CHAPTER 4
At midnight on June 1st, Maurice’s cell phone rang and a computerized voice told him that the pickup window for his transportation to the Vampire Council would occur between 2:15 and 2:45am under an overpass on the outside of Columbus, near Hilliard.
Maurice sighed and put his face in his palm. “I don’t want to go,” he said.
“You have to go,” Reginald told him. “You don’t have a proxy. If you don’t go, Gregor will be acting Deacon. Not only does Gregor usually think that there are small UFOs flying around his head, but when he’s coherent, he’s very liberal. And who knows what’s on the docket that will pass if you’re not there to veto it?”
“Ugh. And that long, long ride with blindfolds on…”
Reginald nodded, his lips pursed. This would be his third trip to the Vampire Council. The first time he’d gone, it had been for his own trial, and he’d been treated like a prisoner. The second time, he’d been free and he’d gone willingly, and he’d been treated like a prisoner. This time he and Maurice would be visiting as Deacon and Deputy of the Council, so this time, they’d be treated like prisoners. The procedure was the same for everyone, with no exceptions. They’d be bound with silver handcuffs and blindfolded twice, and then they’d be driven around for hours and handed off three or four times to different sets of escorts. The entire process was dictated by the master algorithm that choreographed all incomings and outgoings to and from the Council’s current secret location. The system was what it was, and until the day Reginald divulged the fact that he’d cracked the algorithm, it’s how the system would have to remain.
“Do you suppose we could just show up instead of meeting the escorts?” said Reginald. “Seems silly to spend all night traveling all over the place when I know the Council is currently in that half-finished theater we drive by all the time, like ten minutes away.”
“If only,” said Maurice.
“In fact, let’s go there now,” said Reginald. “We can hang out with Charles, who never leaves and travels with the Council every time it moves. Get some donuts.”
“They don’t have donuts at the Council,” said Maurice.
“I know that. I said get some donuts. They have whole 24-hour stores filled with donuts now. We can give some to Charles as a peace offering. Not the good ones, though. Just those shitty plain ones with the little handles baked into them.”
Maurice laughed.
Charles Barkley, who inexplicably refused to go by “Chuck” or “Charlie,” had been a major force behind Reginald’s accusation and trial. Following the trial, he’d wormed his way into a spot on the Council — a process over which the Deacon had no control. Once in, Charles had immediately begun pushing ultra-liberal legislation whose sole intention seemed to be to infuriate Maurice and insult Reginald.
“I really, really don’t want to go,” Maurice repeated.
“Get up,” said Reginald. “It’s time to make-slash-get the donuts.”
And so, over a flurry of protests, Reginald loaded Maurice into his car and they drove to the pickup location at the scheduled time. Then, once cuffed and blindfolded, they spent several hours in the back of windowless SUVs pretending they didn’t know where they were.
“I know we’re not on Neil,” said Reginald. “And I know we didn’t juuust… now pass that Starbucks I go to all the time.”
“Should I knock on the cab and ask them to stop, so that you can get a caramel latte?” said Maurice.
Thanks to the blindfold, Maurice was just a voice in the darkness, but Reginald’s brain and senses had become refined enough that he could “see” his surroundings by listening to the way sounds bounced off of the objects around him. He clicked his tongue a few times and listened to the echoes to be sure he saw what he thought he saw.
“Don’t make that face at me,” he said to Maurice. “Just because you don’t like coffee doesn’t mean other vampires can’t appreciate it.”
Maurice said nothing.
Several hours later, Maurice and Reginald found themselves walking down a long and familiar-sounding hallway. Ten minutes after that, their handcuffs and blindfolds were removed and they made their way to the Council chamber, where they found Brian Nickerson sitting in a chair, texting on his cell phone. Brian was six-foot-seven and weighed over three hundred pounds of solid muscle. Under his bulk, the chair he was sitting on looked like a toy.
“Brian,” said Maurice, “let that poor chair go.”
“Maurice,” Brian replied, standing and gesturing at Maurice’s black wardrobe, “let Hot Topic go out of business.”
Brian’s massive frame was topped with a head of wiry, thinning brown hair. He had a square face and wore invisible-rim round glasses. Brian was the only vampire Reginald had seen who wore glasses. He didn’t need them, of course, but they were a human affect that he rather enjoyed, like Maurice with his sword.
Brian had been 44 human years old when he’d been turned five years ago. By modern standards, 44 was quite old. With bootcamp becoming more and more stringent, it was rare for humans over 35 to make it through. Most graduates were under 30, and Charles kept trying to pass legislation that would place a formal age limit on applicants, regardless of their bootcamp performance — bad news for Brian’s wife Talia, who at 37 hoped to wait eight more years to become a vampire, which was when she figured their youngest child would be old enough to be without her during the daytime.
Despite his young age as a vampire, Brian was one of the most senior Council members. Of the seven who had survived the last meeting, only one other had served under Logan. The rest had been killed by either Nikki or Maurice during the coup, and Brian had survived because Maurice had told Nikki to “avoid killing the guy who looks big enough to be three guys.” The vote for Reginald’s execution six months earlier had been eleven to one. Brian had been the sole holdout.
“You’d better watch your back, my friend,” Brian told Maurice. “These others here, they’re out for blood.”
“Arguably, with a vampire population, that doesn’t mean much,” said Reginald. He looked up at Brian, who looked like a wall. Even at just five vampire years old, Brian’s enhanced strength would likely allow him to lift the Council arena. It was frightening to imagine him in a thousand years.
“Your blood too, Reginald,” Brian said.
“They’re always out for my blood,” said Reginald, waving a dismissive hand. “I’m kind of used to it by now. I didn’t fit in with my co-workers and I don’t fit in with vampires. I didn’t fit in through high school and college. I’m considering joining a fat running group because my sub-par speed would impress them. Maybe I could become their leader.”
“The only thing stopping them from trying to kill you again is this guy right here,” said Brian, laying his hand on Maurice’s shoulder. Maurice’s head came to Brian’s nipples. If Brian had been hollow, it would take at least four Maurices to fill him if they were packed like Tetris blocks. “And you know the law. Right now, the law is protecting you, and the Deacon controls the law. But as soon as they find a way to change the law so that the Deacon no longer controls the law? Well, then, watch out.”
“But Maurice controls the law,” said Reginald.
“Until they change the law,” said Brian.
“If they try to change the law, Maurice will block it,” said Reginald. “Because he controls the law.”
“Until he doesn’t,” said Brian.
It was futile to argue with Brian because he’d been a lawyer prior to being turned. There were many jokes about how Brian, who was too old to pass bootcamp, could only have gotten through because he’d been able to show years of prior experience as a bloodsucker.
“Brian,” said Maurice. “You were at the last meeting, right? So what happened?”
Brian shrugged. “Gas explosion?”
“I mean, what did you see?”
Brian shook his head as if exasperated by a question he’d been asked a thousand times. “I don’t know, man. Loud noises. Bright lights. Lots of ash and smoke. I even got a few seconds of sun myself, but I’m young, so it just singed me a bit. Then I grabbed Councilman Klein and used him as a shield. You remember Klein? Liked to eat babies.”
“I remember Klein.”
“Once he started to poof, the debris had mostly fallen and I dove the fuck under it. Bunkered in. Then a few hours later, the cavalry arrived. End of story.”
“But what caused it? Was there… I don’t know… an attack? Anything you saw that indicated foul play?”
“I don’t see how. No blurs that looked like running vampires. The roof just kind of blew off.”
Reginald stared at Brian. It seemed impossible that he could be hearing himself. The roof just kind of blew off? Were all vampires so jaded about death that they’d lost their fear of it? Were they so used to being the apex predators that they couldn’t imagine anyone — or anything — being out to get them? Reginald had been right to assume the Guards’ complacency back when they’d brought Nikki in. In death, vampires seemed to have lost the ability to see past the obvious.
“An incubus named Altus came to visit us about it,” said Reginald. “And he says…”
“Altus!” Brian blurted, interrupting him. “I love that guy. He’s an asshole. And yet, he knows he’s an asshole. It’s what makes him so awesome.”
“He says there was foul play,” Reginald finished.
“How could he possibly know?” said Brian. “It wasn’t incubi, I can tell you that. They’re not fast like we are.”
“He says he just knows, and that it wasn’t an accident.”
“Interesting. So what kind of foul play removes a roof?”
“What kind of gas explosion doesn’t make a huge noise and a fire?” Reginald countered. Reginald liked Brian, but Brian was being dense.
“There may have been noise and fire,” said Brian. “It was pretty confusing. You lose track of things.”
“Nothing is on the videos,” said Reginald, who never, ever lost track of anything anymore.
“Really! Strange. Well, it’s not like our guys do forensics. We got out of the wreckage, they glamoured those that needed glamouring, and the humans wrapped it up. Maybe we’ll never know.”
Now Reginald was just getting annoyed. “Why are you so blasé about this? Almost four hundred vampires died with no warning. Doesn’t that bother you? You were in a building when the roof came off and death rained from above. You lay buried under rubble for hours.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Reginald. Shit happens. A few years of knowing you can’t die and can only be killed changes your perception. And no, I’m sorry, but I didn’t see any vampires being foul, or playing, or getting up to any foul play. Besides, it was sunny out. They’d never survive to pull it off.”
“Well, what if it wasn’t vampires?” said Reginald.
“What would it be if it wasn’t vampires? Don’t tell me you think humans could pull a roof off. We have patrols in bunkers around the place at all times. Humans would need a crane, and nobody saw a crane, or any other kind of equipment.”
Maurice put his hand on Reginald’s chest. “Don’t say it.”
“Altus says it was angels,” said Reginald. It sounded dumb when he heard the word pass his lips, but he had nothing left. Brian simply wasn’t listening.
Brian gave a huge belly laugh. “This is from Altus? No surprise there. He’s a superstitious asshole. All incubi are. They think they’re demons; did Maurice tell you that?”
“Yes. But listen…”
“My youngest kid still believes in the tooth fairy. She’s as dead serious about it as Altus is about angels and demons and Heaven and Hell. Maybe the tooth fairy destroyed the Council.”
“Look, I’m not saying that it was literally…” Reginald began. But at that moment, in the background, someone began shushing the assembly, which meant that the proceedings were about to start.
“We should go up to the Deacon’s box,” said Maurice. He nodded a goodbye to Brian, who tipped them both a salute.
Maurice led the way from Council chamber, up a hidden set of stairs, into a boxed-off area in the stands. A chill ran through Reginald. He’d seen this place before, from below, from the floor of the arena, when he’d been on trial for his life. It was as if he’d gone back in time, and he and Maurice were stepping into the bodies of other people. Maurice would be playing the part of Logan, the Deacon he’d deposed. Reginald would be playing Logan’s Deputy, who in Reginald’s mind’s eye was constantly making notes on a clipboard. Both were dead now, of course, and Reginald wanted to knock on wood and tell himself that history wasn’t about to repeat itself. Maybe Brian had lost his fear of death, but Reginald certainly hadn’t. It was being unfit that did it, he supposed. Maybe the Brians and Maurices and Charleses of the world had become predators, but Reginald still felt like prey.
And prey, by instinct, was always looking for the threat. He could feel it now. Just two weeks ago, this same building — in a different location — had been ripped apart by someone or something, and none of the milling vampires below him seemed to care. It was just business as usual for them. They had laws to pass, bigotry to spread. But Reginald could feel the threat hanging in the air, as if it was about to happen again.
He shook it off. Obsessing would help nothing right now.
Beside Maurice, in the box, was a large chair, like a throne. The throne was made of what looked like sandstone. That was another thing that was different from when Reginald had been here as a prisoner. Back then, the throne had been made of carved wood. Maurice had exposed the wooden throne as a safety hazard when he’d shattered it from behind, sending miniature wooden stakes into Logan’s heart.
At the fore of the box, standing in front of of the throne, was Charles Barkley. He was rapping a stone against the arm of the chair and calling for order.
“Charles,” said Maurice.
Charles looked back and smiled. He continued rapping the stone. “Order!” he said.
“That’ll do, Charles,” said Maurice.
“Order! This meeting of the Vampire Council is called to order!”
“Give me the stone and go back to the Council room, Councilman Barkley.”
“Who are you and where is the Deacon?” said Charles, smiling vaguely.
“Last chance, Charles. I’m asking nicely.”
“I’m doing you a favor here. They don’t know who you are, Maurice. Deacon Maurice…”
“Deacon Toussant.”
“… but they do at least know me. Now, if some stranger suddenly shows up in the Deacon’s box claiming the Deaconship — some small stranger, say — then…”
There was a blur and a breeze as Maurice moved to Charles’s side and deftly broke his neck. He turned Charles’s head so far that it ended up facing backward, the skin on his neck ripped all the way around like a bloody necklace. Charles screamed, and that did finally bring the noisy room to order.
Maurice took the stone from Charles’s hand and said, “Go back to the Council chamber, Charles.”
“This REALLY FUCKING HURTS!” yelled Charles.
“By the common stairway, of course,” said Maurice. “The rear stairway is for the Deacon and his staff only.” He nudged Charles toward the front of the box where a long, meandering set of steps weaved through the bleachers before wrapping back to where Charles would be able to access the Council box.
Charles was trying to turn his head back around, but the muscles seemed to have torn. He grabbed both sides of the backward-facing head and tried to torque it back to front, but there was a snap and he stopped.
“You interlocked my vertebrae, you asshole,” said Charles, tugging at his head with both hands. Watching him was bizarre. Reginald honestly wondered which way he’d walk — forward blind, or backwards and at least be able to see?
“Suck it up, Charles,” Maurice hissed. “Do you want a Snoopy band-aid for your boo-boo?”
“You could burn for this,” said the back of Charles’s head.
“I doubt it. I’m the Deacon. Right, Deputy?”
“‘Deacon may injure Council members at Deacon’s discretion,’” said Reginald, making a note on a clipboard he’d found on a shelf at the back of the box.
Charles began to carefully make his way (backward for the torso and forward for the head) toward the large stairway. Maurice gave him a kind warning to watch out lest he break his neck on the way down.
When Charles was gone, Maurice grabbed the rock and banged it on the arm of the throne.
“I, Deacon Maurice Toussant, hereby call to order this meeting of the Vampire Council, yada yada yada, you get the idea,” he said, a surprising amount of authority radiating from his small frame. “I know a lot of you here don’t like that I’m here. But as the ancient human expression goes, tough shit. I am your Deacon, and you will show me respect. You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to support me. But the next person who fails to recognize my authority to lead this Council, having bested the previous Deacon as is our law —” He gestured at Charles, who tripped and fell as if on key. “— will be summarily staked. Do any of the rest of you want to challenge me? I’ll face you one-on-one. Speak now or forever hold your petty comments.”
He paused, his chest full and his head high. The room remained still.
“No? None of you who have challenged me in my absence? Who have questioned my right to rule or the presence of my proxy? None of you whom I’ve heard call me a relic, a throwback, a reactionary revolutionist? I know who you are, so speak if you’re going to speak.”
Reginald coughed.
“Fine,” said Maurice. “Then as Deacon, I…” He trailed off, then looked over at Reginald.
“What?”
“I don’t know how to conduct a Council meeting,” Maurice whispered.
“You’re supposed to have the Deputy read the minutes first. That’s me. I don’t know the minutes. I wasn’t here and haven’t reviewed the videos yet.”
“Make something up,” said Maurice.
Reginald walked to the front of the box. Someone laughed. Two or three voices muttered something.
“Minutes of the last meeting,” said Reginald. “Council talked about laws. Then the building blew up.”
The crowd increased its murmuring. Yes, they seemed to remember it that way too.
“Also, Charles Barkley was accused of fornication with a poodle. Charges were forgiven.”
No objections came. Reginald wondered what else he could get away with, but decided not to push his luck.
“So are the minutes,” said Reginald, concluding as he’d seen past minutes concluded in the records. Then, for effect, he bowed.
Reginald walked back to Maurice and whispered, “Now you make an opening address. Think Carson’s opening monologue.”
“I didn’t prepare one.”
“I just told them Charles screwed a poodle. I don’t think it matters what you say,” Reginald whispered.
“Can I talk about anything?”
“Sure. But I’d go for a rant. Openers are the time you get to speak without being interrupted by the Council.”
Maurice stood up and walked to the front of the box.
“You are all assholes,” he began. He looked back at Reginald.
“Maybe take it down a notch,” said Reginald, holding his finger and thumb pinched together in front of his face.
Maurice turned back to face front.
“By which I mean that you’re shortsighted. You refuse to see what’s in front of your faces. You’re a population that has entered into a willing, deliberate evolutionary bottleneck in order to become homogenous, with zero diversity in your population. There is, no pun intended, no new blood in our ranks. You must see that, yet you seem so intent on proving me and my ways wrong that you’re willing to doom all of us to do it. I’ve been watching the new legislation. I’ve seen what’s on the roster for tonight, and for meetings to come. Councilman Barkley has been pushing for an age limit for new vampires. The age is lower for women than men. Why would that be? I’ve seen the law that would require retroactive testing for vampires who are old enough to have never gone through the application and bootcamp process. What’s the point? Any vampire old enough to fit that description would be orders of magnitude stronger than any new vampire. You are spinning your wheels in order to prove your own idiotic, asshole point. Two weeks ago, nearly four hundred among you died, and today you’re back here not to talk about what happened and what it could mean and what to do, but to throw more… asshole legislation onto the docket because you don’t like my ways and what I represent.”
He paused. When it seemed that he was done — and not a bad opener, thought Reginald — a voice spoke up from the assembled audience.
“Permission to address the Deacon,” it said. The speaker was a young man with jet black hair, severe black eyebrows, and a chiseled jaw.
Maurice nodded.
“All due respect, Deacon, but this isn’t about being disrespectful. It’s about quality control.”
“Really,” said Maurice.
“We survive on fear and spectacle. Humans outnumber us a hundred thousand to one. They own the daylight. We need to be worthy of their fear and respect. Times are only getting harder. Humans are slowly covering and exposing every corner of the planet. If our representatives are…” He gestured in Reginald’s direction. “I’m just saying, I don’t know how frightened I’d have been, when I was human, of… of…”
“You can say it,” said Reginald. “Of me. Of a fat guy.”
The kid shrugged.
“How old are you?” said Maurice.
“Six years as a vampire.”
“So, a child of modern cinema. Tell me: Before you knew we were real, how would you have described a vampire?”
“Uh…”
“Go ahead. You may speak freely.”
“Fast. Strong. You killed them with a stake. They backed away from crosses and holy water. Maybe they flew. They were dark and glamorous. Sexy. Beautiful.”
“Did becoming a vampire fix your flaws? Make you — as you said — dark, glamorous, sexy, and beautiful?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Did you see Nosferatu?” said Maurice.
“Pardon?”
Maurice looked up from addressing the kid in the stands and played his gaze over the entire Council and assembly.
“You like to think that you’re so different from humans,” he said. “But you aren’t. Few of you are older than one hundred years old. I am over two thousand. Throughout most of my life and through early cinema, vampires were monsters. Creatures of the night. Outcasts — and not in a brooding, fashionable way. In a ‘we must pursue and kill it’ way. Vampires have not always been beautiful, sexy, and glamorous. We’ve been like goblins and ghosts. Things that were fearful because we were so unlike humans, not because we conformed so clearly to their ideals. I had a friend who was turned after losing most of his face, having been dragged half a mile over stone roads by his horse. Name was Jean. Nice guy. He didn’t sparkle, but he scared the hell out of his victims. But there aren’t many Jeans anymore. There’s nobody like him, and supposedly it’s all about ‘quality control.’ You grew up believing what you believed because it was what others showed to you, not because it was ‘true.’ You are slaves to pop culture. Human pop culture. The ideals you’re striving for are not objective absolutes. They are new inventions. Your ‘quality control’ is actually just fashion.”
“This reminiscing is nice,” said a voice from the Council. If Reginald didn’t know better, he’d swear the speaker was Todd Walker. “Can we move it along?”
Maurice threw up his hands. “Fine.”
The crowd murmured. Reginald watched them, trying to read the room’s mood. It was jovial. They’d already forgotten what Maurice had said… or, more likely, they’d never heard it.
“Good monologue,” said Reginald. “Wrong crowd.”
“Maybe the roof will come off again,” Maurice said.
“One can hope.”
“What do I do next?”
Reginald looked at the clipboard, flipping a page. He made a face.
“What?” said Maurice.
“Executions,” said Reginald.