Embracing the Shadows (23 page)

INITIATIVES

While Viggo and Mr. Staalsen moved off to
talk privately, I sat down with Gwen and Traeg and answered their
questions. I wouldn't wish the infliction on my enemies, but it was
all Viggo could do to save my life. I wasn't sure yet if it was a
good choice or not. I said that as far as I could tell, I was the
same ol' Leo on the inside and they had nothing to fear from
me.

The reassurances seemed to calm Gwen down,
which was my goal. In a more relaxed mood, I told them about the
events leading up to McKenna kicking my ass and ripping my guts
open. I wished I had more details of what Viggo did to that fucker
in return.

Viggo said Traeg and Gwen were excused for
the evening. On their way out, I told them we'd all get together
again soon at the fire station. After they left, I was formally
introduced to Rolf Staalsen. He was a Norwegian minion of Viggo's
who met with him at least once a month, whether by Viggo
void-walking or Staalsen buying a plane ticket. His current visit
was at Viggo's request, and for my benefit.

Mr. Staalsen worked for ShadoWorks in the
capacity of property manager over all of the Scandinavian holdings
Viggo owned. Okay, an important guy. Staalsen spoke perfect
English, and with hardly any accent. He explained the basic concept
for his visit: Viggo was giving a handful of his northern European
properties to me. Basically, the minion oversaw the properties
while I sat back and got paid. It was by no means a fortune, but it
would still be a fairly steady monthly sum I could easily live
on.

"Are you sure about this?" I asked Viggo. "I
hate the idea of taking money out of your pocket."

"Leo, do you have any idea how much property
I own around the world?"

Not having a clue, I looked to Staalsen for
help. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't bring my spreadsheets here. In
Scandinavia alone, however, I know for a fact that ShadoWorks owns
a total of sixty-six developed sites, mostly in commercial and
industrial zones."

"Oh . . . uh, okay, when you put it that way
. . ." Damn. With the assumption of free housing, no bills, and my
truck being insured as a ShadoWorks vehicle, even a small income
was mostly profit. Hell yes.

The next night, I sat down with Staalsen and
Viggo at a nicer location. Viggo's local financial manager, a
recluse named Keith who had some sort of social phobia, was on
speaker phone. We hashed through all the shit. Well, mostly
Staalsen and Keith did; I mostly just sat there and thought up
names for the LLC that they were putting together for me. I didn't
have to get too creative about it. By the next day, after the
application was approved, I was the anonymous owner of Norbeck
Limited.

After the meeting, Viggo and I sat alone and
discussed how I'd feed myself. I really wanted to figure that out;
I couldn't keep relying on him for my new basic needs. Yeah, I know
- Viggo was giving me a place to live and an easy income. I felt a
little guilty about it, but I wasn't fucking stupid enough to
refuse all of it. Still, I had to gain some of my independence
back.

Okay, so feeding, hunting, stalking, becoming
a true predator. One option was to make a minion out of a blood
bank worker. However, there weren't many in the right positions,
and they were probably already spoken for. I pushed the idea aside
and moved on.

Alright, I should explain something at this
point. I knew I couldn't drink Jack Daniels straight - or with
coke, either - but I found out I could have a half-shot chaser
after draining a rat. For one thing, it made the blood taste even
better to me. For another, that sip of Jack made the thought of
physically drinking an animal's fluid somehow more bearable. I
don't know why. Ask a shrink.

With that in mind, the next idea was right up
my alley: stalking drunks. Like a pervert, I'd be creeping after
piss-stained alcoholics, and coeds who made bad choices. Yeah, it
was just as classy as it sounded. Thing was, it worked. Well, when
I had the chance.

There's a certain district in my city called
Westport. It's an area of themed eateries, craft shops, and a wide
selection of bars. That was the logical place to test my stalking
skill, but I figured other hemos went there as well and I didn't
want to be spotted. Viggo told me not to worry, he'd be
watching.

The next night was a Friday, a perfect time
to practice. Westport had a constantly moving pedestrian crowd.
That made it easy for me to walk around with my new 'ignored'
ability. Viggo called it "blending in". I was scared at first. As I
walked by or through crowds of people on the wide sidewalks, I soon
noticed that they involuntarily walked around me or got out of my
way. No one looked right at me.

One guy went so far as to veer away from me.
When his girlfriend stopped and asked where the hell he was going,
he said in a confused tone that he didn't know. 'Blending in' was
gonna be damn handy.

I'd found a narrow, unlit alley and waited
there for the right prey to come along. I waited a while. The right
prey meant I was looking for one or two people walking past, not
part of a group, and stumbling drunk. As Viggo once said, the human
mind was adaptable, and would create a logical scenario after being
fed from . . . but not a lucid, fully coherent mind. That was a big
fucking exception.

That's where some Gift abilities came in. One
trick of the Gift of Control could make a victim forget, or have
the memory altered. I didn't have that one. An ability of the Gift
of Enchantment could make the victim think it was a pleasurable
intimate encounter. I didn't have that, either. The Adepts, some
Outsiders, and a very few Deviants knew those two Gifts. I wasn't
one of them.

There was also a higher ability in the Gift
of Shadows that made the hemo simply disappear; the victim would
mentally give the encounter a different explanation. Nope, I
couldn't do that yet. There was also a trick of the Fauna Gift that
turned the victim into emotional putty, mellow to the extreme,
letting the hemo do as he pleased. I sucked at the Fauna thing.

That left the option of lying in wait for
innocent, hammered people who wandered past me. I hoped they'd pass
my attack off as an attempted mugging. I also hoped they didn't
puke on me. There could also be a situation where the victim might,
uh, bump his head; drunk and stunned would've made it easy. I
wasn't too proud of having that idea to begin with, but a guy's
gotta eat.

Viggo had warned me beforehand that the 'dark
ardor' would be felt when taking blood from a human. He described
the taste as pure ecstasy - especially compared to rats - and that
I had to stay in control. Not staying in control meant I'd have a
dead body on my hands.

After three hours of standing around and
bored out of my damn mind, I learned that I could bend my own
shadow. Viggo later told me that it was the first step into
learning the Gift of the Void. It freaked me out at first, but then
I started to experiment with it. On the alley wall, I contorted my
shadow in all sorts of ways; I stretched it, made it wiggle, and
even managed to make it look like I had four arms and a tail.
Twisting my silhouette into different shapes got easy after a
while, so I pushed further.

I focused on the old-style streetlamp just
down the block and tried to dim it with my shadow. Other shadows
from parked cars and door frames extended toward the lamp. Those
weren't really shadows, though. There was a soupy, yet smoky,
quality to the silent shapes. I got the creepy feeling there was a
dark sentience in them. More fascinated than unnerved, I willed
those slithering ribbons of darkness to complete their mission.
They slid up the cast-iron pole and smothered the light.

Shocked by the unexpected event, I lost my
concentration, which made the void-strips (for lack of a better
term) suddenly fade. Knowing I had that ability both thrilled and
disturbed me.

Luck finally came my way just as I was about
to go back to my truck. A completely shitfaced guy came my way,
using building walls to keep himself upright as he stumbled along.
It was easy to pull him into the alley facing away from me and sink
my big teeth into the side of his neck. And, holy shit, Viggo was
right - that first sip was like having a full-body orgasm while
eating a whiskey-marinated bite of steak.

I had control; fuck dark ardor. I licked the
two punctures so they'd close, just like Viggo taught me, and then
shoved the guy back out onto the sidewalk. He staggered and fell
against a parked car, rubbing his neck. Then, without looking back,
he walked off on unsteady feet.

That was it, I was a hemo. I felt the same
way about that fact as I did with creating void-strips.

DEPRESSED

Viggo wasn't enthusiastic about my surprising
grasp of the Void Gift, although I think he actually smiled. He was
also pleased that I had more confidence in sustaining myself.
Before void-walking out of the Westport district, he said, "You
have done very well, Leo. The rest of the night is yours. What
would you like to do?"

Without having to think about it, I replied,
"I wanna go home for a little while."

"Then I will take you there. Keep in mind
that I have arranged an event for the faction to welcome you the
night after tomorrow. If the timing pressures you, I will postpone
it."

"Nah, two nights is fine. I just need a
chance to chill out on my own for a bit. If I go back out tomorrow,
I'll go stalking someplace else where I don't have to worry about
anything or anybody interfering."

Viggo thought about it for a second, and then
nodded. He created a void and enveloped us with it. We stepped out
into the small, dark office of the thunderdome. As we walked out
into the hall, we heard Clara's distant voice say, "I'm upstairs
with Thunder." I didn't know how she knew we'd just arrived, and I
didn't want to. That little girl was spooky.

As we went up the stairs, I had a sudden
thought. "Oh shit - Phillip. I hope Clara fed him."

"He is no longer a concern," Viggo said
casually. "During your infliction, Mr. Merritt checked on Mr. Aoki.
The man's memories were altered to an acceptable degree, and he was
then released to return to his home and his life. I do not believe
Lady Le Meur will take any further interest in him."

That was a relief, all of it. Phillip never
deserved any of the shit he was put through. For him, at least, it
all ended well.

Thunder greeted me with his odd purrs while
he rubbed against my calves. Clara, without looking away from the
TV in the lounge as she sat back in an overstuffed chair, told me,
"I've been telling him what a good keeper you are, and to look out
for you." Then she turned her head away from her Pixar movie and
looked at Viggo. "Hello, father," she said. "I did like you asked.
It fits okay."

I turned to Viggo with a curious expression,
or at least as curious as my new face would allow. "Your bed sat
between windows," he said. "That obviously would not do. So, at my
request, Clara moved your bed down into the basement."

"I had Milo go clean down there first," Clara
added.

"Thank you for that," Viggo said to her, and
then turned back to me. "I presumed you did not want a coffin. If
you prefer, one can be obtained and placed where your bed formerly
sat for sake of ease."

"No, uh, thanks all the same. You presumed
right."

"Very well," he said. "We will leave for now.
I will come to collect you for the faction introduction."

"Okay, cool." To Clara, I said, "Thanks for
looking after Thunder for me." I still wasn't used to hearing the
new rumble in my voice; I sounded like I needed to clear my
throat.

"Sure," she replied as she crawled out of the
big chair. Passing by me, Clara paused and looked up. "I'm glad you
shaved. Your new face would've looked silly with whiskers."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

"It isn't as weird as father's is," she went
on, still referring to my face, "but it's alright." Her unflinching
gaze and candid opinion of my features left me feeling a little
less self-conscious. "Don't mope, okay?" Clara added with a smile.
"Wait 'til you see Mr. Lucida - you won't feel bad then. Okay, see
you at the party." She stepped over to Viggo, who gave me a
farewell nod, and they both walked off.

After they left, I went down to the kitchen
and dug a knife into my finger to let a few drops of blood mix with
the water in Thunder's bowl. No pet of this hemo was gonna die from
old age.

When the cut closed, I went another flight
down to the small utility basement to see what it looked like. Not
bad, really. Milo had obviously cleaned everything up, put a new
coat of paint on the walls and pipes, and laid a big area rug down.
Pinning down one edge of the rug was my bed. Clara had hung a few
posters with tape on the walls for decoration. The 'hello kitty'
had to go.

I went back upstairs and . . . And I let my
stupid, frail male ego get the best of me.

I brought two mirrors into the master shower
and propped them up. I needed to see the full effect of the Deviant
infliction. The old bomb scars on my side, left thigh and butt
cheek were turned into rough grooves, just like the ones on my
face. My entire body was a dusty beige rock formation, shaped into
etched muscles. The veins in my arms had turned into faded brown
striations, like marble. And, like a fucking masochist, I studied
my junk again. I mean, it was still there, but . . . damn.

I was depressed for the rest of the night.
Not even Thunder's friendly attention helped.

My first thought when I woke the next evening
was that driving anywhere was going to be a pain in the ass. I
don't mean physical issues with operating a vehicle; that wasn't a
problem. I mean things like people seeing my inhuman face at
stoplights, or getting pulled over for whatever reason. That
could've caused serious problems. It was then I saw the real value
in minions. I was going to need one.