Blood Lite II: Overbite (12 page)

I win!
Ms. Mullens shouted.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve. The last thing I needed was to have my dinner clinging to my face. A ghoul’s digestive system wasn’t built to expel food. The mouth worked as an intake-only valve, which made throwing up painful. “You happy now?”

6

I climbed back in the car and waited. Ms. Mullens couldn’t go long without talking. It wasn’t in her nature. My patience paid off.

Fine
, she said.
I’ll give you a hint. He made a miraculous recovery.

“You think Lawrence Koffman is involved in Benny’s death. The billionaire? Why?” I asked. It seemed unlikely that someone like Benny would ever come in contact with Koffman. They didn’t exactly run in the same circles.

It’s logical, really. A couple of months ago we read that he was terminally ill. Now suddenly he’s better. You said so yourself that a Harvester was involved. A billion dollars can buy a lot of body parts.

I looked up the phone number for Koffman Funds and managed to bullshit my way up to the assistant of his assistant’s assistant, but no further. It was enough. My phone rang thirty minutes later. Surprisingly, it was Koffman himself, launching immediately into that offensive that rich assholes specialize in, threatening to sue the city and get me fired if I didn’t stop harassing him. Innocent people don’t act that way. His behavior was especially telling since I hadn’t mentioned why I’d phoned. I waited for him to finish, then quietly said, “We need to talk about Benny Frost.”

His rant stopped immediately. Silence reigned for a few moments, then he calmly gave me his address. The place turned out to be a luxury high-rise in a must-have zip code. Koffman’s penthouse was located on the seventieth floor. The elevator opened straight into his home.

Past a pat-down from a couple of Brioni-suited goons, Koffman was waiting as I stepped into the white marble foyer. “Make it quick.” He glanced at his Rolex. “You have fifteen minutes.”

“You look good for a man who was terminally ill a couple of months ago,” I said. “Death wears you well.”

He smirked, and I knew it was true. I could see the damp skin, the cracks that never quite heal. “Get to the point, Detective.”

“How did you find Benny Frost?”

Koffman walked over to his minibar and poured himself a scotch. He didn’t offer me one. Instead, he took a big swig of the amber liquid, staring at me over the rim of the crystal glass. “Homeland Security is one of our biggest customers,” he said. “We provide sniffer machines at bus terminals, train stations, ferries, and at airports. All it takes is an extra calibration to get the machine to detect decaying flesh, along with explosives residue. Names, addresses, and occupations are collected and stored for later use. It’s really quite simple.”

My heart slammed into my ribs. He knew what I was and where I lived. They could’ve harvested me at any time.

Ms. Mullens gasped, shocked into silence for once in her life. I wouldn’t be dying alone if I got hulled.

Fear quickly turned to anger at his arrogance.

He caught the change in my expression and laughed. “At first, we thought there were only a few hundred of you, but it turned out that you number in the thousands. With so many, there’s really no need to be quite so circumspect.”

That was news to me. I didn’t think there were that many of us, but I don’t get out much. “What did you take from Benny?”

Koffman grinned. “I needed its heart, its liver, kidneys, lungs.” He paused. “Oh, and a spleen, whatever that is.”

How positively delightful
, Ms. Mullens said.
He used all those organs from the same ghoul. Greedy and clueless. The combination doesn’t get any better than that.

It was my turn to smile.

Koffman’s grin slowly faded as he noted the change in my demeanor. “No one will believe I had anything to do with this crime. You know it and I know it. Ghouls don’t exist, remember?”

I nodded in agreement. Everything he’d said was absolutely true. “I have no plans to arrest you,” I said.

Koffman’s eyes narrowed.

“But I have a question,” I said, reaching into my pocket for my wallet. “How do you feel about snakes?”

He blinked in confusion. “Snakes? What in the hell do snakes have to do with Benny Frost?”

I stepped forward and showed him.

It truly is an interesting sight when someone suddenly discovers they have an insane fear of snakes and actually takes a running leap off their seventieth-floor balcony.

Presumptuous Beast Throws Sumptuous Feast

MIKE BARON

“The great white hunter,” Count B’orloff sneered as his chauffeur-driven Hispano-Suiza soaked up gully-whumpers that would have cracked a caisson. “Buys the biggest estate in town, declares himself the sine qua non, the ne plus ultra, the cat’s pajamas, and invites the thread-bare gentry to sup at his table.”

The Countess laid her long ivory hand on his leathered sleeve. “Please let’s not work ourselves into a lather, dear. Herr O’Malley brings much-needed work to the province. And no one liked watching that house fall into desuetude.”

“The sheer unbridled ignorance of the man,” Count B’orloff continued as if his wife had not spoken. “To add insult to injury, he invites us at the height of the full moon. The man calls himself a nature expert. How could he be unaware of the demmed werewolf, or is this some sort of juvenile test? For all his accomplishments, this O’Malley fellow comes across as remarkably insecure.”

“Dear,” the Countess continued, fitting a Turkish cigarette to her ivory holder, “please let’s not psychoanalyze the man based on a dinner invitation. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt. He may turn out to be delightful company.”

“He’s Irish,” the count said with disgust as if that alone explained everything. “Not even your proper Englishman who goes to Rhodesia and finds diamonds. No. He makes his living taking upper-class English twits into the brush where they corral some hapless beast and beat it to death with sticks.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case,” the Countess averred, tiring of the Count’s attitude. “Oh, look!” she cried with girlish enthusiasm. “The Vieblers are here! And that’s Count Epicstein’s Bentley, is it not?”

The Hispano-Suiza pulled up beneath the marble portico of an immense wedding cake of a house, lit windows overlooking the brick turnaround, their arched shape giving them an expression of surprise. Six or seven expensive automobiles, including a Mercedes 500SK and a Bugatti Royale, were parked on the expansive lawn. A liveried pug-ugly held the car door for them, ushering them toward the entrance where a toady in a liver-colored waistcoat made notations on a clipboard.

“Count and Countess B’orloff,” the toady intoned. “So good of you to come. Please proceed to the main salon where bwana is waiting to greet you.”

“Did he say ‘bwana?’” the Count whispered. The Countess rolled her eyes.

Countess on his arm, Count B’orloff sashayed to the balustrade overlooking the main salon, where Lord Patrick O’Malley vigorously pumped hands and flashed his too-white teeth. A tall, thin, dark man, Count B’orloff was aware of the effect he had on those who were not familiar with him, in his jet-black suit and black satin cape lined with red. Some bumpkins mistook him for a vampire. Countess D’angela was similarly cadavered in a form-fitting black taffeta gown that flared at the calves, her deep décolletage decorated with a strand of black pearls. Her silken jet hair hung in a waterfall straight down the back of her gown.

Lord O’Malley was exactly the type of fellow Count B’orloff despised: mesomorphic, ruddy-cheeked, cheerful, and gregarious. Those teeth! Like massed Hun shields turned toward the sun! That mustache! It belonged on a Texas Longhorn! A coterie of eager debutantes hovered at the hunter’s perimeter.

The toady appeared at the Count’s left elbow. “Count and Countess B’orloff!”

O’Malley stepped forward to grasp the Count’s delicate hand in both his ham-sized fists, pumping the Count’s arm as if trying to shake birds off a clothesline. The Great White Hunter wore tweed pants with jodhpurs stuffed into leather cavalry boots, a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and collar, and an open shirt of high-quality muslin the Count recognized from his last trip to Savile Row. A half inch of fresh bandage peeked from O’Malley’s right sleeve.

“Very pleased you could come, Count!” O’Malley enthused through his teeth.

“Don’t be silly, old chap,” the Count said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Welcome to the neighborhood. I hear you’re quite the hunter.”

“Man is at his best when he hunts,” the bumpkin brayed.

“And you, my dear,” O’Malley seized D’angela’s hand. The Count feared their host might rip it off. “You are a vision of continental sophistication and loveliness.”

The Countess blushed at the man’s brash charm. “Tell us about your latest escapade.”

“I can’t do that, madame,” O’Malley said, twirling his mustache. “It would ruin the surprise! But I can tell you last year at this time I was in the American West hunting mountain lions in the Rockies.”

Count B’orloff sniffed. “Where might that be?”

“In Colorado, in the American West. A chain of mountains that dwarfs the Carpathians. Only Switzerland has anything similar.”

“What’s a mountain lion?”

“Also known as the American puma! A fearsome beast that weighs up to two hundred pounds. Took me two shots to bring him down. As a young man I vowed to cull every possible trophy from the wild. I have hunted snow leopard in the Himalayas, jaguars in the Amazon, rhinoceroses in Africa. By the time I killed my American puma, I had pretty much written the big game book.”

“And the reason you honor our miserable burg,” the Count said smiling ironically, “is that you heard of our supernatural predators.”

“Precisely,” O’Malley burst with satisfaction.

Other guests displaced the B’orloffs on the receiving line. The Count snagged glasses of champagne and spotted Manfred Viebler, who had the estate next to his own. B’orloff went over to where Manfred stood by the groaning board, eating deviled ham on a cracker.

“Manfred, old boy! What do you make of this, eh?”

Manfred looked up, his gaze encompassing the silent circle of trophies occupying most of the wall space. Lions from the veldt, a tiger from India, various members of the deer family (with and without antlers), a stuffed bobcat, several eagles, a snow leopard, a thylacine and a moose.

“Fellow seems determined to kill one of anything, wouldn’t you say? In any case, it was unconscionable for him to hold his event on this night of all nights with that cursed beast on the loose.”

“Then why are you here, old boy?”

Manfred shrugged unhappily. B’orloff knew full well Viebler had married a Viennese actress less than half his age. “Bella wanted to come. When I tried to explain the situation, she sneered at me. Love, eh? What we do for love.”

“Nevertheless, you took precautions,” B’orloff said.

Manfred nodded solemnly and patted his waistcoat. “My man Delmer is an expert shot with the .450 Martini-Henry. Had to sacrifice a lovely tea service left to me by my great-aunt, but such is the price we pay for living in these times. If all else fails, I’ve got my father’s dagger.”

“Good God,” the Count exclaimed.

“What is it, dear?” the Countess said.

“What if the fellow killed it? That might be the very reason he came. Having exhausted the fauna of Africa, he’s after our werewolf!”

“Is that a bad thing?” Manfred said. “The creature kills someone every time there’s a full moon.”

“I’m not defending the creature,” B’orloff said. “But consider . . . those of us representing the diminishing aristocracy, hoarding inherited fortunes, we do not welcome the world’s scrutiny. Fear has been our friend lo these many years. Fear keeps the outside world at bay. Even the King’s Exchequer fears to tread, and that helps keep taxes low.”

Manfred stroked his chin. “Well, when you put it that way . . . it’s degrading property values. Are you suggesting we stop trying to kill it?”

B’orloff glanced all around to make sure he wasn’t being overheard. The Countess gripped his upper arm. “Don’t start, dear.”

The Count lowered his voice to Manfred’s ear. “I’ll go further. We should consider giving it what it wants. The gaols are full of gypsy trash. Feed the beast a gypsy or two. We kill two gamecocks with one shot: assuaging its hunger, and sending a message to the gypsy tribes that they are not welcome here.”

Manfred stroked his prickly chin. His eyes went round. They narrowed to gun slits. “You don’t suppose . . .” he said.

“What?” the Count prodded.

“The great white hunter.” Manfred nodded to their host, chatting up a huge bald-headed man in a naval uniform with gold epaulets. “You’re absolutely right, Count. That’s why he’s here.”

“How presumptuous. Taking it upon himself to deprive our community of a creature that certainly has more claim to this land than he does.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” Manfred said.

The Count prodded Manfred with an elbow. “He’s wearing jodhpurs. Of course he’d dare.”

Manfred shuddered with revulsion. “Oh, dear,” he said.

The Count peered down. “Problem?”

“The menu,” Manfred gestured.

“Well, he promised a surprise. And we mustn’t let him down. Wouldn’t want the fellow to think we were
chicken
, wouldja?” The Count winked. “Are you chicken or aintcha?!”

Manfred inhaled deeply through funneled nostrils. “I’m hungry enough to eat a werewolf.”

As if on command, the majordomo in the liverish suit tapped a silver spoon against leaded crystal from the entrance to the dining room. “My lords and ladies, dinner is served.”

The guests filed into the elegant, walnut-paneled dining room with a cut-glass chandelier and a splendid boar’s head mounted over the immense fireplace. All the guests sat at an enormous dining table on which O’Malley had deposited place cards.

The Count and Countess B’orloff found themselves seated to their host’s left and one seat down at the enormous walnut table handmade in Carpathia. An intricate carving at least six feet long depicted plumed royals on horseback pursuing a wolf through the forest. A pack of hounds nipped at the wolf’s heels. Manfred Viebler and his girl bride Bella were seated to the left of Countess B’orloff.

Waiters in black slacks and white shirt circulated, depositing greens in front of every guest. The Countess regarded her salad with enthusiasm. “Look, Udo. Where on earth do you think he found arugula? He must have had it brought in from Italy.”

For several minutes there was only the susurrus of muted conversation and the chewing of greens. Their host stared at his own dish, never touching it. He raised a crystal chalice of merlot and a silver spoon. TING! he rang the chalice. TING!

As waiters whisked away dishes with the speed and alacrity of pickpockets, all eyes turned expectantly to their host.

“Dear friends,” the lord of the manor rumbled, “and friends I hope you will be, I thank you for welcoming me into your community. Yours is one of the oldest bastions of civilization in Eastern Europe and I am fully cognizant of your rich and tragic tradition as well as your reticence to welcome outsiders. Most of you know me as a big game hunter and leader of expeditions to the Dark Continent. But I also consider myself a biologist, and in fact hold a degree in that discipline from Christ Church college in Oxford. Toward that end, I have sought to catalog the world’s most diverse biological predators, from the fearsome cape buffalo to the lion of the veldt. You have seen my thylacine and my dire wolf.”

Their host paused, deeply ruminative, as the waiters again swarmed the table setting down great bone china dishes upon which sat thick slices of a savory red meat. At the far end of the table, a lesser duke surreptitiously took knife to platter before his wife snatched it from his hand.

“In any case, it was my intention to serve up the very beast that has terrorized the countryside for lo these many years.” Their host set his misshapen knuckles on the table and looked down. “I had already sent the invitations when I set out last night to make good on my vow. Unfortunately, I failed.”

There was a collective gasp from the table.

“The creature left its mark on me. On your plates is a wild boar I bagged this morning served in a cranberry sauce. Please—enjoy.”

There was a smattering of applause from the far end of the table, then an outpouring of clapping and exhortations. “Bravo!” “Well said!” “You tried!”

Viebler leaned across D’angela to hiss, “No prayer.”

“Indeed.” The Count sniffed, cutting into the red meat before him. The Countess dug him in the ribs and nodded. Their host sat staring at a loaded fork as if he’d never seen such a thing.

The Count set down his knife and fork.

“I say, O’Malley,” he said in a concerned baritone.

There was no reaction.

“Bwana!” the Count barked.

Their host looked up, bewildered, then broke into a smile. “What can I do for you, old man?”

“Are you all right? You look a little pale.”

O’Malley smiled, mustache twitching. “Never better! Bit past my usual bedtime. Early to rise, early to bed, et cetera.”

The Count looked at the slip of bandage poking out from O’Malley’s sleeve. “The beast marked you, eh?”

O’Malley could not stop himself from staring at the Countess’s elegant throat. “Eh? That’s right, a mere scratch. Not like I was bit or anything.”

O’Malley’s brow lunged forth and sprouted hair like a woolly mammoth. His snout elongated with a painful popping sound, scimitar canines descending from his upper jaw.