One (Rules Undying Book 6)

by R. E. Carr

  “Yeah, I think I’d like that . . . a lot,” Gail confessed. Edwin and Winona giggled. Their laughter faded abruptly as Edwin frantically waved everyone over.

  “Mom, Dad—you have got to see this!”

  “Whoa,” Winona added unhelpfully.

  Everyone crowded around Edwin’s laptop where a video remained on pause. Gail gulped as she saw the headline “Matsuoka Corporation Announces New CEO”. “This can’t be good,” she whispered.

  Edwin hit replay. All jaws dropped as a man with a sleek black ponytail and bright green eyes stepped up to the podium. A pair of tall, broad-shouldered blond men flanked him, and the screen flickered strangely as he smiled for the camera. He adjusted his cuffs, giving a flash of the ink that went all the way down to each wrist. The subtitles read “Arthur Ren Matsuoka, New CEO of Matsuoka Inc”.

  “That is a vampire on television,” Lorcan said.

  “On the news, you mean,” Mina corrected. “I didn’t arrange for this. What is he playing at now?”

  “Judging by the stock prices I saw this morning, I am guessing that I wasn’t the first choice you had in mind to replace Uncle Shinobu, now was I?” Arthur said, eliciting titters from the crowd he addressed. His voice sounded more like the California-born Ren than the proper British of Arthur Pendragon. “Let me put all your fears to rest. I am definitely here for the long haul. I am also happy to announce our acquisition of the following biotech and medical research facilities in China, Korea, and Singapore—”

  As he rattled off a list of companies, Edwin and Lorcan paled. “Those are Lung and Jiangshi companies, all of them,” Edwin noted. “Lotus Tech is where they—”

  “Where they treat bondsmen,” Mina finished, aghast. “Why is he announcing all of these? They are already connected to us. Announcing it just makes us more of a target to those . . . oh no . . .”

  “I have a bad feeling right now,” Gail said as Arthur showed off a few chemical formulas on screen and prattled about new research and development. “Those guys behind him—”

  “His human father, Ivan Lyashev,” Lorcan hissed. “And Morgan Blaylock, the werewolf who let himself be captured in my place. Why is he there?”

  Edwin looked up from his phone and let out an awkward “Wait for it. . .” Gail shook her head as the fast-forwarded press conference sped through accounting and logistics projections. Edwin put them all out of their misery as every phone in the room blew up with buzzes and beeps. As the progress bar crept towards the end, Morgan stepped nearer to the podium and took off his glasses.

  “I am sure that all of you have been following the news,” Arthur said. “We at Matsuoka Corporation have been following the situation in the besieged city of Nashville as much as all of you, and we feel like we owe you some answers. My assistant, Miss Young,” he said, pointing to what looked like thin air, “Has been coordinating with our contacts in Washington to finally show you the latest in military bioweapons technology. We feel it is time that the American people—and indeed, the people of the world—know the truth. Behold the results of the berserker virus, a virus that known terrorists released on the poor citizens of Nashville. We are not just going to give them our thoughts and prayers anymore. Today, the world will see the truth.”

  In plain view of thousands of witnesses in the room and millions more on camera, Morgan smiled, his irises expanding to cover his cornea. The screams and panic only began when he popped out his claws and let out a roar. He punched his fist clean through the podium, snapping one of the supports as if it were a twig. Guards rushed him, and he put on an action movie-worthy display of beating the crap out of them until one of them finally shot him live on air. The screams turned to gasps as Morgan picked himself up and clawed out the bullet. The camera zoomed in on his skin to show the wound closing over in real time.

  “Dog, osuwari!” Arthur commanded. Morgan dropped to the ground while Arthur, Ivan, and the goons surrounding the stage calmed everyone down. Arthur raised his hands and explained, “This is not a trick, it’s not magic, it’s science—the science of making better, stronger soldiers to protect the world.”

  One member of the audience spoke up, an older Japanese man who seemed completely unfazed. “And what, pray tell, are monsters like that going to protect us from?”

  “Monsters like us, of course,” Arthur replied glibly. “Did we forget to mention that we were vampires?” He wrapped an arm around Ivan and stretched out the other as if draping it over a phantom person’s shoulders.

  “Well, shit,” Gail said flatly. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “It just got worse,” Edwin announced, slamming down the laptop screen. “I got a tip that the feds are on their way, and rumor has it that they have Lung technology—high tech cameras that even pick up vampires.”

  Everyone moved at top vampire speed as they snatched up papers, phones, and any other incriminating evidence they could find. “Clean car, Beulah,” Mina commanded. The former stripper ran ahead with Winona, while the others did a final sweep, then made a beeline for the lobby. Gail grabbed Lorcan the moment she saw a bulge in a pants leg and a man actually reading a paper newspaper while everyone else looked at screens.

  “I know feds when I see them, guys,” Gail warned. “Are we really going to get into a shootout fang-fest in a Boston luxury hotel?”

  “Gail, do you remember the Intercontinental from Georgia’s stories?” Mina whispered. Gail nodded. “My father will be there, assuming things have not changed too much. Back in Nashville, I noticed that you share Javier’s gift. Use it now and find Merlin. Hurry!”

  “But—”

  “Arthur has clearly gone mad. Help him. Help us all,” Lady Harker commanded. “I have a feeling that my darling ex-husband and I are about to be quite busy.”

  Gail took a deep breath and focused all her thoughts on not being seen, not being noticed. She slipped into a pack of young Asian tourists armed with selfie sticks and didn’t look back until she was safely nestled on the red line at Park Street station. “Oh boy,” she whispered as all she could hear were the furtive and incredulous whispers of, “Vampires are real? No way.”

  “One law down, three to go, I guess,” Gail muttered to herself as she curled into the shadows. The whole car tittered and showed articles to one another, while Gail sulked against the fake wood paneling. It only took a second or two of scrolling to get the general gist of what every news outlet was reporting. By the time she made it into the cavernous lobby of South Station, crowds had gathered around the televisions in the restaurant there, and a heightened police presence carefully monitored the entrances and exits.

  “Massive Crowds Gather around Boston Headquarters.”

  “Vampires: Hope or Hoax?”

  Gail found a smaller group of people clamored around tables, all staring at phones. She slipped an earbud out of her purse and began a rapid scan of local news to see just where Boston Police had set up barricades downtown. She stopped in her tracks upon seeing the headline, “Romanian Government Stunned by Fifteenth Century Hero Showing Up to Open Parliament”.

  “Oh my god,” Gail whispered as she read how Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula, made an appearance at Victoria Palace in Bucharest to greet the Prime Minister. The next article claimed that British authorities were called to the Shakespeare Museum in London to address Christopher Marlowe appearing drunk and disorderly to declare that the great bard was “a plagiarizing, boil-brained, canker-blossom upon modern literature”. Every outlet she turned to seemed obsessed with a single topic.

  “So, have you seen this on Reddit yet?” Gail could just make out across the table. A group of girls with brightly colored hair and chunky glasses all did silly poses and took rapid fire selfies in front of the line behind them. The one with fuchsia locks demanded that they start playing with filters while the one with teal hair giggled. Their ringleader explained, “So yeah, you know how they said vampires don’t show up on camera, but there are like these b
lurs, and the filters will pick them up, so you get the Claude-shot happening—”

  “Oh, that’s so cool! They got one in a parking lot in Jersey. Shots are coming in from California, too. It really works.”

  Gail froze as the rainbow trio whipped their cameras around to the other side of the table. She heard the click, the giggles and then, “Oh my god, there is one right there!”

  The girls started clicking their hearts out while Gail bolted for the door. “Hey, that’s a vampire!” echoed in her ears as she ducked behind a kiosk.

  “Please don’t see me,” she begged. Gail darted between some older women clearly there to pick cans out of the recycling bins and made a fast break onto the street, where she found a nightmarish gauntlet of pedestrians with phones. She tried her best to walk with the all-business crew who were at least using their phones to look at the news and check email rather than take endless selfies. She turned around a few times, trying to get her bearings in her old hometown. Only after wandering into Seaport by mistake did she finally pull out her phone again and look for directions. She did a search for the Intercontinental Hotel. Her heart sank as her little blue patch took her straight towards a massive crowd and a police barrier.

  Gail typed in “Claude-shot” and gasped as she read the descriptions of phantom filters. The first image was a pair of sunglasses, floating on a blur in a swanky bar in Beverly Hills. Various internet news sites all had clickbait galore, such as “Finding the Bloodsucker Near You” and “You Won’t Believe this Simple Trick to Finding a Vampire”. She cocked her head to look at “Sexiest Claude-Shots with Puppies” for just a moment before raising her brow to see that some App companies were already doubling in price as investors flooded to them like they were sure-thing Bitcoins.

  Gail put on her best bored human face and slipped through groups of people as she tried to find an opening to make it around to Tremont Street. Her insides quivered as she saw cops talking to teenage girls, instructing them to start taking panoramic shots of the crowd.

  “This is my own personal hell—running from Snapchat.” Gail looked at the alleyways and side streets as well as the restaurants and clubs that marked the edges of Chinatown and the Theater District. She fell in behind a pack of hipsters in beards and man-buns who had poster board under their arms. “And we get protesters already. Wow.”

  She smiled a little as she saw one of the posters read “Fangs for Nothing” in glitter glue. She then looked at a nearby CVS where another group emerged with art supplies.

  “Too much work,” she grumbled before waiting for one of the would-be protesters to set his kit down to take a selfie. She grabbed the poster board and used it as a shield to join the amassing . . . masses. The crowd, however, seemed firmly wrapped around the building that contained the Matsuoka headquarters, and Gail could just see a ray of hope as her navigation program pointed an alternate route through the Theater District. She looked up at the marquee and almost cried tears of joy to see “The Electric Review, starring Nicolette Tesla” over her head.

  “If the universe gives you a sign, you take it,” she whispered as she darted into an alleyway and soon found herself in a dressing room full of duct tape being used in creative applications.

  “The cabaret is next door, girlfriend,” a lanky gentleman said as he painted on his eyebrows. He dropped his pencil, however, as he turned back to the mirror and saw no reflection in the glass. “Oh, my stars and garters, you’re one—”

  “Nikki! I think it’s one of your friends,” another drag queen called across the room. The ladies-in-process rushed outside, leaving only one diva in the back who was just putting the last pin into her scarlet wig. Gail audibly gasped as she saw quite possibly one of the most flawless faces she had ever laid eyes on. Nicolette Tesla raised a perfectly on fleek brow.

  “Look, I know you don’t know me, but I’m a friend—well . . . was a friend of Georgia’s.”

  “We’re all friends of Georgia here. Gordo, we have another one at our door!” Nicolette called behind a dressing curtain. “So, are you hiding or looking to drag us back to Prince Charming and his police squad?”

  “Another one?” Gail asked softly. “Look, my name is Gail—”

  “Gail!” a flat, Canadian voice exclaimed. “You know Nikki?” Edwin peered around the screen, blood dripping from his lips.

  “You know Nikki?” Gail retorted. “I mean, I don’t know her, I just knew of her from—”

  “Georgia . . . you’re Gail,” Nicolette sighed. “I work for Eddie’s family as I’m sure you know from all that time you spent with Georgia and the Jaeger sibs. That’s all well and good, but why are you both here looking scared out of your minds—and where the hell did the second law go overnight? That was Ren Matsuoka interrupting my Real Housewives action this morning!”

  “This is bigger than Christmas,” Gordo, the slightly less-flamboyant bondsman, added as he let Edwin finish his top-off. “You need a hit, girlfriend? I haven’t been on tap for a month, so there’s plenty to spare. I’m type AB-negative, but I’m positive you’ll like how I taste.”

  Gail shook her head. “I just saw the sign, and . . . I don’t know. I just—”

  “She’s got mom’s gift, I think,” Edwin explained. The bondsmen all nodded, but Gail could only look around, confused. “If we get out of this mess without being captured, I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll give you a hint, though—buy lottery tickets sometime.”

  “I’m trying to get to the Intercontinental, but everyone has cameras and people are starting to notice us,” Gail said, steering the conversation back to the topic at hand.

  “Claude-shots,” Edwin, Nicolette, and Gordo all sighed together.

  “Yeah, it only takes an hour for something to become a worldwide phenom nowadays. It’s an old Lung party trick, and now it’s gone mainstream. You get a blur on screen and the app will recognize a vampire as a face. We liked to do sunglasses and say it was Claude Rains, back in the day,” Gordo explained.

  “Back in the day?” Gail asked.

  “Babe, fifteen minutes ago is back in the day nowadays,” Nicolette answered. “It was huge on the bondsman scene when it first came out, but it’s not like we would pass it around to the normals.”

  “Well, it was on Reddit—” Gail started. The others all went, “Ohh,” and nodded in agreement.

  “Well, there you go—we are screwed,” Edwin said. He pulled up his own phone. “Speaking of being screwed—Arthur’s host knew you two, and he has mom, so—”

  “Babe, Gordo voted Commie in the eighties. We are already on all the watch lists. It’s only a matter of time, so I think you two should probably skedaddle. We can top you off and run a little interference, but that’s about it. Wait—did you say that this Ren-Arthur has Mina? Oh my god, that can’t be good!”

  “He has both my parents and my brother, Nikki,” Edwin said gravely. “Now the least powerful and stealthy member of the Pendragon-Harker clan has to try and figure out how to rescue the real vampires before it is too late. They even got Beulah and Winona down in the garage.”

  “Well, at least you have help from your spunky sort-of relative,” Gail added. “We may be the B-squad, but we are all they have right now.”

  Nicolette cracked her knuckles and pushed to her feet. “Well, come on, B-squad. Let’s show the man that B stands for awesome bitches. I can think of one place where we can lie low where no one will suspect us.”

  “Yeah, I can see why no one would suspect a bunch of vampires and drag queens would be hanging out here,” Gail said dryly as they found themselves sitting in the rec room at the First Chinese Church, just down the street from Nicolette’s review. An ancient-looking nun sat in the corner, knitting a scarf and occasionally smiling at them while she kicked her feet.

  “Oh, Sister Kim has been a rock for all of us around here, babe,” Nicolette explained. “You know, she taught both me and Geoffrey Lambley how to crochet. She also taught a dumpling-making class last year that was life
-changing, right Gordo?”

  “Preach, Nikki,” Gordo said as he flicked on the rec room’s TV and turned to CNN. One of the other church ladies wandered in with tea and a pack of cookies. No one seemed to care that a giant of a woman in leopard print jeggings lounged with a man in a plaid suit and two vampires in the early evening. “Oh, babe, Duma Self is gonna make sure the show goes on tonight—not that there will be that big a crowd on a Tuesday anyway, right?”

  They watched in horror as the CDC announced a quarantine around Nashville and spewed all the known facts about the berserker virus. Gail rolled her eyes as she saw people on the screen protesting that vaccines caused werewolves. “That’s not how any of this works,” she growled. “Vaccines prevent werewolves, geez!”

  “So there really are werewolves?” Nicolette asked mildly. “Have we found Frankenstein or the Mummy yet?”

  “Just ghosts,” Gail replied. She and Edwin did their best to catch up the bondsmen on as much as they could about werewolves and Arthur, leaving out most of the juiciest details, but still giving enough to make all jaws drop a little. Meanwhile, Nicolette and Gordo checked for messages from other bondsmen.

  “Gary just got picked up by the feds when he was leaving the blood bank,” Gordo mentioned with a wince. Edwin hustled to get the remote and flipped the channel.

  “Looks like our buddy Arthur is giving another interview. You won’t believe who is back on the scene now.” All eyes locked on the screen where two men with ponytails were settling into chairs on a small, intimate-looking set.

  “Isn’t that the guy from Alien Abductions and Mysteries?” Gail asked.

  “I love that show,” Nicolette said. “I thought he was fired for ass-grabbing an intern or something like that—”

  “Shh!” Edwin snapped as they began to talk onscreen.