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  A knock at the door interrupted him. “That should be Dennis,” Phillip said as he walked to the door. “He is one of my applicants, you know. An intern…as it were.” Phillip looked through a small eyehole, midway up the door and smiled. “It is he.”

  He opened the door and invited Dennis inside, but the man declined. “I just wanted to let you know that the lady and her companion have been added to the ward matrix, sir. I apologize for taking so long, but Mistress Gabriella was quite interested in your new guest.”

  “What did you tell her?” Phillip asked eagerly. He seemed giddy, childlike in his delight.

  “As per your standard request, sir, I told her only that the lady and her companion were your guests and that they were to be given access to all of the common areas.”

  “Was she vexed?”

  “Quite vexed,” Dennis replied.

  “Excellent as always, Dennis,” said Phillip. “You may go.”

  He closed the door and walked back over to me. “Please, excuse the interruption. Gabriella has been a bit wroth with me for the last few decades. She recently relocated from Atlanta in hopes that she might be the agent of my eventual demise. How quickly my offspring turn against me. But you wanted to know about El Alma Perdida; you thought you might find it here?”

  “Yes. We think a female vampire, a Soldier, has it and we think she’s in the building. Her name is Veruca.”

  “Meaning wart…such an unpleasant name for a lady.”

  I’d been taking one last sip of blood wine when he said that and it shot out my nose as I tried to stifle my laughter. I caught the blood with the handkerchief I was still holding, but I continued to cough and sputter. My nose and sinuses started burning and I would have dropped to my knees if Talbot hadn’t caught me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, coughing, “that’s just too funny. Her name means wart? Eric calls her Froggy.”

  More blood tears formed in the corners of my eyes and even Phillip chuckled. “That is indeed an unfortunate nickname for one whose name comes from the Latin verruca, meaning wart. At least he doesn’t call her acuminata. Verruca accuminata would be just too terrible….”

  Only Phillip laughed that time. He quickly controlled himself and sat down in one of the armchairs. They were slightly undersize for a person of average height, but they suited Phillip quite well. He smiled in my direction and motioned for me to sit. Instead, I walked over and knelt next to him. It let us look at each other eye-to-eye and I was tired of looming over him.

  “And you believe her to be in possession of El Alma Perdida?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  He caressed the air about the bullet with his fingertips, but his eyes did not leave mine. “No one by the name of Veruca lives here, I’m afraid, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t staying here with someone else. Did she have any other acquaintances who might have a residence here?”

  I nodded. “Her boyfriend, Roger.”

  “Ah, yes, Germanic, meaning quiet…or famous spearman. And this Roger, would he be a Master vampire?”

  I nodded again.

  “I spoke with him several months ago,” Phillip said as he stroked his chin with his left hand. “Utterly ignorable. He tried to engage me in no less than three business transactions. He wanted to buy the Stone of Aeternum from me. I didn’t sell it to him, of course. You don’t sell those sorts of things; they are given or sought. I am not in retail. I think I suggested that he talk to one of the local demons, though. It’s in my log.” He raised both hands in a dismissive gesture. “I can always check it later.”

  “Do you remember the other transactions?” I asked.

  “Oh, he had some foolish notion about my backing him in the Orchard Lake acquisition. Naturally, I declined. Vampires like him will be the ruin of us.” He trailed off and his eyes focused on someplace far away and probably long ago. Eric has that look sometimes. “Let’s see if your Wart is sleeping over, shall we?” He walked over to an old-fashioned wall phone, lifted the earpiece, and held it at arm’s length. “Dennis?”

  I could hear Dennis easily, one of the benefits of being a vampire. “Yes, my lord?”

  “I want you to check on a Master vampire named Roger. See what suite he is in and find out whether or not he has another vampire by the name of Veruca visiting him. Ring me back as soon as you know anything, would you?”

  “Of course, sir,” Dennis answered.

  A barely audible click signaled the end of the connection on Dennis’s end.

  “He’s going to find out and get back to us,” Phillip explained. “He’s such a clever boy; he’s the current leader amongst the male applicants.”

  “Applicants?” I asked.

  He laughed. “I do hope you will excuse me for not explaining earlier. Every decade I have a contest to determine my next two children: one boy and one girl. It keeps me busy, and some of them make wonderfully entertaining opponents after a few centuries.

  “But enough of that. Dennis should be back soon and I don’t like to let them hear too much about who is in the lead. It makes them insufferable. While we wait, could I get you another glass of wine? Perhaps your mouser is hungry? I’m certain Dennis could scrounge up a rodent or two.”

  I stared at him blankly. “I’m fine, Lady Tabitha,” Talbot told me.

  “He’s fine, thank you,” I said with a puzzled look on my face.

  Phillip nodded absentmindedly, then snapped his fingers. “I could play the violin for you. I’ve only been playing for a century, though, so I haven’t mastered it yet.”

  Talbot cleared his throat. “Maybe you could tell Lady Tabitha about the Lost Soul? What’s it for?”

  Phillip set the bullet down on a table and dashed off. It sounded like he was wrestling with a box of Christmas lights. When he returned, it was with a beautifully crafted violin case. “Perhaps I shall do both?”

  I nodded and he opened the case.

  19

  ERIC:

  GRETA

  I woke to a cacophonous mix of werewolf howls and trucks revving their engines outside the Demon Heart. I was getting tired of fucking around with these stupid werewolves. The door to my bedroom in the Pollux swung open and Greta stepped inside. She’d cut her hair. It was short now, but still blonde. Dressed in running shoes, jogging shorts, and a sports top, she looked none the worse for wear. The only sign of her recent conflict with the werewolves outside was the remains of a tiny media player still clipped to her shorts; there wasn’t much left of it.

  “Up and at ‘em, Dad. There are werewo—” She paused in midsentence as she spotted Rachel. “So that’s Tabitha,” she said awkwardly. “She’s certainly…um, pierced, isn’t she? Those cannot have felt good.”

  “Her name’s Rachel,” I muttered as I rolled out of bed. “I turned Tabitha. This is her little sister.”

  “Jesus, Dad,” Greta complained. “That’s screwed up even for you.” Greta blanched at her own sentence, worried that she’d criticized me too harshly, that I might have taken her seriously, missed the teasing tone in her voice. She looked purposefully away from Rachel’s nakedness and cocked a thumb toward the door, hiding her dismay behind a jaunty smile. “Let’s kill the werewolves across the street and then you can tell me all about it.” She looked back at Rachel and sighed. “Or better yet, you could just not.”

  I rolled my eyes and headed for the door. “Did you have a nice trip?”

  “Oh, yes,” Greta quipped. “It’s been great. Those werewolves have been chasing me all night. I probably could take them, except they’ve got crosses and stuff. How’s Mom?”

  We headed out of my room and down the stairs.

  “I think she suspects that the Demon Heart is really a strip joint,” I joked.

  Greta jumped over the rail and landed next to the door. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “That whole ‘interpretive dance school for nudists’ story couldn’t hold up forever,” she tossed back at me.

  That, in a nutshell, was my problem with Greta. I
liked her too much and we got along too well. She fell into the father-daughter role easily and could make it seem so normal when it definitely isn’t. She accepted me. Even when she snarked about my lifestyle, her complaints were usually voiced as lighthearted teasing.

  If we were a real family, when I grew old, Greta would have never sent me to an old folks’ home; she would have kept me close and taken care of me. That kind of devotion was scary, especially coming from a cold-blooded killer even more amoral than me. Greta viewed me as a hero growing up, justified my every mistake, and lionized my flaws. She took my dislike of other vampires to another level, too; sometimes, she even hunted them.

  Greta opened the front door and one of those fake-looking werewolves was there waiting for us. His hair could have been badly dyed rabbit fur glued over latex rubber skin, and his smooth tan teeth reminded me of a botched resin model kit. He snarled, snapping at Greta.

  “Bad dog!” she admonished. “No biscuit!” Greta caught him by the muzzle, snapping his jaws shut with a pop and giggling when he whined. “Can I keep him, Dad?”

  Roger likes to tell me I don’t think before I act. Compared to Greta, I’m well-reasoned, insightful, and reserved. The werewolf swiped at Greta with his claws and she laughed, popping him twice in the forehead with her right fist. While he was stunned, she grabbed his neck and pulled the beast down into a headlock.

  “Well, can I?” Greta asked insistently.

  “I don’t care if he did follow you home,” I said as I grabbed either side of his head and twisted. “You’re not keeping him.” The wolf’s neck broke and Greta let him drop to the floor. He wasn’t dead, but the broken neck would keep him out of the fight.

  Behind him, I could see about a dozen of his companions strutting across the street like some kind of inner-city gang, clearly confident that we’d be no problem for them. The four in the middle of the pack seemed to be the ones in charge. Two of those wore cross-studded collars around their hulking necks, their fur a uniform dark brown. The third was larger than the rest, a mottled gray werewolf with a pug-nose muzzle more befitting a bulldog than any wolf I’d ever seen. He hefted a large wooden cross made from two interlocking railroad ties. Next to him, a black wolf with a priest’s collar stared directly at me, rosary beads wrapped around his right paw.

  “William?” I asked.

  “The flock calls me Reverend.” His voice was light and airy, a complete contrast to the wolf’s hulking black form. The sound didn’t even synch up with his lips, like a badly dubbed kung fu movie or spaghetti western. Maybe he was using some big magic mojo to translate snarls and growls into English for the wolf-speech-impaired. Quite possibly I should have been impressed, but it only served to enhance the goofy unreality that I experience whenever I run into a werewolf.

  I glanced at Greta. She had a hungry look in her eyes. I imagined it was the same look that I had in mine when I woke up each morning, ready for my next drink of the red stuff. That’s the other problem with Greta. She’s always hungry.

  “What about one of these?” she asked with mock sincerity.

  We walked out into the street side by side. I stopped to lock the door behind me, casually, as if there was no rush.

  “Sorry, honey. You know the rules. No pets.”

  We were both smiling; it seemed to confuse the werewolves. They outnumbered us five to one and they expected trepidation at the least, outright terror at the most. Cocksure bravado was not in their list of likely prey responses. Unfortunately for them, we weren’t prey.

  A wave of holy power hit me as they crossed the center lane. The four in the middle were true believers; no wonder they felt confident. I realized immediately why Greta hadn’t wanted to fight them on her own. She doesn’t heal from holy wounds easily. The more powerful the vampire, the more quirks he or she has. That was one of hers.

  The true believers were going to be the real problem. Most werewolves just charge in without thinking, but these guys held back, waiting, I supposed, on the good reverend’s word.

  “Let’s not do this, Reverend,” I said. “I’m not a bad guy. Ask Jackie, down at the—”

  Reverend made the sign of the cross with his rosary-clad paw and spoke Latin: “In nòmine Patris, et Fìlii, et Spìritus Sancti.”

  “Amen,” the other werewolves said in unison. My teeth went numb, my fangs retracted, and I took two involuntary steps backward. You only feel power like that every once in a while, and generally not from locals. These guys were from the Lycan Diocese, or the one with the rosary was; he had to be. What the Inquisition was to witches the Lycan Diocese is to vampires and other things that might threaten the therianthropic flock. Your average skinchanger can’t go to them for help, but William obviously had some pull.

  This was exactly the sort of attention I’d wanted to avoid.

  “William was right to call us,” said the big one with the giant cross. He unlimbered the heavy thing as he spoke and swung it like a giant hammer. Greta screamed, but I couldn’t move, as if a spell were fixing me in place. The cross hit me midchest, igniting the front of my Welcome to the Void T-shirt and hurling me back into the brick next to the Casablanca poster at the side of the Pollux’s main entrance.

  “I was kind of disappointed when Deacon sent you instead of coming himself. I see that I was wrong,” one of the other werewolves told him. Three werewolves on the left teamed up on Greta, grabbing her as the one called Reverend advanced. He placed his rosary-wrapped paw at her throat. The sizzle and pop of her flesh was all I could hear, the smell of the rosary charring her flesh.

  She screamed out one word, “Daddy,” and then, suddenly, I was free. I could move again.

  Speed. Most vampires have it all the time. Mine comes and goes. Sometimes I can control it, but usually it just kicks in and out. This time, it kicked in. Each sizzling pop of Greta’s flesh resounded like a gunshot. My whole body began to vibrate. I felt like I was going to lose control, go into one of my rage blackouts, but then, somehow, I didn’t. In a wave of remembered cinnamon scents, my proximity to Rachel, even asleep upstairs in the Pollux, gave me reins for my rage. I took a deep breath and charged.

  In an instant I was on the three werewolves holding Greta, bypassing the two werewolves with the cross-studded collars that were headed toward me. I cocked my hands back and plunged my claws through the backs of two of Greta’s captors. My hands closed around their hearts and I let them each beat a single time before I tore them out.

  It must have broken Reverend’s concentration or something, because suddenly Greta could move, too. Greta’s claws were out and I couldn’t stifle my laughter when she gave Reverend a knuckle-deep two-finger eye poke, Three Stooges style, accompanied by an imitation of Curly’s famous “Nyuk nyuk.”

  I tossed the two hearts I was holding down onto the pavement. The remaining werewolf with a grip on Greta let her go and threw up. Weak stomach, I guessed.

  Reverend drew back howling, clutching at his ruined eyes, blood matting the fur around them. The sight distracted me, and the two collared werewolves took the opportunity to sink their fangs into either shoulder. The shoulder bite I’d gotten on Friday had hurt; two hurt more than twice as bad. The added sizzle of their collars against my cheeks didn’t help either. I grabbed them both by the scruffs of their necks like oversize puppies and flung them across the street. The movement didn’t do my shoulders any good, but I didn’t have much choice.

  “Don’t fucking bite me,” I snarled furiously. “I’m the vampire! I bite you. You do not get to fucking bite me!”

  I pointed my finger at the remaining combatants. “You can claw me. You can hit me. Hell, run me over with a truck, but no biting or I’m going to stop dicking around here and you won’t even have time to run away.”

  Everybody stopped.

  “And another thing, your fight is with me and me alone. You touch my little girl again and when I’m done with you, I’ll get your scent from the pieces, I’ll track it back to your home and I’ll bring the
fight to your kids, your family. Does that sound fucking fair to you, assholes?”

  They seemed to suddenly shrink before me, or maybe I was expanding. I could feel a familiar burning in my chest. I wasn’t just standing on the brink of a blackout, I had jumped off the cliff and now everyone was waiting to see if I would catch the rope dangling behind me.

  “Oh, great!” Greta sighed. “You guys went and pissed him off! Now he’s going to go all uber vamp and I’m not going to get to play anymore.”

  “Okay,” Reverend said softly, his paws still pressed to his eyes.

  “Okay what?”

  “Just let us leave. We heard what happened to the Howlers, but we assumed you’d had help. Lots of help. We couldn’t believe that you’d done it alone. I can see we were wrong. So just let us take Jim and leave.”

  “Who the hell is Jim?” I asked.

  He pointed blindly in the direction of the werewolf with the broken neck.

  “Okay, Reverend.” I smiled. “You have a deal. You grab your boy Jim and get the hell out of here. Anybody that wants to go can go, but if I see you around here again, you die. Oh, and I want you to tell your boss something for me.”

  “You can’t do that, Reverend!” one of the collar-wearing fuzzies protested. “They’ve killed Bruce and Annie. We can’t just walk away. They are unholy monsters. We have to kill them, now!” One of them had been a girl? I glanced down at the bodies, but they were too furry for me to tell. Dead werewolves do change back to human form, but only when the sun hits them.

  The Reverend seemed to think it over before answering his packmate. He didn’t take long. “I’m sorry, Paul, but William is going to have to come out here with us if he’s going to send us up against something like this. That isn’t a normal vampire. It can’t be. A normal vampire could not have broken free of my spell like that. You can stay here if you want, but the rest of us are going.” Eyes still covered, he turned blindly back toward me. “What is it you wanted me to tell William?”