The Vampire's Revenge (26 page)

“Thanks, guys,” I said. “I’m going to turn the floor over to Werm. He’s been planning how we should go about this and he’s going to tell you what he thinks we should do.”

Werm stepped forward and rubbed his hands together. “Jack covered most of it. We’re looking for skills, talent, and people who are misfits with no family.”

“However will you find such people?” Mole asked guilelessly.

Rufus laughed but Otis elbowed him in the ribs. “He’s not kidding, is he?” Rufus muttered.

“I think what Rufus means is that Werm’s nightclub, the Portal, attracts . . . unusual people.”

“Enough to have plenty of candidates to choose from, I expect,” Jerry said. “But here’s what I don’t understand. How are you going to approach them? You can’t rightly go up to any old nerd with a dog collar around his neck and say, Hey, man, you look like solid vampire material. Want to sign up? No offense, Werm.”

“None taken,” Werm said cheerily. “Here’s the thing. As the bartender, I get to know people. I know who’s dissatisfied with their human lives, who’s yearning for more out of their existence—a purpose, a mission.”

“Gee, Werm, now you’re making me wish
I
was a vampire,” Otis said, and the irregulars laughed. All of them except for Rennie. Maybe he was in pain again. Or maybe he just didn’t want to get involved. If so, I didn’t blame him one bit.

“It sounds like you’ve got candidates in mind already,” Connie observed.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Werm grinned. “And I also have an idea of how to conduct the competition.”

“Competition?” I asked, not liking the sound of that word in this context. “You didn’t say anything about a competition the other night.”

“My idea has kind of . . . evolved,” Werm explained.

“Please tell me you’re not planning to make a circus out of this.”

“No, not at all. But I am thinking it would make a great reality show.”

I waited for Werm to give some kind of sign that he was kidding. He didn’t. “What,” I asked, “are you talking about?”

“I propose we hold a kind of a contest where three or four people have to prove who’d be the best vampire.”

“Oh,
hell
no,” I said. I was tempted to go over and box Werm’s ears. “That’s the stupidest damn fool idea I’ve ever heard. For starters, people aren’t supposed to know vampires even exist, remember? What are we going to say to the losers? Thanks, but no thanks? Enjoy your lovely parting gifts and have a nice life?”

“Of course not,” Werm said. “You just use your glamour on the ones we don’t choose and wipe out their memory of the contest.”

“I can see it now,” Connie said, making a sweeping gesture with her hand.
“American Vampire!”

“You’re not helping,” I accused her.

“Hey, can I be a judge?” Jerry wanted to know.

“Me too!” Otis chimed in.

“Yes!” Werm said.

“No!” I thundered.

“I have no idea what you’re all on about,” Mole said.

“It’s so crazy it just might work,” Huey, of all people, said.

“Time out, dammit!” I said. “We’re not putting on an
American Vampire
pageant!” I pictured nerds on parade, complete with banners and tiaras.

“Why not?” Werm insisted. “Seriously, Jack, think about it. We can get them to demonstrate their skills or abilities that might help the team. Then we could quiz them about their family situation. And finally we could test them to see how hungry they are.”

“Hungry for blood?” Jerry asked, clearly irked, which he had some nerve being since he was a werewolf.

“No,” Werm said. “I mean hungry as in how much they
want
the life.”

“You mean the
death,
” I corrected. There was a world of difference in how Werm and I were thinking about this. I had chosen to be a blood drinker, yes, but I didn’t know what I was getting into. If I had known, I would have rather died on that battlefield. There were times throughout my existence when my hindsight wavered on this point, but losing Connie in the last couple of days had finally decided the matter for me. Not that my newfound certainty did me a damned bit of good at this late date.

Werm, on the other hand, had desperately wanted to become a blood drinker, although he didn’t know what he was letting himself in for either. Over and over I tried to tell him that he didn’t want to be a creature of the night like me. But he just couldn’t hear me. He was convinced that being a vampire meant never being pushed around again. But he discovered after it was too late that being a vampire just meant that the dudes kicking you around had longer and sharper teeth.

I think Werm had second-guessed himself plenty on whether he had made the right choice. Right now he seemed pretty chipper about it. I hope he didn’t have cause to change his mind.

Werm sighed. “Yes, I mean we have to make sure they want death.”

“That’s heavy,” Huey said solemnly, as if he wasn’t as dead as a doornail himself.

“Another big thing they’d have to understand,” I said, “is that the process of being made into a vampire isn’t particularly pleasant. And there’s a significant chance that the person might not make it. Remember what happened with Shari.”

“Of course,” Werm agreed. “We have to make that crystal clear. Speaking of Shari, and at the risk of sounding sexist, we can’t turn any women. The odds are stacked too strongly against their survival.”

I sighed. “What do you all think?”

Rennie finally spoke up. “I’m for it,” he said. To my surprise, the irregulars to a man nodded their agreement.

“Connie?” I asked.

She surprised me by saying, “Go for it.”

“Mole? You have a lot of experience, and you know a lot about vampire lore. What do you think?”

Mole cleared his throat. “I would trust few vampires with such a grave undertaking, if you’ll pardon the pun,” he said. “But I think that you and Werm are most capable of successfully turning a small number of good candidates and guiding them in a righteous direction.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but okay. Let’s do it.”

“Great!” Werm said, beaming so broadly his fangs glowed white. “You won’t regret it, Jack. Are you ready for my next idea?”

“I don’t know, am I?”

Werm ignored my sarcasm. “Just look around you at this place. Wouldn’t this make a great team headquarters? It’s got everything we need.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “It really does.”

“It’s like a clubhouse,” Jerry declared.

“Yeah, no girls allowed,” Otis said with a wink toward Connie.

“Hey,” she warned. “None of that sexist crap. Besides, I have a feeling I’m going to wind up the den mother around here.”

“Not to mention weapons instructor,” Werm enthused. “We’ve got plenty of room for martial arts training—”

“As if,” I said. I’d been trying to talk Werm into some kind of fighting lessons for months.

“I promise I’ll do it this time, Jack,” he vowed.

“What are we going to call this place?” Connie asked.

“Ideas, people!” Werm clapped his hands.

“Dorm of the Damned?” Rennie suggested.

“Hell Hotel?” Jerry said.

“We’re not looking for bad horror movie titles,” I said.

“How about the Nest?” Huey put in.

“Why ‘the Nest,’ Hugh-man?” I asked. Huey might be a few brain cells short of a full load, but his ideas always had a kind of tortured logic.

“Baby vampires are called fledglings, like little birds, am I right?” asked Huey, the avian expert. “And birds live in nests.”

“Huh, not bad,” I admitted.

“Hey, I like it!” Werm said.

“Me too, actually,” Connie added.

“It seems appropriate,” Mole said.

“And downright homey,” said Otis.

“All right,” I said. “The Nest it is. Werm, how soon do you think you could come up with some candidates for this vampire contest?” I could barely believe what I’d just said.

“No more than a week or so,” he said. “We can hold it onstage at the club. I can charge a cover!”

“Hey, wait a minute!” I said. “I’ve put glamour on a whole room full of people before, but what if somebody sneaks out and spreads the word?”

“You don’t get it, Jack,” Werm said. “The regular customers will think it’s a
pretend
vampire contest. It is a goth club, after all. They’ll think it’s just entertainment. They’ll never realize it’s dead serious.”

This was just getting farther and farther out. I could tell the whole idea really appealed to Werm’s theatricality. I had to wonder again if the boy was straight. “You’d better be damned sure that the contestants know it’s real,” I warned.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m going to take care of everything,” Werm said with confidence.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I muttered.

It was decided that Mole would move into the Nest immediately. He and Werm volunteered to pick out the furnishings and coffins and handle the decorating. If Werm’s taste in decorating the Portal was anything to go by, the place would wind up looking like the brothel it had been meant to be in the first place.

Connie excused herself to go back to her apartment. She had a lot of work to do to smoothe down Seth’s ruffled fur, or werewolf hackles, or whatever. I chose not to think about it anymore for one night. Either Seth would come around or he wouldn’t. He had Connie, so as far as I was concerned, he had a lot of nerve to complain about anything.

Werm went off to check on the bar and help Mole gather his meager belongings from his rented place on Tybee. The fair Sharona would just have to be content with a longer-distance relationship with her leathery beau.

When the irregulars and I got back to the garage, I went to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee. Rennie joined me while the other guys started up a card game.

“Uh, Jack, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, man. What’s up?”

“I know vampires are really strong and all,” he began hesitantly. “Let’s say something is wrong with somebody. Maybe he’s got a bum leg or he’s deaf or has webbed toes or whatever.”

“Yeah?” Remembering his earlier mood, something told me this wasn’t just a philosophical question, and I wondered where it was coming from.

“Well, if that person got turned into a vampire, would he be well again?”

“Hmm. I’ve never known any vampires with any physical problems like that. Except for maybe body odor.” I chuckled. Rennie didn’t crack so much as a grin, so I continued. “I guess it would depend on what was wrong with him. I mean, if he’s missing an arm I don’t know if he could grow it back or not.”

“What if he was just sick?” Rennie asked.

“In that case, I’d say he’d get well. That is, he’d be as well as you could be for a dead guy.”

“What if he had cancer?”

Startled, I looked hard at Rennie. His eyes were as rheumy and unreadable as ever behind his thick glasses, but I’d known him long enough to know that he was very, very serious.

“Rennie,” I began carefully. “You don’t have ulcers, do you?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“How sick are you?”

“I’ve got pancreatic cancer.”

The news struck me like a body blow. I hung onto the sink to steady myself. As shaken as I was, I couldn’t even imagine what it had been like for Rennie, living with this news. “How long have you known, Ren?”

“A couple of weeks now. I started the chemo a few days ago.”

Rennie didn’t have a wife or kids. In fact, he didn’t have any family at all that I knew of. I’d often wondered what he did with his time in the daylight hours. I hated to think of him hooked up to tubes, being pumped full of poison. I was struck again by how fragile and fleeting human lives are. Pancreatic cancer was the worst kind you could possibly have, the hardest to survive. I’d lost hundreds of human friends over the decades, including a lot of close ones. I’d cried buckets of tears over their loss, but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Rennie.

“Oh, man. I’m really sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

“Yeah,” Rennie said. “You can make me a vampire.”

Twenty-two

I was nearly too stunned to speak. “Are you sure? Rennie, this is a big step.”

“And dying isn’t? Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

If anybody besides the twins, Mel, and Renee knew the drill where being a vampire was concerned, it was Rennie. I wasn’t going to insult him by pointing out what it would be like to survive on blood, to never be able to go out in the sun. Hell, for all I knew he didn’t go out in sunlight anyway. He was at the garage from sunset to sunup. He had to sleep sometime.

Yes, Rennie had seen the life close up. He knew about all the trouble we’d been having lately with the bad vamps, the double-deads, vampire plagues, and all the other threats we still faced. He understood about William’s death and how a vampire’s second death is final. He knew he’d be giving up his soul. And he still wanted to play. How could I deny him?

I nodded my head slowly. “All right,” I said.

Rennie smiled. “I knew I could count on you, Jack.”

“Give me a few days to build up my strength and rest. I think that would give you a better chance of survival.” I squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll fix you right up, man.”

Rennie smiled and thanked me again, and we both went to join the card game. We sat down at the table as Huey was dealing a new hand. An argument between Rufus and Otis was in full swing.

“Get out,” Rufus said.

“I’m telling the truth,” insisted Otis. “I saw it once. It’s an island right between Tybee and Wassaw that only faeries can get to. Nobody else can even see it.”

“So what happens when boats come along? Do they run into this invisible island? Next thing you’re going to tell me is that it’s part of the Bermuda Triangle.”

“It’s a magic island,” Otis said. “Boats don’t bump into it.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Rufus said, scooping up his cards.

“Otis, what are you talking about?” I asked, my interest piqued.

“I was just telling the boys about this island I saw once, years ago.”

“How many years ago?”

“This was back when I came here the first time, right after the English colonized Georgia.”

“That’s a fer piece back all right,” Huey said.