Fugue, page 111
There are a lot of things I don’t like about being a parent. Most of the time, they are things for which I lack any talent. Fortunately, this one involved the question of whether or not to murder someone. This is entirely in my wheelhouse.
Yeah, I’m probably going to give her what she wants. I’m borderline on spoiling her. But either I’m going to be reasonably certain she can cope with what she’s asked for, or it’s going to be out of stock. “Sorry. We’re fresh out of psychic priests. The last one turned into a rapidly-expanding cloud of ash.”
I don’t want to deny her, but I want even more for her to be safe. It’s a pickle.
After a careful check of the party venue, I walked into a mirror and out through a doorway. I stepped through into the gentlemen’s bathroom and immediately turned around to exit. I didn’t want anyone to walk in and notice the bathroom mirror.
I wore a typical tuxedo, aside from a few dark places on the inside. The rest of my appearance I adjusted, mostly to confuse Alden. My midnight-black hair turned to silver while I added quite a few wrinkles around the eyes. My hands and throat had a distinct crepe-paper effect to them. I think I looked a very healthy sixty, which would let me blend in at the party. My hope was no one would pay me any attention.
I circulated, meeting all sorts of people. I was a professional investor, long retired from the larger concerns of running an electronics firm. I met the mayor, the comptroller, the public advocate, eleven councilmen, six judges, two district attorneys, the Manhattan Borough president, three rabbis, two bishops, the New York archbishop, and possibly a cardinal in a pear tree.
I also met two other “wealthy investor” types, both apparently in their thirties or forties. I smiled and pretended not to notice anything out of the ordinary.
They were vampires.
I’ve seen many different types of vampires. The most obvious, of course, were the ones used by the Boojum as feeding points. Those were black inside, empty shells of nothingness and hunger.
Mary’s original type was decidedly different. Her species has bright, sharp lines where a human would have a nervous system, while her circulatory system is a network of blackness, hungering, as all vampires do, for blood. It diminished after she fed, of course, becoming less obvious, but it never looked remotely human to me. Her vital force was not a churning cloud, as in a human, but a static thing, a glow of power that waxed and waned with how recently she had fed.
As for me, my own inner lights are similar to a human’s, at least in structure. During the day, I was pretty sure I had a reasonably normal aura and internal lighting. At night, the structure didn’t change, but the chromatic nature did. The colors were reversed, like a film negative. Bright was dark and dark was bright, if only by contrast.
I’ve seen plenty of other types of vampire. For example, there are living creatures, presumably mutants or infected humans, who live a short time with an extremely high metabolism. They’re not supernatural, merely hungry. Their auras are a lot like a human’s, only brighter and more easily depleted. And so many others.
The local vampires were, as far as I could tell, similar to a type I’d seen a few times in various other worlds. I never bothered them, so I didn’t know much about them, but I recognized what they were. I’d never investigated what sort of powers this type might have. Their auras, for lack of a better word, were monochrome rather than colored, making them hard to read. While mine might be a film negative, it was still color film. Theirs were like looking at a rainbow in an old silent film. The auras were bright, though, implying a certain level of power. I didn’t seem them reaching out with tendrils, not even to steal little bits of energy from the guests or staff, but perhaps they were already satiated.
Satiated vampires. Best not to dwell on that thought for long.
I also couldn’t tell if they noticed my own peculiarities. They didn’t try to touch me with any powers, but I don’t know what sort of sensory abilities they might possess. Neither of them gave anything away in their expression. We’re vampires. Our faces must learn to lie if we are to survive.
Alden, dressed in basic black and wearing an ecclesiastical collar I felt certain he was not entitled to wear, bore a champagne glass in his left hand as he gracefully lifted a toothpicked hors d'oeuvre from a passing waiter. He smiled at me as I approached. Somehow, I doubted he would make a good priest. Left to think for themselves, too many of the congregation would be busy thinking about breaking one or two of the Commandments while being lectured on the others.
“Interesting to see you here,” he remarked, smiling and not at all amused.
“One might be as interested to see you here,” I returned. “Shall we stroll and take in the magnificent view?”
“Let’s. I see you’ve changed your hair.”
“Or let it revert after someone stole my hair dye.”
“How old do you normally look?”
“Is this a way of asking my age?”
“Perhaps.”
“How old are you?” I inquired.
“I asked first.”
“Indirectly. I posed a more direct question.”
“Thirty-five,” he told me, passing with me through the doors out onto the rooftop patio garden.
“You’ll forgive me if I fail to believe you.”
“Will I?”
“I have a talent for knowing when someone is lying.” I did not add that his spirit, like anyone else’s, tends to ripple in a characteristic fashion when telling a known falsehood. At this range, I could directly eyeball him and bypass a lot of my own cloaking magic. They’re mostly designed to thwart long-range detection. Also to my advantage, he might be hesitant to fire up spells he didn’t recognize. Perhaps he simply wasn’t proficient enough to manually activate the other spells. Those are generally more power-intensive. They would still trigger under certain circumstances, but he might not be comfortable randomly trying them out.
He didn’t seem to have any health issues from being repeatedly irradiated, damn him. Well, it was chronic radiation poisoning, not acute. No doubt dumping him in an active nuclear reactor—or dumping the interior of an active nuclear reactor on him—would have detrimental effects. I resolved not to try either unless Phoebe said it was okay. I also resolved to figure out how to do it, just in case.
“Very well,” he replied. “Perhaps you’re right. I might, indeed, forgive you. There is much between us best served by being forgiven and forgotten.”
“Does it include chiseling off two of my fingers? Or flaying my chest to the bone?”
“The artifacts had to be removed,” he said, without so much as a flicker of regret. “You would have done the same,” he added, which annoyed me considerably, since he was right. I might have had the grace to feel bad about it, though. Possibly.
“And how about having the circulation in one foot cut off so thoroughly and so long that the necrotic tissue had to be regenerated?”
I had the pleasure of seeing his inner self wince. Outwardly, he sipped at his champagne and lightly licked his lips as he tried to skewer me with his eyeballs. I wasn’t worried. In the latest rebuild of my rings, I added upgrades to my cloaking and disguise spells. In every way I could manage, my aura was that of a Perfectly Normal Human. I went out of my way to make sure I was radiating on all frequencies and in all types of energy as a dead-average human being. A close inspection might reveal it was a disguise, but it still wouldn’t reveal what was underneath.
Alden gave it a close inspection. I don’t know how he saw things, or what things he saw, or even if it was a visual representation. No matter what he sensed, he didn’t like it. He used minions to investigate me, so he knew I wasn’t human. He didn’t know what I was, only some things I definitely wasn’t.
“As I may have mentioned at the time,” he replied, softly, “I was not in an entirely reasonable state. My… propensity for wrath is, perhaps, more of a weakness, a hindrance in achieving my goals, than I like. Add to this the uncertainty of a new environment—a new time, in fact—and you’ll agree I was under enormous strain.”
We continued our stroll around the garden area and paused by the reflecting pool.
“Is that an apology?”
“If you like.”
“Under other circumstances, I would empathize,” I agreed. “In retrospect, I must admit my own occasions of wrath have been marked by enough overkill to intimidate nations. However, despite my reverence for logic and reason, I am not always a reasonable creature, myself. In point of fact, I am not feeling terribly reasonable about the matter between us.”
“And so you come here to tell me this?”
“Among other things.”
“Oh? Perhaps you intend to start a more direct conflict?”
“I’d rather not. We’re here in a public venue. To court attention here would be to reveal far too much of ourselves to individuals best left unenlightened.”
“Unenlightened,” he repeated. “I take it you mean to include me in your derisive grouping of those present? One uninitiated into the secret mysteries you possess and refuse to share?”
“Oh, this again. Your temper—and mine, granted—have closed that door.”
“I believe I have offered to compromise. In regard to that, I am prepared to make amends, if we can negotiate suitable terms.”
I did not fail to note the way one of the fingers around his champagne glass fluttered, drawing attention to the ring on his little finger. It didn’t have a resizing enchantment, so it was the only finger he could wear it on. The fact he wore my amulet, hidden under his priest outfit, was not lost on me.
“The less you point out to me the fact of your thefts, the better,” I told him. As I spoke, something occurred to me. He wore his rosary outside his shirt. I’m not sure that’s kosher—if that’s the right term for a Catholic—or if it varies from universe to universe. If it was a standard priest’s rosary, it would have a hundred and fifty beads of various sizes. Most of his were still regular beads, but the largest ones were mostly replaced with the tektite glass.
If the glass acted as an amplifier for his psychic abilities, it suddenly seemed important to find out how much they amplified it, as well as whether they were additive or multiplicative. Did each one give him one more point of psychic strength? Or did each one increase his power by a percentage? Did they increase only his own power, or did they function in series, raising it again after the previous bead’s amplification? Was there an upper limit?
Maybe a better question was how much amplification did he already have? He only had a couple back in Shasta. Now he had close to one bead for every decade of his rosary, so… nearly fifteen?
I knew I should have studied psychic powers more.
And why did he suddenly have so many more? In Shasta, he had a couple, but now he has several. Online ordering, maybe? Or just more tektites available because this world has had longer to find them?
I suddenly understand the impulse to pry the top of someone’s head off and suck out answers.
“Answer me this,” I suggested. “I’m still not clear on why you want more spells. You can already have anything you want. You can ask for it, even insist. And people give it to you. What’s the point of magic?”
“All the things I cannot have,” he replied, darkly. “There is something more than what I am, what I can do, and I want it. I want the ability. I want to be able to do things. I want to grow, to expand my capabilities, develop them to the fullest.”
“You want power.”
“In a nutshell, yes. There is more to it,” he added, smoothly. “It isn’t simply power, as such. It’s about the ability. It’s about overcoming my limitations. I am more than a flesh and blood man. I am stronger. Better. And yet, I fall far short of what I feel I can be.”
“I commend you on your desire for self-improvement.”
“Self-discovery,” he corrected.
“Potayto, potahto. I still view you as a nonhuman magpie and a thief.”
“If we can reach a compromise,” Alden went on, “when we conclude our arrangements I will be more than happy to return the artifacts in question.”
“Hostages to my good behavior?”
“Just as you hold everyone at this event as hostage to mine.”
I will not grind him into Spam. I will not stuff him in a can. I will not crush him with a ram. I really do not like this man.
“While it is tempting,” I admitted, “to play a long game where we maneuver carefully around each other, seeking openings, a line of attack the other will not see until it is too late, and eventually discover who is the more elegant player of such games…”
“…you quite reasonably fear to lose such a game,” he stated, smirking, “knowing your own propensity for overreaction.”
“Look who’s talking, Mr. Frying Pan.”
“Afraid to face me?”
Grate him onto leg of lamb. Stomp his eyeballs into jam. Drop him off the highest dam. I really do not like this man.
“You know what?” I asked, rhetorically, preparatory to continuing with I’m not going to even try to be subtle about killing you.
My immediate idea was to move, fast and sudden, and tackle him right over the edge. We would hit six storeys down on one of the building’s setbacks. With luck and some tendrils as we fell, I could control the fall. Not only would he hit from six storeys up, but over five hundred pounds of angry vampire would land on top of him. So what if we went through the roof and hit the next floor? I was willing to bet I would recover first. A snatch-and-fling for the rosary, followed by a chomp on one hand to remove the main spell-ring, and talons to peel off my amulet along with any bits of chest that cared to come along. This would ruin the rest of his evening. It would be a short evening, because I would then unscrew his head even if it took both hands.
On second thought, that was entirely too complicated. Once we landed, beating my fist against his forehead until I hit whatever was under it should be sufficient. Then I could worry about peeling off artifacts.
I was interrupted in this pleasant flash-forward of what was about to happen, however, by a lovely lady coming up from my right, opposite the reflecting pool.
“Gentlemen,” she offered, raising her own glass. Ice clinked in amber fluid. Alden and I both turned to her. He raised his glass and I, lacking one, bowed slightly.
The lady was auburn-haired and blue-eyed. Her initial appearance said mid-thirties, but I guessed her hair and makeup were professionally done. She was probably closer to an exceptionally well-maintained fifty. The dress was one of those fancy evening gowns, being quite curve-hugging while still having a fall of layered material. The lady’s was done in red, somewhat darker than the traditional Lady in Red, but still a shade reminding me of blood. Most reds do. Her dress’s built-in shoulder drape was from her left shoulder to right hip.
“I do not believe we’ve been introduced,” she told me. Alden started to say something, but checked himself to look at me with an expectant air.
“Jerry Dandrige,” I told the lady, “but my friends call me something else. As soon as I have some friends, I’ll ask them what they call me.”
She smiled slightly, amused and a bit troubled.
“Alicia Marchbank,” she replied, and offered her hand. Judging by how she held it, she expected me to kiss it, not shake it, so I did as required. I can take a social cue when it’s whacked across my head.
“The pleasure is mine.”
“I do hope it is mutual,” she answered.
“I will do my very best.”
“Adam, have you been keeping my guest to yourself?”
“You know me,” he told her, smiling. “Always looking for a contributor.”
“I do hope dear Adam hasn’t taken all your charity so early in the evening,” Alicia told me, taking my arm. “We’re so hoping to secure it for our own little project,” she added as she led me away.
Alden remained by the pool. He slugged back the rest of his champagne and glared after us. I felt it rather than saw it. He hated having our conversation interrupted. Clearly, he had no idea what I was about to do. I was somewhat annoyed, myself, as I really wanted to wipe the smirk off his face with pavement.
He could have diverted Ms. Marchbank with a thought, but he didn’t. What does it mean when he doesn’t use his mind-control powers? Why wouldn’t he? Is he concerned about using them near me? Would such a diversion of his attention make him vulnerable, somehow? Or does he have energy limitations? Can he be fatigued by his powers? Or, on the other end of the psychic stick, are some people—Ms. Marchbank, perhaps—naturally hard to affect?
Hang on. Two of the local vampires are present. Are they the mind-controlling sorts? Is he keeping a low profile, trying not to be noticed by them?
Damn it, I don’t know and have no good ways to find out! Alden, presumably the mastermind behind Chuck and others, sent minions to test my capabilities. I should figure out a way to return the favor.
“Tell me more about your project,” I suggested to Alicia. I noticed her glass didn’t smell like whiskey. I couldn’t detect any alcohol smell at all. In fact, it smelled more like tea. I doubted anyone else would notice. The other vampires, maybe. So, the hostess wasn’t drinking. What did this tell me? She remained clear-headed to attend to business, probably.
“There’s really very little more to tell. We’re hoping to have every officer on the force wearing a bulletproof vest, but it takes time to buy so many. Time and money, of course.”
“Most of the time is taken to get the money,” I guessed. As we walked, I realized she wasn’t walking like a woman in heels. Flats? At a gala event? It was a floor-length skirt, so she might get away with it. Heels would also make her nearly six feet tall. A woman looking a man in the eye while asking for money might be off-putting. Better to be a little shorter to appeal to traditional masculine instinct.
“Well spotted. While everyone agrees officers need the equipment to do their job, very few want to actually pay for it.”
