by Alix Adale
“Yeah. Well. This is good police work.” Zen flipped through more pictures, stopping dead on one that showed a huge, stocky man with a bloody knife in his hand, facing the victim’s body. A Homeland Security watermark showed in the corner. “What do we have here? This guy’s got the same build as Xerxes Pontides, but he’s got a buzzcut and the face is different.”
The agent cracked a rare smile. “That’s your new prime suspect.”
Zen flipped to the next sheet, a mug shot from the Canadian prison system. “That’s him all right. Who is he?”
“Biker gang boss, goes by the street name of Moog and heads an outfit called the Circus of Blood. Quite a rap sheet on him.”
“Is this guy still in Portland?”
Gideon leaped to his feet. “I don’t know. He’s a hard man to track. We’re stepping out of this one for now. Good luck.”
“Sure, thanks,” Zen said, already thinking of ways to track this biker down.
The agent paused in the door. “Detective Zenkowski?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a good cop. Don’t burn yourself out.” He left, shutting the door behind him.
Huh, strange comment. Zen reached for the file, then on second thought, put it down. He picked up his phone and sent a message to Suzanna:
Coffee sounds great. When and where? :)
Chapter 16: Solstice
Desiree
Vampires danced beneath the sun.
Dozens writhed, spun, and gyrated in the hot afternoon. Pale-faced freaks for the most part, though of varying ethnicities. Those with naturally dark skin found it took on a grayish cast; those with lighter skin turned pale as bone. Deviltry and black magic had disfigured a few of the older or more mystically inclined specimens, gracing them with mauve skin, pointed ears, fangs that did not retract, and other inhuman features. It was disgusting to watch these creatures cavort and caper without a care, dancing on a tiled patio behind the mansion.
Dangerous, inhuman beasts, all of them. Thank god they’d taken her nanorian away. That ‘punishment’ spared her from mingling with the rest of these creeps, at least until the sun went down and Armando forced her to put in an appearance. But until then, she would remain planted in the visitation tomb, alone again. Solitude—her last friend.
A live band called Dr. When and the Time Travelers played melodies ranging across the decades, from ragtime and swing music to rock ‘n’ roll and coffeehouse indie. Each set, they changed costumes and instruments. Their musical versatility suited the crowd, since many of those dancing had lived through all those musical eras and more. Queen Ursula had once been a Regency debutante and a contemporary of Jane Austen before her turning, according to gossip.
During the solstice, the Queen wandered from diversion to diversion, watching tennis, playing croquet, sheltering beneath a gazebo amongst a gaggle of courtier and petitioners. She wore a mass of lace and taffeta, a spectacular ballroom gown with an ample train and petticoats galore. Sunlight made her golden crown gleam. Red, blue, and green jewels sparkled in the coronets, priceless heirlooms pilfered from lost tombs—again, according to rumor.
Hah, and there was Armando, dancing the Charleston with Cherise. It was a ridiculous spectacle, embarrassing. They looked drunk as lords, as intoxicated as everyone else. The liquor flowed in endless rivers, poured by blood thralls and lesser servitors. Cigarette and marijuana smoke billowed from the second-story decks, where coteries gossiped, drank, and plotted.
Colin stood with a pint glass, talking to Mabon and some others. Poor Colin—would he ever find someone? He still carried a torch for some gal name Rosalita he’d buried back in 1898 or something crazy like that.
Hey, it could happen. That might be her fate, mourning a three-day love affair for the next century. It was impossible to imagine recovering from losing Xerxes. She might well retreat into her tomb for a decade or two. There would be no next time, no falling in love ever again. Once was enough. Garden-variety depression already stung, but this profound and hopeless aching for another’s absence was something new.
So yeah. Don’t even think about Xerxes for like, oh, the next twenty years. Seeking a distraction, her eyes went back to the screen. The sight was disgusting.
The Queen sat on her throne, receiving homage and oaths of loyalty from her vassals. The elder Vlacs knelt first, bearing gifts of blood and gold, followed by the Hei-Lung seniors, then Armando and Colin Braden. Odd, there was no sign of George. Maybe he was still refusing to meet the Queen.
There was no need to watch the rest of this nauseating farce. Time to bust out a pen and draw. She muted the audio and fetched sketchbooks and art supplies from her alcove. Spreading the work across the empty dining room table, she reviewed the last month of Red Panda Girl updates and unfinished works in progress. It had been an eventful few days since she’d looked at any of the material. Her pen scribbled across the page, drawing.
A step in the kitchen, accompanied by the pungent reek of cigar smoke, spooked her out of an artistic reverie. “George!”
He held a backpack over one shoulder, wearing jeans and a dirty letterman jacket. “Take care, Dez.”
“What? You’re leaving? Does Armando know?”
Pausing beneath the ladder, he grinned. “Nope, and I’d appreciate it if you forgot you saw me—until the morning.”
“Okay, but where are you going?” She pushed the chair back, getting to her feet.
He sprang up the ladder, rung by rung. “I’m hitting the road instead of bending the knee. See you around, kiddo.”
She stared up toward the ceiling as he vanished into the upper tomb. Without her nanorian, she couldn’t follow. How odd. Six years in the same clan together, yet such a stranger still.
On the TV monitor, George appeared in a few frames, a solitary figure cutting across the manor grounds, far from the party. Then he vanished.
Returning to her seat, she packed up the Red Panda Girl comics, put them away. That storyline wasn’t going anywhere. Time to try something else. She picked up a clean piece of paper and a pencil and sketched. Different eyes, heads, and costumes appeared, but it all lead back to the same idea. Her pencil traced out a sketch of Stud Puppy and the Amazing Woman, a talking animal superhero comic, rich in its bleakness. The hours passed.
The sun set.
A finger tapped her shoulder. “Dez.”
Huh? She’d lost track of the hours. “Oh, Armando. Hi.”
“Are you ready to party?” He wobbled and reeked of alcohol.
“Fine. Let me put this stuff away.” She gathered up all the loose sheets, packing them together. He didn’t need to see this silliness.
He picked up a sketch of a buffed Dalmatian in a fireman’s hat. Other sketches showed Red Panda Girl as the Amazing Woman, in a cheesy, Wonder Woman-inspired costume. “Cute.”
Cute. Yeah. Her sire was no art buff, but Red Panda Girl had been nominated for three Icies in the last seven years—Independent Comic Awards. A pencil twisted in her grip. “Thanks.”
Armando grabbed one of the dining room chairs, turned it around, and sat. “Do you want to know why I turned you?”
How many times had she asked over the years? Without meaning to, she snapped her pencil in half. It made her jump. “That would be cool.”
“Easy.” He picked up an eraser, looked at it, put it down. “I was drunk.”
“That’s it?”
“Drunk on blood wine, feeling sentimental. Feeling sorry for myself, truth be told. I’ve lived a long time. I’ve turned too many spawn. Somehow, it never works out. Isabella, Cathleen, Hippolita, Ginny, Tristen … I could go on.”
Wonderful. She was nothing more than the latest in a long line of failures. It figured. She picked up the broken pencil and twirled it around. “You found all these women in comas?”
A shadow passed over his face. He didn’t deserve such harshness. He wasn’t rotten, merely old and difficult. “I met them in various ways, but no, I knew most beforehand. On occasion, I found them dying and
rescued them. Like in your case.”
“That’s what you call it.” She unclenched her shoulders, exhaled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
His gentle tone was unexpected. “You have a right to question my decision, a right to be angry. Would you like to hear the rest? It’s short, I promise.”
“Go on.”
“There I was, drowning in nostalgia, thinking about all the women I’d known. Then the news came on, a story about a beautiful girl in a coma, almost drowned after a car accident.”
“I wasn’t beautiful back then. No vampire glamour and didn’t take care of myself.”
“You were beautiful, in the way all women are beautiful, so that I want to save them all. And yes, I was drunk. The news called your condition hopeless, claimed the doctors could do nothing. But I could do something, and I did. I don’t remember bringing you back to Braden House, but I must have, blackout drunk. Colin and George found me passed out in the hall the next day—along with a feral newborn running around, clawing the walls and howling for blood.”
“I don’t remember my feral stage at all.” She shivered in horror, glad to have missed that bout of animal savagery, although she’d been around during Cherise’s feral phase. The elders had kept the newborn chained up in the basement for a couple weeks, until her conscious mind regained control. Some turned spawns never regained control and were either put down or unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Turning someone was a brutal process.
Armando unleashed a sigh for the ages. “I tried to play hero, Desiree. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, well. These things happen, I guess.”
He hopped up. “Ready to party?”
“I said I would, so yeah. But I’m not dancing the Charleston with you or anyone else.”
“How about the Lindy Hop?”
In spite of herself, she managed a smile.
Booze helped.
Booze helped a lot. Normally, she didn’t drink or do drugs, but if there was ever a night to cut loose and damn the tomorrows, it was tonight. The last few days had been an absolute hell-ride. The universe had lifted her out of her tomb, flung her up into the sky to pirouette among the stars, only to hurl her back down into even deeper pits of stygian shadow.
So yeah, she drank. And babbled. And talked a thousand inanities with anyone who would listen. At one point, she fell into a deep discussion about art and magic with a lean, English vampire and his Ukrainian witch of a girlfriend. The English guy claimed that the true love was the ‘poet’s love,’ or love-at-first-sight.
That, Dez took pains to explain, was a hot stream of batshit. Love, she drunkenly assured them, did not exist. Love, her intoxicated mind announced, was a trick of biology, a complex bio-medical, no wait, bio-chemmy, bio-something—anyway, something in the brain, just batshit and biology. The polite young couple excused themselves soon after.
Alone, she found herself at the edge of the swimming pool, looking into the murky depths. Dr. When and the Time-Travelers had made it into the 1970s with an enthusiastic rendition of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen.” The wailing guitar strings sounded like cats yowling in the night. Who knows, if she hung around long enough, they might make it to music she liked before the sun came up.
“Hey, Dez!” The cheery voice rang out like a knife scratching glass—Cherise. “I heard you met some guy and ran off with him! You tripping or what?”
That voice—like fingernails on a chalkboard. She staggered around, focusing blurry eyes on her clan-mate. “You. You caused this.”
“You might say I pushed you two together.” Cherise giggled and kissed something small and squirming in her arms. “You should thank me.”
Dez wobbled forward. “Whaddya gonna do now, push me in the pool?”
“Relax! I wanted show you my new puppy. Isn’t she cute?”
Okay, hold still and concentrate. Something small, furry, and alive squirmed in Cher’s hands. “Is that a … a Dalmatian?”
“Yeah! Some geezer at the fire station sold her to me, the runt of the litter, the last one left. I was so psyched.”
“Is that Little Pr-prasino?”
“That’s what the guy called her. But I named her Satana.”
Something was wrong with this picture. Dammit, sober up. “How did you know about … puppies?”
“Mabon mentioned it. By the way, I met your boy-toy! Real stud, how’d you manage that? I always figured you’d hook up with some total loser, if you ever hooked up at all.”
“Why—why do you have a puppy?”
“Why not? I can have whatever I want. If you ask nice, you can take her for walks and clean up after her. I will be so busy with all my new duties for the Queen.”
Something stirred inside, smoldering. “Little Prasino is your puppy now?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“You—take care of a puppy?”
“I’ll be the best mommy ever—oh, hey! No scratching! Fucking beast.” Anger flashed over Cherise’s face and she flung the dog to the ground. It landed on its paws with a yip and scampered to one side. Cher reared back for a kick.
Before she knew what was happening, Dez launched herself through the air, tackling Cherise around the waist and throwing her to the turf. The two rolled and tussled until Dez got her hands around the other’s neck and started knocking her head on the pavement. “Bitch-Eyes!”
“Get offa me!” Cherise tried to fight back, clawing, snapping, fighting like mad and going for the eyes. The fledgling trained with George every chance she could and knew how to fight dirty. Her fangs dropped.
But something had taken over Dez tonight. She fought like a creature possessed and used her advantage in immortal age and might to crush the fledgling. George’s teaching kicked in: if they’re wounded, use it. Her fists rained down like hammer-blows on Cherise’s injured face. Every bit of anger and frustration came out of her in a furious rush. The theft of her nanorian. Oil-can Mike’s murder. Losing Xerxes. “You snake-hearted bitch!”
A crowd of vampires gathered around, cheering and making bets. It wasn’t until Colin and Armando arrived and yanked her off that it ended. By then, her fury was spent.
Cherise pulled herself to her feet, spitting blood. “For fuck’s sake! Keep the stupid dog.” Mabon led her away.
Armando wrapped his cloak over Dez. “Come on, girl. You’ve had enough to drink. I’ll take you back to the tomb.”
“My puppy!”
“I got it,” Colin said, hefting Little Prasino. “Let’s go.”
What had she done? She’d made a drunken ass of herself, ruined the party. People would talk about it for years. Ugh, she’d turned into a beast. “I’m sorry, Armando. I screwed up again. Tella the Queen I didn’t mean to.”
Armando gave her a squeeze. “What for? You stood up for yourself, showed the other clans you’re a fighter. It’s not a solstice without a dozen brawls, a few affairs, some scandals, and a stabbing or two. I’m proud.”
“Proud. Wow. Then how come I feel like shit?”
Colin chuckled. “You think you feel like shite now? Wait ‘til morning. You’ll be hungover and covered with more bruises than a pub full of sailors. Those are the mornings you say, ‘Never again.’ Then next Saturday night sails around and before you know it, you’re three-sheets into the wind, drinking like a pirate.”
Somehow, through the pain, their camaraderie cheered her. But without Xerxes, it didn’t last. She took Prasino from Colin and squeezed the puppy against her chest.
Chapter 17: Shasta Red
Xerxes
Vallejo offered a wonderful new life, the absolute best. He wanted to live there, couldn’t wait to arrive. Moving was a dream come true. He couldn’t wait to see Mom again. She’d be surprised, but she’d whip up some tiganites before setting him up on a blind date. Candice Giogolopos got divorced and is back in Vallejo working as a hairstylist. Mom, better get some pancakes frying.
He’d spent the entire solstice—s
trange that he thought of June 20 by that obscure name—packing up his Mini Cooper with vital belongings. The rest he donated or gave to friends and neighbors. He didn’t have much left. Moving back to California fit his long-term plan, but something imbued every action with urgency. A voice kept whispering in his mind: Get out of Portland as fast as you can. Strange.
He rose before dawn and drove south down Interstate 5, only stopping for gasoline. By the time he reached the California-Oregon border and was waved through the inspection line—Do you have any fruits or vegetables full of harmful bugs that might damage California’s agricultural industry? No. Okay, go on through!—it wasn’t even noon.
But once he passed the border, the sense of urgency tapered off, and he let off the gas. He’d been speeding too much, not good. Lucky he didn’t get a ticket. It would take another four or five hours to get to Vallejo. Plenty of daylight left, so what was the rush?
He stopped for Mexican food in a little town called Yreka before resuming his southward course. The last few days blurred together. He remembered walking the puppies one last time before hearing about a terrible murder down the block. Later, the guys took him to Crafty’s Brew Pub for a farewell party. The memory brought a grin. Afterward that, things grew hazy. Maybe he’d drank too much. A woman figured into it somehow. He could almost picture her, but not quite. Maybe he’d slept with Jilly the waitress? Unlikely, but nothing else fit.
Something orangish-red dangled below the steering wheel. Funny, it was a new keychain, not one he remembered. It was shaped like a plastic animal character, something from a children’s cartoon, a plump fox or a reddish raccoon. Baffling.
The highway wound on southward, the forests giving way to high, dry land in the remote, north-central part of the state. Then the massive, white peak of Mount Shasta loomed out of the misty horizon, like a primal god slumbering beneath a blanket of snow.
He’d always admired that solitary, mighty mountain, so isolated from the rest of the range, so splendid in repose. Over the years, he’d driven up and down this highway many times, but he’d never stopped to take a good look. Why not? It would only take a moment. He pulled off the highway and onto a scenic overlook.
