The Lesser Dead

by Christopher Buehlman

  First thing I want to say about old vampires is that they all get weird. I don’t know how he was back when he was wearing a pigtail under that pointy brass hat he showed me and shooting traitors in the horse, but now? Like an old dragon sitting on money. They say Jews are stingy, but this guy wouldn’t accept a collect call from Jesus on Easter morning. He was friends with John Valentine, which might have been the last time he was friends with anybody. His relationship with my old mentor was the only reason I ever saw inside his tall, narrow brick house in Greenwich Village, and that was in 1940 or so. He’s still in the same house, which is only maybe four blocks from my old house, how’s that for creepy? Moldy old vampire in the neighborhood where I grew up, I probably sang Christmas carols outside his door. Big shade trees in front of that house, servants upstairs, nobody on the ground floor, and he had the coolest basement you ever saw. Had a basement under the basement nobody got to see and that’s where he coffined up and kept his treasure. I think he had tunnels going out under the village.

  After Valentine cooked, Messer didn’t have any use for me and that was okay by me. When Margaret decided to go underground like fifteen years ago, she found me in the Warehouse District basement apartment I was renting and we told him, asked him to join us. He said no. We were sitting in the basement library on a couch almost as nice as Margaret’s, surrounded by swords and pole-arms and oldey-timey maps on the walls, this guy loved a map. His tall brass hat and Prussian-blue uniform hung in a glass case, all lit from below like in a museum. The uniform really brought home how big the guy was. It was jarring that he had been so massive even at twenty years old, even back when everybody had little tiny shoes and chairs like for dolls, when a shrimp like me was average-sized. No wonder he didn’t want to go into the tunnels. I wondered if he even could get small. Probably not very.

  He said, “It is undignified to live in the sewers and unsafe to live under the trains.”

  Did I mention this guy had a mustache? Huge fucking mustache on him, like Burt Reynolds, only sandy-red. Probably used to twirl it on the ends back in the day.

  “What do you mean, unsafe?” Margaret asked.

  “Mrs. McMannis, I mean that it is not safe,” he said, a little crazy in the eyes. “Vampires have disappeared down there, many vampires, as anyone of a certain age can tell you. Your youth and enthusiasm are attractive”—it sounded like attractiff—“but tunnels are for vermin.”

  An awkward moment passed. “Is there any other way in which I might assist you?” he said, leaning forward and putting his hands on his seat like it was time for us all to stand up now.

  “No,” she said, a little pissed. Truth was, he didn’t need us. He had been doing just fine for a very long time, and if Margaret thought organizing underground was smart, she could hardly say his way was dumb.

  Oldest, richest monster in a city of monsters, and as big as Mean Joe Green to boot.

  “Then it is my pleasure to wish you both a good evening,” he said, just like Dracula, if Dracula were a kraut. The new servant opened a white-gloved hand and gestured at the stairs. His old servant, back in 1940, had been a light-skinned colored that could have been mute for all I knew; this 1960s servant was a young German-sounding guy, though he didn’t talk much either. If listening to a clock tick was your idea of a good time, this was the house for you. Anyway, quiet young German guy showed us up and out, opening a door for us with another “Good evening.” Handsome guy, kind of Luftwaffe-looking. Both of the servants had been real handsome. I think maybe Wilhelm the subway-hating Hessian swung AC/DC, just a feeling I got.

  But kids?

  I never saw him being into kids.

  HUNGRY

  “Those kids know how to eat,” Billy said. Luna, Billy, and me were sitting in the Empire Diner in Chelsea drinking coffee just before tucking in. There was already light in the sky, just that little bit so you can’t call it blue yet, just like dark with a glow to it. No sweat, though, there was a manhole cover just outside and the traffic wasn’t bad. I had money and tip lying on the ticket. We could be underground within sixty seconds; by the time somebody notices one of us slipping under, all three of us are under, and what are you going to do? Call the cops?

  The waitress came by; she hadn’t come by for a while and Luna said it was because I hadn’t been remembering to blink, only now I think I was doing it too much, but still she came and poured a little more thick black coffee in my cup. We were all filling our bellies with warm java so we could sleep better. We were all hungry. I was so tired I just watched the steam rise from my cup and said, “Yeah. That they do.”

  Watching the six of them nearly peel the Bakers the other night had convinced me we needed to split them up, so Luna had taken Camilla, Cvetko had taken Duncan and Alfie, and Billy had taken Manu and Peter. I got stuck with Sammy.

  Cvetko was with the kids already, getting them squared away in their little metal bunks.

  Billy said, “Manu ain’t too bad, but my man Pete? He starts bitching and moaning after an hour or two. He don’t take much, but he takes often.”

  Luna nodded. “The girl’s the same. We almost got caught because she bit a guy on the subway, said she couldn’t wait. I charmed three people who got on while she was doing it. But, no, she doesn’t take much.”

  I was thinking about Sammy. Little redheaded Sammy with a belly like a camel. He didn’t need to feed all the time like Peter and Camilla, but getting him off somebody before he drained them was hard; he’d fight you, try to take a quart.

  “We hit three cabdrivers, two around here, one down by the Brooklyn Bridge. The third time I said, ‘Lay off, it’s my turn,’ but Sammy jabbed him anyway, latched onto his wrist while I was on his neck and sucked so hard the guy arched his back and rolled his eyes back in his head, so I stopped. The meter was running the whole time. I didn’t pay.”

  The waitress passed by again and I waited till she was out of earshot.

  “What do you think it is? Because they’re kids?”

  “Maybe,” Billy said. “Maybe not.”

  “Well, what else?”

  Billy grimaced and washed down the last of his coffee. He made sure nobody was listening.

  “What if they’re another kind of vampire?”

  “What, like a different species or something?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said, standing up and hefting his guitar case, “just like that.”

  * * *

  They were snoozing in their lockers. Cvetko had taken to sleeping in a big blanket by the turnstiles; he wasn’t about to drag his coffin out here any more than I was about to move my fridge. He just wrapped himself up good and tight so no light got in, making kind of a turban around his head. But he wasn’t out yet, just sitting up Indian-style, looking for all the world like a guy who smoked. I wondered if he used to smoke.

  “Did you use to smoke, Cvetko?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But only socially, never as a habit.”

  “You wanna walk with me?”

  He nodded, got up.

  Someone kicked inside one of the lockers.

  Someone kicked back twice.

  “Settle yourselves and go to sleep,” he said. A halfhearted kick followed like a mild act of rebellion, but then they fell silent.

  We hopped down onto the tracks and into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “Billy said they might be another species of vampire,” I said.

  “What are your thoughts on the subject?”

  “I don’t have any. It’s why I’m asking you.”

  He walked, his hands in his pockets.

  “Mr. Bang is an intelligent man. It is possible that there are different strains of vampirism, though it must not be thought of as a disease.”

  “You’ve said before you think it’s a curse. Magic.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is magic, anyway?”

>   “In my opinion, it is simply a series of phenomena or forces that science cannot now explain and might never be able to explain. Phenomena that are not subject to rules as we understand them, that may, in fact, change the rules we pretend to understand. Pretend in the French sense, as in to claim.”

  “Why not just say claim?”

  “Pretend is a more elegant word, as there is a sort of elegance in the best science. A child watches his parents dance a complicated waltz. The mechanics are beyond his power and will be for many years. But he may sketch a few steps of it, his head erect, his arms almost in the right position. He says, ‘I am dancing!’ One may say that he claims to dance, but really he pretends.”

  “You think too much.”

  “As you pretend not to understand the concepts I challenge you with. You do not believe the myth of your own ignorance. But you perpetuate it out of habit, out of a desire to align with the ideals of American pop culture. Charisma, action, dumb luck. You will not learn chess because you are too vain to imagine yourself bent over a board with dull old men or with the hucksters in Washington Square Park. You enjoy poker because it is an American game, the game of saloons and broad smiles. A game where luck or sudden violence may yet save the unprepared.”

  “Train,” I said.

  We took a niche, got small and flat, him higher, me lower, our backs to the tunnel. None of the sleepy fuckers goldfished behind the windows of the morning 5 train would know what they saw.

  “So, magic,” I said.

  “Do you remember the man you called the Pied Piper?”

  Of course I remembered; it was one of the weirdest things I ever saw, which is saying something. There had been this guy, shabby-looking guy, I thought he was a Huncher. He walked through the sewers on his way uptown, a mob of rats around him. He was pointing at the biggest rats like a stickball captain picking teams, and damn if they weren’t following him. He must have had forty, fifty trailing behind him like a bride’s dress, all as big as cats or beagles.

  “You said don’t fuck with him because you thought he was a wizard.”

  “I said, Do not disturb him.”

  “You said he was on his way to kill somebody.”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “With rats. And he saw us.”

  “He was aware of us.”

  “What’s this got to do with the kids?”

  “If magic is a current or river, perhaps some manipulate it, as that man with his rats. And perhaps others are caught in it. Those who are accursed.”

  “Us,” I said.

  “And them. Perhaps there are different streams in this river. Perhaps slight alterations in the nature of this curse result in something like speciation. Vampires like us, but not like us. This may account for their increased appetite. Or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “Or anything. This is only one possibility among countless possibilities.”

  “Like what else?”

  He stopped on the tracks, picked up a coin. Looked like a buffalo nickel, I wasn’t sure.

  “I am officially on strike. I refuse to do any further thinking for you until you offer me your own theories.”

  “Maybe,” I started.

  “Not now. You are tired and hungry. Watch them. Think. Avoid television. Tell me your theories this time tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  We walked on for a moment.

  I could feel him looking at me.

  “Do you think the Hessian is like us? The same species?”

  He didn’t ask why I said that. He didn’t have to, a guy like Cvetko.

  He just drew in a little breath and said, “Ah.”

  That ah was the start of the third part of all this.

  Or the end of the second.

  SCHISM

  The Latins went after the Hessian three days later. Don’t go thinking this was all about holy morals and the despoiling of children, though that was how it got dressed up. Wars are never officially about taking shit away from somebody else, be it oil or land or money; officially they’re always about liberty or God or saving somebody. Avenging some wrong works pretty well. So the Latins said they were going to Greenwich Village to avenge a great wrong.

  “And get your hands on his money,” Margaret said. It was a hell of a fight. Margaret was dead set against peeling him until we talked to him, but they said talking to him would just warn him and he would button up or run.

  “He won’t run,” Margaret said, but she didn’t like the idea of attacking him, as disgusted as she was by what he stood accused of. Attacking a beast like that seemed like too much risk for too little gain. But then, she was already in the mayor’s apartment and likely to stay there. With the Hessian’s money, the Puerto Rican guys could set themselves up in some nice, basemented fortress like the Hessian had, get out of the tunnels, pay guys to watch over them by day, roam rich neighborhoods by night, unsuspected because of their fine clothes. Rich vampires definitely had it better.

  “But he will fight. Have you perchance noticed how you’ve gotten just a little stronger every year? Do you know how old he is, and how well dug in? This’ll be no easy matter. We talk to him first.”

  “We don’t fucking need to talk to him, Puta Madre, what’s he gonna say? ‘Yeah I did it, ¡cortame la cabeza! Now cut me my fucking head off please’?”

  “He’s too dangerous.”

  Old Boy got up from his leisurely squat and walked around to flank the Latins, standing now about ten yards behind them and to their right. He let them see where he was putting himself. He was a guy who spoke with gestures and motion.

  Mapache flicked his eyes at Old Boy, but then settled them back on Margaret. He wasn’t giving up.

  “So what? So, you’re dangerous, you get to turn six children, six, and fuck them, too?”

  “Are you suggesting, sir, that we should police every vampire on this island? Or just the very rich ones?”

  “You disappoint me. I thought you were in charge, man.”

  His men were on edge. They hadn’t anticipated things going south with Margaret, they were always cool with Margaret.

  “When it comes to these tunnels, I am in charge, Mr. Ramirez, and you would do well to remember it.”

  “Or what?” he said, getting much closer to her than she liked. “You gonna talk to me?”

  Old Boy gritted a boot on the concrete to let them know he was now five yards away. Margaret, never taking her eyes off Mapache, held a hand up to her pet ghost, as a master might to a dog. Not yet, boy. But maybe soon.

  “If you don’t take one step back,” she told Mapache, growling a little in her throat and speaking slowly—it was always bad when she spoke slowly—“We’ll talk, just you and me. And much will be said between us in a very short time.”

  Margaret didn’t bluff.

  Ruth was already standing next to her, frowning her Statue of Liberty frown.

  I moved closer to Margaret and Ruth, looking at Mapache, which didn’t impress him. Billy Bang stepped up, too, though. On Mapache’s side, Bug and Gua Gua got closer. Damn, Gua Gua was big. Dominic was about to step up next to Margaret, but Baldy hung back so he did, too. This could be bad.

  Nobody said anything for about five seconds, but it felt like an hour.

  Mapache stepped back, but he did it slowly, sarcastically, like Okay, but fuck you.

  Margaret took it because everyone knew he still backed up. We were on uncharted waters now. I knew it. Baldy knew it so well it was all he could do not to smile, not to show the tip of a fang which is like the bird finger from a vampire. If this didn’t get fixed, Margaret’s biggest counterweight to the Italians was gone. And they weren’t the rookies they were before, they knew what they were doing now. They might move on her when Old Boy was on one of his walkabouts. They just might.

  And she k
new it.

  “You want it done?” she said.

  “We want it done.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Then you’ll do it on your own.”

  * * *

  Let’s back up.

  The night before this went down, Margaret came to the 18th Street station to check on things, and Cvetko told her what had been said. The kids wouldn’t utter a peep to Margaret, though; they didn’t like Margaret. She wasn’t exactly child-friendly. She wouldn’t have lasted long on Sesame Street.

  But then the weirdest thing happened.

  The little one, Duncan, said something in German. To Cvetko. Like he had heard Cvetko’s accent and decided it was close enough to German that he would try it out. He popped an eye over to Margaret to see if she understood.

  She didn’t.

  But Cvetko did. Cvetko’s dead fluent in German, just like Russian, French, English, Spanish, Latin, even Hungarian. Who the fuck speaks Hungarian? Cvetko, that’s who. But German.

  When they had gone back and forth for a good while, Cvetko sent them off to play on the tracks, they liked the tracks, and took Margaret and me aside to tell us what they said.

  * * *

  “This boy, Duncan, speaks German because his mother is from East Berlin. These are all the children of British diplomats or translators. They went missing some time ago, perhaps last year, perhaps several years ago; Duncan doesn’t understand time very well and the others will not discuss these matters. They were all charmed away en masse from where they played in Stuyvesant Park, herded into our very old friend’s van, and turned in his basement. They lived with him in captivity until the winter, I assume this winter, when Peter decided he wasn’t going to take it anymore.”

  “Take what anymore?” Margaret had said.

  “Must I say it?”

  “Don’t be squeamish. If something’s to be done, it won’t be done on hints and rumors.”