by Karen Ranney
Evidently, her escape wasn’t the worst of it.
“From what we’ve heard, she joined the The Militia of God. We suspect they're hiding her."
I blinked at her. “What do you mean, they’re hiding her? Don’t you have a warrant for her arrest? Didn’t she escape from the jail?”
Kenisha’s eyes turned flat again. “Yes and yes, but unless you know where she is, there isn’t much we can do.”
“Are they claiming sanctuary?” Dan asked.
I frowned at him. “Can they do that?”
“Not legally, but they can make a public stink. Lots of people aren’t all that happy with vampires being among us. They could play on that.”
Kenisha nodded, glanced at Mike, then back at Dan.
I didn't know much about The Militia of God, other than that they hated anyone who wasn’t human and weren’t shy about promoting that hatred. They’d adopted a cute little ghost symbol and drawn a red line through it, reminding me of the movie out years ago. Their television commercials were well done. The last one had featured an innocent looking little girl with golden hair sitting on the steps in front of her house at dusk. A vampire had accosted her, promising her candy and delivering death, instead. The last frame showed her drained white, crimson blood drops sprinkled across her pink dress.
Their membership had grown to millions in the last few years.
Dan and Mike looked at each other. I could almost see their antennae shiver. God forbid they should actually have antennae.
One of these days we were all going to sit in a Kumbaya circle and fess up. They knew everything to know about me, but I didn't know anything about them. Exactly what were they? Not quite human, I was certain, but what I didn’t know.
"Oh goodie," I said, for lack of anything else to say in the silence. "But why didn't you tell me on the phone? Why did we have to meet in person?"
"That's not the purpose of this meeting," she said.
I got that feeling again, a prickling at the nape of my neck. I looked around, surreptitiously. No one looked back at me. No witches stared holes in me. If there were other vampires in the room among the diners, I couldn't tell. They didn't exactly give off an odor to me anymore, which was a damn shame. I could've at least figured out who they were by their smell.
“The Council wants me to ask you something,” Kenisha said.
The feeling traveled from the back of my neck to lodge in my stomach.
Dan reached under the table and grabbed my hand, holding onto it tightly. I didn’t know if he was signaling for me to shut up or just giving me moral support.
"Are you working for the Council now?" I asked.
"They thought I might be able to tell if you were lying," she said. "Because we were fledglings together."
I could tell from the curl of her lip what she thought of that idea. We had attended exactly one orientation class together. Granted, our relationship went a little deeper than that, since she considered me responsible for Ophelia's death and I had asked her to arrest my mother, but that was about it. We weren’t going to call each other for coffee or giggle about guys.
"About what?"
Good, my voice didn't sound as frightened as I felt.
The Council had jurisdiction over vampire crimes. The legal system didn't know what to do with the undead, so they were grateful to the vampire Council for stepping in and adjudicating anything involving a vampire.
My attempt to kill Maddock was definitely one of those crimes they would handle. If they knew about it. To the best of my knowledge, they didn’t and I wasn’t going to blab to Kenisha.
She glanced at the two men, then leaned over the table, whispering to me. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was embarrassed.
"Are you menstruating?"
Well, hell, I hadn't expected that question.
My eyes opened wide. I hoped she perceived my expression as a look of astonishment instead of just surprise.
"I'm a vampire," I said. "You've read the pamphlets. You know, the ones that say your body is changing. Kind of opposite the ones we got when we started our periods, remember?"
I suspected she cultivated that stone facade when she arrested people or interrogated suspects. Was that what I was, a suspect?
Great. One more threat. Like I needed another.
"The Council has heard differently,” she said.
"From whom? Not my gynecologist, that's for sure."
I pushed my chair back and stood. "If that's all, Kenisha, I have things to do and places to see and people to meet. And miles to go before I sleep."
I'd always liked that Frost poem.
Her eyes narrowed as she stared at me, then finally she let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.
"I told them it was crazy to even ask.”
I only nodded. "Thanks for the information about my mother," I said.
As I left the table, I wished I had the courage to ask about Maddock. Was he foaming at the mouth yet? Evincing signs of dementia? With Maddock it would be difficult to tell.
I wound my way through the restaurant, my departure disconcerting the approaching waitress.
"I'm sorry ma'am, we’re really busy,” she said, clutching her menus.
"It's not you,” I said, stopping my determined departure. “I just realized I have to be somewhere else.”
I smiled my bright white artificial smile and got the hell out of the restaurant. After a moment, I realized Dan was beside me, but Mike was nowhere in evidence. I had brought him here for the express purpose of getting him interested in Kenisha. The fact that he stayed behind now annoyed the hell out of me.
"He's getting her number," Dan said.
"I thought he couldn't date vampires."
“His rule, not mine.”
I gave him a sideways glance. "We need to talk. I mean, really talk. I want to know what's going on at the castle. I want to know who you are. And what you are."
"We'll talk," he said. “But I'm not a shape shifter.”
“Are you a werewolf, elf, gnome, or other species of Brethren?”
When he shook his head, stopped and faced him.
“You’re something, Dan. I can command a human. I can inject a thought into their head. I can’t do that with you.”
For a second he looked startled before his face smoothed of all expression.
“Are you going to tell me?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to tell, Marcie.”
I got into the Jeep without saying a word. When Mike finally joined us, I didn’t ask if he’d gotten Kenisha’s number. In fact, I didn’t open my mouth all the way back to the castle.
For me, that was saying a whole bunch. Like how I suddenly didn’t trust Dan and that the realization hurt a lot more than it should have.
CHAPTER NINE
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket
The normal channels of information were closed to me, only because nobody knew anything about a Dirugu, which is what I suspected I was, a weird combination of witch and vampire. I was a creature who could do what vampires had always yearned to do: walk in the sun, eat, and procreate. It was the procreate bit that made life a bit dodgy for me lately.
I’d already gone the public library route. Google had failed me. We had dozens of universities either in San Antonio or nearby. Was there anything like a College of Metaphysical Myths somewhere? I wasn’t going back to Eagle Lady. Once burned, twice shy and all that. I didn't know any vampires I could trust.
Yes, I was ignoring the fact that I was one.
Hermonious Brown was my best bet.
I encountered the same overprotectiveness at the door as yesterday. This time, however, I wasn’t in the mood to barter. I was still miffed by the non-conversation of the night before, along with the feeling that Dan wasn’t being entirely honest with me.
“I’m leaving,” I said. “Get over it. Follow me if you want. I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
The worm, she was tur
ning.
Both Dan and Mike looked surprised. Good. Let them see me angry for once, not sweet little Marcie Montgomery trying to be all pleasant and tolerant.
Dan was lying to me and I knew it. He knew I knew it, too, because he didn’t say anything. He just got that watchful look in his eyes that made him be all Ranger-y, like I was some sort of enemy.
If that’s the way he wanted it, fine.
I no longer cared. Okay, maybe I cared a little, but I was doing everything I could to tamp out those burning embers.
I wanted to find out what he was, but first I had to find out what I was. It wasn't enough to live day by day with this big cloud hanging over my head. I had to know the truth, rightly or wrongly, for good or ill, for better or worse.
Nor was I going to sit back and let somebody decide when it was time for me to know, like my grandmother finally revealing that ever since I was born I was a changeling. I was a little tired of being passive in my own life. I was going to be active from this moment on.
I drove out of the gates of the castle with Charlie riding shotgun, nose into the wind. I’d opened the passenger side window half way.
"Don't drool on the glass," I said.
He grinned happily at me, then resumed his pose half in and half out of the window.
I wasn't sure Charlie was simply a dog. Of course, my paranoia might be put down to the experiences of the last month or so. I wasn't quite a vampire. Niccolo Maddock wasn't just a vampire, either. I knew Dan wasn't just a former Ranger. I knew my grandmother wasn't just Nonnie.
Nobody was just simply a human being anymore. No, they were one of the Brethren or they were a vampire, or they were something I’d never heard of before, like a Dirugu. So it was to be expected that I was a little suspicious of everything and everyone that crossed my path, including my canine companion.
"If you are more than a dog," I said to Charlie, "now's the time to let me know. Feel free to shift into what you are.”
I glanced at him. All I got was a few pants in response.
"No, seriously, what are you? Shape shifter? Werewolf? Werewolf hybrid? Witch hybrid? Elf? Something I’ve never heard of?"
Pant, pant.
He didn’t shift. He only slobbered against the glass.
"Okay, then."
We got to San Antonio in record time, which wasn't a surprise, since it was between the morning and lunch rush hours. When I entered Alamo Heights, I made sure I was two or three miles below the speed limit of thirty five.
Alamo Heights didn't have a large police department, but the one they did was devoted to monitoring the speed traps.
Alamo Heights was our answer to 90210. An incorporated city within the geographic confines of San Antonio, Alamo Heights was about as preppy and overpriced as you could get. A two bedroom cottage with warped floorboards and a sagging roof could go for a quarter of a million dollars, easily.
Yet for all of its pretentiousness, Alamo Heights had a certain small town ambience. People really did know each other and were cliquish in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I’d always been odd man out in high school, one of the last ones picked to join a team or the girl in the back of the room at any function. School was for learning, not trying to adjust socially. That's a lesson I learned from my grandmother. I should have been a little more like my mother who, even to this day, was a social butterfly. She was probably charming all the fanatics at The Militia of God.
There are only a few main streets in Alamo Heights, Broadway being one of them. Hermonious Brown’s bookstore, cutely named Ye Olde Bookshoppe, was located on Broadway. I parked around the side of the building, looked at Charlie, and realized that I’d probably made a mistake in bringing him.
Well, Mr. Brown was simply just going to have to accept the presence of a dog.
To the best of my knowledge, Charlie didn't chase cats, but to be on the safe side, we had a heart to heart talk in the car.
"There's a cat in there," I said. "Her name is Angelica and she's very, very old. You won't bother her, right?"
Charlie drooled a little on my hand, then whined in agreement.
I wiped off my palm with a tissue I had in my purse.
Before I left the car, I turned off my phone, remembering the last time it had rung when I was meeting with Mr. Brown. He’d refused to talk to me for a good ten minutes, until I was feeling dutifully chastised for my rudeness.
Mr. Brown was a Luddite and proud of it. He didn’t advertise on the web. He didn’t have a website or email, which had made communicating with him during his settlement a pain.
As an insurance adjuster, I’d handled one of Mr. Brown’s claims. A sign had blown off a shop on the opposite side of the street and careened into his storefront, shattering his large glass window. My investigation had concluded that it was one of those errant windstorms we get occasionally in San Antonio. Out of a clear blue sky, the wind can gust up to forty miles an hour.
Mr. Brown was a curmudgeonly sort, completely antisocial and annoyed by all the bureaucracy I’d brought with me. Still, something about him reminded me of my late grandfather, a man as kind as my mother was cold.
Had my grandfather known what I was? He died when I was seven and I felt his loss keenly for years.
Now I wondered if he’d been a witch, too. Or a warlock. Was that a male witch? Funny, I’d rarely read of witches in any of my fiction. Had that been because of something Nonnie had done?
I had too many damned questions.
After clipping on Charlie’s leash, which I was using only because San Antonio and Alamo Heights had a leash law, I opened the car door and together we went in search of knowledge.
I took the three concrete steps up to the wooden boardwalk in front of the store. The place look like a storefront in Fredericksburg, Texas, something that dated back to frontier days. I knew from my earlier research that the building was only from the thirties, but Mr. Brown didn’t do anything to make it smell, look, or feel more modern. The last time I was here, he’d repaired the window, but I knew he didn’t intend to do anything about the sagging floors or the stacks and stacks of books.
I opened the door, hearing the little bell on the top ring as I breathed in the scent of wood, mildew, kitty litter, and old books.
Mr. Brown never came to the front to welcome a browser or buyer. Instead, he sat behind his counter in a space I think of as his safe zone. The area was created by a massive circular counter. Once it had stood in the middle of the shop, but after the incident with the sign, he had moved the counter back until one end touched the far wall.
Not that anyone could tell there was a counter there. Every available surface was covered with books. Stacks and stacks of books ranging in size and age and date. The only way they were organized in any kind of order was by subject. Mr. Brown didn't believe in books that were written in the last twenty or thirty years. Instead, he concentrated on older books, some of them valuable enough to belong to a museum.
One of his most precious volumes was illuminated by a monk in the 14th century. He'd taken it out of his safe and showed it to me, only after I’d agreed not to breathe on it. Of course I wasn't allowed to touch it and when he did so, it was with a pair of white gloves set aside for that purpose.
Mr. Brown would know if there was a book featuring paranormal creatures, like a Dirugu.
I stood there for a minute, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Another thing Mr. Brown didn't like: natural light. Nor was he fond of florescent fixtures. Only one old fashioned banker’s light with a green shade sat at the end of the counter and it was here that he sat huddled over a book.
I don’t think he liked buyers coming in his store. Someone had told me that he was independently wealthy, that he maintained the store to keep his relatives from bothering him. I don’t know if it was true or not. Mr. Brown wasn’t the type to divulge details about himself.
Charlie, thankfully, sat silent at my side, even as Angelica tiptoed over th
e books on the counter. Her white fur had grown yellowish and she was as thin as Mr. Brown.
I hadn't seen the man for two years, but he hadn't changed. He was still tall, but he never stood up straight and even sitting on his stool, he hunched up his shoulders and drew himself in as if to make himself smaller. His face was long, well lined, pulled down by gravity and his own despairing way of looking at the world.
“I’ve read too much philosophy,” he told me once. “I’ve seen too much of what the world can do to itself. I've not much positive thought for the human race.”
How did he feel about vampires?
His hair was thinning, the blonde strands revealing a delicately pink pate. He looked up and saw me, the gesture making his thick glasses with their black frames slide down to the end of his nose. He looked like an ancient Buddy Holly.
"Miss Montgomery, what a surprise."
For a thin man, he had a deep, booming voice. I’d once commented that he sounded like a radio announcer. He’d only stared at me balefully, a warning not to make a personal remark again.
Now he put down the book he was reading and slid from his stool, approaching the counter.
I was pleased that he remembered my name and also that he’d glanced at Charlie but said nothing about my bringing an animal into his establishment.
"I need your help, Mr. Brown," I said. “I’m looking for a book on the paranormal.”
I’d decided, in those seconds I was waiting for him to notice me, to tell him the truth. It might be the wrong thing to do, given my suspicion of everyone and everything, but I also suspected that it would be the fastest way to learn what I needed to know.
Who said I wasn’t still Pollyanna?
“The paranormal, Miss Montgomery?”
I nodded. “I’m looking for any mention of a creature that’s a combination of a vampire and a witch. It’s called a Dirugu. It’s supposed to be a special kind of vampire.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment.
“I try not to keep books on the paranormal, Miss Montgomery. I find that exactly the wrong people are searching for them. I don’t want to anger any of those groups.”
