7.

I wake up with the worst headache in existence.  My temples are throbbing.  My head feels light, my eyes dark.  The television is on, and the anchorwoman on the news is talking about the Rohrsachs again.  I look down.  Misha is curled up like a cat against my outstretched leg, her light brown hair cascading over my black fishnets.  She notices me stir, looks up.  “Hi,” she says.

“I’m starving,” I reply.

Ten minutes later we’re downtown, assessing the nightlife on a Sunday night.  Fortunately, New York City is teeming with young disillusioned hipster kids who want nothing more than to honor their Sabbath by binge drinking and making out in alleyways.  The night is full of the sounds of hooting and hollering, the smell of garbage and urine and expensive vanilla perfume.  The streets are slick with a recent shower.  And Misha and I look marvelous.  She has borrowed most of my clothes and is a tan goth beauty, bright red lipstick, black torn fishnets, a white boy’s dress shirt and a black vest.  A jaunty cap.  Only one night in and she’s already becoming a sexy vampire.  And it’s not even Halloween yet.

Prior to leaving, I checked my cell for any calls.  None so far, but I did manage to wake up right as the sun set.  That’s how thirsty I am.

This particular street near my apartment is full of angry post-teenage men, brooding and painting canvases with mud and frustration.  What they’re frustrated about, I don’t know.  They have the symbol for vampire enclave emblazoned on their suitable-hidden door, inset a foot or so from the brick wall, surrounded by shadows and dumpsters and pipes and greasy windows.  I figure the best way to break Misha in would be to parade her through a bunch of wannabe vampires.  Easy prey.

The instant we round the corner into the alley, we are bombarded by servants.

Okay, humans in all their wisdom like things in classes, or castes, or what have you, and these classes essentially dictate how much of a pussy the human is.  For example, the lowest class is Servant.  Servants serve, obviously.  They don’t want to be vampires, they just want to help vampires.  Don’t ask me why.  They’re mostly fat, lazy, acne’d men who spend their entire day surfing the internet for porn, and find it incredibly “awesome” to wait on us vampires at night.  We put up with it because, well, we can, and because it’s nice to be served.  (Plus no self-respecting vampire would ever stoop this low.)

A step higher are Apprenti.  Apprenti are waiting to become vampires, and were lucky enough to be chosen to be a part of a vampire family.  They basically do our dirty work for us in the day time.  There are some pretty high ranking apprenti in Europe, and some in the US as well, though they choose to remain anonymous, and for good reason.

As the servants bark questions at us (“What can we do for you?”, “Would you like some fresh blood?”, “Can I take your coat?”) I say to Misha, “The next highest, I suppose, are Familiars.  It’s kind of hard to describe their purpose.  They are vampire pets, but they’re also henchmen, in a way.  They will never become vampires, but swear a sacred oath (so to speak) to their vampire lord.  Every ancient vampire has a familiar, and ninety-five percent of all familiars are mentally deranged in some way, usually because of their lord.  Renfield was a familiar.  Are you familiar with Renfield?”

Misha shakes her head.

“He was a loonie in a mental asylum, totally under Dracula’s spell.  He wasn’t much of a familiar, and Dracula ended up killing him, but he took the oath, and so it was.”  Meeting eyes with the least pudgy of the servants, I gesture to the door.  “Gentlemen.”

They nearly break each other trying to open the door first.  Dull-eyed apprenti in black smocks have been watching us the entire time.  I cast my eyes on one, wink at him.  He doesn’t respond.  Good boy.

The slow methodical thud of techno music blasts out of the enclave as soon as the door opens.  Red and purple lights gush out onto the floor.  The servants look at Misha and me like a gaggle of googly-eyed dogs, tongues wagging, wetting themselves in excitement.  I brush past them with a flick of my hand, the other wrapped in Misha’s, pulling her with me.

Inside, the club is smoky and dark and vibrant.  Colors swirl, people gyrate, drinks are poured.  Enclaves are special because they are joint human-vampire clubs, like speakeasys in the 1930s.  Vampires are welcome with the knowledge that no human will be bitten within the enclave, and that a blood bar will be readily available.  Naturally, fresh blood tastes so much better than the bagged stuff, but we can deal with it.

After letting Misha get a view of the place (“I love it,” she mouths to me), we head to the bar, where I flash the Teresini tattoo on my left shoulder.  He nods and looks at Misha.  I point to myself and make two “fangs” with my index and middle finger pointing down – the international bartender sign for “newbie” – and point to Misha.  He nods again.  I give him another symbol – two fingers for two shots, and then one finger gesturing up.  He pours two shots of blood and hands them to us, making his own hand gesture – eight dollars.

I give him the cash and then hand one of the shots to Misha.  She mouths, “Is this blood?”  I nod.  She smiles, and already I can see her fangs growing in.  Oh, I remember what it was like to be a newly sired vampire.  The agony of thirst, the ecstasy of drinking, the love of being undead.

We clink our shot glasses together.  “A toast!” I shout, barely audible.  “To our future!”

“Our future!” shouts Misha.

We drink.  A look of satisfaction on Misha’s face.  My headache instantly gone.  The world is good again.

I order two more rounds.

++

After the enclave closes is when the fun starts.  Suddenly vampire and human are spilled out onto the street, some drunk, others still thirsty.  We talk now that the music is gone, we complain about sore feet, we flirt, and Misha and I look for someone to take back home.  Naturally it isn’t hard: two young attractive ladies who want to take a man back to their apartment for a “little fun”?  Like shooting fish in a barrel.  Plus we’re already drunk from authentic bloody mary’s (not the ones your mom used to make, trust me), so what’s a little more blood alcohol content?

His name is Steven.  Mid twenties, tall, blond hair, exquisitely chiseled features.  Misha is looking at him with puppy dog eyes and I feel somewhat ... jealous?  Is that what this is?  The pang in my chest that refuses to settle, like a hungry dog trapped in a kennel?

Steven looked like a good choice but that was before Misha entered the picture.  Now I’m suddenly feeling a bit lost and depressed.  I’d rather go home and sleep.  It’s only starting to enter the fall, which means the nights are short and the sun will be up by six am.  We’ve had enough blood for the night, I keep assuring myself.  We could sleep and feel fine the next night.

“Where do you guys live?” Steven says in some macho bravado tone of voice that I don’t care to listen to.  Misha swoons a little bit, says “Just down the street.”

“We are not guys,” I say curtly.  I grab Misha’s hand.  “Come on, let’s go.”

“I thought we were gonna bring him home?” Misha says dejectedly.

“We were but I got cold feet.”  To him: “No offense.”

“None taken,” he says, but he’s looking at me like I’m the most horrendous bitch he’s ever met.  Whatever, he doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground.  Which is where he’ll be if he tries to mess with us.

“Dee, what are you doing...?” Misha slurs as I pull her out of the alley.

“That guy was a creep.  We didn’t want him.”

“No, you didn’t want him,” says Misha.  She rips her arm out of my grip.  “What is your problem?  Is this what you’re like when you’re totally drunk?”

“Okay, first off, I’m not totally drunk—“My cell phone starts buzzing.  “Hold on, I’ve got to take this.”

“Excuse me?” says Misha.  She tries to grab the phone out of my hand.  I slap her hand.  She screeches like a banshee and storms off.

Jesus.  Women sometimes.

“Angel here,” I say.  Angel is a semi-sarcastic codename Everett gave me a year ago.

“We need you at headquarters,” says a sultry English man’s voice on the other end.  “Fifteen minutes.”

“Make it thirty?” I ask.

“No negotiations,” and he hangs up.  Everett is such a stoic fellow.

I walk, or stumble, rather, back to the apartment.  Misha is waiting for me by the outside entrance.  She narrows her eyes at me, giving me a tempestuous look that really accentuates her cheekbones.  I’m in love again.  Her hip thrust out, arms crossed, high heeled toe tapping to an imaginary, yet angry, beat.  Short skirt rubbing against fishnets...

“Baby, I gotta go,” I say when I reach her.  Her fury is palpable.

“Why?” she says, almost hurt.

“I got a call from the Big Boys.  I’ve got something important to do.”

“You’re gonna leave me here alone again?”

Her lip pouts a little bit and I have to do everything I can to not pounce on it.  Goddamn you, Everett St. Clair.  Goddamn you.

“I have to.  If I don’t follow what the Big Boys say then I get in trouble, and you wouldn’t like it if I got in trouble.”  We’re close now, and I’ve got my hand around her waist, my thumb lightly touching the crest of her hipbone.  I can tell she likes it cause her eyes close for a moment and her head leans back slightly.  “Here, I’ll take you upstairs, okay?”

“Okay,” Misha whispers.

We hold hands and caress and fondle and do other inappropriate things on our way up to my apartment on the third floor, opting for the quiet security of the elevator for our body searching rather than the clumsy echoing staircase.  When the bell dings and the doors open we feign innocence and walk quietly to my door.  I unlock it and we both go in.

Misha immediately presses me against the door, knocking the air that I don’t need out of me.  Her lips taste slightly of honey.  She tries to unzip my skirt and I have to push her back.

“Sorry, honey, I can’t continue,” I say, zipping my skirt back up.

Misha’s sad puppy dog eyes tug at my heart, so I give her a long, aching hug and a bit of a butt squeeze, which makes her yelp and bite her bottom lip.  Then a quick tender kiss and a hand on her cheek and I’m off, out into the night once again.  There’s only a couple of hours until dawn, so I wonder what they’ve got planned for me and the gang.  I hope we get someplace to sleep for the day, at least.

++

Headquarters is an elaborate basement under an old abandoned building on some industrial street in New Jersey, surrounded by old steel mills and factories and all sorts of other ugly American enterprises.  In darkness it all looms like forgotten civilizations, broken windows and falling bricks strewn across concrete and gravel.

I enter the building and walk, echo-enhanced, to the large elevator at the other end of this enormous room.  It used to be a factory that made some kind of clothes; you can tell because there are fabric swatches still on the ground, and moths flying everywhere and probably bats trying to eat those moths.  Every once and a while you’ll hear something more like a stray dog or cat, or some animals fighting, and in this giant room it echoes like crazy, which can be a little startling.

Yes, vampires can get startled.  New ones can, at least.  The old vamps are sometimes a stiff as starched clothing.  I’ve met Dracula before, briefly, and when he took my hand it was like holding onto a piece of parchment.  The guy has no sense of humor.  I can only imagine what Cain is like.

The elevator descends with a metallic clunk and the mechanical whirr of counterweights being moved with hydraulics.  I descend four floors into the ground, and as I do the quiet silence of the outside is replaced with a new sound – the hum of electricity.  By the time the elevator hits the fourth basement, the hum is loud enough that I fear I might get shocked as I touch the gate.  I never do.  But the fear is there.

I pull the gate aside and walk to a steel door, the entrance to our headquarters.  I say my name, Delia MacArthur Teresini, and my rank, Special Ops Hunter, into a small microphone.  A laser scans my retina.  A red light turns green, and a loud thunk echoes up the elevator shaft as the lock disengages.  I open the door and proceed forward.

Headquarters is brightly lit by annoying fluorescent tubes and garishly decorated.  A long corridor extends into a small room where a heavily-armed receptionist asks me to repeat the codeword for this week.  I say, “Lionheart” and she takes her finger off the trigger, but still points the gun at me.  There are two directions to go now, left and right.  Left heads into the server rooms where a large cadre of apprenti sits at computers, typing and typing and programming until their eyes bleed.  They are all enormously fat and wear thick rimmed glasses and sweat and eat horrible human snack foods and would most definitely be servants if they didn’t possess such a keen savant-level of knowledge about computers.  Some are working on vampire security measures, but most are just updating the eons long list of vampire geneology – from Cain onward, taking it out of yellowed books and parchments and papyrus and stone tablets taken from the library of Alexandria before it was destroyed.  It’s no secret that vampires possess more ancient paraphernalia than humans do, and the humans have been envious for centuries.

To the right is where I’m heading.  A narrow hallway curves to the left into a large, oblong room that Everett calls the Situation Room, but we all like to call the Shit Room – cause it’s where shit happens.  Currently it is staffed to the gills, as vampires and apprenti alike go over various computer terminals and tall panes of glass with some kind of fiber optic ... thing inside them, that makes them project images on them and also allows you to touch them to access information.  I’m no technophile so I don’t know how it works.  A human gave it to us, that’s all I know.

Everett – tall, slender, Oxfordian Everett stands at one of these consoles, rapidly pressing letters on a keyboard that has popped up on the screen.  Above it is a window showing what he is typing, and to the left of that is a video screen of a vampire most likely from the west coast.  Everett is speaking to the vampire as he types.

At a table near him are my Special Ops friends, Greg, Lucie, and the ever-jealous Stacey.  They spot me, and wave, except for Stacey, who flicks her hair.

“I’m here!” I say sarcastically, taking a seat and crossing my legs.  “Where’s my prize?”

Stacey sticks her tongue out at me.  Greg laughs, and Lucie is texting on her phone.  Lucie is the only vampire I know who is fully immersed in technology.  I think she has a blog or something. Or a website.  Something like that.

Everett hears me and hits a button on the screen that sends everything he was doing away.  The pane of glass is now just a pane of glass.  He steps out from behind it and walks over to me.

“Good to see you, Delia,” he says, and I am suddenly flooded with memories.

This happens every time I see Everett, which isn’t as often as you’d think.  Everett was my second love.

++

It was cold, and I was wearing gray tights and a denim skirt, and a scarf that was more for fashion than for function.  Standing at Piccadilly Circus, enjoying the touristyness of it all, the bright lights, the neon signs, the Japanese men taking photographs of everything in sight.  I was twenty, I was in London, and I had been living in a hostel for three weeks.

++

My life after high school graduation was sub par: Boise, it seems, was full of ambition with nothing actually happening.  I enrolled at Boise State with poor high school grades and a poor SAT score, and they accepted me, which made me feel even worse, so I refused to go.  The shouting match with my parents was epic, and resulted in me getting kicked out, thrown to the street with just a backpack full of belongings.  It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, to be cliché.

For a year I lived with a friend, and worked my ass off at a menial job with okay pay.  My friend was working at a much better job with a salary, so she was kind enough to let me stay rent free with her for a year, before I came home one night and found her fucking my boyfriend at the time.  On the coffee table.  And there was a dildo of mine laying on the ground beside them.  I packed up and left immediately after that.

I used the money I saved to buy a decent used car and traveled across the country, eventually stopping at New York.  I spent a terrible eight months working for a modeling agency that I was entirely not good enough for.  I lived in my car a lot.  Ate food out of dumpsters, which wasn’t such a bad thing once I found a local group of freegans who always ate food out of dumpsters.  I had a good two months with them, but lost interest after I got drunk one night, slept with one of them, and woke up with syphilis.

My life story sounds terrible, I know, but you’d be surprised at how many people get syphilis these days.

I had thought about getting in my car and driving across the country again when one day I was walking down the street and I found an envelope lying in the gutter.  The envelope was filled with money.  At the time I was very anti-money, anti-capitalism and I desperately wished to give it back to whomever it belonged, but then I read the note stuffed inside.  Written in pink lipstick, it said:

“my lying cheating FUCK of a husband gave me this money to save our marriage.  if you find it, it’s yours.  congratz.”

There was two-thousand dollars inside.

I decided to use the money to move to London.

++

My first glimpse of Everett was him, shirtless, walking past me in the morning at the hostel, heading to the shower room to shower.  He was thin but not muscular, like a runner.  A small tuft of dark hair matted his chest.  His face long and triangular, ending in a pointed chin and a wicked smile.  He wore small spectacles and his hair was always, always perfect.  Even out of the shower.

He spotted me watching him as he walked by, and winked.  And that was it.  It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t tacky – it was as though we were sharing an intimate, yet slightly humorous moment.  I wasn’t sure what that moment was, but I wanted to know.  Soon.

++

“Thank you all for coming,” says Everett in his crisp British accent.  “I know it’s early, but I wanted to make sure you got this information from us and not over the phone.”

He slides dossiers to us.  As we open and read them, he continues.  “We’re at a critical moment now.  Intelligence has done some calculations on zombie movements and we fear a large uprising is happening.  Jason’s forces are dwindling, so he is using some kind of supernatural ability and raising corpses from the ground—“

Everett says this calmly, as though everyone knew this, but in reality there has never been a zombie raised from the ground before.  Ever.  All zombies come from fresh humans who are bit and infected.  Naturally this raises immediate suspicion on our parts.  So Greg says,

“Impossible.”

“I know, Greg, it sounds impossible—“

“It is impossible,” Greg says.  “That’s ... that’s borderline magic, Everett.  That’s necromancy.  Jason is not a mage, he’s a zombie.”

“I know,” says Everett.  “We’re looking into it.  But we have accounts across the states and Canada of zombies coming out of the earth.  And ... skeletons, too.”

Greg huffs.  Stacey laughs out loud.  Lucie is staring at Everett with wide eyes.  I say, “Skeletons?”

“This is fucking Dungeons and Dragons shit, Everett,” Greg spits.

Everett puts his hands on the table, leans into us.  His face is grim, as though he’s been laughed at all night.  “I know it sounds ridiculous, Gregory.  All I’m saying is that there are reports and have been reports for the past two weeks of all sorts of animated dead wandering the countryside.  Farmers shooting walking skeletons who stumble into their cornfields, cats and dogs being mutilated by stiff, lumbering zombies with strangely untouched skin – as though they’ve been embalmed.  Now,” he stands again, and starts pacing, “we’ve all been aware of Jason’s danger to society for decades now, and the prophecies of his arrival have been circulating for centuries.  But the truth is that, whether or not these incidents are real, they pose a threat.  Jason is an immediate danger now, and we’re going to take him out.”

By “we”, Everett obviously means me, Greg, Lucie and Stacey.

“We’re going to ‘take out’ Jason?” says Lucie.  “It can’t be done.  His lair is impenetrable.”

“And disgusting,” Stacey amends.

“We’ve got recon working on that right now,” says Everett.  “We’re starting initial strikes tomorrow night, surgical strikes to try and thin the horde out there.  You guys will be activated in one week.”

Greg slams his fist on the table, visibly furious.  “Are you kidding me?  You want us – four of us – to walk in and kill Jason?  What about the Foster reports?”

“We’ve got new information—“

“Oh, he can be killed now?  Is that what you’re saying?”

Greg can get a little hot tempered sometimes.  It’s pretty amusing, considering how short and stocky he is.

“I’m saying he can be hurt,” says Everett, with a tone in his voice that he doesn’t use very often, a tone that shuts Greg up and reminds me of fights we used to have, long ago.  “If you’ll let me explain,” Everett continues.  “We recently sent a team up to the Rocky mountains in Montana in search of whatever artifact Jason got his abilities from.  We think we found it two days ago.  In the middle of the woods they found a small clearing, perfectly circular, and in the middle of the clearing was a white altar.  It was pristine; not a scratch or stain or bird droppings.  Nothing.”

Everett walks over to the pane of glass and touches it.  A menu appears, and he quickly presses buttons until a picture of the altar appears on screen.  It is simple, a circular pedestal, not unlike the altars used in ancient Greece, where they sacrificed goats to appease the gods.  It seems almost shiny, however, as though coated with a paint gloss.

Turning back to us, Everett says, “Our team took photos of the altar and sent them to intelligence, and we’ve come up with some ideas.  Primary is the idea that this altar works as a sort of “Picture of Dorian Gray”: it is pristine because Jason is so horribly zombified, and the more he decays, the more perfect the altar becomes.  This theory arose after one of the team members struck the altar with a chisel.”

Everett presses a part of the glass and the picture changes to a closeup of a hand, two fingers pinched around a small fleck of stone from the altar.  It, unlike the rest of the altar, is gray and brittle looking.

“A piece broke off and immediately became old and weathered.  Shortly after taking this picture it crumbled entirely in his hand.  We didn’t think much of it at the time, but then we received photos from a vampire named Uriah who managed to get into Jason’s inner sanctum before being ambushed by his human lackeys.”

A third picture: Jason, the zombie leader, body and face blurred not by camera motion, but by some kind of distortion in the film or digitization (this is how every picture of Jason turns out), chained to the wall of his lair, as two enormous zombie beast men stand beside him on each side, and several cannibals hunch over dead bodies strewn on the ground.  It is dimly lit save for a few torches.  I’ve seen a couple of pictures of Jason’s inner sanctum before, and each one scares the shit out of me.

“Jason is distorted, obviously,” Everett says, “but if you’ll notice—“

“His finger isn’t,” I say.

“Nicely caught,” says Everett.

Indeed, all of Jason is distorted in the picture except for his right pinky finger, which seems to shine compared to the brown-purple blob that is what Jason looks like on camera.

“Picture of Dorian Gray,” says Greg.  “Son of a bitch.”

“Exactly,” says Everett, “except this one works opposite.  If we destroy the altar, we think that Jason will revert to being mortal.”

“So why haven’t we done it yet?” says Stacey, who has finally become alert.  I think she just wants to smash something.

“Two reasons,” Everett replies.  “First, we don’t know what actually will happen when the altar is smashed.  And really we won’t know until we do it, which brings up the second reason – we don’t know how the zombies and cannibals will respond when Jason turns human.  They may still ally with him, or they may tear him to bits.  We can only assume, and we do.  A lot.”

Everett looks at his watch, which makes us all glance at the clock.  It’s an hour to sunrise.  “I’ll make this quick,” he says.  “We want you in there when we destroy the altar.  We want Jason human.”  He hesitates.  “And we want him alive.”

“WHAT?” the four of us say simultaneously.