The Vampire's Betrayal (29 page)

I noticed Werm was following our conversation closely, his eyes swollen from weeping. But he didn’t ask any questions. He was my second now. He was going to have to grow up fast.

“You know you cannot avenge William,” Melaphia said. “As much as I might want you to. Lalee has forbidden it.”

“I understand. But there’s another reason I can’t go after her.”

“Because she carries your child?”

“No,” I said.

“Because we still don’t know how the Slayer can be killed?”

“No, though that’s true, too.”

“Then why?”

“We need her help.”

“With what?” Werm finally spoke up.

“The portal was open for some time,” I said. “The double-dead vampire I killed here at the house made his way up from the underworld pretty quick. How many others do you reckon had the wherewithal to do the same?”

“Oh, sweet Maman,” Melaphia murmured. She glanced down to make sure Renee had fallen asleep again, not that the child wouldn’t eventually figure out for herself how much trouble we were all in.

Suddenly I was thinking clearly again. It was about time. I filled in Melaphia and Werm on Reedrek’s rant in the tunnels and told them about the double-deads and their ability to change their appearance.

“It’s our responsibility to send those mofos back to hell where they belong,” I said.

“My God,” Werm breathed. “There are only the two of us. How are we going to fight them all? How are we even going to
find
them?”

“There’s only one thing we can do,” I said. “We have to get on the good side of a vampire slayer. That’s her job, right? To sniff out vampires and assassinate them.”

“Yeah, but what if those vampires are…us?” Werm croaked.

“We’ll have to figure out how to make her want to kill them more than she wants to kill us,” I said.

“If you say so, Jack.”

“I know you can get us through this, Jack. I have faith in you,” Melaphia said, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears.

Her words meant more to me than she would ever know. I sat on the sofa between her and Werm and put an arm around each of them. “William always said Savannah was his city.”

“It was,” Melaphia sobbed.

I hugged them close to me. “And now it’s ours.”

When people say they sleep the sleep of the dead, they have no idea.

I slept dreamlessly—thank the gods—and woke with a sense of purpose. Werm was awake and feeding from the bottled blood in the refrigerator.

“You probably shouldn’t open the nightclub, even if the power is back on,” I said. “Why don’t you lie low for a while until we get some idea of what we’re facing.”

“In terms of the number of double-deads, you mean?”

“Yeah. But call Seth and give him an idea of what we’re up against. Tell him Connie has been activated and that he should check on her. He knows what that means.”

“Done,” he said, and took the back way out toward the tunnels.

I turned the corner to go upstairs and found Melaphia kneeling before her little altars.

“How long has it been since you slept?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “I had to do something. I prayed to Maman Lalee, but I don’t know if it did any good. She didn’t manifest.”

“What’d you pray for?” I asked, even though I figured I already knew.

“I beseeched her for a favor for William. Even though she told us no one could ever come back from the underworld again, I asked if she could find it in her heart to try to get William to a better place. I can’t bear to think of him suffering for eternity.”

She collapsed against me and began to sob again, and I sank down to the steps with her. “I can’t stand to think of it either,” I said, stroking her hair. It was the thought I had been trying to suppress ever since we’d lost William. It was too painful to dwell on, so I chose not to.

“Have faith,” I said. “Those two have a special relationship. Lalee will think of something.”

“I hope so.”

“Why are you crying, Mama?” Renee asked from the top of the stairs.

We looked up to see the little girl beaming down at us. Then Melaphia and I exchanged worried glances. Was Renee so traumatized by the sight of William’s death that she had blocked it out of her mind?

“I’m just sad because I prayed to Maman Lalee to help William and I don’t know if it worked.”

“Of course it worked,” Renee said.

“How do you know, honey?” I asked her.

“Because I saw him dancing.”

Twenty-two

I went by the garage to check on any earthquake damage and explain things to the guys as best I could. They were shocked to hear about William, of course, and offered me their sympathies and vows of discretion.

I convinced Rennie to close up for a few days on account of potential demon trouble, and advised him and the irregulars to lie low until I had a handle on things. They said they understood and headed for their homes. Before Otis left I told him that later I’d fill him in on some details he’d want to take back to his Sidhe bosses.

I was checking for structural damage around the back of the building, grateful that nothing seemed to have been harmed inside or out, when I saw Huey sitting on the edge of what had been his hole. I say “what had been” because the earthquake had caused the hole to cave in, ruining all the hard work he’d put in to resurrect his Chevy Corsica.

But he didn’t seem perturbed. In fact, he had himself a new friend. Or maybe I should say a closer friend. The crow that had been perched in the tree squawking the last time I’d seen it was now perched on Huey’s shoulder like some cockeyed pirate’s parrot.

“Looks like you’ve got a feathered friend,” I said.

“Yessir. She’s your friend, too,” Huey said.

“Come again?”

“That’s what she said.”

I’d heard it all now. “She said she’s my friend?”

“I taught her to talk.”

“Did you, now?”

“She tried for an awful long time, and finally she caught on,” he said.

I was starting to believe that Huey was a regular Doctor Dolittle. Not long ago he had demonstrated his ability to speak werewolf—he could interpret their barks and whines—and now he had taught a bird to talk. At least he claimed that he had. But hearing was believing.

I bent down to get a better look at the critter, and she eyeballed me in return. “There’s a pretty bird,” I said. “Can the pretty bird talk?”

The crow flapped its wings indignantly. “Damn right I can. Dammit, Jack, get me out of here!”

I nearly fell over into what was left of Huey’s old grave, now Huey’s old mud hole. “Ginger? Is that you?”

“Hell yes,” the bird said.

“How’d you get to be a bird?”

“That bitch of a boss of mine stole my body, and there’s no telling what she’s been doing to it. You’ve got to get it back for me, Jack! Get me the hell back into my body!”

“I—I will,” I stammered. “I mean, I’ll try. There might be a slight problem. With your body, I mean.”

“Oh, geez. What?” asked the long-suffering Ginger.

“You might be a vampire.”

“Don’t tell me you believe in vampires.”

I sighed. “A few days ago, you probably didn’t believe that your boss could steal your body either.”

“Okay, whatever. Just promise me you’ll get me and my body back together.”

“I promise.”

“Good. ’Cause I look terrible in black.” The Ginger bird settled down some, but didn’t take her eyes off me. “Let me tell you something else. Lay off that ‘pretty bird’ business. And if you
ever
offer me a cracker, by God, I’m going to peck your eyes out.”

My second-favorite place to go and think—other than in my car, driving fast—is the beach on Tybee Island. There’s something eternal and reassuring about hearing the waves wash onto the shore over and over.

The humans had practically deserted the island, what with tsunami warnings due to the earthquakes, but when they realized the crisis had passed they would make their way back to their island paradise.

For now, the island belonged to me. Before I took on the serious thinking I had to do—that of the problem-solving variety—I let my mind wander. And I let myself grieve for my friend, my father, my William.

I thought about all the good times he and I had together, like the times we went night fishing or moonlight sailing and he told me stories of things that happened hundreds of years ago. I could have listened to him forever. I never believed that a day would come when the stories would be over.

I chose not to recall the times we’d clashed. Not tonight. Tonight was for pleasant memories.

I closed my eyes and enjoyed the salty wind on my face. When I finally opened them, I looked out into the frothy waves and thought I saw something gliding on the surface of the water. What was it? Bottlenose dolphins? Manatees? No, that couldn’t be right.

It almost looked like a couple dancing on top of the water. I shook my head.
McShane, you’re cracking up.
First talking birds and now merpeople. And I hadn’t even had anything to drink.
That
could be remedied at least. I was going to tie one on before I went into my coffin tonight.

I saw the moonlight strike something shiny as the next wave came in. The water rolled what looked like an antique champagne bottle right up to my feet. It looked really old, like it had been battered against the sand of so many shores that it had worn down in places.

I stooped to retrieve it and saw that there was a cork in it. I removed the cork and shook out a small piece of yellowed paper so old and oxidized it almost disintegrated in my hand. I held it up to the moonlight and strained to read it, revving up my special vampire peepers.

Four words, written in an elegant hand, read,
Don’t worry. I’m fine.

“What the—”

And then I found myself on the flat of my back in the sand, the note flying off into the wind. I tried to keep my grip on the bottle.

Connie held me down with superhuman strength, a wooden stake pressing through my shirt into the flesh right above my heart. “Hello there, lover boy. Are you ready to die?”

Would my time as head of the household last only a day? I fought to remain calm. I’d talked women into a lot of things in my long life, but no sweet talk I’d ever done had prepared me for trying to talk a vampire slayer out of staking me.

She drew the stake back and was about to bring it downward when I yelled, “You don’t want to kill me!”

“Oh, yes I do,” she said. “I’m itching to kill you. I
need
to kill you!” Her eyes were wild.

I could understand now what Travis had said about the slayers turning into something that wasn’t human. I just hoped I’d understood him right when he said they eventually settle down, and I wondered if I could stay alive that long.

“No you don’t. You need me.”

She laughed, and I tried not to think about how sexy those little fangs were. Now was not the time for distractions.

“Oh, yeah? What do I need you for?” she asked sweetly. She brought the weapon to my chest again and pressed it in hard enough to draw blood.

“Do you remember that talk about portals that went on amongst us vampires last night?”

“Uh-huh.” She narrowed her eyes.

Hot damn, I had her attention. “Did you understand what it meant?”

“Nope,” she admitted. “What does it mean?”

“It means that the earthquake opened up a hole to hell that let a lot of nasty beasties escape into Savannah. And you need me to help you find them and kill them before they can eat any of the good citizens of our fair city.”

I was pretty sure this was a bald-faced lie. She was made to root out blood drinkers, and didn’t need me even a little bit, but she was a baby slayer with nobody to teach her, so she might not instinctively know what her powers were.

“Beasties?” The crazy smile disappeared. “What kind of beasties?”

“Ones with big sharp nasty teeth,” I enthused.

“Demons who can shape-shift into all kinds of scary monsters.” I hoped to the gods that not just Connie, but Connie the cop was in there somewhere and that her natural inclination to put the welfare of the citizens first would override her need to kill little old me.

She studied me skeptically. “Demons who can change into all kinds of scary monsters, huh? That’s quite a tale. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Well, I, uh—where’s your sword?”

It was obvious she was new to all this, and she seemed genuinely confused by my question, but then she shook it off.

She was raising the stake again, when a God’s-honest miracle happened. The cop radio that she wore somewhere under her jacket went off, and a dispatcher spewed some cop-speak about a crazed maniac running amok on River Street. Not your garden-variety crazed maniac, mind you, but one with four legs, a tail, and scales.

“What was that about a lizard man?” I asked.

“You’ve got to admit it’s not every day that you see something out of a Japanese horror movie menacing the tourists.”

She looked at me hard, considering. “Seth can help me find these demons,” she said. “And I can sniff vampires. I don’t need you.”

“Smell can get you and Seth only so far. I can teach you what he can’t: how to think like a vampire and how to outsmart one. These demons are bloodsuckers at heart, and it takes one to know one, sweetheart.”

“I don’t need your help to think like a vampire. I’m half-vampire already…but it was a nice try.”

She swung all the way back with the stake and brought it down to my heart. In a flash, I managed to move the bottle over my heart, and the stake glanced off the smooth glass.

“Hey, wait!” I said as she cursed her miss. “You haven’t heard the worst part: not all of the risen undead will be in demon form. Some of them will look like regular folks.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not. You remember that redheaded chick from last night? That was really Eleanor. William killed her in Europe, and she accidentally came back from the underworld with us. She could have morphed into a snake if she’d wanted to. But she stole Ginger the floozy’s body to hop into when she came up from the underworld.”

I was rambling but I couldn’t help it. Maybe if I threw enough at her, something would stick. If it didn’t I was going to be back in the underworld in a flash, suffering a torment thought up just for me. I’d probably be stuck for all eternity driving a Chevy Corsica!