by J. F. Lewis
“And now?”
“Now he does not die.”
“So he sticks around for a few more years? So what?”
“Ever.”
“Excuse me.” I sat up straighter, all of my attention on the demon as he steered us off the interstate again.
“Eric Courtney never dies and in time becomes a hybrid of the man he once was and the thing he has become. If that is allowed to come to pass, then it will render countless prophesies incorrect.”
“And how does she know all of this?”
“She is a Nefario.”
“So.” I ran the possibilities over in my head, chewing my lip as I did so. “She wants me to work for her to keep me from working for Eric?”
“And help you avoid utter destruction.”
I gave a little grunt as he took a sharp turn into an alley, the inertia shoving me up against the door. He hit the brake hard, bouncing me off the back of the seat and bringing the cab to a screeching halt. I’d been so caught up in the conversation I’d stopped paying attention to the route. We were in an area of town I didn’t recognize. It sure wasn’t near the Artiste Unknown.
Two demons with dog heads, leather wings, and big axes stepped out of the adjoining buildings into the alley. After the first set came out, two more followed, and two more after them. “If I say no, then I get to play with the puppies?”
“Yeah.” He looked back over the seats at me, back to easygoing cabbie guy. “Sorry about that. I’m just the messenger.”
My skin streaked black, a sensation like lover’s breath—no, more specific than that—as though Eric’s breath on my skin, cool and steady, chased the black. I felt stretched open, as I grew. Uber vamp wings burst through the cab’s rear window and I stood up through the ceiling, like shrugging out of an old jacket.
I killed the messenger first. A swift slash of my claws and he was headless, the violet glow that poured from my eyes turning his blood from light brown to muddied purple. Heat built up in my piercings, uncomfortable, but not as bad as the fierce sizzle I knew I’d get when I changed back. My uber vamp form isn’t what it feels like to be Eric, but it’s as close as I can get. Channeling this kind of power through a mortal body is like riding the devil’s own stallion. It kicks and bucks. Too much sound and fury, but I’d practiced a time or two, so it didn’t get away from me.
Faster than Eric, I took flight. Wind from my pursuers tickled the back of my neck and I knew where they were without looking. The uber vamp knew. We were like little kids playing tag—very scary, dangerous children. I was still human, still alive despite the boost, and I knew I’d be easily dispatched. Each beat of my heart felt as if it might shake me to pieces. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.
An axe swung too close and I spiraled away. There was no need to fight them. A fight would have wasted precious uber vamp energy, and my supply was limited. I let them chase me through downtown, swooping in and around buildings until I saw the Artiste Unknown and turned on the speed in earnest. A block away from Winter’s club, they broke off pursuit. Lady Scrytha could not buy my soul with threats. Winter and his cronies were set up on the roof as if in wait for me. I landed, then transformed.
They applauded, but not for me, and then I understood. They’d been waiting for me. He’d known. He’d bet on it.
“I won again,” Winter explained.
I nodded, meaning to say something snarky, but caught up in the effort not to flinch at the hot-out-of-the-dryer warmth of my piercings. Ow. Ow. Hot.
“Now.” Winter greeted me with a smile. “Let’s talk about getting you to Paris. All you have to do is keep Eric there for seven days and we’ll be even. Magbidion showed you how to alter a vampire’s memory, yes?”
13
ERIC:
OLD BOLD SOLDIERS
When flying to Paris from abroad, the truly trendy undead traveler chooses to arrive at Orly. It’s smaller than Charles de Gaulle International and since European cities don’t use a Veil of Scrythax, as far as I know, I guess it helps to keep the supernatural under wraps.
“Isn’t this awesome?” Tabitha kissed me on the cheek, the warmth lingering there long after she headed off down the aisle to disembark. I fumbled with Tabitha’s suitcases, my single bag hanging around my neck dogtag style. Beatrice carried her own bag. She’d packed conservatively, like me.
“It’s a better trip than last time,” I said. Tabitha didn’t hear me, but Beatrice did.
“You’ve been to France?”
“Yes.” I tottered down the aisle sideways, crablike, trying not to bump the bags against the seats. Phil’s flight staff hovered nearby, anxious to help carry, but I didn’t want their help.
“Did you fly into Charles de Gaulle?”
“Didn’t fly.” My bag snagged on the arm of a seat, and I had to duck and swing my head to get it loose again.
“By boat? That must have been nice. I’ve never been on a cruise.”
“Me either.”
“But you came by boat?”
“Yes.”
“Eric.” Beatrice came to a stop, but I pushed on. Her breath caught in her throat, and I heard her heart rate increasing. “Were you alive or undead when you last visited France?”
“I was alive.”
“And the ship you were on . . . it didn’t land at a port, did it?”
“Not exactly.” I reached the end of the aisle and looked down the steps. Tabitha was standing at the bottom talking to three humans. She still looked adorable in her yellow sundress and strappy white heels, but her mood had soured. I couldn’t hear what she was saying because of the magic soundproofing Phil had layered onto his plane, but she wasn’t happy.
“Where did you land?” Beatrice asked.
“Normandy.” I walked down the steps. The three men weren’t wearing uniforms. Halfway down, the sound kicked in.
“I’m sorry, mademoiselle, but you and your master will have to board the plane and return to America. Europe is closed to you.”
The speaker was tall and dark-haired. He even wore sunglasses at night, just like that Corey Hart song. The earpiece in his ear made me think Secret Service, but his accent was French. Next to him, a blond in jeans and a “Born in the USA” T-shirt smoked a cigarette, paying more attention to the ground or a spot in the distance than to what was going on next to him.
I followed his gaze and saw a group of mercs clad in riot gear covered with runes and crosses, symbols from several religions. He gave them a subtle shake of his head, which I took to mean “not yet,” and took another drag off the cigarette. His face was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Up close, the third “man” was obviously either a woman dressing to minimize her curves or the most successfully androgynous man I’d even seen. A little closer and I inhaled her scent. Definitely a woman. She caught me sniffing and rolled her eyes.
“Just kill them.” She had a German accent. I didn’t like her.
“Already dead.” I dropped the suitcases on the tarmac and unslung the bag from around my neck. “Besides, you can’t destroy me.”
“You may be an Emperor, but I assure you, we can destroy you. It may be difficult to figure out where on the plane or in your luggage you’ve hidden your memento mori, but—”
“I didn’t bring it.”
She scoffed. It was a very cute scoff. “Only an idiot or a madman would travel abroad leaving their greatest weakness and their greatest strength—”
“Then I’m an idiot.” I dropped my bag next to the suitcases. “Now that we have that cleared up, why don’t you explain to me why it is that I can’t honeymoon in Paris?”
“Corey Hart” opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when the guy in the Springsteen T-shirt spat out his cigarette and shoved his way between his two compatriots. “No way in hell you’re that Eric Courtney.” He looked at me closely, sizing me up. His eyes glazed over, and the other two instinctively steadied him. “You are him!” Eyes refocusing, he shook off the others. “Thumper, how the
hell did you wind up a vampire, you old son of a bitch?”
He took my hand and clapped me on the shoulder. This man obviously knew me, was glad to see me even though I was a vampire. I stared at his brown eyes and the tiny scar on his jawline, and knew that I knew him, too, but his name wouldn’t come. I wanted to call him Carl, but that wasn’t the right name.
“You know this vampire, James?” the tall guy asked.
“Hell, yes, I know him, Luc.” He slapped my shoulder again. “I’m sure I’ve told you about Thumper.”
“Thumper?” Tabitha gave me a quizzical look.
“They used to call me Bible Thumper.” Finding the memory was hard, but it was there, buried deep under decades of misuse. “James must be from my old unit.”
“But he looks young,” Tabitha said.
“They’re immortals,” Beatrice said from the bottom of the steps. She stood there holding her bag. I wondered briefly what it felt like to be the only human in the bunch.
“What?” I looked at her. “Like true immortals?”
“Vampires may run the United States, Eric.” She took a place next to the suitcases. “But the immortals run Europe.”
“So you don’t let vampires into Europe?” I rubbed my fingers over my eyes. “You’d think Lord Phillip would have mentioned that one.”
“No,” the German immortal said, “we allow vampires, but only under strict regulations. European vampires are allowed themselves and three offspring. After twenty-five years of unlife, unless their sire releases them earlier, Kings and Lords may petition the Council to establish their own households. After fifty years of unlife, Knights may petition to leave the service of their rightful masters, but they are only allowed one offspring.”
She smiled a cruel smile. “Vampires that do not abide by these rules are destroyed. As you should be.”
“So . . . what?” I looked at Tabitha, then back at Frau Krautenstein. “She look like three offspring to you?”
James shook his head. “No, Eric, but based on your aura, she is your fifth.”
I counted them off on my fingers. “Lisa. Nancy. Irene. Greta. The guy . . . what’s his name . . . K-something.” I put that finger back down. “But he’s dead so he doesn’t count. And Tabitha makes five.”
“One of your get has formally petitioned the council and been acknowledged in her own right,” Luc told me, “but that still leaves you with four. If we granted you access to Europe, then you’d be bound by our laws and we’d have to attempt to destroy you.” He sighed and gestured to Tabitha. “And as lovely as your new bride may be, we’d be forced to end her, too.” Frowning, he turned back to me. “You would simply re-form at your memento mori, true, but we have no desire for your honeymoon to end in such despair, so instead we are banning you from—”
“What happens if your sire has released you?” Tabitha interrupted.
James grinned. “If your sire releases you, and the Council acknowledges your independent status, you don’t count against your sire’s total. You still can’t make any offspring until you’ve been around for twenty-five years and petitioned the Council again, but for now, both you and Thumper there would be in the clear.”
“Then I guess I need to petition the Council, because Eric let me go back in Void City before we got married.”
“I did?”
“You said . . .” She closed her eyes as if it would help her remember. “‘That’s bullshit. I don’t own you and I don’t own any of your crap. If that’s what you’re worried about you can tell everybody I said you’re free or released or whatever high society pricks call it.’” Her eyes opened, and they were sparkling.
“Like he would acknowledge such a statement—” the German began.
“Are you saying I’m not a man of my word, Fritz?”
“Whoa, Thumper.” James grabbed my shoulder, pulling me aside. “Ix-nay on the itz-Fray. Aarika’s good people. She helped the Allies in the war. She’s a cold fish, but you can’t—”
“Gotcha.” I pulled away from him and stepped toward Aarika. “Sorry.” I held out my hand. “My bad. That was uncalled for.”
She took it, but slowly. “Apology accepted . . . Thumper.”
I laughed, just a chuckle, but enough to show there were no hard feelings. “Fair enough. Now how do we get my bride out of my tally so that I’ll be back in compliance?” I slid my hand around Tabitha’s waist and kissed her on the cheek. She flushed with warmth and I didn’t let go. “My wife wants to see the Eiffel Tower and I have a sire to kill.”
“You want to kill Lisette?” James started. “Okay, there are a few other rules you ought to know about.” Great. Did every immortal in Europe know who my sire was? I wondered briefly if they knew what color underwear I was wearing, decided they probably did, and rolled my eyes.
14
ERIC:
CHARLEY V IS ALIVE!
I don’t know what I expected, but riding in the back of a van (minibus to you Frenchies out there) from the airport to some ruined old castle at Vincennes wasn’t it. Tabitha was glued to the window, but I was preoccupied by a growing sense of discomfort. Beatrice noticed, but didn’t know what to do about it. She took my hand, holding it to her breast, not in a cop-a-feel sort of way, but in the feel-my-heart-beat-and-remember-I’m-here-if you-need-to-feed sort of way.
“Are you hungry, Eric?” Her blue-gray eyes were clouded, her face framed by fiery red tresses that made her look a little too much like Marilyn for comfort. Her skin was hot in the way that the flesh of the living is to us dead folks. She wore a peasant top that clung to her form and drew my eye even though I was trying not to notice. Keeping eye contact, she guided my hand between her legs to the flesh above her femoral artery, my favorite feeding spot.
“Yes, but not now. We don’t have room and I’m edgy.”
“I noticed.” She left my hand where it was and began gently but firmly pressing her hands against my chest, trying to keep my body temperature up. Vampires are always in a better mood when we’re warm, and if I wouldn’t feed, Bea wanted to give me the next best thing. If it had been Rachel doing that, Tabitha would have gotten all pissed off, but Beatrice isn’t into me like Rachel is, so there’s no threat. Plus there’s the whole not being her little sister thing.
“I brought some snacks if you want to watch me eat something.”
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, a human with a package, and my claws came out, abrading the tender skin under my fingernails as they grew. Beatrice winced as my talons scratched a line across her thigh. I hadn’t drawn blood, but it looked painful.
A familiar double burst of discomfort in my upper jaw announced the deployment of my fangs as well, all for nothing more than a guy carrying a long thin package late at night. I’d read him as a threat, a man with a rifle. I’d almost shouted “Gun!”
Seeing James again, being back in France, being off the magic for the first time in fifty years—it all had me feeling the way I felt when I came here as a young soldier. I was jumping at shadows.
My pulse raced briefly, and Bea felt it.
“Eric?”
“I don’t know.” My heartbeat stopped. “I keep expecting . . .”
“What?”
“I keep thinking somebody’s going to take a shot at me.”
“Who’d take a shot at you?” Tabitha called over her shoulder, not looking away from the window, nose still pressed against the glass. She didn’t want to miss a thing.
“Nazis?” Bea asked the question.
I nodded with embarrassment.
“Nazis?” Tabitha snorted. “That’s stupid. Why would he be worried about Nazis?”
One moment I was on my own side of the car, the next I was fang-deep in Tabitha’s jugular and the van was on its side. Bea was pressed against my back, unleashing a torrent of calming phrases (“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. Calm down, baby. She didn’t mean anything. Shhh. Calm down.”). Tabitha held very still, whispering a steady stream of ap
ologies (“I’m sorry. What’d I do? I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”).
The night air blew in through rent metal where something (I’m guessing the uber vamp’s wings) had thrust through and forcibly ejected the doors and bent the frame.
“Gott in Himmel!” It was Aarika’s voice and the air shimmered as she spoke. The van vanished and our surroundings changed. The city was still there, but it looked different, younger. “Der Amerikanische Vampir ist bescheuert!”
“What the hell was that, Thumper?” James stood transformed, still human but wearing a suit of all black modern body armor (helmet included). He wielded a sword two-handed, and from my angle it looked like the blade curved a touch near the end. There was a 9mm in a holster on his thigh, but I was more concerned about the two custom stakes with combat knife-style grips that were holstered on his belt.
I released my grip on Tabitha’s throat, withdrawing the fangs as gently as possible. “I’m sorry,” I announced to everyone, but mostly to Tabitha. “I have blackouts and I—”
“Get off.” Tabitha pushed me with vampire strength, and I landed on my feet.
“I’ll see to the minibus,” Luc said. I turned toward the sound. Luc vanished, but I got a glimpse of metal armor, like in an old King Arthur movie, as he faded.
Aarika hadn’t drawn any weapons at all, but her stance spoke of combat readiness: arms up in what looked like a defensive guard’s posture; feet apart, in line with her shoulders. Her eyes were blue and angry, but I found myself staring past her at the buildings. What had been an urban metropolis now looked like something out of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. All signs of modern roadwork were gone. The grass was green and the air smelled better than it did back home, even in the national park.
“Hunh.” Blood dripped from my lips. Tabitha’s blood. “You okay, Tabitha?” The wound at her throat closed quickly. Flesh knit itself back together, and in three or four seconds her skin was marred only by a light coating of blood.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” She touched her hand to her neck and pulled it away, eyeing the blood, oblivious to the change in our surroundings. “You could have fed from me if you wanted. I wouldn’t have cared. I like it when you feed on me. You didn’t have to jump me and wreck the damn van!”
