Reginald told her to go ahead.
“You’re telling me that you were supposed to become a vampire.”
“I guess.”
“Because one day, you were supposed to find this code thingy.”
He nodded.
“Which, of course, was possible because you were supposed to find Claire in order to learn that the code thingy existed.”
“Three for three,” said Reginald. “As I understand it, anyway.”
“Then if all of that’s true, why do we even need to find it? You act like we’re going to read the future off some scroll or whatever, then use what we learn to prevent the human/vampire war and the deaths of like… billions of people. But how can you prevent anything if what’s going to happen is just… you know… going to happen anyway?”
“If that’s how it unfolds, then I imagine it will be because I’m supposed to prevent it from happening.”
“You’re sure of that.”
“I told you a long time ago that this war feels very wrong to me — and I mean ‘wrong’ in terms of ‘isn’t supposed to happen’ rather than morally wrong. I can feel it in my gut.” He slapped his gut. “And this bitch is never wrong. It has authority.”
“But it’s pointless either way. If you’re destined to prevent the war, why are we working so hard and risking our asses to find the codex?”
“How can we find it if we don’t look for it?”
“You have to find it. It’s all predestined or whatever.”
“Nikki, in order to find something, you have to actually look for it.”
She put her fingers on her temples, then let her head sag. “This makes my head hurt.”
They rode through the night. Reginald’s phone rang, despite the fact that he’d forgotten to charge it and its battery was dead. The call was from Maurice. The ringtone was the Revolting Cocks cover of Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy,” because Claire had once argued vehemently that it was so much better than the original. Reginald, who liked Rod Stewart, had argued that Claire shouldn’t know such a suggestive song. When Claire had won the argument, he’d switched his position to arguing that Claire was too young to appreciate Rod’s genius, let alone know about the Revolting Cocks.
Reginald answered the call. On the other end, Maurice made a grossed-out sound, then yelled at Reginald that he didn’t want to stare into his ear canal. Reginald held the phone out, realizing he was supposed to conduct the impossible call via video.
They kept their discussion brief, Maurice noting how much effort the connection was costing Claire. He gave them a brief report: America was sliding into shit, the neighborhood was all gangs and fires, Vampire President Timken was finally admitting that vampires were committing atrocities but claiming responsibility for none of them. Maurice’s house, however, was still secure. They’d been joined by a handful of sympathetic vampires and had repelled several attacks from hostile vampires. By comparison, humans assaults were not a problem. With so many of their own homes under siege, the humans had little energy to attack the fortified compound.
When Reginald hung up, he and Nikki talked before trying to sleep. It was funny: for months, they’d held their tongues about what Timken was planning to do, and now that they could finally blow the whistle, there was no point. So Timken wanted to kill humans. Who cared? Most vampires now wanted to kill humans because humans were killing them… seeing as the humans had decided that vampires wanted to kill them. It was a no-win scenario. All the while behind the scenes, Claude and the Annihilist Faction were still conducting mass exterminations — but in the fog of undeclared war, how would anyone manage to summon outrage over it?
They arrived in Paris as dusk broke, then followed Reginald’s hunches from nightclub to nightclub looking for a tall, dark German named Karl. It didn’t take long to find him. Karl should have been keeping a low profile, but in the end he was the party guy and the orgy king. Because he had spent centuries as Deacon and had lived long enough to accumulate sizable investment income, he was also rich. His love of loud parties and louder orgies gave him away, and Reginald and Nikki easily homed in on him.
Karl was delighted to see his old friends. He also seemed, in his new haze of random sex (“Am I supposed to worry about getting a disease in my dick? I am already dead!” he told them unasked) to have forgotten the Chateau massacre entirely. When they asked him about it, he waved a hand and said, “When you are as old as me, you are used to death.”
Reginald suspected the truth was deeper. An immortal life was a long time to accumulate psychological defenses, and when he spoke with Karl, Reginald realized he could see right through him. He wasn’t related to Karl and hence shouldn’t have been able to sense his blood… but he could, sure enough.
But even without blood telepathy, the truth of Karl’s fear was revealed in everything he had done since leaving Luxembourg. He no longer wanted to be called Deacon, and reacted violently when Reginald or Nikki mentioned his old home or post. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened at the Chateau. Despite claiming he wasn’t in hiding, he’d altered his appearance as much as was possible for a vampire. He’d cut his long black hair and now wore a chic, Vogue-worthy androgynous hairstyle. He’d traded the bones and claws in his ears for diamonds and gold. He’d ditched his ornate vampire robes in favor of stylishly-cut bespoke suits that Nikki, who knew a bit about fashion, said must have cost a fortune.
“Nicholas contacted me a few months ago,” said Karl as they walked the teeming Paris streets in the direction of his apartment. Paris wasn’t like Luxembourg had been. The clubs and bars were hopping, and there were people everywhere in defiance of the dark. The Parisians flinched back from Nikki but treated Reginald rudely, muttering that he was American. Watching the drinking and nightlife carry on unabated around him, Reginald was amazed that no matter how bad things got, people always found ways to feel normal.
“What did he have to say?”
“He was not angry,” said Karl, his stride long and elegant — a modicum of the old Karl held over through his makeover. “He held no grudge against me or any of us. I suspect it’s because he feels nothing of the election nonsense matters anymore. And he is right. Now the media is alive with figureheads and appearances, but truthfully all of it is just posturing. Nicholas said he was in talks with Erickson and the humans, but unless they are stupid, they know his SA and the Annihilists are behind the so-called ‘plagues’ in Sudan and Egypt, India, other places. The humans know he is pushing the riots in Moscow and Rome.”
Reginald looked at the people around them, once again amazed that Rome could burn while Paris carried on. Karl caught his gaze.
“Paris is mostly quiet of that,” he said. “Everyone here just wants to party and pretend it is not happening. Fashion shows go on. Clubs go on. I can blend in because their fashions here make me not stand out at all. Everyone is like a vampire.”
“But anti-vampire sentiment…”
“It is not so much,” said Karl. “But that might change very soon.”
“Why?”
“When I talked to Nicholas, he was trying to get in front of the accusations against him. That’s why he called me. He wanted my help. I imagine he reached out to you? He said he was going to.”
Reginald shook his head. The idea that the vampire president might have contacted him for help was shocking. Timken had appealed to Reginald after the election debacle — claiming that the angels’ mandate made turning Earth into a vampire planet the only logical course of action — but Reginald hadn’t budged and had vowed to fight against Timken for as long as he could. For nine long months, that’s what Reginald had done, more through subterfuge than action. After all that history, how could Timken think Reginald and Maurice might help him? His delusion and single-mindedness was terrifying.
“He probably couldn’t get through,” said Reginald. “Maurice locked us down pretty tight.”
“Oh, he is only trying to buy time,” said Karl, flapping his bej
eweled hand in answer to Reginald’s expression of disbelief. “Vampires fight humans and they fight us, but until it’s all out in the open, most humans are in the dark. When they realize we are real, things will get harder for Nicholas and Claude. He knows that day will come, so he is trying to wipe out as many humans as possible before it does.”
“But he’s accepting responsibility for some of the vampire attacks — to Erickson, at least.”
“Yes. In the interest of keeping the humans talking. He’s saying that factions are going rogue — slyly adding that they are doing it because the humans are attacking us.”
“The AVT, you mean,” said Reginald, thinking of the dead soldiers in the Chateau.
“Yes, but also just humans in general. Nicholas told Erickson that the SA is just trying to keep the peace and nothing more — to protect vampires in areas where humans are burning nests during the daytime. The humans, thankfully, do not seem to know about the Annihilists. If they did — and if they knew the Annihilist vision calls for ridding the planet of all humans except for a handful to bleed — the humans would have unleashed their troops already. I suspect Erickson is not stupid, but is afraid like the rest of them. They’ve been studying us for centuries and have what seem to be some nasty new weapons —” Reginald thought of the human weapon concealed in his hiker’s backpack. “— but we are still terrifying to them, and they might believe we could kill them all if we wanted to. So they are hoping against hope while Nicholas stabs them in the back to the tune of many millions already slaughtered.” As he finished, Karl scoffed. “Hope: humanity’s greatest vulnerability.”
They arrived at Karl’s apartment and walked the steps to his top-floor apartment overlooking the Seine. Reginald complained the whole way up, stopping halfway to pull a juice box from his bag.
Once inside and behind a fortified metal door with three deadbolts, they made themselves comfortable while Karl served French cheese and bread with a blood fondue. Reginald sat in a chair comprised of a bright chrome frame stretched with swaths of black leather to create the chair’s arms, back, and bottom. The thing slanted backward like a bucket seat, so in addition to feeling like he was going to bend the thing in half, Reginald kept thinking he was going to get stuck in it. Combine the two and the chair would clamp around him like a claw, necessitating extraction by the jaws of life.
“Have you heard anything about the rest of the American Council?” Nikki asked, dipping a white cube of cheese into Karl’s red fondue.
“Council,” said Karl with a scoff, again waving his long fingers in the air. “Is not a Council. They meet in secret, sharing their proceedings only with other Councils. They are not a government anymore as their image suggests. They are more like military, discussing plots and plans while smiling at their foes. Timken is like a man with two faces. There is the face he shows the humans and the cameras, and there is the face that was behind that red helmet the day of the putsch that ousted Charles Barkley. I have lost most communication with Council since leaving Luxembourg. The first face, see, is the face Nicholas shows me. He has been showing it to me for years, ever since he used to come to München for Oktoberfest. It’s clear now to me that he always wanted power. Now he has it, and he doesn’t want me to know he has it — or that he enjoys having it. So he tells me what he tells the humans and nothing of Council’s true workings, which I have learned of in small bits through other means. His estimation of my stupidity is insulting. But I can see through it.”
Reginald leaned forward. “What do you see?”
Karl narrowed his eyes before answering. As their eyes met, Reginald was suddenly aware that he had never been around Karl without Maurice nearby. Maurice was Karl’s peer — old-world himself, French by birth, significant in age, history, and strength. Reginald had always been the new guy in their trio, but as he looked at Karl now (and as he continued to sense Karl’s thoughts and feelings for some odd reason), he could see that the torch had been passed — and that he himself was Karl’s peer now.
“I see the way vampires move around. I hear reports from friends overseas. I see the Young Seditionists’ recruiting posters and hear their slogans — and when I do, I recognize similar echoes from the darkest corners of history. Nicholas Timken feels he has a mission and that his mission is holy. That makes him very dangerous. A man who feels compelled by a higher authority will never back down, because his mandate is righteous. Claude Toussant is similar, only for Claude it is even worse, because his mission has been twisted by hate. I do not think Claude believes himself to have the same holy mandate as Timken, but rather believes he has something even better.”
“What’s that?” asked Nikki.
Karl looked at each of them in turn. “Permission,” he said.
The air hung thick with implications. From Reginald’s vantage point, looking out from behind Karl’s thoughts and emotions despite his effort not to intrude, Reginald saw that Karl had suspicions within suspicions. The oncoming human-vampire war was but the surface of the onion. Further down was layer upon layer of horror.
“What else have you heard?” said Reginald.
“Your old friend, Charles Barkley? He is coordinating massive turning efforts. It has a harvesting feel to it — stripping the very best from humanity before discarding the rest of it.”
“Turning humans who are worthy?”
Karl tipped him a finger. “Exactly. You know how it was when you were turned, Reginald: you wanted to be a vampire, you trained, they found your conditioning and preparedness worthy of their standards, and you were allowed in. This is that process in reverse. They are looking at the human populations they survey, pulling out those who meet their standards, turning them to strengthen vampire numbers, and then discarding the rest… or, in cases where waiting is prudent, marking them for eventual slaughter once the masks come off.”
“Like they’re taking a census,” said Reginald.
“That’s what I hear. And do you know who is in charge of keeping those numbers? I will give you a hint. Someone who is close to Charles, making him a natural partner. Someone who is used to working for a company and is good at crunching numbers — at least according to two people who knew him well and who are in my apartment right now.”
Nikki’s mouth came open. “You don’t mean Todd Walker.”
“That’s the rumor,” said Karl. “He already has an impressive reputation, and he is just as big of a sonofabitch as your Charles.”
Nikki looked at Reginald as the conversation hit a lull. He could see the nudge she was giving him with her eyes, but could also feel the intention in her blood.
“Karl,” said Reginald with an acknowledging look to Nikki. “I don’t know how to put this.”
Karl shifted. “It is okay. I would have sex with both of you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Reginald.
Nikki had started to agree, but then lowered her hand. Karl, turned down by Reginald for about the thousandth time, looked disappointed.
“We heard about something. An ancient artifact, or body of knowledge.”
Karl shook his head.
Reginald explained about Claire, her growing ability, and the glamour trance he’d put her into. He told Karl what she’d said about an ancient and mythical vampire record. Finally he told him that Claire had told Reginald that he, himself, was destined to find it.
For a moment, Karl looked like he was going to brush the idea away and make another sex joke, but instead he stood from the leather couch and began to pace, interlocking his fingers with their many rings behind the back of his tailored suitcoat. He walked to the window and looked out, quiet.
“I am very old, Reginald,” he said, still looking through the window at the streets and river below. “Older than Maurice. I have seen things that most believe are mere superstition. But in my youth, many things that are laughable today were simply fact. There was a commonplace sense of magic in those days that we have since explained away. There was a wonder about the worl
d before the arrival of stoicism and science. We were gods, and we believed in angels. We took them as a given. But before the Ring of Fire, we old ones were laughed at for even suggesting they existed.”
Karl turned.
“In those same superstitious days, there was talk of a grand plan. That myth, like the myth of the angels and the creation myth and even the myth of Cain and Abel, was, even in my day, considered hearsay at best. But to answer your question: yes, I have heard of the vampire codex. And yes, I believe in it as surely as I believe in angels.”
“What do you know?” asked Reginald.
“The legend,” Karl said, now pacing again, “goes like this: All things happen for a reason. All things exist for a reason, within a framework. But from time to time, the plan deviates, and that is good because the creators of the plan created us as well, to move nature forward. We — and by ‘we,’ I mean both humans and vampires — were intended to be flies in the ointment. There was the plan, and then on top of the plan there was us — those who unbalanced the plan. It was by design. But from time to time, there was need for a correction — a jilting of the train back onto the tracks, so to speak, to bring the chaos back into alignment with the plan for all that, in the end, must be. So I too am fatalistic about this war, Reginald, and I am afraid. The Ring of Fire? It may have been their first attempt. You and Claire bought all of us time. But I believe a reckoning is coming, and in the end fate cannot be fought. The plan must be re-balanced and placed back in the box. And if there really is a codex, then it contains the plan above the plan — that which details what must happen, even after as many corrections.”
“All the more reason to find it, then,” said Reginald.
“Perhaps,” said Karl. He shrugged. “Because who can say? Are you an agent of the plan? Or are you a rogue? Is it your job to read the plan and implement it, or to read it and disrupt it? I do not know.”
“Does it matter?” said Reginald.
“Probably not. What will happen, will happen.”
Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse Page 7
