CHAPTER 6
It felt oddly normal, after a day of such incredible abnormality, to be at the office.
Maurice and Reginald were tired. They’d barely slept after a few hours of detention at the Council, four rides in blacked-out SUVs, and an insomniac day of indecision spent on and off the phone with Brian Nickerson, who’d stayed at the Council following what Reginald was already calling “the Balestro affair.”
Nikki had arrived on a flight from New York a few hours earlier. She’d taken the whole week off and wasn’t supposed to return to work until Monday, but she came in Friday night anyway because she missed Reginald and Maurice — and, as she’d explained months ago, she “had few friends among the living anymore.” Nikki had almost been approved to become a vampire before Reginald’s trial, and the coup had slowed things down enough that she was just now almost approved again. For six months, she’d been on the brink of leaving daylight forever, and had severed most of her daytime relationships accordingly.
Reginald was glad to have Nikki back. He wasn’t used to having a girlfriend, and he’d missed her. He certainly wasn’t used to having a super-hot girlfriend. He kept pinching himself. Then he’d pinch her. Then she’d pinch him. Then she’d try to get him, yet again, to have sex, because as she explained, “a girl has needs.” But for six months, Reginald had demurred. It was hard to get his mind past the many years of rejection, he said. And so, reluctantly, she’d given him time to face whatever internal demons he still faced.
The atmosphere of the office was comforting, despite the fact that the day shift was having its annual customer appreciation event out in the main office space. Reginald, Maurice, and Nikki, who worked the night shift, hadn’t been invited. This was fine with all three of them. Reginald loathed the day shift except for the three other misfits he never saw anymore — Sarah, Noel, and Scott, who of course wanted nothing to do with the annual customer appreciation event and had stayed home. Maurice didn’t particularly like the day shift. Nikki was constantly warding off sleazy come-ons from the day shift.
And as far as the day shift was concerned, the trio represented another race, from another planet. The night shift workers, officially uninvited, would simply keep working while the event was going on. But it was Friday night, and most of the gym buyers were exactly like Walker, who was exactly like Berger, who was exactly like everyone else on the sales staff. So the party got drunk. And then it got loud. And then it spilled out of the conference room and across the cubicles, and Reginald, Nikki, and Maurice retired to the mail room, which seemed relatively safe.
Yet the presence of humans felt good, even though neither Maurice nor Reginald felt the need to feed at the moment. Humans were so normal. So harmless. What could a human do to you, compared to the awesome power that Balestro wielded?
Nothing, if you wore chain mail.
“You really are a genius, Reginald,” said Maurice, admiring Reginald’s chain mail shirt.
“No I’m not,” said Reginald. “The rest of you are stupid. Think about it. Only three things will kill a vampire. Humans aren’t able to pull off heads and sunlight doesn’t come out at night. That leaves wooden stakes through the heart. Yet you never hear of vampires wearing simple chain mail shirts. You can’t get a stake through chain mail. Hell, wooden bullets wouldn’t even penetrate it. I can’t believe nobody thinks of it.”
The idea had seemed obvious to Reginald from the beginning, but the challenge turned out to be actually finding the chain mail. He’d looked at Army stores, speciality stores, hardware stores, and online, where he’d found only flimsy costume chain mail. Eventually he’d located the real thing, but the chain mail he discovered was the size of an XL shirt. When Reginald asked about size 4XL chain mail, the man on the other end of the phone told him that there hadn’t been any fat knights. Reginald snapped back that he’d never heard of a fat vampire either, then hung up before the man could reply.
Eventually he’d ordered four chain mail shirts. He took two of them to a historical village and paid a blacksmith to have them combined into a giant chain mail parka big enough for — in the blacksmith’s words — “Lancelot the Hut.” The other two were in gift bags on the table.
“Yours is for later,” Reginald told Nikki. “You know… for after you’re turned.”
“Can we do that tonight?” said Nikki, running a finger up Reginald’s arm.
“Your re-authorization should come any day now. Let’s wait and do it by the book, so that Maurice doesn’t have to pardon you again.”
“Good idea,” said Nikki.
“Being executed would suck,” said Reginald.
“Suck,” Nikki repeated, removing her finger from Reginald’s arm and placing it seductively between her lips.
“Dammit, Nikki, knock it off,” said Maurice. Then, turning his attention to the remaining gift bag, he removed the chain mail and held it up to admire it. He pulled his shirt off, exposing a nineteen-year old, pimple-strewn, sunken chest. Then he pulled on the chain mail and put his shirt on over it.
Nikki had pulled off her own shirt and was standing next to them in a white bra that seemed very bright against her tan skin. She wiggled into the chain mail. Reginald told her that there was no point for her to wear it yet and tried to grab at it, but she smacked his hand away. Then she asked him if he’d seriously never worn a Halloween costume around the house before Halloween just because it was awesome.
When her shirt was back on, she bounced lightly on her toes and said, “This shirt is heavy.”
“Take it off, then,” said Reginald. Then he added, “Slowly.”
“If only I had a pole,” said Nikki.
“Writhe against the vending machine,” Reginald suggested.
“I like vending machines,” said Nikki, licking her finger. “If I push the right buttons, I can get nuts to pop out.”
“Jesus, Nikki,” said Maurice.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” said Reginald, “were you around for Jesus? I mean, you must’ve been, but did you know him?”
“That’s like asking a guy from New York if he knows Derek Jeter,” said Maurice.
“So you’re saying Jesus was like Derek Jeter?”
“Maybe.” He cocked his head. “Probably.”
Then the door banged open and the bright white tombstone teeth of Todd Walker burst into the room. A pair of enormous breasts came with him.
Walker looked at Nikki, then Reginald, then Maurice. Then he said, “Hey look, it’s the company vampires.”
“Lucky guess,” said Reginald.
“Ha ha!” said Nikki. “I get it. Because we work at night. You’re hilarious. Are you here to have sex with this woman? Go ahead; we can scooch back a bit.”
Walker’s facial features went blank. The tombstone teeth vanished.
“Yes,” said the woman with the enormous breasts. “Do you mind?”
Reginald crossed the room toward Walker and his conquest. He looked the woman in the eyes.
“You don’t want to have sex with this man,” he said. “You want to go back to the party and tell everyone that he begged and begged, but that you were disgusted by him. So he paid you to have sex. You were willing to do it, but when you saw the size of his penis, you laughed so hard that you lost your balance and fell forward into said penis, knocking Walker here into that wall over there. Then an open printer ink refill fell from the shelf and coated his penis in red ink. Because of this, months from now, everyone will be calling him, ‘Ol’ Red Dick.’”
The woman looked back into Reginald’s eyes and said, “Sure.”
Maurice didn’t tell Reginald that he couldn’t glamour the woman and expect behavior out of other people as he had in the past. Any vampire could command a person to do things themselves, but Reginald was a glamouring virtuoso. He could influence people to influence other people. Reginald’s instructions to humans were always vague, trusting their subconscious minds to fill in the specifics.
Reginald looked at Walker. “You’ll help her prepare and then will forget everything that happened in this room tonight,” he said.
Walker nodded, and then the drama began to take shape.
Walker stood several feet from the wall he’d supposedly been run into, then ran backward at it and rammed the wall with his rear in order to leave a convincing ass-hole in the drywall. Plaster poofed out in a tiny cloud. Then Walker and the woman found a vial of red printer ink, spattered it on Walker’s pants and on the floor below the shelf, and then tossed the bottle into a corner. The woman mussed her hair, and they walked out.
“Will it literally be ‘Ol’ Red Dick’?” said Maurice, fascinated.
“Yes. Human minds are like locks. They are very easy to open once you see the pattern. I planted an idea in her mind, and she’ll plant ideas in the minds of a few of the others outside. In fact, they’ll probably think the nickname was their idea.”
There was a crash from outside the door, and the sound of the party increased. There was much hooting and hollering. Even through the door, Reginald could hear Walker called a “douche” at least twice.
Then, relative quiet returned to the closed mail room. There was something in the air — something heavy and unspoken.
“Maurice,” said Reginald.
Maurice looked over.
“Do vampires have an explanation for themselves?”
Maurice shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you all act so rational, like you’re above believing in the ‘superstitious crap’ that Altus believes. I couldn’t figure out why that bothered me, but then I realized what was going on: You’re just being human. Once upon a time, we were all human, and even now, as vampires, we live in the middle of a human culture. Sensible humans believe in rationality and science and observable phenomena, and sensible vampires believe the same. But sensible humans also don’t believe in us, Maurice, and they don’t believe in incubi and succubi. It’s like vampires have taken this very rational frame of beliefs and have said, ‘The humans are right that magic and supernatural stuff is bullshit… oh, except that there are vampires.’ So I was just wondering — do vampires have a rational, scientific explanation for themselves so that they can explain away the fact that magic doesn’t fit into their sensible worldview?”
“Is this about angels?”
“Angels. Demons. Heaven. Hell. You laugh at it all like you’d laugh at the Easter Bunny, but the mere fact that you exist should cause you to at least open your mind to those possibilities. You are a counterexample to your own argument that everything should be explainable and sensible.”
Maurice drummed his fingers on the table. “It’s not that simple,” he said.
“Sure it is. History is filled with discoveries of unknown and impossible things. Someone realizes that crazy things exist or figures them out, and then everyone accepts them. If aliens landed on the White House lawn tomorrow, people wouldn’t throw out their entire system of beliefs. They’d simply fit aliens into that system of beliefs and would make a small amendment: ‘Okay, aliens aren’t ridiculous anymore, but this other stuff is still obviously impossible and ridiculous.’”
Maurice shook his head. “It’s so deep. So deep in our mythos.”
“Then tell me,” said Reginald.
“Yeah, Maurice,” said Nikki, propping her elbows on the table. She had an interest in mythology that bordered on a fetish. Reginald had made fun of her because she’d taken a 3-volume compendium of the Greek gods with her on vacation.
“All right,” said Maurice. “To answer your question — Do we have an explanation for ourselves? — the answer is yes and no. We don’t have a rational explanation, no. We don’t know what makes us tick, really, and we don’t know, actually and precisely speaking, who the first vampire was. There are two basic schools of thought on it. One says that vampires and humans co-evolved as separate species and that we had our own ‘mitochondrial Eve,’ and one says that humans came first and that we evolved from them in a way not unlike a certain famous fish crawled out of the ocean and breathed air one random day.
“But on the other side of ‘do we have an explanation?’ — yes, we do. On the non-rational side, we have a myth.
“Now, two things you need to understand about vampire myths. The first is that even though we tell the stories, we don’t actually believe them. It’s like how some Native Americans talk about the world being created when a beetle came down from the sky, found nothing but water, and dragged mud up from the bottom of the ocean so he’d have a place to stand. They, like us, don’t literally believe those myths today, but they tell them anyway. It’s part of their culture.
“But the second thing to understand is that unlike with Native Americans, our myths aren’t told from parent to child. Vampires are, almost all of the time, turned willingly when they’re adults. That skews our demographics. Most people who apply to become vampires do so because they’re damaged in some way.” His eyes flicked to Nikki, who looked down. “No offense, Nikki. But below the surface, most vampires — at least today — are emotionally disturbed, or angry, or grew up powerless and now want power more than anything. You’re choosing a life of eternal youth that revolves around ritualistic, sexualized behavior. You’re choosing never to see the daytime again, to live in shadows and indoors, and to be a predator and a killer. And now think: Our myths spread from jaded, damaged adult to jaded, damaged adult. There is no innocence or blind acceptance. Everyone knows the myths, and while nobody believes them, they’ll often talk themselves into believing parts of them because it gives them purpose.”
Maurice looked into Nikki’s eyes, Reginald’s eyes.
“If I could psychoanalyze a little bit, vampires are lost souls,” he said. “Humans at least have pervasive myths in their culture about where they came from and where they’re going, but what about us? We start as directionless, jaded people. We make a conscious choice to turn away from our humanity, and after that, in the big picture, we’re given no direction. We live forever, so there’s no need for an afterlife. So what our myths do is to act as a glue and to fill that void in meaning. Vampires have to believe in something or they’ll go mad, so they grab onto our myths. They laugh at them on one hand and embrace their core meanings on the other. But then, because they’re approaching the myths as fully formed adults, they’ll ritualize them, or subconsciously embody them, or use them as excuses for atrocities. Does that make any sense?”
Reginald, who knew of Maurice’s interest in psychology, nodded.
“So with all that out of the way, the vampire creation myth — the one that nobody literally believes but that everyone tells — goes like this: In the distant, distant past, in the time of Adam and Eve, the universe was ruled by God and angels. Yes, the same god — at least in the modern version of the myth. A group of angels tried to seize power, were foiled, and then were cast out of Heaven. In some versions of the myth, Lucifer is one of these fallen angels, and in others he’s not. In some versions there is a Hell, and in some versions there is not. But in all versions, there are six fallen angels, three of each gender — presumably anthropomorphized from our own genders — and they settle here, on earth, on the mortal plane, as the first earth-dwelling immortals.
“Now, God had already created Adam and Eve, and just like in the Christian tradition, they were his most treasured creations. But there was a problem. He had six very dangerous renegade angels to contend with, and he didn’t trust them, as well he shouldn’t. But the fallen, themselves, were between a rock and a hard place. God had thus far only banished them and could, they suspected, incinerate them instead. So a kind of detente grew between them — an acrimonious ‘agreement to disagree,’ say. But it was too tenuous. Neither side trusted the other. The angels feared being destroyed, and God feared for his creations.
“And so they negotiated, like divorced parents would negotiate over a child they share. They came to an agreement. Adam and Eve would have two sons: Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel would represent a branching of intelligent life on earth into two. In the human version of the myth, Cain kills Abel. In the vampire version, they both kill each other, over and over and over again. First Cain kills Abel. God resurrects Abel. Then Abel, furious, kills Cain, who is resurrected by the fallen angels. It goes on and on and on, brother killing brother, neither side willing to surrender. So eventually, the only way to keep them apart so that each can father his own branch of life on Earth is to ‘sunder the day’ and give each dominion over one. Abel is given the day, the light, and the spark of life. Cain is given the night, the darkness, and the dead.”
“So when Altus talks about angels…” said Reginald.
“Correct. He’s talking about these mythical Six.”
“But why would they be against us? We’re supposed to be in their corner, according to the myth.”
Maurice shrugged.
“Maybe he’s talking about other angels,” said Nikki. “You know, the good ones.”
“Does it matter?” said Maurice. “It’s a myth.”
“Just for the sake of argument.”
“Vampires act like there are only those Six. Incubi too. You never hear anyone talk about any ‘good angels.’”
“I just don’t get it,” said Nikki.
“Because it’s a myth,” said Maurice. “Do you believe that sky beetle dragged mud up from the ocean to make the land of the Earth?”
“But I still don’t see why the angels would have supposedly turned on vampires,” said Reginald.
Maurice rolled his eyes and stood up. “Magic coyote. They turned on us because a magic coyote came in and barked, and then the cactus spirit toked up some weed and the sky fell.”
“Hey, you said yourself that vampires take these things into their psyches and ‘use them as excuses for atrocities.’ We’ve seen atrocities in the past two weeks. I think it’s worth understanding.”
“So you think Balestro was an angel.”
“I don’t know what Balestro was. But wouldn’t you agree that we’re facing a very serious threat — no matter whether it’s mortal, immortal, or angelic?”
Maurice shrugged and sighed, acquiescent.
“And we’ve been given a deadline, remember. Thirty days. 29 days now. Talk about ritualism. We don’t have to believe any myths, but Balestro and anyone who might be with him seem to.”
“So…”
“We’ve got to at least figure it out and decide how to respond,” said Reginald. “Whatever Balestro was, he’s bigger and better than us. I’d say there’s a one hundred percent chance we’ll regret it if he does come back and we’ve done nothing but sit around with our thumbs up our asses.
“So,” he said to Maurice. “We should talk to Brian about manufacturing some consensus on the Council. Let’s meet in my apartment tomorrow at midnight. In fact, have Brian drag Charles along. We’ll have to get him involved. He’s an ass, but he represents everyone who hates us. They won’t listen to us, but they’d listen to him.”
Maurice nodded, then peeked out the small window in the mail room door. He looked at the clock on the wall above Walker’s ass-hole in the plaster.
“One fifteen,” he said. Then he cocked a thumb over his shoulder, at the mail room door. “They’re shitfaced out there and it’s only going to get worse. Anyone want to knock off early for the weekend? They’ll never know.”
“Good idea,” said Reginald, standing from his chair. “I have some reading to do anyway.”