by J. T. Bock
Leaning in a little closer without actually touching him, Catrionella closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. With her hands now placed on either side of his head, Moused took this opportunity to duck under her arm and move himself across to the other side of the elevator from her.
She turned slowly to face him again, her back resting against the elevator controls. This separated Moused from accessing them, which had possibly been her intention all along.
“Mon dieu, but you smell absolutely délicieux, mon jeune ami. I was not expecting that. I was not expecting you at all, if truth be told. Given your background, age, hacking skills, gaming obsession and several other things I have read about you, I thought you’d be more…”
“Penelope Garcia?” Moused asked. “I get that a lot.”
“I was going to go for the other one…the one from NCIS…”
“Ah, Abby Sciuto. That look never really worked for me. I think it’s my hair color. Brown just doesn’t scream Goth, does it? I see you’re going for that 1920s, Louise Brooks, silent film look. It looks good on you.”
Catrionella looked at him with some disdain. “I am not going for anything. I was Turned in the 1920s. This has always been my look.”
“Oh. I didn’t think of that. Sorry. I’m not exactly known for my tact or for mastering the skills required to make small talk. Are you now going to lecture me on how great the old days were and how corrupted my generation is etcetera?”
“Only if you’d like me to. Although I will say that you can tell much about a person from the clothes they wear, you know. A lot can be said about how the youth in my day used to dress. Can there really be anything more appealing than a man in a tight jacket with sloping shoulders? Or a man wearing a pair of baggy plus-fours or tailored wide-legged trousers? You youngsters today have no idea how to dress to impress. I am surprised the Master of the Segher House allows his Retinue to represent him in such casual attire.” Catrionella took in his sneakers, jeans and knee-length coat in one long, leisurely, almost-judgmental, look.
“Assistant Ret – and to be fair the coat is Armani and it’s Christmas Eve and technically my day off,” Moused responded. “Also, Reyes Alfonso is officially the Retinue for House Segher.”
“Ah, Maurice, but Monsieur Alfonso is currently making the transition to vampire, n’est pas? That leaves you in charge, doesn’t it?”
“Mr. Alfonso is currently overseas on business. And the name is Moused.”
“Come, come, now Maurice. Do you have something against the name your mother gave to you?” The woman smiled at him again. “Ah-ha,” she continued, “that got the heart racing just a little bit faster, didn’t it? It appears you aren’t too fond of the name Maurice at all, are you?”
“First of all, Catrionella,” Moused said to emphasize the fact she wasn’t the only one who’d done her homework. “While it does sound just a tiny bit better coming from your lips and in your accent, my mother will never be forgiven for naming me after her favorite uncle. The name is Moused and it’s the only one I’ll answer too.”
“Calm down, mon jeune ami, I was only teasing un peu. I think my teasing is preferred over any potential alternative…no?”
“Like eating me for dinner?”
“Qui! C’est ça! I must say, Moused, you are deliciously entertaining for a computer nerd. You may call me Cat.”
“Well, Cat, let’s hope I make it through the next few moments without you discovering how delicious I am firsthand, okay? Why don’t we head up to my office and discuss further what brings you to Segher Technologies.”
Cat laughed heartily, throwing her head back and causing the entire elevator to shake just a little.
Without warning the laughter stopped abruptly and she moved with vamp-speed over to Moused, picked him up by the lapels of his coat, and slammed him down onto his back on the elevator floor. Before he could blink the woman was sitting astride him, her knees pinning his arms to his sides.
“But why would we move from here, mon cheri? After I’ve just gone and made myself more comfortable?” Her immaculately painted red lips twitched and her eyes sparkled devilishly from the small exertion.
Moused, having just had all the air knocked from his lungs, struggled to control his breathing for a moment.
“Oh la la,” Cat continued with a smirk, “It appears I have inadvertently discovered what makes the young Ret’s heart beat a little bit faster - and it has nothing to do with fear…or his aversion to being called Maurice.”
Moused felt his face flushing as he tried to control…other parts of him affected by her actions.
“Assistant Ret, remember?” he breathed out in a low voice.
“And here I was thinking we were becoming friends, Maurice. Are you going to insult me further by continuing to deny that Reyes Alfonso is currently undergoing the Turn? He has not been seen in public for over seven months, mon cheri. What else could keep him away from running Segher affairs for so long, eh?”
“My friends, Catrionella, don’t usually hold me hostage in an elevator.”
“The word ‘hostage’ implies I am looking for something in exchange, Monsieur Thurman.”
Damn, why did the way she pronounced ‘Thurman’ as ‘Turman’ sound so damn cute? Not to mention the way she dropped all the ‘Hs’ from the beginning of her words. ‘Hostage’ became the most adorable-sounding ‘ostage’ and just by virtue of the way it sounded, Moused felt like it was something he kind of liked being…for the moment at least. Damn that French accent!
“I eagerly wait to hear what it is that you do want, Ms. Monsignac. I assume there’s more purpose to this little show of yours than your blatant display of brute force over an embarrassingly weak human, isn’t there? Or perhaps chilling out and listening to Christmas carols in elevators is your thing…?” As he said this, the speakers in the ceiling announced a new song was starting.
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,
Right down Santa Claus Lane
“My dear, dear, Mousey. May I call you Mousey? It is, after all, what your friends call you, n’est pas? I assume it’s a term of endearment?”
“I’ll take anything over Maurice,” Moused replied before redirecting the conversation. “So tell me, Catrionella, I was just doing some reading about you and your… partner… Claude Toussaint. Will your brother be joining us any time soon?”
“Very impressive, mon cheri. There are not many still alive that know his true connection to me.”
“Or your true connection to the Toussaint Family.”
“Quai, c’est vrai. I was married to Albert Monsignac when I was sixteen years old. The marriage did not last long, but I kept the name. I am, by birth, a Toussaint along with my fraternal twin, Claude. Do enlighten me as to what else of interest you have uncovered about me. Or perhaps you’d like to hear about what I’ve discovered about you?” Cat adjusted her position on him a little, as if she were making herself more comfortable. Then she looked down at him expectantly – waiting for his response.
Moused looked up at her in disbelief. Still trying to steady his breathing after being slammed to the ground, he gave her a look that may or may not have conveyed either ‘die in a fire, evil bitch’ or ‘wiggle your lower half just one more time…yep, just there…’
He suspected he was going for the former, but had ended up with the latter.
Looking very amused, and quite a bit pleased with herself, Cat spoke again.
“So, you would prefer me to go first? Pas de problème.
“Maurice ‘Moused’ Thurman, born in Las Vegas, Nevada and raised near the small, abandoned and derelict town of Nowhere, Nevada. Your parents are wealthy cattle rancher Henry Thurman and his wife, Jewel, and you also have an older sister called Diamond. Neither you nor your sister took any interest in the ranch, which has disappointed your father to no end. When you were around eight years old, Louise and Lucas Balak – a brother and sister who inherited the small town from a distant and eccentric relative – m
oved to Nowhere, bringing with them their young ward, Napoleon Charming. You and Napoleon became inseparable friends. Such good friends, that neither discovering he was gay nor that he was a werewolf, along with his ‘Uncle’ Lucas, affected your friendship. I believe Napoleon remains your closest friend even to this day, n’est pas? How am I doing so far?”
“Not too bad. You don’t have any popcorn in that large bag of yours, do you?”
“Très drôle, monsieur. But let me continue. Lucas Balak meets his true-mate, an extremely rare female wolf, and he and this Pierce woman – along with some help from her family and friends – begin what is now known as the Nowhere Pack. Here is where my details are a little…fuzzy? This is a word, no?”
“Yes, fuzzy is a word. An example of it used in a sentence could be: My thought processes went a little fuzzy due to the constricted flow of blood to my brain from having a vampire sitting on me.”
“Ah, an excellent example! Let us continue. Somehow this female wolf has a very close relationship with the Segher House – to Hendrick and his right hand man, Oscar. This relationship is what brings the Pack together with the House, and for the first time in vampire history, a Family aligns with wolves. C’est incroyable! I would never have thought this to be possible!”
“And if someone had told me I would have a Louise Brooks look-alike sitting on me in my own elevator, I would have been a disbeliever too.”
“Pour l’amour de Dieu, again with the ‘Louise Brooks’ thing? I’ll have you know that I had already cut my hair like this long before that dance-hall tramp made the bob so popular.
“Now where was I?” Cat continued. “Oh yes. The Segher House becomes best buddies with the Nowhere Pack and this is how you, a computer hacker and genius, come into contact with vampires – more specifically the Retinue and day walker for the Segher House – Reyes Alfonso. Monsieur Alfonso, seeing the potential in you, makes you an offer you can’t refuse. You will work under him until such a time as you will take his place, and in exchange the House puts you through college, amongst other things. You somehow managed to obtain your undergraduate degree from Columbia University in just over a year and then graduated with an MA and PhD from M.I.T. in a record-breaking three years. All of this done by the time you were twenty-two. Very, very impressive, Monsieur Thurman. Of course now you work full-time for Segher Technologies and are the current Ret and day walker for the Segher House.”
“Assistant Ret. Now that I have suffered through an abridged retelling of my life, perhaps I may ask you one or two things about your own?”
“I would be delighted to answer your questions, mon cheri,” Cat said with a wink.
“I would’ve thought life as a Toussaint Enforcer would be just a little more exotic than say, sitting on Assistant Rets in elevators on Christmas Eve. Have you been ordered to kill me? Because if you haven’t, perhaps you would be so kind as to get up so that I might attempt to redirect the blood flow back in the direction of my hands and legs.”
“I think it might be just a little too soon in our relationship for you to be making blood jokes yet, Mousey.”
“And here I was thinking we were getting on so well,” Moused smiled up at her.
Laughing, Cat scooted off him and sat with her back against the elevator wall.
Moused sat up slowly and stretched out his arms, before moving to rest against the wall adjacent to the one Cat was leaning on. As her knees were raised, allowing her to rest her chin on them, Moused had the room to be able to stretch his legs out in front of him.
“I am obviously not here to kill you,” she said in a soft voice, “otherwise you’d be dead already. But you evidently worked this out for yourself, or one of your werewolf watchdogs would have broken into this elevator by now. I know you must have some sort of device or means of summoning security. It is your business after all,” Cat said with a knowing smile.
“While that may be true,” Moused answered, “I was thinking more about where my death would get you. Not on Hendrick Segher’s good side, that’s for sure. With his resources you can pretty much assume that payback would be a bitch.”
“Are you sure of this? You are just a human after all.” Cat’s twitching lip betrayed the fact she was teasing him…again.
“Human or not, I am a card-carrying member of the Segher Family and Hendrick will take it very personally should so much as a single hair on my head get a split end unexpectedly in your presence. I know this will be hard for you to understand, but he feels the same way about members of the Nowhere Pack too. They are aligned with us and are considered family. Contrary to your Family’s beliefs, it is possible to build solid, personal, long-lasting, relationships outside of the vampire world.”
“Henri would say seeing is believing and only time will tell. Real time, that is. Not what can be measured in a human lifespan.”
“Are you here representing Henri Toussaint?” Moused asked.
“Yes and no,” she answered cryptically, leaning her head back while keeping her eyes locked on his. “You obviously know who I am and who I work for. That in itself is quite impressive.”
“Don’t be too impressed just yet, as I only discovered your identity about an hour ago. I haven’t had time to conduct a thorough background search on you…yet. In the little that I did get a chance to read, before you accosted me in this elevator, enlightened me about rumors going around that the Toussaints are looking to join with another Family. From the glance I took of your financial records, I’d say aligning with a stronger Family is really your only option. Henri Toussaint gave Hendrick a little help when he found himself unceremoniously evicted from his home five years ago, but then publically shunned him when the Segher House made the decision to align, politically, financially and personally with the werewolf pack from Nowhere. The Segher House has had no contact with another Family since this shunning. Due to this, it never occurred to any of us that the Toussaints might consider our House as potential allies. I still may need some convincing if that is indeed why you’re here now. Is that why you’re here now?”
“Well, let’s just say that while it’s true that we are looking to merge with another Family, the Segher House is not at the top of Henri’s list. More accurately, the Segher House isn’t even on the list. Henri is very old and very set in his ways. He entered his ‘Giving In’ years a decade ago, yet he still holds on. He hasn’t left his rooms in twice as long. Maintaining the Toussaint name is all he cares about, despite the fact there are so few of us left. I think he will Give In within the next year and the other Families, knowing this, are circling as if we have an all-you-can-drink blood buffet going on.”
“He’ll want a House with financial backing, but one looking for the prestige of his name then,” Moused said, thinking aloud.
“Exactement. You should see some of the offers coming in – from dregs of vampire society our Family would never even allow ourselves to be in the same room with back in the day. Now here we are, nothing but our name and our honor, forced to consider aligning with the likes of the Santander Family or the McGees.”
“Both of which acquired their wealth through drug running, racketeering, extortion, investment scams and bookmaking,” Moused added, grateful for the first time to Reyes for his incessant grilling over the histories of the other Families.
“Yes, and both are desperate to be considered as more legitimate in the vampire world. The Toussaint name backing them could do this.” Cat sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, giving Moused a few seconds to full out stare at her.
Her cheek bones were high and her lips heart-shaped. The severe lines of the bob cut framed her face like it was a painting. A beautiful, mysterious, exotic painting. A painting that Moused couldn’t seem to stop looking at.
“Do you like what you see, Monsieur Thurman?” she asked without opening her eyes.
“How do you know what I’m looking at?”
“Let’s just say I made a wild guess,” she replied before opening glistening eyes and
staring right back at him.
“Have you finished?” Moused asked calmly.
“Have I finished what?”
“Have you finished with that heap of bull crap you just tried to feed me?”
“Was it the tear-filled eyes? Too much?”
Moused may have imagined it, but he could have sworn he caught a flicker of something flash across Cat’s face. Something that hinted she was possibly relieved – or maybe even impressed – he hadn’t fallen for her story.
“First of all,” Moused continued with a small smile, “Henri Toussaint is not considering Giving In. He may be old, but he’s way too stubborn to take his own life and leave the running of his prestigious Family to the likes of his deranged nephew or a mere female. Yes, he uses you two as his Enforcers – and while that term can mean Head of Security or even assassin, I would assume that where you’re concerned, its meaning leans a little more into the ‘baby-sitting’ category. Henri needs someone who cares about the Family name to keep an eye on Crazy Claude. Who better to do that than his sister? After all, wasn’t it Claude who murdered the sixty-five year-old husband you were forced to marry as a teenager? Separating people from their heads seems to be something of a hobby for your brother, doesn’t it?
“Then there’s your Uncle Henri. He’s too old and too set in his antiquated ways to fully trust handing over the reins of his House to a woman – even if she is the best …woman… for the job. Instead he hangs false hope on Claude, who probably thinks he’s your superior but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. You may let Claude think he takes the lead on everything, but it’s really you that calls the shots. As the smarts behind your little team of… deux… how frustrating it must be to know that Henri realizes this, but yet never gives you your due. Or, are your manipulation skills so honed and fine-tuned by now that you have him under your thumb too?”
“Mon cheri…”
“I’m not finished,” Moused added before she could interrupt him completely. “Despite all the things I’ve mentioned, you still have to adhere to Henri’s prelapsarian way of life, for example, shun the one House that is moving with the times; the one House that’s developing ground-breaking technology that is going to change the face of vampire society as we know it.
