Guilty Pleasures

I opened the door, and the heat fell around me like fur.

“It’s dark,” he said. “They’ll be here soon. I can’t help you if I’m not with you.”

I stepped close to him and said in a near whisper, “Let’s be honest, Phillip. I’m a whole lot better at protecting myself than you are. The first vampire that crooks its finger will have you for lunch.”

His face started to crumble, and I didn’t want to see it. “Dammit, Phillip, pull yourself together.” I walked out onto the trellis-covered porch and resisted an urge to slam the door behind me. That would have been childish. I was feeling a little childish about now, but I’d save it. You never know when some childish rage may come in handy.

The cicadas and crickets filled the night. There was a wind pulling at the tops of the tall trees, but it never touched the ground. The air down here was as stale and close as plastic.

The heat felt good after the air-conditioned house. It was real and somehow cleansing. I touched the bite on my neck. I felt dirty, used, abused, angry, pissed off. I wasn’t going to find anything out here. If someone or something was killing off vampires who did the freak circuit, it didn’t seem to be such a bad idea.

Of course, whether I sympathized with the murderer was not the point. Nikolaos expected me to solve the crimes, and I damn well better do it.

I took a deep breath of the stiff air and felt the first stirrings of…power. It oozed through the trees like wind, but the touch of it didn’t cool the skin. The hair at the back of my neck was trying to crawl down my spine. Whoever it was, they were powerful. And they were trying to raise the dead.

Despite the heat, we’d had a lot of rain, and my heels sank into the grass immediately. I ended up walking in a sort of tiptoe crouch, trying not to flounder in the soft earth.

The ground was littered with acorns. It was like walking on marbles. I fell against a tree trunk, catching myself painfully against the shoulder Aubrey had bruised so nicely.

A sharp bleating, high and panic-stricken, sounded. It was close. Was it a trick of the still air or was it really a goat bleating? The cry ended in a wet gurgle of sound, thick and bubbling. The trees ended, and the ground was clear and moon-silvered.

I slipped off one shoe and tried the ground. Damp, cool, but not too bad. I slipped off the other shoe, tucked them in one hand, and ran.

The back yard was huge, stretching out into the silvered dark. It spread empty, except for a wall of overgrown hedges, like small trees in the distance. I ran for the hedges. The grave had to be there; there was no other place for it to hide.

The actual ritual for raising the dead is a short one, as rituals go. The power poured out into the night and into the grave. It built in a slow, steady rise, a warm “magic.” It tugged at my stomach and brought me to the hedges. They towered up, black in the moonlight, hopelessly overgrown. There was no way I was squeezing through them.

A man cried out. Then a woman: “Where is it? Where is the zombie you promised us?”

“It was too old!” The man’s voice was thin with fear.

“You said chickens weren’t enough, so we got you a goat to kill. But no zombie. I thought you were good at this.”

I found a gate in the opposite side of the hedges. Metal, rusted, and crooked in its frame. It groaned, a metal scream, as I pushed it open. More than a dozen pairs of eyes turned to me. Pale faces, the utter stillness of the undead. Vampires. They stood among the ancient grave markers of the small family cemetery, waiting. Nothing waits as patiently as the dead.

One of the vampires nearest me was the black male from Nikolaos’s lair. My pulse quickened, and I did a quick scan of the crowd. She wasn’t here, Thank you, God.

The vampire smiled and said, “Did you come to watch…animator?” Had he almost said, “Executioner”? Was it a secret?

Whatever, he motioned the others back and let me see the show. Zachary lay on the ground. His shirt was damp with blood. You can’t slit anything’s throat without getting a little messy. Theresa was standing over him, hands on hips. She was dressed in black. The only skin showing was a strip of flesh down the middle, pale and almost luminous in the starlight. Theresa, Mistress of the Dark.

Her eyes flicked to me, a moment, then back to the man. “Well, Zach-a-ri, where is our zombie?”

He swallowed audibly. “It’s too old. There isn’t enough left.”

“Only a hundred years old, animator. Are you so weak?”

He looked down at the ground. His fingers dug into the soft earth. He glanced up at me, then quickly down. I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me with that one glance. Fear? For me to run? A plea for help? What?

“What good is an animator who can’t raise the dead?” Theresa asked. She dropped to her knees, suddenly beside him, hands touching his shoulders. Zachary flinched but didn’t try to get away.

A ripple of almost-movement ran through the other vampires. I could feel the whole circle at my back tense. They were going to kill him. The fact that he couldn’t raise the zombie was just an excuse, part of the game.

Theresa ripped his shirt down the back. It fluttered around his lower arms, still tucked into his waist. A collective sigh ran through the vampires.

There was a woven rope band around his right upper arm. Beads were worked into it. It was a gris-gris, a voodoo charm, but it wouldn’t help him now. No matter what it was supposed to do, it wouldn’t be enough.

Theresa did a stage whisper. “Maybe you’re just fresh meat?”

The vampires began to move in, silent as wind in the grass.

I couldn’t just watch. He was a fellow animator and a human being. I couldn’t just let him die, not like this, not in front of me. “Wait,” I said.

No one seemed to hear me. The vampires moved in, and I was losing sight of Zachary. If one bit him, the feeding frenzy would be on. I had seen that happen once. I would never get rid of the nightmares if I saw it again.

I raised my voice and hoped they listened. “Wait! Didn’t he belong to Nikolaos? Didn’t he call Nikolaos master?”

They hesitated, then parted for Theresa to stride through them until she faced me. “This is not your business.” She stared at me, and I didn’t avoid her gaze. One less thing to worry about.

“I’m making it my business,” I said.

“Do you wish to join him?”

The vampires began to spread out from Zachary to encircle me as well. I let them. There wasn’t much I could do about it anyway. Either I’d get us both out alive or I’d die, too, maybe, probably. Oh, well.

“I wish to speak with him, one professional to another,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

I stepped close to her, almost touching. Her anger was nearly palpable. I was making her look bad in front of the others, and I knew it, and she knew I knew it. I whispered, though some of the others would hear me, “Nikolaos gave orders for the man to die, but she wants me alive, Theresa. What would she do to you if I accidentally died here tonight?” I breathed the last words into her face. “Do you want to spend eternity locked in a cross-wrapped coffin?”

She snarled and jerked away from me as if I had scalded her. “Damn you, mortal, damn you to hell!” Her black hair crackled around her face, her hands gripped into claws. “Talk to him, for what good it will do you. He must raise this zombie, this zombie, or he is ours. So says Nikolaos.”

“If he raises the zombie, then he goes free, unharmed?” I asked.

“Yes, but he ca

“Which was what Nikolaos was counting on,” I said.

Theresa smiled, a fierce tug of lips exposing fangs. “Yesss.” She turned her back on me and strode through the other vampires. They parted for her like frightened pigeons. And I was standing up to her. Sometimes bravery and stupidity are almost interchangeable.