by C. T. Phipps
Gerald, meanwhile, was scooting on the floor to the door. Apparently, he was disturbed by the latest display of ultraviolence. You’d think a vampire would be less squeamish.
“So, you’re best friends with a billionaire’s daughter,” I said, remembering she’d described Cassie as an heiress. “A billionaire’s daughter who was getting married, only to take you out into the middle of the woods for her bachelorette party. A party that turned out to be a front for gathering young women to kill in The Most Dangerous Game. This forms a pattern.”
Nancy blinked. “Maybe Cassie was been betrayed by her evil family?”
I looked at her skeptically. “Err, not really where I was going with that. However, you know her best.”
Nancy frowned, clearly not buying what I was selling.
That had to be a real blow to the ego. Not only had this entire thing been a set up but it had been done at the behest of a false friend who’d led them like lambs to the slaughter.
“She could be innocent,” Nancy said. “After all, you’re both people who know something about having an evil father.”
“Yes,” Carrie replied, nodding. “It’s also possible that Young Earth Creationism is true and that dinosaur bones are all a plot of Satan. I wouldn’t count on it, though.”
“Carrie—” I said, not wanting her to pick a fight.
“If hell has dinosaurs, I’m all on Team Satan,” Carrie said. “Especially T-Rexes. Love those things.”
“Bark-bark!” Cujo said.
Gerald finally got up off the ground and looked at the various corpses before sucking in an unnecessary breath. “I want to help you against the Fraternity.”
Nancy and I exchanged a look, still not certain we could trust the undead horror—who was apparently terrified of us both.
Carrie, however, was ecstatic. “Awesome! I never had a pet before and now I have two.”
Gerald blinked. “Uh—”
“Bark?” Cujo asked.
Carrie put her bloody machete over one shoulder and narrowed her eyes. “Any objections?”
Cujo put his paw over its face. “Grrr.”
“No,” Gerald said, clearly regretting his choice. “Not at all. Sounds great!”
“I’ll go see if we can get you a collar!” Carrie said, far too excited.
“People pay money for that in certain states,” Nancy said.
“Can you be of help during this?” I asked Gerald, trying to avoid thinking about where this conversation had gone. “How can we trust you?”
Gerald gave me a look skeptical look, as if he thought he wasn’t the person whose trust should be in question. “You saved my life. In vampire society, that means I owe you a blood debt. That’s something my kind takes very seriously. What they do there at the compound is evil and I’ll do what I can to stop it. I may have just been a blood source, but they moved me around in it constantly. I know every inch of that place. Also, I am a vampire and I’ve been one since the Eighties. That’s not as old as some but it’s stronger than most humans.”
“We’re not most humans,” Nancy said, walking over and picking up Wilbur’s M16.
“Also, it’s almost daytime,” I said.
Our plans were to hit the compound during the afternoon. I didn’t know much about vampires, but I did know that sunlight killed the weakest of their kind. Even the stronger couldn’t do anything but stagger around when Helios was high in the air.
Gerald grimaced. “Yeah, I’m not good during that.”
Nancy looked ready to tell him to take a hike, or gun him down. I wasn’t sure which. “I’m also not going to let you snack on my friends.”
“He can snack on me!” Carrie said, cheerfully. “Assuming vampire bites are sexy and erotic versus a horrifying violation. Well, actually, maybe then. I am very messed up.”
All of us looked at Gerald. Gerald looked down at Karl’s body. “Yeah, I’m good for a while actually. I can also turn invisible and control people’s minds—well, mortals at least. Older vampires can control anyone, but if they’re regular humans, I can order them to do anything I want.”
“Maybe you should have led with that,” I said. It wouldn’t change my plans, but it meant we had more options, if he could be trusted.
“If you could do that, why didn’t you just walk out?” Nancy asked, skeptically.
Gerald stared with cold, unblinking eyes. “Aiden Cassidy has a control ring for me. It allows him to act as my master.”
“And we’re back to killing you,” I said. “Do you want decapitation, sunlight, or fire?”
“No!” Carrie said, standing in front of him with her arms spread. “You are not killing my pet!”
“I am not...” Gerald started to speak. “Actually, no, sure, let’s go with that.”
“We can’t trust you,” I said, firmly.
“We can bind him with the Necronomicon!” Carrie said. “Controlling the undead is like half of what it does?”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“Yes. Repeat that, please?” Gerald asked.
Nancy looked at me. “He’s spilled innocent blood but never voluntarily. I think we should allow him to try to redeem himself.”
I gave her a ‘you have got to be kidding me’ look. “We’re just forming a little menagerie of monsters, aren’t we?”
That was when I saw a blue-silver fire start to burn from the living room. Esteban’s head lifted off the ground, illuminated by Saint Elmo’s fire. It had one good eye burning with the same substance and I could see more magical fire burning inside its mouth. A shrill inhuman voice escaped its lips that sounded vaguely Gaelic. It was a will-o-wisp, a magically created monster used by old school wizards to communicate. I knew that because my grandfather used to create them. “You will all die, thieves of the sacrifice! The tithe to hell will be completed! We know you, son and daughter of the Undying! You cannot escape our—”
Nancy proceeded to shoot it in the face with Wilbur’s M16, sending it flying and landing on the ground with a thud. All the magic had fled from the will-o-wisp, leaving it nothing more than a severed head with an ice skate in its side. “Boring conversation anyway. It’s a good bet the Empire knows we’re here.”
“Huh?” Carrie asked, confused.
I smirked.
“That was Aiden,” Gerald muttered. “He’s the wizard of the brothers. I don’t know what sacrifice he’s referring to or why.”
“I do,” I said, frowning. “This isn’t just rich people hunting women for sport. They’re carrying out a Wild Hunt.”
Chapter Thirteen
“So, tell me this again,” Nancy said, sitting across from me at the Demeter’s Garden booth. “What the hell is the Wild Hunt?”
It was about a half-hour before sunrise and Demeter’s Garden was a twenty-four-hour establishment. Why in the world someone would want to buy crappy faux-Greek food at six in the morning was anyone’s guess, but my group had unanimously agreed to go here instead of the nearest Waffle House. The four of us had abandoned our home and taken the late Wilbur’s yellow Hummer with its back loaded up with what we could harvest. The farmhouse was left to burn down to the ground and, hopefully, the fire would distract our enemies from finding us for a short while.
The Demeter’s Garden here in Silverton was a clean, albeit generic, looking establishment with fuzzy carpet and large glass windows that provided a view of the parking lot. There were television sets mounted in the corners of the room that showed various CNN and Fox pundits talking about the vote for President in a few nights. I didn’t pay much attention to the event as I’d never had a chance to vote and wasn’t likely to get the opportunity anytime soon. Carrie was rooting for our cousin, but I was of the opinion his relationship to the family was a reason not to cheer his election.
“Hold on,” Carrie said, reaching over to snag a sickly tube of yellow bread. “Let him finish his breadsticks.”
Nancy looked at her, sitting beside me. “This is a bit more important.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Nancy muttered.
“Bark!” Cujo said, in-between Carrie and Gerald. Gerald was wearing a Metallica “For Whom the Bell Tolls” t-shirt and ill-fitting blue jeans he’d taken from one of the previous owners of our now-abandoned home. Apparently, continuing to wear the clothes he’d been exsanguinated in for months wasn’t an option, no matter how ludicrous his appearance now was.
“How did you get them to let him in?” Nancy asked.
“I slipped the sitting waitress a fifty,” Carrie said. “Wilbur wasn’t going to need it.”
Nancy sighed. “Fine. Eat your breadsticks.”
“It’s just for the substance,” I said, mostly there for the coffee. It didn’t taste like complete ass but was cheap and watery. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. “How are you getting Cujo to behave around Gerald?”
“He used his supernatural powers over animals to befriend Cujo,” Carrie said, waving her hand with her pinkie and thumb out. “Gerald can even talk to them!”
Cujo snorted. There was something weird about that dog. I wondered if it was the fact that he’d taken to napping on the Necronomicon.
“I fed him some more of the ribs and let him be dominant to me,” Gerald said. “He’s decided I’m alright now.”
“You realize those were human meat, right?” Nancy asked.
“I’m not judging you for being cannibals,” Gerald said, sounding like he very much was.
“Good, because you’d be a hypocrite!” Carrie said.
Gerald looked abashed. “Vampires don’t eat...flesh.”
“And drinking blood is totally different?” Nancy asked.
“Yes,” Gerald said, sounding less confidant than he probably wanted to be about the subject. “Taking blood is something that people get over. Eating muscle and bone is something that people...don’t.”
“I think by the time that you’re eating someone, you’ve lost the moral high ground,” I said. “Also, human flesh is available in great abundance due to people dying every day while blood goes bad very quickly.”
“Eating flesh is something draugr do,” Gerald said, disgusted. “The worst of our kind.”
“Draugr?” Nancy asked.
“Cannibal zombies,” Carrie answered. “It’s a widespread misconception they eat brains but, really, any part of a living human being will do. They’re created by vampires, but don’t come all the way, or by curses. This contrasts with the revenant class of zombie that is made by ghosts rising in bodies at the behest of well, ghosts, or necromancers. There’re also wights that are when a guy is so evil that he won’t stay dead.”
“Huh,” Nancy said. “This has been a very educational night.”
“Your family didn’t seem to educate you about some things,” Carrie said, sipping her morning Mountain Dew through a straw.
“My family knew plenty of things about certain subjects and very little about others,” Nancy said. “The government, or maybe a group in the government, tried to recruit us multiple times but Grandma wouldn’t hear of it. She believed they were making deals with the supernaturals and not hunting them.”
“She was right,” Gerald said. “The Vampire Nation can feed, even kill, as long as it’s within reasonable limits. Also, certain people are off limits.”
“Certain people?” Nancy asked.
“Rich white people?” I suggested.
“Sometimes,” Gerald admitted, looking traumatized. “It didn’t stop them from turning me or me from killing my family when I woke up.”
Sometimes there were no good responses.
“Maybe your family wasn’t rich or white enough,” Carrie said.
Like that for example.
“So, anyone want me to top them off?” A woman who looked almost identical to Marge but without the aura of evil about her said. Her nametag read MIDGE, which I took to be a coincidence.
“Yes, please,” I said, extending my cup for her to refill.
“You’ll never get to sleep if you keep drinking coffee the way you do,” Carrie said, frowning. She disapproved of my caffeine intake the way I disapproved of her enthusiasm for murdering people. We were both unlikely to change.
“I only sleep about an hour a night anyway,” I said, matter-of-factly. “I’ll be fine with a nap before we take care of our business.”
“You sure?” Nancy asked. “You should be at your best when we do this.”
“He’s not joking,” Carrie said. “He really does just sleep an hour a night. He learned to go without sleep while I just built up my own mental fortifications. They look like a magical Winter Wonderland full of booby traps. Dad used to assault us in our dreams on a regular basis. Personally, I think an hour is still too much even if it means you can do the heavy lifting driving wise.”
Midge looked at us strangely.
“New Stephen King book,” Carrie said.
Midge stared. “Really? Because I wasn’t pleased with his last one’s ending.”
“I know!” Carrie said. “So disappointing.”
“You look like a wine drinker, boy,” Midge said, looking at Gerald. “Want to try our breakfast wines?”
“Breakfast wines?” Gerald asked.
“Say the line!” Carrie said.
“What line?” Gerald asked, confused.
“Say the line!” Carrie said, now threatening.
Gerald blinked. “Oh, yes, uh, I never drink...wine. I’ll have a cherry coke instead.”
“Cherry coke?” Carrie asked. “Eww.”
Gerald shrugged. “I like the taste.”
“Suit yourself,” Midge said. “Your pasta and salad should be out in a minute.”
Midge turned around and headed for the kitchen.
“I didn’t know vampires could eat food,” I said.
“We can’t,” Gerald said. “It’ll come back up in an hour or when I sleep. However, it reminds me of being human.”
“Vampire bulimia is not sexy,” Carrie said, shaking her head. “You work on that.”
“Can we talk about where I’m going to sleep?” Gerald asked, trying to ignore my sister having essentially enslaved him. “I can stand a little bit of sunlight, maybe an hour, but it’s not good for me. The depiction of vampires exploding is an invention of films.”
“We have a body bag in the back,” I replied. “Well, Wilbur had a body bag in the back. I figured we’d store you there. We’ll cover you in a blanket as well in case anyone looks in the back.”
Gerald frowned. “Well, I’m dead to the world during the day so it’s not like I’ll feel anything. Wake me up if you need me to do anything. I owe you big for saving me. What you rescued me from was a fate worse than death.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine what it’s like having your blood drained out of you to sustain the immortal existence of evil monsters,” Nancy said.
Gerald stared at her. “Now that’s just rude, especially given the company you keep.”
“Carrie and Will have proven true friends,” Nancy said, frowning.
“I meant hunters,” Gerald said. “They’re just bad people in general.”
I leaned back in my chair. “So, the Wild Hunt? You want me to go over that again?”
“If you don’t mind,” Nancy said. “Every little detail could be something that saves the life of a friend.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Aiden Cassidy seemed aware of not only what we were but who we were. I didn’t know if that was because he was magically scrying his former servants (how many wizards employed meth dealers?) or whether it was him putting together clues, but the result was the same. It meant they were on alert that there was danger and our largest advantage, surprise, was now removed. If they were smart, then they would increase their security or move their prisoners to a new location. I wasn’t about to share those details with Nancy, though. We’d come this far, and I was committ
ed now.
“The Wild Hunt is a motif that occurs throughout European folklore. A group of supernatural hunters led by a central huntsman be he Odin, Herne the Hunter, the Devil, or a Lord of the Fae. A common manifestation of it would be that some poor bastard—”
Nancy flinched at my use of the word.
“Really?” Carrie looked at her. “Do you just not watch television?”
“Nothing uncensored,” Nancy said. “I only listen to the radio edits of music too.”
Carrie rolled her eyes.
“I don’t get it,” Gerald said.
“She’s afraid of swearing,” Carrie explained.
Gerald looked at her sideways. “You didn’t blink at shooting a flaming head.”
“I’m fine with violence,” Nancy said. “Just not swearing.”
“I’ve heard about it for nudity, but I just thought that was because we Americans are a repressed bunch of prudes,” Carrie said. “You know, being descended from a bunch of crazy religious zealots who hated fun.”
“That’s not inaccurate,” I said, raising my cup to my sister.
“My family helped settle New Orleans,” Gerald said. “
“Ours were a cult of devil worshipers, cannibals, and witches the Puritans missed during the Salem Witch Trials,” Carrie said. “My theory is that they were too scared. Better to go after a bunch of teenage girls and their boyfriends.”
It was a bit more complicated than that, but we weren’t here to discuss early American colonial history. It did, however, remind me just what an incredibly bad bunch people my family was every generation. We might be the origin of the slasher gene given how many of us there were.
Nancy shook her head. “As far as I know, my family begins with my grandmother. I’ve heard that part of the legend. The Wild Hunstman grabs some random farmer off the road and then forces them to run through the woods. If the human manages to survive until dawn, they get to live. If they don’t, they’re fairy hound food.”
“Bark!” Cujo expressed his approval.
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “That’s the tourist version, though.”
“The Cassidys aren’t fairy lords either,” Gerald said. “Nor are their extended relations. They are Irish, though.”
