by J. F. Lewis
He bristled slightly, but did as I instructed.
When we were done, both our jaws hurt from all the chewing and we sat there in a state of pained, yet satisfactory, fullness. “Tell me what you meant before about my circumstance,” I said, breaking the silence.
“I will answer, to the best of my ability, any one question on any subject,” he said with a casual wave of his arm.
“Okay, but you have to answer the question I’m trying to ask and not screw me over if I get the words wrong. What I want to know is, what special circumstance? You were talking about the whole uber vamp thing, right? Or maybe the reason my eyes are still blue?”
He took a long pull of beer and finished his bottle. “I was.”
“Then tell me.”
“It’s all in the timing,” Phillip began. “With you, everything had to go in a very strict progression. You were murdered. After the crash, you lay there in the dirt. Roger stood there and watched you die before calling the paramedics. He taunted you. You struggled to rise, enraged at your own murder. Given time and opportunity, had you been a normal human, you would have risen as a revenant and Roger’s unlife would have become most unpleasant. In time, I feel confident that you would have managed to master your powers enough to eventually catch and end him. I’m not sure his hired mages could have moved you along. Even as you lay there, I could feel your power growing.”
“Feel it?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, after all, you were and are a Courtney.”
At those words John Paul Courtney manifested behind Phillip’s back. His face was twisted with rage. Fangs lowered from his upper jaws—curved fangs, not straight like mine. His mouth opened wider than humanly or vampiricly possible, unhinging like a snake. His fists clenched at his side. He let loose a single angry hiss, forked tongue darting past his fangs, but then gained control of himself, vanishing without another sound. My eyes widened. “Holy shit.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know all about your family, more than you do.”
Really, I thought, did you know my great grandpaw was a weresnake?
“You see, even in life I was a wizard, a sorcerer, a magician, an alchemist. It is enough to say that I was gifted with true mystic flair. I have the dubious honor of being the reason why mages who become vampires are hunted down and destroyed by their former allies. They will allow no more like me.”
“You upset the apple cart,” I said with a grunt of admiration. I like people who disturb the status quo—any status quo but mine, that is. “You’re probably the reason guild mages are so touchy about working with vamps in general, too.”
“Precisely so.” He rubbed his hands together as he spoke, repeatedly flashing that devil’s grin he favored so much. “Any being as powerful as you comes to my notice instantly through the web and weave of my magical influence, your peculiar situation notwithstanding. Void City is my domain. If I’m to be completely truthful, I had expected your creation, sensed it, foreseen it, and I had taken several days to prepare.”
“My problem was twofold: how to slow your development while simultaneously ensuring your survival? Were you to rise at full strength, your powers intact, you would have realized your potential too quickly to be of use to me—too swiftly to be interesting as well. The timing was dreadful. There wasn’t enough, you see.”
“Wait.” I leaned toward him. El Alma Perdida pulled against my jeans as I moved. “So you stole my body?”
“I had no need. It was quite simple to follow your body to the morgue and deal with you there.”
“What did you do? Are you trying to tell me you’re my sire? ’Cause no offense, but Darth Vader, you ain’t.”
Shock is the only word I can think of to describe the look on Phillip’s face at the suggestion. “Of course not, my boy. No, no, no. Heaven forbid. No, I had you embalmed with a little alchemical concoction which, when applied, destabilized the—shall we call it judgment—under which you found yourself.”
“Judgment?”
“Curse, then.”
“What curse?”
“The Courtney family curse is a transmuted judgment of sorts. Sins of the father, that sort of thing, very Old Testament. My alchemical concoction delayed the full effects, allowed it to work its will upon you, to bring you back, but prevented the complete attainment of your vampiric nature and hid you from your sire. I’d expected it to last another decade or more, but there was no way I could have foreseen your flurry of activity, the many times you’ve been reduced to ash. Each time you re-formed, you came closer to your true potential.”
“So you’re behind everything then.”
Phillip seemed to think that was really funny; he shook his head as he laughed. “No, my boy. That is another kettle of fish. Trust me when I say you’ll figure it all out if you don’t get ahead of yourself.”
He floated out of his chair and landed in front of the fireplace; the edges of his outline were blurred by wisps of vapor as he moved. His control reminded me of Winter. He took a small box from the mantel. It looked like steel, a very sturdy thing, without decoration. “I want to ascend further and I need your help to do it. Here, take this as another gesture of my goodwill…”
He opened the box. Inside, a small journal, burned around the edges, sat silent and alone. The cover read, Le Coeur du Démon.
“This is different than the stained-glass thing downstairs.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” Phillip beamed. Before I could ask him to elaborate, he was blabbing again. “If I had left you as you were, you would likely have already confronted your sire. She would have destroyed you or you would have destroyed her and I would be pursuing less amusing roads to victory. Now, she has only just sensed you for the first time. You’ve created a memento mori and she cannot but have sensed its creation. Her mind quests for your mind, but the remnants of my potion make that quite difficult.”
“I haven’t felt anything. Wait…my sire’s a she?”
“You will and she is. Your sire is unimaginably boring, yet she does represent a singularly rare vampiric accomplishment, one that I can use. I could technically use you, of course, but I never murder interesting people.”
“So she, my sire. She just happened to be standing on the side of the road when I was murdered?”
“No, my boy; Lisette hasn’t left France in over a century.”
“So…what…I’m the vampire equivalent of artificial insemination?” I shook my head. “Did she use a magic turkey baster?”
“She turned another Courtney into a vampire, a Courtney who begged to be forgiven, to be saved, and he was, but in exchange, the next seven generations of his family had to serve”—he paused, gesturing to the ceiling—“Him.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I assure you that I am not,” Phillip said.
“No wonder Dad was so upset when I dropped out of seminary and enlisted during the war.”
“You were the last Courtney male who could have been affected by the curse.”
“I think I’ve heard enough.”
“Surely you’re curious.”
“No, I’m usually not. There are whole worlds of information folks think I ought to be curious about.”
Phillip spun in a small circle and jumped back to his chair, where, standing in the seat, he addressed me. “Come, my boy, what could it hurt?” He held out the box containing the journal.
“Shit,” I said. It would be stupid to refuse. If Vamp Mom was going to come after me anyway and she was as powerful as all that…I considered refusing just to be obstinate. In the end, I reached out and took the box.
“The journal is in French. Do any of your thralls speak the language, or should I provide an interpreter?” Phillip smiled.
“I’m good.” I walked to the door. “One last thing,” I asked. “You said I’d created a memento mori. That means ‘remember your death.’ I’m guessing that you mean Fang, my Mustang, but what the hell is it?”
“Latin is a magnificent language, my
boy, and like so many languages, its phrases may have subtly different meanings based solely on their context. When you think of an Emperor’s memento mori, it is more accurate to say that the name means ‘remember that you are mortal.’
“To achieve their true potential, an Emperor must do two things: create a memento mori, a repository to contain the portion of his darkness that he cannot completely control. Usually it’s a small item, a necklace, a ring, a pair of spectacles…something that can be kept close, because once it is created, the Emperor’s powers are tied to it.
“Until an Emperor creates a memento mori, his powers are often unreliable. Memento mori are also a weakness. Until you created Fang, you could not truly be destroyed.”
“And now?”
“Now, if someone were to destroy Fang and to destroy you, then you would no longer be a vampire at all. You would be a revenant and nothing more.”
“Good to know.” I sighed. “What’s the second thing?”
“Postmortem stress syndrome. You still think with your brain and see with your eyes. Even your Tabitha no longer does that. She may not yet have realized it, but she ‘sees’ with the essence of her being. Flesh is simply a convenient interface.”
I said, “Thanks, Yoda,” and stepped out into the hall, where I grabbed Beatrice by the arm to ask a very important question: “Do you really speak French?”
34
ERIC: ONCE UPON A TIME
We sat out in Lord Phillip’s waiting room while Beatrice read me the brief journal, translating as she went. I wasn’t certain how much it helped. It was basically a re-telling of the mural I’d seen downstairs, only this copy had the names filled in. The female vamp’s name was Lisette, also referred to as Démon Coeur, the Demon Heart. The irony that I’d named my strip club just that did not escape me.
The Knight had a similar name, apparently because he was part of a group of knights called Le Coeur du Démon. The Heart of the Demon. They’d named themselves after the monster they wanted to kill. They would stop at nothing less than tearing the Demon’s heart from her chest.
They failed. The journal told the story of the last of the knights…the one who’d temporarily been a vampire. I couldn’t pay attention to all of it; the beer and the food made me sleepy and full in a way that I hadn’t been in fifty years. For reasons undetailed in the text, the Knight had given up the quest, moved to America, and changed his last name to Courtney. But I thought I knew why. He’d been afraid either for himself or someone he loved and he ran. On the final page, the author promised to pick up the tale in a new volume documenting the next generation of the Courtney line. The last entry was signed with a single letter—the only indication of authorship throughout the entire work—simply, P.
“C’mon, Beatrice.” We left and headed toward the Gryphon Suite. “Did Lady Gabriella get all of that?” I asked her.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“She’s given you to me, but you’re still her thrall, correct? She seems to have a lot of spies, so I’m guessing she could see what happened in there, and she heard what you read?”
“She did see, yes,” Beatrice admitted.
“Good. If someone kills you maybe I can bargain with her for the information later. I have terrible memory problems. I may need you to tell me the whole thing again, maybe more than once.”
I didn’t want Gabby spying on me all the time, though. I also didn’t want to rip Bea from her by force as I’d done with Ebony. Was there a third choice? I thought back to the yellow notebook pages Magbidion had given me about thralls. Yep, a thrall could be released by a master or mistress willingly. It was a matter of willpower and saying the correct phrases.
“Is she watching us now?” I asked, stepping into an elevator that was, for once, without a human operator. As the doors closed behind us, Beatrice nodded. “Where are you marked?” Beatrice pulled her top open at the neck and bent over so that I could see the rose on her left breast.
“Release her, Lady Gabriella. You gave her to me and I have accepted.”
The rose flashed brightly, then faded. Beatrice grimaced and began to change. Crow’s-feet appeared at the corners of her eyes. “Please. If you’re going to enthrall me, do it quickly,” she said. Her cheeks began to sag and wrinkle as streaks of gray flowed into her hair. I did the deed and watched as the ravages of time faded with only slightly less speed than that with which they had arrived.
I must be better at the whole turning-back-the-clock thing than Gabby, I thought as I studied Bea with a critical eye. Her appearance seemed a bit younger than it had when I’d first seen her—maybe early twenties or late teens. It made sense. Gabby was just a Master and I was a Vlad…or whatever.
“How?” Beatrice took two steps away from me, studying her reflection in the metal of the elevator’s interior doors. “I’m younger than I was before I became a thrall. How did you do that?”
“Comes from making a whole lotta thralls in two days, I guess,” I lied.
The elevator doors opened and we walked through Tabitha’s waiting area into the apartment. Ebony’s kids didn’t look up from the board game they were playing with the Highland Towers’ child care guy.
Ignoring them, I pulled Beatrice into the bedroom and closed the door. Asleep on the only bed, Ebony stirred but remained unconscious.
“Excuse me, Highness?” Beatrice said. “Many male vampires like to seal the deal, as it were, with their new thralls.” I listened to the sounds of Ebony’s kids rolling the dice, moving their pawns along a candy-colored path.
“I thought,” I looked at my feet uncomfortably and then looked back at her, “you know…ewww.”
“That was when I was still in Lady Gabriella’s service.” Beatrice spoke carefully. She looked at the bed and blushed. “It’s been a while since I’ve been exposed to a Vlad’s pheromones without the protection of being a thrall. It shields you, but not from your own master. If your master is sexually compatible, then it is enhanced.”
Sitting down on the bed, I patted Ebony’s leg casually. “That certainly explains a lot.” No wonder all my thralls wanted to hump me.
“And some vampires give off a more powerful…compulsion than others. Yours is very…intense. I think it should have built up more gradually. You can will certain people not to be affected, if you want.”
Unsure of how to do what she was asking, I concentrated on her and thought really hard about her not being attracted to me. “You’ll have to tell me when it works.”
“That’s better,” she said after a moment.
“Cui bono,” I said, turning back to the problem at hand. “We’ve got to go to the Pollux to see if anyone is still alive. Do you have a car?”
She nodded.
“How big is the trunk?”
35
TABITHA: AN UNEXPECTED RESCUE
In the parking deck near the Pollux, I found myself in the middle of a fight between two mages. Magbidion was on my side, Talbot was chained up, and Greta was nowhere to be seen. The sun was shining brightly overhead, but the structure provided ample shade. Rachel had underestimated me, the way everyone always does. I’m not weak.
I wasn’t weak when I was pretending to be human and now that my vampire abilities were back, I was truly a force to be reckoned with. Eric was going to find that out when I got my hands on him. What kind of a man expects a woman to have sex with her own sister for his amusement? I understood the thought, the fantasy, but Eric had gone beyond that and my fury drove me much in the same way his had often driven him.
Eric’s leather bat wings and black skin weren’t in my arsenal, but my own speed, strength, and claws were more than enough. Rachel dueled with Magbidion; the two spell slingers made gestures in the air, spat magic words, and matched each other spell for spell. She could have killed Magbidion any time she wanted to. I could tell from the pouty little half smirk she always got when she thought she’d already won but wanted to run up the score. I crouched, preparing myself to charge. Despite all
the things she’d said and done, it was hard to attack. Family is family. I gritted my fangs and charged with a growl. Rachel stopped playing with Magbidion and an arc of electricity struck him from the light over his head. He fell in utter silence and lay still, barely breathing. I slashed at her with my claws and she whipped past me, her feet floating above the ground.
“You’re actually gonna fight me, sis.” Her eyes widened and went red, the eyes of an angry vampire, and then they went purple—Eric’s uber vamp eyes. “How cool is that?” Skin darkening to pitch black, she flexed long talons at me.
“What the hell?” I blinked at her, my mouth agape.
“Every time I make him feel alive.” Wings ripped through the back of Rachel’s suit, leathery wings—Eric’s wings. “I siphon off a little bit of his power.” My little sister stared at me across the parking deck, the female image of my boyfriend at his baddest and blew me a kiss.
“Yeah, but how long does it last?” Changing her body was a mistake. I could see her as an enemy. She didn’t look like my sister anymore, more like a crude parody. We exchanged blows. I opened a long gash in her suit jacket, exposing the coal-black flesh of her stomach. She moved with the blow going past me, tearing my back, ribbons of my flesh clinging to her talons.
“Long enough to handle you.” She clipped my head with a kick and it spun me around, breaking the skin on my forehead.
“That’s the only thing bad about this job,” Rachel said. I snagged her shoulder, catching cloth from her torn jacket, missing the meat. She backhanded me into the Le Baron. I struck the rear tire, knocking it loose and bending the axle. For a half a second I stared at the spot where Greta had lain prone, but she was gone. “When I’m done—no more Eric.”
“What do you mean?” I rolled to my feet, dodged a claw that she’d leveled at my head, and struck her in the head with my elbow. Rachel swatted me with her wings and I slammed into the concrete column at the center of the deck where the spiral allowed cars access between the levels.
