Marty Phillips (Book 2): The Taste of Blood

by Kieran Double

  The world was a cacophony of noise. Something was burning. I heard the front door of the house slam. Someone walking towards us. Vaguely, I was aware of the twisted metal around me. I clicked the seatbelt open and tried the door. Wouldn’t open.

  So I rolled down the window, then fell out onto the gravel driveway. The coupé’s roof had collapsed and ripped. The center of the Jag was crushed. I leaned against its beautiful remains, towards the Gran Torino’s crushed front end. There wasn’t a sound from inside.

  For a second, I thought Tasaria was dead. Then I remembered she was a vampire. No car crash would kill her. Nothing a machete to the neck would do that. A vampire could die of loss of blood too, though. It was what they craved. What they needed. Vampire as she was, I was still worried for Tasaria.

  I stumbled towards the Gran Torino. The front driver’s window, and the window screen, had smashed into shards. I knocked away the broken pieces and unbuckled her seatbelt. Her legs were crushed, I realized, as I picked her up. If she was a human being, she’d be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

  Facing the Mansion, I staggered slowly towards the front door. Tasaria muttered in my ear, “Don’t forget my bag… the blood.”

  I turned back, looked, saw the bag in the passenger seat. I grabbed the bag – a generic shoulder bag that anyone might have owned – holding Tasaria’s limp body in one arm. She was very light. Tasaria took out an IV container full of blood. Ashley and Susie must have given it to her. She sucked on it like an athlete would drink water after a competition, her fangs bursting through the plastic.

  Ashley, shocked, was on the doorstep in a nightgown and robe. Nicolae was there. Muller was behind them too, I noticed a few seconds later, flustered. Gently, despite my tiredness and injuries, I placed Tasaria in her brother’s arms. I kept the shoulder bag waiting until Tasaria needed more blood.

  “What the hell? Are both of you drunk?” said Ashley, suddenly un-petrified. I handed Tasaria another bag of blood, as we went inside.

  “Neither of us is drunk,” I answered, “but Tasaria will be really pissed with me when she has enough energy.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were working this case,” I said, adopting my usual courtroom manner. “A stalker. The client was Karen Arthurs. Susie had hacked into her building’s CCTV, and I’d added a few more cameras at the blind spots. Tasaria called me. Said the stalker had attacked Ms. Arthurs. When I got there, the police and an ambulance. I talked with the lead detectives, Schwartz and O’Neill – I need to have a word with you, Ashley, about Schwartz later, not now.”

  “Anyway, Schwartz and his partner said that Tasaria had pulled the perp off Ms. Arthurs and locked him in the bathroom. Then she called 911. I talked to her and Ms. Arthurs when they were in the ambulance,” I continued stiffly. “Ms. Arthurs was pretty beat up. Tasaria said she was going to leave Seattle, then she got into the Gran Torino, and I followed her in the Jag. She drifted away from the driveway – I’d been behind her – so I go in front of her and turned the Jag in front of her. She’d sped up by then, and crashed into me.”

  “Christ, you really did take Ashley’s orders to heart!” exclaimed Nicolae. Surprisingly, it was the first time since the crash that he’d spoken. Very unlike Nicolae Brasoveanu. “And you two wrecked the Gran Torino.”

  “I wasn’t following orders. I was doing what I wanted to do. And Tasaria is safer here than she would ever be anywhere else. She needs to be protected, and not just from other Hunters, from herself. She probably won’t understand, but I had to do it. And we wrecked granddad’s 1963 Jaguar E-Type, so don’t start complaining. Couldn’t you do some magic shit on them?”

  “I could. But it wouldn’t help much. And when we call in the tow-truck, everything will have to look as if it just happened.”

  “Or we could just call Schlaukopf’s cousin, Kurt,” said Ashley. I could never keep track of Schlaukopf myriad relatives. “He runs a garage, and he won’t question if everything looks suspicious.”

  “But what if Schlaukopf finds out?” said Nicolae anxiously

  I shrugged. “He knows Tasaria’s in town – he had to, she’s working for me.”

  “But the circumstances…” began Nicolae

  “We’ll say we were both drunk. That should be enough.”

  “What if he arrests you both?”

  “He won’t. Marty’s a Huntsman, and Tasaria’s a Hunter,” Ashley said. “It’s in his, and his family’s, best interest to protect us. Even if it’s just from a DUI conviction.”

  “Fine.”

  My phone rang. Susie.

  From inside her cell, Tasaria shouted, seemingly using all her strength. “You had better answer that, Marlowe! You can’t ignore her forever.”

  I smiled, answering it. “Sorry, Susie…”

  Tasaria was fine by the next morning. Ashley had stockpiled blood and Tasaria had spent half the night drinking. It was scarier than fighting vampires, seeing them re-heal. I had to pick Susie up with Ashley’s BMW. She was still quietly pissed at me, just like Ashley. Not long ago, I would have thought that the two of them agreeing with each other was impossible. How things changed.

  “‘Porfiry, do not unfairly punish me for I have nothing wrong‘,” said Tasaria, smiling.

  “‘Oh, really, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, we both know the truth of the matter’, ” I parried. Out of character, “I thought I was more Sonia to your Roddy.”

  “‘Sonia Semyonovna, will you follow me to Siberia in the punishment of my crimes?’”

  “‘I don’t rightly know whether I will or not, Roddy, for your crimes are horrible’,” she answered, smirking.

  “Oh, my god, what TV show is this from?” Nicolae was lounging on the other couch. Susie, Muller and Ashley were sitting at the counter. “You two are so sad.”

  “It isn’t a TV show they’re referencing, Nicu, it’s a book. ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Dostoyevsky,” answered Muller. “Raskolnikov murdered an old pawnbroker, Sonia is his girlfriend and became a prostitute to support her father’s drink problem, and Porfiry Petrovich is the investigative magistrate in charge of the murder case. I didn’t know you read old books.”

  I shrugged. “I do. Sometimes. Annie was always telling me to read more. Said it improved my mental stability and calmed me down. She was right, you know, she always was.”

  “You’re never fair on yourself, Marty. You always liked reading, you were just ashamed of it.”

  “I was not,” I protested indignantly. “And I read crime books, still do, helps with investigations and stuff. ‘Crime and Punishment’ is crime fiction.”

  “I always did like modest men,” Tasaria said, kicking me playfully with her barefoot feet. I grabbed them looking at her smooth legs. They looked entirely perfect, as if nothing was wrong with them, but they’d been completely crushed only hours before.

  “That vampire-juice sure has power. Your legs are better than ever,” I said, admiring her dark legs.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you liked them that much,” said Tasaria, smirking.

  “Neither did I.” I leaned forward and kissed Tasaria on the lips for the first time.

  “Jesus, not on the couch you two,” exclaimed Ashley incredulously.

  “And not in front of me, either,” agreed Susie. “We had a conversation about this before.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But can she come to the Detective’s Annual Christmas Eve Ball with me?”

  “I think she can,” answered Tasaria, “if Miss Phillips allows it.”

  “I do.”

  “What about Ms. Phillips over there?”

  “I do too.”

  “Well, then, Sonia Semyonovna, we shall go to the ball together.”

  “Indeed we shall, Raskolnikov,” I agreed. Then, the act over “Seriously, though, Tasaria, we’ve got a lot of unfinished business to finish together”

  “Well, we had better get finishing, hadn’t we?”

  “How’s your potion go
ing, Nicolae?” I asked. The countertop was littered with the debris of alchemy; cylinders, containers, cauldrons, Bunsen burners. “Are we any closer to finding Lewis?”

  “A small bit, but this will take longer than I’d hoped. Christmas day probably,” answered Nicolae. He wore a white lab coat like a scientist. “Someone’s shielding him.”

  “I thought you said twenty-four hours?”

  “This isn’t science, its alchemy,” answered Nicolae. “I’m guessing most of the time. And that was without shielding.”

  “So someone was helping him,” I said “Another magician?”

  “Yes” answered Ashley.

  “A Noble?”

  “Could be.”

  “They seem to be everywhere.”

  “I know,” agreed Ashley. “It’s just like the last war, back in the early 90’s. It was all just calming down when I saw for the first time.”

  “There’s going to be war,” said Muller ominously. “And soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Don’t ask that question, Marlowe,” said Tasaria. She actually sounded vaguely worried, and that, more than anything else, scared me. Nothing annoyed Tasaria Brasovneau, or at least that’s what it seemed to me. “You won’t like the answer. That’s why you should realize asking too many questions is dangerous.”

  It was past twelve when Tasaria and I finally stumbled into Police Headquarters. Walker smirked when he saw us. “Late night, Marlowe Investigations?”

  “You could say that,” said Tasaria, smirking.

  “You could, I agreed.”

  As before, Walker waited until Tasaria left the room on some minor errand to talk to me about her. “You realize,” he said slowly, “that Ms. Brasoveanu has a criminal record. Detective Schwartz called from Sexual Assault and Child Abuse.”

  “Oh, for god’s sake, will everyone stop badgering me about that?” I said, frustrated. “I know she had a criminal record, and I just don’t care. I know Tasaria, I don’t care.”

  “Is that just because there’s something going on between you two?”

  “What? How did you…?”

  “I’m a detective, Marty, finding out what others would rather no one else knew,” said Walker, smiling. “And you can be so damn obvious sometimes.”

  I sighed. “We didn’t actually… we nearly did, though. Ashley felt the compulsion to say ‘not on the couch, you two’.”

  “And yet, nothing happened?”

  “Not yet. I’m taking her to the Annual Christmas Eve Ball.”

  “Really?” said Walker incredulously. “You think she’d get on well with the detectives and their wives? And you’d have to get her in a dress, which doesn’t seem likely.”

  “I doubt she’d get on well with the detectives and their wives, but Ashley’s taking her out dress-shopping tonight. They said they won’t show me what Tasaria’s going in until we go to the Ball.”

  “Mysterious…”

  “Everything is, with Tasaria Brasoveanu…”

  11

  The Annual Christmas Eve Ball

  Then she put on her dress which sparkled like the stars, and went into the ball-room with it; and the king danced with her again, and thought she had never looked so beautiful as she did then (Cat-Skin, Household and Children’s Tales, Brothers’ Grimm)

  Tasaria looked beautiful that Christmas Eve. I picked her up from the Mansion. She was wearing a little black sparkly dress, down to the knees, and small straps. On her hands, she wore elbow-length smooth black gloves. I saw her in a different light. Gone was the sarcastic punk-girl, replaced with a ballroom diva. She seemed more feminine than ever before. Her dark complexion glowed against the black fabric.

  “You look beautiful, Tasaria, where have you been hiding all this?” I said, as we climbed into the rental I’d hired as a poor replacement for the Jag. Susie had insisted on going with Muller and Ashley in the BMW. Too much flirting – and no action – between Tasaria and me.

  “All what? Can’t I show a bit of cleavage?” said Tasaria. “And who said I don’t always look beautiful.”

  “Not me, but…” I said, turning the keys in the car’s ignition. “Until now, back in High School, you were always such a tomboy. All you’d ever wear is jeans and leather jackets. And now… this…”

  “Well, even I like a good dress every now and again. Besides, Ashley said I had to wear a dress, that I’d look weird if I was wearing anything else,” said Tasaria, her voice taking on a strange tone. She sounded angry, bitter even. It took me a long while to figure out why. “You know how much she cares about what other people think.”

  I took my right hand from the wheel and placed it on Tasaria’s lap, trying to comfort her, but from what, I didn’t know. “What?” she said indignantly.

  “I dunno” I muttered “You seem… to need it. Even if I can’t figure out why.”

  “Maybe you’ll figure it out someday,” she said ominously.

  Most of the Detectives in Seattle Police Department and staff of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office were at the Annual Christmas Eve Ball. I’d been invited every year for ten years – this was my tenth year – but after Annie died, I stopped going.

  When we arrived at Seattle City Hall, about six, I found Ashley talking to her boss, James Matheson, Criminal Division Chief of the Prosecuting Attorney’s office. The Prosecuting Attorney wasn’t very far away, chatting away to some Captain, Diaz, from Robbery, I thought. Matheson was balding, even if the rest of him looked youthful. His wife was on his arm. “Ah, Marty, it’s been too long,” he said, clasping my hand in his.

  “I was just having an interesting conversation with your adopted daughter,” said Matheson. His face changed, tragt, into that of a cat. Katzmann. Matheson’s wife was too. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. “My daughters definitely weren’t as smart at her age. I assume she’ll be a Detective in ten years.”

  “Or a lawyer,” supplied Ashley.

  “Or that,” said Matheson. “Continuing the long line of Phillips in law enforcement.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” muttered Susie, flashing her true form.

  “That… was not what I meant.”

  “I know. People rarely want my people getting involved. Most of us are pretty bad. Everything’s quieted down recently, but that’s only temporary.”

  “Yeah, the rest get out of Juvie soon,” said Ashley “Don’t they?”

  “Not all of them are in Juvie, Ashley,” I said “But those that aren’t are either MIA or Ungefährlich. There’s Jimmy Bayer, fifteen – a half-breed, mother’s a Fuchsfrau, Schlaukopf’s sister, good kid. Angelica Klingemann, sixteen – I’m not too sure, in for possession of Marijuana, possession of a firearm, Grand Theft Auto, DUI and driving underage, three years, sometimes good, sometimes bad, won’t know until she comes out.”

  “Klingemann’s sister Hannah, eight, is in for Grand Theft Auto – she’ll be out in a few months, no danger if we catch her so enough. Jacob Von Estermann – very dangerous, in for raping a classmate…”

  “That was retaliation…” interrupted Susie “…it’s his signature”

  “What did the girl do?”

  “Insulted me. Called me a slut. Von Uradel doesn’t take no one messing with his people. Dad was really happy with him. I didn’t mind that he retaliated, but rape... too far. He always was the Alpha male of the little-league pack. Dad wanted us to get married – probably would have happened too, if Marty hadn’t done his shit properly. When he gets out… put a bullet in his head. For everyone’s sake.”

  We all looked at her for a second. Not exactly surprised, or shocked, just… mildly startled. “Yes. Von Estermann wasn’t very forward coming – he’d only agreed to meet me to see how you were – I gave him a few tidbits, but what I could gather, from his mother – she’s in for armed robbery – and from Angelica and Jimmy – he’s a psychopath in the making.”

  “Fits all the profiles for a psychopath; bedwetting, animal torture, fire-starti
ng. The rape – probably a few more, always used a condom. Not to mention the three D’s of sadism; Dread, Dependence, Degradation.”

  “You’ve got it all sorted out, haven’t you, Marlowe?” said Ashley sarcastically.

  “Yeah, I do,” I said angrily. “We should profile the Gefährlich. Focus more on their personality and treat them as if they were human. If they show signs of repeat offending or of psychopathy and sadism, then, by all means, execute them, but not before. This medieval ideology of lop their heads off because of their race… it's pure racist.”

  “It’s common sense.”

  “It’s scaremongering, and it’s downright primeval.”

  “It’s doing our job. We have to do this, Marty. We cannot be weak. You cannot be weak.”

  “Keep your voices down, you two,” interrupted Susie urgently. “There’s a room full of people here. They’ll think you’re mad if they hear any of this.”

  “One of us already is,” I muttered, walking away. From the corner of my eye, I could see Ashley glaring at me.

  I ran into Detective Schwartz a few minutes later. He was looking smart in his suit, much better than I did, and there was a look of quiet contentment on his face. “I hope Ashley wasn’t assigned the Karen Arthurs case.”

  “She wasn’t,” Schwartz answered. “Matheson only does that when it involves Verstecktvolk. And he hasn’t got much a choice then, does he? Only we can really understand these cases.”

  “Yeah,” I said, slightly curious, “on that, can you keep an eye on some of her friends for me? Jacob Von Estermann, and a few others. Didn’t you handle his arrest?”

  “I did,” said Schwartz, nodding. “You want me to… Has this been cleared by the Gathering?”

  “No. I don’t want anyone else to know about this. I’ve been given the job of keeping the younger generations of Ungefährlich Verstecktvolk under our control. I’m not as stupid to believe that I can do it on my own – we’re understaffed, we Huntsmen. You’re a police officer. In my book, that makes you half a Huntsman already.”