I imagined him old, simply because he is old. But he has the face and body of a young man, even as his eyes hold nearly a century of heartache.
The sly way Monroe regards the crowd from under the brim of his white fedora sends a shiver up our collective spine. He wears an immaculate white suit and tie, which contrast with the battered black guitar case swinging at his side. He steps up onto the stage like he was born and raised there.
David speaks in a hushed voice over my shoulder. “Ci-ara, this is unprecedented. You’ve done something here.”
“I never even talked to him.”
Monroe sits, then flips open his guitar case while Jim lowers the microphone.
“But your idea,” David says, “bringing them out into the light. It gave him the chance to perform again.”
With no warm-up, Monroe starts playing, with such speed and confidence I could swear it was more than one person. He sings the first line of “I’m So Glad,” and the ancient voice bears as little resemblance to his baby face as a butterfly to a caterpillar. One hand flies over the fret board while his picking fingers form a blur. On the second verse, his voice soars up another octave as naturally as a bird taking flight.
I grip the bar’s brass railing. Though I’m totally sober, the music puts me under a spell as strong as any drug.
The song is short, and when the last note shimmers away, the audience members finish the breaths they were working on before exploding in applause.
Monroe tips his hat. “How y’all doing tonight?” More applause. “That’s just fine, fine.” He tunes his guitar as he speaks. “Name’s Monroe Jefferson, some call me Mississippi Monroe, since that’s where I hail from, Natchez to be exact, but you can call me Monroe if it suits you. I was born in 1913.” He smiles and strokes his smooth ebony chin. “I look good for my age.” Applause and laughter. His smile fades. “That’s because in 1940 I met a man changed my life.”
I gasp and turn to David. “He’s going to tell it?”
David puts a finger to his lips. On the other side of the bar, Regina and Noah confer with worried faces.
“Lotta people know about Robert Johnson, how he’s supposed to met the devil at the crossroads at midnight, sold his soul to master the blues. Anyone who knew him, like I did, knows that ain’t true. It was Tommy Johnson— no relation—who said he himself had done it. He’s the one gave me directions.”
Pluck. Strum. “I’d been playing the juke joints, oh about ten year. Little bit of money in it, kept me in whiskey and cigarettes, but not enough to buy me a ticket to Chicago or New York, places where bluesmen made it big. I was good—you can tell that right now,” he says without a trace of false humility, “but not good enough.
“So one night I go to the crossroads—not the one at Highways 61 and 49, that’s a lie. The real crossroads is a secret, and no, I ain’t telling.” He strokes the strings like they were the hair of a woman on the next pillow over. “I went on a Tuesday, so I wouldn’t have to stand in line.”
I look at David, who reflects my smile.
“ ‘Round about midnight, a man walks up, a tall man, a white man. Just like Tommy said the devil would be. Long hair so black, look like a river of blood in the moonlight. He come up to me and says, ‘Son, you’re not here to catch a bus, are you?’ I shake my head no. ‘Well, I reckon we got business, then,’ he says. By this time I’m scared as a whipped puppy, but I ain’t about to leave, so I pull out a cigarette and try to light up.” He pauses while he does just that. The brief flame casts shadows over his face, giving his deep-set eyes an even more haunted look. “Problem is, my hands shaking so hard I can’t hold the match. Then the man flicks his fingertips and there he is, holding fire in his hand. Cigarette falls out of my mouth, but he catches it and lights it himself. He takes a puff—” As Monroe does. “—and hands it back to me. I put it in my mouth and—” He holds the cigarette between his lips while he plays a few more notes. When he’s done, the silence is deafening. “—it tastes like blood.”
I steal a glance across the bar at Regina. She stares at Monroe, frozen, her own cigarette holding a two-inch ash.
“Didn’t surprise me none. After all, I thought he’s the devil. But then he opens his long black coat, and I see he’s dressed like a preacher man. ‘I’m not here to take your soul,’ he says, ‘I’m here to save it.’ I get mad, I tell him, ‘Saving is the last thing in this world I want, so if you aim to save me, you well’s to kill me.’”
He puffs for a bit while he plucks a different tune.
When the notes fade into the air, Monroe says, “The man took my word. He took my blood, he took my life. He made me what you see here, and if I walk this earth a thousand year, I’ll never master the blues.” He takes a long drag and grins through the smoke. “But it’ll master me forever, so I reckon that’s something.”
He launches into “Baby Please Don’t Go,” and the crowd applauds slowly and reverently.
I turn to David. “Shane said they never tell their stories.”
He lifts his glass in a toast toward the stage. “Anything to please the crowd.”
I wonder if Monroe’s telling the truth. How could a vampire hold fire in his hand? Maybe he was a super-ancient one. But didn’t I also read somewhere that it wasn’t the soul-buying devil that blues players went to see, but a hoodoo trickster spirit?
Anyway, it makes a great yarn, and that’s all that matters.
We listen to the next few songs without speaking. The weight of the music, made of pure emotion, sinks my mood into the cellar. I take a few forlorn sips of my beer. Finally David holds up two fingers to Stuart.
“Jack Daniel’s,” he says. “Leave the bottle.” Stuart raises his eyebrows but obeys without comment, plonking the half-empty bottle in front of us, along with a pair of two-ounce shot glasses.
“That’s more like it.” I pour us shots and settle in for a long night of commiseration.
At the end of the next song, I say to David, “It’s sad, huh?”
“Yeah, even the happy blues songs have that effect.”
“I mean Monroe’s story. Did any of them want to be vampires?”
He wags his finger at me. “No, you don’t. It’s not up to me to tell their tales.”
“And no one else can tell yours.” I tip the whiskey bottle into his empty glass and dribble out the amber liquid.
David just rotates the shot glass, fingertips on the rim. Monroe strums and croons, weaving his misty magic with “Gallows Pole.”
Finally David gets tired of staring at the Jack and downs it. He wipes his mouth, then takes off his leather jacket. A trio of nearby women join me in admiring the contoured biceps revealed by his sleeveless black T-shirt, but he’s oblivious to the attention.
“My father died suddenly when I was a college senior.” He drapes his jacket over the back of the bar chair. “I was away at school and didn’t get home to see him in time.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I’m supposed to.
He nods. “He was Control. Growing up, I hated all the secrecy and the moving around. I just wanted a normal life.”
“I know the feeling,” I mutter.
“I majored in broadcasting and was managing the college radio station when I was only twenty years old. But after Dad died, there was no question what I would do. I signed up for the Control as soon as I graduated. On my first day I met Elizabeth.” He falls silent after saying her name, confirming my suspicion.
I pour him another shot for strength. “So she was human at the time.”
“Human, all right. We were in love.” He slams back the whiskey. “She’ll never admit it now.” He takes a long sip of beer, then swishes the glass in the condensation puddle left behind. “When she was turned, she—”
Applause and hollering erupt as Monroe leaves the stage. Rather than stay for drinks and adulation, he grabs his guitar case and heads out the front door without a word for anyone.
Noah takes the stage and slides his smile ove
r the audience, clearly relishing the whispers of female admiration. “I am Noah. N-O is ‘no,’ and A-H mean ‘pain,’ so Noah mean no pain. When I bite, you don’t feel a thing but happiness.”
“It’s true,” David says. “I don’t know how he does it.”
The crowd rises and falls to Scratch Perry’s “Dreadlocks in Moonlight.” I guess Noah’s not telling his story, at least not yet.
Despite the change in music and my compulsive foot-tapping, the mood at the bar stays dark. “So Elizabeth was turned ...” I remind David.
He frowns. “It happened on a raid in the Ozarks. A cadre of older vampires had gone rogue and started preying on a little town in the tail of southern Missouri. We went in, captured a few of them. But we were underdeployed.” He leans his head on his fist and forces out the next sentence. “The lead vampire’s name was Antoine. Some say he was a century old, but he looked maybe fifteen or sixteen. I think Elizabeth was fooled by his apparent youth, couldn’t bring herself to neutralize what appeared to be a kid. He dragged her off.” He clutches the empty shot glass. “She showed up at my place the next night.” He closes his eyes for a long time.
“She bit you.”
“She was so strong. I thought I was going to die, and after a while I didn’t care, because it felt—” He glances at me. “Well, you know how it feels.”
“Only the stabbing pain part.” I lean closer, knowing the liquor is loosening his tongue. “What’s the rest like?”
His eyes unfocus. “Like the far side of an orgasm. You feel complete, like you found something you never knew you needed.”
I wonder what kind of power it would give someone who could make you feel that way. “So then what happened?”
“When I was almost unconscious, she tossed me aside and told me that was the only way she’d ever touch me again.” David’s lip curls into an expression I’ve never seen on him before. “Revenge was the only thought that kept me alive. I went against orders and hunted Antoine, alone. One night in a Memphis alleyway, I staked the fucker.” He puts his head in his hands. “I never meant to hurt her.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you kill a vampire’s maker, you kill a part of them. She came to me that night in agony. She said it was like someone had ripped out her heart and stuck it back in upside down.”
“Did you confess?” I ask him.
“Eventually. She looked at me like she was the one I’d staked.”
“But she’d bitten you. She hurt you.”
“It wasn’t her fault. Brand-new vampires can’t control themselves. She should’ve been better supervised.”
“No, David,” says a low, female voice that makes my neck hairs stand on end. “I should’ve ripped out your throat.”
We turn slowly to see a woman in a long black silk dress. She looks maybe a few years older than me, but much taller. Blonder. Everything-er.
“Elizabeth,” David says in a hoarse voice. “I didn’t—I didn’t know—”
“I was here?” Her blue eyes flare with a controlled rage. “Didn’t know I was listening to you tell my story to a stranger?” She doesn’t even look at me—not that I want her to.
He clears his throat and meets her gaze. “It’s my story, not yours.”
“Antoine is mine.” Her fingers slip around his forearm. “Not yours. Not ever.”
“I wanted to make Ciara understand.” His voice has steadied. “She deserves the truth. She’s one of us now.”
At the moment, I’m not sure I want to be one of them. In fact, I’d like to be one of the people walking out the door. Not that anyone is leaving.
“Pleased to meet you.” I hold out my hand so she’ll have to take hers off David’s arm or be incredibly rude. “Ciara Griffin, marketing intern.”
She looks at my hand like she thinks I just wiped my nose with it. “This is your party?”
“It’s the station’s party. What do you think of it?”
Without turning her head, she glances around at the humans dancing, drinking, and falling over each other. “I worry about the vampires losing control around so much fresh blood.”
I pull my hand back. “What about you?”
She twitches a thin, arched eyebrow. “I always keep my thirst in check with blood bank leftovers.”
David gives a harsh laugh and pries her hand off his arm. “Then why are you so cold right now?”
“The ratings are bound to go up,” I say, trying to turn the conversation in a more professional direction. “David did interviews with all the major local media tonight.”
He gives me a grateful glance, then turns back to her. “And on July first,” he says, “we’ll start replaying the DJs’ shows during the day in place of some of those annoying paid programming bits whose contracts are up.”
I nod vigorously. “Because who wants to wake up at three a.m. to listen to music?” Besides me, of course.
Elizabeth stays silent for a few more moments, then extends her hand to me. “Good luck,” she says without smiling.
I try not to grimace at her icy grip. “Join us for a drink?”
“Not right now.” She tilts down her chin and widens her eyes at David in what looks like a questioning, almost pleading gaze. He juts out his jaw and turns his head away from her, glaring at the floor behind the bar with narrowed eyes. She doesn’t move, and I suddenly feel like I’m eavesdropping on an intimate negotiation.
Finally David rubs his chin and gives a jerky nod without looking at her. She lets out a deep breath and appears relieved.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” she says, “I have to confer.”
She glides away and approaches a broad-chested man standing against the wall observing the crowd. He’s dressed casual like everyone else, but straightens into an official bearing when he sees Elizabeth. They converse, nodding and watching the partiers with wary eyes.
I turn to ask David who that guy is, but he’s not even watching Elizabeth, he’s just staring into his whiskey again, lips tight and brows pinched. The overhead bar light casts shadows on his cheeks in the shape of his long, thick lashes.
I touch his arm, and he looks up quickly. Disappointment crosses his face when he sees it’s only me.
“Who’s Elizabeth talking to?” I ask him.
He glances over. “Control goon.”
“But—wait a minute. She still works for them?”
“As one of their contractors. She gives the Control information in exchange for money and protection.”
A vampire rat. Glad she has a sense of honor.
The Control ogre bends to speak in Elizabeth’s ear, and I notice a bulge in his black leather vest.
“Is he armed?” I ask David.
“Not with anything that hurts humans.”
I watch them monitor Noah, who’s lounging against the wall by the stage, chatting up a group of hotties. “So I take it you quit the Control after the Antoine incident,” I ask David.
“They kicked me out with a general discharge. But I didn’t care, because I finally had a chance to follow my dream.”
“Running a radio station?”
He nods. “And in the process, helping a few vampires avoid the Control. Elizabeth and I gathered half a dozen DJs and musicians and gave them a chance to stay in the present and in their Life Times simultaneously.” He gestures to our surroundings, by which I think he means Sherwood. “We gave them a safe, quiet place to achieve self-actualization.” His whiskey-numbed lips struggle with the seven-syllable word. “A place where they wouldn’t end up like Antoine.”
I fill our shot glasses and lift mine in a toast. “To redemption quests.”
We clink and drink. From the speaker, Bob Marley assures us that every little thing’s gonna be all right, but somehow, deep down, I wonder.
14
Bad Company
When I arrive at the office Monday morning, Franklin punches the hold button on his phone. The other line is ringing.
“Get that, wou
ld you?” he says. “It’s probably an advertiser.”
“Advertisers are calling us? Did I come to the right office?”
“Put your smart-ass in a sling and answer the phone.”
The caller is a local Italian restaurant I’ve been able to afford exactly zero times. They want to buy ad spots, and I find sadistic pleasure in telling them we’ll try to squeeze them into our crowded lineup.
When we’re both off the phone, Franklin holds up the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun’s Sunday style sections, one in each hand. “Page four and page two, respectively.”
“Nice work, Mister Hyde.”
“You know what I realized in the shower yesterday morning?” His phone rings, and he points at me as he reaches for it. “You conned me out of nine bucks.”
“Consider it overtime pay.” I turn back to my computer and pull up a spreadsheet of WVMP merchandise. We need to order more before the next gig this Friday.
Regina clomps up the stairs and snatches the papers from Franklin’s desk. He manages to scowl at her even as his voice lilts over the phone.
She comes to my desk and sits on the edge while she examines the article and the accompanying photo. “I looked good, didn’t I?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Maybe more of the red-on-black T-shirts this time.
Regina flips through the newspaper’s pages. From the corner of my eye I see her perusing the comics.
She grunts. “I swear I read the same fucking Mary Worth strip twenty years ago.”
I look up at her. “Did you want me for something? Ridicule? Harassment?”
“Oh.” She chews the inside of her cheek as she runs a black-lacquered fingernail over the edge of my desk. “I wanted to tell you, I thought the other night was pretty cool.”
“And what’s the punch line?”
“I’ve spent too many years cooped up in that little studio. Having us all play live in one place—it felt like I was doing the clubs again.” She sniffs. “Complete with some preppie wanker bugging me to play ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead.’”
“It’s the only Bauhaus song the average person knows.” Which made me an average person before I started listening to Regina’s show.
Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires Page 78
