Immortal (6 page)

“Go ahead,” I said. “That’ll be fun.”

A car slowed for her. She gave the driver a little show, leaning over and shaking her fairly impressive pale breasts. He decided after some consideration to shop elsewhere.

“When was it, twenty years ago?” I asked. “Couldn’t have been much more than that.”

She turned and looked at me long and hard. Not threatening, just curious. “Twenty-seven,” she admitted.

“Thought so.”

“You’re not one, are you?”

“Nope.”

She circled me. I think she was trying to be intimidating, and if I found vampires frightening, she might have succeeded. But the truth is the percentage of vampires that are also evil killers is about the same as the percentage of normal people who are also evil killers. Brenda didn’t look like a killer; she looked like a mall rat.

“You smell like vomit,” she said, her nose crinkling.

“It’s the coat. It’s a loaner.”

“How did you know I was a vamp?”

“Maybe you noticed how everyone else is dressed in layers? The Guns ‘N Roses concert shirt doesn’t help either.”

“I like it,” she insisted.

“It’s very fetching. But the band broke up a long time ago. You haven’t learned how to keep up with the times is my point. But you’re young. That always takes a while.”

Brenda stopped circling and met me face to face. “And how would you know?”

“I know a lot of vampires. And I’m older than I look.” I extended my hand. “I’m Apollo,” I said, giving her the name she was most likely to have heard.

“No way!” she exclaimed. “The one-who-walks-by-day?” She grabbed my hand and squeezed, just a bit too hard.

“Oww,” I said.

“Sorry. My strength, it’s . . .”

“I know. It’s something to get used to, isn’t it?”

I’m something of a legend within the vampire community, if you hadn’t already guessed. I’m most often described as another vampire but without a sun weakness. I gave up trying to correct the misapprehension about three centuries ago. The name Apollo—Greek god of the sun—was given to me by a vampire named Magnus in the eleventh century. It certainly wasn’t because of my stellar physique.

“Wow, I can
not
believe I’m talking to Apollo!” she gushed. “The one who made me told me
all
about you! You’re like, a legend!”

“This is a treat for me too, really,” I said. “Look, I have to pick up something from the train station, but I was wondering if I could ask a favor.”

“Anything!”

“Great. Because I need a place to crash.”

“O-okay. It’s not much . . .” She was already reassessing her opinion of me. That was fast. One of the drawbacks of being a legendary figure is that inevitably the legend outstrips reality. She probably thought I had magical powers and could leap tall buildings in a single bound.

“Brenda, I guarantee I’ve seen worse. I only need a place to stay for a night or two, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Sure, but . . . it’s just that I haven’t eaten yet . . .”

“Right. Tell you what, if you can’t snag a quick bite while I’m gone, you can nibble on me. We’ll call it my rent for the night.”

She brightened, provided that’s possible for the undead.

“You’d let me do that?”

“Sure. Just don’t go nuts or anything.”

“It’s a deal!”

“Great. I’ll be right back.”

I left her to her street corner and made my way to South Station, where I hoped my bag was where I left it.

As I found out later, around the same time Brenda and I were negotiating the rent for a night’s stay, something unpleasant showed up at Gary and Nate’s. Something that was looking for me.

*
 
*
 
*

Brenda lived in Chinatown, a short three blocks from the corner she was working. It was a second floor apartment above a restaurant that specialized in something called “hot pot,” which I later discovered means “come boil your own dinner.”

The word “apartment” needed translating, too. It was one room plus a toilet that had evidently been installed in a closet, with a bucket and a sponge instead of a tub. I wasn’t getting that shower. I might have credited Brenda with being far enough along to realize she didn’t actually need to sleep in a coffin except that the place was so small it nearly qualified as one.

It did have a bed, though. Clean sheets, too. This made some bit of sense, especially if Brenda brought any clients to the place. Vampires have an acute sense of everything, but their sense of smell is particularly exceptional. I imagined she washed her sheets after every appointment, probably at the all-night laundromat around the corner.

She shut the hallway door, cutting us off from the dangling bare bulb out there and plunging the room into total and complete darkness. (The windows were heavily shuttered, for obvious reasons.)

“I told you it wasn’t much,” she apologized, moving freely in the dark.

“Brenda, I can’t see anything.”

“Oh, sorry. I figured you could see like me.” A flame sputtered to life in her hands, which she marched over to a candle resting on the windowsill. “I don’t pay for electricity,” she explained. “No phone either.”

“That’s okay.”

“Boy, you’re really a lot like them, aren’t you?” she observed.

“Like who?”

“Humans. You’ve . . . ass . . . what’s the word I want?”

“Assimilated?”

“Maybe, yeah.” She sat down on the bed. “No strength, no eyes . . . and hey, your heart is still beating.” Good hearing being one of the aforementioned heightened senses.

I sat next to her. “I’m not a vampire. The truth is, nobody knows what I am, exactly. I sure don’t.”

“Wild,” she said, with about as much sincerity as one can say that particular word. “So, you don’t drink blood or anything?”

“Nope. I eat rare steak from time to time.” I polished off the last of the vodka and started to roll up my sleeve. “I assume you’re still hungry.”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah. But, you know, only if you want to.”

A point about vampires. They can and do have sex. I’ve tried it. It’s not bad. A little cold, a little dry . . . it’s kind of like screwing a very lively statue. Usually the vampire is doing you a favor because they’re not particularly turned on by intercourse, although that’s not always true with the younger ones. Drinking blood, however, is an orgasmic experience nearly every time, hence her enthusiasm. Yeah, she had to eat, but there was more involved. In a lot of ways it’s more fun watching them eat than having sex with them.

“A deal is a deal,” I said, extending my arm. “I assume you know how to stop yourself.”

“Oh sure. Haven’t lost a John yet.”

“How’s that work?” I asked. “Do you wait until after they’re done, or during?”

“During, usually. That way we’re both having our fun.”

“And they don’t mind?”

“Nobody’s complained yet. And when I do it well, they don’t even notice.” I found it hard to imagine not noticing one is being bitten, but that’s me.

She held my wrist lovingly.

“Cheers,” I said.

With a grin, she bared her fangs and dug in. It only stung for a second. Then the two of us leaned back slowly onto the bed, Brenda in a blind frenzy of rapture and me watching her. Lying there, it occurred to me how
 

Viktor is getting more talkative each day. He really isn’t a bad guy, despite all the poking and prodding. I assumed I’d be dealing with your basic mad scientist type—if there is such a thing—purely based on what he’s trying to accomplish. But he’s hardly mad at all, just a little loopy. Everybody on his team is friendly, actually, and comes in varying shades of loopiness. Best of all, they let me hang out in the lab even when my part is done. Which is great, because these guys are all very talkative.

   
Today Viktor rambled on at length about my telomeres and how they don’t get any smaller. He feels this is very important, but unfortunately I can’t figure out why; the phrase
in layman’s terms
apparently doesn’t mean anything to him. I just nod and let him talk, hoping something of use will come out of it.

He’s obviously hoping I pick up on some of his excitement. I think that would make this easier for all of them, knowing I was happy to donate my freedom to the cause. And because every time I smile about something they start talking more, I’ve learned to accommodate them. If I’m lucky, soon they’ll start talking about the others.

*
 
*
 
*

I met Eloise in the winter of 1356 in France, while I was working in the castle of Enguerrand de Coucy in Picardy, the northern region near the border of the Holy Roman Empire. Picardy was almost perpetually snowbound, and the castle was 200 years old already at that time, so the damn place was as drafty as hell, but it did have a few things going for it. Foremost, it wasn’t Paris.

I have developed likes and dislikes regarding major cities over time, and one thing I’ve learned is you have to pick your spots. For example, Caesar’s Rome was a fine place to be, as was Aristotle’s Athens. But Paris and London up until the World Wars were almost completely intolerable, as was early New York and early Berlin. Basically, Paris in 1346 was one gigantic smelly sewer, which made some sense, as neither the flush toilet nor deodorant had been invented yet. And the plague only compounded the problem. Nobody knew quite what to do with plague victims, so they usually lay where they dropped and just added to the overall bouquet.

Altogether, I was pretty happy in my drafty old castle on a hill overlooking nothing in particular. It was quiet, not nearly as smelly, and the plague rarely made it to us. (Not that I personally had to worry about it, but stinky dead people are stinky dead people and I’d just as soon rather not have to deal with them.)

Strictly speaking, I was a servant. I don’t like to put it that way because Lord Coucy was a generous man who treated most people he met with a reasonable degree of respect, so I never felt much like one. And my singular talent, the one that got me the room in the castle instead of the hay loft in the stable, was that I was literate. Coucy could read and write as well as the next man but nobody else in the place could, which made me, simple peasant that I was, extremely valuable, especially when he was away.

And he was away all the time. This period was later known as the Hundred Years’ War on account of France and England kept fighting each other over French sovereignty. (Or something. They just didn’t like each other. Still don’t.) While he was off fighting various noble battles—which France invariably lost—I kept up correspondences and maintained the books, looked after Mme. Coucy, and basically hit on the staff whenever I could.

The castle was built on the peak of a hill, with thirty-foot walls that made three quarters of the keep virtually impregnable to everything except the march of time. The fourth side was open to a small village, itself surrounded by a low wall, with gates at the far end that were lightly guarded on most occasions and not at all in times of war. One might be led to believe the opposite, except that nobody bothered to attack us during war. Most of the battles took place in Southern France, in places like Poitiers and Crecy. There were no guards because all able noblemen went to battle. I was an able man but I was not noble. I wasn’t even French. I claimed to be a Jew from Venice. (I did not look particularly Jewish, per se, but nobody in Picardy had ever seen one so I got away with it. Intolerance reared its head on occasion, but I had the protection of the lord of the castle, so I stayed pretty well out of trouble.) What noblemen remained were advanced in age and had already seen too many battles in their lifetimes, so busied themselves with maintaining order in the Coucy-le-Chateau in the lord’s absence.

One such man was an old codger named Lord Francois Etienne de Harsigny, who for some reason, liked to be called Lance. Lance was fifty-two and should not have been alive. He only had one foot and one eye, suffered from gout, and always smelled of gangrene and poppies. The foot he lost in the Battle of Crecy. I don’t know when he lost the eye, but I suspect its absence was indirectly what caused the loss of his foot. To compensate—for the foot at least—he would strap the boot from his armor onto the stump. It didn’t do him a damn bit of good when he walked but it helped when he rode. Harsigny served as castle regent in 1356 while Lord Coucy was yet again away to battle.

On one disturbingly cold winter’s morn, Lord Harsigny bade my presence in the main hall for a matter of grave importance. The hall was where the lord of the castle served as de facto judge and jury for local disputes among the peasantry. When I arrived, I found a local smithy weeping over the body of his wife.

“Lord Venice,” Harsigny called when I entered. He called me Lord Venice in public out of respect, for I had no actual title. Serge was my common name at the time. “Attend.”

I went straight to the smithy, a pleasant man named Albert with whom I’d had many dealings in the past. Albert was a tanner. He made an excellent leather waistcoat, one of which I was wearing. “Albert,” I asked, “what has happened?”

He looked up at me, mute with grief, and lifted the cloak from his wife’s body. Something had torn her throat out.