Dante's Awakening

by Devon Marshall

  Finally, thirdly, I realized the man had red hair.

  Then a very large, bunched fist smacked me upside the head and the lights all went out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I came to slowly, like swimming upwards out of a sea of treacle, with my brain floating around somewhere separate from my body. Everything whirled and ached and throbbed and swayed. I broke the surface of the treacle, breathed air and saw red-tinted light through the backsides of my closed eyelids. Not daylight—artificial light from an unshaded bulb, shining directly on me. I didn’t want to open my eyes, not yet, because I knew it would hurt like all the bitches of Hades and I already had enough hurt going on. I felt groggy and couldn’t quite figure what felt so wrong about my physical position. I knew I was seated, on a wooden straight-backed chair I thought, like a kitchen chair, but my arms seemed to be on backward.

  I remembered using the ladies bathroom in the restaurant during my dinner with Lois Bartlett. I remembered coming out of the stall, and walking into someone’s fucking fist.

  A vampire.

  A redheaded vampire.

  I heard a voice from somewhere nearby. Male. Not familiar. “She’s coming ’round.”

  Footsteps clacked across a cement floor. A second voice spoke up, this one female, and instantly recognizable. Those glacial intonations. “Please fetch Robin from upstairs.”

  Marjorie Tucker. Mrs. Mayor of Holly Bush Junction.

  A shadow moved through the red of my eyelids. “Dante? Are you with us?”

  Curiosity won out over fear of pain. I opened my eyes. Oh God, big mistake! Twin needle-like beams of light stabbed me deep in each eyeball. I groaned, snapped my eyes shut again. I waited a few seconds, then tried again, slowly this time, first experimenting with various degrees of squinting before I ventured to open my eyes all the way. First thing I saw was Marjorie’s red hair. I wanted to pull it out by the roots.

  “What the…” My throat was dry. I coughed, tried to muster some saliva… “What the fuck did you do to me? Where am I?”

  “You’re safe,” Marjorie assured me. I was less reassured when she added: “For the moment anyway.”

  First thing I realized was my hands were cuffed behind me. I briefly wondered if the cuffs belonged to Lois Bartlett and mourned that we had not been able to use them a little more creatively. Also, my neck ached. I could only turn my head a fraction in either direction. The bulk of the room was dark, my view of it limited to the dull yellow circle of light cast by the naked bulb hung from the ceiling above my head. I saw a grey concrete floor stained with oil and other unidentified substances, and the lower edge of a brick wall to my left. The air held a damp, stuffy smell of oil and spoiled vegetables that I usually would associate with basements.

  Marjorie stood in front of me, at a distance that kept her safe from my kicking her in the shins, which was a great pity.

  “Where the fuck am I?” I demanded.

  If my coarse language offended Marjorie, she did a poor job of hiding it. Her mouth pursed up and her nostrils flared like a bad smell had just wafted under her nose. I squinted my best attempt at a glare. A sharp-toothed puppy of a headache was nipping at my temples. Soon it would grow into something big and nasty that would bark for hours and make me wish I could hack my own head right off. If I ever caught up with that bastard redheaded vampire I definitely would hack his head off.

  Marjorie tried to smile with her pursed lips and came off looking constipated. “I am terribly sorry, Dante, that we had to do things this way,” she began, and I thought, oh yeah, you sound like it, you fucking bitch, but I didn’t say anything, just kept right on squinting Clint Eastwood-style at her. Marjorie gave a theatrical sigh. “We really did need to get you away from your escort, however.”

  She meant Ellis and Samson. I wondered how she—or they—had orchestrated this. A worm of unease unrolled itself in my gut. Had Ellis been harmed in any way? I couldn’t think of another reason she would allow me to get snatched from under her nose. As much as I wished to know that Ellis was uninjured, I refused to give Marjorie and whoever else was in on this with her the satisfaction of knowing how worried I was.

  “Our leader wishes to speak with you, Dante,” Marjorie said when she realized I was going to give her nothing but glare.

  I frowned. In spite of myself I was now curious. Marjorie had just said that their leader wished to speak with me, not eat me or kill me. I wasn’t expecting that, and so I hazarded a guess. “So you’re not the leader of the Children of Judas then?”

  Marjorie trilled laughter. She seemed genuinely delighted by my mistake. “Oh no, not at all.” She shook her head and I noted that her perfectly coiffed blood-red hair did not move an inch. “I am only a humble emissary. You will meet our leader very shortly.”

  “Oh, can’t wait for that.” I gave my arms a jerk that made the bracelets rattle. “Where the fuck am I? And why do you have me handcuffed to this fucking chair?”

  Marjorie winced at my continued poor language but refrained from making an issue out of it. Which was good for her. At some point I was going to get free, and then I was going to come after Lady Mayor of Shitsville Marjorie Tucker and shove the chainsaw I would first use to lop her head off up her tight ass. I hoped she appreciated her freedom, fleeting as I was certain it would be. Ellis, Voshki and the rest of the vampires must be closing in as we spoke.

  “I am sorry for the restraints.” Again, Marjorie’s sincerity was underwhelming. She smiled. Cobras have probably managed to look warmer. “If you are cooperative, I’m sure we could remove them. But that is for our leader to decide. As for where you are, Dante, I’m afraid I cannot tell you that.”

  “Uh-huh. And when might you be afraid your leader will get here so that I can tell him—or her—to go fuck themselves?” I inquired.

  Marjorie just smiled and shook her head at me. She stepped out of the pool of yellow light and I heard her clacking footsteps retreat. A door opened, a cool draft swirling in and bringing an odd smell of cinnamon and fresh oranges.

  “Robin,” Marjorie said, her tone reverent.

  I turned my head as far to the right as I could make it go without the urge to scream overwhelming me.

  A woman walked into the pool of yellow light—younger than Marjorie, smaller than her too, a brunette with pale skin and freckles, and the most startlingly green eyes I’d ever seen. Even though I knew straight away that she was a vampire, and probably a Child of Judas despite the lack of red hair, I couldn’t help but be drawn into her gaze. It was as cool and implacable as a pool of seawater. It tugged at you the same way that deep, clear water did, filling you with fascination and dread in equal amounts. Casually dressed in blue jeans and a man’s pale blue shirt under a loose-fitting navy jacket, she looked like someone you might pass on the street and perhaps glance a second time at—wonder who she was—but not somebody you would run over hot coals to meet again.

  What she did not look like was the leader of a vicious and reviled sect of two thousand year-old vampires.

  Her hair color really threw me. Hadn’t Voshki said all Children of Judas were redheads? Hair dye, Dante, I reminded myself. The only thing you can find more of swilling through the State of California than booze is hair dye.

  This incongruous and somewhat insignificant leader of the Children of Judas flicked a glance at Marjorie and dismissed her with a curt, “You can go now.”

  Marjorie practically bowed and curtsied her way out of the room and closed the door behind her. That left me utterly alone with the leader of the Children of Judas. She stood in front of my chair, studying me. I could sense her trying to probe my mind. I had to struggle to lock down the barriers before she pushed in too far for me to dislodge her, and the fact that I succeeded earned me some eyebrow action. I experienced a single moment’s smugness before vague terror grabbed the upper hand once again.

  “Your resistance is strong,” she said.

  I smirked. “Thank you, Seven of Nine.”

  She u
nderstood the reference and actually laughed at my feeble attempt to be defiant. She was not unattractive, I realized, even though she was nowhere in the league of Voshki or Ellis. More kind of cute. In a kind of dangerous and deadly way.

  “I’m sorry about the crude methods employed in getting you here,” she said.

  I snorted. “Yeah. Margie already said as much. I didn’t believe it coming from her either. Who the fuck are you anyway?”

  “Excuse my lack of manners. I’m Robin. Robin Shepherd.”

  I couldn’t help what happened next. It was just such a wholly unexpected name for the leader of a sect of cursed and reviled two thousand year-old vampires. I mean, Robin Shepherd, seriously? I burst out laughing. But even as I was spluttering and hooting, I knew I might be having the very last laugh of my life. Yet I could not stop myself either. It’s amazing, and weird, the ways in which terror will fuck with your mind and your common sense.

  “I’m sorry,” I hiccupped between snorts and sniggers, “it’s just that… Robin? Shepherd? I wasn’t…expecting that!”

  She smiled. She looked even more deadly cute when she smiled. She had dimples, for chrissake! It was a disconcerting moment, realizing your vicious vampire captor has cute little dimples and a killer smile. Pun fully intended.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Robin Shepherd isn’t what you would expect.”

  My giggling fit finally succeeded in hiccupping to a halt. I swallowed, cleared my throat, and then I looked Robin Shepherd over with renewed interest. Somehow I felt she wasn’t an immediate danger to me. Hell, she’d just allowed me to laugh at her and pretty much tell her that her name was silly, and she hadn’t ripped my throat out yet. There had to be hope in that.

  “No red hair?” I inquired.

  Robin shook her head. “We’re really not all redheads. That’s just a myth.”

  “Like garlic and running water?”

  “Something like that.”

  I lifted my arms and gave the cuffs another quick, hard rattle. “Any chance you could remove these? They’re chafing.”

  Robin didn’t answer right away. Instead she walked away into the shadows for a moment and I heard something scrape. She returned bearing a second chair identical to mine, which she placed a couple feet in front of me. She sat down on the chair and leaned forward, forearms on her thighs. “Maybe I’ll take the cuffs off in a little while, Dante, if I feel that I can trust you.”

  I frowned. “Pardon me for being Captain Obvious here, but you’re a vampire and I’m a human. It’s not exactly an equal match.”

  She laughed. I pressed my case. “I don’t even know where in hell I am, and for all I know there are a hundred more vampires beyond that door all just peachy-keen to have me for breakfast. Or dinner. Whatever. See? I don’t even know what time it is. Or what day it is. Anyway, the handcuffs are superfluous is what I’m saying.”

  Robin rose smoothly and walked around back of my chair. She bent down and I heard a key scratching on metal and then the ratchet of the bracelets being removed. I pulled my arms around, rubbed them vigorously as the blood started flowing again. The pins and needles stung me nearly to tears. Robin came around and stood in front of me, watching dispassionately as I suffered through the restoration of feeling in my fingers. After a moment, seeming satisfied that I was not going to turn into Wonder Woman and try to escape by drilling through the ceiling with my magic cape or whatever, she sat back down.

  Once I was sure I could do so without causing myself more pain, I reached up and gingerly poked at my head with my fingertips, searching for cuts or knots there. Nothing. That was a plus, I supposed.

  “Thanks,” I told Robin through gritted teeth. That human urge to be polite even to the person that has us locked up in a fucking basement. I jerked my chin to indicate my surroundings. “You seem to have gone to quite a lot of trouble to get me here. I’m disappointed my accommodations aren’t more five star.”

  “You can stop fishing, Dante. I’m not going to reveal where we are. I do need to talk with you, however.”

  “There are more conventional means of doing that, you know. I’m in the phone book. I have an office.”

  Robin shook her head. “Voshki Kevorkian would never have allowed me to get within ten miles of you by any of those conventional means.”

  I hadn’t the faintest clue what she was talking about. Apparently my confusion showed on my face because Robin tilted a curious look at me and added, “You are Voshki’s human, right? I can smell her all over you. A vampire leader will protect their chosen human fiercely indeed.”

  Okay. That made absolutely no sense at all to me. If there was any vampire whose scent should have been all over me—and I’m not saying I was comfortable with the idea—it should have been Ellis. For now I set that aside, more intrigued by Robin’s assertion of the fierce protection awarded to a vampire leader’s human. Right about now it sounded like a damn good proposition.

  “Frankly, some of this has had to be a little off-the-cuff,” Robin confessed. She grinned at me. “No pun intended!”

  I smiled without enthusiasm.

  “Anyway, not everything has gone exactly to plan. I engineered Derek McBride’s meeting with a guy in bar—one of my people—who told him about the location shoot. I knew Derek’s proclivities would make it an easy bet he’d come here, make a nuisance of himself and draw Voshki’s attention. I was betting she’d send you here, Dante—she’s taken similar steps before. An agent doesn’t raise suspicion on set.”

  That meant Robin must have had people watching me for some time. There was a creepy thought to keep you awake at night. How much else did she know about me?

  “So, if you were using Derek the Peeper to draw me up here,” I said, “why was the whole suicide thing…and attacking Caitlin Harris necessary at all?”

  Robin tilted me a look which I found disturbingly hard to read. “Cherie Dunlop was a demonstration of how serious we are. The Harris woman…” she blew air in a hard, irritated sigh… “that was a mistake. One of my underlings got a bit carried away about being a fan. Someone will pay for that, I can assure you.”

  “You guys are fans of Caitlin Harris?” I asked.

  “Not specifically, but we do watch TV. Movies, too. What? You thought we lived in caves and amused ourselves by gnawing on the bones of squirrels?”

  “I really hadn’t thought that much about it at all.”

  Robin frowned. “Having Lois invite you to dinner seemed the best way to get you alone and, um, persuade you to come with us.”

  “Kidnap me, you mean,” I corrected her.

  “Semantics, Dante. I just didn’t expect you to be so heavily guarded. I was not expecting Samson and Ellis to be there outside of the restaurant. Oh, wait. Are you and Ellis…together?”

  Okay, so absolutely everyone knew about Ellis and me, including the leader of a vampire sect whom I’d never met before in my life. I saw no point in lying and simply nodded.

  “Hmm, that is very curious,” Robin mused. “A vampire leader who doesn’t mind sharing her human with her own creation.”

  Once again I was back to being baffled. Robin explained it to me. “Ellis Kovacs is Voshki’s creature. Voshki sired her. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No, I did not.” It hadn’t occurred to me to ask Ellis who sired her. In my wildest imaginings I wouldn’t have thought it might be Voshki, although it made a certain sense to me now. Voshki did like to keep Ellis close. I resolved to ask both of them about it just as soon as they arrived to rescue me from this predicament. Which hopefully would be very soon indeed.

  Robin crossed one leg over the other, smoothed out an imaginary crease in her jeans and looked at me from under her long dark lashes. “I have a message for Voshki Kevorkian and I want you to deliver it.”

  I wondered if I’d heard right. This was the vampire who had ordered the killings of those in Voshki’s employ, who had kidnapped me, and she wanted me to take a message to Voshki? I could think of a few thi
ngs more pointless to do, but not many, and certainly none that did not involve some form of self-mutilation. Also, I was annoyed at being used as a messenger boy. Or girl.

  “Do I look like your messenger?” I demanded.

  Robin’s lips twitched in amusement. “Right now you look pretty much like my bitch, yes.”

  Okay, I accept I probably walked into that one. I shook my head. “Voshki isn’t going to want to hear whatever you have to say. Won’t matter whether I deliver the message, or Santa Claus does.”

  “Oh, she’ll listen,” Robin said.

  She stood up and walked around a bit, arms folded. I wished she’d sit. I didn’t like her on the prowl like this.

  “I think it’s time for vampires to come out of the closet,” she announced.

  I blinked. Surely this was one of those bad ideas that only sounds like a good idea for about five seconds before the brain fart stops. The entire human world is in turmoil. People are either actively blaming someone somewhere for something that happened someplace else, or they’re looking for someone to blame. In such a climate, what chance did vampires stand of a warm and fuzzy reception to their coming-out of the coffin?

  “I intend to bring the Children of Judas in from the cold under a new joint leadership between me and someone I will choose at a later date, and I intend to announce our existence to the whole human world,” Robin informed me.

  I tried to find something to say. I really did. But words failed me at that moment.

  “And Voshki Kevorkian will just have to go along with that. I’m willing to let her live if she does. If not, well, that would be her loss.” Robin made an eloquent shrug.

  She seemed sure of her plan being a success. I couldn’t see how it would ever be so, and that made me wonder if she had some ace up her sleeve. Then I reminded myself of how psychos are often incredibly sure of themselves and their grandiose plans.

  “Even if Voshki did step down, the Council would never get behind you,” I pointed out. I don’t know anything about the vampire Council, really—I was just taking shots in the dark. Something must have struck home. Robin stopped prowling and gave me a sad smile.