Annie of the Undead (34 page)

“Where is the cur who has given you so paltry a
claim to immortality? Speak or die eternal death.”

“Y-c-c-c…y-you sh-c-c-c-shouldn’t be here,”
Psalter choked.

“There is no time for you, bacterium. Speak, and
I will allow you to crawl forth from this place with your wretched
skin on your carcass.”

“N-no. P-p-p-please. D-don’t-t…hkkkkk!”

I heard several weighty objects fall wetly to
the floor. Miguel had ripped him apart.

“Annie.”

I felt his hand on mine. For the first time
ever, it was actually hot.

“Miguel! Fuck, I can’t see shit.”

“We are leaving.”

“Yoki –my friend…”

“She is not here. She has already been
freed.”

“Those lying fuckers.”

“I am going to carry you.”

“Good, because I really need some sleeeee…”

He swept me into his arms and we shot through
the door like…well, like Miguel. I think we knocked some people
down along the way, and leaped over things, and generally treated
the precinct office like a child’s obstacle course made of
Tinkertoys and Lego blocks. The poor cops in the dark were no match
for Miguel. Even if they’d known he was there, which they didn’t, I
don’t think they could have gotten any rounds fired as he blitzed
by them. He wasn’t walking against the wind. He was the wind. We
were on the rooftops faster than you could say Mississippi three
times, and then we were sailing through the air in fine style.

And somehow, despite the fact that I had pulled
some crazy shit, and I was bound to get an earful, I was, for the
moment, incredibly happy. Vampire Miguel had busted me out of jail,
which was, I decided, quite the most romantic thing anybody had
ever done for me.

Back at the house that Andy built, with Andy and
his merry men respectfully in some other part of the house at
Miguel’s silent behest, the two of us convened in a slightly less
white room than the others I had seen. This one had very subtly
salmon curtains and burgundy lamp shades that popped like cherries
against the otherwise endless white. The rug was salmon shag. I sat
on it, or in it. It was deep shag.

Miguel sat in a chair beside me. I spent a good
deal of time just looking at him. His flesh was flushed a hot pink
like a person with a fever. Certain veins stood out brightly
through his pale skin. His lips were positively scarlet. The
weirdest thing was his eyes. The whites weren’t white at all. They
looked like those of someone who had been smoking way, way too much
weed. Righteous weed. They made a scary contrast with the sparkling
green of his irises.

He spent a good deal of time just looking at me
too. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but if it was anything
along the lines of what I was thinking, it was a miracle that we
didn’t kill each other or fuck right then and there.

I was the one who finally broke the silence.

“Thanks for getting me out of jail, and for
killing that fuck in the suit.”

He merely looked at me.

“But you didn’t tell me about werewolves.”

I watched his face closely, but I hadn’t learned
to read it well enough to read it then.

“…In Canada.”

Nothing yet.

“And you didn’t tell me about earthvines.”

Nothing.

“Or covens of thirteen full witches plus their
understudies. Or mind control. Or zombies.”

He watched me, unmoved.

“Or the fact that young vampires can handle the
sun, but it turns old ones to ash. Or that young werewolves are
certifiably crazy, and old ones can look like anybody. –Oh, and you
didn’t mention that werewolves hate vampires, and if I’m a vampire,
I have to stay between the tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of
Cancer, or I get smoked just for not breathing. You didn’t tell me
any of that. You left me here so that Andy’s boys could tell me, so
that Mark could…”

I stopped myself, suddenly seeing the
intelligence in the face in which I had only at that moment wanted
to find fault.

“You left me here so that they could tell
me.”

He merely looked at me.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“I thought he would explain things better.”

“He doesn’t know that much. I think you could
tell me a lot more.”

“I will do so.”

“But not yet.”

“No. Not yet.”

“Not until I’m dead.”

“You know what a mortal should know. When you
are immortal, I will teach you what immortals should know.”

“You didn’t trust yourself not to tell me too
much.”

He did not deny the accusation.

“How old are you, Miguel?”

“Tell me what happened to you yesterday.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Tell me why I had to storm a house of law
enforcement for you.”

Fair enough. I hadn’t gotten the earful I had
expected, so I couldn’t tell if he was pissed at me –not that he
had any right to be, but if he was, maybe this was my one chance to
win him over. Besides, the steam had suddenly gone out of my
argument. Maybe I was just too tired to sustain it.

I told the tale in fine style, complete with
near-nakedness conjoined with remembering to bring a firearm.
Winning combination, I thought.

After I had told him everything, he only sat in
silence for about thirty seconds before saying what he had to say,
and, God help me, I listened.

“Something has infected this city. The creatures
we have encountered are not like any vampire I have known. They are
weak, strange. They bear no predator’s teeth. They behave like
humans. The one who fled from me pleaded for mercy when I found him
again. He was so brittle, like a dried twig. His blood was less
fine than mortal blood. It was…thin.”

“Sounds like you killed him.”

I saw that something in Miguel’s expression then
that I had seen the night we had encountered that other vampire,
that gut reaction that looked so much like disgust.

“So frail an existence…can we even call it
killing?”

“Well I’d sure call killing what they were going
to do to me, and probably Yoki if they find her, and I don’t think
they’ve got crowning you king on the agenda in looking for you. I
really think they know something about you. At least, they want to
meet you. I think they’ve got some kind of racket going here,
something we’ve blundered into.”

Miguel spoke icily, “Those creatures do not own
this city. Their conceit will not be born.”

I had never seen him look so revolted, not even
when he had spoken of the witches. He wasn’t even looking at me as
he talked –almost like all he could see was the foulness of which
he spoke. The only time I’d seen him remotely like this was the
night of the other encounter. He had called that creature, like
these, “weak.” Somehow he made the word sound dirtier than
“toddler-fucker.”

“Did you run into any more of them while you
were out?” I asked.

“Only one.”

“Did you learn anything from him, like what
their game is here, how many of them there are?”

Miguel did not answer.

“Is that a no?”

“He begged me not for his immortality, but for
his life, like an animal.”

Miguel was thinking out loud.

“I fail to see the difference.”

“He saw in me no equal, but a monster. He did
not see me.”

“Now you’re really confusing me.”

He finally looked at me.

“You do not understand eternity. Neither did
that creature.”

“Now you’re just sweet-talkin’ me.”

“You will understand it,” he assured, “when it
is yours. But these things do not. The one in the police station
with you was more a man than an immortal, but his heart did not
beat. I did not even desire to take his blood.”

“Now that is mystifying.”

He stared into his own brain, lost in thought.
Finally, he said, “I cannot deduce how these creatures came
about.”

“So there’s something new and interesting out
there for even the most jaded world traveler. So, how many of these
two-percent vampire fuckers do you think there are?”

He spoke with his teeth bared. It was an
expression to behold with those red eyes a-burnin’. “I don’t know,
but the way they behave suggests their numbers are strong where
their bodies are not.”

“Fat hell. So much for New Orleans being an open
city.”

How the fuck was I supposed to save Yoki from
this? I sighed tiredly.

Miguel looked at me. His blood-soaked eyes
softened. His face melted from revulsion to something like sympathy
or…no, couldn’t be that.

“Annie,” he reached out his hand to my face.
“You have outgrown this flesh. I once wanted to change you for fear
of losing you, but now I must change you because you must be
changed.”

“Uh, Miguel, I…”

“Are you uncertain?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I mean yes. I’m uncertain
about a lot of things. I’m uncertain what it’s going to be like not
having to shave. I’m uncertain about all the possibly hostile
super-neighbors. I’m uncertain about being addicted to blood. I’m
uncertain about all kinds of crazy things, but I’m also uncertain
about what color the couches are in the Playboy Mansion. There are
some things you just can’t know until you’ve been there.
Uncertainty has never been one of the things that goes bump in my
nights. I’ve lived in it my whole life.”

I took his hand away from my face and held it to
my chest so he could feel my heart beating.

“There is one thing of which I am certain. I
want to know more about you, and I am going to need eternity for
that.”

“It is decided then.”

“Yeah.”

“It must be soon.”

“Because of the redheaded-step-vampires.”

“Because of you. When you become your true self
not twenty or thirty or forty such creatures will intimidate you.
You will be magnificent.”

He paused. He was tasting me again, through the
air. He removed his hand from my chest and my grasp. He took it
back into his lap as though to contain it –and himself.

“Tomorrow.”

“Now hold on…”

“You are ready.”

“But I haven’t reached a thousand crunches yet.
I’ll be mushy for eternity.”

“Nonsense. Your abdomen most closely resembles a
cheese grater.”

“You know how to flatter a girl. I can hear the
pickup lines now: Is that a kitchen utensil in your pants, or are
you just happy to see me? Shred me, baby! Sorry, Don Juan. You’re
just not the sharpest cheddar on the block…”

Miguel laughed at me.

“The cheddar, naranja, is not what needs to be
sharp.”

He snapped his teeth at me. I dodged. He tackled
me on the shag.

“Miguel…Miguel, dude,” he was breathing through
his teeth at me. I knew it was a what-sweet-blood-you-have thing,
“So what are we going to do about the two-percent vampires?”

He thumbed my throat.

“Don’t call them vampires.”

“So what are we gonna do about the vaguely
vampire-like un-vampires?”

“Eradicate them.”

“Do you have any idea how unbearably sexy you
just got?”

“Don’t get used to the feeling.”

“What vampires have is better, isn’t it?”

“You will know soon enough.”

So I would, or I’d be dead.

We spent the next two hours entangled in it and
each other, discussing what we were going to do about two-percent
vampires and New Orleans and immortality...and about that damned
tattoo on my... Anyway, he felt my heart beating, and I felt his
flesh slowly cool to room temperature, and I fell asleep in his
arms.

When I awoke in the afternoon, I found the blood
crystal lying in the shag where Miguel had been –I had left it
behind when I had undressed for that shower what seemed like days
ago. I recalled that expression on his face that I had been so
hesitant to label when he had aimed it at me the night before. The
emotion behind that expression was one that in my life I had never
either given or received. I had been ill-equipped to do so. As the
crystal warmed in my hand, I found I had lost my fear of that
emotion, lost my fear of calling it by name. If this ageless
vampire could feel it for me, maybe even I could one day learn to
give it back.

I spent the afternoon in a guest bathroom,
shaving, trimming, and tweaking away anything I wouldn’t be caught
dead in and watching the news reports. I’d never really been
interested in news before now –any kind of news, but I guess being
in it can tickle the narcissist in anyone. New Orleans’ troubles
weren’t only local. They were nation-wide. The big news networks
had picked up the story about me and Yoki and Tulane. They were
already referring to the incident as “Terror at Tulane”, with its
obvious harkening to that other incident where people actually did
get killed. My face was all over the news too. There was little
back story from my time in Detroit –they hadn’t gotten a hold of
that yet, but there was plenty about how I’d possibly attempted to
kidnap a girl, set a whole college campus a-jumping, and then been
broken out of jail by sophisticated people who had cut the power
and possibly used an explosive device and kidnapped Detective
Frederick Psalter…naked. Only his clothes were found at the scene.
I was even shown as one half of a pair of notorious miscreants, my
eviler twin being Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho. It was an
injustice, but I wasn’t about to come out of the woodwork to
explain how I had actually probably saved a life.

In the local news, another story was already
attached to my name. The body of Trisha Danes had been discovered
floating in a bayou outside of the city. She had been wrapped in
black plastic and sunk, but had apparently escaped her watery tomb
through bloating and improper weighting. Those Detroit boys could
have taught her killer a thing or two about the proper disposal of
bodies. That wasn’t all. She had been brutalized –chewed on, and
they were likening her manner of death to the Louisiana Werewolf’s
MO. Again, my picture was shown. Was Annie Eastwood somehow
connected to the Werewolf? Even though I had been in Detroit until
two weeks ago –in detention, no less, they were all too eager to
draw the conclusion that I was somehow involved. I couldn’t exactly
explain that my alibi was a houseful of gay lethal weapons and a
dead guy who hated me.