Blackout

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Turning back to Lucas, Reet asked, “And the Slayer told you this? Why?”

  “She said she knew how to get to Spike. He got a honey.”

  As Lucas told his boss about Drusilla, a memory nagged at Reet, and he finally realized where he’d heard the name Spike before. It was when that blond girl, Darla, came through town. Reet had been warned to stay away from her, as she was a favorite of the Master. Reet didn’t have much truck with a vampire who called himself that—last man Reet called “master” died slowly by Reet’s own hand on a Mississippi plantation over a century ago—but he also knew how powerful the head of the Order of Aurelius was. So he did as he was warned, but he for damn sure didn’t like it.

  That was the one and only time that Reet had been grateful for the Slayer’s presence in the Big Apple. The Chosen One had made his business into a nightmare, but at least she drove that blond bitch out of town.

  After that, Reet had had his men check into Darla, and he now remembered that she used to run with a vampire couple named Spike and Drusilla. Reet never learned much beyond that, but it was enough.

  “So Drusilla’s in town too, eh?”

  Nodding, Lucas said, “That’s what the Slayer said. And she said if we nab her, we can get Spike.”

  “You believe this jive, boss?” Leroy asked.

  “I do, in fact. Bonds among our kind are rare, but when they do exist, they are quite strong. Witness the friendship Heathcliff and Shades shared.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Leroy said, “I can dig it—so where’s that leave us?”

  “We find this Drusilla girl. Take Andrés and Gustavo and track her down. Capture only—killing her will just enrage Spike. We want him to cooperate, and he’ll only do that if he thinks we might spare her. If she dies, he will go after us, and that is not something we want.”

  Lucas said, “Slayer said she got a thing for dollies. Said to be checkin’ toy stores and such.”

  “Okay.” Leroy moved toward the phone behind the bar, which somehow had escaped the Slayer’s wrath, and dialed a number. “What’s happenin’, Jonesy? Andrés still there? Good. Gustavo check in yet? Okay, when he does, tell him to meet me and Andrés at Macy’s.” He looked up at Reet. “We’ll try there first, work our way uptown.”

  Reet nodded his approval. This Spike was a loose cannon, and he had to be brought in line. No doubt that was why the Slayer had intervened. She had pecked away at Reet’s organization. Profits had plummeted in the past four years, even though logic suggested that, what with the city’s ongoing fiscal crisis, not to mention the huge rise in crime, unemployment, and inflation, his profits should have increased. The decline was attributable to the Slayer’s efforts. Still, the girl understood how the system worked. She fought him the right way.

  Spike, though, he was a wild card. For her as much as for Reet. They had a common goal—just as they had when Darla was in town. Reet stared down at the remains of one of the poker tables. The house couldn’t always win if there were wild cards in the deck, because it made it much harder to predict the result. Reet didn’t allow wild cards in his poker games—and he didn’t allow them in his town.

  Very soon now, Spike would be cast out of the deck.

  Chapter Twelve

  New York City

  July 13, 1977

  4:45 a.m.

  “The sun’s gonna be up soon, man!”

  Leroy was gonna kill Gustavo if he didn’t stop his complaining. “We got an hour, and the place is only up the street,” he said as he drove his Cadillac down 57th Street. There wasn’t hardly anyone on the street at this hour on Tuesday night—or, really, Wednesday morning—and FAO Schwarz was right ahead. They’d just come from Bloomingdale’s and Alexander’s, but no British vampire girl. Mind you, they’d seen signs of her. A bunch of dolls had been stolen from their kids’ departments. Andrés had found a carbon copy of a theft report on one of the desks in the back offices of Bloomingdale’s.

  Then Andrés said that, since they were in the neighborhood, maybe they could check out Schwarz. It hadn’t even occurred to Leroy—he didn’t know nothin’ about no kids’ stores. But Andrés had been human more recently than the others, and he used to go there as a kid.

  Each of the last two nights had turned up empty, and Leroy did not want to face Reet empty-handed when he woke up Wednesday night. If the bitch wasn’t at Schwarz, he didn’t know what he was gonna do.

  He parked the Cadillac on 57th, right under a red sign that read NO STANDING ANY TIME. Leroy wasn’t worried. If they got a ticket, Reet would fix it. If the car got towed, Reet would not only fix it, but give Leroy first shot at eating the turkey who done the deed.

  Since Andrés was the one with breaking-and-entering skills, he went first. Reaching into the brim of his large purple hat, he pulled out some wires that he could pick locks with. He knelt down by the padlock that kept the metal grate over the back entrance to the store.

  “This is stupid,” Gustavo was saying. “This ain’t gonna work. This fool gonna be here till the damn cows come home and the damn sun come up, and we gonna be crispy-fried!”

  “Shut up, fool, I’m concentratin’,” Andrés said.

  Leroy, though, noticed something when he looked up in the window. “There’s somebody in there!”

  “What?” Gustavo looked up, then followed Leroy’s gaze inside. “Prob’ly just a night watchman. We should beat it, ’fore—”

  “Ain’t no night watchman wearin’ no dress.” Leroy smiled as he caught sight of the long, frilly dress that trailed behind the figure moving about in the darkness. He couldn’t make out a face, but that was definitely a chick.

  He hit Andrés lightly on the arm. “Forget that, brother. If that chick got in, we can get in the way she went. She didn’t trip no alarms.”

  Andrés didn’t get up—he was still working on the lock. “We don’t know that. They could have one o’ them silent alarms.”

  “Then we gotta move fast. C’mon, let’s check the front.”

  “Now you’re talkin’,” Gustavo muttered as Andrés reluctantly got to his feet.

  The three of them walked down 56th Street to the front of the store—which was at the back end of a plaza that looked out onto Fifth Avenue. Leroy figured the place was probably crowded during the day, but at four forty-five in the morning, there wasn’t anybody here.

  What there was, though, was a smashed lock lying on the ground next to the revolving door that led inside.

  “Ain’t no way there’s no alarm on this,” Andrés said. “Or at least a guard or—”

  He cut himself off. This time it was Leroy following his gaze: a night watchman, lying dead on the ground, puncture wounds in his neck.

  “Great, so she’s full,” Gustavo said. “Let’s get outta here before—”

  “Will you please shut the hell up?” Leroy said. “Let’s move, in case that night watchman has friends—or called the fuzz before he became breakfast.” With that, he pushed his way through the revolving doors.

  Andrés followed, then Gustavo. The latter was muttering to himself, but Leroy ignored him. They moved past the G.I. Joe toys and the stuff that was based on TV shows and movies and such, and went back into the area where the big stuffed animals were.

  He heard her voice before he saw her. She was singing. “Three blind mice, three blind mice. See how they bite! See how they bite! They all chased after the princess, she bit them all in the neck, she did. Three blind mice.”

  “Very funny, bitch,” Leroy said, “but that didn’t rhyme.”

  The girl came out from behind a big display of teddy bears. She was clutching a porcelain doll in one hand and a small teddy bear in the other. Leroy was surprised to see that she was a fine-lookin’ chick for a white girl, with big eyes and long, dark hair, and she was wearing a long white dress that was covered in lace.

  “You just gotta be Drusilla,” Leroy said.

  She looked at him with those big eyes, tilting her head down so it was almost like she was loo
king at him through her eyelids. Leroy’d once had a girlfriend with a cat who looked like that. Or, at least, it did until Leroy strangled the cat and ate the girlfriend.

  Drusilla started talking in a singsongy voice that was hypnotic. “You’re going to go all to pieces over a girl. The moonlight shines on her blond hair.”

  Yeah, like I’d be fallin’ for a white chick. “You comin’ with us, you dig? We work for—”

  “The slave.”

  Now Leroy got nervous. “We be workin’ for Reet Weldon. He ain’t nobody’s slave.”

  “Not anymore. He made the bad men pay. Now he wants to make me pay for another’s badness. Shame, shame, naughty man!” Drusilla set the porcelain doll and the teddy bear down, and picked up something else—it was shaped like a soldier. “I found a nutcracker, like the one in the ballet. They were so delicious, the ballerinas. They tasted like daffodils.”

  This bitch is crazy, with a capital C. “That’s great—but we gotta take you to Reet now, all right?” Leroy slowly moved forward. Andrés and Gustavo did likewise; the three of them started to close in on her.

  “I don’t think that’s very nice. I think—”

  “Hell with this,” Gustavo said, and lunged for Drusilla.

  She whirled around and slashed at him with her fingernails, ripping into his throat. Gustavo screamed and doubled over.

  Andrés got his game face on and screamed, “Bitch!” He jumped at her so hard his hat fell off, and rolled it on the floor up against one of the teddy bear displays.

  Drusilla broke off the lever on the back of the nutcracker and stabbed Andrés right in the heart.

  Leroy was stunned—it all happened so fast, he barely had time to register it before Andrés was dust.

  Now Drusilla had her game face on, but Leroy was stunned to realize that this made the bitch less scary. Like this, she was just another bloodsucker.

  Gustavo kicked at her leg from his doubled-over position, which made her lose her footing. As she stumbled to the floor, Leroy grabbed her in a bear hug and picked her up off the floor. “That’s enough outta you, bitch! Now you comin’ with us to see Reet, and you try anythin’, you’ll be dust, you dig?”

  “Hell, dust the bitch now!” Gustavo said, clutching his throat with one hand. “She done cut me!”

  Not wanting Drusilla to know that they were under orders to take her alive—since that would mess up any chance of threatening her—Leroy didn’t say anything in answer to Gustavo. Instead, he squeezed Drusilla harder. “I said, you dig?”

  “The salmon try to dig their own graves, but they must swim instead.”

  Rolling his eyes, Leroy said, “I’ll take that as a yes.” He turned to Gustavo. “Find somethin’ to tie this bitch up with.”

  Looking royally pissed off, Gustavo asked, “Why I gotta be the one to—”

  “Andrés had the fishing line.”

  Now Gustavo looked over at Andrés’s hat, sitting on its side on the floor. Because it fell off before Drusilla stabbed him, it hadn’t turned to dust like everything else on him—including the fishing line that was supposed to tie this bitch up.

  “Yeah, okay.” He walked off.

  Drusilla didn’t struggle at all once Leroy grabbed her. That didn’t mean he was going to do something stupid like let go of her, though. But she was just talkin’ garbage like she’d been all along.

  “Darkness will come all round. It smothers like a blanket—suffocating everything in its wake and bringing the house down like a pile of cards. All the battles will come to an end, but one—and that will fester down the decades until it boils over like a stewpot.”

  Leroy muttered, “Right on, sister.” Where the hell is Gustavo? Only reason I ain’t staked this bitch is because of Reet’s say-so, but if I gotta listen to the chick that killed Andrés talk crap for much longer, I’ll take the chance on pissing Reet off.

  * * *

  Spike dropped his latest meal to the pavement of the alley behind the bar where he’d picked her up. He hadn’t bothered with the whole take-her-home routine—too much work when he just wanted to nosh.

  Wiping the bird’s blood off his lips with the sleeve of his shirt, he wandered out into the humid Manhattan night.

  Been four days since I tussled with the Slayer. Figure that gives her enough time to get right nervous, looking for Spike round every corner. Eventually, she’ll finally figure I’ve given up or left town or some other such thing.

  He sighed. The original plan had been to wait a week before striking, but Spike no longer fancied sticking around that long. I’m bored. I’ve seen the Ramones, it’s time to make a move on the Slayer.

  Before he got more than a block down whatever street this was—he looked up to see a yellow sign with black letters indicating that it was East 1st Street—he got a whiff of a vampire.

  “I don’t bloody believe this,” he said as he stopped walking. “I thought I told you tossers to—”

  “The name’s Toby. Got a message for you from Reet Weldon, honky,” the vampire said as he walked up to Spike. Toby was wearing tight pants that flared at the ankles—bell-bottoms, they were called, and right loony they looked too—and a button-down shirt that was completely unbuttoned, revealing a hairy dark chest. His hair extended at least a foot out from his scalp, held in slightly by a purple bandana he’d tied around his forehead.

  “I don’t care what your message is, mate. I didn’t care when any of the other four tossers this Reet chap sent after me showed up either. I just want to hear some good music and bag me a Slayer. I should think you’d be grateful.”

  “You crazy? Grateful? I oughtta stake your ass for that—you killed Heathcliff and Shades, and Reet ain’t gonna be grateful for that.”

  This is getting incredibly boring, Spike thought with a sigh. “Fine. Look, I’ll take care of the Slayer, and then I’ll be on my merry way, all right?” He started to walk forward, intending to move past the vampire.

  However, Toby moved in front of Spike and put his hand on Spike’s shoulder.

  In a low, dangerous tone, Spike said, “Friendly word of advice, mate: I’d be moving that hand right quick.”

  Toby smiled. “You say you don’t care what the message is—I say you do care, ’cause the message is that we got your honey.”

  Spike blinked. “My what?”

  “Sweet chick, name o’ Drusilla. We got her, sucker. Reet’s keepin’ her on ice for now, but she gonna go from on ice to bein’ iced, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  His mind reeled. Drusilla’s here? She came for me? He smiled to himself. She did come for me. That’s my Dru!

  Then he realized what Toby was saying. That bastard Weldon’s got Dru.

  “You want her back, honky, you come up to Reet’s place. Maybe we let her live. Maybe not. Better deal than you gave Heathcliff and Shades, dig?”

  “I gave them a perfectly good deal—sod off or die. They chose not to sod off.” Spike then grabbed Toby’s wrist, which served to remove the vampire’s hand from Spike’s shoulder, and twisted it down, forcing Toby to his knees. “Now where exactly is Reet’s place?”

  Toby tried and failed to break free of Spike’s grip. “Let—go o’—me—man!”

  Pushing the arm down farther—and causing a snap of bone that sounded very much like a dried twig—Spike put on his game face and said, “Where?”

  “Aaaaaahhh! He at that building on the corner o’ Lenox an’ 119th!”

  “And which corner would that be?” Spike asked, pushing the broken bone a bit harder.

  “Northeast! Northeast! You’re killin’ me!”

  Spike let go. “No, mate. I ain’t killin’ you. I’d rather you suffered.” For good measure, he kicked Toby in the ribs.

  Then he walked over toward the next street. If he remembered right, there was a tube station nearby—or, rather, subway, as they called it over here. He had one hundred and eighteen blocks to traverse, if this Toby tosser was to be believed, and he didn’t fancy doing it on foo
t.

  I’m gonna get you, Dru. And then we’ll kill every last one of them until we’re swimming in their blood.

  Just as he caught sight of a staircase that led to the subway, he found himself plunged into darkness.

  It was an odd feeling. Spike, of course, hadn’t felt the touch of sunlight in a hundred years, except for fleeting glances from comfortable shade. But a big city in the late twentieth century was never completely dark, even in the dead of night, and especially not New York City. Even in the early evening, like it was now, the place was brighter than Flanders Field on a sunny day.

  Until now. None of the streetlights were lit, none of the buildings or advertisements glowed—only the headlamps from the cars still provided any kind of illumination.

  A blackout, Spike realized after a moment, when he looked up Second Avenue to see that there were no lights, aside from car headlamps, to be seen at all. This city had, he knew, suffered a previous power outage a decade back or so, and now it looked like they had another one.

  He started jogging north on Second. On foot it is, then. Give the blood a chance to boil right and good before I take Dru back.

  * * *

  “The storm gathers, but there is no lightning. Thunder, though, is aplenty. Why does the prince not see that his reign is to end in darkness?”

  Reet Weldon stared at the vampire chick that Leroy had brought back. This was apparently Drusilla. Leroy had brought her in after Reet had already gone to bed, and he had some other business to take care of when he awakened Wednesday evening, so this was his first look at her. She didn’t seem like much—but Reet probably didn’t seem like much when Caleb turned him from a runaway slave into a creature of the night.

  “She ever start making sense?” he asked Leroy.

  His lieutenant snorted. “No way José. I’m tellin’ you, boss, that bitch is nuttier than a fruitcake.”

  Walking over to the chair into which Leroy and Gustavo had bound her, Reet looked down at her. “You’re the love of Spike’s life, eh?”

  Drusilla looked up at him with those big, brown eyes that made her look to Reet like a deranged deer. “I made Spike. He stopped being little Willy and became big Spike. And he’ll come and burn down the house.” She spoke strangely, the way British folks did, without pronouncing the first letter of “house.” “You should have let him be. If you had, all your problems would be over.”