All Hallows Page 20

  Maren groaned aloud. “How many times have you told that?”

  “Not enough to ride the comedy circuit, apparently. Yours are no better.”

  “So, you’re alive and eating again? What of Carmilla? That young woman who stumbled past is yours. And the wrestler?”

  “Wrestler? Oh, yes—they were walking together. I don’t have a tag, warden, but it is hunting season. Carmilla’s… you know how she is. Stayed in. She’s thin, but I can’t get her to… you said you saw a lich.”

  “I did. Mudmush. How many have you had?”

  “I’m not in your sisterhood. As I said, I don’t go for the kill—not often. The girl on stilts will live. I take the young adults when I can. Few know they’ve been bitten before they expire, and the marks fade within minutes.”

  “Which is the greater sin—to steal from the young or the elderly?”

  “The old want more years, but teenagers want to be older than they are. I fulfill that desire.”

  “How many?”

  “You’re incessant. Half a dozen will have a headache. One expired. An underlying condition, I’d say.”

  “One dead. Was it a law officer?”

  “Am I stupid? No.”

  “Then that makes two. Mudmush was slurping a male cop near at the bridge. There will be more.” Maren glanced around the corner. “It’s irresponsible to let her flop in plain view. The sequins made me think of a marlin when she landed in the cactus. Others will see a young woman hurt.”

  “Had you not blocked my way and bound my hide, I’d have already been at her elbow to help her home.”

  “And the wrestler?”

  “What were my options? His intentions weren’t noble. I should have killed him outright. He’ll awake sore and short of memory. He’d been drinking. As to letting the girl go free… what would you have me do? Tie her? Cage her? Gag her? Scramble her brain with fear?”

  “The pact says that—”

  “—Nobody follows the pact. Rules are for the young and foolish. I no longer kill indiscriminately. I could, but the stress of death alters the taste of… you know this. Your questions make me address you like an idiot.”

  “I fear I may have become one. Fond, if nothing else. I remember the old ways with more romance than they deserve: the striking bite, the slice across the jugular. Your kind used to finish in minutes before scampering like rats.”

  “And how many of my kind remain? Don’t count the recently turned. Your ‘old ways’ make for bad optics in an era of dashboard video, distant satellites, and a camera in every pocket,” Slager said.

  “You don’t want alarms raised, but drunkards falling in ten different directions will get that for you. It’s as bad as that junkyard of bones drinking the police.”

  Slager waved a hand. “Mudmush is just… tonight is a festival. A girl, walking alone, shoes in her hand, a fish-scale gown… anyone who saw her stumble will assume a shot of cream liqueur put her down. Maybe she popped a designer drug the middle classes love to fear.”

  “And when someone sees her? Tries to help her?”

  “Who would? What if they do? I said it before: you interrupted me. If someone steps outside, they’ll get a stumble in their walk, too.”

  “I saw no blood. You said no deaths, save one. And yet you have had six.”

  “Seven, counting that bird in the bush.”

  “Cactus.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’ve been busy for an age, Slager. I’m missing the newer trends. How are you doing it? I’d have wagered to see a torrent of red and a body at your feet—especially with the plethora of gory disguises.”

  Slager adjusted his scarf. “Let us rewind. Pretend you are not in the picture. A healthy young woman is injected with a measured dose. She walks away, quick and whole, albeit confused. She sweats, her blood moves; a great fever clouds her mind. The punctures seal before she falls.”

  “When did you discover this?”

  “That’s the thing, Maren. It was your recommendation. You suggested testing. It was the London symposium of… I can’t recall the year. The slayers were thick, and you made the point that the dead do not heal.”

  “I said… well, that’s not always the case,” Maren was obliged to add, thinking of Mudmush.

  “I’m talking humans here. If I make a corpse, a bite won’t escape the forensics of this era. And so the girl lives, and heals without, and burns within, walking as the venom works—a cute little mouse on unsteady feet.”

  “You let them walk until they fall?”

  “If they want. Some never move. Protein chains break down and realign, clumping and congregating in the neck, clotting above the hyoid. Seeing distress, I rush to help—I kneel, delivering the usual measures to ensure her safety. I take the clot, she sleeps, and none’s the wiser.”

  “The clot. What’s that like?”

  “Like you: soft but firm. A ball of cooked tapioca. If I don’t eat it right away, it would dry to a grain of sand.”

  Maren tried not to look worried. If Slager could store his kills, a fantastic amount of power could be carried in a tobacco pouch. “Sounds unfulfilling,” she managed to say.

  “Too light for you?” Slager asked, his voice a rich, rhetorical baritone. “When I’m hungry, I eat a steak. Wagyu strip loin, if I want to splurge.”

  “And those bitten are anguished throughout?”

  “Naturally. Such is life. The dreams are the worst of the side effects—that and the lost years—but then, who hasn’t had a nightmare?”

  “They don’t turn?”

  “I would make a poor father, Maren. I can’t even get Carmilla to drink as much she… no.”

  “You can take this… clot… even while observed?”

  “Absolutely. Before the heart enters arrest, the afflicted has the antidote and I have my reward, collected like a Moroccan delicacy, my fingers deep in their throats. The prize is delivered by the body’s own defenses.”

  “Fascinating. Do they keep? The dried pearls?”

  Slager made a face that suggested he hadn’t thought to try. “Why bother? They reproduce like… you’ve seen the statistics. Fresh is best—and their lives are a finger dragged through water. I take a small portion of their essence metabolized from… it is not their soul, and yet is equally irreplaceable. I am neat. Sure. Careful.”

  “Arrogant.”

  “I have withstood your inquisition. You claim I am arrogant—unlike your high coven? The government of the ungovernable? May they remain as selfless as you, dear Maren. After a few hundred years in office, it could be tempting to become entitled, incumbent, aloof… ambitious. Though surely not so arrogant as I, who neither ask nor answer anything.”

  “We all answer to someone.”

  “None more blindly than your precious sisters. I won’t explain myself further, for I am as I was created—though I’ve made myself. This is our night. I’m easily within the collective agreement.”

  “Speaking of agreements… who set this bounty?”

  “Sorry. I promised. Hmm. I can’t say the name, but I recall no mention of hints. I will give you just one: she is that rare woman who could rival you in your youth.” Passive magic rolled through the alley, charming and warm as a tropical wind.

  Maren blushed—she had forgotten Slager could be so… persuasive. Her loins grumbled with more than fiber for the first time in recent memory.

  “You flatter me, Slager. This is how I like to remember you—first among gentlemen. So it was a woman. But not Mary. Another sister, then?”

  “I can’t say, but no.”

  “Couldn’t you have bitten her, just for me? You go for anything in high heels.”

  “I do not. The dark world sees. It speaks. It knows. You have taken this refusal to feed too far: I smell the weakness in you; the damage of age. If not to your abilities, then—well, look at you. I, too, have starved myself of pleasures before, but… Maren: life is found in life.”

  “It can be rationed.”


  “But not refused forever. You can’t survive without your gift. I have posed as a mortal with some tricks in his sleeves—but I don’t like to. What is life without diversion? What I receive, Maren is… you have altered yourself a thousand times before with nature’s bounty. You know the pull. What I get is that and more: it’s a drug past all else—it is power, organic and raw.”

  “Keeps you out and about, though. Puts you in the papers.”

  “Maybe—but I don’t need a cauldron to cook a spell. The forces I work with…that’s real magic,” Slager said, his eyes feral, his body lean and muscular, healthy and manicured to perfection. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

  “You’re a junkie,” Maren summarized.

  Slager bared his teeth. “It is a word. My power is not constant—not if I refuse to feed—but you can’t imagine what hell I could unleash if properly… motivated. Yes, I pay for my strengths. I have my frailties. I tell you nothing you don’t already know.”

  “We all have our problems,” Maren acknowledged. She frowned and glanced in the direction of the police cruiser, remembering the face of the officer, of the necrolich sliding his mass over the dead officer. “You are not being forthright. Mudmush was skulking, and the officer was… that was you.”

  “I said one died. Blame fried foods and cigarettes.”

  Maren cleared her throat, her fingers tattooing against the zipper of her bowling case. “You said you weren’t stupid, either. Was it Banfield?”

  “Banfield? Who knows? I barely know which province we’re in—is this town so dear to you?”

  “Not the town. The man. Copeland Banfield. A detective. It didn’t look like him, but the light was poor, and faces change after—” Maren found her fingers entering the bag despite her commands.

  Mudmush was one thing. Slager was another—he had fed, recently. He would be quick, brutal, and strong as a god. But if he had lied to her once…

  “Get out of your bag. Don’t forget your scars. Those marks on your wrist are the result of a joust with a creature less capable than I.”

  “That’s very debatable.”

  Slager ran a hand across his square jaw, straightening the beginnings of a moustache. “Never challenge what you can’t kill. You’d have no scar to remember me by… only the air where your arm once was. You have bound our lives, not our limbs.”

  “If you’ve killed a friend of mine—” Maren said, gritting her teeth, pulling back on an arm that numbly refused to stopped scratching in her purse; it sought something—anything—sufficiently potent to attack or defend against a vampire of Slager’s unmatched heritage.

  “Be still, Maren. Be the maiden I once met; the girl in wooden shoes. It takes me a while to remember. You were hendly then, and unafraid, and so strikingly beautiful I spared your life. Do not make my mercy a folly. I correct such mistakes.”

  “Why did you kill Banfield?”

  “Her name didn’t match this man of whom you speak.”

  “Her?”

  “The police officer. Female, though you could hide a sack of onions in those uniforms. Brunette, straight hair tied back like yours, although more… completely. She had a name of the Spaniards pinned to her chest. Mazoverde? Nizario? Sentenza? There was a ‘Z’ in there. I seldom read the labels on food.”

  “And her partner?”

  “He heard something go bump in the night. Wasn’t named Bancroft. I don’t have to remember his name to remember what it wasn’t. If his flashlight earned a bite, he’ll still be sitting in his car. He won’t find her. Nobody will.”

  “Mudmush found him, is my issue. If you are sure on the name, it is of less consequence. Everyone has to eat.”

  “You think me intemperate. I hadn’t glutted for ages—not until this attempt at assassination. It took a lot out of me—and I mean that literally. Carmilla spent days stitching on my neck. Feasting won’t grow a conscience, but it can rebuild a nicked valve, most of a liver and lung, and it has reseated my head where it belongs.”

  “Who came for you? Specifically?”

  “Nothing but mortals, though the son of… that is a conversation for another time. I say this for now: feed, Maren. The war that we thought won… if it’s not back with a roar, it’s simmering. I am not certain our kind will end on top, should it boil.”

  “Some will survive. They always do.”

  “Of course. But which tier? The strongest—you, me, others—we will be singled-out and sought by name. The weak and stupid will end as they always do, screaming on a bier. There will be some that crawl into a foul den and believe they can become powerful by waiting, incapable of realizing that nothing comes of nothing. It’ll be just like old times.” Slager smiled, and Maren felt the draw of his magic—her spoons had long since left her with blisters.

  “If a war is brewing, I have missed it. I have been at my studies. A final question.”

  “Dinner’s waiting.”

  “Pretending you could kill me, could you take the gift—this… tapioca—from me? Sisters are missing.”

  The vampire raised a finger to his full lips, the movement a blur. His long coat flapped like charcoal wings. Slager chewed carefully around the nail with calm deliberation. “Pretending?” He bit the skin, his teeth as white as Maren’s were orange.

  “I won’t ask again,” Maren countered.

  Slager tore the cuticle in a perfect slice, and he waited until Maren exhaled as though she’d been punched in the belly button; she removed the hand from her purse at his glance.

  “I can kill witches, but what is my motive? Our diets do not overlap. And to feed on one? I wouldn’t want to know the result. Your kind is female to the eye—but the taste.” Slager made a sour face. “My senses are highly refined. Old as you look, your face betrays not the hundredth part of your true age.”

  “Your diplomacy is that of a lawyer into his second bottle of spirits. The tailored clothes remain, but they do not conceal the lack of control. If you have killed sisters before, you will kill again.”

  “Yes—now find the profit in it. You won’t stop until I tell you, so know this: I’ve had both blood and essence of witch, but there is a concentration of power in your kind that—” Slager must have known his eyes were beginning to surge with a hypnotic violence; he dabbed at them with a silk handkerchief.

  “That sounds like it would be tempting to someone with a heart murmur and a severed head.”

  “At what cost? I’ll be more easily repaired with humans. It’s safer that way, and I prefer the nubile—the unmarred and unmarried. Witches taste like spoiled meat, whatever the reward. You sisters are neither chaste nor young, though some must start that way.”

  “And that strumpet eating a spiny lawn? She looks spoiled to me. I wager she has a trust fund.”

  “Spoiled in one way. She is young, however, and human, and—how does their book go? She doesn’t know what she does. The sisters do. Those I respect enough not to slaughter on sight, that is.”

  “I do like a life examined,” Maren said. “The hour deepens, and I’d forgotten your meal. I appreciate the audience, though I have fewer answers than I would have liked.”

  “But you seek them. I do the same. It is not common among our kind, and as to the humans…” Slager moved his manicured finger. “They march to their deaths walking on unquestioning faith. Then again, how many among our kind speak of forever—right to the day they are quartered and burned? You and I know our existence for what it is: a longer mortality. It is nothing more.”

  “We tally on that,” Maren said. “Speaking of mortality, you have my word of silence—but that doesn’t mean others won’t learn of your location.”

  “A new address will be my priority. I won’t owe you for this. Not with the binding you’ve set.”

  “Am I asking payment? If you want terms, I want this: swear you will always face me. If we must someday lock in combat, I’d like to do it with honor. And if a war is in the wind, let’s reconvene. If we determine we’re be
ing used—again—let’s fight with our backs touching.”

  Something Maren said wiped the remnants of Slager’s smile from his sensuous mouth; the stubbled dimples disappeared. “There’s another… we should speak plainly.”

  “Finally felt it? You’re being played. Or I am. Or we both are. One coincidence has piled upon another. I ask that we not kill each other—and let us here include our favorites: your sister, my Uriah—without an effort to find whoever is pushing us like pawns.”

  “As to that, we have an unfinished game.”

  “What, chess? You have my leading chariot, but I’ve snatched your wazīr. Queen. Whatever.”

  “You only took… you wouldn’t let me castle or move more than a square per turn.”

  “We agreed to forgo gambits and the newer rules until we’d finished our board. We already ditched the Gupta restrictions. The Persians made a longer game of it, I’ll grant you that. The pieces have lost their beauty, too.”

  “You’ve put hundreds of years between moves,” Slager noted. “You think that will go to your advantage.”

  “It will,” Maren said. “Have you seen the timed games? Dreadful. The participants must fear they’ll die before they can finish. But we’re more confident than that, are we not?”

  “We are. Bring your colored board the next time we meet. I remember the locations.”

  “So do I. There will be no accidental nudging. You tried that in Nahavand while I was sampling the shiraz.”

  “As you say. Until then, Maren.” Slager ran long fingers through longer hair. “I don’t like to be a pawn by any name. Have you deciphered any of the movers?”

  “Not the ones I’d want to put in check. I thought you might be behind this unease. Even Mudmush, though he didn’t come to mind until he came into view.”

  “We on the ground are Padàti, as I said.” Slager rubbed at his trimmed cuticle. “Maybe it is time for another war. There are a multitude of suspects. I would tell you one, but I can’t.”

  “The woman of the bounty? Her identity will be revealed by care and patience. I have had three encounters today, and none of us are dead. Four, if I count a chupacabra.”