Nightlord: Orb (13 page)

Sunday, September 13
th

I went into town to buy a lawnmower, but nothing’s open on Sunday.  True, Bronze can crop grass, but it’s a low-yield energy source for her.  It’s almost not worth it.  She would rather stand still and conserve her resources while her Field builds up her magical charge.  I can’t argue with that; I never liked mowing the yard, either.  Now, though, I kind of have to.  I have to keep up the appearance of a Perfectly Normal Neighbor.  There’s a thin green line of hedge between me and suburbia.  Well, a thick green line, then about a hundred feet of grass. The yard will wait until Monday.

The neighbors won’t.  They barely waited until afternoon.

Valley View Court is a piece of blacktop running due north for the length of five homes.  There’s no valley within a hundred miles.  There’s certainly no view of one.  I guess they liked the name.  It’s every inch a suburb and shockingly cookie-cutter.  Lots of fiberglass and plastic give it a sort of prefab look, but done in such a way as to appeal to Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class.  It looks weird to me, somehow.  It reminds me of an idealized 1950’s suburb, but there’s something
wrong
with it.  It looks… strange.  I can’t put my finger on it.

Valley View ends in a round cul-de-sac.  On either side is another house and yard.  The walk up to my front door is like a narrow concrete continuation of the street, piercing the wall of hedge, stabbing through the yard to the front porch.

A full house—three ladies and a pair of men—opened the gate in my hedge and marched boldly onto my porch.  The doorbell buzzed out its harsh, annoying burr.  I think it says something about me that, when the doorbell buzzed, my first thought was to grab Firebrand.  I hope it says more about me that I didn’t actually grab Firebrand.

Mental note: new doorbell.  Monday.  Along with a front gate more like a door than a picket fence.  I probably need to put some sort of extension on the driveway gate, too, to make it taller and more opaque.  I definitely need something to reinforce the hedge.  Right now, a car could come straight down the lane, bounce up the steps to the porch, and wind up in the front room.  A big truck might make it all the way through and out the back.

Dragon teeth, maybe—the steel-and-concrete kind.  That won’t help against pedestrians, though.  Electric fence?  Barbed wire?  Caltrops?  Land mines?  Maybe a guard dog?  Aren’t quasi-demonic hounds traditional for vampire lairs?  But if I do that, I’ll have to get an Igor and an opera cape.  I might have to learn to play the pipe organ.

I opened the door with Perfectly Believable Smile #2 pasted onto my face, instead.  I’ve tried to delete all grinning and other teeth-showing smiles from my casual repertoire.  My teeth aren’t obviously pointed, but there’s something subliminally wrong with my smile.  It unnerves people.  While it has its uses, it’s not something to show the neighbors when I’m trying to blend in.

“Good afternoon,” I offered, eyeing my unexpected guests.  They carried pans and covered dishes—always preferable to pitchforks and torches.  “Can I help you?”

“Oh, we’re so
pleased
to meet you,” started the lady in front.  “I’m Myrna, this is Susan and this is Velma.  That’s Larry, Susan’s husband, and that’s Fred—he’s my husband.  We’re here to welcome you to the neighborhood!”

I felt a brief pang at the mention of Fred’s name.  I miss my Fred; I haven’t spoken to him/it in ages.  I wondered how he was doing.  Maybe I should get a bed, slide under it, and see if he shows up.  Probably not; wrong universe.  Then again, he hangs around in what is, essentially, his own sub-universe…

Like riffling through a set of file cards:  Step One, open the door wider, step aside, and invite them in.  Step Two, apologize for the mess.  (Substep: pause to let them express how they understand completely, just moved in, and so on.)  Step Three, explain the rest of the furniture hasn’t arrived, yet.  Step Four, show them into the kitchen so they can put their stuff down.

I got through it.  I shook hands firmly while looking people in the eye, was warmly hospitable, kept my closed-lip smile in place, expressed no political or religious opinions, agreed in general with their views while not committing to anything, and deflected questions with rambling stories, jokes, and questions of my own.

Some questions I could answer without worry; BitRate gave me a complete dossier on Vladimir Smith.  Never married, no kids—less work to generate a person with no family.  A family either had to be copied, swiped, or invented, then they needed explanations for their absence.  Moved south for my health because the winters in Alaska were starting to affect my sinuses something awful.  What do you do, Mr. Smith?  Why, carpentry and general handyman stuff, but I inherited some money…

Firebrand told me nobody noticed it in the fireplace.  It was easy to miss, or at least misidentify; there’s a heavy mesh screen across the front to prevent sparks and cinders from popping out.  I made sure not to stand near the fireplace, anyway.  Looking at me drew their eyes away from it.  The lack of chairs was a trifle awkward for everyone, which made the visit shorter than it might have been.

Once the Politeness Brigade completed its interrogation—spearheaded by Myrna the Nose—and withdrew from their exploratory sortie, I put food away and laid Firebrand on the kitchen table.  I poured myself a glass of water and sat down.

“Well?” I asked.  “What do you think?”

I think Myrna needs her shoulders shaved, Boss; we could remove the lump sticking up between them.

“You don’t like her either?” I asked.

She was constantly thinking about how to find out more about you.  Susan—the young one—thinks you’re funny and sexy.  Velma—the old lady—thinks you’re a sweet young man.

I found a towel and mopped up the spray of water.

You know,
Firebrand observed,
most people just drink the stuff.

“I have a drinking problem.”

Another one?

“Go on with the guests.”

Okay.  Velma is also happy you’re white and hopes you’re not one of those homos that seem to be taking over everything.

“Seriously?”

Not a clue, Boss.  That’s just what she thinks.

“She seems like such a nice old lady,” I protested.  “I wouldn’t have thought she was… what’s the word?  Bigoted, I think.”

She’s got some strong opinions on stuff.  Skin color, who screws who, some people she thinks of as “tight-fisted Jews.”

“Well… she’s old.  She’s got a lot of life experience.  I suppose she has a right to her opinions.  I didn’t expect such unpleasant ones from someone who seems so nice.”

Years of practice at being polite?
Firebrand guessed.

“I hope I’m as good at it when I’m her age.”

Uh, you kind of are her age, Boss.

“I slept through most of it.  Okay, Velma is a nasty old lady in a kindly granny suit.  What about the rest?”

Larry’s thinking his gutters need cleaning out and wonders if you have the ladder he’s been borrowing from the Ardents for the past four years.  He also hopes you don’t try to pressure him into a discount when you find out he works in a furniture store; it eats into his own money, somehow.  What’s a “commission?”

“He gets a percentage of the purchase price for every sale he makes.”

Oh.  Okay.  Fred is about as curious as Myrna, but he hates the way she wants to find out everything immediately.  He’s patient.  He also wonders how much you inherited if you went from handyman to homesteader like this.  He also thinks there’s something weird about Bronze; he’s seen her running around the farm.

“Well, he’s right.”

Yeah, but we can’t have him blabbing to everyone, can we?

“No, I suppose not.  And, before you start with suggestions on how to dismember or decapitate him, that is
not
how we do things in this world.  Any suggestions not involving bloodshed or arson?”

Firebrand was silent.  I waited.  It remained silent.

“I figured.  I think I have a different plan.”

Oh?

“Yep.  Plausible deniability.”

I sensed a wordless question.

“Here’s the deal.  I can order all sorts of stuff—no, let me back up.  That magic box can communicate with other magic boxes.  If I use the magic box to send money to someone, he’ll send me stuff in exchange.  I don’t even have to go to his store.  Got that?”

Sure.  Seems simple enough.  You’re buying his goods from far away instead of flying over, burning his shop to the ground and taking anything shiny.

I ignored this.  I’m not sure if Firebrand says this sort of thing deliberately, or if it really can’t help but think that way.

“Now, around here, they make a particular type of golem called a ‘robot’.  My plan is to order up some robot parts, or things that could be robot parts, and have them lying around in the barn.  I plan to use the barn as a shop, anyway, for experimenting with gates.  Come to think of it, robot construction can be a good cover for that, too.  But if anyone starts getting too nosy about Bronze, I can show them my shop and ask them what they think of my home-made robot horse.”

You think that will work?

“I have no idea; I’m making this up as I go.  If it doesn’t, then we can make them disappear.”  I cursed under my breath.  “I should have sucked it up and gotten a place farther from other people.”

Didn’t you say you needed to be near the herd for easy hunting?

“In your terms, yes.  What I
actually
said was I needed to be fairly close to someplace with lots of people so my movements wouldn’t easily correlate with deaths.  I’m trying to avoid the whole, ‘Every time he comes to town, another villager dies,’ scenario.  What I’m talking about now is having people who can look across their yard and into mine.  I should have picked a house farther away in that sense.  They might see enough to be troublesome, and modern pitchforks and torches are worse than you think.  ”

I’ll defer to your experience, Boss.
  I could hear Firebrand’s mental reservations.  I can’t really blame it.  It’s a dragon-sword.  It kills things.  That’s what it does.  A little contempt for farming implements is only to be expected.

On the other hand, maybe I should get a shotgun.  It seems to go with the general vibe of the farmhouse, plus it’ll give Firebrand and Bronze an idea of what we might expect if we have to bolt.

Thursday, September 17
th

Operation Robot is going well.  I’ve been observed pretending to work on one of Bronze’s forelegs with a socket wrench.  I’ve got sheet metal, fiberglass, and a silicone horsehead-mold in the barn.  I also picked up some pipe, wire, and electric motors, along with bunches of bolts and some hinged contraptions that look suitably mechanical.  It should be sufficient to fool anyone who isn’t actually a robot builder.

Bronze has also been practicing her “mechanical” gait.  It’s awkward to ride, but it looks “robotic.”  I think we can stand another layer of inspection without too much trouble.  Even a nosy neighbor who pokes around in my barn will have a hard time accepting she isn’t a robot.  Someone will really have to be suspicious and determined to blow her cover.

And clever.  I’ve already had to smack a couple of toy camera-drones with my mental movement trick.  It’s like daytime tendrils, which strikes me as problematic.  My tendrils are spiritual extensions, psychic fingers.  They’re part and parcel of being a creature of darkness.  They shouldn’t manifest in sunlight.  Yet, it feels like they’re still there when I try to move things during the day.  Is that because it’s a sensation I’m used to?  I think of telekinesis in tendril-terms, so that’s how my mind perceives it?  That’s not an unreasonable theory, given that I didn’t have funky mind-powers before catching vampirism.

Anybody got a manual on vampires?

Anyway, toy camera-drones.  The local kids want to look at Bronze and spy on the new neighbor, it seems.  I grab them when I spot them spying and stick them in a drawer.  I don’t damage them; I’m a nice guy.  If the owner comes up to the door and asks for their drone back, I hand it over.  Until then, the drones remain incarcerated for espionage.

I don’t have dragon teeth in my hedge, yet, but I did drive some heavy, metal fenceposts into the ground.  About four feet of steel are aboveground, hidden in the hedge—the hedge is under six feet high when properly trimmed.  The posts won’t stop a big truck, but anything else is in for an ugly surprise.  I may never need them, but I feel better knowing it’s not a straight, unobstructed run down the street and into my living room!

Someone might clean out the mailbox by the curb, but the hedge is full of surprises.

Larry has the ladder.  It was hanging on the side of the barn and I’m not likely to use it.  Besides, he’s always returned it to the Ardents; we’ll see if he gives it back to me.  He also gave me a discount (he says) when I bought a couch and other living room stuff.  If I’m going to have guests, I should have a room where they belong.  All the interior doors now have doorknobs for exterior doors; they have locks and keys.  This will help enforce a lack of wandering and increase my feeling of personal security.

I have a new doorbell.  It’s really multiple doorbells and doorbell systems.  One is in the house and one in the barn; one button makes them both ring.  They’re bell-chimes, not buzzers, and much more pleasant.  I also have a second system of doorbells tied to the front gate.  Those go off when someone opens either the truck-gate or the people-gate in the hedge.  Fewer surprises that way.  Plus, having an extra thirty seconds to get incriminating evidence tucked away could be vital.

I’ve been all over this house and I think I’m enjoying it at lot.  I see all sorts of things I want to do to it.  The attic is darn large—I could floor it and insulate it.  It would make an awkward but useful room.  It wouldn’t be part of the air conditioning of the house, but it might make a good storage space or hideout. 

The walls are pretty decent, but I think they could stand some more blow-in insulation.  There were some vermin of various sorts living in the walls, but one night with a life-drinking monster in the house took care of that.  Anything that didn’t flee at the spiritual touch of the undead master of the house didn’t get a chance to flee afterward.  Then there are a bunch of little gaps that need sealing; they make a foam for that.  And I want to take out the wall between the dining room and the kitchen to make it more of an open countertop arrangement…

I’m enjoying being a homeowner.  It’s the little things, I think, that make immortality tolerable.

Being a rancher, on the other hand, is impossible.  The paperwork is ridiculous.  Sasha must have had people for that. I never saw any signs of health inspections, vaccination records, and so on.  And, to be clear, I never want to.  There’s enough paperwork and bureaucracy involved to give a horse colic—or fuel Bronze for a week.

So… trees.  They’re low maintenance.  I like that.  I can swipe a trick I learned from Timon, too: make an unfired clay cup, fill it with dirt, and start a sapling.  When it’s pushing the cup apart, it’s time to move it to the ground, so bury the cup.  Since I have a walnut tree on the east side of the house, I presume I can gather them from the ground and go from there.  True, trees are a long-term project, but that means I’m not out messing with crops and harvesting and other farm function stuff all the time.

The basement has come along splendidly.  I have basic magic-gathering spells on four walls and a floor.  The ones on the walls act sort of like fans, “blowing” magic toward the Ascension Sphere in the middle of the room.  It’s still not too impressive, but it’s helping.  Maybe I’ll start working on a better version of my energy-converter spell once the Sphere has a decent charge built up.  We can see how much my electric bill goes up.

I’m not entirely pleased with the spells I’m using, though.  I keep thinking there should be more effect.  I put quite a bit of effort into casting them—attention, focus, personal power, even using my own blood to draw the symbols—and they don’t seem to have the drive they should.  A lot of that is because of the magic-starved environment, sure, but they should work better than
this
.  I keep thinking the symbols and ideograms I’m drawing look strange.  I’m not sure why.

As for my overall goal of finding other worlds—maybe even one where people won’t hunt me down and kill me, if there is such a place—I’m doing some reading on the local science.  I started with “my” articles on wormholes and quantum foam.  That led me to other sources.  I don’t understand what I’m talking about, yet, but I will.  Eventually.

Maybe I should see if I can get me to coach me?  Or would I give myself a heart attack?