The Vampire's Revenge (12 page)

I dressed quickly and took the stairs two at a time. My family was in the kitchen. Reyha and Deylaud were huddled together in their human form, making a keening sound that was between a human wail of grief and a dog’s mournful howl. It always made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Melaphia, afraid of what Dex would think, was trying to calm them down. Renee stoically stared out the window, waiting for William’s driver.

Dex came downstairs just as Mel had gotten the dogs under control. “What in heaven’s name was that racket?” he demanded. Who was he to demand anything in this house? I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling him what he and the horse he rode in on could do.

Dexter Culhane had always been the scholarly type as long as I’d known him. He was tall, thin, attractive, and smart. They said he could be charming when he wanted to. Around me he must never have wanted to.

Melaphia had fallen hard for him when she was a freshman and he was a junior at Savannah State University. William had offered to send her anywhere in the world she wanted to study, but she’d chosen the nearby university so she could live at home with us.

Despite Melaphia’s beauty, intellect, and charm, Dex treated her from day one like he was too good for her. I can’t imagine why. It wasn’t as if he knew William and I were vampires. His tidy worldview didn’t make allowances for blood drinkers. She still adored him. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess. When Mel got pregnant, William prevailed on the young man to marry her over the objections of his equally snooty family. His signature wasn’t dry on Renee’s birth certificate before he’d left Melaphia and gotten a quickie divorce.

He’d never had more than a cursory interest in his little girl until the last couple of days. I smelled a rat, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Besides, the more I thought about it, the more I actually wanted them to go. They’d been through hell in the last few months because they lived with monsters. If either of them became disembodied by the crisis we now faced, I’d never forgive myself.

The magic would start in a few hours, and I wanted them on a plane headed far away from Savannah as fast as it could fly.

When Dex saw me, he cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. In the old days I’d threatened to take him out back a time or two for the way he treated Melaphia, and judging from the panic in his eyes, he hadn’t forgotten.

“Hello, Jack,” he said.

“Dex, come with me a second.” I stepped forward and put an arm around his shoulder.

“Jack—” Mel warned.

“Relax. I’m just going to say good-bye, man to man.” I walked him out into the foyer where the luggage was stacked. “You know how important Melaphia and Renee’s happiness is to me, don’t you, Dex?”

“I remember,” Dex said. His glare spoke volumes.

“I figured you did. You take care of them now, you hear?” I released his shoulders with a pat that was half punch. It was a good thing Dex never dreamed how dangerous I
really
could be. That would have sent him running off screaming into the night.

I saw through the panes on each side of the front door that Chandler had pulled up in William’s limo. He had instructions to wait for the pagans’ plane and fetch them to the garage after he dropped off Melaphia’s family at their terminal.

I hugged Melaphia and kissed her cheek. “Be happy,” I whispered. She hugged me back and nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks, not able to say anything. It had all been said anyway, hadn’t it?

As Chandler began to move the luggage into the limo, I kneeled down beside Renee and she threw her skinny arms around my neck. “Good-bye, Uncle Jack. I’ll see you soon,” she said pointedly.

“Take care of them,” I said, holding her gently, reminding myself that leaving me was the best thing for her. “And remember your promise.”

The three of them walked to the car. Reyha and Deyland moved forward from where they’d been cowering, and I took each of them under one arm. As the doors closed, the twins clung to me and began to howl in earnest. Only once or twice in my existence had I heard that plaintive, primal sound coming from them in their human forms, and it always meant profound sorrow and loss. I walked them both upstairs, turned down Melaphia’s bed for them, and tucked them in.

They cradled a stuffed dog between their bodies. Renee had left it behind so that they’d have something with her scent to remember her by. “It’s just the three of us now,” Reyha said as I turned out the light.

“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine,” I said, wishing that I believed it.

As soon as Mel’s family had left, Olivia and I rushed to the tourist district where all hell was breaking loose. People who had been bumped out of their own bodies and into others were staggering around bewildered and incoherent.

Usually I don’t pick up on psychic vibes from live humans. But I could feel the human confusion and panic in the air like someone had overturned a fruit basket of souls.

It was a good thing it was Saint Patrick’s Day. The mass bewitchment came off as the result of excess alcohol consumption. By tomorrow we wouldn’t have the cover of the holiday, and then all this strange behavior would go from appearing natural to being completely weird and
un
natural. Then it would only be a short step from unnatural to supernatural, and the
real
panic in the human population would spread.

The main thing we vampires, shape shifters, faeries, and other denizens of the dark have going for us is the element of disbelief. Most humans don’t believe in us, so they tend to deny the little ways in which we can be recognized—the unnatural pallor of a blood drinker’s skin, and the way shape shifters disappear on the nights of the full moon.

Werm had made me for a vampire the night he failed to see my reflection as I carelessly towed a car in front of a store window. But free thinkers like him were few and far between. Most people would have written off that moment as a matter of poor eyesight or a trick of the street lamps.

Olivia and I had a couple of hours to kill before the Celtic gods were to arrive at the garage, so we walked along River Street looking for signs of real trouble. The Red Hat ladies who now found themselves stuck in the bodies of frat boys were bad enough, but the main threat still came from the double-deads who walked around in their new stolen bodies.

We’d made it about a block and a half when a tall, willowy woman stepped out from one of the stone-lined alleyways. She was a gorgeous redhead, well dressed and classy-looking. Tall and thin like Olivia, she sauntered toward us with an unmistakable twinkle in her eye.

“Olivia, darling, imagine meeting you here,” the woman said.

“Do I know you?” Olivia asked, approaching her.

“Why, it’s me, Algernon. Do you like my new look? I’ve often felt I was a man trapped in a woman’s body.” The woman’s body in question issued a maniacal high-pitched laugh.

“Alger!” Olivia began to run forward, her arms raised up to embrace the woman. I caught her arm and hauled her back toward me.

“Olivia,” I hissed, “This is not the Alger you know. Remember, he’s been to hell as a twice-killed vampire, and he’s evil now. He’s not the good, gentle sire that you knew and loved.”

“Don’t listen to him, my dear.” Algernon put his arms out and Olivia shook me off and went to him.

“Oh, Alger, I’ve missed you,” Olivia cried.

Ignoring me, Algernon said, “And I you, darling. But I’m back now, and we can be together as always, but I need your help to stay alive.”

“How? How can I help you?”

“A blood exchange. This body is not truly the body of a blood drinker. It’s weak. You simply must do me the honor and courtesy I did you some eighty-odd years ago and . . . turn me.”

“You can’t, Liv. This woman’s spirit is out there somewhere, and she needs her body back. If you turn it, what then?” Looking at Algernon now, I said, “And Alger has to go back to hell. There’s nothing we can do for him now. It’s too late. He is lost to you.”

Olivia wheeled and got in my face, and I could see up close the desperation in her eyes. “Are you saying that if it were William standing here instead of Algernon, you wouldn’t help him? You wouldn’t take whatever body he was in and make it into the body of a true vampire so that he could come back to you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Because it wouldn’t really be William. Alger has
changed,
and there’s no turning him back to what he was before. The Devil turned him into a demon. This isn’t the real Algernon and won’t be, even if you try to turn his new body.”

“Damn you, Jack!” Olivia hauled off to hit me, but I grabbed her arm before the blow could land.

A young guy passing by misinterpreted the situation and decided that I was mistreating Olivia. “Do you need any help, lady?” he asked with a challenging look toward me.

I looked into his eyes and laid some calming glamour on him. “Move along, junior,” I said, and he did.

When I returned my attention to Olivia, she was looking around wildly. “Where’d Alger go?”

In the moment of distraction, Algernon had fled. “Come on,” I said.

We searched the narrow park area between the street and the river, dodging drunks, partiers, and vehicles, but didn’t find him. We combed the dark places behind the row of buildings fronting River Street. The buildings had been warehouses and exchanges back when cotton was king in the south. The streets and alleys were paved with large stones that were brought over on sailing ships as ballast. The stones had been dumped out in favor of bales of cotton bound for the factories of England’s industrial revolution.

We scrambled up the steep stone steps that led from the back alleyways up to the Bay Street level. The street was lined with another strip of small parks. It was from one of these that we heard a scream. We followed the sound until we saw two figures struggling on the grass. Together we pulled Algernon off a young woman who was clutching at her own neck. “What kind of crazy attack lesbian are you?” she demanded.

I pinned Alger to the ground while Olivia checked the younger woman’s neck. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “Put some antiseptic on it.”

“What’s wrong with her?” the woman asked, brushing off her jeans. “And for that matter, what’s wrong with me? Why am I wearing someone else’s clothes?”

I pointed to the woman I had pinned to the ground. “She’s criminally insane. You’re just drunk.”

“I am not,” the girl insisted.

“Yes, you are. I know drunk when I see it.” I narrowed my eyes and used glamour to convince her.

“Okay,” she agreed. “I guess I am.”

“Run along now,” Olivia said. “Off with you.” The girl walked away meekly as I continued to struggle with Alger.

“What are we going to do with him?” Olivia asked.

“Let’s take him back to the garage. It’s almost time for the holy guys to arrive. We’ll use Alger as a test case. If the transformation works on him, it’s going to work on everybody.”

“What transformation?” Alger wanted to know.

Olivia ignored him. “Good idea.”

Olivia helped me get Alger back on his—or her—feet and we marched him toward William’s Escalade.

I peered into the hole Huey had dug behind the garage. Water from the spring he’d struck earlier had turned the whole thing into a giant mud puddle.

“Can’t you just feel the magic?” Olivia asked with a little shiver.

“Not so much,” I admitted. “What is it about this Benetton that’s supposed to help us out, anyway?”

“That’s
nemeton,
” Olivia corrected. “It’s usually a grove or glade. This is the first time I’ve felt one in a—a—”

“Mud puddle?” I supplied.

“Never mind, Jack. It’s impossible to explain to someone who’s not in tune with Celtic mysticism. You’ll just have to take my word for it. This is a holy . . . mud puddle.”

I was beginning to think that this whole scheme was just wishful thinking, but I hoped I was wrong. Algernon was tied to the nearby pine tree that had been Ginger’s perch until Eleanor had flown off in the bird body.

We’d assembled the whole garage gang plus Werm. Right now they were helping by standing around and swilling my beer—the same way they usually helped whenever their assistance was needed in a crisis.

“Where are the gods?” I asked Olivia.

“Close. I can feel them.”

Sure enough, in the next few minutes the limo glided down the street and pulled up beside the garage. Chandler got out and opened the door for two very unimpressive specimens of godhood, who looked at the rest of us like
we
were the weird ones. Chandler opened the trunk and set their bags on the curb.

“Shall I wait, Mr. McShane?” Chandler asked.

“Yeah, why don’t you stick around for a while.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll be in the vehicle.”

I figured if the conjuring didn’t work, I would have Chandler get the Celts back to the airport as soon as possible. There was no telling what kind of trouble two foreign deities could get into. I had enough to deal with already.

The taller of the gods looked at Olivia. “You the bird what sent for us, then?”

“That’s right,” Olivia said, shaking his hand. “You must be Bilé.”

“Yeah, but you can call me Billy. Everyone does,” said the Irish god of virility and whatnot. Lanky and sallow, dressed in a floppy raincoat, Doc Martens, and jeans rolled up at the hem, he didn’t look like a guy who’d have any special way with the ladies, but who knew what he was packing? His limp, sandy hair was combed into a poofy attempt at a pompadour. He actually looked like he could have been the bastard son of Brian Setzer.

“And I’m Gwyn,” said the short one. He was the Welsh god of something else I couldn’t remember, but he was the one who was supposed to put the bodies and souls back together. He had darker, greasier hair and wore a leather bomber jacket and motorcycle boots. I started to point out to these two that the punk scene had gone out in what—the eighties? But there stood Werm in his high-heeled boots with every spare inch of his visible flesh pierced to make a liar out of me.

Olivia shook Gwyn’s hand as well and introduced the rest of us. The two foreigners didn’t look any more impressed with us than I was with them. In fairness, though, I must admit the eclectic collection of vamps, shifters, faerie, and zombie was a fairly odd lot.