SNAP: The World Unfolds (20 page)

We waited less than thirty minutes. The jet swept in, taxied to the hangar, dropped the steps and the pilot came off. Paolo unloaded my luggage, trundled up the stairs, handed it off to the attendant at the door and went into the plane’s cabin. The pilot was stretching and talking to the refueling crew. I stood by the car, mentally twirling my thumbs and waiting for somebody to say something to me. I felt like an unclaimed package.

Finally, after stowing my luggage, the attendant, a blond, natch, came over to me. “Hello Ms. Gwenoch, I’m Serena and I’m your cabin attendant tonight. Do you want to come aboard and get settled?”

Well, duh...oops. I mentally slapped myself, smiled, mumbled “Thank you” and climbed up into the jet. Even though it was on the dark side of twilight, all the window shades were drawn and a lamp glowed on a desk at the back of the cabin. Paolo was standing in front of it, talking, and Jean-Louis was jotting notes on a laptop. “Thank you, Paolo,” he said, stood and walked toward me. He smiled, he glimmered, he said, “Hello, Maxie,” and I stammered.

I put out my hand, expecting to shake his, but he took it and pulled me into him. It was a hug of welcome more than a lover’s embrace, but the feeling of his arm around my waist sent jitters up my spine and made my hair dance. I looked up at him. His dark eyes looked into mine and saw my soul, or at least the lust I felt for him.

Like a cat that stole the cream, his next smile managed to be both sexy and mischievous. “I’m glad to see you and from the look of you, you’re glad to see me, too.”

In a spate of movement, Paolo left, the pilot reboarded, the attendant shut and locked the door, turned to us and said, “You’ll have to be seated and belted in now.” and the plane began its taxi. Suddenly we were airborne, circling around over the Atlantic and heading west, for L.A. I wasn’t the same person who’d left the Coast a few days ago. I didn’t know who the new person was going to be.

Serena came over and asked if we’d like dinner or a snack. In the final rush of packing, I hadn’t eaten and said, “Dinner, please,” as Jean-Louis just shook his head. “I’m fine. Maybe a glass of Bull’s Blood to keep Maxie company while she eats,” he smiled.

The food and wine arrived as we reached cruising altitude and we moved over to the desk, clearing space and using it as a table. I took a couple of bites of chicken picatta before I said, “Well, did you and Paolo get yesterday’s hallway visitor figured out?”

“We did. From all we can see, he was just who he said he was, a freelancer wanting to meet you and sell something.”

“That’s good.” I took a sip of wine. “I really don’t think I can go through life suspecting everyone who talks to me. Besides, how many people could the Huszars hire? And wouldn’t it look suspicious if I was suddenly swamped with people accosting me?”

Jean-Louis shook his head. “Pen told me she called you a naif,” he grinned and drank. “She was right, in so many ways. You’re bright, you’re knowledgeable, you’re quick and clever, you know you stuff and the media biz, you understand the celebrities.

“What you don’t know is our side of life. Hell, you don’t know anything about danger or power or ambition...”

“Wait a minute.” I interrupted him, waving my fork under his nose. “I’ve covered, and assigned, and planned coverage of some of the most ambitious, venal, powerful, corrupt people possible. I’ve interacted with stars who have bigger egos than...than...” I sputtered, searching for a word.

“OK, OK, I give you that many of the guys who make headlines are ambitious. And many of them are powerful, in their own spheres. I’m talking about finding or using the power to control tribes, towns, areas, maybe even countries. And the power of life. Or the power of death.”

“Well,” I hesitated. “You may be right.”

“When the people you’ve known double-cross or backstab it’s usually as individuals who are out for themselves. An individual who’s messianic, who believes he’s found the Way, who needs to have converts, who must be followed, is different—and frightening. Think Hitler, Stalin, good god, even Jim Jones and the People’s Temple. That’s the kind of ambition I mean. Wanting and needing to lead an uprising, a mob. The kind of leadership who’s lead regulars into wars throughout history. The kind of a leader who will sacrifice even his own followers for his passions.”

I closed my eyes and suddenly saw the visions of swirling forms, of blood and darkness again and heard the scratching and snuffling and yowling again. I moaned and Jean-Louis said, “You see. It’s the pit of fear, the hole of nothingness. That’s what we fight.”

I pushed the food away from me. “I can’t help how I was taught or how I think, I need you to show me. I’m sure I’m naive about the way your world works, but I’m willing to learn. “

“Good. That’s what I’m banking on. I figured I hadn’t read you wrong, you have courage, guts, a sense of adventure and you question.”

“Questions? What do I question?”

“A bit of everything. The way things have been working, authority, the status quo...you have questions and asking questions can lead to knowledge. I told Stefan, Pen and the others. They didn’t agree with me. They think you’re ‘Just another of Jean-Louis’ interests’” he said, mimicking Pen’s tone and cadence. “I told them that you’re different. You can help in the struggle against the Huszars.”

“I thought this had surfaced
because
of me,” I gasped. “I’m the one they’re after. I’m the bait, the chum.”

“Right now, you are,” He was losing his glimmer. His mouth was a straight slash, his eyebrows almost meeting over his great, hooded eyes. “Don’t ever for a moment think that this hadn’t been going on for centuries.

“We’ve been at each other from the beginning,” Jean-Louis’ voice settled into a story-telling tone. “In the beginning, it was just a minor tussle over food, prey. Then some of us began to travel. By the late Renaissance, Stefan, Pen, Carola, I, had been to Italy, France, England, the Low Countries. We were particularly intrigued by Amsterdam. It was the height of the Dutch East India Company and we watched fortunes being made in trade. The Dutch started a stock exchange and members bought and sold shares in ships and their cargo. We weren’t interested in the goods, but we were interested in the money and the security it could buy.

“We needed the security and the privacy because we were still hunting and living off our victims. We opened a small warehouse and began trading the grain grown on our holdings for goods brought in from the colonies. When coffee was first being imported, we invested heavily in it. It didn’t matter to us, we didn’t drink it, but coffee beans were worth as much as some metals. As we began to amass money, we shipped it home, bought land, built castles, villages, put more land into grains. Instead of using serfs, like the Huszars did, we hired free laborers, farmers, who shared the crops and income with us. We also began experimenting with food for ourselves.”

He paused, his eyes focused in the past. “How did you manage to eat,” I asked, thinking I wouldn’t have gone to work for vampires, at least not then and not as a peasant on the farm. “Did everybody steer clear of you guys when the farmers disappeared?”

Jean-Louis shook himself back to today. “It was a touchy problem,” he shrugged. “We were using animal blood as a substitute on occasion, and we also found some peasants who were willing to be donors. The catch was that we could only take so much of their blood, and we had to be careful. If we took too much, they died. And if we mixed our blood with them, they became vampires as well. We didn’t want bunches more vampires hanging around, it was hard enough feeding our basic family.

“The Huszars, of course, had similar problems, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t stop long enough to look at a long-term solution. They just kept raiding more and more territory, bringing the peasants onto the land as serfs and then feeding on them. That was the first of our skirmishes.”

We were sitting on one of the couches. I
reached over to take his hand. He started, then relaxed and looked at me. “This is all just so much ancient—and boring—history for you, isn’t it?”

I smiled at him and tried to form an answer that wasn’t “Yes.” Boring wasn’t quite the description I would have used, but hearing about centuries of how the Kandeskys made their fortune was...well, tiring.

“I am interested in the family’s history. I keep trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I work with people who’ve been witnesses to centuries of history. What I really want to know is what’s going on now? My interest is you. I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that I’d brought you into danger.”

Jean-Louis slid his hand up my arm and caressed my face. His hand was smooth, warm, and his touch was silky. He ran a finger over the arch of my eyebrows, smoothing the small frown wrinkles and then smoothed my lips.

“You are so soft,” his voice was a purr. “Regulars have a different texture; it’s creamier.”

My body was shivering. I wanted him to touch me again, again and again, all over. “I’m glad you like the feel of me,” I whispered, “but you are so glorious. When you glimmer you take my breath away. How do you do that? And how can your skin be almost translucent?”

He tossed his head and laughed. “I don’t know exactly how we do it. It’s just a knack we developed over the centuries, probably as a way of hypnotizing our prey. When regulars are frightened, their vessels constrict and pull their blood back to their heart and lungs. It’s why you get pale. It makes it harder for us to drink, so we developed the glimmer. It fascinated regulars.”

He leaned over and kissed me gently. “Enough. You wanted to know what was going on now. Let me fill you in on our approaches to the Huszars, specifically Matthias.”

As we flew through the night, Jean-Louis paced the cabin and replayed the so-far fruitless meetings with the head of the Huszar family.

It seemed that they were not interested in moving into the 21
^st
century. Felix, Matthias’ predecessor, had gone so far as to cultivate trees that had the truffle fungus. He’d even planted an orchard of hazelnut and oak trees, inoculating them with the fungus that produced black truffles. This was a lucrative cash crop for the family and allowed them to build and consolidate their holdings, but they still relied on peasant labor to work their land, and for their own food.

When the Baron suggested to them that they could have a new SNAP bureau in middle Europe, perhaps Ukraine, Matthias just laughed and said they didn’t know the first thing about the media, didn’t want to learn, gathered his bodyguards and walked out.

“Neither Stefan nor I thought that was a productive talk,” Jean-Louis shrugged.

Being immortals, they figured this was just an opening sentence. The Kandeskys were looking at making this a change that would produce peace for centuries to come.

After Matthias stomped out, the Kandeskys and their demons spent the rest of the night responding to Huszar feints and forays. Their shape shifters flew in low over the roofs and chimneys, searching for any chinks in the motion lights. Small creatures crossed the lawns, watching to see where the motion sensors shot out laser beams. The feral pigs and werewolves ranged in the forest, searching for any lone demon on patrol.

The defenses held, but the Kandeskys worried that all of their perimeter was mapped, which made it easier to be breached when the Huszars mounted a true raid.

“One of the tasks I have in L.A. is to research defense and surveillance equipment. We may not be quite state-of-the-art yet.” Jean-Louis showed concern in the small vertical lines between his eyebrows.

“I didn’t think vampires had worry lines,” I teased and reached out to smooth them away.

He took my hand and kissed it before putting it firmly back in my lap. “We do have worries; it’s just that we know they’ll go away. This is concerning us, but it isn’t a war, so we’re bulking up our defenses, not going on offense. We’re going to keep pushing for a summit.”

“I can’t tell you everything. If the Huszars think you know our plans, you’ll be in even more danger. We’ve identified a few of Matthais’ council who are fed up with his leadership. Not all of the Huszars believe violence is the way to live. Stefan is sending demons out at night to get messages to these guys.”

“If the pigs are running, isn’t that iffy?”

“I can see I’m going to have to tell you more. I told you, you question too much.” He swiveled around, pulled open a drawer in the table next to him, took out a fat roll of paper and unrolled it. I was looking at a map of the lands around the Baron’s castle. It was more of a drawing; forests were hundreds of tiny trees and the trout stream a sinuous blue ribbon with a leaping fish.