Bad to the Bone

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “What are you doing?”

  “Oh!” The saucer slips from my hand and clatters on the counter. I turn to face the mousy middle - aged woman who let us in the door last week. “I’m sorry. This strudel looked so amazing, I couldn’t resist.” I grimace. “I’m totally PMSing. It makes me crave chocolate.”

  She opens a drawer and pulls out a long, serrated knife. I take a step back.

  “Relax.” She slides the cake dish over and cuts a slice. “You should have just asked.”

  She hands me the plate of strudel, along with a fork. My stomach is twisting like a flag in a windstorm, but I take the dessert in exchange for a wide smile.

  It’s quite good, and I tell her so.

  She looks down at her roughened fingers. “I made it.”

  “Wow. This crust is extremely flaky.” Just like me. I extend my left hand. “I’m Ciara, by the way.”

  “I know.” She pushes a blond - gray curl from her eyes as she shakes my hand. Then she turns to leave.

  “So how long have you lived here?”

  She stops and stares at me. “I, uh, it’s been eight years. Since a vampire killed my mother.”

  The strudel goes lumpy in my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  She gives me a sharp look. “You’re with that radio station, right?”

  “Yes. But our vampires are good.” Good - ish, I add mentally.

  “There’s no such thing as a good vampire.”

  “Do you have a radio in your room?”

  She hesitates, then nods.

  “Will you do me a favor and listen tonight? It’s 94.3 FM.” She glances at the kitchen door. “I don’t think—”

  “Just keep the volume low.” I take a step toward her. “When I was a kid, I had to use headphones so my parents wouldn’t hear.”

  She gives me a reluctant smile, then whispers, “Me, too. My daddy was a preacher.”

  “Mine, too! Only he was a fake.” I set down my fork on the saucer, which emptied at an embarrassing rate. “But a lot of people were comforted by his words, so I guess he was real to them.”

  “That’s all that counts.” She inches closer to me. “My name’s Luann. I was rude not to introduce myself before.”

  I wave off her apology. “So what kind of music do you like?”

  She looks away and rubs the space under her nose. “When I was in high school, I once snuck off to go to a Cure concert. It was their first American tour.”

  “Then Regina’s the one you want to hear. Her show’s on tonight at midnight, then it’ll be repeated tomorrow from three to six.”

  Luann glances at the door again. “I don’t know . . .”

  On a strange impulse, I dig into my purse for my MP3 player. “Here.” I hold out the tiny silver contraption, its ear-buds dangling from their ever - tangled wires. “Try our pod-casts.”

  She gapes at me but doesn’t take the player. “Why would you give me this?”

  “I’m not. I’m lending it.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. Because you make good strudel?” I shove it into her hands. “Just take it, all right? You’re embarrassing me. Sheesh.”

  I walk out before she can protest, and find Ned waiting for me at the front door.

  He looks at me, brows pinched. “I just found out—” He rubs the back of his neck. “Do you mind if we stay here a while?” He motions to the parlor. “We can sit in there and talk.”

  I follow Ned in and sit on one end of a silk - upholstered love seat while he stokes the fire in the fireplace. His shoulders are tight and slumped.

  “I have good news,” I tell him. “I’ve decided to break up with my boyfriend. After this is all over and my dad is safe.”

  “That’s great.” He shifts the log at the center of the fire. It breaks in half in a crackling shower of sparks.

  “Especially for us.”

  He sets the iron poker back in its rack and turns to me. “Ciara, there’s something I need to tell you.” He slides his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “I really like you.”

  Uh - oh.

  He adds, “But I think I’d rather just be friends.”

  Oh. “Umm . . .”

  “I just need to get my head together. Besides, I don’t know about you, but when we kissed, I felt nothing. No spark. I think that’s a bad sign.”

  “Probably.” I want to laugh with relief, and to mock myself for assuming he was smitten.

  “I’m sorry for leading you on,” he says, “but I do really, really like you, and I want to keep hanging out, as friends.”

  I change the subject before he can detect my glee. “Is that why you’re so nervous tonight?”

  “No, it’s—” He breaks off and stares at the foyer. “People are coming later. Elders of the Fortress.”

  “For a meeting?”

  “No.”

  “Are you an elder?”

  “Not yet. In this Fortress chapter, my brother decides who gets that rank.”

  “Didn’t you say he was younger than you?”

  “Benjamin has money, and a long antivampire history. People like me have to earn our way up.”

  I stand and go over to him so I can whisper. “How do you earn it, Ned?”

  He hesitates, then takes my good arm. “I’ll show you.”

  With the aid of a flashlight, Ned leads me down a dark staircase into a cool, musty cellar. To the left is a wide room with a stone floor.

  “This is where they’ll come tonight for the ritual,” he says. “I don’t know the details, since I’ve never been invited.”

  A rustle across the room makes me jump. “Who’s here?”

  “Not who.” Ned shines the light at the far wall. “What.”

  A line of steel bars casts shadows on an enormous young man huddled on the floor in front of us. His face is grimy and his pale green eyes stare straight ahead.

  “What’s going on?” I choke out.

  “Don’t worry, it’s safe,” Ned says. “He’s locked up.”

  The man blinks slowly, then shifts his gaze in the direction of our feet. I realize that what I thought was grime on his face is actually a mass of scars. The distinctive charred black of holy-water burns.

  Beyond the scars, something about him seems familiar. I take a step closer and tilt my head. The sharp nose, pointed chin, and mop top brown hair remind me of—

  A chill starts at my neck and courses down my spine, then flashes back up again.

  “Jacob . . .’’ One of Gideon’s bodyguards and progeny, who came to David’s house and tried to kill us. Who no doubt has sworn an oath to kill me and Shane to avenge his maker’s death.

  “Gideon’s right - hand vamp.” Ned swings the flashlight beam to the back of the cage. “And there’s the left hand.”

  Another hulking twentysomething man sits against the wall, arms locked around his knees. Like his blood brother Jacob, Wallace hails from the early sixties, but his dark hair forms a tight crewcut. He rocks fitfully but doesn’t look up, even when Ned shines the light directly in his face, which is also crisscrossed with black scars.

  I step back, ready to flee. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “Don’t worry.” Ned’s voice is solicitous. “They’re starved, too weak to harm anyone. Hold the flashlight if it’ll make you feel better.”

  I grab the long - handled contraption, reassured by its heft. “Shouldn’t they be in Control custody?”

  “Arrangements were made. To test my loyalty, the Fortress put me in charge of their care.” He sniffs. “Such as it is.”

  “What do they want with them? Information?”

  “We know all we need to know about vampires.”

  I shine the light to my left, where another cage sits empty. Unlike Wallace and Jacob’s cell, this one contains a cot and a toilet.

  Human accommodations.

  “I gotta go.”

  To my surprise, Ned says, “Okay. I’d get in huge trouble if the elders know I brought you
down here. Are you hungry? There’s this great Thai place that just opened over on—” He stops and grabs my bad arm. I bite back a yowl of pain.

  Footsteps—a lot of them—proceed across the floor above our heads.

  “Uh - oh.” Ned takes the flashlight. “Let’s find the back way out.”

  In one dark corner, a short flight of stairs leads to a steel cellar door. Ned shoves against it, rattling the rusty latch, but it doesn’t budge.

  I point to the edge of the door. “It’s welded shut. Can we hide somewhere?” Somewhere dark, where I can plant one of these bugs.

  “This way.” Ned runs to a door built into the space under the stairs, on the opposite wall from the cages. He unlocks it with shaky hands.

  Inside the closet are chains, stakes, crosses, knives, and bottles of holy water. I’ve stumbled into the vampire Inquisition.

  “There’s no room for us!” Ned is on the verge of panic.

  “Is this what they’re using for the ritual?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then let’s put it all out, arrange it on the floor. They’ll think you took the initiative to set up for them.” When he hesitates, I say, “What choice do we have?”

  “Right.” He hands me the flashlight and goes to work. As I watch him set out the weapons in a line next to the wall, I notice a large white circle drawn on the floor. Twelve red hash marks are placed around it, like the hour delineations on a clock.

  Finally, Ned draws out a ten - foot wooden stake twice the thickness of a flagpole. “I wonder where this goes.”

  I shine the light at the center of the circle. “In that hole?”

  He jams it in, a perfect fit. Above us, the footsteps move toward the top of the stairs.

  Ned and I hurry into the closet and sit on the floor. He pulls the door shut. I turn off the flashlight, plunging us into total darkness.

  But not for long. Pinpoints of light appear, and I realize the drywall has rotted through—or been cut—in several eyeball -size places. Keeping far enough back to avoid detection, I peer through one hole to see the bobbing flames of two torches, carried by those at the beginning and end of a thirteen - man procession. Barefoot, they wear knee - length white linen robes tied at their waists with even whiter belts of silken rope.

  All but one. A tall, muscular man with closely cropped sandy hair brings up the rear, his outfit identical to the others’ except for a belt of scarlet. He looks roughly thirty and exudes a sinister self - possession not unlike that of an ancient vampire.

  Benjamin, I assume. He’s definitely the guy we photographed at the cross last week. He approaches the center stake, striding on bare feet with the crisp rigidity of a man in jackboots.

  In their cage, Wallace and Jacob stare ahead with sunken eyes, catatonic. I look at Ned, who’s watching through his own peephole. His hands twist together so hard, I worry his knuckles will crack and give us away.

  A man with a dark goatee unlocks the cage. Two others follow him inside. They strip off Jacob’s shirt and haul him to his feet, while the first man holds out a cross in one hand and a torch in the other. He waves the flame at Wallace in the corner, keeping him at bay. None of the precautions seems necessary; the vampires look about as dangerous as sacks of flour.

  As Jacob is dragged to the stake, two other elders pick up the length of chain that Ned laid out. The vampire suddenly twitches in their grip, as if the movement of his feet has returned the blood to his brain, along with the desire to live.

  Two more men rush forward to subdue him with crosses, searing his exposed chest. He screams as his flesh sizzles, but his voice soon fades, and his unconscious body droops in their arms. They drag him to the stake, more slowly now due to his dead weight.

  As four of the elders chain Jacob to the pole, the other eight position themselves around the circle, one at each hash mark. They begin to chant in a guttural language I’ve never heard before—it sounds like Latin spoken with a forked tongue.

  “What are they saying?” I whisper to Ned, now that the room is loud enough to cover the sound of my voice.

  He shakes his head, his face tight with worry.

  “Is that Benjamin?”

  He nods, hugging his knees. I wonder if he’s ever seen a vampire staked, and how many of his 117 bites came from Wallace and Jacob.

  Finally Jacob is secured to the pole, arms behind his back, chin drooped to his smooth bare chest. Benjamin advances with a sharpened stake. I take Ned’s hand to comfort him. I’m ambivalent about this myself—after all, Jacob would kill me in a second if he could.

  Benjamin plunges the stake into Jacob’s heart. I startle—I was expecting more ceremony, or at least a new chant for this central piece of the ritual.

  Jacob shrieks and jerks at the chains that bind him, but the thick metal links hold him fast. The vampire’s body seizes and shakes, and his bare feet squirm and slide against the stone floor, as if he can run away.

  Suddenly his efforts stop, and he slumps against the post. Passed out from the pain, I guess. He won’t die until they remove the stake.

  The chant ends, and a pair of elders steps up to the post. They loosen the chains around Jacob’s upper body, keeping his legs tight against the pole so that he tilts forward, his head and chest out. The blood from his wound plops into a puddle.

  The two men return to their places around the circle, but Benjamin stays at Jacob’s side, watching the trickle of blood, blinking at the impact of each drop against the stone floor.

  The goateed man enters the circle, carrying two clay bowls—one large and one small. Beside him pads a shorter fellow with a silver tray. The first man sets the smaller bowl under Jacob’s dripping wound, catching the slow cascade of blood from his heart.

  From the silver tray, Benjamin takes a long dagger with a curved blade. The knife’s gilded hilt bears strange black markings that from here look like hieroglyphs. The guy with the tray bows and takes a step back.

  A new chant begins, quicker and more intense than the last, with a low harmony that resonates in my bowels and makes my heart doubt its own rhythm. Beside me, I feel Ned shrink back from the wall. I let go of his hand and watch.

  Benjamin slices Jacob’s neck. Blood pours from the wound into the large bowl the other man holds up. The vampire’s eyelashes flutter, but he remains unconscious, or so I hope, for his sake.

  Within ten seconds the wound has healed, and the red flood slows to a halt. Benjamin cuts again, this time carving a half - moon shape into Jacob’s left side. As it heals, he repeats the motion on the right side.

  Steadily, methodically, Benjamin slices Jacob’s skin—his upper arms, his chest, his neck again, his belly.

  I shut my eyes hard. What do they want with vampire blood? To drink it in some twisted act of vengeance? They must have gotten nearly a gallon by now—there can’t be much left. Maybe they just want to drain him dry.

  The thick, coppery scent of blood assails me, and I slap a hand over my mouth and nose. I turn to look at Ned, whose face is buried in his arms as he sits with knees pulled to his chest.

  I slip my phone out of my purse and nudge on the video function. In case Ned decides to open his eyes again, I lean forward to block the phone, then press its camera eye up to a crack near the floor that looks mouse - chewed.

  Through my own peephole I see Benjamin replace the knife on the silver tray. He kneels beside the pole and lifts the small bowl of blood, joining the chant with a high, keening harmony that scratches my spine. His voice mesmerizes me the way no mere human’s has done since I was a child listening to my father preach. I realize that this man is about the age my dad would’ve been at the height of his charismatic career.

  The other elders—most of whom are a lot more elderly than Benjamin—watch him with a mixture of pride and fear.

  The goateed man picks up the larger bowl and turns out to face the circle. He steps slowly, ceremonially, toward a middle- aged man with dark blond hair, taking care not to spill a drop of the bloo
d sloshing near the rim of the punch - bowl -size vessel.

  As one, the elders untie their robes and pull their arms out of their sleeves. Naked torsos of all shapes and shades appear as the robes fall back, tied at the waist.

  The first guy dips his hands in the bowl of vampire blood. It steams in the cool cellar air. I grimace, waiting for him to slurp.

  Instead, he splashes it on his face, luxuriating in the liquid as if it were fresh, clean water. Blood clings to the hair at his temples and drips off his chin. He smiles.

  The elder dips his hands again. This time he rubs the red liquid over his chest and shoulders, painting his skin in a literal bloodbath.

  My God. I want to turn away, but fear that moving my head would make me pass out or throw up. My eyelids feel glued open, determined to witness this atrocity.

  The man with the bowl shifts around the circle, letting each elder drench himself. I check to make sure Ned’s eyes are still closed, then I ease my bad arm out of the sling, gritting my teeth against the pain. Quickly and quietly, I deploy another listening device in the corner of the closet wall. I tuck the last one inside my left palm, hoping to plant it in Benjamin’s office later tonight. Finally I return my arm to the sling and look through the peephole again.

  The red streaks on the men’s pure white robes remind me of Christmas Day in Wisconsin when I was five. It had just snowed, so the roads hadn’t been plowed. My parents and I were trundling along with chains on our tires, singing carols, when we came upon a deer hit by a car. Its neck was broken, and the blood from its mouth threw scarlet gashes over the fresh snow, stretching across our lane. I screamed for an hour.

  Benjamin sets down the bowl and unties his own robe as the chant crescendos. Unlike the others, he removes it entirely and lets it fall to the floor. He kneels, now wearing nothing but a linen loincloth, like the kind they show in paintings of Jesus on the cross. Yet the effect of his taut muscles and smooth bare skin is more Daniel Craig –as– James Bond than a martyred messiah.