I left the bathroom with my towel wrapped around my waist, plodding with bare feet into the kitchen. Might as well check, I thought. There was a note and a twenty-dollar bill stuck to the fridge by a flat, card-shaped H&K Hotels magnet.
John,
Out to get the car. I ordered a pizza and made coffee. Try to take a shower before I get back.
Lily
I chuckled and tossed the letter and money onto the counter and checked the fridge anyway; it was empty, of course. I saw the old bag on the counter that I’d left here that had contained fast food burgers from the night before, but something about eating a day-old unrefrigerated burger didn’t sit well with me, even though I was sure the burgers were so well preserved that they would be sitting around in a landfill perfectly intact long after I was dead and gone. I settled on a mug of the dangerously hot coffee, no sugar or creamer.
I stood behind the couch in the living area and watched the TV, flipping through channels until, with a sigh, I went back to the news. A blonde woman with too much makeup was talking about kids picking on each other in schools. I couldn’t help but snort and chuckle. It made sense that kids would pick on each other in school, all those concerned, doting mothers weren’t exactly going to let them play dodge ball to get all that pent-up energy out. Breaking news: Another politician was facing trial for some corruption charge. Figures. I’d have loved to see all of them stand before a court and answer for their sundry crimes, well known or not. I had barely started for the bedroom to put on some clothes when there was a knock on the door.
“Shit,” I muttered, pushing down my embarrassment and tightening my towel around my waist. I walked to the door and opened it a crack.
“Large pepperoni?” The teenager on the other side asked. He was the personification of the pizza-delivery-guy stereotype. Probably going to college and earning a few extra bucks for beer. He looked up and down the hall with a mix of irritation and impatience carving extra wrinkles into his forehead—it must be hard to deliver pizza.
“How much is it?”
“Fourteen fifty.”
“Just a sec’.” I let the door hang slightly open and made my way to the kitchen, snatching the twenty off the counter. I heard the door swing open and spun around, and found myself wondering why the pizza guy would just invite himself in. I looked around, but the place wasn’t exactly bristling with potential weapons. Lily rounded the corner, beamed a smile at me and snatched the bill from my hand while turning on her heel and paying the delivery guy. I stood there with my heart beating uncomfortably fast. A moment later the door closed and Lily sashayed back into the suite holding the pizza with one hand. She playfully slapped my chest with her free hand as she walked by into the kitchen, leaving a slightly stinging red handprint.
“Ow?” I inquired.
“Oh, you big baby,” she clucked. “I didn’t know which kind you liked, but everyone loves pepperoni.” She said, opening the box and taking a slice out, the cheese stretching obnoxiously until it snapped like a rubber band and robbed her slice of half its toppings. Without missing a beat she plucked the pile of cheese off of the cardboard and put it back on her slice.
“Car okay?” I asked.
“Yes, nobody tampered with it,” She said before biting into her pizza. My stomach growled and I carefully pulled a slice of my own from the box.
“How many days do we have left to save my uncle, do you think?” I asked.
“Mmm, three or so. Have you got a plan?”
“I might. We go to whoever owns the club and talk him into letting us blow through his basement.”
“We could just try the sewer.”
“Not likely; most sewer pipes in cities like this aren’t more than a couple feet wide.”
“I see your point,” She said, her mouth twisting in a moue of disgust, inspired more towards the thought of squirming through sewer pipes than by the cheap, grease-laden pizza.
“Know who owns the club?” I asked.
“Actually yes, as it turns out. The owner and I go way back.”
“How far back do you go, exactly?” I asked with an arched eyebrow, the question full of insinuation.
“Not that far,” She said. “He’s Malkuthian. He’s name is Leon. He’s a real power-player in the vampire world.”
“Does he happen to reside here in San Diego?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact he does, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be easy to get to. Even we do get to him; I hope you weren’t thinking about negotiating by force. He’s old enough to take us both down with little effort.” She said with her eyes unblinking and her voice laden with caution.
“Alright, what do you suggest?” I asked.
She shrugged and took another bite of pizza, chewing for a moment as she thought. She snapped her fingers after a second and gave me a smile. “I’ll call him and set up an appointment.”
“You can just do that?” I asked, disconcerted by the workup.
“Oh yes, he’s a legitimate businessman. I’m sure he’ll see us.”
“You don’t see the obvious flaw?”
She stared at me blankly for a moment. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“That he sees us just long enough to tear us to shreds? We almost got trapped at his club, remember?”
She shrugged. “So we’ll leave if we get any bad vibes. I’m not saying we walk in and put complete trust in him, I’m just saying we shouldn’t go in guns blazing either.”
I sighed and chewed on a bite of pizza for a few seconds. Hopefully there wouldn’t be metal detectors, because there was no way I was going into the belly of this particular beast without some hardware. “Make the call, then.”
She nodded and pulled out her cellphone. I had forgotten completely about mine. As far as I knew it was dead and lying on a table somewhere at the pawn shop. I needed a new one anyway; mine was about ten generations behind the latest technology. I focused on my pizza while she talked, and it didn’t take long for her to set things up. After a minute she pocketed her phone and fell languidly onto the couch.
“It’s done. He’ll see us in an hour.”
I almost choked on my pizza. “An hour? I don’t mean to say that’s not great, but holy shit. Where is he?”
“He works at the Imperial Bank Tower, here in downtown. We could walk it, if you want; it’s not even a mile away.”
I got up and walked to the bedroom, shedding my towel once away from her doubtlessly prying eyes, and started digging through my bag for clean clothes. I fished a pair of underwear and pulled it on. “Nah, let’s take the Charger. I want to make a stop after we get out of our ‘meeting.’” I turned around and jumped in surprise, Lily was standing in the doorway. “Privacy, please?” I implored weakly. It’s hard to sound commanding when you’re caught unawares in your skivvies.
She rolled her eyes and turned around. “Never any fun.”
“Do you always act like this?” I asked, starting to get annoyed. It’s not that the attention was getting to me, but combined with the frayed nerves of the past few nights and the pressure of the mission at hand, I was starting to get a bit pissed.
“Only most of the time. Your uncle tends to tolerate it better.”
I didn’t really have a comeback for that. What exactly was my uncle’s relationship with this girl, anyway? No, not a girl; a vampire. I had to remind myself, despite the horrible things I’d seen mere hours ago, that I had to be careful around her. What if this was a trap? What happened to make me so trusting of Lily, despite her nefarious nature? My head started to throb for a moment as a tension headache set in and I rubbed my temples for a few seconds until it faded somewhat.
I pushed the other thoughts out of my head and focused on my meeting with this new and undoubtedly dangerous vampire. I wasn’t going to rush headlong into an ambush without a minimum of armament. I tucked a stake into my jacket and also slid my .45 into my holster. I also buttoned a bowie knife—my uncle’s preferred weapon—into the righ
t side of my jacket, but left the rest behind. Whilst I wanted to be armed, I didn’t feel like walking into a public building armed to the teeth with the excuse that I was meeting with a vampire. Spending the rest of my life in a padded cell wasn’t all too appealing, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to abuse my powers to get a bunch of cops out of my way; a future as a lab specimen on a dissection table was just as unpleasant as the padded cell.
I’m not sure when she left my doorway, but when I walked out, Lily was sitting on the couch with her legs crossed, watching the news.
“Protestors composed mainly of the unemployed and college students gathered today again in New York, rallying against allegedly unfair corporate practices meant to keep people, and I quote, ‘downtrodden slaves of the wall street elite.’ This protest comes during a major movement for more government regulation of businesses in an effort—perhaps misguided—to decrease the unemployment rate.”
“People are idiots,” I said, walking up behind her. “They don’t even realize that the government is made up of corporate CEOs and lobbyists.”
“It doesn’t matter; most of them don’t live long enough to make a difference.” She replied, her tone bitter, and she had a point. In the long run these protestors would accomplish nothing. They didn’t have any real choice in how politics evolved. I had learned a few years back that American politics had become so corrupt that even a solid majority of voters could no longer reel in their rogue legislators. Election fraud, the central bank, bribery, and every war since World War Two; everything was an interconnected part of the political machine working in full swing against the best interests of people who wanted nothing more than individual liberty.
I found this out in Iraq when we couldn’t find any nukes. Right when the government started joking about not finding weapons-of-mass-destruction, I had asked myself and my fellow marines, “Why in the fuck are we still out here, then?”
The answer was obvious. War is money in the bank for the people who run the system. Sure, it might bankrupt the citizenry; but as long as you can pull the wool over their eyes and give them free stuff, they’ll go along with it.
I was asked, after this revelation, if I thought we were defending anyone’s freedom. I didn’t think so. Iraq wasn’t bombing us. The men, women and children who lay massacred there in the dirt were a threat to nobody back in the states. When asked why I stayed in the marines, my answer was simple: “I may not be defending the folks back home, but at least I can do my best to defend my brothers and sisters out here in the shit.”
“Snap out of it,” Lily said, and I realized I’d spaced out for a minute. “We need to head out. I called for our car to be brought around to the front.”
“A valet had the Charger?” I asked, feigning shock. “Better not have a scratch on it.” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
Lily smiled and gave me a carefree shrug and walked out of the suite, leaving the door open behind her.
*****
The ride was short and wordless. Surprisingly short, in fact; traffic had slowed to a trickle, and the nearly full moon lit the streets almost as well as the amber lamps spaced along it. There weren’t a lot of people walking the streets around this area as we drew nearer to the office buildings in the commercial area of San Diego. As we pulled into the parking lot, the streets were nearly deserted except for the occasional vagrant. The Imperial Bank Tower rose before us like a foreboding obelisk of black mirrors, each one reflecting its own demented vision of a world twisted by darkness. Seriously, that building was—is—creepy as all hell.
Lily and I walked through the front door which slid open with a murmur of rubber on glass to admit us in. The interior was a faintly lit mixture of dark blues that smelled of floor polish and faux leather. A single large desk with seats for many people stood in the center, with escalators running behind on either side. A solitary blonde woman with a pretty face and a plain white blouse with a plunging neckline sat at a computer in the middle of the desk, looking up at us for a moment and then back down at her glowing screen as we approached.
“We’re closed for the evening, I’m afraid,” She said as we came up to the desk.
“We have an appointment with Leon,” Lily said. I had expected her to use some kind of honorific, but the receptionist merely looked up for a moment in recognition of the name before carrying on as if nothing abnormal had been asked of her. The woman looked from her screen at me and then Lily, narrowing her eyes in thought for a moment before smiling broadly. The smile was so fake that I wouldn’t have been surprised if her lips cracked and fell off; made entirely of brittle wax.
“Ah yes. Sorry, you weren’t what I was expecting. You must be Ms. Romenski. Please take the elevator over there to the twenty-fourth floor. You will be escorted to your appointment.”
“There’s the catch,” I thought as Lily and I walked to the elevator. The mirror-polished doors slid open, and a man in a black suit stood at the back, staring at us both. His features were unremarkable, and the moment I looked away from him I couldn’t even remember his hair color. The memory of him in my mind just looked grey. Lily stepped in and I followed, making sure to position my back to the wall facing the stranger. He smiled at me like a shark smiles at a seal, though it seemed to take considerable effort as his facial muscles twitched and strained. Lily, of course, appeared completely unperturbed. I pressed the button labeled “24” and the doors slid shut before the elevator made its smooth ascent.
“Is there any kind of protocol I should follow during our meeting?” I asked Lily.
“Just be tactful. Let me do the talking unless he asks you a question,” She said, talking to her fingernails. I sighed, unsure of whether or not she had her mind on the task at hand. The elevator arrived at the twenty-fourth floor with a smooth deceleration and a thunk. The doors didn’t open until the man stepped forward and pressed his thumb to a small rectangle of glass above the buttons. A light crawled behind the little glass plate and then flashed green. It occurred to me that if I could see the fingerprint scanner and the Grey Man, that there were probably half a dozen other security measures that I couldn’t see—I ground my teeth as my nerves wound up a notch. The doors slide apart and showed a deep hallway lined with doors. At either end of the hallway—including right next to this elevator—there were a pair of armed guards wearing the same black suits as our escort.
“End of the hall.” The escort said. His voice sounded like gravel crunching under a car tire, and I caught a clear whiff of dust and moldy decay from his breath when he spoke.
Lily and I walked down the hall. The carpet was a lush red affair and every inch of the walls seemed to be made from the same dark-stained wood. The doors were all mahogany and had varying names in bright gold letters pressed into them. The door at the end of the hall was much more elaborate, a relief of some kind of biblical battle, angels flying and demons breathing fire. Men caught in the middle screamed and ran for shelter as the crossfire threatened to wipe them out. It was a masterpiece; a frozen moment from the battle between good and evil over the hearts of men carved into a single piece of hardwood and turned into a set of doors. As Lily and I approached, I noticed also that there were no doorknobs on the door. One of the guards next to it ran his hand over the surface of the door, generating a sound like knuckles popping, and it swung inward noiselessly, allowing Lily and I to step through and then swinging shut behind us.
The next room wasn’t exactly an office as much as it was a garishly over-decorated apartment with a desk in the middle. Black marble pillars ran from the soft red-carpeted floor to vaulted ceiling spaced a couple yards apart. Each section of dark wood-paneled wall between the pillars had a piece of artwork on it, none of which I recognized. Every luxurious stick of furniture was a statement in and of itself, doubtlessly collected from all over the world. I knew right away that this was the kind of wealth people aspired to, but could only collect with the aid of several lifetimes. For some that means inheritance, but this display of affl
uence had a certain pattern to it that bespoke an individual taste; a small, dark, private world cobbled together over centuries.
At the desk in the middle of the room a man sat looking at papers. He had salt and pepper hair, appearing to be in his early forties. His skin was not bleached-white pale like Lily’s, but neither was it very dark. His face had the worn lines of middle age, and his build was healthy and fit for someone his apparent age, but was not otherwise large or intimidating in stature. His suit was grey and plain but for very faint pinstripes, and he wore only a single gold ring on his right hand. He looked every bit the politician; bland and easily forgettable, until he looked up from his papers and the pupils in the middle of his chocolate-brown eyes widened into complete circles of inky blackness for a moment. I could practically hear the grin that snapped itself onto his face when he caught sight of Lily.
“Lilivera! It’s wonderful to see you again. What brings you to my dark corner of the world?” He asked. His voice was a smooth almost musical tenor of American English syllables with no perceptible regional dialect, all spoken in dulcet tones.
“Leon,” Lily said and curtsied in her blue jeans. “We’re here to ask permission to—”
“Oh, I actually know why you’re here.” He said, cutting her off. He pulled a huge, shining steel handgun from the center drawer of his desk and laid it on top, the barrel pointing directly at my crotch. I swallowed reflexively.
“You must be John Magnus,” Leon said, his dark eyes locked onto mine. The right side of his mouth crooked upwards, transforming his grin into the very image of refined contempt. “I assume you know what kind of weapon this is?”
“Looks like a Desert Eagle. Israeli make?” I said, keeping my voice even. That weapon could take down a Kodiak bear with a single shot if you hit it in the right spot. The highest caliber models had all of the power of a rifle in a neat, if a bit large, handgun package.
The Chronicles of a Vampire Hunter (Book 1): Red Ashes Page 21
