The Falstaff Vampire Files

by Lynne Murray

  “Vi, do you think that what you did to Quiller—?”

  “Brought them back? Maybe. Even if it did I had to rescue that cat.”

  “I know.” On the kitchen table I saw one of the garish plastic water cannons, smelling strongly of onion juice. “Look, Mina and Bram must have left this for you. May I?” I picked it up.

  “Be my guest.”

  I whirled on the Other floating around Vi, spraying the juice full in its face.

  A more muted whump sound, and the Other screamed and rushed away to wherever they went. I adjusted the stream from the stream and squirted it several times to dispatch an Other that had been hovering around the ceiling.

  Vi unexpectedly hugged me. She was so cold that I started to shiver. She saw and stepped back. “Thank you, Kris. Please thank Bram for me. I’m going out to hunt now. I’ll take this big squirt gun bottle with me.”

  “I’ll leave you another bottle of fresh onion juice so you can refill.”

  Chapter 74

  Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

  August 29th continued

  Going out Vi’s back door I walked through swarms of Others, kept my head down until I got to Bram and Mina. Their faces were flushed and damp—with tears, I realized. They were creating clouds of onion spray.

  Bram wiped his face with his arm and handed me the water cannon. “Here, take this. I’ve got another loaded inside. Be right back.”

  “Get wet dish towels,” I said, “for our eyes.” I stood next to Mina and began firing at Others. They disappeared up into the cloud with regularity, but there were still many swarming Vi’s house, although they had cleared away from my cottage.

  “Did you notice?” Mina said. “Bram can see them now.”

  “He can?” I turned to look at her and paused while she expertly sprayed one of the creatures who followed my head motion to bob beside her, trying to catch my eye. The Other screamed soundlessly and jetted up into the cloud escape route.

  “Yeah. I think I figured out why.”

  “Why?”

  Mina winked. “Think—what happened last night that was different?”

  Before I had time to react, Bram was back with a freshly primed water cannon. The three of us started working together. Mina was right. It was clear from how deftly he was aiming that Bram could see them, all right—and he never seemed to be tempted to look them in the eye.

  It took another half hour for the three of us to clear the yard. Then Bram and I went along with Mina back to her apartment. She persuaded us to swing by Hal’s house on the way out. It was just an old house in the dark—no sign of the swarm of Others there.

  It felt like a good night’s work. We left Mina at her apartment with a juice-loaded water cannon, ten pounds of onions and a small food processor. A week earlier none of us would have thought of this as armor.

  “Suddenly you can see them,” I said to Bram on the drive back to the cottage.

  “Mina asked what was different.” He gave me a significant look.

  “You mean sex is the answer?”

  “Depends on the question, but that’s a pretty good answer,” he said.

  I was driving, so I couldn’t hit him on the arm. “Seriously. It seems that sex with someone who can see the Others can communicate that ability.”

  “You say those things can feed through window glass without making physical contact. We don’t have enough information to know what it takes to see them. But it’s sure easier to shoot them if you can see them.”

  “If we’re very lucky, maybe they’ll just go away.”

  “We’ll have to take it one night at a time.”

  So we did.

  Chapter 75

  Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

  August 30th

  The next evening Vi came out to meet me with the thin gray cat balanced on her shoulder. His eyes had less orange and more pale green as he regarded me with the same insolence he had shown the night before.

  “There’s one cat who’s not afraid of you,” I said.

  “I don’t think he’s afraid of much. We went out hunting last night and he stalked a pit bull terrier.” Vi reached up and scratched under the cat’s chin. It stretched its skinny neck out and began a loud, rusty purr.

  “That’s not funny.”

  A pained look came over Vi’s face. “We don’t kill our victims. Mrs. Battle taught me that only a certain amount of blood and a large helping of life force are necessary to survive. We can harvest a victim off of any Muni bus, and we can make it a pleasant experience for all concerned. He’s adopted me now.”

  “Have you thought about names? What about Fang the Wonder Cat?”

  Vi petted the cat from head to tail, and it stood on her shoulder and purred louder. “His name is Brutus now.”

  “E tu, Brutus.”

  “I’ll teach him to be much nicer to his prey. I’m starting a new organization with some of the other vampires in my orientation class. We’re going to call it—Vampires for the Ethical Treatment of Prey.”

  I hadn’t seen Vi so happy since—well, since she died.

  “I think I’ve figured out why they don’t recruit more older women for the ranks of the vampires,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “They don’t want their authority challenged.”

  “And older women are more likely to do it.” I finished up the thought. “I guess it’s too late now. The vampire establishment is in big trouble.”

  Vi smiled, revealing that her teeth were no longer that scary pink, although the vampire fangs still showed. She was smiling more now, but when she took a step toward me, I instinctively stepped away.

  “Are you afraid of me too, Kris?”

  “Vi, I saw what you did to Quiller. “

  Her voice was meek. “I promise you, Kris, I would never do anything to hurt you. But Quiller was trying to hurt this kitty and other animals. I had to stop him from that.”

  “You would have killed him. Sucked his life force out and killed him.”

  “I meant that about sending him to the Others. He knows that now.”

  “You could do that? When you do that thing with the eyes?”

  “I’ve done it before with prey—don’t freak out, we practice feeding without causing harm on birds and mice, but mine kept disappearing. I didn’t know what it was until Mrs. Battle explained that normal vampires don’t do that. It’s like the vampire feeding without drinking blood, except that the Others do it without physical touch. Now that I know what it is, I can control it--some.”

  “Control it some? Oh my God, Violet!” Without meaning to, I put my hands over my face. I rubbed my eyes and looked back up cautiously.

  “You don’t have to be afraid. I can look you in the eye without draining you. I don’t use their way of feeding. A few more came back in the house when I got back from hunting. I think it draws them in when I use that power.” She gazed sadly at me.

  “I thought you were cured with the onion juice?”

  “I don’t think it’s a cure, Kris.” Vi stepped closer to me and I started to shiver, fighting an instinctive thrill of fear, and the cold. Nowadays, standing near her chilled me—except just after she had fed. I wanted to step away, but I managed to stand my ground.

  “I’ve been taking the onion juice and garlic juice whenever I feel the Others rising in me,” Vi said.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I think that’s one reason they’ve stopped swarming the house. Their eyes are much more vulnerable than the rest of them, and the onion fumes hurt them. Rubbing it all over me is creating some kind of thin barrier. I’m learning how to fight them off, but without that barrier, I might be lost in their world.”

  “What do you know about their world?” This was the first I had heard of that.

  “I got as far as the entrance. It was like standing on a small ledge above a great dark plain, or on the rim of an active volcano, looking down into the caldera. There’s an almost irresistible pull down into th
e darkness—all I could see down there were a lot of red fissures. I don’t know what they are. They looked like hot lava with a small crust of cooler black on the top, but there was no feeling of intolerable heat. It’s heavier as if there were more gravity. It might be a gateway into another planet for all I know. It was darker, which is why they only come here at night. Their world looked like hell to me. You brought me back with the garlic and onion juice—I only pray it keeps working.”

  Chapter 76

  Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

  August 31st

  The onion juice stopped working the next night. The Others began to filter back. Looking cautiously at them, we could see a kind of film around their eyes. It looked like a transparent visor or shield completely covering their eyes. Either they had grown a membrane or created a covering that could be worn with no signs of straps or other attaching devices.

  Bram and I tried the water cannons first with onion and then garlic juice. The spray just bounced off their new shielding.

  “A true scientist would test whether they could still drain the life out of you with those eye protectors on.” Bram said thoughtfully.

  “No!” My response was instant and heartfelt.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t experiment.” Bram put his arm around me and hugged me reassuringly.

  “Let’s just assume, in the interests of survival, that if they could do it through a windowpane, whatever shielding they’ve got would allow them to attack us, either with their eyes or their teeth or both.”

  Mina buzzed my doorbell not long after. They had returned to her apartment, too.

  Chapter 77

  Hal Roy’s spoken notes

  silver flash drive/voice recorder

  August 31st

  The FVI checked me out of my hotel and set me up in a small dorm-style room at their headquarters. The door was locked from the outside. They brought me a phone to make a few monitored outgoing calls, but not to receive any. I called Mina. Afterwards I regretted that. Had I just betrayed her to them?

  At first I hoped that giving them information would do my career some good. But the questions sounded more like a criminal interrogation, although no one directly accused me of anything.

  “The question you need to answer to our satisfaction, Mr. Roy, is how you could even see the creatures.” The vampire who sat across the table to interrogate me was a degree or two less cold than the two silent vampires who stood against the wall unspeaking--the difference between standing in a windstorm and standing in a windstorm on a glacier.

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Usually the Others can only be seen by a vampire, or one who has been bitten and injected with vampire venom.” All three vamps tensed a little when he said “the Others.”

  I didn’t have much going for me, so I tried to observe them, but it was like observing marble statues. I didn’t say anything. After all, he hadn’t really asked a question.

  “But you say you were never bitten.”

  “I understand that you can tell that I never was.”

  The interrogator hesitated. I could feel the other two tensing up. Then he smiled and leaned forward, so that I could see his fangs close up. “The purpose of our investigation is not to give out information, but for you to provide it.”

  “A vampire told me that he could tell I hadn’t been bitten.”

  “And that vampire’s name would be?”

  “Morford.”

  “Ah, yes, your lawyer.” They weren’t taking notes. Of course, our conversation would be recorded. “You are not a vampire and have never been bitten. How could you see the Others?”

  “Maybe a third category would be someone who has sex with someone who has been bitten by a vampire.”

  “Most intriguing, Mr. Roy. We’ll need names and contact information.”

  Finally I told them how Lucy, who had been bit by Morford, drew the attention of the Others when she cut her knee. By sleeping with Lucy, I seemed to have opened up some kind of way for the Others to get to me as well.

  No flicker of emotion showed on the vampire agents’ faces but I could feel a visceral shudder pass through them.

  “You know that these creatures steal life from vampires. Having a woman with bites from both is dangerous. We need to hunt them down at the source. Would you happen to know what death gate they came through?”

  “I don’t even know what a death gate is, and you say there’s more than one?” Now I shuddered at the thought.

  “There are several. They seem to be vectors into whatever it is they came from. Where did you see them first?”

  I told them what happened on the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Chapter 78

  Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

  August 31st to September 1st

  Mina stood on the street outside the gate, but the Others swarmed over the house and cottage, hovering over the garden in between like an army of floating gray, with sparks of red eyes glowing. It was chilly and wisps of fog floated around the mass of creatures. I called Mina’s cell phone and told her to go on up the steps and knock on Vi’s front door. Bram and I would meet her there.

  Bram and I set out across the garden through mobs of Others bobbing around us. They floated aside without touching when we walked through. It was unnerving.

  “Goddamn paparazzi,” I muttered.

  “Or gigantic mosquitoes.”

  We both laughed. I hadn’t known I still could joke. But the crowd pressed closer, as if encouraged. “Sorry. Shutting up.” I said.

  Bram put his arm around my shoulder and I slipped mine around his waist. We walked bent over, as if through a windstorm.

  Mina and Vi were waiting for us in the front room. Sir John came in a few minutes afterward and sat in the wing chair, Vi in the straight chair next to him. Mina had brought the computer chair over with no prompting. Bram and I sat close together on the sofa. The body contact seemed to give us both more courage.

  “We have a little grace time before the Night Court meets and decrees our death,” Sir John said solemnly.

  “Our death? Why are you so sure they’ll decide that?”

  “They fear contamination. This horde started at Hal’s, followed over here and to Mistress Mina’s abode. For now they only swarm us. But if the local vampire rulers allow them to spread, the national vampire organizations will move to stop the contagion by destroying every vampire in the city and every human who can see these creatures.”

  The front door opened and a moment later Mrs. Battle appeared, this time wearing a blue trench coat and a tan fedora.

  She looked at me as if I had spoken. “Once we have permission to enter, Kristin, vampires have no need to knock. I cannot stay long.” She gave a cursory check that the blanket still blocked the fireplace and nodded her approval, but she kept the hat and coat on.

  “I must persuade those with influence in the Night Court to postpone your hearing till tomorrow night. They wish to dispose of you quickly before they get blamed for this infestation. All I can do is delay—unless you have a new weapon.” She looked at us hopefully.

  “We haven’t come up with anything to get through the critters’ new eye defense,” I said. “Dr. Quiller had an idea to use antibiotics, based on the antibiotic properties of garlic. I think he’s just discovering antibiotics about sixty years after everyone else.”

  “Dr. Quiller has not been seen lately. He seems to be feeling poorly.” Mrs. Battle looked at Vi as if she expected a confession, but Vi and I both kept silent.

  “There is one thing we might use against them.” Sir John had a sheepish look on his face. “Didn’t think of it till now. I’ve seen a hundred battles over turf in the past six hundred years. But fighting through that mob outside reminds me of the Hungry Ghosts. They might do our work for us.”

  “What are Hungry Ghosts?” I asked.

  “Displaced spirits,” Sir John said. He deferred to Mrs. Battle.

  She nodded. “That might work, Sir John.”
She sighed and removed her trench coat and sat on the sofa, but kept her hat on. “Most of our Hungry Ghosts died here a hundred years ago or more—some from the 1850s Gold Rush days. They had no relatives living near to give them burial rites. Mostly Asian, but some black, some Indian, some white—all poor. If they had died among their kinfolk, their families would have offered rituals, or tended their graves at the least. They got buried out beyond the city limits—twice. They didn’t get moved the last time they the cemetery was dug up. There they lie, forgotten, their graves unmarked. No family to pray or burn candles and incense. No one to feed them on feast days, or ring bells. They rise up and drift in the fog, hungry and seeking.”

  “You say Hungry Ghosts—what do they eat?” Bram leaned forward, fascinated.

  “Subtle-bodied creatures that they are, professor, they live on scents,” she said. “They are not physical, but they consume anything in their realm.”

  “Creatures that’ll steal a human’s last breath--like the long pork you know.” Sir John managed a weary chuckle. “I hear they like common roasted pork as well. They wander into restaurants and drool. Poor sorry things.”

  “Can you see them?” Mina asked.

  Sir John looked at Mrs. Battle. She shrugged. “Knowing where to look, I can. Most vampires can. Though they hide well. They come upon humans from the side or behind. They lurk on property lines, fences and walls, guarding their last scraps of residence, even after the graves are long gone.”

  “Do they destroy vampires?” Bram was curious.

  “They’ll snuff an unwary vampire like a candle,” Sir John said.

  Mrs. Battle didn’t say anything for a moment. “They are among the dangers I teach young vampires to avoid. They haven’t fangs and venom to take life as a vampire does, but they can steal the breath from a man or a vampire and kill him if they catch him unawares.”

  “Do you think they might eat the Others?” I had to ask.

  “They might if we can summon them from their graves,” Sir John shrugged. “We must needs bring the Others to their table.”