by Jack Conner
Francois looked at him but said nothing.
"You don't like me to speak of my death, do you?" Roche said.
"I see no reason why you should die. If it comes to that, why don't you simply concede? We can bring the Dark Council back together and begin the mending process. Perhaps someday the world will be ready for your movement."
"No. We've been complacent with our role for far too long." Closing his eyes, he took a sip of bourbon and cleared his throat. "Ambassador, I know you have only good intentions at heart, but this is as it must be. Now please leave me for the moment so that you can attend to the arrangements we've discussed."
With obvious reluctance, the ambassador nodded and left. Sarnova returned to watch the night.
* * *
Several hours later and thousands of miles away, in the Hamptons, Harry Lavaca was also drinking in a study. However, he was sitting, not standing, and his drink was not bourbon but a homemade vodka martini.
Nearby the man who called himself Martin Ascott perched in his own chair sipping on a ginger ale. True to his word, he drank no alcohol. In the days Harry had spent living with him, he’d noted that, as advertised, Ascott was a decent family man, even if the money that he'd used for capital in the hot dog business had originally come from being a very successful heroin distributor. Still, drug money, especially the relatively small-scale stuff Ascott would've been involved in, would not be enough to buy an estate here. No, Ascott must have a good mind for legitimate business to have done as well as he had. In fact, and despite himself, Harry found that he could even get to like the man; Ascott was intelligent, soft-spoken, modest and gentle. Although he tried hard, Lavaca couldn't picture him as a rapist or a drug runner.
The two had been enjoying a companionable silence for several minutes before Ascott spoke: "Harry, I must tell you that I've enjoyed your being here. You know what Charlotte told me yesterday? She said that Michelle, our youngest, asked if she could call you Uncle Harry." He smiled. "I told Charlotte to tell her that that was just fine with me, but we ought to ask your permission first, of course. So what do you say?"
Grudgingly, Harry smiled. Ascott had raised some fine kids. "It's okay with me," he said. "But I don't know how much longer I can stay here and I wouldn't want to hurt little Michelle. She's precious."
"Please, we would love to have you stay on. Maybe permanently. And I don't say that just because I'm afraid of Danielle—although I am, terribly—but because, well, I've come to regard you as something of a friend. I like to think that you feel the same towards me."
"I suppose I do, Marty. If I did leave, I wouldn't hang you out to dry as far as Danielle is concerned. I've got contacts, friends of friends. I could find her, eventually, but most of these contacts I'd have to see in person. Some dislike telephones."
"Why on earth is that?"
"Shades have been around long before modern technology and many are resistant to it. I’ve been around them so long, I don’t have a telephone, either."
Ascott considered that. "Harry, you know a great deal about these creatures, don't you?"
"I've gathered a lot of information over the years."
"Do you know how they came to be?"
"There are many stories, creation myths, but I can't say that I absolutely believe any of them."
"Tell me."
Harry wet his mouth. “Magic.”
“Magic?”
“Oh, according to the myths, this old world of ours used to be full of mythical beings, from unicorns to dragons and other, more esoteric creatures. Spirits from other planes came to Earth regularly, and many worshipped them. They altered our reality, created the various immortal races. Cursed some, blessed others. But that’s just a story, and of course it’s a lot more involved than that. I don’t actually believe in dragons.” He smiled.
Ascott frowned. “Well, why not?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you accept the existence of vampires and werewolves, you accept the existence of the supernatural. Like you said, what is that but magic? Call it by a different name if you want, but it amounts to the same thing.”
“Perhaps,” Harry said. “But unicorns—”
The lights flickered out. A scream curled up from one of the lower floors (Michelle hated the dark), then silence fell. Only a glimmer of moonlight washed in through an open window, which also let in a current of cool air. This wind was the only sound.
"Is it the Gutter Angel?" Ascott whispered, and there was a trembling in his voice. "Is it Danielle?"
"Quiet." Harry made his way to the telephone: dead.
He pulled out his gun and pressed his back to the wall beside the door just as several dark figures leapt into the room and surrounded Ascott.
"Stop right there," commanded Lavaca. "These are silver bullets."
A petite woman, the only female of the group, laughed. "You've got the race right, but if you believe we're going to be afraid of some silver, you'll be disappointed. Who do you think you are, Harry Lavaca?"
"That's right, darlin'."
"Are you serious, old man?" asked one of the others. "You're the Slayer?"
"In the flesh."
Another raised his gun. "Not for long."
"Cut it out,” said the woman. “He could be of use to us. He knows the odd flock."
"She's right," the largest shadow said; he had an Australian accent. "We'll take him with us."
"Who the hell are you people?" Harry said.
"I'm Cloire, and you can meet the others later. Funny, I'd always expected you to be taller."
"You're Cloire?” Harry nodded. “I’ve heard of you. A member of Jean-Pierre’s death-squad.”
“Not anymore.”
"Knock it off, all of you!" roared Ascott, who seemed about to pass out. "Get out of my house, you demons! I'm not going anywhere with you."
The one Harry would come to know as Loirot lit a cigarette, the flare of his lighter very bright in the dark room. "I guess we go for the hard sell," he said, and reached a hand toward the man who'd once raped Danielle.
"Leave him be," said Harry. "You obviously didn't come here to kill him."
"Shut it, mortal.”
Harry shot him in the heart. These were werewolves and it was the first time he'd really been able to try out his silver bullets. A waste of money, as it turned out. Loirot straightened out and glared at him; Harry could see it well enough, even in the dark.
"Let's get out of here before the maid runs to the neighbors' and calls the cops,” the one Harry would learn to call Kilian said to Cloire.
"Don't you hurt my family," Ascott said, and for the first time Harry got a glimpse of his more brutal side. A vein throbbed in his forehead, and spittle sprayed from his lips. "Or I swear I'll hunt each and every one of you down and, before I kill you, I'll destroy every single thing that you love in this life."
"Be agreeable and no harm will come to your family,” Cloire said. “Now clam up and come with us. You too, Harry."
Chapter 23
On the third day of apartment-shopping, Jean-Pierre and Sophia found what they were looking for: a nice little place in SoHo. With cash down, they could move in on Monday.
It was not to be.
The Funhouse of the Forsaken had arrived in New York, just in from Lereba, and were performing their second show, which Jean-Pierre and Sophia decided to attend. The freak show played to an eclectic audience and charged high prices even for Manhattan; a six-hundred and sixty-six dollar cover charge and an extra two hundred for backstage passes. It was an intimate audience with no more than a hundred seats arranged around small tables, as if at a comedy club. Sophia chose a table near the center of the room and the two ordered drinks from a waiter. She ordered a strawberry daiquiri and he a gin and tonic.
The show started with the snake-oil salesman, Maximillian, coming out onto the stage before the curtains and making a few purposefully bad jokes.
"He's the shade, right?" Sophia whispered to Jean-
Pierre.
"That's the story. Supposedly he owns the troupe and gives the freaks—if you’ll pardon the term—just enough blood to temporarily immortalize them—it also allows them to perform acts that they couldn't do otherwise."
"Does the audience know what he is?"
"Some of them, probably. Trust me, we're not the only shades here."
The audience laughed at some tasteless joke Maximillian had just delivered, and he gave an evil smile.
"I see you're a group to my liking.” He rubbed his hands together. "Alas, it is not me you have come to see. In this world where so many of us are trapped in conformity, it is the majority who are imprisoned by their own ideals. Everyone seems to be alike in this world, so it's those that are different that are the truly free. We call them freaks, and oh! how we love to revile them, but somewhere in our minds there is part of us that sees their social liberation and yearns to join them—yearns for release! Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the opportunity to join them and for a few brief moments of eternity feel that release. Deliver yourselves into our embrace and let your minds float uninhibited by the jailhouse of convention. I now present to you, my good people, the Funhouse ... of the Forsaken!"
He bowed and everyone applauded. Then, stepping backward, he disappeared through the psychedelic curtains amid a burst of purple smoke and a barrage of surreal lights. Jean-Pierre was impressed. The showman had just insulted a roomful of people who had paid a high admission and gotten them to clap about it.
The curtains parted, revealing a dark dreamscape of props, smoke, and background. There were winding roads and tilted, pointy hills dotted with stunted trees, a cemetery with some nightmarish tombstones, and galaxies of wild, multi-colored stars above. It was arranged to resemble some Eastern European countryside—perhaps even that of Romania itself.
Haunting music swelled, the lighting grew more intense, and a score of actors dressed as peasants swept onto the stage and began to dance in what seemed to be a spooky folk-ritual celebrating something. Tittering back and forth and swirling across the stage, they raised their hands to the stars, then down to the ground again.
They stopped abruptly to see a sort of procession appearing around a hill. Six peasants held up a carriage-like bed, and lying on the bed there was a rather homely woman, grotesquely obese, but she smiled serenely and her eyes were warm. Dressed in a simple nightgown, she was playing a jaunty song on a fiddle. The six peasants set the carriage down and everyone gathered around, leaving an opening so that the audience could see what transpired.
A man dressed as a priest helped the woman out of her nightgown, while the peasants started chanting and then began to dance in a circle around the bed, still leaving room for the audience to observe the action. Other than being extremely fat, the woman had what seemed to be a long scar running up from her groin to her breastplate. As she started to croon in a low voice to the rhythm of the chanting, something in her abdomen seemed to buck; it appeared as though she was about to give birth. At the climactic moment of the chant, a head popped out of the scar running up her belly, which wasn't really a scar at all but an opening. With a little help from the peasants, a short figure emerged from the chasm of flesh and stepped to the ground, dripping fake blood.
The bearded dwarf wore a skin-tight shirt (that bore horizontal black-and-white stripes) and green trousers. Most unsettling, he boasted four perfectly-formed and mobile arms.
The priest raised his hands to the sky, howled, and ran off stage. The peasants performed a dance of fright and followed the example of their holy man. The woman, whose cavity had sealed as soon as the birth had been complete, stared at her child with panic, threw on her nightgown and began running away from the dwarf, who followed her with a smile.
He chased her through the hills and around the stage a few times (to the delight and laughter of the audience), then grew discouraged and sat down at the top of the hill the cemetery was located on. His mother returned to her bed, sobbing. The scene was tragic despite its comic undertones, but Jean-Pierre was settling into the spirit of the show.
A mime appeared. He was a tall man who looked rather ordinary except for the fact that he had no cartilage in his nose, just a stubby bone and two long black holes for nostrils, which lent his face the likeness of a skull—an image complemented by the thick white make-up and his big dark eyes. He studied the mother and child, tapping his foot thoughtfully. Then he grinned, snapped his fingers, and from the bed grabbed the fiddle, which he brought to the four-armed dwarf. The bearded “child” accepted it, turning up his ear as the mime bent down to whisper something to him. The dwarf smiled and took a bow to the fiddle, while the mime stepped courteously to the side.
As the dwarf began to play, swaying atop the cemetery hill, the mother watched him, the serenity returning to her face as the music moved her. Her son performed a little jig of affection and happiness, placing his free set of hands on his hips. The mime clapped along and joined in the jig.
The mother smiled, wiped the tears from her face and, after climbing down from the bed, went to her son and embraced him. The lighting grew warm and a rim of orange appeared above a hill, as if the sun were rising. In the glow of the brilliant dawn, the mother, son, and mime began to dance anew. Soon, the peasants returned to the stage, all smiling. The dwarf gave the fiddle to the mime and, taking his mother's arm, led her over to the bed, where she cradled him in her arms and kissed his forehead tenderly.
The six peasants who'd carried the bed onto the stage lifted it and led the way out, the rejoicing peasants just behind. The mime followed last, smiling, dancing and playing the instrument. He glanced once over his shoulder to give a kind wink at the audience before the actors all disappeared behind a green hill. The curtains closed.
Really, thought Jean-Pierre, the act had been quite sweet and even strangely affecting. Along with the rest of the audience, he applauded loudly, then reached for Sophia's hand. She smiled at him. There was something else in her eyes, something particular that had touched her about the act. She turned back to watch the show, leaving him to wonder.
He reflected that they had grown extremely close over the last few days, their bond only strengthened now that they could openly call each other father and daughter. A thought had hit him yesterday and he'd suggested inviting Veliswa to dinner one night in a sort of family reunion. Sophia had smiled and said that they should wait until they'd moved into their new home.
There was only one thing that bothered him, and that was the urge he kept feeling. Strange thirsts welled up in him, and hungers. He craved violence. Casual brutality had been a part of him for too long.
For the first week he hadn't even noticed, had been perfectly satisfied with his more conservative eating habits, and his more villainous selection of victims had only seemed to add a little spice to his meals. It had finally hit him today that what he craved most in all the wide world was just to run through the streets tearing off the heads of passers-by and sucking out their brains. NO! his new-found conscience screamed, but it was too new a voice to override his bloodlust. He could actually feel his hands shaking at the thought of violence, as if he were trying to kick cigarettes again.
Was that it? Was it an addiction? And was it one he wanted to overcome? If anyone could help him, it was Sophia, but he hesitated to speak to her of it; despite everything, she was moral and unlikely to understand his predicament. Also, of course, she was half ghensiv—maybe more than half—and ghensivs didn't generally behave in patterns of violence. They must shed blood occasionally, but only occasionally.
He ordered a vodka gimlet and settled in for the rest of the show. Not all the acts were as gentle as the first had been—in fact, some were downright cruel—but they were all interesting and varied enough to hold his attention. Lord Kharker had instilled in him an appreciation of the finer things in life—smooth automobiles, fine wines, Cuban cigars, classical music—but the only one that had really stuck with him was the love of opera. When moved b
y a particular opera, the albino was able to forget himself for awhile. It was this same pleasant feeling that he rediscovered now, with some surprise, by watching the performances of the Funhouse of the Forsaken. He found he was looking forward to his visit backstage and hoped that Sophia shared that anticipation.
Eventually, the last act came. It concerned the fate of a spider and a woman. The woman appeared normal, with blond hair and wide blue eyes, but the spider was a long, thin man with arms where his legs should be and hands where his feet should be. He had three eyes and two sets of upper teeth, all of which were malformed. Despite this, he appeared quite dignified—stately, even.
The tale unfolded thusly: the woman was passing through a forest when she stumbled across a giant web, the centerpiece of the stage, suspended between two large trees. The spider had gotten tangled in his own web, so the girl ascended one of the trees until she drew close enough to liberate him. Pulling a saber from a sheath, she cut him free, but in doing so inadvertently tangled herself in the web.
Immediately the spider descended on her, intent on feeding.
She began to sing. A low, beautiful song rolled out, full of mourning and redemption. Moved, the spider released her. She kissed him and disappeared into the forest. The spider watched her go, then returned to the center of his web, where he waited. He danced around playing an accordion, calling to the gods to deliver him sustenance, but none came. The sun rose and set, the night grew dark, then the sun rose and set once more. The cycle repeated itself several times, and the spider grew so weak from starvation that he collapsed into the web.
Finally, the girl reappeared. Seeing him caught again, she set about freeing him, successfully staying clear of the web's entrapments. Once he was liberated, they began to dance, but suddenly the spider broke away from her, crying because he still had no food.
The girl offered herself to him. He resisted. Seeing that he would die without her sacrifice, the girl flung herself into the web, becoming firmly entangled. Immediately the spider freed her, but she just entangled herself again. The spider cried and watched her, then began to dance with tears in his eyes. Still, he refused to take her, and as he came to free her again, his body went rigid and a fixed expression swept his face. He collapsed beside her, having died of starvation because he wouldn't accept her sacrifice. Only now she was trapped in the web with no hope of release.
