Vampires: The Recent Undead

by Harris, Charlaine; Russell, Karen; Kiernan, Caitlin R. ; Smith, Michael Marshall; Armstrong, Kelley; Caine, Rachel; Sizemore, Susan; Vaughn, Carrie; Black, Holly

  “Well,” said Dahlia. “Crap.”

  Dahlia was extremely strong, but extricating herself cost another hour. By the time her leg slid free, she was close to exhaustion. As she rested, she looked down at herself. Ugh! She was naked and streaked with dirt, soot, blood, and pale, powdery dust. She held up a strand of her long, wavy hair, normally coal black. In the dim light, it looked white. She’d been there awhile. How much time before dawn? She made herself move.

  The corpse was that of a uniformed hotel maid. Her neck had been broken in the explosion. Since she hadn’t bled much, Dahlia was able to tank up. The blood of the dead was even worse than the bottled blood substitute that had enabled vampires to become legal citizens of the United States. The vampires could truthfully say they no longer needed to feed from live humans. Of course, they still enjoyed it much more.

  Dahlia lay across the maid’s body, gathering strength for the climb up through the rubble. For a black moment, her normal confidence wavered, and she wasn’t sure she could manage it.

  “Hello!” called a hoarse voice from above. “This is Captain Ted Fortescue, Rhodes Fire Department! Anyone alive down there?”

  She thought about remaining silent. Then she bit her lip. Dahlia was very proud, but she was also a survivor of no mean skill. “I’m here,” Dahlia called up out of the darkness.

  “Human or vamp?”

  “Vampire,” she said defiantly, even though she feared he’d leave her where she was when he found out she wasn’t a breather.

  “Ma’am, how hungry are you?”

  He’d been coached. Good. “I’ve had the blood of a corpse. I will not attack you.”

  “’Cause we can have Red Stuff O-Positive ready when we raise you . . . ”

  “Not necessary.”

  “There’s a corpse?”

  “Two, Ted Fortescue. A vampire, though he’s mostly gone. A human woman dead before I found her.”

  “We gotta take her word for it,” said a lighter voice.

  “Can you grip a rope if we send it down?” Fortescue called.

  “Yes,” Dahlia said. “If I try to climb, the ruins will shift.” Humans were going to save her. Humans. Though Dahlia hadn’t wanted to build her character, after all these hundreds of years it was apparently going to be built.

  “Okay, here comes the rope.”

  The lifeline uncoiled about a yard from Dahlia. She pulled herself to it with her right arm. Gripping the pieces of wreckage that looked most firmly lodged, Dahlia pushed herself erect. Luckily, she was a very small woman. She seized the rope with her right hand. Gritting her teeth, she wrapped her right leg around the rope and called, “Pull!”

  After a swaying, painful ascent, Dahlia Lynley-Chivers emerged into a nighttime landscape of horror.

  One glance at Dahlia had Ted Fortescue bellowing for a blanket. The captain looked almost as battered as she did. His brown face was as dirty as hers, his close-shaved hair white from the powdery dust. Above his mask, his wide brown eyes were shocked.

  Dahlia found his smell enticing. She needed some blood very soon. But her need was drowned by the humiliation of having to stand with the man’s support until her blanket was passed up. When he’d wrapped her in it with impersonal hands, Fortescue handed Dahlia down to the next human in line until she reached the base of the mountain of debris. The last person in the chain directed Dahlia to a line of humans waiting on the nearest clear sidewalk. She said, “Those are people willing to give you a drink, ma’am. Please try not to go overboard.”

  “They volunteered?” Dahlia tried not to sound disbelieving.

  “Yes, ma’am. A lot of people are upset that the Fellowship of the Sun took such an extreme action against your people.”

  “The Fellowship is taking responsibility?”

  “Yes. I guess they figured a vampire conference would be a prime target. Some of their own people hired onto the hotel staff. But they didn’t feel the necessity to tell their fellow humans to get out before it blew. In fact, their news release says it served the staff right for serving vampires. Not too many people are happy with the Fellowship.”

  “My home is here in Rhodes. Is there a way I can get a ride to my house?”

  “Get your drink, if you want it, and then head over to that other line over there. They’ll help you out.”

  “Thank you for your courtesy,” Dahlia said stiffly. “Can you help me over to the donors? My arm and leg are broken.”

  Captain Ted Fortescue had descended from the mountain of rubble by that time, and he overheard Dahlia’s words.

  “Jesus Christ, why didn’t you tell me?” Ted Fortescue took Dahlia in his arms and carried her to the donor line on the sidewalk.

  “Thanks so much,” Dahlia said through clenched teeth. “Where do you serve?”

  “We’re the Thirty-four Company from the station at the corner of Almond and Lincoln. You gonna be okay, now?”

  She assured him she could stand on one leg while she fed. He needed to get back to his work, so he left her there. Dahlia watched him walk away.

  For a short time, she’d loved a werewolf. He hadn’t been exactly human, of course, though close enough to cause her qualms. Dahlia had always felt the same kind of contempt for humans that most humans feel for Brussels sprouts. They were good for her health, but she didn’t like their proximity.

  The donor was a short woman with long white hair. Her name was Sue, she told Dahlia, and Sue held Dahlia’s hand during the feeding. If Dahlia had been herself, she would have been put off by the woman’s prattle about “we’re all one family.” She didn’t like her food to talk. But tonight was different.

  Having fed, Dahlia was able to hobble to the impromptu cab rank, where a free voucher got her a ride to her home. The vampires who lived in Cedric’s mansion, already beside themselves with grief and rage, were glad to see a survivor come through the door. All Dahlia wanted to do was shower and crawl into her own bed in her own room in the windowless basement.

  The next night, all the Rhodes vampires met in the mansion’s common room. At least fifty vampires from the central United States had died in the bombing, the newspapers said. Their deaths were not the worst part of the attack, to this assemblage. The worst part was the loss of face. Their city had been targeted, and the attack obviously had been planned well in advance—but they had not detected it or forestalled it, though the plan had been devised and carried out by humans.

  “We have been dishonored,” Cedric, Sheriff of Rhodes, said. Every vampire in the city had been present at the meeting, from those who had their own homes to those who lived in the nest. Even Dahlia’s friend Taffy, married to a werewolf, had been present.

  Cedric turned his large blue eyes on Dahlia. Pink tears glistened in their corners. “Our sister Dahlia nearly met her final death and had to be rescued by humans.”

  “I accepted human help because it cut short the time I was trapped,” Dahlia said, her back absolutely straight and her face utterly composed, though it was an effort.

  “We must meet this challenge directly,” said Cedric. “This is our city. Now we are at war.”

  The vamps of Rhodes had not been at war since Prohibition, when some bloodsuckers from Chicago, frightened away by the aggression of Al Capone’s henchmen, had tried to move into the tunnels below Rhodes. They’d survived one night.

  “Tell us what to do,” Taffy said. Taffy was tall and buxom, her physique emphasized by the slut-biker outfit her husband, Don, favored.

  “Taffy, you and Dahlia must visit the headquarters of the Fellowship. Get in by whatever means necessary. Look for membership lists. We want to know their leaders.”

  “This will have been done by the police,” Taffy said.

  “And will the police share with us what they found?” Cedric had a point.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to bring the whoresons to justice,” Dahlia said carefully, “but the lists will be on computers, and Taffy and I are not conversant with these machines.”

/>   “One of the Arkansas vampires is adept with computers, but he was burned so badly he’ll take time to heal,” Cedric said. “Wait! I know someone.” He whipped out his cell phone again. It was the one piece of modern technology that thoroughly entranced the sheriff. “His name is Melponeus, he’s a half demon, and his services do not come cheap.” Cedric, who was cheapness personified except when it came to maintaining his pride, grasped the financial nettle firmly.

  The half demon was at the mansion within thirty minutes. He was a short man with reddish skin, a head of thickly curling chestnut hair, and pale eyes the color of snowmelt. When Dahlia greeted him at the door, those pale eyes showed instant admiration. Dahlia, though used to this, was nevertheless pleased. She was glad she’d worn her pink three-piece suit with the pencil skirt.

  “I hope you’re as good with modern technology as your reputation has it,” she said tartly and beckoned him to follow her to the common room.

  “I love a good, strong vampire woman,” Melponeus said. “Such a woman, if she is willing, can take a lot of . . . energetic activity.”

  “I am several hundred years old,” Dahlia said. “I assure you, I can take anything you could imagine handing out.” She didn’t turn to look at the half demon, but her lips curled in a little smile.

  “You’re older than Cedric,” Melponeus observed. “But you’re not the sheriff.”

  “I don’t want to be,” Dahlia said. “And some think I’m not diplomatic enough.”

  “I remember your name, now. It was you who broke the newscaster’s arm?”

  “She wouldn’t stop asking me questions, after I’d warned her,” Dahlia said reasonably. “I told her I would break her arm if she didn’t leave me alone.”

  “Foolish woman,” Melponeus said.

  “Deserved what she got,” Dahlia agreed. She was thinking that after the honor of the nest had been restored, she might find out what it felt like to kiss lips as full and hot as the half demon’s. Since hers were always cold, the sensation might be interesting.

  Cedric greeted Melponeus with appropriate dignity, mentioned a price, and Melponeus agreed to accompany Dahlia and Taffy. When the three were setting out, Dahlia realized no one knew the location of the Fellowship’s organizational offices. Taffy had to look it up in the phone book. “This is the kind of thing detective novels don’t cover,” Taffy complained.

  “You haven’t read a detective novel since Agatha Christie quit writing,” Dahlia said. “Don’t whine.”

  “She’s quit writing?” Taffy was really put out. “When did that happen?”

  “She died. Probably fifty years ago.”

  “And why should I know that?”

  “There have been plenty of novels since then. You should read some of them,” said Dahlia, who seldom read herself . “We’ve got the address. Let’s pay them a visit.” In Taffy’s Trans Am, they drove west into the old part of Rhodes.

  They left the Trans Am on Trask, which ran a block south of Field Street, the location of the modest storefront housing the Fellowship headquarters. The small businesses in the area had already closed for the night. The occasional pedestrian hurried along, since the evening was chilly. The three approached Field through a filthy alley two blocks west of their goal. Since they could all remember times when filth and debris were the norm, this didn’t bother them. The two vampires and the half demon hung in the shadows of a trash bin while they evaluated the Fellowship headquarters.

  “Cameras,” Melponeus murmured.

  “I see them,” Dahlia said. There were cameras all around the building. After a low-voiced discussion, Dahlia returned to Trask Street and ran silently east until she was pretty sure she was in line with the Fellowship building. She slid into the next alleyway and headed north. About halfway down the alley, Dahlia found a nice dark patch she didn’t believe human eyes could penetrate. She crouched and gathered herself She launched herself upward, landing neatly on the roof. Dahlia was confident that even the Fellowship wouldn’t think of pointing a camera upward. She was right.

  After a quick smile of self-congratulation, she took off her designer heels and made a great leap, landing across the street on the roof of the two-story building housing the Fellowship. She swung her legs over. Her fingers and toes clamped into the little spaces between the lines of brick, and she worked her way to the first camera. With a quick twist, she removed it from its mounting. She pitched the camera onto the roof, then did the same with all the others. Then she put on her shoes again.

  She waved at Taffy and Melponeus, who began trotting toward the Fellowship. Dahlia leaped down from the roof to join them, landing on the sidewalk as lightly as a feather, though she was wearing three-inch heels.

  “Good job,” said Taffy, and Dahlia inclined her head.

  “I’m impressed,” Melponeus said, looking at Dahlia’s legs. “Taffy, let’s see who’s minding the store.”

  Taffy knocked on the door, which bore the distinctive Fellowship symbol—a sun, represented by a circle with wavy rays leading outward. Within the circle was a pyramid.

  “What does the pyramid mean?” Taffy asked.

  “Earth for Humans, Eradication of Vampires, Eternal Victory,” Melponeus said. “Kind of ironic that the hotel was the same shape. Maybe that sparked the plan.”

  A young man came to the door. Through the thick glass (bulletproof?) the three could see he was a reedy Asian guy in his twenties with a soul patch.

  Taffy gave him her best smile and said, “Young man, I want to come in.”

  If she hadn’t called him “young man,” he might have unlocked the door, because Taffy had a great no-fangs smile, and her tight leather pants added a powerful incentive. But the “young” roused his suspicion, since Taffy looked (at most) twenty-five. He began punching numbers on a cell phone.

  “Look at me,” Dahlia said in a voice that managed to compel, even through the glass. And he did, no matter what he’d been taught.

  “Open the door,” she said. And her voice was so reasonable that the young man did just that.

  Melponeus immediately set to work looking at the Fellowship computers. Dahlia sat opposite Asian Soul Patch at a table covered with coffee stains and notepads.

  She said, “What is your name?”

  “Jeffrey Tan.”

  “You’re Fellowship?”

  “I hate vampires. I killed one myself.”

  “Did you really?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  While Taffy searched the office building and Melponeus began copying files onto a disc, Dahlia asked a few more questions. Jeffrey Tan had been dating a vampire, a girl he’d known before she went over. They’d been going at it hot and heavy one night, and she’d bitten him. Terrified, he’d stabbed her with a handy wooden chopstick. (Unfortunately for the young vampire, Jeffrey’s mother had brought him a traditional meal that day.)

  In a flash, Jeffrey’s lover had been shriveling and flaking on his bed.

  He had to live with himself, and the easiest way to do that was to find other people who thought he’d been perfectly justified.

  Dahlia, who’d heard this sort of story many times before, had a fleeting moment of sympathy for Jeffrey, since she’d become reacquainted with panic the night before. But she squelched the moment ruthlessly. She asked, “Did you help bomb the Pyramid?”

  “No, but I applaud the courage and determination of our soldiers,” he said unconvincingly.

  “Yes, slaughtering people who are asleep is brave. Do you know who planned and executed this action?”

  “They’re hiding, getting ready,” he said, his eyelids flickering furiously. “The vamp lovers in the police department and the fire department who rescued vampires, they’ll die next.”

  “Where are these heroes hiding?” Dahlia asked.

  Melponeus, who’d been looking at the screen of one of the office computers, said, “I think I may have the membership list,” at nearly the same moment as Taffy pulled a large file out of the filin
g cabinet.

  “Here’s a list of the properties they lease or own,” Taffy said, as Melponeus began downloading the list. “Oh, I checked out the basement. No one there.”

  A phone began ringing. Jeffrey Tan reached for it, but Dahlia stayed his hand. “What does the phone call mean?” she asked.

  “I told them the cameras went out. They’re calling to check on me,” he said, and he seemed to be coming out of his trance. His gaze began flickering from Taffy to Dahlia to Melponeus.

  “You said the Fellowship was going after firefighters?” Dahlia had a sudden misgiving.

  “We have pictures of every traitor who worked the rescue at the Pyramid.”

  Melponeus said, “We’d better hustle.”

  “Shall I kill him?” Taffy asked.

  “No, that would be too much of a red flag,” Dahlia said. “Though I’d enjoy it very much. Look at me, Jeffrey!”

  He couldn’t disobey, but he was struggling.

  “We were here to check for your leaders,” Dahlia said, gripping his chin to force his attention on her. “They weren’t here, so we left full of frustration.”

  “Yes,” he said, his face slack again.

  The three left the building as quickly and quietly as they’d entered. In silent accord, Dahlia and Taffy flanked Melponeus and held him, leaping to the top of the building. The three made their getaway across the roofs. By the time they’d gone two blocks, cars were parking in front of the Fellowship office.

  “That was almost too easy,” Dahlia said, on their return to the mansion. She and Taffy were drinking Red Stuff, and Melponeus was sipping coffee, very strong and very black. Cedric had come to the common room to listen to their report. “They left one human, and such a puppy, to guard the office? When they’d have to figure we’d be looking?”

  “Humans do underestimate us,” Taffy said. “Their thinking’s limited.”

  “And we underestimate them,” Dahlia snapped. “Look who wiped out over fifty vampires at once. Even that puppy killed his girlfriend with a chopstick.”