“You might want to repeat that,” I said, not at all sure I’d heard that correctly. “Rebecca Plum is a vampire serial killer?”
“Aren’t all vampires—” David realized who he was in the company of just a second too late.
Ashura didn’t seem to notice. Probably because she already had a focus for her ire. “I find this entire story depressing, Sam. Would you be a dear and explain for me?”
“All vampires are killers, yes,” Sam said, picking up the slack. “Rebecca Plum, however, has no control over the Need. She ravenously tears into her prey, drinks until their deaths, and gorges before pulling away.”
There were only a few kinds of people that vampires didn’t tolerate among their ranks. You could be an assassin, warlord, slaver, and bathe in the blood of your enemies without getting much more than an upturned nose. Most vampires hated those who preyed upon children or were needlessly sadistic to their prey but even that was a regional thing. New Detroit was one of the few places where there were any laws against abusing mortals. Which was a practical thing anyway, as Thoth explained it, since tourism was the lifeblood (ba dum ching) of the city.
The only vampires who weren’t tolerated anywhere were Bleeders and Plague Rats. Bleeders could depopulate regions and brought out the torch-wielding mobs within a week or two even in metropolitan areas. Plague Rats were those who spread disease with their bite and served as Typhoid Marys for everything from AIDS to hepatitis. It was hard to say which vampires hated worse. I’d destroyed two of the latter as bellidix, including a sixteen-year-old girl who didn’t understand how she’d infected her entire family with terminal illnesses.
Sometimes being a vampire just sucked.
I blinked repeatedly. “No one’s tried to help her feed properly? Not go directly for the artery? Not chew and lick wounds?”
“Rebecca Plum can’t be helped,” Thoth said, coldly. It was with genuine loathing, this time, as only one who has been forced to kill for centuries can have of those who like it. “Rebecca Plum refuses to feed on animals, blood bags, or even in long intervals. Instead, she insists on eating a person a week and sometimes one a night.”
I did the math in my head. “You can’t mean—”
David stared in horror. “She’s killed over a hundred people since she’s become a vampire?”
That was a lot of damn corpses. Contrary to some movie depictions, most vampires didn’t kill all that often and when they did it was because they hadn’t eaten in a while. The first thing you were taught by a responsible creator was how to feed lightly and from multiple sources. The few vampires who did regularly kill tended to do so of people that society was better off without. Thoth had a love of white supremacists, rapists, and hunters. Even then, it was more a treat he preferred to indulge in rather than something he’d made a lifestyle. Ashura, sanely, forbid the killing of mortals without cause and inflicted severe penalties on those vampires who harmed the tourists. That was my primary job, and I’d knocked out more than a few fangs teaching Youngbloods to behave.
“Closer to two hundred,” Asura said. “She is the absolute worst of our kind, the creature that we have evolved from and should be left in the dustbin of history.”
“Only one in a thousand vampires do not possess a basic level of control and usually have the decency to commit suicide after their first few nights,” Thoth said, sounding as disgusted as most mortals would be in his situation. “Or they’re helped along. Apparently, Mrs. Plum was a high functioning psychopath in life. Now she’s not functioning.”
David, thankfully, didn’t make a joke. “I don’t think I like her books anymore.”
“It’s how I felt after I found out about Marion Zimmer Bradley abusing her children,” Sam muttered, referring to the fantasy author turning out to be a pedophile married to another pedophile. “The Councils of Ancients have been very clear that not only is Mrs. Plum not to be destroyed, though, but she’s also to be...catered to.”
It occurred to me what they’d dragged me here for and why they were paying me fifty grand to play babysitter. They wanted me to find her food every night and make sure she stayed out of the papers. I was to be her drug dealer. Except instead of drugs, I would be delivering her people.
“Oh hell no!” I said, opening my mouth in disgust. “I am a monster, but I am not that kind of monster.”
“The sacrifices have already been provided for,” Thoth said, cutting me off. “The absolute worst of the U.S. penal system and several people who couldn’t be arrested due to technicalities. Also, several individuals we were saving as tribute to the Council of Ancients. She is only to eat once a week, and any additional meals are to be from receptacles like blood bags or chalices. We are to treat her with every courtesy, but this goes beyond a normal indulgence for our kind.”
“A lot of guys in prison don’t deserve it,” I said, repulsed by what he was suggesting. “They’re in there for crimes they didn’t commit.”
“Trust me,” Thoth said, his voice lowering. “They’re all guilty of crimes worth death.”
“So is she,” I said, unsure I could do this. Even for the money to keep my mom comfortable for another year. “You guys are letting her get away with mass murder because she’s a popular writer? Have you no fucking self-respect?”
That was when I noticed David had stepped out from behind me and was now behind my jeep. Uh oh.
Seconds later, I was being lifted a foot off the ground by Ashura as she plunged her perfectly manicured nails into my neck. The Old One only needed one hand to lift me up. “I am not letting her do anything. This sick would-be Elizabeth Bathory was indulged by the voivode of Texas for years before her rebirth. Voivode Forsyth provided her with people society would not miss. Why? Because she pays him. Billions of dollars from merchandising, movies, and more to go into his pockets. Money he sends up to the Council of Ancients. He was not a rich or influential Old One before and changing that was worth as many human lives as he could provide her.”
Ashura dropped me, and my neck healed over instantly.
I took a moment to process that. “And that’s what we’re going to do?”
“Yes,” Ashura said. “I might even be willing to risk staking her for the sun if not for the fact there’s five or six would-be voivodes who would love to take New Detroit for themselves. You would not like their style of governance.”
The sad fact? She was probably right. Despite the fact Ashura let people get away with literal murder all the time, she really was the lesser evil in this town. There were places now in America, particularly Texas, where the casualties resembled Baghdad during the height of the war. Part of the reason we needed those damned books, I suppose.
“Time will catch up with her,” Thoth grumbled. “Eventually. As soon as those books stop making the fortunes they’re currently raking in, she will have outlived her usefulness to the Council.”
I stood up and stretched my neck to make sure it still worked. “Okay, I got the score. But…”
But what? What could I really say? Even if I didn’t participate in this, it wouldn’t result in the situation improving. Hell, they’d just get another vampire to do it, and he might not care if she did go on a killing spree and take down someone who didn’t deserve it.
Hell, I didn’t even know why I was so angry. I knew vampires killed people, by accident or design, all the time. They tried to keep it to a minimum, though, and were ashamed of it when it happened. Was it really such a big difference we were dealing with someone who didn’t? Emotionally, yeah, apparently it was. The whole premise of letting a Bleeder live pissed me off and I could tell it did Ashura and Thoth too. They were just willing to put their own political and social position over it for as long as she was with us. Could I? Was I capable of being that much of a bastard?
“But what?” Ashura said.
I stared at her. “I want more.”
Apparently, I was.
“More?” Ashura asked, raising a perfect eyebrow.
“A salary,” I said, coughing. “Regularly, yearly, for what I do as bellidix.”
Thoth rubbed his temples. “Oh, Peter.”
“Done,” Ashura said. “You’ll be paid a living wage.”
“Unliving,” I corrected. “Five figures. I want to be able to pay for my mom’s care until she’s dead and have a little more on the side.”
Ashura smiled. “An unliving wage. Much greater. I’ll also see your mother’s healthcare is provided for.”
Thoth’s expression was enigmatic.
Great, at least I hadn’t sold my soul cheap. “One last question: what happens if she doesn’t want the house special but wants to order out?” I asked, looking between my bosses. “You know, says, ‘Hey, Peter, I’m going to this daycare center.’ What do I do then?”
I knew what I would do, with or without their approval.
“Stake her and put her on a rooftop for the morning sun,” Thoth said, not hesitating. “We agreed to provide for her, but there are some things beyond the pale. Unless you have an objection, my lady?”
Ashura stared at him. “No. She will live by our rules while in Detroit even if we fete her like a queen. That means no killing anyone we don’t want her to kill.”
That was harsher than she treated her own subjects. So, yay, I guess? Why did I feel like I hadn’t won much of a victory?
Sam clapped her hands cheerfully. “Splendid! Then we’ve got it all worked out.”
Sam was way too cheerful for a woman enslaved to a pair of older-than-dirt immortals. Favored slave or not. Whatever she was on, I wanted some.
With that, a plane finally descended from the sky above our heads. It was a G4 private jet, worth about three million dollars, and it landed with perfect precision. It said something about the kind of circles I provided security for that I knew that was the kind of private jet for someone who was rich but not mega-rich.
“Finally,” Ashura said. “I was about ready to go get my bodyguards to give me fellatio to pass the time.”
“One final question,” I started to say, knowing she was completely serious. Old Ones didn’t have much sense of propriety.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Ashura said. “What?”
“If she is such a sacred cow, then why is the voivode of Texas sending her your way?” I asked. “Isn’t she still making him too much money?”
“That is a very good question,” Thoth said. “One we’ve been debating for some time.”
Great. I hated it when I was right.
“There are many upcoming votes in Michigan,” Ashura said, frowning. “Votes designed to repeal the special status of New Detroit and the tribal laws that we’re allowed to operate under.”
Vampire Special Zones operated a bit like Native American Reservations, except they actually had the authority to punch back at the government due to mind-control as well as billions of dollars. The Far Right hated the undead and wanted to see us all carted off to camps and experimented on. Maybe they had a point given all the murders, but plenty of us hadn’t chosen to be vampires and were doing the best we could to not kill people. It’s just I wasn’t one of them anymore.
Damn, this was a bad night.
“Rebecca Plum’s presence will cause many housewives and newly adult teenage girls to vote to continue the special rules vampire society exists under,” Thoth said. “Voivode Forsyth wants those repeals to fail as much as we do. It increases his power in the Vampire Nation to provide us a weapon against them. Even one as loathsome as her.”
“For now,” Ashura said. “He was one of the ones who thinks a mass purge of our race would remove the deadwood. Remember, the Council of Ancients thinks she’s their golden goose and has ordered us to keep her in a manner befitting her station—which is apparently other than a Youngblood who eats like an animal.”
“Oh great,” I said, realizing not only was I babysitting a serial killer, but it was a political shitstorm too. I knew the money was too good.
“Whatever the case, let’s just get her taken care of so we can get her the hell out of my city and away from our people before she triggers a lynch mob,” Ashura said, walking up beside me alongside Thoth. “I’m willing to host her for a month but not a second longer.”
“Wait, a month?” I asked, doing a double take. “I’m expected to look after her for a month?”
“A short time’s work is very relative,” Thoth said. “Trust me, Peter, you alone can keep this from becoming a massacre.”
“I—”
“I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars,” Thoth said, doubling my fee again.
I shut up.
“Wow, this is fucked up.” David stood on the other side before leaning over and whispering, “I never in my wildest dreams believed the Detroit Vampires were the good guys, but I thought they had standards.”
“You realize they can hear you, right?” I said, frowning.
David blanched.
Plum’s jet came to a stop a few dozen yards away before boarding stairs were wheeled up to its side. Two women stepped out and headed our way. Both were striking but in entirely different ways. The first woman was Rebecca Plum, recognizable from her back covers’ photos and a thousand nighttime television interviews, even if I wasn’t particularly fond of her work. Really, the movies improved on it a lot.
“Do you think she’d give me an autograph?” David asked.
“Hush!” I snapped.
“I wouldn’t keep it,” David defended himself. “I’d sell it on the internet.”
Rebecca Plum was a pleasantly plump woman with graying dark hair, lines on her face, and none of the supernatural beauty that some vampires possessed as a gift. Much like me, she possessed the same look she’d had in life: a thoroughly normal-looking middle-aged housewife who’d been transformed into a vampire recently.
Rebecca made up for her average looks with an expensive-but-not-couture wardrobe that seemed designed to mock Ashura’s European designs. She wore big box department store black slacks, leather jacket, a blood red turtleneck, and expensive but mass-produced silver jewelry. A pair of two-hundred-dollar sunglasses were on her face while prominent ankh earrings were on display, each containing a tiny driblet of blood.
Instead of moving with the gait of a supernatural serial killer, beings who tended to be filled with self-hatred and justifications, Rebecca Plum walked with the self-confidence of a woman on top of the world. I would have immediately doubted her danger if not for the fact I smelled blood under her recently-painted fingernails, and human brain matter was stuck behind her left ear.
Jesus.
Following behind Rebecca was a five-foot-four, white-haired woman of Asian descent wearing a long skirt and possessed of crimson-red eyes. She wore a knee-length white dress and blouse with a tiny sun amulet around her neck. The woman wasn’t beautiful, certainly not the way Ashura or Sam were, but she was striking. The woman carried two suitcases and had a carry-on bag in her mouth. That would have looked silly if not for the fact she had the jaw strength to pull it off. It didn’t take more than a glance to realize she was a shape-shifter, probably a Kitsune, and Rebecca’s assistant.
Who’s the babe? I asked Thoth, telepathically. Some vampires had full-on psychic powers, the same way some vampires could do magic while others couldn’t. Almost all vampires, though, could communicate with their creations and servants. I was no exception.
There’s a time and a place for everything, Peter.
Yeah, well, I don’t want to think about the Parent-Teacher Conference Killer.
Thoth paused. That’s Yukie Onna. It’s a joke in Japanese.
A language I don’t speak, unlike you, Man of the World. Underworld. Damn, sorry, not very good at puns.
It means ‘Snow Maiden’ and is a type of scary story, Thoth replied. Yukie is Mrs. Plum’s bodyguard and possibly the most dangerous woman in the city after Ashura.
And yet she’s treated like a valet? I asked.
Mrs. Plum didn’t select Yukie as her servant. She was a gift from the Western Old Ones, who received her as a gift from the Yakuza.
So she’s a slave.
More like a contract killer. She’s a half-demonkin, half-werefox, and a trained spellblade. She’s killed numerous problems for the Council of Ancients after leaving the Yakuza’s service for the Vampire Nation.
The Yakuza?
A group of Japanese criminal secret societies dating back to the Warring States period.
I know what the Yakuza is. I’m just curious what she’s doing here.
Keeping us from doing something rash.
Like stopping a serial killer? I asked.
Yes, Thoth replied.
Yeah, if you were looking for sympathy then Thoth wasn’t the guy to go to. He had something akin to five hundred million dollars in the bank and I mean cash, not investments, but wasn’t the sort of guy to share that with his creation since I needed to make my own way. Cheapskate.
I heard that, Thoth said.
Yeah, well, it’s the truth. Not that I have any right to complain. When do I get my hundred grand?
Upon her exit from New Detroit, assuming you don’t end up killing her, as I half suspect you will.
“Great,” I muttered.
You’ll only get half if that happens, Thoth ended our telepathic conversation.
Rebecca Plum removed her sunglasses and walked over to give Ashura a hug that looked like two sharks grappling. “Andrea, darling, it’s so good to return to your city. I do hope things don’t turn out like last time. Such a big fuss over something so little.”
Andrea, huh. Referring to vampires by their original names was a big no-no in vampire circles. I’d say this woman had balls of steel, but the simple fact was, pressured by the Council of Ancients or not, you did not want to challenge a vampire on their home territory. It was like going into a cobra’s den.
Ashura gave a forced smile. “Yes, I can definitely agree with the desire for it not to turn out like last time. How is your husband?”
“Oh, Michael’s drooling in a corner somewhere where I told him to stay. I’ve told the bellidix of Dallas to keep him hydrated and change his diapers.”
“Lovely,” Ashura said, keeping that pageant show look of withheld disgust on her face. “And the kids?”
“Equally good,” Rebecca said. “In fact you could help with Michael Junior. He’s in college in Michigan now, pursuing a degree in vampire studies. However, he’s got an upcoming rape charge against him that is nothing but the police blowing it all out of proportion. Could you get that taken care of? He has a bright future that shouldn’t be derailed.”
Ashura looked like she wanted to rip Rebecca’s head clean off. “I don’t think that falls under my purview.”
Rebecca just shrugged it off. “Oh, don’t worry, I have friends among the Magistrates who are handling it now. I just wanted to make the offer, so you didn’t lose face with your superiors.”
Ashura’s eyes twinkled like a cat’s and she turned to Thoth. “Honey, would you do me a favor and talk to Mrs. Plum? I have to be anywhere else on Earth. Come, Sam.”
“Yes ma’am,” Sam said, following the voivode as she headed to her limousine.
Ashura not being able to keep her cool in front of a hated enemy, especially one centuries younger, was a major social faux pas. It was something I had to say I had the tiniest bit of admiration for, though.
Rebecca put her sunglasses away in her jacket pocket. “Ah, yes, I heard Andrea got married to someone. I think we met before. What’s your name again? Benson?”
Oh hell no.
Thoth just smiled. “You’ll forgive me if I skip past your feeble attempts to insult me. I was the one who forced Heidrich Himmler to take his cyanide capsule. I have precious little time to banter words with a writer.”
Rebecca narrowed her eyes. “I see.”
“That is David,” Thoth replied, gesturing. “King of the Zombies.”
David waved. “My people greet you from the underground tunnels where we dwell.”
Rebecca rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “I can see none of you are cultured enough to carry on a polite conversation like they can in the Western territories. Can we just get back to the hotel? I want to unpack, shower, and feast. I hope, at least, you’ve reserved the penthouse for me.”
“You shall be treated like royalty while you are here,” Thoth replied. “The Apophis’ every service will be made available to you, but the staff and guests are untouchable.”
“Then I want another hotel,” Rebecca said. “There are other vampires willing to accommodate my special needs.”
Thoth stared. “Of course.”
Rebecca smiled in triumph, unaware that she’d played into Thoth’s hands, even in just a little way.
Thoth then gestured to me. “This is Peter Stone. You’ll be—”
Rebecca gasped.
I looked over my shoulder. “Huh?”
Rebecca turned around and grabbed me by the hands. “The Peter Stone?”
“I’m a ‘the’ now?” I said, blinking.
Rebecca looked right up into my eyes. “Peter Stone. I’ve come across the entirety of the United States to make you famous.”
I opened my mouth in sheer confusion then realized this was another setup by Thoth and Ashura. “Great!”