by Jon F. Merz
"You own ‘em all?"
"No way. Just this one. But they built it for the family. Not for sale. It’ll stay in the family forever as far as I’m concerned. My father loved this house. He worked his ass off making sure it was always the best looking one on the street."
"Do the landscaping yourself?"
"I used to. Schedule’s kind of busy nowadays what with chasing child kidnappers and traitors all over town."
"Damned inconsiderate of them to cut into your garden time like that."
"You said it. Nowadays, I hire some of the local kids to mow the lawn, plant a few shrubs, that kind of thing."
I led the way inside and up to the second floor. I heard the chirps from Mimi and Phoebe before we crested the stairs. Phoebe got a look at Wirek and freaked out, running for the upstairs bedroom.
"Schizophrenic," I said. "Doesn’t like strangers much."
"A schizophrenic cat? Never heard of such a thing."
"You have now."
In the kitchen I opened two cans of catfish and plopped them into the can. Phoebe reappeared. Her appetite always did win out over her various phobias.
Mimi seemed more interested in nuzzling me and getting some quality affection in. I spent a few minutes with her and then nudged her toward the food dish before Phoebe polished it all off and added another layer of fat to her already ample midsection.
Wirek checked out the Japanese paintings in my sitting room. "So, what are we getting here?"
"Weapons," I said. "You ever do any shooting?"
"Long time ago. Long time. Years. I think it was called a musket back then."
I nodded. "Well, here’s hoping you haven’t forgotten." I went into the study and pulled a section of the white bookcase aside. A hollowed out nook behind the books served as my gun safe. I unlocked it and swung the heavy steel door open.
"Holy shit," said Wirek.
I smiled. I’m not a gun freak. As far as I’m concerned the most important thing about weapons is they do what they’re supposed to do. Namely, go bang and launch a projectile at a bad guy. I don’t care what the rate of fire is, how many feet per second the rounds go or any of that stuff. If it holds bullets and fires when I pull the trigger, we can do business.
But even I recognize the need for superior firepower. And heading out to Arvella’s estate, thick as it was liable to be with bad guys, we were definitely going to need more than just pistols.
I took out a Mossberg shotgun and handed it to Wirek. "Here, you don’t need to be a marksman to use this. Just point and it’ll spray enough shot to cover a room." I popped a box of rounds into his hand. "Loads underneath."
"A shotgun? It just sprays buckshot doesn’t it?"
"Not these rounds. Think of them more as hardened BB pellets of various hardwoods. Nasty shock to our kind, I’ll tell you."
"What if they’re not vampires?"
"You get hit with that stuff, no matter what you are, you’ll go down. The closer the better, by the way. Don’t shoot if you aren’t within about fifteen feet. Any further away and the spread fans out too much to do much damage."
"What about you?"
I reached back into the safe and took out the Heckler & Koch MP5. It had been modified some time back by the Fixer armorer here in town. It shot 9mm rounds of the same variety that I carried in my pistol. Wooden tips that exploded and fragmented on impact. Again, a nasty shock to a vampire, and a bad case of splinters for humans.
I took four extra clips of 30 rounds each and tucked them into assault bag I kept in the safe as well.
Wirek hefted the shotgun. "This is kind of heavy."
"You’ll be fine." I handed him a pistol. "Backup. Don’t use it unless you have to. And for god’s sakes don’t shoot me in the back."
Wirek looked down at the two guns he held and shook his head. "Life sure does have a way of fucking with you sometimes, doesn’t it?"
"Be grateful you don’t get it every day like me."
Wirek chuckled. "Once an Elder, then a drunk. Now a gun-toting fool who’s probably going to get his ass shot off." He looked at me. "How the hell do you do this shit?"
"It’s my job." I shut the gun safe and replaced the book shelves. "Come on. We don’t have much time."
Wirek tagged along behind me. "So, what’s the plan?"
I stopped. "Thinking up the plan was your job."
His eyes widened. "Wha-?"
I clapped him on the shoulder. "Forget it, it was just a joke. We’ll discuss our options in the car."
Chapter Nineteen
Going into combat is funny.
Especially when you know it’s coming.
Little things that might barely have registered a moment earlier suddenly took on a new light. Potholes, as common as bad drivers in Boston during the Winter months, seemed to sprout everywhere, causing me to slalom the car like an Olympic hopeful. Specks of dried brown slush at the fringes of the windshield loomed larger, reminding me the Volvo was overdue for a cleaning.
But the overhead, the gray afternoon dissolving into a dark navy blue evening sky looked more beautiful than usual.
Wirek kept his thoughts to himself.
I looked over a few times but he seemed still, focused internally no doubt. Part of me found it hard to believe that he’d never been in a fight before. Sure, he was an ex-Elder, one of those chosen members of vampire society who preserves the old ways and passes on his knowledge to others. But looking at Wirek, I always got the impression there was a lot more to him than met the eye.
The traffic on Hammond Pond Parkway crawled during the rush hour commute. We inched along. Slowly.
"Tell me something, Wirek."
He looked over at me. "Yeah?"
"What made you give it up?"
"Give what up?"
"Being an Elder. Something must have caused you to retire. What was it?"
"Kind of personal, don’t you think?"
"You don’t feel like sharing?"
"It’s a long story."
I pointed at the bumper-to-bumper traffic. "We going anywhere fast?"
He sighed. "You’re a pushy bastard, Lawson."
"I’ve been told that, yeah."
"Being an Elder is a lot like being a Fixer, you know? You don’t really ever ‘give it up’ per se. Once you’re in, you’re always in…except in extraordinary circumstances."
"All right, but you’ve never acted like much of an Elder around me. I mean, my impression was that you guys were all holier-than-thou."
"Holier than thou?"
"Considering what kind of knowledge you have, yeah."
"We’ve got the same knowledge anyone else in our society could have if they read the same books, Lawson. We’re not so special."
"I don’t buy that. I know there are some elements to being an Elder that are pretty damned special."
"What we are," said Wirek, "is a fucking endangered species."
"Why so?"
He sighed. "You know how many people want to become Elders? Not many."
"You don’t exactly advertise, though." I looked at him. "Do you?"
"No. We’re chosen. Like Fixers. Like Invokers. Like other traditions. But telling someone what the profession entails can be a real downer. Most of our kind want nothing to do with it."
"Really?" I worked my way into the left lane and managed to gain three feet of road.
"Our people have in so many ways rejected the old traditions. They’re focused on tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Can they get a bigger house? Can they get more money? They raise children on television and video games without so much as an ounce of discipline. Have you seen the new cars and minivans that have television sets in them? It’s like another excuse not to even talk to your children. Our kind are growing up with no sense of history. The failings of humans are all around us. And I guess in some ways it’s impossible to escape their influence."
"Is that what made you so disenchanted?"
"Not exactly. I realized a long time ago
the ways were changing. Oh sure, there are holdouts. Certain aspects of our society will always stay attuned to the laws of nature and our old ways. But there are so very few of us in those secret circles…we’re a minority."
"A powerful minority, though."
"Minorities usually are. It’s why those in the majority fear them. They know the power they wield."
"Go on." A giant Ford Suburban cut me off and I briefly considered flipping him the bird. I decided against it. I didn’t think Road Rage was popular with Wirek.
He continued. "For me, the turning point came a few years back when I began seeing how much corruption extended its evil hands into the most sacred aspects of our society. I saw members of the local governments delve into things that warrant them a visit by one of your colleagues, Lawson. And I saw members of the Council turn a blind eye to it, simply because it wasn’t deemed as necessary for intervention."
"You’re being too general. What was it in particular that made you change your mind?"
Wirek sighed. "You don’t let up too easy, do you?"
"Persistence is a virtue in my line of work."
"Hmph. I guess." He fiddled with the heater. "Well, Mr. Persistence, all new Elders are apprenticed to an old member for on-the-job training. In my case, I got paired with an Elder years older than I was or even am right now. This guy was ancient. I remember the first time I saw him: he had flaps of skin hanging off, sheets of freckled flesh. His hair exploded out of his head like some kind of strange Albert Einstein look. He always kept a pipe hanging off his lower lip. I used to think it was going to fall off, but it never did."
"Nifty trick."
Wirek looked at me but didn’t comment on my choice of words. "He spent years schooling me, carefully imparting his wisdom of times past. The laws, the lore, the virtues…even the vices of our people. His knowledge seemed boundless. He knew whole tomes by heart, could recite every legend in the old language. He amazed me.
"I used to think how lucky I was to have found a teacher like him. It was so rare to actually find an Elder so old and so…unscathed by the ways of society. I sponged off this guy. Soaked up everything he had to teach me and then asked for more. And I learned it all. In a relatively short time, I was appointed to a rank of some importance within the Elder community."
"You have ranks?"
"Like bishops in human churches, yes. I was known as the Kaldak for the Northeast."
"‘Kaldak?’"
"It means ‘one endowed with the ages.’"
"Okay."
"I came to Boston to work directly with the Council. And I was still young enough to feel proud of my accomplishment. There’s nothing wrong with a little pride, you know. If you’ve worked hard for something, made sacrifices and relinquished a lot of yourself, there’s nothing wrong with sitting back for a moment to appreciate the view."
"I’ve done that on occasion."
Wirek nodded. "So you know what I mean. Anyway, I came to Boston full of ideas about how to save our race. I proposed a series of outlines and initiatives aimed at bringing us back around to the old ways. I wanted our kind to disdain human vices. Embrace the past, I said. Reject the future. It seemed sound at the time, but I know now it was foolish naiveté. Call it youthful idealism if you want, whatever the case, it was stupid."
"Maybe not so stupid, Wirek. It sounds like a respectable ideal."
"Maybe to some extent it was. But it was flawed at the same time. I addressed the Council one day. I was giving a nonsense report on some trivial matter. The Council members seemed uninterested in it. No doubt I was equally uninterested. The subject of who I studied under came up."
"Didn’t they know ahead of time?"
"Not necessarily. Elders keep a very low profile. I was appointed not by the Council, but by the governing body of Elders."
I kept silent. The traffic was moving again and I worked hard to keep us in the steady flow toward Newton.
"I told them all about my great teacher," said Wirek. "I spewed such idol worship I must have really sounded fanatical. But I’d trained under a man I truly believed was great. He was someone to look up, a pillar of our community.
"Anyway, when I finished, they all sat there with smiles on their faces. I asked them what they thought was so funny. They told me, Lawson, they told me that the man I studied with, the Elder of Elders, the one I so desperately wanted to emulate-they told me he had recently been killed by a Fixer."
"For what reason?"
Wirek looked out the window. "For molesting a young child. Turned out he was a pedophile."
My stomach turned over. Pedophiles in my book rank even lower than racists and terrorists. And that is serious scum.
Wirek kept going. "It apparently wasn’t the first time. He’d done it for years. While I was studying with him, even. But he’d never touched me. Hell, I never even suspected anything was amiss."
He looked at me now. "Do you know what it’s like to have every one of your dreams dashed so completely in the space of just a few precious seconds? Knowing that you will never ever feel the same about anything? That you’ll never look at things the same way?"
"Possibly."
"Well, I became a jaded, cynical bastard in the space of about thirty seconds. I wanted so much to not believe their lies. I wanted to walk out of there, to try and rationalize their contempt as jealousy of the great man my tutor was." He cleared his throat. I kept looking straight ahead.
"But they weren’t lies, Lawson. They told me the truth. And they destroyed me in the process."
He sighed. "Perhaps it was my fault. If I hadn’t built him up so much in my mind, if I hadn’t worshipped him so completely, maybe I wouldn’t have been so devastated. But I was."
I wove around a double-parked red Toyota in Newton Center. "I’m sorry."
Wirek ignored me. "I turned to the bottle. I started drinking every ideal I’d once espoused into liquid oblivion. If it was a vice, I embraced it. Certainly not to the depraved extent that my teacher had. I could never do that."
Thank god. I couldn’t tolerate Wirek if he’d molested kids.
"But I took drugs, drank, smoked, cavorted with hundreds of human women, let myself go and generally became a slovenly pig." He tapped the dashboard. "And all the while I blamed my former teacher. I blamed him for everything I did. Anytime I needed an excuse, he was there to take the fall. But it wasn’t really his fault. Oh sure, he did the worst things imaginable and I certainly would never condone them. But in terms of my own behavior, he wasn’t to blame. Only I was. You understand that, Lawson?"
"I think so."
He looked at me for a second before nodding. "There’s a cult of victimization that runs rampant in every society. And if it grows unchecked long enough, it will gain momentum and carry everyone along with it. When people start looking for excuses to shirk responsibility, when they start blaming something else for a lack of discipline, you know it’s almost too late."
"We may be too late then."
Wirek nodded. "It’s possible. But if enough people stay true to the laws of personal discipline and the laws of nature, there will always be hope. Even if there’s just a few of us left."
"I don’t know how much of an upstanding member of society I’ve been, Wirek. I wouldn’t go using me as an example."
He smiled for the first time in several minutes. "I don’t think your love for a human excludes you from the good vampire club, Lawson."
"The Council may not agree with your assessment."
"To hell with the Council. For the most part they’re hypocrites. Endowed with the power of massive bureaucracies, there’s no telling what kind of damage they can do."
"I’d agree with the hypocrisy part of that."
"So, what’d they tell you? You had to get rid of her right? It was either that or they’d kick you out of the service? Maybe even send another Fixer to pay you a visit?"
"Something like that."
"Indeed. And you told them you’d break it off,
right?"
"You’re the one with all the information, Wirek. You tell me."
"All right, that’s just what you did. And you might have meant it, I don’t know. But love has a way of bypassing all that silly crap the Council imposes on us, doesn’t it?"
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean, Lawson, is that you still love her. And if I’m still the keen judge of character I used to be, she still loves you. Hell, you two probably have some sort of arrangement worked out-no don’t go telling me, I don’t want to know for certain. But don’t think for a second that you’re not a good man in spite of your transgression. True love obeys no laws, even the ones you hold up."
"Thanks."
"Thanks nothing. Zero wouldn’t have been your friend if you weren’t a decent guy. And I happen to know that among the Fixers I’ve liked best, the temptation to fool around and fall in love with human women has usually been too great to resist. Hell, Zero fell in love and married one of them. Talk about balls on that guy." He sighed. "Damn, I miss that bastard."
"You and I both. So, you knew about his marriage?"
"I was a character witness at his hearing. Zero and I, we go way back. Maybe I’ll even tell you about sometime. Provided you get me through this crap we’re about to undertake in one piece."
"Deal. SO, what made you come out of your hermitage?"
"Why the very boy we’re going to rescue, Lawson. I would have thought that was obvious."
"Not necessarily."
He smiled. "I see in Jack the same way I used to be. His eyes, if you look into them, they hold that same idealism I once cherished. There’s some real power behind his spirit. He can do great good for our people. Maybe I saw that and wanted to help him. Maybe I’m still working through my mistakes. I don’t really know."
"On the subject of your mistakes, you ever have any regrets about your life? Would you have done things differently knowing what you know now?"
Wirek turned down the heater. "I used to ask myself that very same question all the time. usually when I was coming down off some cheap high and sleeping off a hangover. It’s funny how when you sink into oblivion you become real philosophical. The best thinkers in this world are the drunks and addicts. They see the bottom of the barrel – hell they live it. And they come up with some pretty profound shit while they’re down there."
