Bloody Banquet

by Leod D. Fitz

  “Really?” The girl sounded oddly hopeful.

  “I don't really have much in the way of friends now,” I explained. “I'm a ghoul. We're solitary creatures, so, you know, we don't usually go around making a lot of friends.”

  “Well, did you ever go to school?”

  I sighed. “Yes. My mother home-schooled me for a while, but around middle school she decided that I needed to spend more time around people. She said that I needed the practice acting like a human.”

  “And?”

  “And what? I didn't eat anyone, if that's what you're asking.”

  “No,” the girl let out a little cough that sounded oddly like a laugh. “Did people make fun of you?”

  “Probably.” I shrugged. “I didn't really pay attention to other people. I spent most of my time wishing I was back at home where I didn't have to stand up straight all the time. Or do all the other things I have to do to look human.”

  “Did anyone ever give you grief?”

  “Not until high school. There was this guy, I can't remember his name. He liked to call me names and push me around. One day he poured a bunch of juice on my pants and started calling me 'Wet Wally.'”

  “What did you do?”

  “Not much. Until the day he taped a kick me sign to my back and proceeded to chase me around the halls kicking my ass. Then I punched him in the face.”

  “And?”

  I looked up from my work. “He went to the hospital. My parents pulled me out of school. There was going to be a lawsuit, but apparently one of the other students made a video of the whole thing and when everyone saw it, they realized that the three minutes of him kicking me and calling me names before I maimed him wouldn't go over well in court.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not that I recommend it. If it hadn't been for the video, my life could have taken a very ugly turn.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  I turned back to the woman on the table. “But if I were you, I'd take a few shots at the boy who tricked you into sleeping with him. I doubt it technically qualifies as rape, but he definitely has an ass kicking coming his way.”

  “I probably better not. The last time the police picked me up I got in a lot of trouble.”

  I shrugged.

  “But, what should I do about school?”

  I stopped what I was doing and gave the girl my best bewildered look. “Seriously? You actually want my advice? Have we not established that I am a terrible role model?”

  The girl sniffed and looked away from me.

  I sighed. “Fine, people are making fun of you for what you can't do. So, what can you do? What are you good at?”

  “Besides hunting? Not much.”

  “I'm sure your mother taught you more than how to stake a vampire.”

  Patricia grimaced. “Not really. Everything kind of centered on the family business. I mean, there was unarmed combat, armed combat, firearms, tactics, metal smithing, woodworking, how to make false identities, automotive maintenance, poisons, explosives--”

  “Automotive Maintenance?”

  “Well, yeah. We spent a lot of time working on cars. She said that the last thing I wanted was to find myself broken down on a lonely stretch of desert highway halfway between home and a job. Plus, we went over how to fix up an old piece of crap so it can really haul ass, cause when you've just pissed off a whole clan of crotchsniffers, it's important to be able to get out of town in a rush.”

  I nodded. “Okay, who's the person who gives you the most grief?”

  “Stacy.”

  “And does she have her own car?”

  Patricia made a face. “Yeah. Her parents got her this really nice mustang. Totally cherry--”

  “Okay,” I cut in before she gave me more details I didn’t care about. “Next time you decide to skip some classes, instead of coming here, go out to the parking lot and take her car apart.”

  “Huh?”

  “Find out where she parks, and take out a few vital components. Wear gloves, so you don't leave any fingerprints, and leave whatever you take out in her backseat, so nobody can accuse you of stealing, but the next time you see her, make sure she knows it was you. To be clear, don’t tell her, make sure she knows without actually being told.”

  Patricia stared at me. “I don't get it.”

  I sighed. “Cars are expensive, and important, and people don't like being without them.”

  “Yeah, but, won't she just be able to put it back together?”

  I shook my head. “Most girls don't know how to fix cars.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  I waved dismissively in her general direction.

  A few seconds later I heard the girl hop off the table and wander over to where I was working. “So, what exactly are you doing?”

  “I'm trying to make a corpse look like it could wake up at any moment.”

  “Creepy.”

  “You'd think so, but apparently, most people find it comforting.”

  Patricia watched me work for a bit. “You know, I could probably do this kind of stuff.”

  “Uh-huh. Feel free to buy your own mortuary.”

  “No, I mean... I could probably help you out with this stuff.”

  I looked up at the girl, searching for several seconds for the kindest way to ask what needed asking. “Why in hell would I want your help?”

  Patricia pursed her lips in annoyance. “You don’t have to be mean, Mr. Keppler.”

  “Seriously, I do this so I don't have to deal with people. And stop calling me Mr. Keppler. My name is Walter.”

  “Fine, sorry Mr. Walter.”

  “No, not… you know what, screw it, Mr. Walter is fine.”

  She grimaced and looked away for a moment. “Maybe we could make a deal.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “What if I thought things over and decided that I could loan you that sword for a couple of days?”

  I furrowed my brows suspiciously. “How many days?”

  Chapter 7

  Patricia made me wait in the truck while she broke into her house to get the sword.

  I thought about explaining to her that if I wanted to find out where she kept her stash of weapons, I could go in an hour or ten after her and sniff out her route. Easily. In the end, I elected not to: for one thing, it was possible that she was taking the necessary precautions to keep me from following her trail, but more importantly, we were on shaky ground as it was. Giving her something new to worry about didn't seem wise.

  Instead I sat in my vehicle, staring out at a pleasant little one story home that would be Patricia's property in a few short months. I couldn't help but envy her a little. I ran my own business and had my own place, but I didn't actually own either of them. I'd had to take on some rather sizable debts to get where I was, and it would take me years of hard work to get me all the way back to being broke. And here Trish was, with her own home... a permanent structure with its own basement, even, while my house rested on cinder blocks.

  She was in a nice neighborhood, too. The neighbors on her left were garden aficionados. The flower bed in front of their porch poured into the yard and pooled around a couple of small trees. In fact, there was so little actual yard left in their yard that I wondered if they even bothered owning a lawnmower.

  The neighbors on the right had gone the other direction, turning their front yard into a perfect green field, interrupted by a lone aspen, standing sentinel in the exact center of the yard. From the collection of balls, bikes and Frisbees on the grass and driveway, I guessed that this family had at least four children.

  Most likely these were the kids that Patricia used to babysit. I wondered, for a moment, how the family had reacted when Patricia's mother disappeared, and social services came by asking uncomfortable questions about shouting and bruises.

  Then Patricia was coming out of the house, carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder and glancing around like she w
as expecting the full weight of the Collinswood police to fall down around us.

  I opened the door for her. “Try not to look so guilty, kid. You're in your own yard, for god's sake.”

  She grimaced at me as she dropped the bag into the back of the truck. It clinked loudly, much louder than it should have for just one sword.

  “My social worker made it very clear that I'm not supposed to come here alone, Mr. Walter.”

  “Really? Why?”

  The girl gave me a look. “My mother disappeared, duh. They aren't looking as hard anymore, but technically the investigation is still ongoing. They've searched the place, like, a dozen times.”

  I paused, waiting pointedly until the girl took the hint and buckled her seat belt.

  “A dozen times,” I replied, “and they never found your stash?”

  “Yeah, mom and me spent a lot of time making sure we could keep shit hidden.”

  “I.”

  “What?”

  “Mom and I. Not mom and me.”

  Patricia rolled her eyes. “Geez, it's almost like I didn't skip any classes at all.”

  I shook my head. “How many languages do you speak?”

  “Um, just English.”

  “Uh-huh.” I turned out of the cul-de-sac and headed out of the secluded neighborhood. “If you only speak one language, the least you can do is learn to speak it properly.”

  “Whatever. So, I've got the job, right?”

  I nodded. “You have the job.”

  “Awesome. How much does it pay?”

  I sighed. “That is not the first question an employer wants to hear, Patricia.”

  “Right, sure, but how much does it pay?”

  “Do you know how much minimum wage is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good, because you aren't getting it.”

  “Isn't that illegal?”

  I glanced at her. “Do you really want to go poking holes in the hot air balloon?”

  She gave me a confused look. “What the hell does that mean?”

  I grimaced. “It means that I already told you that I prefer working by myself. Does it really make sense for you to give me more reasons to take the job back?”

  “I could take the sword back.”

  “Could you?”

  She stared at me for several long seconds, then grimaced. “Fine. Asshole.”

  “Never claimed to be anything else,” I countered.

  Patricia slouched in her seat.

  We drove in silence for a few blocks. Then Patricia started fidgeting.

  “So, tell me about these chimera-things,” she asked at last.

  “Why?”

  She let out a frustrated breath and rolled her eyes. “Geez, I'm loaning you the damned sword, already, I think it's fair to expect you to tell me who you're planning to kill with it.”

  “The truth is, I don't know that much about them. I know they're looking for keys of some kind, and they think that I have one of them.”

  “Keys to what?”

  I shook my head. “No idea.”

  “Why do they think you have one?”

  “Someone told them I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I assume the person who did it wants me dead and is trying to get the chimeras to do their dirty work for them.”

  “Oh.” She thought about that for a moment. “So why don't you just point them at the guy who lied about you?”

  I sighed. “Because they wouldn't believe me. Best case scenario, after they tortured me to death for information, they'd realize I was telling them the truth, then they'd hunt down the guy who set me up. It might suck for him, but it wouldn't do me any good.”

  “Why wouldn't they believe you?”

  “I don't know. But according to people who’d know, when they think they have a lead on one of the keys, they follow it until they're a hundred percent sure that they've hit a dead end. And they won't be a hundred percent sure about that until I'm dead.”

  She thought about that for a little while. “What if you made the person who lied to them admit that he lied?”

  “For starters, I can't get close enough to him to make him do anything. Even if I could, I'm not sure I could make him do anything. He’s kind of terrifying. And of course, the frosting on that particular shit cake: if I did get the guy, take him in front of the chimeras and make him admit what he did, they wouldn't know if I was forcing him to tell the truth, or forcing him to lie, so they'd torture me to death anyway, just to be sure.”

  “Oh. Wow. That really sucks.”

  I nodded. “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  She stared out the window for a few seconds, then turned her attention back to me. “So, are you going to train me today?”

  “Hm?”

  “For my new job.”

  I shook my head. “Not today.”

  “Okay. What are we doing today?”

  “I'm going to finish up at work. And you are going back to school.”

  “What? No I'm not!”

  I turned my most withering stare towards the girl, who shrank under it. “Rule one of working in my morgue: you don't invite the attention of authorities. A seventeen-year-old who skips classes brings truancy officers. I don't want officers of any kind in my morgue. Are we clear?”

  “Seventeen is old enough to drop out. Truancy officers don't care what I do.”

  “How about your foster home? Do they have rules about that kind of thing? And your case worker? You think she might hear about it? Because if either of them come sniffing around my place because of you, I'll probably just have to sever ties with you completely.”

  Patricia mumbled a few choice words under her breath.

  “Excuse me?” I frowned deeply at her.

  “I said, ‘you’re the boss,’ Mr. Walter.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  I dropped Patricia back off at school, staying in the parking lot long enough to be sure she actually walked through the doors. Then I headed back to work.

  I checked the bag of weapons once I had it safely in my basement. In addition to the sword I'd requested, the girl had brought two long daggers which, at a sniff, I realized had been forged from the duplicate sword I had broken. There were also two metal staffs with weighted ends, and a pair of fencing foils.

  “What the hell are these for?” I wondered out loud.

  I stashed the searing sword in my truck, on the floor behind the seats.

  Unwilling to leave the rest out where Percy might stumble onto them, I hid the weapons in the back of the closet where I stored cleaning supplies. On the rare occasion that he opened the door to that closet, he never went deeper than he had to. Usually he just grabbed the broom and dustpan or the mop and bucket.

  I was on my way back down to the basement when the phone rang.

  The caller ID read 'Fox.' I muttered a few of my favorite curse words before picking up. “Yeah?”

  “Special Delivery. Ten minutes.”

  A special delivery. Shit.

  My arrangement with the vampires was, for the most part, a straightforward affair. They avoided having extreme body counts, but from time to time they would find themselves with a corpse or two that needed to disappear. I made sure that, on particular days, at particular times, I was available to receive those bodies. If anything, it was more convenient than my usual work, since the neckbiters delivered instead of expecting me to pick the corpses up.

  It was a mutually beneficial understanding, and we had things running like clockwork. But there were a few addenda to our contract, the most relevant of which regarded 'Special Deliveries.'

  Upon occasion, the vampires found themselves in possession of a body which, for whatever reason, they would need to get rid of with haste. Upon those occasions, they would contact me with a 'special delivery' notification, at which point I was to drop everything and get ready to receive the package.

  I wasn't particularly fond of these situations, but they came up quit
e rarely, and the neckbiters paid well for that service. And I definitely needed the money.

  Plus, their timing only nominally sucked this time. Last time they had a special delivery, it was during a viewing, on Percy's day off. That was problematic as the ramp that leads to the bay doors where I receive the bodies, runs directly next to the back wall of the viewing room, which means that for about twenty minutes I had a diesel truck rumbling audibly over the soothing music that was supposed to be filling the room. And I couldn't talk to the family and explain the situation because I was busy dealing with the fifteen mutilated corpses that had just rolled up. I didn't think that particular family would be sending any dead loved-ones my way anytime soon.

  Until I actually got the body, I didn't know what I'd need to do with it. The neckbiters might want me to get rid of it because they were having trouble making it stay dead, in which case I'd probably want to burn it straight away. Or it could be the body of someone the police were actively looking for. In that case, I needed to eat off the teeth, fingers and face and start the rest burning. Most of the time, however, 'emergency bodies' required no extra work at all. They were usually former minions whose masters had been less than careful. While, technically, the masters could do anything they damned well pleased with their underlings, the neckbiters didn't like to develop reputations for carelessness. It made it harder to recruit new feeding stock, so when they ended up with a corpse like that, they tried to get it out of the house as fast as possible. Before the rest of the cattle realized what had happened.

  Still, best to be prepared. I checked the freezer to be sure I had enough space, then prepped the crematory. I had two bodies scheduled to be burned anyway. If necessary, I could mix bits of the new guy in with those. To the best of my knowledge nobody had ever received the ashes of a dead relative, hefted them, and said, 'I didn't expect there to be so much of him left.'

  Finally, just to be safe, I took a trip to the bathroom and emptied out as much of my bowels as I could. My last binge had been far too recent for comfort, but if I had to, I could probably force down a hundred plus pounds of long pig.

  I opened the back door to the place just as the truck arrived.

  Something was wrong. The neckbiters always arrived in black vans with the name of one of their businesses painted on the side. This was a red pickup truck. The neckbiters must've sold my services to a third party. I tried to remember if our contract had wording that would specifically prohibit that, but I've never been good with legal language. I'd have to have somebody who understood that shit better take a look at it sometime.