by Lee Hayton
The groper had friends.
“I’ll leave you to sort it out,” Joe said, retreating back behind the bar. A moment later, he’d disappeared somewhere. Down into a cellar for protection?
“Now, fellas. This doesn’t have to go down this way.” I held my hands up to show that I was unarmed. A man near the front must have been paying attention, though. He pulled out a knife, not trusting his strength against the power in my arms.
“There’s no need for weapons.”
I spun the baby-doll voice dial up to ten, but none of the men surrounding me backed down.
Is this what walking into trouble looks like? I wondered a second before I had to dance away from the edge of his blade.
“It’s just money, folks. I’m good for it. By the morning your bank accounts will be topped up, and you’ll not even remember that anything happened.”
I could make it so if I were given an ATM and some time. A crowd looking on wasn’t ideal, but it was better than becoming a cyborg kebab.
“Meow.”
A figure flew through the air in front of me, releasing a pretty spray of crimson drops in her wake. When my eyes caught up to what they were seeing, I realized that my potential attacker's throat was now slit, his lifeblood draining out.
Meow?
I turned and saw Miss Tiddles standing within touching distance, her dripping claws held out in front of her face like an assortment of gruesome razor blades.
How the fuck?
But there was no time for questions. Apparently, killing a fellow patron wasn’t the way to calm things down.
Like we’d been fighting in choreographed MMA movies all our lives, the cat and I dispatched the first line of attackers. The second line wasn't so keen, soon dissipating as they remembered other things they could do apart from being mortally injured in a bar fight.
As the crowd melted out into the dirty streets, I slung an arm around Miss Tiddles shoulders, squeezing her to make sure she was real. “Where the hell did you come from?” I demanded.
“I’ve been where you abandoned me,” she shouted back, somehow turning half the syllables into sibilants. “On a staircase in a condemned hotel. Did you realize they decided to burn the whole thing down?”
I shrugged. It didn’t surprise me. Easier than wiping the stain of dead bodies out of the public’s mind. Midtown real estate was cheap, to begin with.
What did surprise me was the appearance of a lost friend in a guise that suggested she clearly hadn’t died. Had a vampire managed this feat of overpowering the afterlife?
“I thought you were dead,” I said, not knowing how else to explain it, or what the areas to gloss over or avoid were. “If I’d known you’d revive, I would have brought you home.”
“I was dead,” the cat said, sounding somewhat mollified. “I thought you left me behind because you didn’t want me as a friend any longer.”
While I stared at her in puzzlement, my brow creased so much that I could feel the silicone molding into it as a permanent shape, she laughed with joy. After a minute of hilarity, she slapped me on the shoulder.
“You obviously aren’t familiar with cats, my dear. You know that we have nine lives. I’m only on my third inning myself.”
If I was going to get anywhere in my quest, I needed to pay a visit to Madeline Pennyworth.
Funny. When I said her full name out loud, she did sound like a villain in an old cartoon. Batman, maybe. Well, pretty soon I’d be needing those Kapow! signs. I felt ready to bite through a yard-thick wall of concrete to find out why. Why the vampires? Why me?
“I’ve paid off my debt to the Pennyworths,” Miss Tiddles said, an air of incredulity about her. “And you want me to go straight back to their lair and present myself like some unopened gift.”
“I believe what I asked you was if you could distract the guards while I nipped around the back.”
Miss Tiddles shook her head. “I don’t know what you think you’re up against, but that place is locked up like Fort Knox. If you want a hope of gaining entry, it won’t be with a bang and crash. The sentry bots that secure their neighborhood aren’t there for window dressing.”
“Well, what’s the worst they could do?” I bared my teeth, wanting to gnash and chomp through a thousand sentries.
“They’ll pull your head off and delimb you, then take all the separate parts to a different tower while they fill out a full report. Unless you’ve had an upgrade, I don’t know about, you won’t last five seconds.”
The whole community had been pleasant when I’d last visited. The sweet talking of the guards had taken a few minutes, sure, but once I had gotten to the Pennyworths’ door, even Graham had been willing to let me in.
“I’ve gotten in before.”
“You got in because they let you in,” the cat pointed out, earning her no favors at all. “Whatever part of the plan you played, it’s over now. They won’t be as welcoming this time around.”
“Well, what would you suggest, since you know them so well?”
My voice came out jagged with sharp edges, and I leaned over to tickle her behind the ears to soften the sting. I wasn’t angry with her, after all. I was still filled with delight that the limp body I’d held in the conference center foyer had been miraculously restored.
Miss Tiddles closed her eyes and rubbed her neck up against my hand. When she looked at me, it was with pity not with anger. Boy, did that rile me up again.
“It might be easier for you to draw her out. Hasn’t Mrs. Pennyworth met you off-site before?”
I nodded, a hard smile twisting my lips into a parody of happiness.
“Don’t worry,” I said, starting up Pete’s car and nosing out into the road. “I’ll stick with my plan A. I’ll still need your help distracting the guards, though. I hope I can count on you for that.”
The severed finger from Nika’s apartment lay inside my jacket pocket, keeping warm. I hoped like hell that the average man was right and the Pennyworths hadn’t caught up on the news of Nika’s sudden disappearance.
If they’d reprogrammed the system to wipe Nika’s fingerprints out already, then I was about to meet my doom.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Pennyworths fortress turned out not to be as impenetrable as Miss Tiddles had thought. While she drove the car up to the guard house, engaging their attention with her claws covered in dried blood, I had a brief chat with the electric gate around the property, coming to an agreement that I wouldn’t fry its circuitry if it didn’t cook me.
Once the fence was rendered a climbable obstacle rather than a death trap, I quickly scaled its height and jumped down the other side. A quick release and the circuitry started to buzz again with shock value running through its veins.
I didn’t fit into this neighborhood, but long years of not melding in anywhere had made me impervious to stares. Although a few heads turned, nobody called in the security bots. A good thing too. I couldn’t imagine being thrown into a police cell and explaining the spare finger in my hand.
I waved to the gardening crew as I walked around the rear of the Pennyworths’ property. Based on nothing but a hunch, I guessed that the old money of the Pennyworth clan wouldn’t be happy with a maid walking through the front door. Sure enough, around the back was a servant’s entrance, complete with a finger scanner.
The second that passed after I inserted Nika’s severed finger into the waiting hole was a tense one. I concentrated on not looking furtively over my shoulder—the universal signal for ‘I don’t belong here.’
A beep later, the gate opened for me. I’d have breathed a sigh of relief if it hadn’t been too close to the opening of a lion’s den. With no idea of what waited for me inside, I jutted my chin out and held my head high. I wanted answers, and I needed to look like I deserved them.
Once through the two-level security, the property was woefully underserved. I guessed that might be more of an illusion than the truth—cameras could be capturing my every move and feedin
g it through to a monitoring service—but I moved forward and opened the rear door of the house with no other hoops to jump through.
The clip of footsteps approaching reminded me that I held a severed finger in my hand. I tucked it into my jeans pocket, feeling sick that its shape pressed against my leg.
Nika was a braver soul than me to cut off part of her anatomy. I owed her one, and if that meant dealing with her scummy ex-husband again, that was as good as done.
“Asha,” Madeline Pennyworth called out, “how nice to see you again, my dear.”
I guessed from the reserved tone and the flat stare in her eyes that her husband had called ahead.
She held out a hand, and I walked closer, sublimating a shiver of fear to take it in greeting—scared she would use it to pull me closer and devour me whole. But she just shook it limply and let it go. Hardly the queen of darkness I’d built her up to be.
“What is it that brings you here?”
I could play her game of pleasantry and waste minutes, or I could lead with the truth.
“You used me.”
She tilted her head to one side, a smile playing at the edges of her mouth. “I paid for your services, my dear. The bounty is gone. If you didn’t want to participate, you didn’t have to. That was always your choice.”
“It’s not a choice when you hide the purpose every step of the way.”
Graham walked into the room behind her, but Madeline waved him away, and he retreated. Probably, not too far.
“I want to know why.” It was the only truth I had left.
“Why the vampires?” A tiny crease appeared on her brow—the Botox wearing thin again. “I should have thought that was obvious. We needed new stock—the whole city does—and the empire wasn't playing ball.”
“But…” I trailed off, confused. I thought she was working for the empire. She must have read that in my face and offered a scornful laugh.
“I’m private enterprise, my dear. I’m far too busy keeping the empire my daddy built alive to worry about ‘the empire.’”
Her words put it in mocking quote marks as though it was nothing, instead of the ruthless machine that haunted my friends and me.
She sighed, smoothing her eyebrow with one red-tipped finger before clasping her hands together in front of her again.
“But the empire controls the vampires.”
The compounds, the tunnels underneath the fake community in the fake town. Only the empire had the resources to stage such a scam.
Mrs. Pennyworth gave a delicate shake of her head.
“The empire isn’t fit to control anything,” she said, the ghost of a curl caressing her upper lip before it dropped back into its perfect line. “My daddy’s mine should still be producing, but because they don’t assign assets where they should, the empire let it rot away into nothing.”
Her daddy’s empire. Mining. How could I have forgotten that crucial fact?
“But they have the new vampires now.” My hand crept down to my front pocket, feeling the line of Nika’s finger there, and scampered away in fright. “I saw the soldier bots rounding them up. They were leading them all back to the compound.”
Mrs. Pennyworth smiled and waved her hand—a graceful butterfly twisting and dancing through the air.
“The empire is holding them”—she paused and waited for the word to appear—“temporarily. Haven’t you been paying attention to the news?”
“No. I’ve been tracking back my contacts to find out you were my employer all along.”
Madeline scrunched up her nose for a second, delighted. “Andrew kept picking at me, for months now, saying that everyone would see through the whole plan. I knew they wouldn’t—knew you wouldn’t. No one ever sees the truth dangling in front of their face. Not when there’s money to distract them.”
She cleared her throat, and Graham appeared in the doorway again. This time, she didn’t even need to signal for him to assess the situation and melt into the background.
“Already, the media are questioning how the empire managed to let such a mass escape happen to begin with. The carnage that the vampires caused in the conference center has been recorded on thousands of devices.” Madeline gave a gentle laugh. “I believe that the twenty-four-hour news channel is intent on playing each and every one.”
I shuffled my feet, not breaking eye contact, but wanting the numbness settling into my legs to go away. I could imagine the stolen images the devices would show—teeth bared and plunging into defenseless necks, blood spattering in a pink arc from a nicked jugular vein.
“Once the people start questioning the empire, it’s only a matter of time before they search for a new solution.” Mrs. Pennyworth extended her hand, cupping the air. “And here we are, offering the perfect answer for such a reasonable fee.”
She snatched her hand closed, catching the intangible as she planned to catch the slave stock. “People trust private companies more than they do the government, it’s built into their capitalist souls. Whatever we have to agree to at first, we’ll agree. It won’t take long before no other infrastructure exists as competition and then we can do what we like.”
“Why me?”
Mrs. Pennyworth laughed. “Because you hated the empire and we needed people who wouldn’t be upset so long as they were the eventual losers.”
My mouth dropped open. “You think I’m not upset?” I poked a finger at her chest, forcing her back a step. “I led those innocent men and women to their deaths.”
“Well”—Mrs. Pennyworth tossed her head—“not really their deaths, although there were a few more than we would have liked. More accurate to say their enslavement. And they came willingly, my dear. Your conscience is clear with me.”
“How many?”
“Nine hundred forty-two at the final count and two dozen lost during the battle. They did very well, almost doubling the numbers.”
Of that, I’d contributed in the range of sixty. I wondered if the dupes who had led the rest to their fate had survived, or if they, too, had ended up in the chain gang.
“Don’t look so downcast. You’re alive and well, aren’t you? We wiped the bounty on your head, and the empire has forgotten you existed.” She shrugged. “You’ve done well out of the situation, I’d say. Better than being used as a sex-bot down in the cells.”
Madeline stepped closer as the blood in my body dropped to my ankles, leaving my head and torso cold. She reached out a hand, gripped my chin between her thumb and forefinger, and stared straight into my eyes.
“I sent you a present once when I found out they had something so special locked down in the basement out of sight. A little vampire boy to set you free. I hope that you enjoyed him.”
She stepped back, letting go and clicking her fingers in the air.
“Graham, could you show Asha the door? I believe I’ve answered all her questions.”
My mind whirled in confusion, trying to grasp onto a solid anchor to help me survive the storm.
“Don’t come here again.” Madeline’s voice was soft, but it held a backing of solid steel. “If we need you, we’ll use you. Otherwise, you’re free to go.”
“Where’s Norman?”
The words burst out of me, ahead of the questions I could or should have demanded. No, you haven’t answered my questions, bitch. Not by a long fucking shot.
But Madeline shook her head, one eyebrow raised. “This interview is over.” She flicked her hand in dismissal and turned to go.
When I stepped forward to follow her, pin her down, Graham placed a strong hand in the center of my chest. “If you need more encouragement to leave, the bots are on their way. I wouldn’t wait if I were you.”
Miss Tiddles refused to relinquish her position in Pete’s vehicle, so she drove us home after detangling herself from the long-winded conversation with the gate guards. They didn’t look happy to see me strolling toward them from the wrong side of the fence, but I just shrugged and told them I’d been in there all day.
/>
Outside the apartment, I opened the door, then turned in confusion as Miss Tiddles cleared her throat.
“Do you mind if I keep the car?” she asked. “Only until I can make other arrangements.”
Disappointment welled up in my throat, choking me for a moment. I’d assumed that the cat would accompany me inside and that one thing would be the same as it had been before.
“Of course not,” I managed after pulling myself together. I was getting better at that lately—it came from far too much practice. “Take it for as long as you need.”
With the question answered, I still couldn’t force myself to move out of the passenger seat. The lonely trek inside, to an empty apartment, wasn’t anything I looked forward to.
“Did you get the answers you wanted, at least?” Miss Tiddles asked when the pause in noise and action stretched out too long. “Do you know why they used you the way they did?”
I started to nod and then shook my head. “The only reason seems to be that they’re terrible people. How long did they have you at their beck and call?”
She looked down the street, her hands tensing on the wheel. “A few years.”
“And now what? Do you have a family to go back to?” Good old Asha, back to being blunt as usual.
I pictured a litter of kittens, mewing for their mother to come home so that they could be fed. The vision didn’t quite fit with the dried blood on her claws or the sadness that curled down her whiskers, but I didn’t know how else to ask.
Miss Tiddles shook her head and turned to look out of her side window. After a moment, I understood from the shake of her shoulders that I’d crossed a line from sadness into pain.
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching a hand out to stroke her back. I didn’t know what I was sorry for exactly, except that my question had triggered a load of unwelcome emotions.
She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry.” She reached out for the ignition wires, bending her head to duck it under the dashboard.
“Where are you going?”
The cat shrugged and looked back down the street. “I don’t know. I’d never really thought this far ahead. Before it was always back to them, but now that I’m free…”
