Blood of Gold (17 page)

The vampire she’d called Marc didn’t seem convinced. He shook his head. “Someday you’ll see, Clarkson. He is nothing like us.”

“I still don’t understand,” Simone said. “Who are you, and why are you here?”

Rod put his arm around her waist. “Remember when I told you of
The Testament of Michael?
How there was a powerful vampire who preached coexistence with mankind? I left him a message on the Internet. I hoped if Terrill was as powerful as he was rumored to be, he’d find us.”

Clarkson nodded. “I found your blog.”

“On the Internet?” Simone repeated doubtfully. Even though she had spent hours exploring Rod’s cellphone apps, it was clear she still didn’t get how far-reaching the technology was that had developed while she was a captive. But even the relatively tech-savvy Rod couldn’t help but be impressed by how quickly the vampires had found them.

“If we found you, others can too,” Clarkson said, all business. “The message mentioned there were three women. Where are the other two?”

“They’re gone,” Rod said. “I’m not sure they would have wanted to join us anyway, but we were planning to leave them a message.”

Clarkson nodded. “Hurry,” she said. “When you’re ready, come with us.” She walked toward the front of the house, followed by Marc. There was a big black SUV parked in front, with tinted windows, which was a good thing, since dawn was only an hour away.

Just as Clarkson’s hand reached for the door handle, a loud voice boomed at them from near the doorway of the house. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Rod turned and instinctively tried to shield Simone when he saw Awbrey standing there pointing a shotgun at them. Simone gently pushed him to one side and stood in front of him instead, which made more sense, he admitted to himself.

Awbrey edged around them so he could get a clear shot at all of them. Clarkson tensed, and for a moment, Rod wondered if she would attack. From what he understood, these Golden Vampires wouldn’t kill humans.
But what about in self-defense?
he wondered.

“I called my nephew,” Awbrey said. “Stephen’s never heard of you. You’re squatters. So I’m thinking you owe us some rent money.”

“We’d gladly pay you,” Rod said, “but if we had any money, we wouldn’t have been squatting.”

Awbrey snorted. “Worthless pieces of shit.” He put the shotgun under one arm and fumbled with a cellphone. “Why don’t we let the sheriff sort it all out, then? You can work for the county for a while in an orange jumpsuit, and we’ll garnish your wages.”

“Hello, dispatch? I got a situation here. I g-” His voice cut off abruptly and a strange look came over his face. He made a gargling sound, and a gush of blood flowed out of his mouth. He dropped to the ground, unmoving, his head semi-detached from his neck.

From the darkness behind him emerged a vampire who was nearly as massive as Awbrey, but taller, wider in the chest and narrower in the waist.

Simone gasped. “The Monster!”

Chapter 16

Hoss was cloistered in his hotel, which was on the opposite side of London from the Council of Vampires’ offices and chambers. It was obvious to him now that the distance was deliberate. While Peterson was paying for the lodgings and was constantly telling Hoss how important his “New World” viewpoint was, the old vampire clearly had no intention of letting him get mixed up in politics, whether or not he was a Council member.

New World?
Hoss thought.
How is America new to anyone who isn’t centuries old? It’s ridiculous.

He’d asked to check out the IT services at the hotel, and Peterson had looked at him as if he had no idea what Hoss was talking about. “Oh, computers!” he’d finally said. “I think we have a room for that somewhere around here.”

After exploring the lower warrens of the skyscraper, Hoss found the little room on his own.

He entered quietly, stood in the back and watched the vampires there. It felt so familiar to him, as if he’d finally come home. They were so engrossed in their work that they didn’t notice him at first. Finally, the tall, rawboned vampire who was walking from station to station supervising their efforts turned around. He was dark-haired and lanky, and wore loose-fitting shorts and a baggy T-shirt, which made him look even thinner. He was growing a beard, but it looked more like he’d accidentally forgotten to shave than a deliberate effort.

When he saw Hoss, he literally jumped in surprise. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted.

“My name is Hoss.”

“As in
Councilor
Hoss?” The lanky vampire stared at him suspiciously. “The newly elected councilor from America?”

“That’s me,” Hoss said.

“Wow,” the vampire said. “You’re the first one to ever visit us.”

Then Hoss asked a question about some coding one of the vampires was doing. The IT guy looked surprised, but eagerly answered. The conversation quickly evolved into technicalities. Time flew by, and before Hoss knew it, it was quitting time for the IT gang. The tall vampire stuck out his hand. “I’m Jared,” he said. “Come by any time, Councilor Hoss. I think you’re the first lord high mucky-muck to understand what’s going on in the world.”

So it was that Hoss embedded himself with the group of young vampires, who were frustrated and angry at being ignored by the old guard.

“So ignore them back,” Hoss said after a few nights of listening to the IT gang complain. “Let’s do what needs to be done, and to hell with asking permission. I’m a Council member. I’ll take the heat.”

It was as if he’d freed them from chains. They had a thousand ideas, some good, some bad: some of them were fully fleshed out and only awaiting permission to be implemented. Hoss was happy to provide that permission. “Information is always good,” he said. “Go ahead.” Of course, he took great pains to make sure none of this activity could be traced back to its source. But little by little, the Rules of Vampire were reaching a wider and wider audience, promulgated throughout social networks and going viral in exponential leaps.

Public surveys were showing that a larger and larger segment of the population was beginning to believe that vampires were real. Hoss had decided they couldn’t stop that; there was too much hard evidence out there. Sure, they’d existed in secret for most of history, but that was before camera phones. There were dozens of very convincing YouTube videos from the Crescent City incident alone.

Hoss had realized that though they couldn’t hide their existence any longer, they could try to shape how vampires were perceived.

He wasn’t going to promise that vampires were harmless to humans; it would be many centuries, if ever, before most vampires could peacefully coexist with humans. It was the rare vampire who could turn Golden. Even Hoss had little inclination to follow Terrill’s lead. He liked feeding on humans too much. So they couldn’t pretend to be innocent. That was out. The message Hoss tried to shape was that vampires weren’t numerous enough or dangerous enough for most humans to be worried about. He argued, through a thousand Internet sock puppets and proxies, that if people took precautions to avoid vampires, vampires would probably avoid them. Becoming the victim of a vampire attack was like being attacked by a cougar while out jogging: the chances were so slim that you might as well not worry about it.

Of course, even as he argued this, Hoss was out on the town every night, looking for victims. He felt a twinge of guilt, but not enough to stop doing it. He was being practical. Vampires had been discovered, vampires were going to feed; there was no getting around that. The Rules of Vampire were the best way to keep the situation from getting out of control.

His two young friends, Jimmy and Pete, were out with some of the younger vampires every night, painting the town red––literally. Jodie was even more voracious. She still crawled into Hoss’s bed at night, but he was certain that he was only one among many to whom she granted her favors. That was all right. He was losing interest in her. She was a simple soul, vicious and insatiable. If it weren’t for him, she probably would have gone Wildering. When Jimmy began paying more and more attention to her, Hoss signaled that it was fine with him.

Sometimes Combs asked him over. At a sumptuous banquet table, he was fed a nice young victim, one who was usually completely intoxicated or drugged so he could get a good buzz on.

“Why do we have to kill them?” he asked one night. “Why can’t we just take their blood?”

“Have you ever tried?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And how did that go?”

“I couldn’t stop feeding once I started,” Hoss admitted.

“We are vampire,” Combs said simply.

They went back to eating the prostitute, whom Combs or one of his surrogates had picked up off a local street corner. She was diseased, but such things didn’t seem to affect vampires and indeed added a little flavor to the meal. Hoss wondered if vampires had evolved to feed off less-fortunate humans, to cull the herd, which was beneficial to both vampire and human.

“I’ve been watching your activity online,” Combs said, looking up and wiping his mouth. “I approve. However, I think you need to be careful. Most of the old vampires don’t completely understand this new way of exchanging information. They might think that you’re breaking the Rules of Vampire.”

“I doubt they’ll even notice,” Hoss said. “I think Peterson wakes up at dusk and asks his servants to bring around the horse and buggy.”

Combs laughed. “He probably does. But then he fully wakes up and gets into his Ferrari. Don’t underestimate us old vampires. Over the centuries, we’ve had to learn to adjust to change. Fitzsimmons especially has become very adept with the new technologies.”

“Then Fitzsimmons had better damn well return from wherever he is,” Hoss said. “He should be taking care of business. Peterson has done nothing. He seems to only care about consolidating his personal power.”

“It’s possible Fitzsimmons
can’t
return,” Combs said.

“What do you mean? You’ve hinted at this before. If you know something, just tell me.”

“As you said, young Hoss, Peterson is consolidating his power. How do you suppose he is doing that? And why is Fitzsimmons letting him?”

Combs, wily old vampire that he is, is still not answering the question
, Hoss thought.
Probably never gets his own fangs bloody.
“Well, something better happen soon,” he muttered. “The world is changing fast. Vampires have been exposed. Yet the Council of Vampires does nothing.”

“What would you have us do?” Comb asked.

Hoss looked up from gnawing on a piece of gristle. The old vampire seemed genuinely curious.

“The way I see it, we have three choices,” Hoss said. “First, we can try to stay hidden, use every trick we know to hunker down and obfuscate our existence. As I’ve said, I don’t think, in a world of cellphones and social networks, this is possible. Second, we can slowly emerge from the shadows, but try to peacefully coexist with humans. Delay, delay, delay. This will be tricky and might require a rewriting of the Rules of Vampire. We would have to control our feeding on humans, if not completely eliminate it.”

“So you expect us all to follow Terrill’s example?” Combs asked.

“Not possible. But we can pretend to do everything we can to reassure humans that we aren’t really dangerous. Maybe in the future, the situation will change. I admit, this isn’t a very good solution, but it’s the only solution I can think of.”

“And the third option?”

“We go to war. We kill humans when and where we please. We try to gain the upper hand.”

“But I take you don’t like that last option.”

Hoss nodded.
Of course I don’t like it,
he thought
. Driving an entire species to extinction is evil. But Combs seems merely curious, like it wouldn’t bother him at all
. “I don’t think we would succeed. We would rouse the entire human military-industrial complex. We are outnumbered a hundred thousand to one. We wouldn’t stand a chance. We would come closer to extinction than any time since before the Rules of Vampire were promulgated.”

“But this new strain of vampirism?” Combs mused. “Couldn’t we increase our numbers dramatically? In a very short time?”

Hoss shook his head emphatically. “The Battle of Crescent City showed how that would turn out; and the humans didn’t even have to bring the full force of their resources to bear.”

“But what if you
hadn’t
intervened?” Combs said, suddenly sounding impassioned. “Have you thought about what would have happened?” Hoss was startled. Usually Combs acted like he was above it all; he almost never got emotional, but here he was, arguing. He seemed to catch himself, paused, then said more calmly, “If your followers and Terrill’s hadn’t joined the humans, it seems to me the Wilderings would have won.”

“Yes, but then what?” Hoss answered, curious about what the dapper vampire was getting at. “The human response would have been even bigger and more severe.”

“The Wilderings would have also increased exponentially!” Combs cried.

Hoss fell silent, astonished at Combs’s response. But even as he watched, Combs’s expression went blank, as if he had drawn a curtain over his thoughts. “Well, that was invigorating!” the old vampire said. “‘What if’ discussions are always fun, but I suppose we’ll never know what would have happened, eh?”

“Thankfully, no.”

“Still…” Combs mused. “Have you ever done a computer simulation?”

Hoss shook his head, somewhat surprised that he’d never thought of it. As soon as he left here, he decided, he was heading for the computer room to present the problem to the IT vampires.

They finished the meal with small talk. Hoss had visited most of the tourist sites in London, and Combs told him about some less-known but fascinating locations. Hoss left the dinner slightly buzzed from the intoxicated victim and almost forgot the argument he’d had with Combs.

But as he walked down the stairs of the high rise, he remembered what Combs had said about Fitzsimmons. He needed to look into that. If the president of the Council of Vampires was in America, there should be a record of that somewhere. Sure, Peterson relayed a steady stream of messages from Fitzsimmons, but that was the problem: it was all coming through Peterson.