They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  I’m not literally super-strong, but I’m maxed out on everything a normal human can do. When it comes to lifting weights, I’m a perfect match for some four-hundred-pound dude named Boris who set the world record at the last Olympics. Unless you’re a Spark or a Darkling, I’m stronger than you. So I sling luggage around with abandon, until I notice the dirty looks I’m getting. In these cramped quarters, people can smell the alcohol on my breath, and for some unfathomable reason, they’re pissed that a drunk is smearing her fingers all over their dainties.

  But even when I see them getting mad, I have trouble stopping. I just keep thinking I can patch things up if I try really hard. It’s the logic of someone who’s well and truly in the tank. Mark, the air-host guy, finally taps me on the shoulder and suggests I leave well enough alone.

  He doesn’t look so charmed by me anymore. Oh well, he was probably a creep anyway. Shame on him for chatting up a girl who’s blitzed.

  Now he’s giving me the stink eye. Maybe he’s received word that I’m wanted by the Mounties. The cute Mr. Mark has started wondering if I’m a drug mule or the hench-wench of some supervillain. Or else he just sees me as a stupid drunk slut who deserves to be locked away from decent people.

  Great. Now I’m depressed.

  I slump along with the crowd toward the plane’s exit. My Darkling drinking pals are long gone from the first-class cabin. They were ushered out ahead of us sweat-stained plebeians. I picture them being driven in gold-plated golf carts to some superfast baggage claim. Meanwhile, the rest of us clog up the exit of the plane like gunk in a Drano commercial.

  At least it gives me a chance to see what awaits me outside. We don’t go straight into a terminal like in upscale airports; it’s down a ramp to the tarmac, then across a stretch of pavement before actually entering a building.

  And look! Two persons of lawful authority stand at the foot of the ramp: a man and a woman, both in dark blue suits and their forties, imbued with officious dude-i-tudes. People keep a nervous distance, as if the pair of them are bristling with poisonous spikes. I’d bet dollars to dachshunds these two have spent years drinking blood from some Darkling master. It’s made them into Renfields: strong, fast, and wrong in the head. Even if they look superficially human, they give off monstrous vibes that creep the hell out of normal people.

  Renfields are almost as intimidating as Darklings. However, I can tell that these dudes are only minions, not full-on members of the Dark. Why? Because their suits came off the rack from Moore’s—specifically the Kenneth Cole Awearness line. (Yeah, I know shit like that. One of my not-quite-superpowers is that my brain automatically downloads useful trivia when I need it. I call it WikiJools: instant mental access to all public knowledge.)

  The point is, true Darklings wouldn’t be caught undead in mass-produced clothing. These two Renfields may be serious heat, but they’re not the biggest flames in the furnace. On the other hand, they’re probably stronger than I am: not just human, but superhuman. I have to assume they’re faster, too, and maybe tough enough to take bullet or two without getting mopey about it.

  I ask myself if I should reassess my decision not to call for help. I’m looking at Mulder and Scully’s evil twins; I may be in over my head. But hey, I’m a Spark. Even if these heavies are stronger and faster than me, they won’t be nearly as smart.

  Cuz I’m brilliant now, right? And Renfields have the IQ of Styrofoam. When you drink Darkling blood, what you gain in muscle, you lose in intellect and independence.

  I can outwit these dudes. My inebriated brain says it’ll be fun.

  So down the ramp I go. And yes, they’re definitely Renfields: the stink of blood surrounds them like the haze around Pepé Le Pew.

  It proves they aren’t honest-to-artery vampires. You never smell blood on vamps—that’s part of their magic. As inexplicable as the ability to suck a person dry through two piddly holes in the neck.

  Fucking magic is so semantic. I mean, if I were going to suppress the smell of blood, I’d have to think about scent molecules and blocking olfactory receptors. Reams of biochem and anatomical analysis. But with magic, it’s just, “Blood, smell, block,” and it’s done. That’s offensive, is what it is, especially to those of us who pissed kidney stones to squeak out a 52 percent in organic chemistry.

  The Dark has no respect for mundane reality. Neither do the Renfields waiting for me; I can tell that just by looking. They’re plasma-scented tools of the powers that be: not just ordinary po-po, but members of some vague yet menacing government agency that does dirty deeds for the Darklings who run our country.

  RCMP? It is to laugh.

  The male minion blocks my path as soon as I hit the tarmac. “Julietta Walsh?” He plumps up his aura of intimidation to add more butterflies to my fluttering stomach.

  FYI, I hate people who call me Julietta. It’s like dealing with one of those ATMs that read the name on your card and then repeat it umpteen times during the transaction. “Welcome, Julietta! You’re broke, Julietta! Stop crying, Julietta! If we actually let you have cash, you’d only waste it, Julietta! Have a wonnn-derful day and come back soon, you bankrupt trash bag … oops, we mean our precious respected customer, Julietta!”

  So I don’t acknowledge the name and I don’t acknowledge the man. That just means I get buttonholed by his partner. She flashes a card. “RCMP. Would you come with us, please, Ms. Walsh.”

  “Whoa,” I say. “Show me that card again.”

  The woman looks taken aback. I’m supposed to be cowed by the megajoules of magic pounding my brain with “Respect my authoritah!” But passengers from the plane are waddling all around us, and dozens are within easy earshot. Whatever this run-in eventually becomes, these two Slytherins want to appear legit, at least for the time being.

  So the woman lets me look at her ID again. She allows me plenty of time to admire the ornate seal of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police embossed on plastic-coated card stock. There’s a photo of the woman labeled STAFF SERGEANT BARBARA L. STEVENS. It looks very official … except inside my head, WikiJools does a download to brief me on Mountie minutiae.

  Staff Sergeant Barbara L. Stevens, you’re busted.

  The card the woman showed me is a perfect reproduction of what Mountie IDs used to look like. Just one problem: the format changed eight months ago. The new cards have embedded RFID tags, similar to the EMV microchips on bank cards.

  Staff Sergeant Barbara L. Stevens is chipless. With her outdated card, she couldn’t even get into a Mountie parking lot.

  She’s Fakey McFakeface. I give her a smile. Set kid gloves to Off.

  Of course, I don’t do anything rash. I’m supposed to be a normal university student, not someone in the know about Mountie IDs, and definitely not the type to cause a fuss with the police. Besides, I don’t want to endanger the innocent people around me. If I get rambunctious, who knows what will happen?

  Anyway, I want to see where this game is heading. What are these fakes up to? And why with me?

  So I don’t resist when they parenthesize me, one on either side. They take my arms, but their grip is light; they don’t try to cuff me or use those plastic restraint strips that make you feel like a freezer bag. The word “arrest” never burbles into the air. I’m simply going along with the nice pseudo-Mounties for purposes we’re all too polite to mention.

  It occurs to me that a normal girl would ask, “What’s this all about?” So I do.

  “We can’t talk here,” the man says. “It’s a confidential matter.”

  Uh-huh. It’s so confidential that this dude hasn’t even showed me his ID. I believe I will christen him Staff Sergeant Bobby L. Stephens. That way they can be Stevens with a “v” and Stephens with a “ph”—like Thomson & Thompson in Tintin, but without the comb-overs.

  To be fair, Stevens & Stephens don’t look alike, despite their similar suits. Stephens (male) is the same height as me, but built like a bulldog. Or a fireplug. Or whatever your favorite simile is for someone de
nser than seawater. Stevens (female) is a few inches shorter, but just as blocky as her partner. She has bottle-blond hair and a reddish complexion that is either windburn from skiing or … oh, fuck, my brain just downloaded a medical encyclopedia full of skin diseases.

  Barf. It’s not the first time this has happened. I hope it’s the last.

  I look away from Stevens-female and back to Stephens-male. His skin color is Mediterranean. Dark brown hair. Bloodshot eyes. He’s wearing green-iris contact lenses, and he’s had them in too long.

  But why does he need contacts? Renfields usually have super-acute vision. I’ll bet this dude has been drinking Darkling blood for so long, his eyes have mutated to look nonhuman. He needs contacts to hide the degeneration. Maybe Lady Stevens’s reddened skin has a similar cause.

  As I thought from the first, Stevens & Stephens are longtime Darkling suck-ups. That makes them more powerful than run-of-the-mill Renfields, but also more mentally unstable. Like the original Renfield from Dracula, they may eat bugs in private or have even less savory hobbies.

  Ooo. Yummerific.

  * * *

  STEVENS & STEPHENS GRAB a porter and order him to take my carry-on to the main Arrivals area. They march me off in a different direction, into the terminal building and through nondescript corridors until we reach a door labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. We go another short distance, then reach a door that clashes with the glass-and-chrome ambiance we’ve seen so far in the airport. The door is solid mahogany, oiled and polished, busy with intricate carvings of devils.

  When Stevens & Stephens open the door, the first thing I see is utter blackness: like a curtain hung just inside the entrance, but so blackity-black-black, it eats photons for breakfast and never bothers to shit them out. I’ve seen its like before—it’s a blinder wall. A magical privacy barrier that Darklings use to block prying eyes. High-quality blinders can’t even be pierced by sorcerous scrying or superpowers; they cloak clairvoyance and X-ray vision, to make sure that shenanigans go unseen.

  Stevens & Stephens escort me forward. There’s a moment of total sensory dep as we pass through the blinder, then suddenly we’re in a brandy-scented gentlemen’s club straight out of 1890s London. We’re talking actual gaslight. Oak paneling. A genuine fucking hearth with a genuine fucking fire, and over the mantelpiece, a huge painting that to my alarmingly expert eye looks like an authentic Watteau. (Two rosy-cheeked women are reading in a forest. “Ooo, chère Hélène! Let’s put on impractical gowns and walk in the woods, so we can read dirty bits from the Decameron while deer look over our shoulders!”)

  Screw Watteau. I turn my eyes toward the bar: specifically toward the bottles of booze, each of which would cost a year’s tuition just to sniff the cap. Whiskies and brandies and gins, oh my! And no bartender in sight. As if you can just walk up and fill a glass from whichever bottle you fancy. I’d say it’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven, except that with a free, open, and expensively stocked bar, I might simply die without heaven being involved.

  The only features that clash with the room’s decor are the people who currently occupy it. Two paper-pale women sit with mugs of blood on the table in front of them. A dude with the head of a jackal eats a plate of I-seriously-don’t-want-to-know. And a human-shaped mass of flies is reading The Wall Street Journal. As one does.

  For lo, this must be the luxury lounge where the .01 percent wait for their Learjets to get refueled. Every person here is a multimillionaire, rich enough to afford the Dark Conversion. Every person is also a festering bleed of mystic corruption … which is why the ceiling is cobwebbed, the paneling is cracked, and tribes of deathwatch beetles peek out from the upholstery.

  It’s the same wherever Darklings gather. Airport staff must try to keep this place free of decay, but unless they scrub continuously 24/7, the rot sets in. No doubt some first-rate wizard has cast a preservation spell on the Watteau, but otherwise the lounge is allowed to molder. Darklings don’t mind—they find decrepitude homey. But every few months, the airport must have to trash all the bug-infested wood and rusted metal, then start again from scratch.

  Well, heck, why not? Darklings can afford it. They openly enjoy conspicuous waste. What they don’t enjoy is intruders. A moment after we enter, one of the vampire women rises from her padded leather chair and addresses my escorts. “Were you looking for someone?”

  She has to know that Stevens & Stephens are Renfields. If they smell bloody to me, a vampire must be able to sniff them from thirty miles away. And if the woman knows they’re Renfields, she can deduce they have a master: some Darkling who supplies them with blood and calls the shots. To the vampire woman, Stevens & Stephens are someone’s personal pit bulls. So why are they here, off the leash?

  Meanwhile, the woman doesn’t give me the tiniest glance. I’m not even as important as a Renfield; I’m beneath her interest.

  But I’m interested in her. For one thing, she looks old. If she were human, I’d put her in her fifties. That’s unusual, especially for vampires. Lots of vamps are trust-fund kiddies who Convert on their eighteenth birthdays. That leaves them stuck forever looking like high schoolers. And vamps who convert when they’re older get younger as they feed—not all the way back to eighteen-year-olds, but usually to their early thirties.

  So every vamp I’ve ever seen looks to be in the age range from eighteen to thirty-five. What does it mean when a vampire looks fifty? Either she’s incredibly ancient—so old that the power of blood can only get her down to middle age—or else she’s made herself look older with a magical glamour.

  Another thing I notice: her British accent. I’ve only heard her speak a single sentence, but I can already tell she’s rocking Received Pronunciation. Or so WikiJools informs me. For a long, long time, RP was considered the apex predator of accents—the difference between the hoi and polloi in Oxford and the BBC. Attitudes have mellowed in recent years … but RP is still the accent of choice for people whose first language isn’t English but want to hide that fact.

  It takes work to replace your native accent with something more posh. The people who go to that effort do it because RP sends a message: I. Have. Class.

  One way or another, this woman is not your run-of-the-mill vampire. Maybe she isn’t a vamp at all, despite her Kleenex-white skin. She could be a different type of Darkling: one of the many called demons for lack of a better name.

  Maybe she’s something exotic from non-Western folklore. Apart from her pallor, she looks Southeast Asian: dark Pacific Rim eyes and straight black hair that’s unfashionably long for someone her age. Her lips are ebony, and I don’t think the color comes from lipstick. In fact, she’s not wearing much makeup at all. That’s atypical for Darklings—most are obsessed with the way they look, and I don’t just mean the women. Whether or not a Darkling aspires to be conventionally attractive, every single one of them wants to look striking.

  I can’t help noticing this woman wears a loose full-length dress. Black silk with gold embroidery. From the waist up, she looks like a normal woman—trim and well built for someone her age. But from the waist down, under that dress, she could look like anything. My drunken brain imagines her slurping around on octopus tentacles like Ursula in The Little Mermaid.

  “Well?” the woman says to Stevens & Stephens. “For whom are you looking?”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Stephens says, “I can’t answer that question.” Both he and his partner have tensed up like cats who’ve run into a Doberman. The Dark Pact says Darklings can’t hurt humans except in self-defense; but Stevens & Stephens are Renfields, and to a Darkling, they aren’t people, they’re just property. If the woman in black decides to get pissy, she can smash them however she chooses. The only penalty she’ll pay is reimbursing their owner, like when you accidentally break a neighbor’s window.

  But the pale-skinned woman doesn’t resort to violence. Instead, she only cocks an eyebrow. “Your patron must be formidable if you’re willing to annoy so many of us. Your patron is also
a boor to deem this a suitable place for meeting with your kind and this mortal. However, I won’t punish you for obeying orders. I will hold my disapproval until your master arrives.”

  The woman gives one last glare at all of us, then returns to her seat. The other Darklings in the room give us scowls of their own. (Well, at least the ones who have faces.) Then they all turn away pointedly, and pretend we deplorables don’t exist.

  I’m left with nothing to do except stare at the bar with saliva-filled longing. I wonder what Stevens & Stephens would do if I went over and got a drink. Maybe something from the Highlands and older than my father. Would the bar have something like that? Not bloody likely. This may be a luxury lounge, but Waterloo is a backwater. I’d expect to see quality hooch, but nothing world class.

  The bottles are calling my name. Jools! Jools! Wrap your lips around us and suck! But if I take one step toward the bar, Stevens & Stephens will … no, forget what they might do, the woman in black will turn me into a newt. Or a vole. Or some other animal whose name is fun to say.

  I can feel her watching me now. She’s pretending to read: a fat red morocco book whose cover has faded with age. I think it might be a codex, written by hand instead of printed. The woman moves her finger along the page—not left to right but downward, as if the writing is Chinese. But she’s not really reading. She’s eyeing me with an unblinking stare, hiding her gaze under her eyelashes.

  For all I know, she could be casting a spell. Maybe she’s hexed me and I can’t even tell. Legally, Darklings aren’t supposed to use their mojo on mortals without consent … but legally, people aren’t supposed to shoplift nail polish and that happens all the time. Specifically, every Sunday afternoon around three thirty at the Shoppers Drug Mart in Waterloo Town Square.

  Maybe I’ll ask the woman right to her face why she’s checking me out. But before I can muster the nerve, there’s a kerfuffle in the hearth. The flames go agitato, and a dude balloons out of the fire.