by J. F. Lewis
Magbidion joined the menagerie of people in my mind’s eye, only now the vision was clearer, more distinct. Greta was watching The Goonies with the survivors of Sweetheart Row. Tabitha felt guilty about screwing Talbot and some fat ass named Phillip, but she did love me. It would have been nice if I could decide whether or not I loved her back. I’ve been in love before and what I felt for her wasn’t the same. Was it close enough? That was the real question.
Rachel, I still couldn’t get a fix on, but I could sense her, which was progress. She felt like she was still in the city, but where was anyone’s guess. Outside, in the neighboring streets, I felt eight thralls belonging to other vampires. Two of them belonged to Winter, three to a female vamp I didn’t recognize, another to a short fat vampire, and the last two to a vamp I’d seen around town but couldn’t name. I guess the stunt I’d pulled out at the Bitemore has gotten folks’ attention. Either that or I was a very popular person to spy on.
If you added it all together, it was more proof that Rachel had lied to me. It was possible that she was just wrong, that she had, like her sister, read too many books about vampires and had good info mixed with the bad, but Magbidion seemed to think she was too powerful a witch to be so wrong about something so simple. Then again, I had been a vampire for decades and her version had sounded reasonable to me. If it turned out that she was an unwitting pawn in all this, then so much the better, but—not likely.
I felt like I was playing Texas Hold’em with only three cards. I could still win, but everything counted on the flop going my way.
Tabitha knelt next to me and cradled my head against her bosom. Another vampire’s scent was there, too, on the diamond necklace. It was a few days old, but the scent infuriated me all over again. What the fuck had she been up to? I couldn’t lose my temper about it. Getting mad felt like the right thing to do, but it wasn’t going to help me. Instead, I reached down to hand Magbidion his clothes and even though I tried to do it at vampire speed, he beat me to it. “Great!” I hissed.
“What is it?” asked Tabitha.
“Nothing,” I told her, “just more of my shit not working right. Mags, get the fuck out of here. Go set up an early-warning system or something. Like the one you have for your RV, but for the whole Pollux.”
“But that will take forever,” he complained.
“Good,” I snarled, “’cause that’s how long you belong to me for.”
He headed for the door and I beat him to it. The speed kicked in that time and I had no idea why. Mags looked like he wanted to get dressed first, but my expression told him that this was no time to argue. He stepped naked onto the parking deck and I slammed the door.
I spoke, still facing the door. “Go take a shower.”
“I just took a shower.” She didn’t even look hurt. Instead, she smiled at me and got to her feet. “But if you want to join me?”
“Then wash the necklace.” I sighed. “It smells like some other guy.”
“If you’re going to start in on me, remember our deal.” She crossed her arms. “You bring up what happened with me and I—”
“Just do it, please.”
Smiling the entire time, Tabitha took off her necklace, set it on the dresser, stripped off her clothes, and went into Mags’s bathroom. My girls always seemed to leave their clothes lying about on the floor. I’ve never minded picking up after them. I remember liking that sort of thing even as a human, to have a woman’s clothes and underwear just lying about my bedroom. It made normal women seem so brazen. Her panties lay on top of her blouse. I picked them up and sniffed them before hiking over to the Pollux. Yep, it was nice to have her scent back.
24
ERIC: NEW RECRUITS
Talbot stood next to the stage in front of the wooden elevator that would have raised the old Wurlitzer organ up and down, except that it wasn’t there anymore. It had been sold in the auction along with tons of stuff I would never miss. Talbot missed the thing. He and Marilyn had always harbored a hope that I’d play the organ again one day, but I won’t. Music aids memory and I don’t want the help.
Five women lay on the stage with their tops rolled up to expose their backs…except for Gladys who insisted on being completely nude. I went down the line, smearing blood on each of them, willing it into the form of a butterfly tattoo, and this time around I thought to make the mental connection before saying the words again, having been advised by Magbidion that it would ease the pain.
“I mark thee and bind thee,” I began. The pain started and with it my range expanded further until I could sense one more thrall, in service to a vampire I didn’t know, a vampire with golden-rimmed glasses. “Master to servant.” As I chanted, Gladys began to moan and change. Her skin drew taught, the muscles in her calves and buttocks clenching. “Servant to master.”
“You’re so good, baby,” she said between clenched teeth as her hair went from gray to a rich auburn.
“You are mine until I set you free.” The others sighed then, in unison, and I realized that it wasn’t painful for them. The process was pleasurable. Their breaths came in quick rapid pants. Gladys rubbed her thighs together, rolling her head to one side so she could look at me through those timeless bedroom eyes.
“You are mine,” I continued, ignoring my own arousal. Gladys rose up slightly, revealing the curve of her full breasts, a hint of nipple. “So mote it be.” They climaxed in unison and Tabitha thumped me in the back of the head but didn’t say anything. They were mine, the former girls of Sweetheart Row. My pain built to a crescendo, five distinct spikes of agony and I hit a knee onstage.
They moved for me, as one, but I waved them off. “Wait down there for a second.” I gestured at the front-row seats. “Except you, Gladys.” She paused and I looked up at her only to find myself eye level with her belly button, the scent of her filling my nostrils.
“Yes, Master.” Her fingers curled through my hair and I shuddered as it eased the pain. Note to self: a good thrall is twice as effective and fast acting as aspirin…not that I can take aspirin.
“You get some clothes on first and don’t call me master.”
“Tease,” she said with a wink. Her hand left my head and the pain returned. Wait…so I was going to have the rest of the girls stand around smelling like sex? What was I thinking?
“Get cleaned up,” I called as she headed for the seats. “All of you.” I put my head down on the cold wood, ignoring the scent of sex. Red tinged my vision again and the waxy smell in my nostrils was coming from me. After making them, I was running on empty. The magic had used up too much blood.
“Eric?” said Talbot, a note of concern in his voice.
Talbot smelled appetizing, but feeding from mousers is a bad idea as a general rule. “Hungry,” I said. Magbidion rolled up onto the stage and shoved his wrist at my mouth.
“It’ll be fine, Eric,” he said. “Just be careful.”
I sank my teeth into his veins and he stifled a hiss. It doesn’t feel good when I bite. I’d thought, now that he was my thrall, there might be a flavor to his blood, like with Rachel’s. There wasn’t, but it did the trick anyway.
When I’d taken enough, I pushed him away from me and closed my eyes, head still pounding. Note to self: when making thralls, do them one at a time. An hour later I opened my eyes. My six new thralls sat in the front row looking a century or two younger between them. Even Magbidion looked younger and healthier, despite the snack service.
Turns out Soldiers slow the aging process when they make thralls, Masters freeze it, and Vlads—or Emperors—can turn back the clock. Gladys in particular was bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to please. It had been decades since she was a cute young thing; she had probably been around longer than I had, but her beauty was timeless. I could see why each successive pimp running Sweetheart Row had kept her around. She looked like a redheaded version of Marilyn Monroe or Brigitte Bardot, but she was willing to do anything with anyone as long as it was okay with “her daddy.” Like I needed
another grown woman calling me Daddy.
Magbidion had summoned them all up a set of fresh clothes that he warned would only last twenty-one hours. Talbot had had him burn the others. Greta had supervised showers for the girls and aside from a lack of hair spray, they looked better and smelled better than I was willing to guess they had in the last ten years. My army: five ex-hookers, a glorified house cat, one crazy female Vlad, a greasy magician, my car, and my ex-ex-girlfriend.
I caught Tabitha smirking at me in the back row and flipped her off.
“Okay, here’s the deal. Who here knows the trick—” Gladys raised her hand.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I know the trick.”
“I haven’t even said which trick I’m talking about.”
Gladys laughed. “Oh, you might know it by another name, honey, but trust me, I know the trick.” Everyone laughed, including me. She was a breath of fresh air.
“Simmer down, ladies,” I said affably. Gladys looked over her shoulder. “Yes, I mean you,” I added before she could comment.
She winked at me. “Go ahead, sugar. I won’t interrupt no more.”
“Who here knows the trick where you regenerate blood quickly, so that a vampire can feed off of you multiple nights in a row?”
Four hands went up. Sally, a brunette, laughed out loud. “Gladys can go all night on three Slim-Fasts and eight hours of sleep. I can take three drinkers, more if they just want a taste near the end.”
Erin, one of the two blondes, held up two fingers. I’d yet to hear her speak and she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Jodi, the other blonde, put her arm around Erin. “She doesn’t talk any, but she can give blood a couple times a night. Petey was kinda hard on her, but if you work with her, you might get her numbers up. She’s a real good girl and the johns like her ’cause she’s quiet. I can do three.”
Cheryl was the only one of the gals who hadn’t raised her hand. She’d gotten rid of the wig she’d been wearing. Beneath it, her hair was short-cropped and brown. I looked at her and she stared back at me. The other girls were all sexually excited, but not Cheryl. Cheryl smelled angry.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I—” She cut her eyes at the other girls. “I just thought it would be different. You seemed different.”
“I am different. Let me explain something to you, Cheryl.” I hopped down off of the stage. “This is my theater and that”—I pointed in the direction of the land where the Demon Heart had once stood—“was my club. The women who danced there were my girls. I looked after them. I paid them an excellent salary. I paid for their health insurance. I even put them through college. I didn’t do that because I’m a nice man. I did that because it is a fair reward for what I expect from my girls. I expected them to dance their asses off for me for three to five years. They shook their boobs and showed their crotches, but that’s only part of it.”
“You had your own whores.” Cheryl sighed. “I get it. Just tell me who to fuck, Master. Tell me what to charge and I’ll do it.”
My eyes glowed blue and as I looked into her eyes, she stared back at me defiantly. “You want to leave? I’ll let you go right now. No strings attached. No questions asked.” She grew still and quiet; I could feel her panic. She was like me, even as a thrall she needed to be in control. “If I wanted you to be my whore,” I told her, “I’d throw you on the ground and bang you like a beast and there wouldn’t be a thing you could do to stop me.” She squirmed uncomfortably in the seat. Gladys’s excitement was growing. She wanted me.
“Keep it in your pants, Eric,” I muttered to myself.
“Why don’t you do whatever you want to with it?” Gladys said. Maybe there is some sort of pheromone I give off…an airborne brass monkey or Spanish fly. Whatever it was, it didn’t affect Cheryl.
I bared my fangs at her. “I’m a vampire.”
“No shit,” Cheryl said.
“I don’t want to have sex with you.” Gladys and the others looked crestfallen, but I kept talking. “I have a girlfriend…possibly…and I’m really trying to work on keeping it down to me and her, but that’s not what this is about.” I rubbed my eyes.
Cheryl stood up. “So, you want us to be strippers?”
“No,” I said sulkily. “I’m not building another strip club. I built that in the seventies and now that it’s gone…I don’t know…I was thinking a bowling alley, maybe. I like bowling.”
“Anything, so long as it has balls,” Gladys chimed in.
“So all you want is our blood, right?” Jodi spoke up.
I nodded. “Basically.”
“Do you have to drink it straight from the source?” asked Erin. “And what vein do you like? Because I don’t really like anybody feeding near my nethers. I’m always afraid they’re going to bite something that don’t need bitin’.” Everyone stared at her.
“Well, I am.” She blushed. Anybody broken just loves me. Maybe like attracts like? The others girls crowded in around her, hugging and smiling, thrilled that she was speaking again. Cheryl asked a question and despite my hearing, I couldn’t make it out in the din and excitement, but I heard her reply.
“’Cause he’s got a real nice aura,” Erin said shyly. Her eyes widened. “I’ve never seen such.”
“You and me both,” Talbot whispered.
When everyone had settled back down, I continued, “When I ran the club, all my dancers owed me one unit of whole blood—that’s not quite a pint—every fifty-six days. Some of them gave it via the needle and I stored it in the fridge. Others liked to have me take it in person…maybe they were into the pain or it fulfilled some creepy vampire fetish. A few did it because they knew I like it better that way.
“Some of my girls voluntarily gave more than is healthy and became anemic; they weren’t thralls and they didn’t know any tricks. I usually kept around twenty eligible female employees and ate out a few nights a week. If things are going well, I only have to consume about a cup of blood per night. Which doesn’t mean that’s all I want, but it is all I need. With your unique talents,” I smiled at my group, “I might not have to eat out anymore.”
I stood and nobody flinched, but, then again, these were professionals. They knew more about the needs of vampires as a whole than I did and Erin’s trust in me seemed to work wonders for their morale. I should have shut up, but I went on anyway, to fill the silence. “On the other hand, when the shit is hitting the fan and everyone is out to get me, I require more nourishment. Usually, I get it by killing someone and draining them dry. Even if everything is fine, I still wind up hunting eight to ten nights a month. On most of those hunts, my victim dies. I never feed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or Halloween. I even take my turn protecting folks during the Void City Music Festival. And just so you know who you’ll be working for…”
I was into the same spiel I gave prospective strippers. From a certain perverse perspective, anything that happened to them if they chose to stay was their own fault. They’d have been warned. “Because of what I am, I murder, on average, roughly one hundred and thirty people a year. I’ve been doing it for over four decades. The first twenty years I killed someone almost every single night. Sometimes I killed more than that, because I was learning my limits. Overall, I suppose I have been responsible for the deaths of over ten thousand human beings. Charles Manson can kiss my ass. He has no comprehension.
“Most vampires I know haven’t killed a third of the people I have. They either don’t have my control problems or they make do with animal blood. And yes, if you’re wondering, I have tried animal blood. It didn’t work. For me, it has to be human or I just get hungrier. I don’t like what I am, but I’m too selfish to let anyone kill me. Any questions?”
Gladys raised her hand and I nodded. She bit her bottom lip, gave Cheryl a sidelong glance, before saying, “Then could you fuck me, like, right now?”
Maybe it was an act, but she knew how to keep
things from getting too dark.
“Talk to her about it.” I pointed up the row at Tabitha. “I think if we stay together she’s going to want things to be mostly exclusive unless it happens on a hunt.”
Tabitha raised an eyebrow.
“Things happen when you hunt sometimes,” I explained. By her expression, I could tell she understood. I wished that she hadn’t. It made her one more woman that I’d turned into a monster.
“What else do we have to do?” Sally asked.
“If I open something across the street, you have to work in it. You’ll be paid, I’ll put you through college if you want to go, you’ll get health care with vision and dental, and you’ll feed me. Since you’re all thralls, shall we say, experienced with blood regeneration, we’ll work up a rotation. I’m sure I’ll still hunt some, but this will minimize the damage I do.”
“Can I give you mine via blood bag?” Cheryl asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you can drink it straight if you want.” Her expression softened. “I’m not saying you’re all that different,” her eyes flicked to Erin, “but I’ll give it a try.”
“Why are you so nice to them?” Magbidion grumbled. “You hardly know them! Me, you call your slave.”
“Because you know I’m kidding,” I told him. “They’ve been slaves too long for me to be sure they know the difference.”
“Oh.” The mage slunk down in his seat.
“In the morning Talbot will take you shopping for new clothes, linens, makeup, and whatever. Go backstage; pick out a dressing room each…any room but Greta’s.”
“Talbot will?” Talbot perked up.
“Yep.” I flashed my fangs. “You’ve got money squirreled away for a rainy day. I’m sure of it…and it’ll get you off my shit list.”
“Okay. Done.” Talbot nodded.
“Pick up some bedding, too, sleeping bags and cots or something. Those dressing rooms are small.”
“What about me?” Magbidion asked. “Should I just keep working on the early-warning system? I’m going to need blood, oni claws—”
