CHAPTER 15
The blue ring of fire continued to circle, continued to churn. Claire looked up at Reginald, then at the angel. Reginald gave her a small nod.
“Uh…” said Claire.
“If you have nothing to say,” said Balestro, “we’ll continue.”
“Uh…” said Claire. She tugged on her mother’s pantleg. Victoria looked down, a wide smile on her face. Finding no help there, Claire looked back at Reginald.
“Fine,” said Balestro. He raised his hands again. The fire swelled.
“Wait!” said Claire.
Balestro lowered his hands. The fire shrunk again, became blue again.
“It’s like Reginald said. They’re going to evolve. He’ll… uh… he’ll show them the way.”
“What way?”
“The smart way.” She waved her hands around in mystical-looking spirals. “It is thus predicted. Shazam.”
Balestro looked up at Reginald. Squinted. Then he looked back at Claire.
“Tell me more,” he said.
“There’s… uh… a great change coming. A war, between humans and vampires.” She looked up, having caught Reginald making sharp head-shaking motions and drawing a finger across his throat. “Wait. Not really a war,” she continued. “Like a skirmish. Yes. I see it now in the third eye. It’ll be all good. And then there will be change. Like, you know, good change.”
“A war?” said Balestro.
“Just a little one. Nothing to get worked up about. I mean, just a few skirmishes to, like, clear out the pipes, you know? Shake things up. There will be… uh… bad vampires. And… like, some good ones. But…” Her eyes jumped open as if something brilliant had just occurred to her. “Oh! Like, lots of evolved ones, like, you know, evolved vampires. Like Reginald! And they’ll use their big brains and become more. Uh… Like, they’ll invent stuff like that True Blood blood substitute or whatever, which isn’t to say that they’ll be, like, sellouts, you understand… but, like, that makes them more flexible.” She looked at the angel, met his icy glare. “But they’ll still be evil! Not too evil. Like, the perfect amount of evil. Like, what I’m saying is, here: They’ll be the hunters they’re supposed to be, and they’ll drink blood and be eternal and all, but they won’t be assholes. Oh, sorry, Mom. They won’t be jerks, I mean. They’ll… what?”
She turned her head to look at Reginald, who was doing an odd dance with his chin held high and his lips pursed, his expression superior, his hands tugging at imaginary tuxedo lapels. Then he made big X motions over himself. He stopped when Balestro looked over.
“And the vampires will… not be fancy? They won’t be… uh… gay? No! No, I guess they’ll be gay sometimes.” Her eyes were darting back and forth between Reginald and Balestro, trying to read a frantic game of charades.
“Pompous!” she yelled, suddenly triumphant. “Yeah, that’s what it was… uh… I mean, what ‘the eye’ was trying to tell me. All the stuff they do now, with, like, trying to be some sort of a super race, that’s over. Like, in the near future.”
Balestro thought for a second. Then he said, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Your… vision… says that vampires are going to stop pursuing a bottleneck of perfection. If this is true, why would it be?”
“I don’t know,” said Claire, offended. “I don’t write the songs. I just play them.”
“I’m sure it’s because they recognize that evolution doesn’t come from the bottleneck you mention,” said Reginald. He dropped his eyes to the ground when Balestro snapped his head over to look at him.
“Yeah,” said Claire. “I see Reginald leading a lot of this stuff, so there you go.” She made jazz hands. “Booga-booga.”
Balestro stood tall on the altar. The blue fire continued to roil. Reginald watched it, seeing it boil past trees and rocks and leaving them untouched. It was in his mind. It was in all of their minds. What would happen if Balestro unleashed it? Would vampires simply explode? Or would they have the vampire equivalents of embolisms, quietly breaking inside and falling apart? He could feel Maurice’s consciousness inside of his mind — and now, joining it, Nikki’s as well. Through Maurice, he could sense dozens of others, and through them, scores of others. A giant family tree stretched below him in the recesses of his mind, and he was sure — yes, sure now — that every vampire alive was watching the ring of fire wherever they were, knowing exactly what it was, waiting to see what would happen.
“I can’t read her,” said Balestro, looking down at Claire.
“Strange,” said Reginald. “I can.”
“I couldn’t read Merlin either,” said Balestro. Then he looked at Reginald. “But you, I can read.” He looked at Maurice. “And you. And the rest of you.” He sighed. Reginald wondered if sighing was a human affect, something he did because it was a habit of the flesh. Did angels sigh in Heaven?
The fire blinked out like an exhausted gas flame and was gone.
“You, I can read,” Balestro repeated. And then, without warning, something came out of Balestro and blew through Reginald like a shotgun blast. He felt his head come off, watched as his vision went a brilliant white and then black. The world spun and he hit the ground, his head an arm’s length away, and he could see it now, and he reached out his hand for it and his neck was ragged and bleeding and he could feel his pulse, could feel his life leaving him, and then…
And then he was standing where he’d been a moment earlier, intact, and nothing had happened after all.
But something had happened. But something had changed.
“We will be watching,” said Balestro.
And then, accompanied by the fire and light show that had heralded his arrival, he was gone.