by Jack Conner
“Yes?”
“I could never be with an evil man. I must teach you how to be good. Not that I’m on particularly good terms with good, but … do you accept?”
He blinked at her. “A defining moment, you said.” When she didn’t reply, he ran a hand through his hair.
She waited, tense. Would he actually forgo the dark path?
Finally, he straightened. “So be it. For you, Sophia, I accept. But teaching me will not be easy.”
* * *
Leaving the airport, Ruegger and Danielle rode a taxi into the heart of Lereba. Excitement coursed through him, and Danielle seemed to feed on it.
The city blazed, bright and colorful. Capital of immortal activity in Africa, Lereba played home to the two dominant races of immortal here: the abunka, like the assassin Jarvick, and the karula. The karula tended to be Arab-looking and, unlike abunka, they fed exclusively on humans, on whatever bodily tissue or fluid was convenient and tasty at the time. Relations between the two races were always tense, but their coexistence was made easier by the fact that one race lived largely below ground and one above.
The narrow streets twisted and turned in labyrinthine corridors, and the taxi was often halted by the people and their mounts swarming the streets. Clay buildings towered to either side. Spicy scents of local cuisine drifted out from open windows.
"It's beautiful," Danielle said.
Ruegger watched her. The cross on her forehead was completely gone, erasing all physical evidence of their time in Nevada, but there was something that was too quiet about her, too composed. She showed little of her usual spark or enthusiasm, which worried him.
"Yes," he said, "it is."
"What's wrong?"
"Just wondering where the hell we're going to find Hauswell in this madhouse. He could've already left by now. Laslo wasn’t in any condition to tell me how long he’d been here."
She patted his hand. "Maybe Saskia will know."
"Maybe."
"If he doesn't, then at least he can provide a place for us to stay while we ask around, right? Everything will be okay, don't worry."
The taxi dropped them off a block short of Saskia's hotel, and they enjoyed the chance to walk among the townspeople. Ruegger hoped their energy would be contagious. Upon entering the hotel's lobby, the odd flock immediately noticed the many guards in attendance—at least five of them immortal. Though the guards were discreet, their presence was unnerving.
The lobby, like most of Moroccan buildings, radiated heat, as the clay absorbed the warmth of the sun and retained it for long periods. A few fans stirred the air, and with the buzzing clientele and the friendly nature of the place, the effect was warm and pleasant. The odd flock moved through a small archway and a curtain of beads into a heavily-shadowed room that appeared to be a sort of nightclub, filled with several different kinds of smoke, sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. They sipped their drinks, getting comfortable, listening to a small native band that played on a raised stage in the corner. A few local businessmen of respectable ages sat nearby, celebrating something. They smoked marijuana but didn’t drink, not uncommon in the region.
Ruegger asked the bartender to send a courier to inform Saskia they were here. The bartender obliged, and in a few minutes Saskia came through another archway spanned by beads. The karula looked more severe than usual, his thick black beard braided formally and wearing a brown robe and head scarf, as if in mourning. Three immortal bodyguards hovered about him.
"Well, well," he said, putting on a smile. "So my favorite nomads have returned!"
He embraced them both, exchanging greetings. Saskia bid his guardians relax and plopped down at the bar, ordering a bottle of vodka and a shot glass.
"I wasn't sure you'd make it back here, my friends," he said. "We hear rumors about your Balaklava and your Jean-Pierre. We heard what you did to Triboli. He was quite well-known around these parts."
"We were hoping you might know something about the hit Jarvick was carrying out."
Saskia shrugged. "Well, I can tell you that he had vague connections with Roche Sarnova's people."
"You think Sarnova wants us dead?" Danielle said.
Saskia chuckled. "That seems unlikely, but it's all I know. I'm sure you’ve more than a few enemies lying around, but you'd know them better than I. Would you consider Lord Kharker an enemy?”
Ruegger shifted uncomfortably. “No. At least, I wouldn’t have phrased it that way.”
"Well, I know that Lord Kharker and Roche Sarnova are friends, which leads to the connection with Jarvick."
"What are you saying?"
Saskia downed a shot without a chaser and said, "Probably nothing. I didn't mean to upset you. Please, let's not discuss this anymore."
"So what's with the guards?" Danielle asked. “And why are you dressed that way? What’s wrong?”
Saskia made a face. He started rolling a joint. "Care to join me? This is prime stuff."
"Sure."
"It's been a bloody awful last few weeks," the karula said while he worked. "Lyrenk and Testopha were killed within a few hours of each other, twenty-five nights ago. Since then, it's been war."
The news jolted Ruegger. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t get it,” Danielle said. “Who were they?”
“Lyrenk and Testopha were the leaders of the karula and the abunka here for over three hundred years,” Ruegger said. “They kept the two races at peace.”
“Without them, who knows what will happen?” Saskia said.
“Hell,” Danielle said.
Ruegger lowered his voice. "Who killed them?"
"The abunka claim that we killed Testopha and they retaliated by assassinating Lyrenk,” Saskia said. “But it's all very shady, very mysterious. No one knows for sure what happened. There's a rumor that someone from the outside had Testopha killed to ignite a war. Maybe, maybe not, but either way, war's what's happened, though so far it's been small-scale stuff, an assassination here and there. But sooner or later ..." He licked the joint shut and lit it.
"You think there will be actual war?" Ruegger asked. "Fighting in the streets?"
"I'm afraid so; at this point, it seems inevitable. The abunka and my kind have hated each other for thousands of years—our gods versus theirs, and both sides claim that this is their homeland. The usual. I've always taken a stand against that crap, being friendly to the abunka when I can, but it's only the renegades—like Jarvick—that will deal with me. They've rejected their gods, for the most part, and I've rejected mine. We have no quarrel, but it's all the others, the traditionalists, that are out for blood. Figuratively, of course." He passed Danielle the bomb.
She sucked in a long toke, then a sip of her beer. "Maybe they'll kill each other off," she said. "And the only ones left standing will be the enlightened ones."
Saskia smiled sadly. "That's my dream, too, kid. But it seems that I'm in some danger, and not just from the sand-rats."
"You're afraid of karula, too?" Ruegger said.
Saskia nodded. "I think my free-spirited ways have gotten me in trouble. My peers don't appreciate my rejection of their values … and the fact that I deal with abunka. And the abunka know I'm a valued leader and representative of my kind, at the same time my kind wish I weren't. So, you see, it's looking pretty grim for your humble friend either way, don't you think?"
"Why don't you just get out of here?" Danielle said, passing the joint to Ruegger. He declined.
"This is my home. I've been thinking of abandoning it, though, at least until things calm down. I've thought of relocating to Iraq for a time." He shrugged again. "Looks like we're both being hunted, doesn't it?"
"Nothing makes sense," Ruegger muttered, knocked back a vodka shot and passed the shot glass to Danielle.
Saskia looked contemplative. "Chaos is breaking out all over the world. Immortals are being slaughtered every night, every hour. The Scouring, they call it, but no one knows what's really going on, or what tomorrow might
bring to light. By the way, I am sorry about the loss of your friend, Ludwig. I never met him, but he always sounded like an interesting character."
"Thank you. You wouldn't happen to've heard anything about Hauswell, would you?"
"I heard he was dead, but I'm sure you know that already."
“If he wasn’t dead, and were in town, where would he be?”
“There’s only one place I can think of: the territory of the renegade abunka.” Saskia stood. "Well, my friends, I'm afraid that I've got things to do, but you're always welcome to come chat and smoke with me. I think you'll be quite safe in Lereba as long as you stay here; I've some clout, you know, and no one would dare harm one of my guests. Would you like your old room?"
"That would be great."
"Is there anything else I can do for you while you're here?"
"We could use some hardware,” Ruegger said. “I feel naked without a few guns on me."
"Of course. I'll send a man around tonight." Smiling affectionately, he embraced them both and departed.
Watching him go, Danielle said, "I'm more confused now than I was before. What the hell's going on?"
* * *
“What about that one?” Jean-Pierre asked, pointing out the dirty window of the truck towards a man standing on the street corner.
“No,” said Sophia. “They must be evil. That guy’s just selling ‘shrooms.”
Every day he was getting better, or thought he was, but this just wasn’t something he was used to thinking about. All the same, he knew he had to. A defining moment. Besides that, Sophia had made it plain that she would not stay with his old amoral self. Now, days after the showdown at Laslo’s, he had bought a used Bronco and, together, they were trying to pick out a victim to feed from. They’d been at it for hours.
“Well, then you choose one,” he said. “Show me how it’s done.”
She squinted at the crowded street. At long last she admitted, “To tell you the truth, I’ve never really done this. A ghensiv doesn’t have to.”
“Then how’d you expect me to tell which one of these people is evil?”
“I don’t know. You’re supposed to be a powerful psychic.”
“You said reading their minds was an invasion of privacy.”
She let out a breath. “I take it back, for the moment. Better to invade their privacy than kill them if they’re innocent.”
While he was probing the brains of the passers-by, he mused, “How do Ruegger and Danielle do it?”
“Heard they ousted lowlifes from prison sometimes, killers and rapists—then feed from them. But mainly, I think they just use their contacts. They pay people all around the world to keep tabs on bad guys for them. Plus, they kill a lot of shades and drink their blood.”
They didn’t find anybody purely evil that night. Instead, they returned to their hotel room and made love, then called up room service and ate until they couldn’t move. Next evening they camped out again, looking for bad guys. The cycle repeated itself several times, and to him that was a good thing. No more roaming around, executing Vistrot’s enemies, maintaining order in the criminal underworld. Still, it was frustrating. Going hungry wasn’t the glamorous life he’d pictured. He missed the crew and the constant rush of adrenaline.
He was learning, though. Sophia taught him to be patient and to bide his time. Her calm was contagious. If this was being in a constructive relationship, he could live with that. When another few nights passed without food, he told her the situation was unfair. Every day he sustained her—sometimes several times—yet she expected him to starve.
“What’s your point?” she said.
“Maybe I’ll let you go without for a couple days and see how well you do.”
“I’ll bet you can’t.”
“Bet I can,” he said.
“Care to make it interesting?” When he said yes, she asked, “What’re the stakes?”
“If you hold out longer than I do, we’ll go on like this. If I resist you, you help me fill my belly unless you want to go without as well.”
They shook on it. After two nights of nothing but heavy petting, she grew more strident in her efforts at helping him feed. To make up for lost time, he sustained her as often as he could.
Days passed. Then a week. Then two.
After the second week had gone by, and he and Sophia were closer than ever, he announced his plan. They were sharing an omelet in the last Ma and Pa restaurant in Vegas when Jean-Pierre told her how he felt, and what he felt they ought to do about it.
“While in Vegas ...”
“You can’t be serious,” she said.
Jean-Pierre, the albino, retired world-famous assassin, slipped out of the booth and dropped to one knee.
* * *
In Los Angeles, at Sophia’s home in Beverly Hills, Veliswa was enjoying the moonlight out by the pool and stroking the three-legged cat when the phone rang. She smiled when she heard her daughter’s voice.
“Yes, yes, the cat’s fine. How about Ruegger and Danielle?”
“Safe for now,” said Sophia.
“I’m so glad you’ve been able to keep an eye on them. So what bizarre circumstance compelled you to call your poor mother?”
When Sophia told her, Veliswa dropped the phone. “Jesus H. Christ!”
She waited for the tears to come. After all the affection she’d wasted on that bastard, he’d married her daughter! She couldn’t believe it. But the tears didn’t come. In fact, after a minute she found herself laughing so hard that the cat ran off.
“Does he know?” she said.
“No. He has no idea.”
Chapter 21
The first thing Ruegger noticed when he woke up was that the maid was late again. A body lay near the door, where it had been left last night, a dry host to flies to be taken out during the day while the vampires slept—but this was the second night in a row a body was still there when he woke.
He nudged Danielle, immersed in a silken sea of reddish sheets. She murmured something, then slowly rolled over and propped herself up against the adobe wall the bed was shoved against. Though naked beneath the sheets, she didn't cover herself. She smiled sleepily.
"Hey."
He smiled back. "Hey."
He kissed her sweaty throat, playing his fingers through her hair. He rose, rooted briefly through a wad of scattered clothes on the floor, produced a couple of cigarettes—not cloves, thank the gods—and lit them both one. Smoking, she threw off the covers and climbed out of bed as well, obviously relishing the warm clay against her bare feet. She wrapped herself loosely in a rouge sheet and moved to the window, hidden now behind a curtain. Ruegger felt it, too: the pulse of the young dusk outside, its crackling energies lush and unrestrained.
Danielle found a pack of incense, shook a few dry brown stalks into her hand and plunged the sharpened tips into the bloodless chest of the dead man, a former child peddler and murderer they'd stalked last night, then lit her clove from the incense flame, blowing her first lungful out to tame the fire and taking a moment to study the hot glow of the burning tip.
“I’ll never get over having to kill people to live,” she said. “At least we’re able to take down some bad guys, though.”
“Indeed.”
Ruegger slipped into a pair of white silk pants, stepped over to the wall near the balcony and hit a button that made the blackout curtains swoosh to the side, letting in the strong light from outside. He blinked, knowing that the sun hadn't been down for even five minutes. But it was night now. Moving onto the balcony, he leaned over the balustrade to peer at the bustling robed merchants and brightly decorated camels that banged through the narrow street. Danielle joined him. Together they watched the exotic frenzy, letting the spices and scents of the city tickle their noses.
"I love Morocco," she sighed. "Too bad we can't stay here much longer."
Ruegger arched his eyebrows, thinking of the telegram they'd gotten last night. Hauswell had contacted them; he was i
ndeed staying with the renegade abunka in the southeastern part of town, though apparently he was using a false name and few there knew him. He'd gotten wind of the vampires’ questions and sent for them. They’d been in Lereba five days trying to find him, unsure which branch of the renegade abunka to look into or if he was really with them at all.
"It's almost over," Danielle said.
Ruegger kissed her forehead. "Let's just hope that what he has to say was worth what we went through to hear it." What he was really thinking was that it was a shame they had to leave, because he felt that another few weeks here could bring her back to her old self. Already she seemed in better spirits. But they couldn't risk the chance that the death-squad would reacquire them here, especially now that Jean-Pierre wouldn't be able to protect them. And Ruegger sure didn’t want to meet up with the Balaklava again.
She reached for his hand, then leaned out over the balcony on tip-toe, allowing the wind to tease her dark hair.
"We'll have to come back soon, though,” she said.
"We will.”
"Umm," she murmured, still studying the street, but something in her face had changed. She raised a hand lamely and waved at someone down below, then turned to Ruegger. "I think we've outstayed our welcome, babe."
"How?"
Then he saw them too. They weren't hard to spot. Out of all the hundreds of people below, they were the only ones standing bone still and staring up at the hotel. Six tall, thin black men who wore desert-blue robes, they carried machetes at their sides. Ceremonial designs had been painted on their faces, supposedly giving them strength to walk above ground.
"Great," said Ruegger.
He guided Danielle inside and closed the door. His eyes darted into the corner, where their suitcases lay open on a little table. Courtesy of their host, they’d been able to purchase a wide variety of weapons not normally available in the States, and Ruegger was looking forward to trying them out. As was his custom, he had devoted an entire suitcase to his firearms.
