Skinwalker

by Faith Hunter

Page 30

 

  A few doors were closed to either side. From the scent of coffee and tea, I identified a butler’s pantry that separated the dining room from the expanded kitchen. I got a glimpse of an old-fashioned music room behind the parlor, and smelled mold that was peculiar to old books in the room behind it. But the rooms on the left at the back of the house were for the servants, including security. Brandon opened each as we passed.

  There were six bunks in one room, five neatly made, one with a body under the covers, snoring. I smelled blood on him, but as he was still breathing, I figured he was a human blood-slave of the clan and said nothing. I didn’t have to like it, but I wasn’t here to rescue junkies.

  Lockers were on one wall of the bunk room, a laundry on the other. A unisex bathroom was on one side of the hallway, a big storage closet across from it, and a tiny cubical marked SECURITY. Inside was a security console with six monitors, each flipping back and forth with different camera angles, viewing the house and grounds from multiple positions. One showed the street. They had seen me coming. They grinned at me, and I grinned back. “Nice setup. ”

  “It works,” Brian said. “Plus we had heard from the Rousseau and Desmarais security teams that a female biker was in the District. We talk. ” I nodded, impressed. “Want sweet tea?” he asked, indicating a break room with minikitchen, table, chairs, sofas, recliners, and TV.

  “That would be nice,” I said, on my best children’s home manners. I took a seat at the table while he got out glasses and poured tea, and Brandon went back to the security console, glass in hand. He was close enough to participate in the conversation, sipping, his chair at an angle, one eye on the screens, one on me. “Mind a few questions?” I asked, trying for girly and innocent, but not really fooling either twin, even after the silver bracelet incident.

  “As long as they aren’t about the security precautions or systems of the clans, you can ask anything you want,” Brian said. The brothers had mellow voices with a strong Deep South accent, one I had heard only in Louisiana, spoken as if they talked through a mouthful of melting praline candy.

  “Ask away,” Brandon said.

  So I did. We drank cold sweet tea, which tasted fresh brewed, from good quality loose tea, not the tea dust called fannings in grocery store-quality tea bags. I asked about any recent changes in any vamps they knew—feeding changes, habitat changes, scent changes. The twins were an integral part of the vamp security community, which, I discovered, was a growing and lucrative business in cities with a city blood-master and vamps who were out of the closet. Not all of them were, even now with the improving vamp-human relations.

  They volunteered info about social relationships, which clans were feuding, which vamps were entering and exiting affairs of the heart, which clans and individual vamps were having financial trouble, or gambling, or building too many blood-servant relationships, or too few, their habits, feeding times, and the emerging human donor systems that allowed vamps to feed without forming blood relationships. This new change bothered them the most.

  I studied them as we talked, and my impression of their military backgrounds was reinforced. These guys were smart, and something suggested they were older than they looked. More like Vietnam War military. Or maybe even World War II. It was clear from their carefully controlled physical motions that they fed on vamp blood often enough to be fast. Not quite vamp fast, maybe not even Beast fast, but faster than any regular human.

  I wanted to ask about it but that seemed rude. Like, “So, tell me. How often do you suck vamp?” No way to ask directly and still be polite, so I asked, “These human donor systems. Who sets them up?”

  While Brian was pouring more tea, Brandon said, “We don’t know. It’s an Internet thing, like a call-girl site, but for blood donors. Blood for cash. If a vamp needs blood for an evening, he can message the site with contact info, city, cell phone, credit card, and restaurant or hotel where they want to meet. They’re in four cities in the United States: New Orleans, New York, San Fran, and LA. But it’s spreading. We hear that a new branch is opening in Nashville. ”

  “We’re trying to get a handle on who’s behind it,” Brian said. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing illegal in blood for money. Winos have been selling plasma for decades. And it’s great for vamps who want an occasional safe, fresh-meat snack, but as a permanent lifestyle it isn’t good for the vamp community. ”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because the blood-slave and blood-servant relationships are special. They give vampires stability,” Brian said. “Emotional, as well as personal and clan security. ”

  Brandon stood and scooted his chair so he could reposition and still see both the screens and me. He straddled the chair, resting his arms across the back. When he spoke again, it was the voice a master sergeant might have used instructing soldiers or grunts, a clipped and well-thought-out spiel, almost rehearsed. I suddenly had to wonder if the brothers had been watching for me, to tell me this. Since any reliable info on vamps was hard to come by I had to wonder why.

  “Vampires,” he said, “are volatile at the best of times. The younger they are, the more high-strung, hot-tempered, impulsive, unpredictable, and capricious they are. Almost erratic. ”

  “And violent,” I said. “Let’s not forget violent. ”

  He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “They need good, steady, strong human servants to provide emotional balance and a ready supply of safe, clean blood. Servants who aren’t easily riled to help them navigate the human legal, financial, and social systems. Which is why the blood-slave and blood-servant relationships were put into the Vampira Carta. You know of it?”

  I nodded. Troll had mentioned it.

  “According to the oldest of us—Correen, who lives here with Clan Arceneau—without this stability, vampires go rogue faster. They need the long-term, lifelong bonding that takes place with the slave and servant relationship. They need it. They need us. ”

  “Is that what Correen thinks happened with this rogue I’m after? He lost his blood-servant?”

  “She thinks it’s possible. ”

  I tapped my fingernails on the glass, little tinks of sound as I thought. “What’s the difference between slave and servant?”

  “Time, money, and monogamy,” Brian said. “A blood-servant is a paid employee who offers work and blood meals in return for a salary, security, improved health, expanded life span, and other benefits resulting from a few sips of vampire blood a month. If the relationship works, then a servant is adopted into the vampire’s family, becomes part of the financial, emotional, and legal running of it, just like an adopted child would be, but with the benefits not dropped when he or she reaches majority. Servants are too important, too difficult to replace, to let grow old, unhealthy, or slow. Of course, getting out of the relationship is problematic from our end too. ”

  “We’re hooked on the blood,” Brandon offered, “and on the relationship, which is . . . intense. ” The brothers shared a quick look that said the type of intense was sexual, but was also something else. Something I hadn’t penetrated yet.

  “A blood-slave is a blood-junkie, but one who doesn’t have a permanent master,” Brian said. “Slaves are passed around between masters, usually only inside a family, but not always, and without a contract or the security offered in the longer-term relationship. They’re used for food, fed on several times a month, and might be offered a small salary and an occasional blood sip in return. But slaves do it for the high they get when they’re fed on, not the relationship. ”

  I rubbed my head, more as an excuse to think than to relieve tension. I had known there was a difference between blood-slaves and blood-servants but the particulars weren’t easy to discover. And I was certain that I didn’t have the full picture now. I hadn’t gained much new info from this conversation, but I had discovered, over the years, that I would eventually use and expand on what I learned. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll thin
k about all this. Okay if I call you with questions?”

  “Not guaranteeing we’ll answer, but you can always ask,” Brandon said.

  I dropped my hand and stood, stretching. “Okay. So on that note, how about two favors. First, call the other security people and tell them I’m riding around, learning the lay of the land. Ask them not to shoot me if I bike up to their doors. ” I grinned to show I was only half jesting. “And . . . tell me. How old are you guys?”

  Brian laughed. Brandon sighed, looked at his watch, and handed his brother a five-dollar bill, saying, “We have a standing bet. You asked within the first hour. So I lose. ”

  “And?” I asked.

  The twins exchanged a look, the kind that only those who have worked closely together for years, like old married couples, or twins, share, the kind that says so much more than words. Brandon said, “We were born in 1822. ”

  I stared. “Crap. You’re old farts. ” The brothers laughed, at which point I realized I had spoken aloud. I smiled weakly as they showed me down the hall toward the door, while offering assurances that they would pave the way for me with the other security personnel.

  I thought I was done, until I passed the hallway mural. I stopped midstep, midword, midthought. The nighttime pastoral scene was of vamps having a candlelit picnic. Naked vamps. And the food was naked too—alive and human. I couldn’t help my blush when I saw Brandon and Brian were part of the scene, and that they were depicted as being very well endowed. Very, very well endowed. My blush made the brothers laugh, one of those manly he-men laughs that said they were, indeed, well endowed, and that they thought blushing was cute.

  Beast is not cute, she thought at me. I took a steadying breath and said, “I recognize you two, and Leo, and Katie. ” My blush deepened. “But who are the rest of the . . . um . . . vamps and . . . um . . . ”

  Brandon took pity on my stumbling and stepped to the mural, pointing. “Arceneau, our blood-master, Grégoire”—he indicated a blond man who looked like he was fifteen when he was turned, like a child beside the lithe and muscular twins—“currently traveling in Europe. Ming of Mearkanis”—he pointed—“now believed to be true-dead, and her blood-servants Benjamin and Riccard. Rousseau and his favorites, Elena and Isabel. Desmarais with his Joseph, Alene, and Louis. Laurent with her Elisabeth and Freeman. ” The phraseology had taken an old-fashioned cant, and I wondered if the mural took them down memory lane, bringing out archaic wording.