Twenty-two
Jean Horla and Peter Vardalack drove down Memorial Boulevard in the rental car they’d picked up at the Houston airport. Jean was driving while Peter consulted the instructions Michael Morpheus had given them over the phone the previous week when he’d called them and asked for their help in locating Pike and his friends.
When they came to the street where Morpheus lived, Peter told Jean to take a left turn. At the end of the street was a large, estate-style house on almost an acre of secluded, wooded land. The house was set well off the road and was accessed by a long, curving driveway.
Jean cut the engine and both he and Peter grabbed their suitcases from the trunk and walked toward the house.
“Nice digs,” Peter said, glancing around at the large, lavish house.
“It’s okay for a rental,” Jean said, not sounding too impressed.
Since it was relatively easy for vampyres, who lived hundreds of years, to amass large sums of money, most of their kind were financially well off and only the very stupid or lazy had any money worries.
Jean reached up and rang the doorbell, and a moment later a hoarse voice came through the intercom next to the door. “Come in, Jean.”
Surprised, Jean looked up and saw a video camera with a small red light at its base pointed down at them as they stood on the porch.
“Good security, too,” Peter observed as he opened the door and they entered.
“I’m up here, at the top of the stairs,” Morpheus’s voice called, echoing through the large entryway.
The house had very little furniture in it and appeared to be almost deserted.
Jean and Peter glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, put their suitcases down on the marble floor, and walked up the stairs.
As they approached an open bedroom door at the end of the hall, Jean wrinkled his nose and made a face. An odor of burnt, rotting flesh hung on the air like a malevolent fog, and it was all he could do to keep from gasping at the foul smell.
When they entered the room, they could see Michael Morpheus lying spread-eagled on a large bed, his arms and legs outflung, pieces of charred, blackened flesh peeling off his body, with the underlying skin as red and pink as a newborn baby’s.
“Jesus, Michael,” Peter said, “what the hell happened to you?”
Morpheus stared at his two friends through reddened eyes. His head was devoid of hair and his scalp showed a pink scar where part of his skull was being remade by his vampyre body’s miraculous recuperative faculties.
Morpheus almost smiled at the two of them standing at the foot of his bed, being reminded of Abbot and Costello. Jean Horla was a tall, extremely thin, cadaverous-looking man who was, as usual, dressed all in black, like a large, skinny crow or a mortician living up to his image. Which is appropriate, Morpheus thought, remembering what he’d heard about Horla’s past. Word had it he had actually been a mortician in Philadelphia in the early 1800s, when he made the mistake of trying to infuse formaldehyde into a vampyre he mistakenly thought was dead. The vampyre, understandably pissed off at this affront, had decided to punish Horla, whose name at the time was Mortimer Pasternak, by transforming him into a creature like himself. Horla, never what one would call a warm, fuzzy person to begin with, had been a spiteful, bitter man ever since, with the argumentative personality of a pissed off badger. Peter Vardalack, on the other hand, was short and pudgy, standing barely five-feet five-inches with his shoes on, and had rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes. He was wearing his usual merry, cheerful expression on his face, like a cherub in a children’s story. Morpheus was not fooled by this happy-go-lucky façade, for he knew Peter to be a ruthless killer whose appetite for fresh blood and young teenaged girls was prodigious.
“How was your flight from Baton Rouge?” Morpheus asked, ignoring the question of what had caused his awful appearance.
“It was fine,” Jean said, a sour expression on his face as he moved slowly toward the bed, trying to breathe through his mouth to mitigate the rancid, charnel house smell of the room.
“What’s going on, Michael?” he asked. “Who, or what, did this to you?”
“TJ O’Reilly and Samantha Scott,” Morpheus answered shortly through his raw, charred throat, his eyes blazing with hatred.
“Samantha Scott, your mate, did this?” Peter asked, his thick lips curling in a smile of disbelief, astounded that this vampyre’s mate, who was supposed to be committed without question to the one who’d performed the Rite of Transformation on her, could have so mistreated her lover.
“Yes,” Morpheus answered gruffly, venom dripping from his voice. “And they will both pay dearly for the pain they’ve caused me when we find them.”
“Speaking of that,” Peter said, moving around to the side of the bed where Morpheus could see him without having to turn or lift his head, “I’ve got all our contacts in the credit card industry, as well as some new converts in the phone company working on locating the group. If they use a credit card or make a call on one of their cell phones that lasts longer than five minutes, we’ll have them.”
Michael wrinkled his forehead, and grimaced at the pain it caused him when the shiny pink new skin stretched. “Why five minutes on the phones?” he asked.
Peter shrugged. “It has to do with satellite triangulation and finding which towers they’re closest to when they call,” he answered. “I don’t really understand it myself . . . too high tech for me.”
“How about the others?” Morpheus asked. “Have they agreed to join us?”
Jean nodded. “Yeah, most of ’em. Christina Alario, Theo Thantos, Gerald Enyo, and Louis Frene are all committed to meet us when we find out where the group is hiding. Christina is working her contacts in the travel industry to see if they’ve made any plane reservations. Ramson Holroyd, from the old Houston Council, is still riding the fence. I don’t know if he’s undecided or just playing us along, but in any event, we have enough without him anyway.”
“What about councils in other parts of the country?” Morpheus asked, his lower lip cracking as he talked, causing a small stream of blood to run down his chin.
Peter winced at the sight; his ever-present smile fading for the first time since he’d entered the room. “Everyone in our group is making calls to others they know across the country and putting the question to them.” He shrugged. “Some will join us and others will probably want to know where to go to get the treatment. As far as I can tell, our race is pretty evenly divided on the vaccine.”
Morpheus grimaced and clenched his fist, causing the skin over his knuckles to split and bleed. “Damn it! Don’t they understand the vaccine will mean the end of our race if it’s allowed to be used?”
Jean frowned, his eyes on Morpheus’s bleeding hand. “Don’t excite yourself, Michael. We’ll take care of it.” He took a deep breath and made a face. He could almost taste the burnt flesh on Morpheus’s body. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, for he preferred his meat fresh and rare, not well done. “Meanwhile, you need to relax and let yourself heal.”
Morpheus’s eyes narrowed. He knew what he needed and it wasn’t rest. “What I need, Jean, is blood, fresh blood, and lots of it. That will speed the process of my healing much faster than rest. Obviously, I’ve been in no condition to Hunt, so I’m going to need some help.”
Peter smiled cheerily, as if he’d just been asked to get takeout pizza. “I’ll do it, Michael,” he said, chuckling and rubbing his ample stomach. “I’m getting a mite hungry myself.”
Morpheus waved a hand feebly. “Both of you go. It will take two of you to bring back enough for all three of us.”
“Any suggestions, since we’re new to the area?” Jean asked, a slight tinge of red drool appearing at the corners of his mouth at the thought of feeding.
“Yeah. There’s a gentleman’s club called Rick’s Place on the freeway about five miles from here. The girls get off at two in the morning and the parking lot is not too brightly lighted. If you get there early, you should be able to make arrangements with a couple of the dancers before they head home.” He tried to smile and it was a ghastly sight. “They sometimes work as prostitutes to earn extra money, so flash a wad of cash and they’ll probably be standing in line to leave with you.”
Peter slapped Jean on the shoulder and grinned. “Good, then we’ll be back soon.”
“Any particular preferences?” Jean asked with an evil grin.
Morpheus thought of the auburn-headed Sam and answered him though cracked, bleeding lips. “Yeah, get me a redhead if you can, one with fair skin and freckles.”
Jean nodded, and as he and Peter left the room, he whispered, “Remind me to pick up some air freshener on the way. I’m afraid the smell in there is gonna ruin my appetite.”
* * *
Rick’s Place, situated on the 610 loop, was representative of the so-called gentleman’s clubs all across the country. A large room filled with tables and chairs, low lighting, a stage up front with a brass pole in the middle for the girls to swing on, pulsating music that numbed the brain, and lots of scantily clad, large-breasted women who took drink orders, did lap dances, and tried their damnedest to separate the poor, horny men in the audience from their hard-earned money.
Jean and Peter had no trouble attracting these female sharks. Once Peter had pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills large enough to choke a horse, it was like pouring blood and chum into the ocean. They became the center of a feeding frenzy as numbers of women tried to get their attention by pressing their breasts in their faces and rubbing up against appropriate parts of their anatomy. The fact that neither Jean nor Peter was particularly good looking ranked far behind the size of their bankroll in determining their popularity with the girls.
Finally, when last call was announced over the loud speakers, Jean and Peter made their choices. Jean picked Barbara Wolensky—stage name Babs—a tiny girl with improbably large breasts who stood barely five-feet tall, while Peter selected Angela Cartwright, a massive specimen who towered over him, which put her breasts at the level of his eyes. A third girl, Sally Kelly, was just what Michael had ordered. Of Irish descent, she had bright red hair and freckles that extended from her rosy cheeks to her pink-tipped breasts.
Arrangements were made, a price for the entire night was agreed upon, and the five revelers piled into Jean’s rental car and headed for Memorial Boulevard.
As they drove toward the house, with Babs’s hand in Jean’s lap and Angela’s right nipple between Peter’s lips, Sally leaned forward and asked Jean, “You said my date is under the weather. He doesn’t have anything catching, does he?”
Jean answered through tight lips, his attention more on Babs’s hand, which was now sliding into his zipper, than on the question. “No, dear, he was recently in an accident and is still recuperating.”
“Will he, will he be able to perform?” she asked, worrying that if he couldn’t she might not get paid.
“Oh,” Peter said around a mouthful of Angela’s right breast, “I promise you a night you’ll never forget.”