2 Death Rejoices

by A. J. Aalto

  The house's appearance had a palpable effect on Chapel; from the back seat I felt a splinter of dread vigilantly contained and quelled by logic, which surely reminded him that a house is a house, even if it looks like it should be the domain of unspeakable evil. While Chapel's gut told him bolt, get out of the car, run, I could count on the fact that, no matter what he was feeling on the inside, he'd do and say exactly what was needed. That gave my own courage a boost.

  A veritable Second Empire Gothic manse, the house loomed beige and tall and narrow, much like Agent Chapel, and was just as serious across the face. It lurked in the dusk as a dozen discreet solar-powered lights shaped like small Parisian streetlamps started to light up the long drive. Cloistered by mature trees on three sides, the house towered above the highest branches. Jutting mansard mansion roofs of patterned slate cut the night sky. Dropped into the suburbs below, the house would have appeared a prince among peasants, its wrought iron cresting like a dragon's black spine along the upper cornice, its tall, empty windows the melancholy eyes of a captive audience witness to foul deeds and ghastly times.

  Ben settled the Focus in the driveway beside an old yet immaculately maintained black Bentley, its piano-black clear coat buffed to a high shine. Harry would approve. There were tiny sparks of light in the hedgerow. I swallowed, heard a dry click in the back of my throat.

  “Your revenant friend, he likes to leave the Christmas lights on all year, huh?” I commented, more to hear myself talk than to get an answer. Christmas in August. Christmas all year long for Santacorn and Master Malas. “I thought there would be others. Are we the first to arrive?”

  “The others were instructed to park in the garage,” Ben indicated a veritable five-car hangar on the far left, neatly overshadowed by a glowing stand of golden Aspen in full leaf, ghostly in the near-dark. There was another building behind the garage, a crumbling ruin which my over-active imagination turned into a torture chamber littered with bodies. I didn't think I should send that idea to Martha Stewart Living for the annual Halloween issue.

  As he swung out of the driver's seat, Ben reached behind his seat for his unicorn head and cane. Chapel offered them up. Ben craned up at the third floor window, which was alive with inviting radiance. He settled his head on his shoulders and limped ahead, fingering through his keys to find the one for the house. “Let's hurry inside, I think I hear thunder.”

  I took two seconds to rummage through Ben's glove compartment for clues, found nothing but road maps and a box of latex gloves, then said to Chapel with forced brightness, “Come, Jim. Let's go meet a new friend.”

  Chapel silently took my open hand and slid out of the back seat, presenting to me my squirrel head. Reluctant to put it back on, I tucked it under my arm awkwardly instead, taking a furtive peek down the drive to search for de Cabrera's surveillance van. I hadn't heard a word from him in a good twenty minutes, and then remembered that the headphones were in the helmet.

  I was about to cram the helmet back on when the smell stopped me, bringing my nose up. The hairs at my nape crawled to full attention.

  Burnt sugar.

  My nipples contracted painfully and tried to burrow inside my body, while my attention was dragged to the side cellar wall, as if the squat, bricked-up window had magnetic draw. A rush of anticipation spilled over the back of my scalp and prickled all the way to my forehead.

  Power. Savage, crisp and cloying. Unique, I thought, distinguishing a tangible difference between what I was feeling on the air and what I usually felt in my home with Harry. Charred molasses, dark brown sugar spilled on a hot stovetop, blended with an herbal undertone and the coppery tang of fresh blood. The sluggish, stirring excitement of predator crawling out of hibernation. He's been fed once, but it's not nearly enough.

  I had to suck wind to get my lungs to bring in any air. As the revenant stretched, I could feel the pull of his muscles filling with ancient influence, the physical manipulation of extraordinary strength, bloodlust surging rapidly through veins that thrummed anew. So much older than Harry. I felt my hand flutter to the bare slash of skin at my throat, and the brush of my furry paw startled me. My gaze swam up at the third floor knowingly.

  If there wasn't a revenant living here, just now waking from a deep and thirsty sleep, I'd eat my froggy-print underpants.

  As we climbed the front steps, I could hear music filtering down from above. The dormer windows were closed, but the volume was enough to rattle the leaded glass in the frames. I recognized the tune: Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, done on solo electric violin instead of the pipe organ, played masterfully with tremendous pomp and ceremony. Of course it had to be that piece. It was all too corny, a silly revenant parody, a magnificently high-budget yet cliché movie.

  My brain delighted, Who loves self-parody? Old vamps! Clutched in the fist of anxiety, I did a quick weapons scan. Stake? Knife? Check and check. What could go wrong? Since I never listen to common sense when it's yammering about stuff like self-preservation, I thrust my chin up to convince myself I wasn't teetering on the verge of hysteria and, putting my squirrel helmet on, hurried to catch up with Chapel, who now walked with an uncharacteristic slouch. His tall and lanky frame appeared far less authoritative than I was accustomed to. He held one purple paw clutched inside the other, and when we got to the door, he waited to let me go in first.

  Our host had removed his head again. Ben was crouched at the bottom of the stairs, talking to a hyperventilating giraffe on the lowest step. One of her brown Ugg boots had come off, a silent tawny sentinel upright on the floor. The giraffe lady had no helmet; she held a thick wad of bloody napkins to the side of her neck with a trembling hand. Her cheeks were pale, like oatmeal with too much milk poured into it; her eyes were saucers above a narrow, quaking chin. My first instinct was to rush forward and help her, but when she answered Ben's soft query, she gave a wobbling smile, nodding rapidly, enraptured.

  Bleeder. The willing appetizer. I had to work hard not to bolt right back out the door, though within the privacy of the squirrel helmet, I allowed myself a full-face grimace.

  Ben gave us an annoyed glance (“Master Malas is not a patient man.”) and crammed his helmet back on. As Giraffe kicked off her other boot and wobbled to her feet, he gave her ass a proprietary stroke. She turned with a gasping laugh, throaty and excited, and bolted up the stairs, pumping her arms to go faster. Youth and vitality spilled down the staircase at me; she was almost inhumanly spry. I hesitated at Giraffe's push of energy. Ms-lipotropin junkie.

  The Blue Sense roared into life, singing on the tripwires in my belly, coiling up my arms. There were others upstairs, humans, all on tenterhooks, shifting anxiously in their sweaty suits. They were loving every minute of the anticipation, and I could feel each of them, individually and as a great boiling stew of emotions: arousal, nervousness, exhilaration, lust. Not a single one of them terrified.

  They should have been. The thing stirring in the cellar was hungry.

  Ben started limping up the stairs, leaning heavily on his cane, and motioning with his free hand for us to follow. Gone were the pleasantries and poetic compliments. It was all business now. Get the blood bags to the feeding station. He wasn't even bothering to maintain the pretense of the yiffing, the furpile, or whatever it was. There would be no time for that, now. The creature in the cellar was fully awake; his need cramped my guts. I had to slide my paw up the railing to keep from buckling.

  I said softy into the microphone to de Cabrera and Chapel, “Affirmative. Switch off,” and hoped I hadn't been too loud, but judging by the power racing like a colony of ants up and down my flesh, the revenant that dwelled here was ancient; his preternatural hearing could be distressingly sharp from even two floors below.

  I didn't know if de Cabrera or Chapel had heard me, or obeyed my instruction, or where my partner was, or whether or not Chapel trusted me to figure out what needed to be done, but inside my now-silent costume head there was no way of telling him anything without being caught
.

  On the third floor, a pair of grand oak doors were propped wide to frame an opulent scene: tables draped with lavish gold cloths, lit with candles and laden with food, surrounding a giant blue athletic mat in the center of the hall. The dissonance was jarring, even before I noticed the black stains on the mat. These weren't dropped hors d'oeuvres spatters or the telltale outline of a spilled drink, these were gaudy crime-scene splatters, reminders of past parties gone awry, or exactly as planned. No one else seemed to notice. I reached to paw Chapel's arm, but his head was fixed straight ahead; he breathed my name, astounded, inside his purple cat helmet.

  On the raised platform that served as a stage, flanked by leaded glass windows, framed by deep cerise crushed velvet curtains as though he were a portrait hung in a gallery, awash in the glow of a hundred white candles from a massive chandelier above, stood a solitary violinist. The way he held himself, proud shoulders thrust back, emanating an egotism both immortal and infernal, reminded me of someone. It took me a heartbeat to realize why, and when I did, shock hit me like a sledgehammer to the forehead.

  I heard his name fall from my brain to my mouth and snagged it behind the bear trap of my clenched teeth.

  On stage, above the victims of the slaughter to come, Lord Dreppenstedt played.

  CHAPTER 3

  HARRY. MY HARRY.

  Resplendent in a charcoal grey velvet jacket with high, stiff, black lace cravat, balancing his newly-refinished violin beneath the pale cleft of his chin, Harry started playing Vivaldi at the same gut-fluttering tempo he'd been practicing for weeks. “Allegro appassionato,” he'd told me with a teasing grin around full fang. “Espressivo,” he'd demanded of himself aloud, whipping himself into a frenzy of musical passion. “Fieramente!”

  His right Oxford, glossed to perfection, struck the hardwood platform without faltering, keeping the rapid tempo. Though he didn't so much as glance in my direction, I knew my Cold Company had sensed my approach even before we'd turned up the hill; Harry felt me as deeply in his bones as I was feeling him.

  The Blue Sense yanked me into silence at Harry's unexpressed command. He radiated waves of composure to offset my surprise: through our Bond, Harry was trying to soothe me without moving a muscle. Relief swept me, more his own than mine.

  I'd yell at him later. Oh boy, would I yell. Harry was supposed to have been in London for the last two weeks, and not due back for another. That was the story I got. If Chapel knew Harry was going to be here, if he had set this up… I trained my empathic power in Gary's direction and felt the same sort of slack-jawed astonishment coming from him that was jittering around in me. He'd been caught out, too. Point: Harry.

  “Quite a spread,” Chapel said under his breath. “Why don't you go check it out?”

  “Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a waitress,” I hissed. “I'm not leaving you alone in this place.”

  If the Fed thought my Star Trek reference or my promise to protect him was amusing, he didn't say it. We wandered as a unit, sticking together like a couple of transfers to a new high school. At the near end of the room, the guests’ laughter was tight, and eating was done reflexively. A cute lamb with complicated make-up rather than a helmet mechanically shoveled olives into her generous scarlet mouth.

  When Harry finished his performance, the small gathering of seven or eight Furries clapped, though plush paws and hooves muffled their enthusiastic applause; they made up for it with whoops and hollers. He bowed briskly and began another piece, something soft and sumptuous, which would have been very romantic in any other setting.

  Close by, a floppy-eared hound dog groomed a short black chicken's striking crest of feathers. He said, “When do we fuck? Christ.”

  Realization dawned on me, followed by a wave of unease. Of course it's an orgy, dim-bulb. What the hell did you think a furpile was going to be, if not a pile of Furries?

  The chicken swatted the hound's paw and, in an older woman's tight voice said, “Watch your mouth.”

  Hound dropped his hands.

  “Quarter for the swear jar!” A female voice, slippery with booze, guffawed at the two from inside a pink-spotted and red-stained Lycra cat suit. The voice sounded too young to drink, or to be caught up in this situation, or to be wearing clingy tights, frankly. She slopped red wine down her suit; she didn't seem to notice. “Bad boy.”

  Hound Dog feigned a playful growl. “You'll find out how bad this doggie can be, kitty-cat.”

  Drunk Kitty giggled and pulled her tail around to wag it at him. My tummy twitched with an unfamiliar urge and I filed it away to deal with later: this was no time for maternal nurturing. She can't be more than sixteen under that mask, and you know it. Get her out of here.

  “God-mocking fool,” Chicken hissed at Hound, which I found bizarre, considering what they were here for.

  “Both of you shut up,” Giraffe told them with that particular thread of self-control that only comes with age and experience. The long outfit suited her; she must have been nearly six-three. “Just be cool.”

  Beside her, a two-legged zebra nodded but said nothing; one of the few male Furries here, he kept his broad shoulders back, taking up lots of space, his black and white striped arms crossed over his chest. He seemed to be staring directly at me; though it was impossible to tell what was going on behind his giant glossy plastic eye-beads, I felt the unmistakable weight of his glare. I was getting distinctly tired of being stared down by excessively masculine Equus rejects.

  How were we going to get this young girl out of here before she saw anything, or participated in something that would scar her for the rest of her life, if there even was a rest of it after tonight? How did Ben think it was okay to bring a girl her age to this? How could Ben think it was okay to bring any human here to be snack food? Did anyone other than Giraffe know about the revenant, or did we have privileged information? I trained my impotent, angry glare onto Ben, who was fiddling fretfully with little forks on the table next to the pickled onions and jalapeño-stuffed olives.

  Chapel pulled me deeper into the room and found a darker corner. He needn't have pulled so hard; fear had stolen both my humor and bravery and I eagerly retreated with him, closer to Harry, though the safety of Harry's presence could no longer be considered a sure thing. Was this the sort of event Harry attended frequently, without my knowledge? Unfamiliar doubt filled my gut like a cold lead cannonball. Is this where he disappeared to on his midnight joy rides? Was this his hidden habit, a kinky addiction? Was he to be fed as well? Would he partake in the sex?

  Of course not. Not my Cold Company, I chided myself, though the doubt was not easily dismissed.

  On stage, Harry gave another elegant, sweeping bow, avoiding my gaze, and announced in a booming voice, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, as promised, our guest of honor for the evening … Malas Nazaire, Maréchal Toussaint, Vicomte de Brisbois.”

  Nazaire? As in, Gregori Nazaire? As in, the revenant I'd staked last December? Was Malas Gregori's sire? Would Malas know it was me who had staked his Younger? Fuckanut. I trained my empathic Talent on Chapel to sense if he'd made the connection, and felt new concern trickle through his chest, too.

  Ben the unicorn hobbled about straightening things, pinching out more than half the candles until the room was cloaked in gloom, touching the women in the group as though to reassure himself that he'd collected enough, and I saw it for what it was: a head count. He rearranged his big mane atop his shoulders, cleared his throat, then went about doing a second head count, a checking routine perhaps. I counted with him, six, seven, eight… Why count only the ladies? What happens if you didn't bring enough, Yiff-Master? A nearby cat, this one a Siamese, refilled her glass of Zinfandel while she said something quietly to Giraffe. They both nodded enthusiastically and toasted.

  Harry's gaze flicked to my face then to his violin case beside the stage for a split second, and then he went back to pointedly ignoring me. A warning? A hint? I tensed, my attention following his sweeping ar
m to the staircase.

  The sight before me made all sane thought scramble for cover like exposed beetles on a turned corpse. Harry was quickly forgotten as I struggled to compute, groped dry-mouthed for a scientific explanation. One of my hands tapped my hip out of habit, looking for a Moleskine mini notebook and golf pencil in the pockets of my jeans, finding only layers of foam and fur. I sidestepped against Chapel, and his arm shot around to steady me; it was the second time in my life Gary Chapel had touched me of his own accord, but I'd never been more grateful for it.

  The thing that crested the top of the stairs wasn't even remotely human anymore. Malas didn't make any attempt to blend; his color was moldy lemon curd, gone to the sour yellow-green of adipocere underscored with subdermal rot. The lovely alabaster of the immortal line had spoiled on him, the mediagenic pallor long since corrupted.

  What he had lost in tone, however, he had gained in the unmistakable weight of power. Though Malas was not a big man, the floor trembled with his coming, shuddered under each agonizingly slow footfall. Most of his long, colorless hair had abandoned ship but for a few stubborn, wispy clumps; the smooth pate shone under the candlelight. There was a flinch around his eyes, as if even that faint light pained him. Those eyes were palest cornflower blue, but as they fell on the gathered group before him, his pupils expanded, black rapidly eating up most of that soft color, the thin ring of blue shot through with gold streaks. At the line of his neck, where his dun brown collar stopped, a faded black tattoo began; a ghostly ink hand reached across his throat to behind his left ear to become a crescent moon fingered by thorny vines. His right arm was held protectively across his belly; withered to the bone, deformed, the fingers on his right hand were crammed tight in a seemingly useless fist. Napoleon Bonaparte couldn't have looked at Malas in that pose and not felt like an impostor and a lightweight.