman part of our country. Hidden in plain sight, where anyone was free to see it, in what I always considered to be one of the Agency’s more cunning moves.

  Though I usually occupied myself with the books regarding accounting law, a close call—in fact, one inside Charlotte Manor—had shown that it was worthwhile to keep all of the books on hand, just in case. After a few wrong files and a quick search, I finally found what I was looking for. The actual laws about founding new clans were surprisingly lean, and it took no time to skim down and find the information about quotas.

  “Looks like new clans get capped at ten parahumans—wait, that can’t be right. It should say ‘vampires.’”

  “They tried to keep the language as generic as possible, just in case we ever hit a snag,” Krystal explained. “There have been a few vampire offshoots over the centuries—mages experimenting and creating things that were close, but not quite, vampires. Since ‘parahuman’ is a word that covers everything, most of the treaty uses it wherever possible, just in case we get some surprises down the line.”

  “That is an impressive amount of foresight,” I said. “Anyway, they get ten spots at their founding, then they get another five slots after twenty-five years, another five at fifty, then five more at seventy-five years, and one last group of five at a hundred. From there, they gain ten new slots every fifty years for the next two centuries, and then ten every hundred for a millennia.” My brain quickly did the math before I even noticed I was adding the numbers up. “So, the most any clan can have is a hundred and seventy vampires?”

  “Sounds about right,” Krystal confirmed. “Though, of course, we’ve got the clanless ones to account for too, like those in the Agency, or abandoned ones like you. Still, you can see how precious those slots are, especially for the younger houses.”

  “No kidding. A clan with only ten vampires would be crushed by the ones with a full roster,” I said.

  “There are some checks and balances for two houses dealing with one another, but yeah, not many of those last too long,” Krystal confirmed. “Starting a new clan generally means you either have real ass-kickers with a lot of connections and mojo, or you’re aligned with someone powerful enough to give you protection.”

  “Seems to be the case.” I read through the document again, noting that although the limits on how big a clan could get were w
ell defined, down to the parahuman, actually starting one was relatively easy. A new idea, built on the ashes of my old one, started to bloom. This was insane, obviously. Completely so. Even worse than my first idea. But . . . it couldn’t hurt to do a little research. Could it?

  “If Lillian wakes up, let her know I’m on the phone,” I said, rising from the table.

  “Calling the Sheriff to tell him we’re heading down?” Krystal asked.

  “Not quite yet.” My fingers were already flipping through my phonebook as I sought out the familiar name of an old friend. “First, I need to talk to a lawyer.”

  5.

  **Note: As I was not present for what occurred next (I was busy in a meeting with Asha to further my own plans), I must allow another to momentarily take up the tale. In this case, Charlotte was chosen, as she has both an excellent memory and a knack for seeing more than most.**

  Strictly speaking, it is not the place of a house to interfere. We exist to offer shelter from the storm, warmth from the cold, and a sense of security to those staying within our walls. That is the philosophy of all proper houses, even if some aren’t as keenly aware of it as I. And that is the directive I was created with, when those mages empowered and enlightened me all those decades ago. So I said nothing as they drove themselves deeper into madness and greed, courting an inevitable death at the hands of angry agents. I merely did my duty, filling their bellies with food and wine, keeping the beds neatly made, and stopping any who might intrude.

  Then the agents came, with cunning plans and stronger magic. And I sat alone for a very long time, ensnaring any stray guest I could just for a small semblance of company, something that could remind me of when I’d been more than just a house, I’d been a home. It was a lonely stretch that I can scarcely look back on without my windows growing foggy. But on the day when someone proposed my very destruction—what should have been the worst, possibly even final, evening of my life—salvation arrived. Fred protected me, gave me the rights to my own property, and for that alone, I was grateful. But then he went and did something I’d long given up hope of ever feeling again: he gave me purpose. First Arch, then Krystal, and, bit-by-bit, laughter and conversation filled my empty halls for the first time in so long I could barely withstand it, I was so happy. There was a reason to burn the candles again, as he and his friends routinely came for dinner or lodging.

  It is not the place of a proper house to interfere. But I am not just any house, and I have had my rooms emptied before. That is not something I wanted to experience ever again. So perhaps that is why, when Fred ran out the door with Lillian in tow and Krystal called my name, I came to her, ready. That shrewd look on her face left no doubt of what she would want from me, and despite all the notions of decorum and privacy I knew I should maintain, I put up no resistance as she asked for it. I materialized in the form they thought of as the real me, a lovely young woman in a gown I’d seen and fancied on one of my residents. It was as good a form as any, and I somewhat enjoyed the sense of familiarity in her eyes as I appeared at her summons. True to form, she wasted no time in getting down to business.

  “What was Fred talking to his lawyer about?”

  “Based on what I could overhear, it seems he’s decided to take a new approach. Rather than just joining an existing clan, I believe he intends to found one of his own.” Though I couldn’t make out Asha’s words through the small phone—so much tinier than the rotary versions we once possessed—Fred had been the one doing most of the explaining.

  Krystal sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth and let it out as an equally sharp whistle. “Fuck me, that’s what I was afraid of. He had that look in his eye, you know? The one where he thinks he’s cracked the problem. I was hoping it meant he’d given up, but with what he just finished reading . . . shit. Shitty shit, shit, shit. This isn’t good.”

  “It does seem like it would remedy the issue, does it not?” I’d dealt mainly with mages and elderly couples between my creation and bed-and-breakfast days, so vampire society was not something I had extensive knowledge of.

  “Only in the most technical of senses. A clan with one member is no better than an abandoned vampire in practicality. He’s far from the first of his kind to get this idea, and there’s a reason so few new clans survive. There are plenty of ways within the treaties for the houses to squabble with each other.” She stared down at the empty plate in front of her, and for a moment, I considered having another part of me bring out more pie. I hesitated, though, as Krystal was generally one to make it clear when she wanted something.

  “There’s probably no stopping him, either. When he gets these ideas, it’s like all the smart parts of his brain just shut down.” Krystal reached into her pocket and yanked out her own phone, thumb racing across the flashing screen. “Charlotte, I hate to impose, but would you mind putting together some dinner and coffee? You’re going to get an influx of guests in the next hour, and I’d like to soften them up with some good food, at the very least.”

  “Of course. Let me know when you’re ready for the meal to be served.” I vanished then, though that was merely for her benefit. Though they rationally knew that I was everywhere at once within these walls, the act of seeing some specter or other tends to unnerve people. Perhaps they felt they weren’t being watched if they couldn’t see the eyes. Not that they had anything to worry about; a proper house knows the value of silence and decorum. With forgivable exceptions where the safety of one’s guests are involved.

  Over the next hour, I opened my doors several times to many familiar faces. Neil and Albert were the first to arrive, the latter courteously wiping off his shoes and urging the former to do the same. Then came Amy, who stared up at me as she entered, no doubt examining the spell work that wove through every beam and stud of my being. Bubba was next, and along with him, I was surprised to see the massive Richard ducking down to fit through my door frame. I wondered if I had any rooms big enough to accommodate him, should the meeting run long, and then resolved to fix that lack of hospitality as soon as possible. Arch made his way down from his room eventually, having finished the paperwork he’d been dealing with for several hours.

  With the last of the guests present, I began serving the soup course, as Krystal brought everyone up to speed on Fred’s predicament. Most knew the basics, but between clarifying questions and recaps, I was putting down the fish course before she was done telling them about the latest twist, that it seemed Fred was trying to form his own vampire clan.

  “Well, that’s surprisingly stupid,” Arch noted, as one of my waiter selves filled up his water glass. A cigarette was being rolled between his fingers as usual, but though I kept watch, I never caught him breaking our lease agreement. Once I had the time, I was hoping to add a smoking lounge for those with small nicotine sticks or old-fashioned pipes like my creators had smoked.

  “I’m sure he thinks he’s got some angle on it; Fred’s rarely one to overestimate himself,” Krystal snapped defensively. “But, this time, he’s biting off more than he can chew. If he tries to meet the House of Turva on even ground, they’ll tear him apart. Worse, they’ll see it as a sign of aggression, and that makes our plan to disappear more complicated.”

  “Sheriff Thorgood can more than handle one clan of vampires,” Bubba pointed out.

  “True, but he shares the same weakness we do—come through the treaties, and he may have to back down,” Arch countered.

  “If you think Leeroy Thorgood is backing down from anyone trying to hurt his residents, you don’t know him that well,” Krystal said. “No, my concern is that eventually Fred will want to leave Boarback. Maybe for a trip; maybe for somewhere new to live. Whatever it might be, if Fred creates a grudge between himself and the House of Turva, then they’ll lie in wait until opportunity strikes. Boarback is supposed to be our refuge, not our prison.”

  Slowly, Albert raised his hand in the air, waiting to be called on. Eventually, Krystal noticed and gave him a small nod. “Maybe he won’t
be able to pull it off so soon. If I’ve learned anything working for Fred, it’s that paperwork can take a long time to go through. You said he has only two nights left, so time might fix the problem for us.”

  “Much I wish I could believe that, having seen Asha and Fred work together up close, I’ve got no doubt in my bones that they’ll find a loophole or expedition clause or somethin’. Nobody knows paperwork like those two,” Bubba said, shaking his head gently.

  “I could petition to block it, since he’d be founding in my town,” Richard volunteered. “That might slow them down enough to force the issue. I hate to do it, but if it’s for Fred’s own good, then it would be the right call.”

  Krystal drummed her hands on the table, considering the proposal. “Too risky,” she said at last. “Even if you can block him, the Turvas might still find out he tried to form a clan. At that point, he’s in just as much shit, but without even the thin veneer of being part of a clan to protect him.”

  “It is possible to render the discussion moot.” Neil had been uncharacteristically silent as he listened to the issue’s discussion, his eyes glancing over to Albert on occasion, and Amy more frequently. “Fred and I haven’t always gotten along well, but I don’t want to see him killed. So, what if I were to bind him like that night at the LARP? Grab him as soon as he comes back in, leave him catatonic, and then put him on a plane.”

  “I don’t think Fred would care much for that,” Amy told him.

  “Oh, no question about it, he’d likely despise whoever did it to him, which is why I volunteered,” Neil said. “We’re already on poor terms; it doesn’t really matter as much if Fred hates me. I can even pull it off alone, so that the rest of you have deniability.”