Crossed (14 page)

“You may be an Emperor, but I assure you, we can destroy you. It may be difficult to figure out where on the plane or in your luggage you’ve hidden your
memento mori,
but—”

“I didn’t bring it.”

She scoffed. It was a very cute scoff. “Only an idiot or a madman would travel abroad leaving their greatest weakness and their greatest strength—”

“Then I’m an idiot.” I dropped my bag next to the suitcases. “Now that we have that cleared up, why don’t you explain to me why it is that I can’t honeymoon in Paris?”

“Corey Hart” opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when the guy in the Springsteen T-shirt spat out his cigarette and shoved his way between his two compatriots. “No way in hell you’re
that
Eric Courtney.” He looked at me closely, sizing me up. His eyes glazed over, and the other two instinctively steadied him. “You are him!” Eyes refocusing, he shook off the others. “Thumper, how the hell did you wind up a vampire, you old son of a bitch?”

He took my hand and clapped me on the shoulder. This man obviously knew me, was glad to see me even though I was a vampire. I stared at his brown eyes and the tiny scar on his jawline, and knew that I knew him, too, but his name wouldn’t come. I wanted to call him Carl, but that wasn’t the right name.

“You know this vampire, James?” the tall guy asked.

“Hell, yes, I know him, Luc.” He slapped my shoulder again. “I’m sure I’ve told you about Thumper.”

“Thumper?” Tabitha gave me a quizzical look.

“They used to call me Bible Thumper.” Finding the memory was hard, but it was there, buried deep under decades of misuse. “James must be from my old unit.”

“But he looks young,” Tabitha said.

“They’re immortals,” Beatrice said from the bottom of the steps. She stood there holding her bag. I wondered briefly what it felt like to be the only human in the bunch.

“What?” I looked at her. “Like true immortals?”

“Vampires may run the United States, Eric.” She took a place next to the suitcases. “But the immortals run Europe.”

“So you don’t let vampires into Europe?” I rubbed my fingers over my eyes. “You’d think Lord Phillip would have mentioned that one.”

“No,” the German immortal said, “we allow vampires, but only under strict regulations. European vampires are allowed themselves and three offspring. After twenty-five years of unlife, unless their sire releases them earlier, Kings and Lords may petition the Council to establish their own households. After fifty years of unlife, Knights may petition to leave the service of their rightful masters, but they are only allowed one offspring.”

She smiled a cruel smile. “Vampires that do not abide by these rules are destroyed. As you should be.”

“So . . . what?” I looked at Tabitha, then back at Frau Krautenstein. “She look like three offspring to you?”

James shook his head. “No, Eric, but based on your aura, she is your fifth.”

I counted them off on my fingers. “Lisa. Nancy. Irene. Greta. The guy . . . what’s his name . . . K-something.” I put that finger back down. “But he’s dead so he doesn’t count. And Tabitha makes five.”

“One of your get has formally petitioned the council and been acknowledged in her own right,” Luc told me, “but that still leaves you with four. If we granted you access to Europe, then you’d be bound by our laws and we’d have to attempt to destroy you.” He sighed and gestured to Tabitha. “And as lovely as your new bride may be, we’d be forced to end her, too.” Frowning, he turned back to me. “You would simply re-form at your
memento mori,
true, but we have no desire for your honeymoon to end in such despair, so instead we are banning you from—”

“What happens if your sire has released you?” Tabitha interrupted.

James grinned. “If your sire releases you, and the Council acknowledges your independent status, you don’t count against your sire’s total. You still can’t make any offspring until you’ve been around for twenty-five years and petitioned the Council again, but for now, both you and Thumper there would be in the clear.”

“Then I guess I need to petition the Council, because Eric let me go back in Void City before we got married.”

“I did?”

“You said . . .” She closed her eyes as if it would help her remember. “‘That’s bullshit. I don’t own you and I don’t own any of your crap. If that’s what you’re worried about you can tell everybody I said you’re free or released or whatever high society pricks call it.’” Her eyes opened, and they were sparkling.

“Like he would acknowledge such a statement—” the German began.

“Are you saying I’m not a man of my word, Fritz?”

“Whoa, Thumper.” James grabbed my shoulder, pulling me aside. “Ix-nay on the itz-Fray. Aarika’s good people. She helped the Allies in the war. She’s a cold fish, but you can’t—”

“Gotcha.” I pulled away from him and stepped toward
Aarika. “Sorry.” I held out my hand. “My bad. That was uncalled for.”

She took it, but slowly. “Apology accepted . . . Thumper.”

I laughed, just a chuckle, but enough to show there were no hard feelings. “Fair enough. Now how do we get my bride out of my tally so that I’ll be back in compliance?” I slid my hand around Tabitha’s waist and kissed her on the cheek. She flushed with warmth and I didn’t let go. “My wife wants to see the Eiffel Tower and I have a sire to kill.”

“You want to kill Lisette?” James started. “Okay, there are a few other rules you ought to know about.” Great. Did every immortal in Europe know who my sire was? I wondered briefly if they knew what color underwear I was wearing, decided they probably did, and rolled my eyes.

    14    

ERIC:

CHARLEY V IS ALIVE!

I don’t know what I expected, but riding in the back of a van (minibus to you Frenchies out there) from the airport to some ruined old castle at Vincennes wasn’t it. Tabitha was glued to the window, but I was preoccupied by a growing sense of discomfort. Beatrice noticed, but didn’t know what to do about it. She took my hand, holding it to her breast, not in a cop-a-feel sort of way, but in the feel-my-heart-beat-and-remember-I’m-here-if you-need-to-feed sort of way.

“Are you hungry, Eric?” Her blue-gray eyes were clouded, her face framed by fiery red tresses that made her look a little too much like Marilyn for comfort. Her skin was hot in the way that the flesh of the living is to us dead folks. She wore a peasant top that clung to her form and drew my eye even though I was trying not to notice. Keeping eye contact, she guided my hand between her legs to the flesh above her femoral artery, my favorite feeding spot.

“Yes, but not now. We don’t have room and I’m edgy.”

“I noticed.” She left my hand where it was and began gently but firmly pressing her hands against my chest, trying to keep my body temperature up. Vampires are always in a better
mood when we’re warm, and if I wouldn’t feed, Bea wanted to give me the next best thing. If it had been Rachel doing that, Tabitha would have gotten all pissed off, but Beatrice isn’t into me like Rachel is, so there’s no threat. Plus there’s the whole not being her little sister thing.

“I brought some snacks if you want to watch me eat something.”

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, a human with a package, and my claws came out, abrading the tender skin under my fingernails as they grew. Beatrice winced as my talons scratched a line across her thigh. I hadn’t drawn blood, but it looked painful.

A familiar double burst of discomfort in my upper jaw announced the deployment of my fangs as well, all for nothing more than a guy carrying a long thin package late at night. I’d read him as a threat, a man with a rifle. I’d almost shouted “Gun!”

Seeing James again, being back in France, being off the magic for the first time in fifty years—it all had me feeling the way I felt when I came here as a young soldier. I was jumping at shadows.

My pulse raced briefly, and Bea felt it.

“Eric?”

“I don’t know.” My heartbeat stopped. “I keep expecting . . .”

“What?”

“I keep thinking somebody’s going to take a shot at me.”

“Who’d take a shot at you?” Tabitha called over her shoulder, not looking away from the window, nose still pressed against the glass. She didn’t want to miss a thing.

“Nazis?” Bea asked the question.

I nodded with embarrassment.

“Nazis?” Tabitha snorted. “That’s stupid. Why would he be worried about Nazis?”

One moment I was on my own side of the car, the next I
was fang-deep in Tabitha’s jugular and the van was on its side. Bea was pressed against my back, unleashing a torrent of calming phrases (“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. Calm down, baby. She didn’t mean anything. Shhh. Calm down.”). Tabitha held very still, whispering a steady stream of apologies (“I’m sorry. What’d I do? I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”).

The night air blew in through rent metal where something (I’m guessing the uber vamp’s wings) had thrust through and forcibly ejected the doors and bent the frame.

“Gott in Himmel!”
It was Aarika’s voice and the air shimmered as she spoke. The van vanished and our surroundings changed. The city was still there, but it looked different, younger.
“Der Amerikanische Vampir ist bescheuert!”

“What the hell was that, Thumper?” James stood transformed, still human but wearing a suit of all black modern body armor (helmet included). He wielded a sword two-handed, and from my angle it looked like the blade curved a touch near the end. There was a 9mm in a holster on his thigh, but I was more concerned about the two custom stakes with combat knife-style grips that were holstered on his belt.

I released my grip on Tabitha’s throat, withdrawing the fangs as gently as possible. “I’m sorry,” I announced to everyone, but mostly to Tabitha. “I have blackouts and I—”

“Get off.” Tabitha pushed me with vampire strength, and I landed on my feet.

“I’ll see to the minibus,” Luc said. I turned toward the sound. Luc vanished, but I got a glimpse of metal armor, like in an old King Arthur movie, as he faded.

Aarika hadn’t drawn any weapons at all, but her stance spoke of combat readiness: arms up in what looked like a defensive guard’s posture; feet apart, in line with her shoulders. Her eyes were blue and angry, but I found myself staring past her at the buildings. What had been an urban metropolis now looked like something out of the fourteenth or fifteenth
century. All signs of modern roadwork were gone. The grass was green and the air smelled better than it did back home, even in the national park.

“Hunh.” Blood dripped from my lips. Tabitha’s blood. “You okay, Tabitha?” The wound at her throat closed quickly. Flesh knit itself back together, and in three or four seconds her skin was marred only by a light coating of blood.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” She touched her hand to her neck and pulled it away, eyeing the blood, oblivious to the change in our surroundings. “You could have fed from me if you wanted. I wouldn’t have cared. I
like
it when you feed on me. You didn’t have to jump me and wreck the damn van!”

“Coming back here is traumatic for him,” Beatrice broke in. She stepped between me and Tabitha. “The embalming magics used on him have worn off. He has forbidden Rachel to dull his senses, to use any magic on him or in his presence, and he is facing the world sober for the first time in his unlife, Lady Tabitha. Add to this that the last time he was in France was as a soldier in World War II, when, yes, being shot at by Nazis, bombed by Nazis, and otherwise fearing for his life was a very real concern . . . and one may see why your comment incensed him.”

“That’s not an excuse.” I stepped around her.

“Like hell it isn’t.” Tabitha stared at me, angrier than before, cheeks flushed and eyes dimly lit with red. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were going through?”

“Because it’s stupid.” I mumbled the words. “That was more than half a century ago, and anyway, bullets can’t even hurt me anymore. There aren’t any Nazis hiding in the bushes. I know that. It’s dumb, but I still feel like they’re there, waiting to get a shot off.”

“Why did you confide in her, but not me?” Tabitha frowned, transitioning from hurt to sad. “I don’t understand. We’re married. I’m here for you. I—”