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That’s
the one thing I really hate about going to bars now-a-days… all the damn
vampires! Not Just Another
Dead Guy by Richard
Jones “So,” I finally asked, “how long
have you been dead?” The dead guy rocked back on his barstool like I'd slapped
him. He turned away from the Panthers game playing on television and stared across
the bar at me. Without looking away, he fumbled for his shot glass and tossed
the Jim Beam down his throat. “How...” He swallowed the bourbon
without so much as a grimace, “did you know?” “You keep forgetting to breathe when
you’re not talking.” “Ah,” he said. “Gotta work on
that.” I gave him my most engaging
smile, the tight-lipped semi-grin that says, “Hey, I understand.” Apparently,
it didn’t say
enough. He looked down and began contemplating the water stains on top of the
cherry-wood bar. Putting down the clean glass, I started drying another one
while I studied him. I couldn’t tell for sure because he was sitting down, but
he looked to be about average height. Brown hair hung limply past his ears. His
average build fit loosely into a rumpled brown suit that was a size or so too
large for him. He looked amazingly normal; the sort of person I don’t see
enough of. Aside from being dead, that was. Nice and normal wasn’t good enough. This dead guy had walked
into a situation that was like juggling buzzing chainsaws. Blind. And drunk.
Too many things could go wrong. I put too much effort into setting up the
meeting that Nathaniel was late for. I didn’t need somebody mucking up all my
hard work, inadvertently or not. This guy did not belong in Bloody Mary’s. “All right,” I said. “You’re not in a coffin. What the hell
are you doing in a bar slugging down rotgut? Especially this bar.” “Don’t know. All I remember is seeing the sign and feeling
like I _had_ to come in. When I try to remember more, all I get is that there’s
something I’ve got to do. It’s just... Aw, forget it.” The dead guy turned back to his drink for a moment, grimaced
and slapped his forehead. His chest started rising and falling as if he were
breathing. He caught my eye and held up his index finger. A thought occurred as
I gurgled Beam into his glass. “Does that still work on you in
your, ah, condition?” I swigged from the brown bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
I’d been nursing under the counter for the last hour and watched a dead guy
swill down Jim Beam. Watching, I thought about preconceived notions. Before I
landed this gig, I thought the things that frequented this bar had only a
single item on the menu. Turns out they like a good Bordeaux as well as the
next fiend. Who knew? The dead guy meditated on the amber liquid for a few seconds
before looking back at me. “I have no idea,” he said. He tried to smile, but his face
was so full of twisted loathing that it rather spoiled the effect. The dead guy
rubbed absently at a spot on his chest just below his breastbone. “But I sure
aim to give it my best shot. No pun intended.” The dead guy looked around. His gaze lingered on the wall
full of framed photos. They looked impressive, just chock full of people with
names that would sound good dropped into conversation. They had fooled me for
about ten minutes, until I realized all the pictures were torn from the pages
of defunct fashion magazines. Bloody Mary’s is dimly lit and furnished with second-hand
chairs and tables. I’m particularly proud of the television. It gives at least
the illusion of a regular bar. When an outsider walks in from Mr. Chan’s
Bar-B-Q next door, and it does happen, the place needs all the help it can get
to look at least slightly normal. You just have to hope the person who walked
in is and observation-deficient drunk. And doesn’t look tasty. It’s not so much a bar as it is an idea. The place is an
island of relative safety in a unique sea. Years ago, Mary struck a bargain with
the locals. Her bar gets immunity and they get a place to gather without too
much fear; let your fangs down, sort of thing. I’m not sure how Mary enforces
the bargain or what keeps the locals from just taking her out. She won’t talk
and neither will they. I guess I’m the bar’s public face. Mary likes to stay in the
background and needed an idiot as front man. Say hello to Lucas Barnard,
part-time idiot, full-time peacekeeper. I wasn't the first person to work as
Mary’s hands. Hell, the man who worked the bar before me just plain
disappeared. I wished I could disappear. No call from Nathaniel. No idea
if he was even going to make the meet and he was already late. Sighing, I
leaned to my right over the bar and tried to pry some more information out of
the dead guy. “What the hell you lookin’ at, meat?” The gruff voice
whispered from just over the bar to my left. I stifled any obvious reaction.
It’s a learned response when you spend your nights dealing with people who see
you as a light snack. “Him,” I said, putting just enough emphasis on the word that
it might be heard as sarcasm. Or maybe not. I could argue both ways. “What him? Meat, there ain’t no him. You losin’ it.” The
voice laughed, sounding like the bastard offspring of a grinding gearbox and
savagely beaten Wurlitzer. I turned deliberately to my left, making shushing motions
with my hand in the dead guy’s direction. Since I don’t like to take chances, I
made sure to focus my gaze on the smashed, splayed end of the newcomer’s
astonishingly ugly nose. Even without looking, I knew the whites of his eyes
were enlarged, the black irises squeezed down until they were almost
indistinguishable from his pinprick pupils. The vampire’s scraggly beard grew
in clumps along his chin. Old acne scars pockmarked his face, going all the way
around to disappear beneath a truly awful mullet haircut. His ever-present
gimme cap bore a Confederate flag logo. “Name’s Lucas. Use it. And what’s up with you, Bubba?” I
asked. “Those funky looking eyes of yours finally get the better of you?” Bubba snarled, turning an ugly face
into something hideous. “Meat, you walkin’ a bad road now,” he said. “You talkin’ to
nobody then try talkin’ crap to your betters.” He shoved his face closer to mine. Bubba’s slaughterhouse
breath was a physical presence. Being dead, he didn’t have to breathe. Bubba
knew his breath could defoliate a tree from twenty paces and used it like a
weapon. “You don’ wanna walk that road. Leads to bad places.
Somethin’ gonna eat you up.” I couldn’t believe it. He really didn’t see the dead guy.
Well, the other dead guy. I held up a finger, making a wait-one-second gesture,
and turned around to make sure the dead guy really was there. Yep. Still
sitting on the cheap vinyl stool at the end of the bar. “You, Bubba, are telling me you don’t see a guy sitting on
that barstool?” I jerked a thumb back toward the dead guy. “Average-sized guy?
Brown hair? Brown suit? You really don’t see him?” Bubba looked straight, and obviously unseeing, at the dead
guy and his face split into a smile. It wasn’t something you wanted to see
coming from a vampire, especially one who didn’t believe in dentists when he
was alive. “Heh,” he said. “Meat, you done lost
it. I’m gonna love watchin’ you fall.” He started to move off, trying to whack my shoulder. It
probably would have knocked me to the floor. I raised my bare hand in front of
his face. Bubba hesitated. Actual physical contact with me tends to be rather
... strenuous. Then, I saw it in his eyes when he decided the pain was worth
it. He drew back his clawed hand. Crap. I felt like the mouse flipping off the
swooping eagle. I was ready to leap – far away – when a voice came from
behind Bubba. The voice was smooth and resonant, but something about it
reminded me of a bad actor vamping desperately for gravitas. “Now, now, Bubba. We mustn’t play with our food.” Bubba stepped aside and I looked down. Way down. Standing
behind the hulking vampire, was a great-looking miniature tuxedo filled out
with a degenerate scumbag inside. Myron Deshale, the only dwarf vampire I had
ever heard of. I sneered down at him, trying to look strong on the outside
while praying Mary's truce would hold on the inside. “Hello, Deshale. New shoes? They really give you a lift.” He scowled and barely managed to repress a glance down at
his thick-soled shoes. Deshale stepped around Bubba toward the bar, the dim bar
lighting glinted off the enormous whites of the little vampire’s eyes. “Ah, Lucas. You never cease to amaze me. So little wit and
so great a capacity to display that lack.” Deshale smiled up at me, his tiny
blue pupils fixed directly on my neck. His gaze flicked quickly to the dead guy
and then back. “I wonder, Bubba, if Lucas here will find anything funny
about...” “About what, Boss.” “Never mind. Come, Bubba. We have business to attend.”
Deshale’s shiny, black shoes tapped out a merry cadence on the wooden floor. I couldn’t help myself. “Sorry your conversation was so short, Deshale. I’ll talk to
you in a little while.” I should probably learn to keep a tighter reign on my big
mouth. Bubba whirled around and headed back for me before Deshale held up his
hand to stop the big vampire. “You gonna fall, Meat,” Bubba said. He raised one hand, made
a whistling bomb-dropping sound and smacked his hands together. "Mr.
Deshale been learning. Been teachin' some, too. Gonna be some hard lessons for
you." He turned and waded back into the dimly lit interior of the bar. The
links in his wallet chain clanked loud enough to be heard over the hushed
conversation. Learning? What could Deshale have been learning? It amazed
me that he had managed to survive for so long, much less have the time to learn
anything. He was a minor-league strength compared to the others. From what I'd
seen of vampire society, Deshale seemed to have developed a knack for the
underhanded gesture. I knew of at least three vampire deaths Deshale had to be
responsible for, but I could never find _any_ evidence pointing to him. Most manipulators operated behind one or two screens. I
figured Deshale for at least six. In the back of my mind, something went
_click_ just before the dead guy derailed my train of thought. “What was that all about?” he asked. “That big guy blind or
something? And that midget...” “Never mind. Just some local color. They’re a bit... strange
sometimes. Hey, I just realized, I never introduced myself. I’m Lucas. What do
they call you?” The dead guy’s eyes widened. His face became even bleaker
and he started slowly banging his head on the bar. “Hey, that’s no way to treat a dead
head.” “Just one goddamn thing after another,” he said. “I’m dead
and I can’t even remember my own name.” He wound down and laid his head in his hands. I thought he
was trying to cry. I looked around. Still no Nathaniel. Dammit. It was his
life, unlife, whatever, on the line. There was a pretty good chance somebody in
Nathaniel’s nest wanted him back in the grave. Permanently. After Mary asked me
to look into it, I’d found a few names I was supposed to pass on to the vampire
leader. And the arrogant bastard couldn’t even be bothered to show up. It made
me sick. If I could think of a way to do it without bringing Mary
down on me or endangering even more of the daysiders living in Charlotte, I’d
sun every one of the bloodsuckers. They were all filthy bottom feeders who
deserved nothing less than a good stake. Unfortunately, my life depended on
dealing with them. Nathaniel was just the least worst of the bunch. I did not need the extra complication of a dead guy trying
to cry on my bar and giving me a very bad feeling. I needed more information.
Dammit. I tried to smile encouragingly. “Well, have you looked in your wallet?” Hope bloomed so bright it was almost painful. Quickly, he
scrabbled in his jacket pocket. After some fumbling, the hope and expectation
died an ugly death. He held up a couple of twenties folded over a paper clip.
So much for the easy way out. “I, um, I think I can maybe help you
with that,” I said. “The name thing.” The dead guy stared my way. I could see the grave in his
eyes. Damn spooky. “Really? You can? That’s great. That’s...” He frowned and
looked at me suspiciously. “How?” “Well... It’s kind of strange.” The dead guy looked at me in a way that said, _“Hey, I’m a
dead man walking around. Don’t talk to me about strange.”_ “Right. Good point. Ever heard of psychometry? Never mind.
Hardly anyone ever has. It’s the ability to get information by touching
something. Well, I’ve got it. I can do that.” “So do it already.” He looked pitiful. The despair in his
eyes tried to reach out and smack me into submission. In no way did I want to
do this. Maybe I could just spook him out of the bar and my life. “You don’t know what you’re asking. It’s hard, especially
with people, or things that used to be people. It’s not so much painful, as
it's agonizing to the point of wishing your hand would drop off so you could
stop touching me. That’s...” “The girls must love you.” “You have no idea.” I had a wife. A life. One morning I woke
up feeling crappy. Ally touched my forehead to feel for a fever. That touch
combined with an unsuspected cardiac arrhythmia and dropped her like a stone. I
don’t really remember very much about the next few years. Just squalor and an
increasing sense of desperation. I’ve never been very big, topping out around five-foot-ten
and weighing about one hundred forty-five pounds. Near the end of my time on
the streets, I weighed less than ninety. My red hair turned a disgusting shade
of brown beneath the accumulation of dirt and scum. Even now, three years later,
I still dream of stroking Ally’s cheek, feeling nothing but the satin
smoothness of her skin. I tried to clear away the memories. It’s better to live
in the present. Not nearly as much pain. “Anyway,” I said. “The touch thing. The point is: I might be
able to tell who you are, but it’s gonna hurt. A lot.” “I don’t care.” He almost screamed. I hissed at him to be
quiet, surreptitiously glancing around to see if we’d attracted any undue
attention. Nobody so much as glanced in our direction. “I need to know what’s
happening, who I am. Anything. Please.” “Okay, but look. There might be a little feedback. I mean,
you might start seeing a few things from me. Just ignore it. All right?” He said nothing, just held out his hand. I took a deep
breath. He didn’t. I knew what was coming. Again, he didn’t. I reached out my
trembling hand toward his. Contact. Oh, God. The pain. It blazed up my arm and straight to my
brain. My muscles clenched, spasming into lockup. Fire danced along my nerves,
burning through my consciousness. I willed myself to breathe. My eyes had
squeezed shut at contact, so I forced them open. I knew the visions weren’t
real, but I needed my eyes open to see. Just how it works. A tsunami of agony washed over me. Hyperventilating, I
surfed the pain wave, looking for a way into the dead guy’s past. With the
suddenness of Montezuma’s Revenge, I saw the sign for Bloody Mary’s that hangs
over the front door. A suffocating need to enter that door overwhelmed me. _Harder. Push harder._ The vision fractured and reformed,
showing me a small room, lit by flickering fire. The dead guy was alive,
writhing on an altar, his limbs trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey. My body
shook as the visions quickened, ratcheting the pain upward. A figure, wrapped
in shadows, stepped out of the gloom and raised a foot-long piece of metal too
nasty to be just a knife. The figure chanted softly, spitting out consonants
like sunflower seeds. Interspersed throughout the unknown language was a word I
recognized: “Nathaniel.” The chanting rose to a crescendo as the figure raised the
knife high above its head. The perspective weirded out, like the room expanded
to enormous proportions as the figure came closer. For just a second, I
glimpsed the figure’s eyes. They were terribly white: vampire eyes. The figure
slammed the knife home, ripping and tearing through the chest of the man whose
vision I shared. I pushed harder, trying to get past the killing. For an
instant, there was a feeling, more impression than sight, of a woman; blonde,
with laugh crinkles around her eyes. Just the feeling of that hair and those
eyes swept a clean breeze through the miasma of hate and fear. The feeling
vanished. I tried for more, but it was no use. I was stuck, my psyche wriggling
like a worm on a hook. The harder I fought, the higher the nerve fire blazed. I tried to break contact as the dead guy crushed my hand.
Locked in, my legs weakened and I almost smelled smoke from the mental heat. I
groped along the bar to my left, my hand shaking like an epileptic in a grand
mal seizure. _Got it._ Fumbling with the soda gun, I aimed at the dead guy’s
face and spritzed. With no change in expression, the dead guy released my hand.
I nearly fell backwards into the muck behind the bar. Water dripped off his
face, a look of surprise gradually overtaking his agonized grimace. I shook my
hand out, trying to massage some feeling back into my abused fingers. “God. That was awful,” the dead guy
said. “I saw you fighting in some alley and... Wait. My name? What’s my name?
What did you find out?” I held up a hand, telling him to wait while I caught my
breath. Vampire eyes flared up in memory. Crap. Once again, something in the
back of my mind went _click_ and I had it all. The room in the vision wasn’t
enormous. It’s just the figure was small: Deshale-sized small. I looked at the
dead guy. “You’re a goddamned gun.” “I’m who?” “Not a who, a what. You’re a
goddamned gun, you poor bastard.” “What are you talking about? What’s
my _name_?” “Look, I’m sorry. I couldn’t get it. Your name. There’s
something blocking me. That doesn’t matter. We need to go. Now.” I hopped the bar and grabbed the dead guy’s coat sleeve. He
was thinner than when he first walked into the bar, which made sense. If he was
a revenant, basically a dead person come back for a purpose, then he was
burning up his body mass for fuel. At least, that's how I understood the thing,
seeing as I'd never actually heard of a revenant existing in real life. If I
was lucky, I could keep him out of Nathaniel’s way until the dead guy was
nothing but a shabby suit. If I wasn’t lucky, I was looking at a bloodbath. “No,” the dead guy said. “Not until
you tell me what’s going on, why you’re so scared.” “I’m not scared. I’m... Look, there’s three things you’ve
got to know: One, vampires exist. Two, the only thing keeping this city from
becoming a blood farm is an old vampire named Nathaniel, who has just enough
sense to keep his kind in the shadows. Three, _you_ were killed and brought
back to destroy Nathaniel. If that happens, as bad as Nathaniel is, the results
will be worse. Plenty of civilians will get nailed in the crossbite.” “What the hell are you talking
about? _Vampires_?” I sighed. “Look. You’re dead _and_ walking around, right? So why’s it
so hard to believe in vampires?” Give the guy credit, he really tried to wrap his head around
the concept. He was quiet for a few seconds then nodded his head jerkily up and
down a couple of times. “Okay. Fine,” he said. “I’ll buy that. But what does all
that have to do with me?” He nodded when I asked if he had seen the eyes on Bubba and
Deshale, tiny pinprick pupils and irises and vastly expanded whites. I tilted
my head back toward the door, where another of Deshale’s toadies had walked in.
Tall, with dyed-black hair and purple lipstick, Carol Torbano looked more goth
than vampire. Torbano cruised past the bar, her eyes never leaving mine,
those huge whites and pinpoint irises almost luminescent in the darkened
interior. Despite almost bumping into the dead guy, Torbano never even glanced
in his direction. Then she hissed at me. Really. She hissed. She must have
watched too many Dracula movies as a kid. “She didn’t even see me,” the dead guy said. “At all. It’s
like I was invisible or something.” “Yeah. Or something,” I said. “You know anything about
sharks? Well they have a lot in common with vampires. Sharks have these things
called the ampullae of Lorenzini all over their heads. I read where these
things let sharks detect the weak electro-magnetic impulses given off by beating
hearts. Well, vampire eyes are like that. Those whites of theirs. They can see
everything normal people do, but those ampullae analogs rivet their attention
to living beings. It's all about attention. They saw you. They just didn’t pay
any attention to you.” The dead guy shook his head, frown lines forming between his
eyes. I wanted to help the poor guy, but my best hope was to get him out of the
bar as fast as possible. He wouldn’t last long. All I had to do was keep him
out of Nathaniel’s way until the dead guy kicked ash. “So what does that have to do with…? It’s because I’m dead,
right?” “Yeah,” I said. “At least I think so. Of course, I’m basing
all this on the one time I touched a vampire. That’s how I ended up here. I...” Too late. Nathaniel walked in. The old vampire inclined his head a bare millimeter in my
direction, giving as much of an apology as he ever could. The dead guy’s eyes
glazed over as whatever programming was keeping him going kicked in. He stood
and strolled wordlessly toward Nathaniel. “Shit. No, no,” I screamed, waving
my arms. “Outside. Get back outside. Now. Go!” From the back of the bar I heard
chairs being pushed away from tables. The sound was easily audible over the
sudden hush that took over the bar. A puzzled look on his face, Nathaniel stopped just inside
the front door. To him, the scene must have looked way off: He would have seen
me jumping up and down and shouting, but nothing else. No revenant. Nothing but
a human acting strangely. But arrogant does not mean stupid. Nathaniel must have known
something was wrong. He nodded again and turned around. That last move pulled
the dead guy’s trigger. I grabbed at his arm as he started forward. The dead
guy clouted me on the jaw, blasting me physically and psychically. Stumbling up from the floor, I jumped on the dead guy’s back
and wrapped my arms around his neck, the sleeves of my worn, green jacket
protecting me from contact. The stranglehold would never work. He didn’t
breathe. I dropped to the floor, kicked the dead guy’s legs and had the same
effect as if I’d tried to batter down a redwood. As Nathaniel paused in the doorway to look back, the whole
plot unfolded in my mind with frightening clarity and my list of people who
wanted Nathanial gone narrowed down to one. With Nathaniel back in the grave,
Deshale would prop up a toady as leader of the Charlotte nest and control the
whole thing from behind the scenes. And the only person who could pin anything
to his stubby chest would be easily broken bartender Lucas Barnard. I would get
dead, along with as many of Charlotte’s civilians as Deshale and his cronies
could drink. Crap. From the back of the bar came the susurrus of vampires
moving closer to take in the action. Some of them – Deshale, Bubba, maybe
Torbano – had to be in on the plot. The rest just wanted to see what was
happening. Nathaniel looked at the gathering vampires and I saw him reach a
decision. If he left, the nest would devour him. Arrogance became stupidity.
The idiot shook himself slightly and stood straighter. I decided to try something desperate. Stepping behind the dead guy, I reached around, grabbed his
face in both hands and yanked. I tried to rip his head clean off. The pain hit,
draining my strength. I felt like I was trying to lift a boulder. Through mental
flames, I saw understanding flood Nathaniel. He understood, and knowing,
stepped forward. Fast as he was, the dead guy was even faster. Nathaniel slammed into the wall, his arrival heralded by
showers of plaster. A babble of voices came closer. The vampires would never
interfere. If a leader couldn’t handle a simple challenge? Time to get a new
leader. Agony lanced up my arms. I screamed as the urge to kill
surged into my brain. I needed to tear my hands away from the dead guy’s face,
curl up in a corner somewhere and whimper for a decade or so. I held on, my
fingers gouging for the dead guy’s eyes, but I couldn’t move the distance. I
pulled, with all the effect of an ant moving a whale. Through it all, through the pain and the rage, the dead guy
screamed in my brain. His psyche was ripping apart. Crying inside, he was
scared shitless because he couldn’t stop. In my mind, the dead guy screamed. In
the night, he was quiet as the grave. The dead guy drew back his hand and punched through
Nathaniel’s chest. Ribs cracked and splintered, tearing gaping rents in the
rapidly diminishing flesh of the dead guy’s hand. He was burning out. Fast. The
pain was taking me with him. After the first blow, Nathaniel was too weak to do more than
bat ineffectually at the fists pulverizing his face. The vampire’s arrogance
had been beaten out of him, along with most of his stolen blood. I couldn’t
stop it. This bloody floor was just a foretaste of what would happen when the
revenant finished off Nathaniel. The dead guy’s elbows kept smacking into my face and
shoulders as he drew back to hit again and again. In a haze, I realized that
this really might work. Most of that invulnerable stuff was disinformation,
along the lines of holy water. Vampires are tough, but they can be killed.
Panting, I fought, hoping the dead guy felt something of my agony. An elbow
clonked me between the eyes. The flashbulb pop brought with it an idea, but the
pain was ruining me. I couldn’t tell if the idea was good or bad. Some of me leaked into the dead guy the first time we
touched. Maybe I could turn that leak into a flood. Calling up that fleeting
impression of a blonde woman with laugh crinkles, I willed those thoughts to
flow from my hands into his brain. The dead guy braced his foot on Nathaniel’s
chest and wrapped his hands around the vampire’s neck. If this didn’t work,
heads would roll. The woman’s face became clearer and I saw her nose had been
broken before. A small mole on her lower left jaw helped bring her into focus.
I was getting feedback from the dead guy, helping to fill in the image I turned
around and sent back to him. I concentrated harder, gasping through clenched
teeth. The murderous rage dimmed. The red haze overlaying the revenant’s vision
faded to rose. _Now._ I pushed the vision of the woman into the dead guy,
overlaying her face onto that of Nathaniel. Through my link with the dead guy,
I saw Nathaniel’s sliver hair fade to blonde and his eyes morph to the emerald
green of a perfect summer lawn. The dead guy stiffened, every muscle knotted.
He jerked his hands up and stared at the bloody mess. “No,” he moaned. “Not her. I’d never...” Crap. His rationality another fast fade as the red haze
darkened. I wouldn’t have long to work this last trick. If I couldn’t stop the
rage, maybe I could redirect it. Grunting with the effort, I managed to turn
the dead guy’s head toward the vampire congregation. _There. Deshale._ Through
the agony veiling my thoughts, I stopped sending the vision of the woman and
superimposed Nathaniel’s face over Deshale’s. I hurled that vision into the
revenant. The dead guy shook his head and snorted. I pushed harder,
willing the vision to jump into his brain. He shook his head again. Screaming,
the last of my strength surfed along the waves of pain and into the dead guy.
He went rigid as he locked onto Deshale. The pain overwhelmed me and gravity did the rest. I crashed
to the floor, facing Nathaniel's already reknitting form. Suckers heal fast.
Freed from the pain and my weight, the dead guy sprinted toward Deshale. The
dead guy raced three steps and stumbled to a halt. The vampires gradually
osmosed into the room’s far corners. Only Deshale and Bubba stood still. Slowly shaking his head back and forth, the dead guy
trembled, vibrating like a plucked guitar string. He took another step forward
and stopped. Off to my left, a vampire glided toward Nathaniel, stepping
daintily around the splashes of blood. The only sounds in the room came from my
ragged wheezing. For some reason, I couldn’t take my gaze off a drop of blood
hanging from the end of the dead guy’s right index finger. It slowly elongated,
hung for a ruby second, then dropped to the floor. The sound of its impact onto
the warped wooden floorboard was clearly audible. The smell of blood saturated the room, lending a coppery
taint to every breath. Gasping, I stumbled to my feet and reached out a hand
toward the dead guy. Mere seconds had passed, but to my agonized senses it
seemed like forever since Nathaniel walked into the bar. A voice mumbled
something. It was the dead guy. “No.” He clamped his jaws shut. His molars fractured with
the effort of holding still. “R’member now. ’m a cop. Not a gun.” Somehow the dead guy held off the programming. Deshale
brought this guy back to a semblance of life for one reason, to kill and then
die again. The only thing keeping him upright was the need to kill and somehow
he fought it down. I couldn’t begin to imagine the kind of strength that took. The dead guy ground out another step. I could almost hear
his tendons snap as he tried to stop. Without thinking, I reached out and
touched his hand. Agony beyond words blasted me to the floor. I didn’t
understand how he fought it. Beneath the bone-melting anguish, he remembered.
Everything. And still he would not kill. Ponderously, the dead guy turned his head toward me. He
smiled. Oh, God, he smiled. He stared at me from a hideously ravaged face, his
body only a skin sack holding the bones together. His eyes locked with mine and
then he collapsed; his body turning to ash. Tiny gray flakes drifted to the
growing pile on the floor. “Rest easy,” I whispered. “I’ll find her. She’ll know you
loved her to the end.” Sound roared back into the bar. Excited voices babbled and
shouted. Cold winter air flowed through the open door as vampires rushed out
like the hounds of dawn howled behind them. Another vampire, a woman I didn't
know, stayed behind, hovering over Nathaniel. I guessed she was trying to help.
I noticed this through my peripheral vision. I kept my gaze locked on Deshale.
If only my thoughts could kill. I watched raw hatred and naked terror war across his face.
If he wanted Nathaniel dead again, he'd have to move out into the open. He
stepped forward, hands curled into claws. From the corner of my eye, I saw
Nathaniel twitch and watched it mirrored in Deshale. The manipulator shook
himself and unclenched his hands. Even with Nathaniel broken on the floor, it
looked like Deshale couldn't make himself act directly in front of witnesses. He smiled, a sickening upward twisting of his lips that
exposed fully extended, steak-knife fangs. Slowly and deliberately he mouthed:
No proof. The little psycho sauntered toward the exit. As Deshale passed by Nathaniel, the dwarf’s big eyes
devoured every detail of the fallen vampire, sprawled in a pool of stolen
blood. Deshale looked up from the carnage and stared at me. “Imagine," he said, "when this blood is yours.” He
turned and walked with Bubba out the door. Nothing I could do. Physically, I was no match even for a punk
like Deshale. Add in that sorcery garbage... Goddamn. I... Nathaniel. Maybe he
would listen. If he recovered. I needed to be careful. I’d probably be just the
thing for a healing vampire, pain or no pain. I looked to where Nathaniel’s broken body slumped on the
floor. The woman vampire bent over, reaching to help Nathaniel to his feet. “Don’t.” Nathaniel’s voice bubbled, his throat and lungs
thick with stolen blood briefly liberated. “Don’t touch me. I am still your
master.” That vampire arrogance again. A glacial age passed as Nathaniel pushed himself up from the
floor. His right leg had two knees, both bending in different directions. I
heard an awful crackling sound as the upper knee slowly straightened, the bones
re-knitting in their correct places. Standing, Nathaniel tottered for a second. He brusquely
swatted the woman vampire’s hand as she tried to help. Nathaniel pulled himself
up as straight as possible under the circumstances and turned toward me. “You _will_ talk,” he said. “Later.” The
door slammed open on its own. Nathaniel creaked outside, the woman vampire
walking alongside. Well. So much for that idea. I looked around at the empty bar. Jesus, the Panthers' game was
still on. Looked like they were going to lose again. Typical. I had $100 on
them to win. God, what a mess. I limped over to the pile of ashes and looked
down. “Gerard Stanley Kupchek. The strongest man I’ve ever known.
You deserved better.” I made a promise to the pile of ashes that used to be a
good man. “I will find a way to bring that monster down. All the monsters.
Somehow.” I walked to the supply closet for the mop, broom and
dustpan. It was going to be a long morning.
The Sorcerer's Song and The Cat's Meow is an author's triumph and a reader's delight...
What a wonderful, free-falling storytelling ride to get to the end of a fantasy that's about
as close to purrfect as you can get.
M. Wayne Cunningham - ForeWord CLARION Reviews
A well-plotted story with vivid and riveting description of characters and settings, as well as an intense page turning battle,
the book is a delight to read.
Tracy Roberts - Write Field Services
A cat and her sorcerer, a beautiful dream weaver, an evil voodoo priest,
a bunch of man-sized rats, an army of really big bugs, a crazed randy rabbit,
some dwarves, dragons and angry three-toed sloths, New York City, the woods of Maine,
the sands of Arabia and the mythic lands of Avalon all come together for the wildest
most epic adventure you’ve ever read!!!!