Legally Undead

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Are you sure? I mean, you could say that I was with you when you found the stuff—” his voice trailed off. “No. I guess not. Okay.”

  “So I think maybe you’d better go so I can do that. Okay?” I didn’t look up at him.

  “Okay.” He whispered, and I realized he was standing just above me.

  Then he leaned over and kissed me.

  You know those kisses that send electricity through you—that shoot right through your mouth and end up in your stomach somewhere? This one went straight down to my toes. I got goose bumps. I forgot where I was for a moment. I think I forgot who I was for a moment. We were both breathing hard when Malcolm finally pulled away from me.

  “Call me when you’re done talking to the police, okay?” he whispered.

  “I think… I think that maybe I’d better not. I don’t want them to track you down through me.” Oh, God. Surely those words weren’t really coming out of my mouth, were they?

  But they were.

  “I see.” Malcolm said quietly. He looked hurt and puzzled.

  I had to fight myself not to kiss him again, to ask him to stay on my couch, in my bed, on the floor—to do anything other than leave.

  But I really did know that this was for the best. I liked him too much to see him get hurt. And as nice as the kiss had been, I wasn’t ready to start seeing someone again. It had only been three weeks since Greg had un-died. So I just let Malcolm leave my apartment.

  It was dark outside. I watched him shut the door behind himself, wanting to stop him but knowing I couldn’t. I knew he was hurt. I suspected he’d get angry after the immediate hurt wore off. I guess that’s why I didn’t suspect anything when I didn’t hear from him for six days.

  In my own defense, I was distracted—both by Malcolm’s kiss and by what happened after he left.

  But I still feel responsible. I should have known that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t call the police when Malcolm left, of course. Instead, I tried to figure out how to deal with this problem on my own.

  I couldn’t think of anything. Malcolm had left the stock exchange information behind when he’d left, but it meant nothing to me. I never could figure out the whole stock exchange thing. People bought shares in stuff. The shares went up or down and people made or lost money. That was the extent of my knowledge.

  So I finished sorting through the garbage. I came up with a lot of trash and not much more. I had a bloody t-shirt, a list of the top New York City vampires and their corporate structure, a list of vampire addresses, and some sort of evidence of their financial solvency. Or immense wealth. Whichever.

  The money stuff didn’t surprise me, even if I didn’t fully understand it. If I were going to live forever, I’d figure out a way to be rich, too. I would hate the thought of toiling away at a job for eternity.

  Which brought me back to Greg.

  Why was he still on the payroll at Forster, Pearson, and Sims? And why did he have all of this information on one of their computers?

  With a shrillness that sounded abrupt in my silent apartment, a phone rang. It wasn’t my land line, and it wasn’t my regular cell phone. It was one of the cell phones we’d gotten for The Sting. I picked it up and checked out the caller ID: “Unknown Caller.”

  Hoping that maybe it was Malcolm—and equally hoping that it wasn’t—I answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Elle.”

  It was Greg. Just what I needed: another talk with the Undead Ex. “How did you get this number?” I demanded.

  “I pulled it from Sheila’s records.”

  Oh. Yeah. Right. The secretary. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. “I see. So what do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you. I’ve been looking for you for days, Elle.”

  For some reason that comment irritated me, and I responded as I might have to any ex. “That’s odd. Because it seems to me that if you wanted to get in touch with me that badly, you could have left a message with the History department at Fordham. And I never got a message from you, Greg. So I just don’t think that you were looking for me all that hard.”

  “Well it’s not like I could just go up some afternoon and leave a note.”

  “And whose fault is that?” I asked. I sounded snippy, but hey, I had the moral high ground here. I wasn’t the vampire.

  “Who’s the new boyfriend?” he asked.

  “He’s not a new boyfriend. He’s a nobody.”

  “Really? Because it looked like you two were in my office together.”

  Okay. This was getting ridiculous. I was having a fight on the phone with my ex-boyfriend the vampire. I sighed and tried for a less belligerent tone. “Is that why you called?” I asked. “Because if it is, we can hang up now. I don’t have a new boyfriend. That’s it. The end. Goodbye.”

  “Then I want to talk about you and me, Elle. I want you to come home.”

  “Home? I am home. I have a home. It’s a home that doesn’t have you anywhere near it. I can’t come home to you. I don’t live there anymore.”

  “Just get on the train and come over. It could all be just like it used to be.”

  “Just like it used to be? No it couldn’t. This isn’t some strange phase you’re going through. You’re a friggin’ vampire! This isn’t some job with weird hours that you can just quit at any time, Greg. You’re on the permanent night shift now.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m one of the bad guys. I’m on the right side, Elle. I promise.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re the good guy bloodsucker. You’re the hero among vampires. You’re doing it all for the greater good of the world.”

  “Something like that. I really did do this for the right reasons.”

  “Did this? You mean you had some choice in it?” My voice was getting shrill. I could hear it beginning to crack. I had never considered the possibility that Greg had chosen to become a vampire. I had always assumed that the vampire I killed had turned Greg without Greg’s consent. My knees suddenly buckled and I found myself sitting on my couch without any memory of how I got there. “This wasn’t an accident?” I was whispering now.

  “No. I did it because Pearson asked me to. He wanted an insider, someone who could learn how and where the vampires were meeting. He knew they were more organized than he’d been able to determine. He wanted to know who their leaders were and how to wipe them out completely.”

  “So you volunteered.” My voice had gone completely flat. If Greg had been paying attention, he might have realized that I had reached a point almost past emotion. This seemed like more than I could handle. If I’d still been drinking, I would have wanted a stiff shot of something potent. Something that would burn away all memory of this conversation.

  “Pretty much. It was a good career move, Elle.”

  “A good career move? That’s the right reason to do something like this?”

  “I’m Pearson’s inside guy. I’ve been getting all the information he wanted. I’m on the fast track now.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This Greg wasn’t the one I had known. And worse, I realized that this Greg had been around before he’d been turned into a vampire. He’d made the choice to become a vampire without ever once considering the larger implications, without considering what it would do to our relationship, what it might do to me. The silence on my end of the phone grew longer and longer.

  “Elle?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Nothing has to change. I promise.”

  “Nothing, Greg?” Now I was beginning to get truly angry. “Let’s test that. Hey. I know. Let’s go down to the Jersey shore for a long day at the beach, just like we used to every summer.”

  “There’s no need to get sarcastic.”

  “You’re the one who said nothing needs to change. Think we can still have a church wedding? No? Okay. Then how about this: let’s go out to dinner. What do you say? I think I’ll order seafood. And you can ge
t some veggie primavera. Oh. Wait. No. You don’t eat real food anymore. Tell me, Greg, how many people have you killed since the last time I saw you?”

  “None. I don’t have to kill people to feed, Elle.”

  “Oh. So you just suck their blood and let them go?”

  “There are plenty of people who are willing to donate. I don’t have to force anyone. Some people actually enjoy it.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “No more sick than killing animals to eat. Think about it. I don’t ever feed without my food’s permission.”

  “So people are just food to you now.” It wasn’t a question—I had exhausted all my questions. “The thing is, Greg, you can’t just be sort of a vampire. It’s either all or nothing. And no matter what you tell me, I don’t believe that vampires are ever the good guys. It doesn’t matter that your victims are willing blood donors. You still have to drink blood to survive. That’s not natural. It’s not okay. You can’t be one of the vampires but not really one of them. You either drink blood or you don’t. You do. I don’t. And that’s that.”

  “But you could.”

  “No, I couldn’t. Not willingly. I couldn’t do what you did. I couldn’t choose to become a vampire. I won’t.” And suddenly I couldn’t think of a single thing more to say to him other than goodbye. “This conversation is over. Don’t call me again. I don’t believe you’re one of the good guys. I don’t think you even know what that means, and I’m suddenly not sure you ever did. I’m not coming back to you. It’s over.”

  With that, I disconnected the call and turned the phone off.

  I sat on the couch holding the cell phone in my hand. I was having a hard time believing what had just happened. Bad enough that the love of my life had been turned into a vampire. Worse that I’d actually had to break up with him three weeks after the fact. For that matter, I had, for all intents and purposes, broken up with two men that night. This was not turning out to be one of my better days.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about what Greg had told me—the part about him choosing to become a vampire because he thought it would further his career. Okay. The whole bit about him having to drink blood in order to continue walking around was creepy. But the fact that he’d known what he was getting into before he’d done it was even creepier. I had thought I’d known Greg. But I was suddenly confronted with the possibility that everything I’d known about him had been wrong. He hadn’t always been kind—at least, not to everyone, though he was never deliberately cruel to me—but I’d always thought of him as utterly ethical. But maybe I’d been wrong. The fact that he’d been willing to turn into a creature of the night who preyed on people certainly argued against an inherently ethical nature.

  And there was more. He’d been raised Catholic. I was guessing that he no longer went to church. How could someone who believed in the tenets of Catholicism, as I thought he had, be willing to become a vampire? Hell, I wasn’t Catholic and I was still disturbed by the whole vampire-as-evil thing—though come to think of it, planning a wedding with a formerly-Catholic vampire might have been easier than it had been with a still-Catholic fiancé. If I’d been willing to marry a vampire. If he hadn’t given up on our entire future by letting himself get turned.

  But that was the big question, of course: how could he? How could he let that vampire suck his blood? How could he allow himself to be turned? How could he be willing to become a human leech? How could he put his career above his life, above his soul?

  And more than that, how could he be willing to put his career above me? If I were truly honest with myself, that was the question I wanted answered. And the only answer I could come up with horrified me. He ultimately hadn’t cared about me as much as I thought he had.

  I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t cry over Greg ever again. But now I broke that promise. This time was different, though. Last time I had cried because my love had become a monster.

  This time I cried because I realized that my love had always been a monster. I just hadn’t known it until now. Now that felt like a damn good reason to cry.

  When my sobs finally subsided, I wiped my eyes and stared at the phone on the coffee table.

  The only way I could think of to get rid of my vampire problem was to get rid of the vampire. And even though I didn’t know which vampires Greg had gotten mixed up with, I did know who to call to put in a vampire extermination order. I picked up my own phone and dialed. “Hey, Nick? It’s Elle. I’ve got some information for you. And a problem I need some help with.”

  Chapter 11

  Nick and his guys picked me up outside my building at 2:00 the next afternoon. John was driving the usual van and Nick was in the front passenger seat. I handed Nick the list of addresses as I crawled onto one of the bench seats in the back. Dominick and Tony, the other guys who had helped clean up the apartment in Morningside, were already back there. They nodded hello.

  “This is all I’ve got, Nick. Don’t ask where it came from unless you’re sure you want to know.”

  “No problem. And you’re sure that these addresses are all vampire hideouts?”

  “As sure as I can be given how I got the information.”

  “Let me guess—you don’t want me to ask about that, either?”

  “Probably better that you don’t know.”

  “Sure you want to come with us?”

  I nodded. “I want to be part of whatever happens with all of this. I got the information, and I want to see this through.”

  “Okay, then.” Nick ran his finger down the list. “Well, we might as well start in the Bronx, since we’re already here.”

  He pointed to one of the addresses only a few blocks away from my apartment and showed it to John, who let out a low whistle. “The Kingsbridge Armory is a vampire den? Damn.” John spoke with a distinct Bronx accent; he was clearly a local boy. “No wonder the city’s never been able to do anything with it.”

  “Let’s go check it out.” Nick folded the sheet of addresses and tucked it into his jacket.

  John drove for a short time—maybe only ten minutes or so—and we pulled up to the corner of a huge building at Jerome Avenue and West Kingsbridge Road. Weeds surrounded the reddish-brown walls and crawled up the turrets (yes, turrets) on the corners. It looked like someone had dropped a huge medieval castle into the middle of the Bronx. I half expected to see knights in shiny armor ride out on enormous white horses. Of course, to get anywhere they’d have to jump the chain-link fence that surrounded the place. And then fight through New York City traffic. On second thought, I decided that the knights and their horses would probably be happier staying inside. Even if the walls were beginning to crumble.

  “What is this place?” I asked. Everyone in the van turned around to stare at me.

  “What? I’m supposed to know already?” I said. “Look, I’m a history student from New Orleans. You want to know where to get the best beignets in the south, I’m your girl. Ask me what happened in England in 1648, and I can tell you. For that matter, ask me just about anything about the Fordham campus, and I can answer it. What I don’t know anything about is Bronx architecture. But I’m willing to learn. So enlighten me.”

  John alternately looked at the road and watched me in the rearview mirror as he drove slowly past the enormous building and talked.

  “The Kingsbridge Armory was built sometime around World War I. I’m not sure when. Maybe 1915 or so? Anyway, it was used by the National Guard for years and years, but they closed up shop there a few years ago. Now it’s just a huge rotting building. Every few years someone announces they’ve got plans for it, but those plans always fall through—when he was mayor, Guiliani wanted to turn it into a community center. Technically, the state owns it, but can’t afford the upkeep. So there it sits.”

  We swung around the corner and I saw the armory stretch out in front of me, all crenellated towers and domed roof.

  “How big is this place?” I asked.

  “About four blocks,” said
John.

  Around the back side of the armory, construction trucks idled as workers swarmed up to the roof.

  “It looks like they’re doing some sort of work,” I said. “Wouldn’t that make it hard for the vampires to actually use it as a—what did you call it? A nest?”

  “A den. Yeah,” said Nick. “It does seem a little odd to have a den in such a public place.”

  “Maybe they just use it as a meeting place,” one of the guys from the back suggested. “There can’t be many people working on it at night.”

  “If any,” Nick agreed. “The main room on the inside is enormous. There used to be a race track in that room in the sixties.”

  “What are the towers used for?” I asked. “Are there rooms up there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nick. John shook his head. “Okay then,” Nick said. “First things first. Dominick, you’re on surveillance. Watch this place and see what you come up with. John, you’re on research. See if you can find a floor plan of the building. And try to find out the construction crew’s schedule—we don’t want to plan a raid and run into a bunch of roofing guys. Elle can help you with that.” We all nodded.

  “Tony, you’re with me. We’re going to start tracking down the rest of these locations. We’ll meet back at the shop tomorrow at noon.”

  “The shop?” I asked.

  Nick didn’t answer that question. Instead he said, “We’ll meet you at your place tomorrow around five, Elle.”

  “Okay,” I said—not because I didn’t really want to know the answer to my question, but because I realized that Nick wasn’t going to give it to me.

  *

  John and I split up that afternoon to do our research. I went back to my apartment to see what I could find on the internet, while he went in search of building blueprints. The easiest thing to do would have been to go back to the Municipal Archives, but there wasn’t time for me to do it that afternoon. John said he’d head over there the next morning if he hadn’t found anything before then.