If there was one thing Phaedra had learned in her short life, it was that love was not to be trusted. Need was better than love, safer than want, more reliable than lust. The Contessa needed her more than anyone else ever had. She needed her like Phaedra needed to eat and breathe. That, more than the money, was what kept her bound to the old woman.
The Contessa had done more for her than any other person on the face of the earth, including her mother. All that bitch ever did was give birth to her. The Contessa, on the other hand, had lifted her up from the gutter, taught her how to act and dress and talk in such a way as to attract a more affluent John. It was the Contessa who exposed her to the world beyond the grim, gray confines of truck stop plazas, trailer parks, and cheap motels.
It was the Contessa who taught her how to best butcher a human being and disassemble
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) them with a hacksaw and a cleaver; it was she who showed her how to dispose of a body without attracting attention. When they first met, Phaedra was a callow young girl with a lot of anger and a straight razor; The Contessa had turned her into a sophisticated femme fatale and a world-class serial killer.
The Contessa had given her a life where before there was nothing but day-to-day existence. Phaedra owed it to her mistress to protect her and make her safe from enemies.
But there was only so much she could do for her lady. Why the Contessa chose to come back to this place, she was not certain.
Phaedra knew the Contessa had lived in Red Velvet Manor far longer than any other place in the nearly four hundred years of her existence. Then again, perhaps the old woman's reasons for returning were more practical than sentimental. After all, Red Velvet Manor was already outfitted for her special needs.
It was Phaedra's job to protect her mistress, and that meant making sure their camouflage within the community remained intact. The best way to do that was to maintain a low profile, make sure the curious stayed at arm's length, and keep moving. The longer they stayed at Red Velvet Manor, the more likely it was that the Blue Monster would sniff them out. Phaedra had never seen the Blue Monster, but she did not doubt it existed. The Contessa's legs were proof enough of that.
In the years spent making sure the Contessa was one step ahead of the Blue Monster, Phaedra had come to realize it was as smart as it was tenacious. While Red Velvet Manor was isolated, it did have a historical connection to the Contessa; one that was easily discovered by anyone with access to the Internet and knowledge of the Contessa's various pseudonyms.
If her lady wished to remain at Red Velvet Manor, then they would stay put. But Phaedra could not shake the sensation that things were about to go bad. It was the same feeling she used to get when she stood on the concrete block that served as the trailer's front stoop, sniffing the summer wind while cicadas sang in the trees. On the surface everything seemed safe, but there was always an edge of potential disaster in the rising wind.
There was a storm coming. But would it be just another summer squall...or a twister? Do you run for cover or stand your ground? Do you batten down the hatches or flee for your life? There was no way of knowing, really, until the storm was upon you. And by then it was too late to do anything but ride it out.
"Have you seen this woman?"
"Nope," the bartender grunted, barely glancing in the direction of the photo on top of the bar.
A fresh twenty suddenly appeared atop the photograph.
"You
sure
about that?"
The bartender stopped cleaning the highball glass and glanced up at the woman standing opposite him. His eyebrow went up even higher. Hotel Orso was a four-star establishment, catering to wealthy business executives. It rarely saw young women tricked out in leather
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) motorcycle jackets, mirrored sunglasses, and tattered Black Flag t-shirts, even when rock stars were staying in the hotel.
The bartender palmed the twenty and picked up the photo, knitting his brows as he frowned. It was a candid surveillance shot, taken with a telephoto lens.
"Which one you mean? The old lady?"
"No. The blonde pushing the wheelchair," the woman in the leather jacket said, tapping the picture.
The bartender shook his head and tossed the photograph back onto the counter. "Naw.
Can't say I recognize her. Sorry."
"How about this one?" She flipped a second photo out of a small deck held in a fan like playing cards.
The other photograph was in better focus, although taken under the same conditions. It was of a sexy brunette in a red cocktail dress being helped into a sports car by a slightly balding middle-aged man in evening clothes. The bartender's eyes narrowed.
"Now
this
one looks familiar. She wears her hair different, but I'm pretty sure it's her. She comes in from time to time. Checks out the bar. Working girl, from what I've seen of her."
"She ever talk to you?"
The bartender shook his head. "Just to order drinks. Virgin Mary's. Keeps to herself, unless she hooks a John."
"When's the last time you saw her?"
"Couple of weeks ago, I guess. She left with some suit." He tilted his head to one side.
"Are you a cop, lady?"
"Do I look like a cop?"
"Hell, no!" the bartender snorted. "The reason I asked, see...that suit she walked out of here with turned up missing a couple of days later."
"You don't say?"
"Cops were all over this place, asking questions. I guess he was some kind of business bigwig," he said, turning to slide one of the long-stems into its overhead rack. "The cops seemed to think the bastard high-tailed it to Rio with company funds. The way I see it..."
The bartender turned back to face his questioner, only to find himself addressing empty space. He shrugged and resumed polishing his highball glass. Fucking tourists.
Sonja strode purposefully across the Hotel Orso's lobby, oblivious to the stares from the staff and guests. She had more important things on her mind. The blood witch was in the area. There was no doubt the Contessa's renfield was out and about, doing her mistress'
work.
She had spent the better part of two years tracking down the old bitch. She had come close to killing her back in Vienna, only to have her escape. Now it was up to her to track the Contessa down and finish her off, much like a master hunter would a wounded deer.
Vampires as ancient as the Contessa were never easy prey. You didn't get to be hundreds of years old without honing the ability to go to ground to a fine art. If one identity got too
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) hot for them, they would switch to another as easily as they would change their socks.
This made her quarry especially difficult to keep track of. However, since ancients rarely had to worry about being recognized from one generation to another, they tended to use the same identities over and over again. Another thing in her favor was the inherent difficulty ancients seemed to have in regard to understanding the importance of technology, which led to her commissioning a computer database of her own design that could access and cross-reference real estate records, land titles, newspaper reports, census information, birth and death certificates and maps, scanning them for known identities and pseudonyms of the so-called Ruling Class. As an afterthought, she had an anagram generator incorporated into the system, just in case someone decided to get cute.
A search on the Contessa pulled up newspaper reports dating from the Depression of a notorious "high-class house of ill repute" called Red Velvet Manor. Its madam was one Eliza Bayroth, who was rumored to have catered to the more outre tastes of captains of industry, Supreme Court justices, and the occasional president. After the start of the Second World War rumors began to circulate of occult rituals, which may or may not have been a cover for Fifth Columnist activities.
The brothel shut down shortly after a newspaperman famous for underworld reportage announced his intention of publishing an expose of Red Velvet Manor. The reporter disappeared off the face of the earth not long after that. A year later, a badly decomposed body, believed to be that of the missing journalist, was found in a nearby landfill. It was assumed to be a gangland killing. By the time the body was uncovered, Madame Bayroth had married a dissolute Romanian nobleman and set sail for the Continent, where she was known simply as the Contessa.
This information dovetailed into what she herself had uncovered from her European sources and from microfiched issues of
Le Figaro, Paris-Match,
and
Der Spiegel.
Studied in its totality, the data answered several nagging questions Sonja had concerning her quarry.
She had been hunting vampires for almost thirty years. Her knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, their abilities and limits, did not come from reading books or watching movies, but from hands-on experience. But, for all her familiarity with the world and ways of the undead, she had been baffled by the Contessa. For one, she did not seem to possess the telltale fangs, nor did she surround herself with lesser vampires of her own making.
And, most importantly, she had survived an attack with a silver weapon, albeit as a double amputee.
Sonja realized now that she had made a grave mistake in classifying the Contessa as a garden-variety vampire. From what she had since learned from various sources and her own research, the Contessa was not a true vampire, but a
strega
—those who transform themselves into the undead through the use of black magic. Such creatures were rare, but those that existed were crafty and possessed different strengths and weaknesses than
"typical" vampires. While the Contessa's means of feeding on her victims did not spread the taint, that didn't make her any less dangerous. Like all vampires, she was a corrupting force on any human who fell into her sphere of influence. To allow such a monster to continue to exist was anathema to her.
After all, it was one such monster that had attacked Sonja, over thirty years ago.. .and made her one of them.
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) Phaedra was wearing the short red wig and the black silk sheath that night. It hadn't taken her very long to reel in the next John Whose Name Wasn't John. As they headed for the Boxter, he began to drag his heels. She turned to look at him.
"Is there something wrong, sugar?"
"Look, lady..." he said, his face coloring. "I thought I could go through with this,"
"What do you mean?" she asked, genuinely baffled.
"It's not you—!" he said with a nervous laugh. "God knows, you're one of the most beautiful woman I've ever met! It's just that—well, I keep thinking of my wife and the kids. And, well, I'm sure you're a great person and all that...but I just
cant
go through with this. I'm sorry if I led you on back at the bar."
Phaedra blinked and shifted around uncomfortably, uncertain of what she should do. She had never had a John throw the hook before. The one or two who had gotten away in the past had done so simply because someone who would have been able to give a description to the local authorities or remember a license plate number had walked up at an inopportune moment. But nothing like actual rejection had ever happened to her before. It had never once crossed her mind that a man might be capable of passing up sex. In her experience, given the chance, men fucked anything that was willing, and much that was not.
"I feel like I haven't been honest with you or myself. My name isn't John, it's Frank. Frank Hensley," he said, an abashed look on his face. "Believe me, I would love to spend the night with you..."
"Get in the car," she said.
"Beg pardon?" Frank blinked, uncertain he'd heard her correctly.
"
Get in the car, damn you!'
Frank's eyes widened at the sight of the gun aimed at his midsection. "Whoa, lady!" he said, automatically raising his hands. "Don't you think you're over-reacting?"
Bartenders, like cops, develop a sixth sense for trouble. And the chick in the leather jacket was definitely that. Over the years he learned never to trust anyone who wore sunglasses after the sun went down, since it usually meant they were strung out on something. Still, potential trouble or not, it was his job to serve her, just as he would any other customer who happened to stroll into the Embers Lounge.
"What'll it be, ma'am?"
"I don't want a drink, just information. Have you seen this woman?" she asked, pushing a snapshot wrapped in a twenty towards him.
"What's the deal?" he said, eyeing her suspiciously. "She owe you money or something?"
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) The woman in the sunglasses smiled crookedly without showing her teeth. "Far from it. In fact,
I'm
the one who owes
her.
I'm just trying to track her down so I can pay her back."
The bartender hesitated for a moment, but the twenty was too tempting to ignore. He picked up the photo and frowned at it for a moment.
"Yeah, I recognize her."
The stranger in the leather jacket and mirrored shades grew attentive. "When was the last time you saw her?"
"Just a few minutes ago." He nodded in the direction of the side door. "She just left with some suit."
To his surprise, the stranger bared her teeth in a snarl and headed in the direction he'd indicated as if the joint had suddenly caught fire. The bartender wasn't certain, but he could have sworn he'd seen fangs. He shook his head as he pocketed the twenty. Yeah, she was trouble all right. But not his, thank god.
"Shut up and get in the car!" Phaedra said, jerking open the passenger door.