I didn’t sit, preferring to lean against the desk and watch her make the drinks. Not only was the view better watching her than the monitors, but it kept her in my line of sight. In my business there are a few ways to get really dead really fast, and turning your back on people you don’t know in their lair is near the top of the list.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked as she poured bourbon over ice for herself.
“No thank you.”
“Are you sure? We have beer, wine, B-positive, holy water.” I went for my Glock the moment she tossed “holy water” into the list, but instinct kicked in too late. She’d already picked up a small pistol hidden on the bar and pointed it at my heart.
“Don’t get frisky, little vampire. It’s loaded with silver rounds, and you don’t want to know what that will do to you. Now sit down. I’m not going to hurt you. If I wanted to do that, you’d be dead.” I didn’t take my eyes off the gun until she walked around the desk, sat down, and put it in a drawer. Her left hand was out of sight somewhere under the desk’s surface, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the pistol was the least of my worries.
“Okay,” I said, sitting, “you know what I am. Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. But you wanted to see the Boss, and he’s not a huge fan of vampires. That could be a problem for you.” She sipped her bourbon, and it took all I could do not to lean over to look under the desk.
“I’m not a huge fan of angels, but Phil and I have done business before.” I shifted in the chair so that, in an emergency, my crossed leg could block most of my center mass from anything but a shotgun blast. I really hoped she didn’t have a shotgun. It probably wouldn’t kill me, but it would be damned inconvenient. And messy. “He knows me.”
“Indeed, I do, James,” said a polished voice from behind me. “But I still need to know why you’re here.”
I jumped almost high enough to touch the ceiling, and when I came down I was standing facing Phil. His manager and her firearm fetish momentarily forgotten, I leaned heavily on the edge of the desk.
“Sweet baby Jesus, Phil. If my heart still beat, I’d have had a heart attack. The whole teleporting thing is one thing, but sneaking up on people is not cool, man.”
Phil was dapper, as always, in a black suit tailored to his lean frame. Phil and I were similarly sized, well over six feet tall with broad shoulders and thin builds, but he always looked better than me. It helped that he was a lot more muscular than me, and could afford a tailor.
Girls think angels are dreamy for a reason. He was ridiculously good-looking even to a straight vampire. My hair is kind of mousy brown and sticks out everywhere, but Phil’s dark wavy curls always fell perfectly into place. He looked like a print ad for men’s hair product, only three-dimensional and annoyingly real.
Phil was right in my face before I stopped babbling. “You know I don’t like that name used in my presence.” Behind the rage in his eyes I saw something deeper, some kind of regret maybe, something that moved him on a visceral level.
In a rare moment of sanity, I decided not to push. I broke off eye contact and looked down. “Sorry about the J-word.”
“Apology accepted.” Phil backed off a little and I could breathe again. “Now I owe you an apology of my own for startling you. Please let me offer you a drink. One without a threat. Lilith, would you please provide our guest with a drink?”
He and Lilith shared a look, and I could almost feel the power struggle between them. Just as I was starting to feel uncomfortable, the name hit me.
“Holy crap!” I bounced back to my feet. They both turned to look at me, and I stammered, “Y-you-you’re Lilith? That Lilith? Like Eve before Eve, but you-wanted-to-be-on-top-and-you-got-banished Lilith?”
She looked at me very coldly, then walked around the desk and stood right in front of me, almost as close as Phil had a moment before. She looked me up and down and said, “That is one version of the story. There are others.”
The way she said “others” let me know the story I knew wasn’t remotely her version, and that her version probably didn’t appear in any of the books I’d ever read, or would ever read. Honestly, I didn’t think I was too interested in hearing her version. The look in her eyes promised that if she told me she’d have to kill me.
Breaking the silence, she smoothly asked, “Now, would you like a drink?” She brushed her hair back off her neck and tilted her head to one side in preparation for me to bite her.
Holy crap and sweet baby Jesus.
“Ummm . . . thanks, but no thanks. I’ve already had dinner tonight.” I tried to step back, but my ass was already pressed up against the desk. I had nowhere to go.
“Please, I insist. It is a rare honor my Lord has offered you. If you refuse you dishonor his gift and pass up an opportunity seldom given to one of your kind.” She spoke so low it was almost a whisper.
Looking into her eyes I thought for a moment that this must be how a mundane feels when I mojo them. It was almost like my will wasn’t my own, except that I knew the choice was mine. The people I whammy don’t weigh the consequences of their choices. I did.
I put my lips to her neck and breathed in the scent of her hair, and knew that I would drink. Her hair smelled like everything I missed about being alive, sunsets on the beach, summer afternoons in a park, fresh-cut grass, that intoxicating scent of salt, beer and cocoa butter combined that defines a weekend at the beach. I buried my face in the side of her neck and held my mouth there for a moment, feeling the pulse under my lips.
“You don’t have to be gentle,” she murmured into my ear. Then a hot spike of pain and pleasure ran down my neck as she bit my earlobe.
Gentle left the building. I sank my teeth into her with no concern for her well-being, because I knew that whatever she was, I certainly couldn’t kill her. She put one hand behind my head and held my mouth to her neck, while the other hand wrapped around my waist to rest on the small of my back. Feeding for me has never been a particularly sexy thing. I’ve never been much for mixing sex and dinner, but Lil was different. The taste of her exploded into my mouth, and I saw colors as my eyes rolled back in my head.
I’ve drunk from stoners, winos, psychos, schizophrenics and club kids hopped up on everything from acid to ecstasy to the best coke to ever come out of Bolivia. Every substance you can shoot, snort, smoke and swallow makes its way into the blood. But nothing I’d tasted did justice to Lilith’s blood. I’m not sure there is a substance that could, and, if there is, I don’t think I want to know what it is. Addictions are dangerous.
I took the smallest sip from Lilith, and I thought the top of my head was going to blow off. Every hair on my body stood on end, and spasms went through every muscle.
I stood there with my mouth latched onto her neck twitching like a kid that just peed on an electric fence. The light show going on behind my eyelids was a Pink Floyd wet dream. I drank from her for only a couple of seconds, but I stood there draped over her, gasping and letting her hold me up for several minutes while I came back to earth. It’s a good thing Phil didn’t have any grudges against me, because if he’d wanted to stake me then and there I couldn’t have done anything to stop it. Which is why addictions are dangerous. They lead you to stupid behaviors. I try not to be stupid too often.
After a long moment I got my breath back enough to gasp out, “You’re an asshole, Phil.”
“You didn’t like it?”
I could hear his smirk in the tone of his voice as clearly I could hear the undertone of harp music. “Yeah, I liked it. It was incredible. The best thing I’ve ever had. And I never want to taste anything even close to that again.”
I straightened up and walked on rubbery legs to the bar and poured myself two fingers of a very expensive scotch. The last thing I wanted to do was put anything in my mouth that would erase the taste of Lilith’s blood, but I knew that if I didn’t start forgetting that taste as fast as I possibly could, I’d keep putting off drinking anything. It wouldn’t
take long for me to starve out of fear of losing that amazing taste. I slugged back the scotch and poured myself another.
When I felt like I could look him in the eyes, I turned to face Phil. “What’s the deal? We’ve done business before without any of the games. What’s different now? Why the snack?”
Phil took a seat behind his desk and gestured toward the chair I’d vacated when he popped in. I sat, and he slid a coaster across to me. I should have known I wouldn’t be allowed to do anything so coarse as to put a glass on his desk. He waited for me to arrange my drink, then said, “Things have changed, James. The balance of power in our fair city is in flux, and it is not in my best interest to align myself too closely with either side.”
“I don’t get it.” I figured there was no point in trying to play mind games with an angel, fallen or not. Regardless of our respective brain sizes, I was giving up a few thousand years experience to Zepheril (or Phil when I was being obnoxious, which was always). I went with honest ignorance, which has served me well so far.
“There is a new player in town, James. A player with the potential to shift things significantly to one side or the other. And until I see which way the wind is blowing, I have decided that it would be unwise to make any specific alliances.”
“Who? Lilith’s new in town, but she’s working for you. Who is it?” There was obviously something going on between them, but she looked way too much like she was the slave to his master, at least this week.
I decided I had read that situation right when he leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Oh no, James. Lilith is my servant, at least for the moment. She is here as a result of a wager. A wager that she lost.” Lilith didn’t look very happy about that. Phil waved her over and gestured imperiously, and Lil sat on his lap like a very sexy and very dangerous kid with Santa at the mall. Only this Santa was a fallen angel, and this kid was older than Eve herself and had more issues than Reader’s Digest. “I speak of a tectonic shift in the balance of power, a change that may not only herald change for the city of Charlotte, but for the world as a whole.”
That didn’t sound like anything I was going to like. Still, I had to ask. “Does this power have anything to do with my having to fight a possessed little girl last night and the missing kids all over town?”
“As usual, you have managed to find yourself in the middle of it all. In parlance you might understand—you’ve brought a knife to a gun fight.”
I hate being right.
Chapter Eleven
I took a minute to digest what Phil had said, and then decided this was going to warrant another drink. I poured my third scotch and returned to my seat. “What kind of power are we talking about, Phil?”
“I don’t really know, James. I only know that since the children have begun to disappear I have sensed a power growing in our fair city, and I have watched it with no small interest.”
Phil reads too much. I mean, seriously, who talks like that? It irritated me, and that didn’t bode well for the rest of my evening. “So you don’t know anything that could help me find it, fight it or kill it. Or if you do, you’re not going to tell me because you think it’s stronger than me, and if I go after it all I’ll do is piss it off, and you’re afraid if I poke the big scary bear that you’ll be facing off with something that you don’t want to take on.”
“That is a fair summation of the facts, yes.” Phil’s voice went a little cold, and there was a warning in his eyes that told me not to push this.
I don’t like being told what to do. It makes me itchy, and when I get itchy, my mouth runs away from my brain. I knew better than to poke Phil too much, so I turned to Lilith. “What about you, Little Miss Sunshine? Do you know anything about the Big Bad? Or do you think we should sit on our asses and eat popcorn while Rome burns, too?”
Lilith looked at me through half-lidded eyes from her perch on Phil’s lap, and I actually blushed. I didn’t even know I could blush anymore. I’d assumed vampires didn’t have the blood flow to spare. I assumed wrong.
“Little vampire, tread lightly. There are forces at work here that you cannot even imagine. I suggest you go back to your little hole and play your video games. You do not want to be involved in this.”
“No, I don’t. I definitely don’t want to be involved. I’m no hero. I’m just a guy trying to make a living, buy a few video games, and maybe find a nice fresh neck to gnaw on now and then. But like it or not, I am involved. There’s a scared kid out there who I promised to help, and as stupid as it sounds, I try to keep my promises.” I looked at both of them with as much humility as I could. “Please, tell me what you know, and I’ll get out of here and back to trying to save the world without getting my ass kicked too bad.”
Lilith chuckled, an earthy laugh that made parts of me tingle that didn’t tingle very often since I had become a bloodsucking fiend. I was starting to get a pretty good idea where her powers lay, and I gotta admit, they were impressive.
She got up off Phil’s lap and came to sit on mine. She twined herself around me in a remarkable imitation of a wetsuit, and it took everything I had to keep focused. “Little vampire, if you insist on your own self-destruction, you will never be able to taste me again. Is that really what you want?”
“No,” I said in a small voice as I watched the gleam in her eyes grow into an inferno. “But it’s what I’ve got to do. Sorry, honey.”
Her gaze turned cold, and I could imagine her ripping my heart out with her bare hands and feeding it to me. My newly tingly nether regions stopped tingling.
The moment my body’s Fun-O-Meter hit fear instead of interest, she stood up, flounced back over to the corner of Phil’s desk, and sat down in a huff. “So be it,” she said in a voice like a frosty January window.
Phil leaned forward slowly as if struggling with a decision. Finally, he said, “We are not entirely sure what is coming, but there is a major summoning in process. It requires the exchange of thirteen pure souls for the souls of thirteen of the damned.”
“Children would qualify,” I said unhappily.
“Whoever is performing this ritual must have some plan for the thirteen damned souls, and it seems to involve Samhain somehow.”
“Of course.” I chimed in. “It has to be Halloween, which is in a matter of days. Because it’s not bad enough that there’s a gigantic evil thing about to rise from the Hellmouth and devour us all, there has to be a time limit so we can wrap all this up and go to commercial. I hate Halloween.”
Phil just stared at me for a moment.
“Sorry,” I said. “But some days it really feels like I’m trapped in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
“Your legs aren’t that good,” Phil said. “May I continue?” I nodded.
“There have been eleven kidnapping victims to date, and their bodies have been inhabited by the souls of the damned. Until you interfered and released the latest damned soul into the city.”
He had me there. I had been the one to ask Father Mike to dispossess the soul with extreme prejudice. “Yeah, that wasn’t exactly my best moment. Do you know what happens to that girl now? Last I heard she was a little freaked out, but in decent shape.”
Phil steepled his fingers and leaned back. “She will be susceptible to possession unless your friend the priest is able to provide her with some type of shielding. The soul you cast out of her will not be able to return. But she will be more likely to see and hear the presence of souls around her than a normal child.”
“And if she continues to dabble in the mystic arts?”
“She will undoubtedly end up dead long before she finishes puberty.”
I hate how much that bastard knows about everything. Or maybe it’s that I hate having to drag it out of him. He’s a bazillion years old, tied to all the bad guys in town and has ridiculously high-speed Internet. The least he could do is not make me beg for scraps. It’s a game with him. I’d better know the right questions, or he won’t play.
“And the soul?
” I asked.
“The soul will look for a host. Typically it will inhabit an empty body, but if one is not available, it will attempt to possess one weaker than itself.”
Lilith looked like she might jump into the conversation, but a glance from Phil shut her up. Then we were back to playing Phil’s little game. It was time to see if I’d asked enough of the right questions, and if I could be trusted with the answer to the big question. “And how do I stop who—or whatever is behind this whole mess?”
“I don’t know. To know that, one would have to uncover exactly who is performing the ritual and what they expect to gain. With that knowledge, then you might be able to stop them.”
Phil stood, and gestured toward a door that I was pretty sure hadn’t existed until that very moment. “But you will, as I said, have to accomplish that without my help. For I have given you all the aid I am interested in giving you, and now you must go.”
One day I’ll figure out what powers the fallen have and how much of their power is mojo like mine, but this obviously wasn’t going to be that day. I’d pushed as much as I dared. Gotten as much as I could.
Lilith opened the door, and stood very close as I made my exit. “Farewell, little vampire. I do hope you enjoyed my . . . hospitality.”
I blushed again as I went through the door and found myself in an alley behind the club. I felt a little dirty, like I’d been caught drinking the Communion wine or something. I hadn’t, for once, but my Catholic upbringing always left me a little self-conscious about anything that felt that good.
Chapter Twelve
Modern Magic Page 26
