An Unattractive Vampire (32 page)

“No,” said Bile. It was a bitter whisper, but the room had become so quiet that the sound grew to fill it.

“Why not, if I may ask?”

“Because,” said Yulric. For a moment, that appeared to be all he was going to say. For a moment, that was the only reason he could think of. He knew that the proposition was good. He was being offered power and safety and freedom to do as he pleased. And in exchange for what? Killing? He was not one of these young things who treated blood like a drunkard treats ale. He had once gone a century not drinking blood, simply to win a bet. He knew he should sign the paper. It just . . . felt . . . wrong.

Yulric picked up the forms in front of him. “This is not what a vampyr is,” he said and threw them across the table.

“Beauty? Blood? Immortality? Power? If that is not
what a vampire is
, then, please, Master Bile, enlighten me. What is a vampire?”

Yulric didn’t have a response for this, except for the ax in his hand. He let the handle fall farther into his grip and readied himself to attack and be slain. But just as he was about to leap forward, an unseen force held him back.

Let it go.

Yulric turned to see Catherine’s mental projection tightly grasping his arm.

Those who fight and run away.
She raised a set of car keys up to his face.

Yulric looked from the woman only he could see to the vampires, who were all waiting for an excuse to rip off his head.
⁶⁵
He made a decision. With as much dignity as he could muster, he gave a curt nod of defeat and faded into a fine mist, which leaked out through the cracks in the door, and was gone.

“Well,” said The Doctor Lord Talby after a moment of awkward silence, “shall we get down to business? If you would all turn to page one of your packets”—they did—“we’ll go over how much each of you are now worth. I’m sorry, Mistress . . . ?”

“Arru.”

“Mistress Arru, I have to tell you, you have wonderful bone structure. You know, there have been some remarkable advances of dermal hydration. Perhaps, if you’d like to make an appointment, with the right moisturizer and some glass eyes, I think . . . Say, does anyone else hear a bus horn?”

• •

Yulric Bile emerged from the bus and stepped out onto the rubble that had once been the conference room. The dust was still settling, as were the pieces of plaster and live electric wires. A quick glance around the carnage revealed little evidence of those who had been sitting at the table, other than Arru’s spiderlike hand poking above the wreckage and the mangled splat peeking out between the grill of the vehicle and the wall. Closer inspection revealed The Doctor Lord Talby’s arm sticking out of it. And Yulric did inspect it. Closely. With a smile on his face.

Yulric turned to leave only to find Tezcatlipoca emerging from the shadows near the bus-sized hole in the wall. The two vampires stared at each other long and hard until the jaguar-headed creature caught sight of the Spaniard’s red cloak crushed beneath a tire. The big cat gave an appreciative grin and stepped aside.

“You know that won’t kill them?” Tezcatlipoca said in considered but perfect Latin.

“No,” Yulric replied in Nahuatl as he passed, “but it hurts like hell.”

Once more, Yulric Bile, the elder vampire of ancient myth and terrifying legend, sat on the couch flipping through channels. With equal unconcern, he moved from a show about good-looking doctors who sleep with each other to one about good-looking lawyers who sleep with each other to another about good-looking police who sleep with each other. From there, he journeyed down the rabbit hole of reality TV, passing by the lives of self-proclaimed famous people, dangerous occupations, and ghost hunts wherein absolutely nothing happened. He decided to stop on the wrestling program where large-muscled men and women beat each other with chairs. It reminded him of his childhood.

“You know it’s fake,” said the small boy seated beside him.

“Yes,” growled the vampire, remembering the conversation distinctly. The boy had taken particular relish in Yulric’s angry disbelief, just as he took relish in reminding the vampire of that fact now. If Yulric Bile hadn’t been feeling especially good, he’d have brained the child where he sat. At least, that’s what he told himself.

The doorbell rang. Neither boy nor vampire moved from his position on the couch. It rang again. From upstairs, frantic footsteps made their way across the ceiling, down the stairs, and to the front door.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get it,” said a harassed-sounding Amanda. She was currently half-dressed, which meant fully clothed but without makeup. The bob-cut black wig she’d put on was askew, and she quickly adjusted it before opening the door.

“Amanda,” said the equally attractive black-wig-wearing blonde on the other side.

“Nora,” Amanda greeted her friend with a little hug. “Come upstairs. I’m almost ready.” She began to run up the steps. “Oh, could you grab my boots? They’re in the closet.”

“Sure thing,” Nora called back. She opened the closet and paused. “Amanda!”

“Yeah.”

“There’s an old woman in your closet.”

The quick pitter-patter of stocking feet running downstairs could be heard. “She lives across the street.” Amanda appeared in the entranceway to the living room. “What is Mrs. Havenaugh doing in the closet?”

“We needed her penmanship,” muttered Simon quietly.

“What was that?” barked Amanda.

“He said they needed her penmanship,” Nora tattled.

Yulric struck the boy upside the head for forgetting there was more than one person with extraordinary hearing present.

“Unenthrall her,” said Amanda, now addressing the ancient vampire.

“At the commercial break,” he muttered.

“Now!” Amanda repeated. She may not have been a vampire, but people who raise children develop their own superhearing for sarcasm and passive aggression.

Yulric grumbled as he got up to release Mrs. Havenaugh from the closet. After the confused old woman apologized for wandering into the wrong house and left, he returned to the couch, where he and Simon proceeded to keep up appearances. Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock but not at the door.

Knock, knock.

Yulric did not get up.

Knock, knock.

Yulric still did not get up.

Knock, knock. Knock, knock. Knock, knock. I can do this all night. Knock, knock.

Fine!
Yulric stamped his way to the door, flung it open, and went back to his seat.

“Nice to see you, too.” Catherine giggled.

“Catherine, is that you?” called Amanda from upstairs.

“Yes, hi,” Catherine replied with a shout.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you knock,” Nora apologized.

“Don’t worry about it,” Catherine told her.

“We’ll be down in a sec, k?” Amanda said.

“No rush,” Catherine answered. She entered the living room and sat down on the other side of Yulric. The vampire very pointedly did not acknowledge her presence, which in ancient-Saxon vampire translated to
hello
.

“Hello, Simon,” greeted Catherine, talking across Yulric, who was very stiffly not looking anywhere but at the images of men in underwear jumping off ladders onto one another.

“Miss Dorset,” Simon responded without looking up.

“What are you reading?” she asked, angling herself to glance at the open book on his lap.

The boy blocked the pages from view with his shoulder and arm. “Nothing.”

“Okay,” she said with a smile. She silently began watching TV.

So
 . . .
wrestling,
she thought.

Yes,
Yulric replied, hoping that maybe if he responded she would be sated and go away.

Wow, this takes me back to my childhood,
she said mentally. Yulric could not tell if she were being truthful or teasing. Likely both.

Who are you rooting for?
she asked.

The villain,
he answered shortly.

I think they call them heels,
she corrected him.

I do not call them that,
he spat.

Well, to each their own.
She shrugged. The two sat in mental silence. Somewhere outside their heads, they registered the sound of Simon flipping pages in his booklet.

Who do you root for if two villains fight?
she asked.

Whoever is the most devious,
he answered, careful not to smile. Those were indeed his favorite matches.

Catherine drummed her fingers on the little blue handbag that matched the midnight-blue dress she was wearing.
What do you think of those characters that the fans seem to love, no matter how villainous they act?

Yulric turned his head and looked at her. Her mouth, lightly coated in lipstick, pursed seriously, though the edges twitched upward ever so slightly.

Yulric turned back to the television and made a point to change the channel.
I despise them most of all.

She gave him a playful nudge with her shoulder. He pretended she did not nor ever had existed, which made her laugh.

Two sets of footsteps descended the stairs, and a pair of nearly identical, black-haired beauties entered the room in matching backless long black gowns. Together, they looked like a movie starlet from the twenties and her image in a mirror.

“Catherine!” said Amanda in greeting. Catherine stood and they hugged. “You really shouldn’t be sitting. You’ll wrinkle your dress.”

“Oh, like anyone’s going to be looking at me with you two nearby. Hello, Nora.”

“Catherine. You look well,” said Nora.

“Don’t I?” Catherine gave a playful twirl. “I nearly fit into myself again.”

“Okay?” Nora agreed, not quite understanding the intricacies of how mind images and comatose bodies worked.

“We should get going. Nora can’t be late for her own party,” said Amanda with a look at her phone.

“Nonsense,” Nora corrected her. “It’s my party, which means it doesn’t really start until I get there.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Amanda asked Yulric. “You’d be one of the first to see the preview for
Nights of Nora
.”

“Are
they
going to be there?” he asked, making sure to put plenty of extra bile on the word
they
.

“Arru and Adze,” added Nora. “They’re a thing now.”

“Really?” Amanda exclaimed. “That’s sweet. And horrifying.”

“Isn’t it?” Nora agreed.

“I will stay,” Yulric said, flipping briefly to some atrocious program that filmed those with mental illnesses and then away to a sporting event with rules he did not understand, other than it involved a ball and running. “Someone needs to watch the boy.”

Amanda’s attention shot to Simon. He didn’t quite hide his books in time.

“What are you looking at?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he replied. It was said with a complete lack of fear or guilt. He could have fooled a lie detector, but Amanda knew her brother.

“Give them,” she ordered, her hand outstretched.

Simon pulled two items out from behind the couch cushions. One was an encyclopedia of ancient weaponry, the other a blacksmith catalogue he’d picked up at the Renaissance fair a few months prior.

She grabbed the latter from him and put it in her bag. “I thought I took this away from you already.” She’d caught him trying to order things with her credit card. If he hadn’t needed to call the blacksmith personally to put in special size requirements, she wouldn’t have found out until, in both senses, the mail had arrived.

Simon shrugged in a noncommittal way that did nothing to reveal whether this was the same catalogue from before, which he’d stolen back, or one of several that he’d picked up and was hiding somewhere.

She turned on Yulric. “And this is how you are going to watch him?”

Yulric flipped the channel. “You would not have noticed had I not spoken.”

Two sets of Linske eyes shot daggers at the vampire; one because he’d been betrayed, the other because what he’d said was true.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” she said with an undertone that read
to search your room.

“Okay,” Simon replied, not quite hiding his own subtext of
I have until then to hide them better.

“See ya, short stuff,” Nora said to Simon, kneeling down and giving him a kiss on the cheek. He hissed and squirmed more than a vampire confronted with a cross dipped in garlic. Yulric could not help thinking that if he were truly so indifferent to girls, he would not care so much. Typical Puritan.

Nora and Amanda sashayed their way to the door, though Amanda stopped at the threshold of the living room to look back. The eight-year-old and the vampire, the perfect pair, each ideally suited to babysit the other. She knew her brother would not allow the ancient one to leave his sight, lest he rampage and ravage. And she knew the vampire would not allow anyone or anything harm her brother, lest he lose the chance to do it himself. It wasn’t what she’d intended. It wasn’t what she’d wanted. But it was what she had, and she could live with that. Emphasis on
live
.

Then again, her brother had said, “
We
needed her penmanship.”

“You two behave yourselves,” she called back, suddenly very worried.

“Yes, Amanda,” intoned Simon in that singsong way of all children responding to authority.

Yulric grunted, which could either be recognition of what she’d said or a reaction to the alien-history show he’d found. With a final suspicious glance, Amanda headed for the waiting limo.

Catherine, too, hung back a moment, just long enough to wink before joining the others. It might have been nothing—a speck of dust, an eyelash, some misguided sign of affection. But then, why had she winked Yulric’s eye?

“She knows,” said the vampire.

“Will she tell?” posed Simon.

“No,” Yulric replied.

“Well then,” said the boy, hopping down from the couch.

“Let’s get to work.”

The full moon loomed large and orange on the horizon as its light hit an attractive figure standing outside the Pink House. The mysterious individual was slight, of average height and below-average weight, though possessing all the proper bulges that men’s fitness magazines said it should.
⁶⁶
Its clothes were perfectly tailored originals, which accentuated the wearer’s physique, especially in the absence of a shirt. Red hair hung like wilting spikes, perfectly coifed and gelled to keep it in place through hurricane winds and all but the most intense lovemaking.