Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest (14 page)

“The first few messages were warnings,” she said. “Disturbingly
specific
warnings about Walter Lafontaine — which is a name that, as far as I’ve seen, isn’t known by the general population. She knew you were going to meet with him, and she warned you not to. She warned us that it was a trap. If only we’d seen that phone, Reginald.”
 

It didn’t matter. They’d made it back alive. All they’d lost was the architect of the world’s murder.
 

“You can’t take a cell phone on a raid,” he told her.
 

“It wasn’t supposed to be a raid. It was supposed to be a negotiation.”
 

“Well,” he said, gesturing vaguely, “I guess that shows what we know. Me being a genius vampire mastermind and all.”
 

“Don’t do that.”
 

Normally he’d wave her away when she told him not to deprecate himself, but this time her words felt particularly poignant, and he let them settle. He wasn’t the same man he’d been. He wasn’t the same vampire he’d been. He didn’t look any different, but he was a little stronger. A little faster. He didn’t eat junk food. He drank a healthy amount of blood. He ran and he trained despite the fact that it couldn’t help him, just to prove to himself that he could. And he didn’t wallow in self-pity. Self-pity did nothing. It was the purest form of self-indulgence: self-important egoism disguised as penance. But self-pity had never helped anyone, ever, and he knew it.
 

“The later texts read like a live recap of your journey back, also oddly specific. She was able to tell where you were and how you were doing, right up until you got back here. Honestly, I wish I’d known so that I could follow along. I was worried sick. As usual, I have no idea how she did any of it.”
 

“She probably plugged into the satellites. Or extrapolated what had to happen next from the information she already had, assuming she had the visibility she can’t always count on having. Or maybe she extrapolated from the things that she
could
see easily, or glean from news reports. Or all of the above.”
 

Nikki shrugged. It hadn’t been a real question.
 

Reginald sighed. Maybe she would be fine. In a literal sense, Claire knew almost everything, assuming she could access the information. She was the closest thing to omniscient that the mortal plane had ever known. He imagined her dodging threats as she saw them coming, always staying one step ahead — not unlike what Reginald could do with his hyper-awareness, when he stopped time and analyzed his choices. He imagined Claire doing much the same, and felt better.
 

“I guess she’ll be okay,” he said. But that was only half of his Claire thoughts. Half of the reason his head had popped up and he’d said her name.
 

“I want to call her,” said Reginald. “I need her mind. I need her to help me analyze the human activity.”
 

“You can’t call her,” said Nikki.
 

Reginald ignored her, picking up his cell phone. Claire didn’t have a cell phone because she didn’t need one, but the house she lived in had a phone, and she’d had it activated. There was Skype. There was even email. He began to dial.
 

“I said, you can’t call her,” said Nikki.

“Why not?”
 

“She left. She’s not at home.”
 

Reginald’s sense of temporary peace broke like a dropped plate. “Oh.”
 

But as his head was sagging, he heard a knock on the door. He looked up. Nikki started to rise, but she didn’t make it past a partial crouch. The door had an electronic swipe lock. It clicked, and the door opened. And there in the doorway was a young woman with long, light brown hair, dressed in jeans and a red top.
 

“Hey,” said Claire.

M
EET
THE
N
EW
B
OSS
, S
AME
A
S
THE
O
LD
B
OSS

REGINALD WAS FURIOUS WITH CLAIRE for crossing the country on her own, but Claire waved him off as usual, assuring him that it was fine. She’d sneaked out of her house in full light, making her way across the city and darting through the gate. Once outside, she’d been safe. She was walking in the sun, probably developing a sunburn owing to her pale skin and lack of regular sun exposure, so no human would think she was a vampire unless they scoped her and found her cold — and even if they
did
scope her, they wouldn’t know
what
to think. She’d then stolen a car and made her way to a converted hospital on the periphery of the wildlands that she’d seen helicopters fly out of in the past, presumably to scope the wildlands for the Vampire Nation. She’d found the helicopter fueled, had climbed inside, and had flown it.
 

When Nikki, aghast, asked how the hell she’d flown a helicopter, Claire just waved her hands mysteriously in the air. The television came on, then turned off. Brian’s cell phone, in the other room, rang. The lights turned on and off, and the electronic door clicked open and closed. The air conditioning came on and off, and in front of them both, Claire’s palms glowed with a strange blue light. Then everything stopped and she lowered her palms, and she answered Nikki’s question: “I just
flew
it
, and now it’s on the roof.” Then she pointed up, a small, innocent smile on her wide, pretty lips.
 

Reginald yelled at her. He said that she could easily have been killed — not just by vampires looking for humans, but also by humans looking for vampires. Claire was neither. The vampire community she’d lived in knew her as vampire, but when she used to go into the wildlands to visit her dying mother, the few vampire-friendly humans they knew had treated her as human. She didn’t have fangs and she couldn’t move like a vampire (or could she? Reginald suspected she might be sandbagging; getting out of the city walls wasn’t simple, and Claire had glossed over it as if it were), but she was cold under their sensors. She could walk in the sun. And she could manipulate energy — an ability that Reginald, to this day, believed she’d only scratched the surface of. But as Reginald watched Claire come into his room at USVC and sit on the bed beside Nikki, all he could see in his mind were all of the dangers she had faced. And it made him angry.
 

Claire’s response was simple and direct. “I’m 51,” she said. “Get off my back, mom.”
 

It was true. Claire hadn’t had a mother in any real sense until she’d been old enough for a mother’s influence to barely matter. Between the addling inflicted by Altus the incubus and the damage the vampire agent had done to her following her attack, Claire’s mother hadn’t returned to normal until Claire’s aging had slowed, until after the writing was already on the wall. Reginald and Nikki had made decent surrogate parents (“decent” other than repeatedly leading her into apocalyptic peril), but they weren’t her blood, and their influence and authority over her could only stretch so far.
 

Once Reginald accepted that Claire had, in fact, taken her ill-advised trip whether he liked it or not (and once he realized that all of his fears for her would go away now that she was with them), he settled down and began pumping her for information. She was only moderately helpful, but she nudged his piece further ahead on the game board than it had been before. Claire’s omniscience was almost subconscious. She got impulses of foreknowledge in the way some people reacted to new events based on incidents in their past, and when she’d begun to fear for Reginald, Nikki, and Brian, a sort of window had opened into her archive and she’d seen it all unfold, watching the information as it funneled to her through the internet’s wires and across the air. Her mind had collated and delivered that information right then, when she was in need, quite clearly. But in the absence of a traumatic event to re-open that window, Claire could only speak vaguely about the world of facts around her:
Yes
, human clusters were appearing worldwide, strategically placed as if by a master plan laid out years ago.
Yes
, there were many more humans than vampires had thought. And
yes
, all those humans out there had been playing dumb while their innovation and technology had, in fact, been growing by leaps and bounds. But beyond those vagaries, Claire had nothing. Nikki suggested glamouring her as Reginald had done before, but Reginald didn’t want to do it. Glamouring a vampire always felt invasive — and Claire, he said, felt more and more like a vampire with every passing day. Nikki pushed harder, and Claire said that it was okay, that she’d do it. But still Reginald hedged, and finally the debate was short-circuited when Ophelia knocked on the door and told them that the president needed to see them. She didn’t make it sound like a request.
 

Reginald’s deeper mind caught what Ophelia had said right away, but it took his top level of consciousness a moment to catch up. They were walking back toward the elevator by the time her words hit home.
 

“You got Timken back?”
 

She shook her head. “President
Toussant
.”
 

Reginald realized now why Ophelia hadn’t summoned Brian too, and hence why Brian had been available to keep an eye on Claire while Nikki and Reginald went with the general. Brian could never, ever be in the same room with Claude again. He’d rip the man apart. Forty years wasn’t enough time to heal the grudge Brian would never forget: Claude had killed his maker, and Brian was big and strong and fast enough to do something about it.
 

“Timken is dead?” Reginald said, feeling like he’d missed several memos.

“It’s de facto,” said Ophelia. “Mr. Toussant was the vice president, so he’s president in the actual president’s absence.”
 

“So you’re just
acting
as if he’s dead,” said Reginald. He turned to Nikki. “Like when they hire someone to replace you when you go on maternity leave.”
 

The move was puzzling without being puzzling at all. Claude could lead the Vampire Nation just fine while remaining vice president. There was no reason to claim the presidency, seeing as he’d just have to give it back the minute Timken was returned. But on the other hand, it made sense because Claude was, in Reginald’s words, “a gigantic cocksucker.” Reginald filed the information for later consideration.
 

They made their way back to the meeting room, meeting up with Charles at the door. When they walked in, Reginald found the mood and the tableau identical, only with Claude now in Timken’s chair. He suddenly felt like he was in a daytime soap opera that had found itself short an actor:
This week, the role of Nicolas Timken will be played by Claude Toussant.

The minute Reginald saw Claude — the big man in his too-small suit, a black goatee on his chin, a vacant and vaguely condescending expression on his face — he charged. He shoved Ophelia aside, vaulted the table with shocking agility (his balance and coordination had improved greatly; he could have beat human gymnasts in the Olympics if he were able to touch his toes), and had his hands around the vice president’s / president’s throat before anyone could react. He squeezed with everything he had. His fangs came out. His blood boiled.
 

Claude smiled up at him. Behind him, Ophelia righted herself and sat in one of the chairs across the table from Claude — and, apparently, Reginald — as if nothing were amiss. Charles sat beside her. Then Nikki walked up to Reginald and patted him kindly on the shoulder.
 

“You motherfucker!” Reginald hissed. “I’m going to tear you apart!”
 

Claude twitched his head. Claude was too fast for Reginald to see entirety of the movement, but he did feel a very sharp pain as Claude’s forehead rammed into his. He felt his scalp split, felt something liquid run across his nose and cheek. Reginald’s hands let go of Claude’s throat and he tumbled from the table and to the floor at Claude’s feet.
 

Nikki pulled out a chair, then bent down to beckon Reginald from under the table. Above him, Claude gestured toward the chair.
 

“Give me one fucking reason I should sit in the same room with you,” said Reginald, standing and wiping the blood from his forehead.
 

“I’m wearing fantastic cologne,” said Claude.
 

Reginald’s fangs were still out. He looked at Claude’s neck and found himself longing to separate it from his body. Even if he could forgive Claude for killing Maurice (which he couldn’t), the score was too thick to settle. The entire world had a score to settle with Claude Toussant. He’d been behind the murderous V-Crews, behind the war crimes, behind the rumors of death camps. Every vampire had blood on their hands, but Claude’s hands were wrist-deep in an ocean of it.
 

“Sit down, Reginald,” said Charles, settling in. He straightened first his lapels and then his hair, and Reginald marveled that throughout everything, the one thing that had never faltered was Charles’s wardrobe.
 

Reginald looked from Charles to Claude. He couldn’t fight them, and it would be pointless to try. And now that he thought about it, giving Ophelia or the others any reason to evict them from USVC was an incredibly stupid idea. First of all, logically, it was in the world’s best interest to solve the situation with Lafontaine and Timken. And second, he wasn’t at all sure that anyone other than he, Nikki, and Brian knew that Claire was here. She’d landed a helicopter on the roof, but the highest floors were unused, and if he knew Claire’s ability, she’d probably scrambled all electronic records of her arrival without even intending to. But if the others found out, it would be one more pinch point. She wasn’t a vampire, and Reginald cared about her. Just one more way for the others to gain leverage, and to put Claire right back in danger she’d so recently escaped.