by Clare Willis
A big wave crashed onto the boat. The Rose’s hull sunk so far into the surf that frothy seawater washed over the decks, soaking them to the knees. Dennis grabbed the wheel and helped Sunni bring the boat back on course.
Sunni opened her mouth to tell him everything, but found that she simply couldn’t do it. If Dennis believed her then he would know that monsters existed, and his entire worldview would be destroyed. If he didn’t believe her then he would think shew as insane, and never trust her again. She quickly formulated a partly true story that she hoped would be plausible.
“He wants me, Dennis. I’m part of some crazy plot Richard has about ruling the world. He knows I wouldn’t go with him willingly, but he also knows that I would do anything for Izzy. So if I go with him, he’ll leave her alone. If I don’t he’ll kill her, but after they’re married, so that he can have her money. He’s already brainwashed her, so there’s no reasoning with her. Either I go with him, or Izzy dies.”
Dennis put his head in his hands and bent over. Another strong wave hit the boat, causing her to dip so far to starboard she was almost horizontal. Sunni had to pull Dennis up so that he wouldn’t be knocked unconscious by the wheel as she steered it hand over hand. The Rose finally entered into relatively calm waters near Ocean Beach. Sunni helped Dennis onto the wet bench, where he sat staring out toward land, looking stunned. Sunni reached out a hand and patted him on the shoulder. She had never seen him so diminished.
“Richard is a vampire, isn’t he?” Dennis asked quietly.
For a moment Sunni could only stare at him in shocked amazement. “You know about vampires?”
He shrugged. “I know they exist. I don’t know that much about them.”
Sunni’s blood felt like ice water in her veins. “Dennis, do you know about me, what I am? ”
He looked up at her. The sparkle was gone out of his green eyes. He looked years older than he had an hour earlier. “God help me, yes.”
Sunni let go of the wheel. Dennis grabbed it from below.
“Why … ?” she couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Just a minute.” Dennis put Sunni’s hands back on the wheel. He walked to the bow and Sunni heard the creaking sounds of the anchor being released. When he returned he took her hand and led her to sit down with him.
“I met a vampire once before, many years ago. That’s all I want to say about it.” He shook his head as if trying to release a painful memory. “I don’t know anything about them, and I can’t tell when one comes into my presence. I only know that they have certain powers. When Isabel brought you home I thought you were just a normal kid.”
“A normal kid? ”
He smiled affectionately. “Well, not normal, of course. You’ve always been special. But it took me a while to see that you had powers that weren’t human.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sunni had to restrain herself to keep from yelling at Dennis, from pounding on his chest with her fists.
“It seemed to me that you could live a normal human life if you didn’t know. You didn’t need to drink blood, you could go out in sunlight. You weren’t afflicted with any of the usual vampire traits. ”
“It seems vampires themselves aren’t afflicted with any of the usual vampire traits,” Sunni wryly commented. “Did Gloria know?”
Dennis shook his head. “No. I wanted her to treat you like a daughter, and it might have been hard for her to understand.”
Sunni snorted. “You think?”
Dennis reached out as if he was going to take her hand, but then pulled back. “I’m not going to ask you to forgive me, Sunni. We have to make decisions as parents, sometimes they turn out to be right, sometimes wrong, but we have to live with them.”
She was glad he didn’t ask for forgiveness, because she wasn’t ready to give it yet, but she took his hand. “I’m sure there’s a lot more to say, but we need to figure out what to do about Richard. Vampires can be killed, I know that. I just don’t know how, yet. ”
“All right, this is what we’re going to do,” Dennis said. His voice was calm. He was used to issuing orders and having things go his way. Sunni hoped fervently that they’d go his way this time. “You’ve got to apologize to Isabel, and tell her you’re going to be in the wedding. This is not the time to be alienated from her.”
“Okay. And then what?”
“I know a guy who knows a guy,” Dennis said. “For enough money I can make Richard go away. ”
“Are these ‘guys’ human, or vampires?”
“They’re human. I don’t know any vampire assassins.”
Sunni chewed her lip nervously. “I don’t think there are any. Apparently it’s illegal for vampires to kill each other. It’s also against their moral code.”
Dennis laughed drily. “Same for humans, but that’s never stopped us.”
Sunni shook her head. “I’m not sure humans can kill Richard Lazarus.”
“These guys have eliminated African dictators with armies of bodyguards. You say it’s possible to kill him? He’s not immortal?”
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“Then they can do it.”
“If you say so.” Sunni was still not sure that human intervention would be enough, but unless Sherman decided to help them it was all they had. And at least she didn’t have to feel guilty that innocent people were going to get hurt. Dennis’s “guys” were obviously no angels.
Sunni looked up. Dennis smiled at her with such affection that it made her heart lurch. “I know I said I wouldn’t ask for your forgiveness,” he said. “But I hope I can earn it someday.”
She gave him a small smile. “I’m going to go below and call Isabel right now,” she said.
As soon as Isabel said hello Sunni launched into her apology. “I am truly, truly sorry. You’re my best friend, Isabel, there’s no one I care about more in the world. I only want your happiness. You believe me, don’t you?”
Isabel paused for longer than Sunni would have liked, but finally she spoke. “Yes, I believe you.”
“Our friendship is too strong to let this get between us. Let’s talk this out, Isabel.”
“What is there to talk about? You said you wouldn’t support my marrying Richard.”
Sunni wondered if Lazarus was standing over her, listening to her conversation, then she pushed that idea out of her mind.
“I won’t say anything more about Richard. I’m going to support your choice. I’ll be your maid of honor. I’m going to stand beside you and throw rice at you and dance at your reception. Okay?”
“Okay,” Isabel answered, a little too automatically.
Sunni clicked off her phone and stared out the tiny porthole at the roiling sea. She hadn’t lied that much, she rationalized. She wasn’t going to say any more about Isabel’s choice of husband. She was going to stand beside Isabel at her wedding ceremony. She just needed to make sure that it wasn’t Richard Lazarus that she married.
Chapter 18
Sunni and Dennis stood under a streetlamp at the corner of Fifth and Market, between a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and a defunct storefront advertising a gambling game called Fascination. A shopping cart and bundle of blankets in the doorway indicated that someone had claimed the Fascination parlor as their temporary home. Dennis had dressed down for the occasion, but his jeans had razor sharp creases down the legs. Even his skin gave off a plump, glossy sheen that screamed money. Sunni felt a constant, low-level buzz of adrenaline that kept her fingers twitching and her eyes darting around. Dennis, the old boxer, probably thought he was protecting them, but Sunni knew now that she packed more power in her pinkie fingers than Dennis had in his whole body.
Dennis clutched a crumpled paper grocery bag in one hand and his BlackBerry in the other, eyeing everyone who passed them with way too much interest. Most of the denizens of the corner paid him no mind, intent as they were on scoring dope, finding something to eat, or struggling with the demons in their heads, but a few slowed down and looked hi
m over with malicious intent, causing Sunni to bristle with aggression.
“Man, it stinks of pee here,” Dennis said, rubbing his nose. He pushed his sleeve back to check the time, flashing a big Rolex.
Sunni slapped his wrist. “Don’t show that around here.”
He sighed and then chuckled. “I can’t think of the last time someone kept me waiting, Sunni. Except for Gloria, no one would dare.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Sunni said.
“Looking for someone?”
The words came from a short, middle-aged white man wearing a blue Windbreaker and an A’s baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, leaning against the graffiti-covered wall next to the store. He had soft brown eyes behind rimless glasses. He looked entirely innocuous.
“Are you Paul?” Dennis asked in his usual booming voice.
“Shh,” the man said, “You trying to wake the whole neighborhood?” He moved a few steps closer to them, but kept looking up and down the street, as if watching for a car. “Did you bring something for me?”
Dennis held out the bag. The man grabbed it, glanced inside, and then tucked it under his jacket.
“Is there a picture in there?”
“Yes.”
Isabel had insisted on engagement photos, even though there wasn’t time to publish them in the newspaper. Sunni, after pondering the fact that a vampire’s image could be reproduced, another myth debunked, had printed one up on the computer. It was in the paper bag, on top of a hundred thousand dollars in cash.
The man in the baseball cap lit a cigarette. “Do you want us to call you when it’s done?” he asked, exhaling in Dennis’s face.
Sunni and Dennis exchanged glances.
“That’s not necessary,” Sunni replied. “We’ll know. ”
“Okay then.” The man dropped the lit cigarette on the sidewalk. He started to turn the corner.
“Wait!” Sunni said.
He looked back at her, his expression neutral.
She closed the distance between them. Up close, she saw his teeth were nicotine stained and his glasses were smudged.
“This man is very, very dangerous,” she whispered.
He smiled. “Yeah, okay.”
She grabbed the arm of his jacket. “I’m serious,” she hissed. “You can’t mess around with this guy. Don’t try to do it with one man, it needs to be several, and they have to be experts. You’ve got to kill him right away; don’t talk to him first. Riddle him with bullets, do you hear me?”
He stared steadily at her hand until she released him. “People like me generally don’t like it when people like you tell us how to do our job,” he said, and then he turned around and walked away.
Sunni ground the man’s cigarette under her heel. “I don’t like this, Dennis.”
He shrugged. “They come very highly recommended.”
“What if they get killed?” Sunni shrieked.
“Quiet.” Dennis tucked Sunni under his arm. “These are trained assassins, Sunni,” he said quietly. “If anyone can do the job, they can.”
Richard left the hotel with plenty of time to spare: St. Sebastian’s was only five blocks up Powell Street. It was a beautiful evening. The perpetual wind and fog had finally receded, leaving the city looking brand-new. San Francisco in the fog was a Monet, all muted colors and soft focus. In sunshine it was a Van Gogh, chaotic and bright. Richard liked the city either way, but to be honest, it was hardly more than the backwater it had been before the Gold Rush. He couldn’t wait to get back to London, to show Sunni what a real city could offer.
He thought about the wedding that was about to occur. It would be his third—no his fourth, actually. He’d forgotten about the barmaid in Munich in 1943. His latest coupling had been to the Countess Yvette de la Foucault, of Lyon, three years ago. It had been a daring move on his part. She was a very rich, very high profile woman. Their marriage was all over the news in Europe. The nerves of every vampire in the Council had been jangled, especially when the countess began to grow ill, of a wasting disease—anemia, septicemia—something nasty but impossible to diagnose. Within two weeks of the marriage she was dead, and her entire fortune had passed to her new husband. It was only then that he found out that the fortune consisted of a mortgaged estate filled with antiques encumbered by the claims of twenty-four different descendants. Isabel, on the other hand, had assured him that she was the sole heir to the LaForge millions.
Lazarus smiled at a pair of attractive women passing him as he strolled up the hill.
“Nice tux,” one of them said.
He lowered his head in acknowledgment of the compliment.
“God damn it,” Richard snapped. “What do they want now?”
The women heard him and looked alarmed, but he wasn’t speaking to them. He was referring to the black limousine that had just pulled into the bus stop. As the door opened Richard prepared himself to deal with Scipio and his henchmen again. He wasn’t worried, but he wanted to get to the church on time. Dealing with the Council might make him late.
But the person who opened the door wasn’t a vampire. It was a red-haired man in a dark suit. Gingers, they called them in England. He held a gun, very discreetly tucked into the crook of his other arm, just the muzzle showing. There was another man in the car: larger, bald, and with a dark complexion. He wasn’t displaying a gun, but Richard guessed he was probably carrying one. Two humans, armed with guns. This was an interesting development.
He stepped into the car at their request. Immediately he pulled a cologne-scented handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his nose. The car stank—of sweat, dried blood, and the rancid stench of fear. These men had been busy. Richard took a deep whiff of cologne and put the hanky down.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, gentlemen?”
The bald man answered. “Dennis LaForge sent us. ”
“I see. You have a wedding gift for me?”
The bald man smiled without showing his teeth. “You could say that. ”
The windows were tinted but Richard could see easily as the car drove a block and then turned into an underground parking garage. They circled down a few floors and parked. Richard could smell the tension coming off the men. It was decidedly more pronounced from the ginger. He had sensed something about Richard that was making him nervous.
The ginger had kept his gun trained on Richard the entire time. To his credit, his hand didn’t shake. Richard’s eyes lingered on the man’s gold wedding band. It was shiny, with not a scratch on it.
The bald man cracked two knuckles. “You aren’t getting married today, I’m afraid. You’re going to leave town now and you aren’t coming back.”
“And if I decline? ”
The man’s expression hardened. He was good at his job, Richard thought. If he were human he’d be quite frightened.
“You don’t get to decline.”
Richard clicked his tongue. “Did your employer tell you anything about me? ”
“He told me enough,” the bald man said.
“Let’s stop talking, Charlie, and just do it,” the red-haired man interjected.
The bald man opened his mouth to reply. It was still open when Richard grabbed his head and snapped it neatly to the side, severing his spinal cord. His head flopped forward, pulling his body along with it, onto the floor. The other man’s gun went off as Richard knocked his hand aside. Whoever had been driving behind the frosted glass panel jumped out of the car. The sound of footsteps on concrete receded into the distance. Richard smiled at the one human left behind.
“Newlywed, are you? ”
The man couldn’t answer. Richard felt his fear like a damp cloud. Like fog, it was, really. Quite unpleasant to be around.
“Well, you should be grateful to me. There will never be a chance for the marriage to go sour. She’ll always remember you like this, young and handsome and virile.”
“Please, sir,” the man babbled. “I’m begging you …”
; “Well, perhaps not virile.”
Richard grabbed a hank of the man’s distinctive hair, yanked his head back, and then sank his fangs into his remarkably tender flesh.
Chapter 19
The sun coming through the rose window of St. Sebastian’s Cathedral cast a kaleidoscope of color onto the rose petals strewn in the aisle, and its rays illuminated the faces of San Francisco’s glitterati in the front rows. Sunni recognized Francesca Savonarella, first violinist of the San Francisco Symphony; Maribelle Sneed, pulp novelist, multimillionaire and serial bride; and Elizabeth Wexler, San Francisco grande dame and chief of protocol for the mayor’s office. Only a man of Dennis’s stature could have brought this illustrious group together after an engagement almost as brief as that of Britney Spears in Las Vegas. But of course all of them were dying to catch a glimpse of the mysterious London financier who had captured Isabel’s heart.
A wizened old man played the processional music on a two-story tall pipe organ, the notes so resonant that they buzzed in Sunni’s gut. Three more bridesmaids stood at the altar with Sunni, in purple dresses that complemented but didn’t matcheach other. The thinnest woman—Isabel’s cousin, Maxine—was wearing a sleeveless sheath. Her friend from college, Angela, who was a bit plump, sported a fifties-style dress with a full skirt. Francie, Isabel’s colleague from the Museum board, who was built like a telephone pole, was wearing an A-line shift dress.
Four groom’s men balanced the women on the other side of the altar, wearing black tuxedoes and purple vests the exact shade of the girl’s dresses. Richard hadn’t chosen a single one of these gentlemen. They were all Isabel’s cousins or the sons of Dennis’s golfing buddies. According to Isabel, Richard had claimed that he couldn’t bring over any of his friends “from across the pond” at such short notice.
The groom stood in front of the altar, his gaze turned toward the door at the end of the aisle where Isabel would soon emerge. His full shoulders and slim waist formed an inverted triangle under his impeccable tuxedo. His dark hair was perfectly coiffed. His expression was reverent and sentimental, but not maudlin. Sunni had felt a moment of hope when Richard was late for the ceremony, but then there he was, with a few hairs out of place and his bow tie slightly askew. He had stared pointedly at Dennis while he told Isabel that he had been “unavoidably detained. ”
