Tooth & Nail (Withrow Chronicles Book 2)

by Michael G. Williams

  Anyway, his browser came up and I figured he would type in an address, what's called an Earl for some reason, but instead he opened a bookmark. He liked disappearances enough to have them mapped and bookmarked for quick reference. That was weird, even by our standards. On the other hand, maybe he had a bookmark for everything he'd ever looked at online.

  The map loaded and centered on Arden. That put Asheville slightly off-center, to the north, with Hardisonville and Rutherfordton and Brevard and Cullowhee and all the other little towns and sleepy villages of the mountains scattered in an uneven circle around it. There were clusters of red dots and he started scrolling the map around and zooming in here or there. “This is a custom app,” he said by way of more nonsense. “I wrote it myself. Whenever I open it, it queries the case databases of all the law enforcement agencies around here and maps any missing persons reports such that the dot represents the last reported sighting of the person who's being sought.” I nodded as though I understood, but in truth I only mostly understood. What I for sure understood were two things: the “last reported sighting” part and that there was no way Marty was having trouble adjusting to life fifteen years after he'd died.

  On the map itself, there were little starbursts of dots here and there – a few dots in Hardisonville, a larger bunch in Asheville, a couple in the middle of nowhere, off on hiking trails and the like where every year a person or three take the wrong turn before they’re gone forever.

  There was a relatively huge cluster south of Brevard, not that incredibly far from where Clyde had been found, not as many as in Asheville but more than was normal for a town that small. I leaned over Marty's shoulder and stared at the screen, then pointed at it. “Isn't that unusual?”

  Marty sat in silence and said, “Want to watch a movie? I got some stuff off Bittorrent that's pretty good quality. There are these crazy guys in Sweden who have all kinds of bandwidth. You can get great speeds from them.”

  So Marty wanted me to see that starburst of dots south of Brevard and he didn't want to tell me why. A visit well worth having made, I told myself. “I'll take a rain check,” I said. “Got some more folks to see. Listen, try to eat something, okay? You don't look so good.”

  Marty shuddered. “Yes, sir.”

  “Please,” I sighed, “Call me Withrow.” I hesitated. Probing further into his feeding habits would be offensive from anyone else, but I was the boss. He was technically my subject. There were places this sort of thing got asked in the open, in front of God and everybody, so I said screw it and asked. “Where do you get food, usually?”

  Marty went blank. “I…” He worked his jaw.

  “You can tell me,” I said. “In fact, you have to tell me. I’m the boss. I have a right to ask and I swear I will keep it confidential.” I put one hand up. “Scout’s honor.”

  Marty blinked rapidly. His flesh was the color of onionskin paper. “I have someone. She’s out of town. She travels for her work.”

  I nodded. “Then get someone else, someone on the side. You can’t possibly live off the blood of one person. You’ll try to take it easy on her, scared you’ll take too much, and you’ll slowly starve yourself to the point you’re guaranteed to go nuts with hunger and kill her outright. Find two or three somebodies to be safe.” Marty didn’t like that unsolicited advice, but it was true. If he wanted to learn that for himself, fine, but I was right. I’d seen it happen a dozen times.

  5

  I had Marty give me a printout of the map. It was small and fuzzy and the greater visual acuity afforded me by the biology of the undead didn't really help any. It just made it easier for me to spot the flaws, the tiny gaps where the printer had skipped a beat trying to spit out the highly detailed imagery. I'd sat in the Firebird and studied it for a few minutes, Smiles panting happily and bumping his forehead against my shoulder every now and then to remind me to pet him, then folded it neatly and tucked it into the inside pocket of my trench coat. I turned on the heat in the car as I drove through Tournament Landing and back out to 25, turning south towards Hardisonville itself. At the last minute I turned back onto the dark, disappearing lanes of 280 rather than keep going in my original direction. It was stupid of me but I was drawn to check out Clyde's house. He had a son, I knew, and I had to wonder what shape the kid was in.

  Well, I say kid. He had to be pushing fifty by now. A little weird in most places that he'd still live at home but up there moving back in with mom and dad is a lot cheaper than paying for a rest home if they've gotten to need help. It's also a lot cheaper than having to get a real life. I'd heard a story on NPR one time years ago about this trend developing in Italy at the time. Mama-something, they're called there: guys who never cut the apron strings, never let go, no matter how hard their mothers push them. From what Clyde had told me in the hours we'd spent together across the decades, that was Cliff.

  The same happens to vampires sometimes, too. I’d reckon about half the time it’s a maker who won’t let go, but just as often it’s a vampire who’s too afraid to leave their maker’s protection. Our relationships are as complicated as any between a parent and a child. Another thought of Roderick’s lack of proper upbringing ran through my head and I called him on speakerphone.

  “Cousin.” He’d let it ring twice and answered with the smoothest voice in known history.

  “I’ve got a question for you.” I didn’t bother with preamble, didn’t bother with Marty’s state of living. Roderick doesn’t seem to require those niceties. He likes to ask pointed questions because they put people off balance and he doesn’t have any obvious qualms about receiving them in kind. “What are your long-term plans? Where do you see yourself in ten years, or fifty?”

  “Rich. Perhaps famous.” Roderick didn’t hesitate to answer. He’d thought about this before. “I’d like to have a few endorsement deals.”

  I drove in silence for a few moments, blinking rapidly to myself. Smiles was staring at the bright face of the magic box that sounded more or less like Roderick. “Endorsement deals?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Roderick sounded pleased with himself. A Cheshire grin was in that voice. “I want to become so rich and so powerful and so respected that I can come out of the closet.”

  “The… the closet.” I was blank and even.

  “Naturally. Look at the world we live in, Withrow. We’re creatures trying to hide in a surveillance society. Do you honestly believe no one knows we’re here? The government? Credit card companies? Banks? They may not know what they know, but they know. Someone has figured out there’s a small, relatively stable population of ‘persons’ who stick around forever and try to escape notice. They know we’re not militia whackos because we’re not running around some square state in secondhand fatigues. Eventually they will figure out exactly what we are and that…” He paused and chuckled. “Oh, that will answer so very many of their questions, won’t it? They’ll get answers to questions they don’t even know they have. I plan to be on the bleeding edge of that, for sure. Once society figures out we exist, there will be some serious commercial possibilities.”

  “Commercial possibilities like honest to goddamn endorsement deals?” I had no idea if he was serious.

  “Exactly. Not for any of the obvious stuff, though: you know, sunglasses and tanning lotion and the like. I mean, how tacky would that be? Jesus. Might as well show up jumping the shark, right? No, I will insist on endorsement deals that are at least a little ironic. Farm equipment, for instance. A vampire selling machines that make food for people who are the food of that vampire? I like that. It’s a nice little cycle of life kind of idea, isn’t it? I’m partial to MacDougal tractors. Their main color is purple and I’ve always liked purple.”

  “You mean every word of this, don’t you?” I laughed abruptly.

  “Absolutely, cousin. You should give this serious consideration. You ask me where I see myself in fifty years? I see myself living in the world of fifty years from now. Most vampires are busy trying to live in the wo
rld of fifty years in the past, not the future. Those are two very different worlds. It’s how we become irrelevant. They’re literally different centuries, and we choose in which to live.”

  We were both quiet as a quarter mile of highway flew underneath me.

  “Does that answer your question?” He said it as mildly as he possibly could, like he was making sure I’d gotten down a telephone number he’d rattled off.

  “I think it does, cousin.”

  “Cousin,” he said, and the call ended.

  I coasted back past the airport and into Kills River and off onto North Kills River to go back into the woods, off a paved road, further back. As I hit gravel, I passed between a pair of white brick signs that bore faded wooden letters: Independence Valley. There were a lot of ironies there. For one, the development wasn’t in a valley; for another, no one with a homeowner’s association lording itself over them could really claim independence. That’s one I’ve learned the hard way. The neighborhood went up decades ago and the sign was a mark of its initial aspirations, quickly abandoned. It was built of bricks, painted white, but the bricks had been stripped of their luster by rain and snow, then picked at and knocked apart by a generation or two of bored teenagers with fuck-all to do in a place like Hardison County. Now they looked like broken teeth and they stood flanking a muddy rut of a road. So much for suburbia as a place to keep safe the dreams of a quiet, neatly mown future.

  When I was a half-mile or so from Clyde's house, I stopped and pulled off onto the side where there was a gap in the trees and left the Firebird locked. Smiles clambered out the driver's side door behind me when I got out and I signaled him to stay quiet. Smiles isn’t just a supernaturally powerful dog and he’s not just well trained. There's some connection between us, from the blood I feed him, so that he understands what I mean. I still did have to train him, mind you, but it took way better than it would with anything short of a Seeing Eye dog, maybe better. I still have the “in training” Seeing Eye dog vest I ordered for him off the Internet, but I only put it on him when we’re going to the mall or something like that.

  We walked a few dozen yards into the woods, away from the road, and then turned and made off up the hill before us. Even at three hundred fifty pounds or whatever I am, I can go through the woods without making a sound. I am a vampire, after all. These woods weren’t exactly virgin forest, either. It might have been built a long time ago, and way out in the country, but a subdivision is a subdivision is a subdivision. Suburbs don’t require urbs to exist.

  Clyde's house was on the opposite face of the hill we were climbing, so that I'd come up to it from behind, through the trees, invisible to just about anybody and anything, including the other houses on his side of the street. These were built before everything had to be slammed down onto a postage stamp with six inches on either side, so there was some actual room between them, but I did want to remain aware of the other houses in the area. I wasn’t concerned that Smiles would bark at a squirrel or the like because he’s better behaved than that. I hadn't taken him in when I went to see Marty because people tend to react badly if they aren't used to him, and he gets really, really curious when he's in a strange place. I was gambling that tonight there wouldn't be any issues with that. I could keep him in check if I had to and I was half sure there wouldn't be anybody at the house anyway. His dad had just turned up dead. Cliff – Clyde's son – was at best staying somewhere with friends or family and at worst in police custody.

  We crested the hill and I stopped Smiles with a fingertip held to the side in his field of vision. We both stood there and listened, me turning my head this way and that, him with his huge parabolic ears twitching back and forth, eyes scanning, nose down to snuffle from time to time. I’d turned off the heat in the car on he way here and in the twenty minutes I'd driven without it I'd given back off a lot of that body heat. I figured that thermal vision wouldn't show much and night goggles like those military guys have in the movies wouldn't show a damned thing with me all done up in black like I was. My skin is pale, but my bulk was hidden. Anyway, what were the odds anyone would have night vision goggles up here in the sticks? Paranoid, I know, but every vampire is a little paranoid. The movies get to us, too.

  As the coast seemed to be clear, I moved us around to the left, away from the big-ass night light on the other side of the house – I’m sure the neighbors loved that – so that we were where the yard was drenched in the house's own shadow. There was only one light on and I'd have bet money it was a single lamp on a timer. There was a car in the carport on the lit side but it was a little station wagon that I figured to be Clyde's wife's car. I thought for a moment about Edith having dropped dead of a cardiac arrest like that and then shook it off. Happens to everyone, I thought. Sooner or later. Still, it was so difficult to think of her as being old enough for that to happen. The last time I’d seen her we were young and to my mind she always still would be.

  Smiles and I crept forward through the yard and I peeked around the front corner to look at the road in front of Clyde's house. I didn't see anything at first but when I leaned back an inch, I caught a glint of light where I hadn't expected one. That damned security light in the yard contrasted with the shadows in which I stood, screwing with my eyes' ability to penetrate the darkness. I had to focus on letting my eyes adjust to the total darkness of the gravel road that ran below Clyde's front yard and on farther. With time I was able to make out the barest outline of the front driver's side quarter-panel of a car. There wasn't chrome or trim where I might have spotted it, which was weird, but enough time passed that I could see that it had been darkened or covered up somehow. Really weird, I thought. Also: clever. Someone was watching the house from a car they'd camouflaged for darkness. Probably the cops, I figured, and if they hadn't popped any sirens yet then they hadn't seen me. That meant either they didn't have any fancy goggles or they weren't watching the back of the house. They were being more thorough in some ways than I might have guessed – the camouflage and all – but not as thorough in others. I smelled a lot of study and not a lot of experience in that. Interesting.

  Smiles was standing at attention with his butt pressed against the back of my legs, keeping an eye out behind us, but moved with me when I moved back around to the rear of the house and crept up to the door out of the kitchen and onto a patio. I was going to stand out like an ink stain on the Sunday tablecloth when I stepped up onto its pale gray concrete surface, but I had to see the place for myself for some reason. No time like the present, I told myself, and I swept right up to the back door and peeked in the window. Lamplight spilled in from the front of the house, but the kitchen was dark. There was a coffee cup out on the table, probably left there when Clyde was getting ready to come see me. I could see the world that very nearly was – the one in which he was still alive and this was still a normal visit – sitting right there around that coffee cup. The world's a funny old place and it only gets funnier the more of it you see.

  I'd brought some cheap, thin gloves with me from the car – the kind that are supposed to be as warm as the thick ones but never are – and I put them on and very gently tried the knob on the back door. It wasn't locked. That’s typical country living for you. The vampires have security bars on the sliding glass doors of their apartments and the mortals leave the doors unlocked.

  I opened the door, slipped through with Smiles on my heels, and closed it after us in one smooth motion. Woods, back doors, sweeping motions: vampires are good at all that kind of stuff. It's what we do. With a gesture I directed Smiles towards the front hall where he sat down by the front door, head up, alert, and started sniffing the air. I turned down the hallway – a real hallway in this real house, as compared to Marty's abomination of neutral colors and cheap carpet – and slid past a guest bedroom, the master bedroom and towards a final door into what had been turned into an office at some point. There was a desk with no computer, a telephone extension, a big, green-glassed desk lamp of the old school sitting on it
, a paper blotter and a peel-off day-by-day. There were no lights except what came in from outside – the yard light – but that was plenty for me. The calendar, I saw, featured pictures of puppies and inspirational Bible quotes; a product of Edith’s influence on Clyde as they'd gotten older, I guessed.

  I could hear a conversation outside but it was far away and it wasn’t getting any closer: probably a nosy neighbor bugging the cops, and more power to ‘em.

  There was a small bookshelf covered in fairly clinical texts on police procedure and law and the like. There was a larger one that looked rough-made, unfinished, that had big ring binders on it with years on the spines. Clyde had kept around his case files, his notes, all the various tidbits about all the investigations he'd worked in forty years with the SBI. I clucked my tongue to myself and wondered how many vampires lurked unrecognized – or worse, recognized – on the pages in those binders. I had neither time for, nor interest in, thieving that night, though. There was something specific I was after, something I felt like would be the final nail in the coffin of whether Clyde's murder was tied to the one he'd investigated when we met the night of our high school reunion.

  There were some big plastic boxes, some older boxes of cardboard: banker's boxes I think they're called. You've seen them before in the back of the closet of a parent or an uncle or aunt or grandparent who didn't buy a home safe and clung to all the paper detritus of a life lived in contractual debts. The boxes had been rifled through so haphazardly that I thought for a moment that the place must have been burgled. That didn't make any sense, though. The rest of the house hadn't been tossed around like these boxes had. Their contents were skewed or scattered hither and yon on the floor.