by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
“I’ve never shared blood with an ephemeral. I’ve never known one I was willing to be that vulnerable to.” He captured her arms. “You’d better stop. Didn’t we decide not to repeat our earlier indulgence?” His voice was slightly hoarse, his breathing ragged. The wings must be as sensitive as those little hairs in his palms.
“You mean our mistake.” She backed off and returned to the chair. “I know you think Anthony made a giant mistake falling in love with Dee.” So much for her brief daydream about a relationship—which she didn’t want anyway, she reminded herself.
Exhaling a long breath, Max allowed his body to melt back into human form, much quicker than the reverse transformation. She gasped at the sudden change. “I’m mature enough to hold that shape for several hours, but it does take energy, so I’d as soon not do it unnecessarily.” He, too, sat down. “Yes, I’ve already acknowledged my feelings about their liaison. But it’s nothing personal. I don’t believe any of our kind should become intimate with ephemerals. Sometimes these affairs work. The male vampire near your home who notified me about the murders has a human lover. But more often than not, the attempt ends in disaster.”
“Because we’re inferior beings.”
“I wouldn’t be so discourteous as to put it that way.”
“I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind putting it that way to your own people. Or to most of us lower animals, for that matter.” She drew her feet up on the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You’re just being polite to me because you’re stuck with me.”
With a half smile, he said, “Your species isn’t inferior in every way. You have creative gifts we lack. We don’t make art and technology of our own, so we use yours. In many ways you’re more flexible than we are. Direct sunlight doesn’t make you ill. You don’t sleep in a state of suspended animation. While that contributes to our long lifespan, it also leaves us open to attack. You can live on many different kinds of foods. Our diet is nearly as restricted as a koala’s or a giant panda’s.”
She couldn’t help smiling at the image of Max munching on eucalyptus leaves or bamboo stalks. “How can a humansize creature live on blood, anyway? Even with the occasional glass of milk?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps we synthesize some vitamins and amino acids. Our physiology has never been thoroughly studied. We’ve been too busy surviving. Our breeding rate has declined over the past hundred years. We aren’t replacing ourselves. Our females go into estrus less often than in previous centuries, and they’re more often infertile.”
“Estrus?” The word came out as a squeak. “Your women go into heat?”
Openly amused now, he said, “Why does that strike you as bizarre? It’s much more efficient than your way. No energy wasted on sexual activity except when reproduction is possible.”
“Oh, yeah? What do you call that mistake we almost made?”
“Erotic dalliance with human donors is our primary sensual outlet. But it doesn’t normally involve genital contact.”
To her annoyance, she was blushing again. “Okay, it makes sense that long-lived animals wouldn’t reproduce often. How long do you live anyway?”
“Thousands of years. Indefinitely. We don’t become infirm with age, and I’ve never heard of a natural death.”
It crossed her mind that he might be lying, playing with her to discover how many outlandish claims she would swallow. He looked serious enough, though. “Some reptiles and parrots live longer than human beings,” she said, “but not that much longer. Some kinds of trees survive for millennia, but mammals, or whatever the heck you are, don’t have the metabolism of plants. The whole idea boggles my mind.”
He leaned back in his chair with a leisurely stretch. “You saw the transformation. Is our longevity that much harder to accept?”
“I’m still not sure I accept the transformation, even after I’ve seen it.”
“Why not? Chameleons change color to match their backgrounds. Arctic foxes and hares become white in the winter and dark again in summer. The uteri of all female mammals enlarge to many times their normal size during pregnancy and shrink afterward. Some fish and amphibians change sex during their lifetimes. Caterpillars become pupae and then butterflies.”
“But that’s not the same thing. All those changes, except the chameleon, are gradual, not instantaneous. And the butterflies don’t revert to caterpillars, and the sex changes aren’t usually reversible.”
“Nevertheless, the principle does exist in biology as you already know it.”
“Okay, you can grow wings and reabsorb them, and you live forever. So how old are you, personally?”
“About five centuries.” He spoke so matter-of-factly that she couldn’t doubt him.
“Wow.” Her head reeled at the thought. “Did you know Shakespeare?”
Max laughed. “As if anyone who happens to live at the same time as a celebrity must know him personally!”
She hugged her knees tighter, armoring herself against his laughter. “All right, silly question.”
“At any rate, he wasn’t Shakespeare then, the greatest name in English literature, just another hardworking actor. And actors didn’t move in the same circles as rich country gentlemen like myself. I did see him in a private evening performance at a nobleman’s home, and I was interested enough to brave London by daylight to watch that actor play the ghost in Hamlet. Later, I saw him as Prospero. But, no, we never met face-to-face.”
“Still, all the things you could tell me…What your people could do for history, if you could let the world know you exist.” She sighed. “Only you can’t. No wonder you think of us as—what? An inferior race? Animals?”
“Most of my species regard yours as prey. Or pets.”
Prey—the way Max had used some anonymous girl that very afternoon. “So much for our being at the top of the food chain and the lords of creation. I’ve never liked those cartoons where the creepy little mice infesting people’s houses are the good guys and the beautiful cats who catch them are the villains. But the thing is, I’ve never been the mouse before. Probably best that most of us don’t know about you. The human race would shrivel up and die from the humiliation.”
“Not quite, I hope. We need you for nourishment, as well as the artifacts you make and the social infrastructure you maintain.”
“Wow, some compliment.”
Her sarcasm didn’t seem to rattle him. “I meant it when I said you have talents we don’t. And, to be honest, we’re far too lazy to go to all that trouble. Your race is much more energetic.”
“Useful animals.” A tinge of bitterness crept into her voice. “So that explains why you didn’t like your brother living with my niece. How old was Anthony, by the way?”
“He was born in 1893. Too young to know better.”
“Better than to fall in love with a pet, you mean?”
“Enough of that!” The sharpness of his tone made her sit up straight. “More important, the relationship was dangerous. Not only for him, but for both of them. You saw the result. He could protect you, but not his lover.”
“Anthony protected me? What do you mean?”
“That necklace you’re wearing. He gave it to you and told you it would keep you safe, didn’t he?”
She nodded, fingering the pendant.
“Thanks to his posthypnotic suggestion, you’re immune to Nola’s psychic influence—and mine, too, inconveniently. Anthony’s mesmerism guarded you against falling under any vampire’s control.”
“No kidding. So that’s why you can’t hypnotize me. And why you’re willing to take me along to face Nola.”
“Yes. As I said earlier, if you can’t be controlled, I’d better keep you in sight until this is over.”
“Fine, I agree with that. Now that we’re giving up all our secrets, tell me what you really have planned for that woman.”
“What about her?”
“Come clean. I may not have ESP, but I can tell you’ve been holding out on me. What are you going to do
with Nola when we find her?”
“Very well, you deserve a straight answer. Our law forbids me to kill one of our own species, aside from an outlaw condemned to death for that very crime. The one exception is self-defense. I intend to destroy Nola, but not by making myself a renegade in the process. I plan to set up a situation where she’ll attack first and give me an excuse to kill her.”
Chapter 9
“Sounds like a flimsy rationalization to me,” Linnet said.
The frown of impatience reappeared, turning his thick eyebrows into a satanic V. “I already told you that your law-enforcement system can’t deal with her. Now you surely understand why.”
“Then what about your system? You have a rule against killing each other, and she murdered Anthony, even if she didn’t do it in person. And what about killing humans?” In the increasingly dim light, she had to strain to get a clear view of his face. She walked to the window and opened the curtains. The view showed a purple sunset, with brightness fading from the sky.
“We have a rule against slaughtering human victims openly, in a way that might draw attention. Nola didn’t commit any such indiscretion. That young fool did the work for her.”
“Indiscretion!” A rush of anger set the pulse pounding in Linnet’s temples. “Is that all a human life means to your kind?”
“Not to me.” He strode to her and clasped her hands. Her feeble attempt to break free brought no reaction. “Please, I sense emotions, remember. Your anger hurts me.”
“Good! You deserve it, if that’s the way you think of my niece’s death.”
“No. Many of our elders would see it that way, though.”
“But there’s still Anthony. Can’t you bring Nola to trial for his murder?”
He gazed down into her eyes. “I wish I could. Do you visualize hauling her in front of some secret tribunal to answer for her crimes?”
“I guess that’s what I imagined.” His thumbs traced circles on her palms. Did he think he could derail her indignation that way? To her embarrassment, the waves of warmth creeping up her arms hinted that his distraction might work.
“We don’t have a structure of law and government. You have those social entities because you’re a gregarious species. We are solitary predators.”
“You have rules, though. You said so.”
“We formed a Council of Elders only a few centuries ago, in a rough imitation of the complex hierarchies that control human society. The elders do very little ruling. Aside from punishing those who turn renegade and kill our own kind, the Council’s main function is to prevent your species from noticing the existence of ours.”
“How would they punish Nola Grant?”
“If she had destroyed my brother by her own hand, she would be sentenced to death. Any of us who found her could execute her.” He released Linnet and turned to the window. “Since her human disciple committed the murders, I’m not free to kill her unprovoked. Revenge isn’t worth being outlawed and condemned myself.”
“So you have to set it up to look like self-defense.”
“That’s what it will literally be. I’ll make sure of it.”
“You’re not worried about getting arrested for murder? By the regular police, I mean.”
“Nola didn’t have any trouble getting your police to leave her alone, did she?” he said with a cold smile. “But I won’t let the problem arise to begin with. She has nobody to notice she’s missing, and I’ll make sure the body won’t be easily found.”
“What do you mean you’ll make sure it’s self-defense, anyway?”
“Goading her into an attack shouldn’t be hard. She’s clearly unstable. And no wonder, since she was born in the eighteenth century, a dangerous time for us.”
“What do you mean?”
He leaned against the window, arms folded, watching Linnet. Observing her reaction to his words, she imagined. “Many parts of Europe still had thriving vampire folklore then. Not only peasants, but representatives of church and state, destroyed our people whenever possible. Scholars soberly debated about whether vampires could exist. We’d made the tactical error of encouraging the superstition that we were human dead returned to life. The elders thought that belief might make people more sympathetic toward us.” He shook his head. “They should have learned better from the witchcraft persecutions of the previous few hundred years.”
“I’m not surprised people believed in the undead. When you’re asleep, you do look dead.”
“Yes. The industrial revolution and the rise of science worked to our advantage. By the time Anthony was born, most of Western civilization thought of us as a myth, a subject for horror tales. Unfortunately, many children of the generations born during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries picked up human beliefs about our kind. Our young are highly adaptable, and such confusion is still a hazard even today. Nola may or may not have a psychosomatic fear of crosses and related symbols like the one you’re wearing, but your psychologists would certainly call her neurotic.”
“And your elders wouldn’t want her locked up for being unstable? Or given some kind of treatment?”
He laughed. “Vampires do not subject themselves to psychoanalysis. The elders would intervene only if her instability threatened to expose her true nature. So far, she has been careful. The friend I telephoned to ask about her is one of the elders. He pledged to back me up if I can plausibly claim to kill her in self-defense.”
“That’s a plan?” Linnet sat on the bed, and Max returned to his chair. “Sounds pretty sketchy to me.”
“The first step is to drive to Monterey and try to find her through normal channels, such as the telephone listings. After that, I shall go to her home and challenge her. Alone.”
Linnet had half expected the “alone” part, and she didn’t intend to let him get away with it. “Just like that? If you guys can sense emotions, won’t she feel you coming and be prepared?”
“She might. What about it?”
“You need me for a decoy again. That’s why you brought me along in the first place, remember? Nola would recognize you at first glance, even if she didn’t sense you a hundred feet away. She wouldn’t recognize me.”
“Too dangerous. She isn’t a harmless idiot like Fred Pulaski.”
“What do you care about the danger? I’m just an ephemeral. I’m expendable.”
“Confound it, don’t twist my words! If nothing else, I care about you because my brother cared for your niece. In honor to his memory, I have to make an effort to keep you safe.” His lips contorted in a self-mocking sneer. “It’s obvious you’ve corrupted me, if I’m falling back on a sentimental argument like that.”
“Gee, thanks.” She squelched the flutter in her chest at the word care. An inhuman, immortal creature couldn’t mean the same thing by that as she did.
“What is your plan, then? You go to her house and knock on the door while I lurk just outside her psychic range? Then what?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have to knock. If I went in the daytime, she’d probably be asleep, wouldn’t she?”
“Very likely.”
“I could break in, get well inside before she woke up. Then I could distract her while you bring in the reinforcements. I have a right to challenge her, too. I told you, I want a confession. I want her to admit what she did to Deanna, and why.”
With his usual annoying half smile, Max said, “You’re going to make these demands while she holds you immobilized with strength ten times your own and bares her teeth at your throat, I suppose.”
“There must be some way to even the odds. Does garlic really work?”
He nodded. “Garlic powder thrown in her face would make her ill, but it wouldn’t disable her for long. You’d have an enraged vampire instead of merely an annoyed one.”
“Long enough for you to charge in and use your own superhuman strength to tie her up?”
“If we had anything sturdy enough to hold her.”
“And then we could interrogate her
as long as we need to.”
“Have you forgotten that I plan to provoke her into single combat? Hard to do if she’s tied up. Even your courts, much less our Council, wouldn’t interpret that as self-defense.”
“If you get her to attack you the minute you show up, how am I supposed to question her? Anyway, I still have my doubts about the whole killing thing.”
A growl rumbled in his chest. “Haven’t you got it through your head that she isn’t human?”
“She’s a sentient being, close enough to human. Not an animal you can put down like a rabid dog. I want that confession. Then we can talk about what to do with her next.”
“You won’t have any choice but to kill her, if you hope to live through another night after treating her that way.”
Linnet rubbed her forehead to combat the ache building there. “I don’t want her to go scot-free, but I can’t see myself as an accessory to murder. Sure, she may deserve to die, but I don’t know if I could live with that memory. Can’t we confine her somehow, make her harmless?”
“My dear, you have no idea what you’re suggesting. Imprisoning a vampire is a fate worse than execution. We can’t starve to death or even suffocate. The pain would simply…continue.”
“Then how would you kill her? A stake through the heart?”
“Not a very efficient method,” he said. “A staked vampire takes a long time to die, and if the weapon is removed before the damage becomes irreversible, the body can regenerate. Decapitation or total destruction of the brain works best. Cremation would also be a viable method, except for the practical problem of sustaining a hot enough fire long enough.”
“But not starvation.”
“No. She would suffer unimaginable agony for days or weeks, until she finally lapsed into a coma. As long as no one released her, she would remain that way indefinitely.”
“Fine, she deserves agony. I just don’t want to kill anybody. Even a monster.”
His eyebrows arched. “You have more of a taste for revenge than I suspected. If you insist on coming with me, we’d better make absolutely sure you can resist if Nola tries to control you.”
