Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (50 page)

That meant it was political and possibly out of my league. But I did know a guy who might know a guy. Roger knew all the bigwigs in town, the annoying seedy little assholes who pretended to be royalty.

I reached for my cell phone before I remembered it was littering the street back in Void City. By my watch, I'd wasted forty minutes wandering around the parking lot. For once, I remembered the sun. I did not want to be caught hiding in the restrooms here if the pack managed to locate their buddies, and it was over an hour's drive back to Void City.

There were no keys in the truck and I've never learned how to hot-wire a vehicle. Unless I absolutely had to do it, I didn't relish the idea of breaking into one of the lake homes; too many windows, no basements. There had to be a gas station around here somewhere. I might be able to make it to a pay phone. Maybe Talbot could drive out here and pick me up before dawn. It wasn't a good plan, but it was the best I had.

I made it halfway up the mountain before I realized I'd make better time flying than I would on foot. Orchard Dam Road was a winding curving thing and the shortest distance between two points…I concentrated on what it was like to be a bat. To the observer, it's pretty quick, but to the vampire doing it, transforming into something that small is painful. It's like having cold-water shrinkage so bad your testicles retract, taking refuge in the pelvis.

Some vampires leave their clothes behind when they change. My daughter is one of them. I'm not. My clothes folded in with me as I sprouted leathery wings and launched skyward.

Bat radar gives me headaches, so I rely mostly on my bat vision. Bats have good eyesight at long distances, so it wasn't too bad. I felt very cold, though. A smaller body meant the cold went to my core faster, and even though it was a sultry summer evening at ground level, it's always colder in the air.

The trees stretched out below me as I flew, heading south to avoid crossing too close to Sable Oaks. County Road 58 was hard to miss, but every time I tried to cross it, something interfered with my senses, making everything hazy and wavering. I don't know if it was residual heat from the asphalt or what, but it was bad enough that I stuck to the forest edge.

A few miles down the road, I had a thought, and if I'd had a human throat, I'd have cursed. As it was, I made a little squeaky irate bat sound. Who the hell had unstaked me and where had he gone? How had he gotten far enough away to escape my notice in the time it took me to rip my way out of a sleeping bag? It didn't seem to make sense.

VAMPIRE
101

H
alfway through the lesson, I was having a hard time listening to Talbot. We were over in the Pollux Theater across from the club, alone. I loved every inch of its elaborately detailed elegance, from the real velvet of the curtains to the leather-covered seats to the sweeping balconies and carved balustrades.

There was no orchestra pit. I sat in the front row only a few feet from the wooden stage, a massive structure that appeared to be about three feet high, though I knew there was a whole basement underneath, still filled with props and pieces of scenery, and a little room where the pipe organ was stored when it wasn't onstage.

It wasn't that I didn't want to know how the whole vampire thing worked; it was more that I couldn't get a handle on Talbot and it was driving me crazy. I'm a focused girl. I set a goal for myself, a man I want or a dress or whatever, and I go out and do what it takes to get it.

Talbot was driving me nuts by refusing to do one simple thing. He was leaning casually against the stage in front of me, and I knew he must have had a good view from there, but no matter what I did, I could not get him to stare at my breasts. I'd never tried when I was alive because I didn't want to lead him on, but now that I was a vampire, it was like my brain had been restructured. My thoughts were still mine, I hadn't exactly stopped being me, but there was a predatory urge coloring everything.

I'd assumed it would be hard getting used to people as food, but it wasn't. The best way I can describe it is that it's like dreaming. You're in the center of a little make-believe universe. Everything around you is for your amusement, pleasure, or dismay. Nothing you do in a dream has any real consequences. For me, that was how being undead felt.

The red tones in the Pollux's velvet curtains were vibrant even though I knew there was a layer of dust covering them. The wind blew through the air ducts with a musical tone so distinct that I would recognize it anywhere. Talbot droned on, but his words weren't important. I watched his eyes, his skin, his pulse, and inhaled his scent.

Finally, he stopped trying to explain whatever it was he had been talking about, stalked up to my seat, and put his big hands right over my breasts. “If I stare at these will it make you pay attention to what I'm saying?” He jiggled them briefly as he spoke and then let go.

I was mortified. Had I really been that obvious? “Because,” he continued, “I could do that, but I want you to know right now that neither you nor any other human is of any interest to me in that way.”

So he was a pervert, a real pervert. I wondered what exactly he did like. Sheep? “Wait a minute,” I protested. “You were really excited back in the bedroom. That wasn't fake. I could smell it, not to mention the way you were poking me with that thing.”

Talbot laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh, more like he'd just heard a hilarious joke, but it felt mean anyway. I don't like to be laughed at. My fangs came out. It was only the third time, but it already felt natural. There was the same stretching jaw-popping feeling, but it was a good sort of hurt. I hissed at him, and he grinned crookedly at me. “Let's just say that it's a dominance thing. You were trying to get away and you couldn't. I like that. It's perfectly natural for one of my kind.”

“Are you a were-something?” I asked. It was hard to believe he wasn't human. Then again, it wasn't like I paid close attention to any of the guys here, other than Eric.

“No,” he answered. “Now listen; we aren't here to learn about me. We are here to learn about your new lifestyle. Your unlifestyle. You with me?”

I nodded. I knew that I could get him to tell me what he was eventually, or maybe get Eric to tell me. It was simply a matter of time.

“What,” asked Talbot, “is the last thing you remember?”

“You told me about the whole mirror thing, which I'd pretty much figured out. You said I should stay out of sunlight, which I already knew. You covered the garlic thing and holy symbols, blessed weapons, and not getting my heart or head ripped out, off, destroyed, or whatever. That pretty much covers what I heard. I don't remember what was last. It all ran together.”

“Okay,” Talbot said. He slipped back into lecture mode, and I tried to pay attention this time. “The number one thing to remember about being a vampire is that the biggest threat that you have is yourself. When you feed, try not to kill anyone. The best way to do that is to eat before you get too hungry. The more ravenous you are, the harder it will be for you to control yourself. If you don't want to act like you did earlier, when you were totally out of control, don't skip meals.

“If you do kill someone, then remove the head or the heart to keep them from rising as bloodsucking zombies. Eric calls them wampyres because he's read too much crap on the Internet, but they're just zombies.

“Don't get sloppy. When you kill a human, you have to dispose of the body or have it done for you. It costs twice as much if the city has to take care of it.”

“Costs more?”

“Void City is vampire owned and operated. The Council of High Magic makes them use guild mages for most disposal services, so they get a nice tidy kickback every month. It drives the prices up.

“What else? Oh, if one of your snacks comes back as a ghost, tell me or Eric about it. We'll get Magbidion to move them along. He's cheaper than a guild mage and he's pretty good at keeping under their radar. In addition, ghosts are less likely if you destroy the corpse completely. Don't get caught and don't leave any evidence behind.

“Eric does a piss-poor job of getting rid of bodies, which is one of the reasons that he likes to eat in and one of the reasons he keeps Magbidion around. Eric tends to eat a little bit from several different people and he tends to prefer his employees. You already know that, but what you don't know is that once you start feeding directly from the vein, it gets hard not to drink it all at once.

“Blood bags are good, if you don't mind it being cold or room temp. Eric usually feeds that way once or twice a week. Most vampires loathe cold blood. Eric doesn't and you don't seem to have that issue either, which puts you one up on a lot of them.

“You can even try animal blood. Eric can't drink it, his body rejects it rather violently, but most vampires can and some do so exclusively. If you choose to feed by killing people, Eric will be likely to make you leave sooner than he might otherwise. You may notice that he breaks his own rules. I wouldn't suggest pointing the double standard out to him. He already knows.

“For the first few months you may feel like you have to go to the bathroom. Don't. The phantom sensations will fade more quickly if you don't indulge them. Some vampires do continue those functions because it makes them feel more normal, but all that comes out is blood and it's better not to waste it that way. You may also have bouts of panic when you feel like you're suffocating. You don't have to breathe anymore, but your mind can and will play tricks on you. After all, you're used to breathing automatically and it can be disquieting once it sinks in that you only breathe when you consciously think about it.”

Feeling a little bit like I was back in high school, I raised my hand. “When do you get to the powers part?” I asked when he acknowledged me. “I mean, I know I still need to know all this other stuff, but I should be able to do cool stuff, too. What can I do?”

I don't know how to describe Talbot's look. He clearly disapproved, but there was something else in his eyes that made me feel there was more to it. “That kind of attitude can get you killed, but to answer your question: I don't know. Eric has a lot of powers, real Dracula-type stuff. He's a Vlad.”

“Vlad?”

“Vamps come in four flavors: Drones, Soldiers, Masters, and Vlads. They used to be called Serfs, Knights, Barons, and Kings.” He hopped up onto the stage, pacing back and forth along the very edge. “Remind you of anything?”

“Should it?”

“It should remind you of the feudal system. Vampire society is slow to change, but as time goes by the names get updated by the new recruits.”

“So Eric is like a king?”

“It's not literal. It's a classification of power levels. Vlads have all the powers in the book and tend to keep coming back no matter what you do to them, just like Dracula.”

I knew my Eric was special…and as the offspring of a King, I should be special, too. “So that makes me a Queen, right?”

“It has nothing to do with bloodline, and everything to do with personality, the strength of an individual's character. I've always thought of it as a supernatural Rorschach test.”

“Then what am I?”

“I don't know,” Talbot said, hopping off the stage and landing adroitly on his feet in front of me. “You'll find out, in time, through experimentation. Roger could tell you for sure. He's a Master.”

“A master of what?” I smirked.

“A Master vampire. Masters and Vlads can sense each other, tell who is who. Vlads can also announce themselves to other vampires, kind of like a psychic challenge, but it's rude, so even if you are a Vlad, you don't want to go around announcing yourself.”

“Can't Eric just tell me what I am when he gets back?”

“You'd think so,” Talbot said, “but a sire can't usually sense his offspring's power level.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. I didn't make the rules. What I know mostly comes from what I've observed with Eric. In some areas, I'm just as uninformed as he is. Thralls are a good example. I know very little about them other than that they are humans that serve vampires and that Eric refuses to make one or to allow his offspring to make them. For now, though, let's only worry about the basics.”

I looked him in the eye to show I was paying attention, but I think he took it the wrong way.

“Don't try to mesmerize me either. Vampires can't entrance c—my kind.”

“I wasn't,” I protested.

“No harm done, but be careful looking other vampires in the eyes unless you trust them. As Melville said, ‘The eyes are the gateway to the soul.' With vampires, he wasn't kidding.”

“So I can take over people's minds?” I giggled.

“You can,” Talbot replied, “but a human with strong will can resist you and a vampire with a stronger will than yours can take you over instead.”

I yawned. I didn't care about Talbot, didn't want to be with him, didn't need to know this stuff. I wanted Eric. I did try to listen as Talbot began to lecture on what he called “the second biggest threat to vampires,” but visions of Eric filled my mind. Despite what Talbot and Marilyn had told me, I had to see him. Even more so, I needed him to see me.

Marilyn had been right about my clothes feeling loose. After I'd been fed the cold blood and Talbot had left the bedroom, I had wound up borrowing clothes out of Amanda's trunk. Amanda was a charity case who'd overdosed on crack about a week before I'd moved in with Eric, and no one had ever come to claim her things.

She'd had this whole black leather temptress thing going on and she'd been frighteningly thin. I dug through her outfits and put together an ensemble I thought Eric would go for. It wasn't all that revealing, but it was what I call a highlighter outfit. What it didn't show, it highlighted and underlined. I was wearing it now. Since it was made for the stage, it came off in sections and I could barely wait to see which parts Eric would want to take off and which ones he would want to leave on. Kelly and Desiree had both assured me I looked sexy beyond belief. They had also helped me with my hair and makeup; I already missed mirrors.

Even the thought of Eric made me tremble in a way I hadn't been sure that I would be able to as an undead. I ached for him. He could say all of the terrible things he wanted about me and claim I was nothing more to him than a sex toy, but I knew the passion he showed when we were together, the way he needed me, the way he sometimes just held me close for hours.

If Eric didn't love me, then why was I the only one he took into his bed? Candice wanted him and I knew he wanted her, but he had never been with her. He was faithful. Sure, sometimes he would have me dress up as other women, now and then even call me by their names, but that was just his way of spicing up the bedroom.

All guys have fantasies, and Eric held none of them back from me. He trusted me with all of his darkest urges and most of them I was happy to fulfill, even if a few of them were a little nasty. Eric loved me, he had to love me, and what he'd said didn't matter.

“Anyone who says otherwise is a liar!”

It dawned on me that I had spoken that last sentence aloud. Color was slowly bleeding back into my vision, replacing the red tint that I hadn't even noticed until it started to fade. My fangs were out and as I looked down at my hands, I could see that my fingernails were longer than they had been. They were sharp and a little curved at the ends, like claws or talons. My skin had grown even paler than before, virtually a true white. Someone was growling. It was me. A rapid drumbeat pounded in my ears, throbbing.

Talbot clapped. “Well, now we know that you have claws, you can make your eyes glow red, and you haven't been listening to a word I've been saying unless you really do agree so vehemently about the third biggest threat to vampires.”

I nodded. “Yes…I mean, no, I wasn't listening.” As I calmed down, I noticed that I was standing up and that the pounding in my head was Talbot's heartbeat. My claws retracted into fingernails again. It felt much weirder than the fangs had, the physical equivalent of the sound fingernails make on a chalkboard. My vision returned to normal, too, although my skin tone didn't. Interesting. “I'm sorry, Talbot. It's just that I want to see him. I need him.”

“I know you do,” he said softly.

“He does love me,” I insisted.