Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest (22 page)

Brian.
 

But when Reginald realized that his blood could almost see Lafontaine through the eyes of the vampire behind the visor, he realized that it wasn’t Brian after all.

It was Claude.

M
ERCILESS

IT ALL CLICKED.
 

WHY HE could feel so much emotion at the gathering, and why he’d thought he could inexplicably look into the minds of humans. Why he was getting a vague, spotter’s eye impression of the entire baseball field. What Charles had been doing on his phone while Reginald had been talking to Walker. Why, beyond mere visual similarity, he’d thought how much vampire and human troops looked alike in uniform. Reginald’s mental abilities were sticky; sometimes he had to be staring directly at an issue and asking exactly the right questions in order to see the obvious. But now that Claude had spoken, his mind asked the questions and got all the answers. He sent his mind out to the crowd of humans, recognizing the now-obvious fact that they weren’t all humans. His blood found Charles, Walker, and at least two dozen of the most elite, former V-Crew troops the USVC (and formerly the Annihilist Faction) had to offer.
 

Lafontaine turned, not understanding why the big guard had spoken. Reginald tried to warn him, but Claude had the human in a body lock in less than the blink of an eye, his big arm cocked around Lafontaine’s neck. Claude was dressed head-to-toe in armor, including gloves and boots. As he moved, Reginald could see that his gloves were doubled and that every seam and crack and crevice in the armor had been sealed. Claude held Lafontaine for ten, fifteen seconds without reacting in pain, without indicating that the humans’ weapon had sneaked past his defenses.
 

Claude’s movement happened so fast that the humans, who’d been looking outward rather than among their own for threats, didn’t react. By the time they caught a sense of what might be happening and began to stir, the other vampires in human armor had moved to strike, each subduing one or two humans each. The entire thing happened so quickly that it seemed rehearsed. It almost certainly had been. The movements were precise and practiced — the actions of seasoned experts. The exchange took two beats. One-two, and the balance of power had flipped.
 

Keeping Lafontaine restrained, Claude used his free hand to remove his own helmet.
 

“Hot as hell in there,” he said. “You’d think they’d make this shit more comfortable, seeing as they’re warm-blooded.”
 

Two of the soldiers walked forward. When they were halfway to the pitcher’s mound, one of the two pushed the other back, placing a hand on his chest. The snubbed soldier made a pouty little motion with his body and Reginald immediately realized that it was Charles. Which would make the other…

“Walker,” said Reginald. Then he added, “You titanic piece of shit.”
 

Walker removed his helmet and stood beside Claude. He whispered something into the big vampire’s ear, and Claude nodded. Walker waved Charles forward. Charles removed his own helmet and then, taking a cue, several of the undercover vampires around the field removed theirs. They’d executed the maneuver flawlessly. Every single human had been covered and neutralized, already disarmed and laying in the dirt with their hands behind them. Not a single shot had been fired, and not a single punch had been thrown.
 

Nikki, still bound, spit at Walker. A blob of white saliva landed on his cheek. He wiped it away and smiled a smile that was the exact opposite of his normal one.
 

“Hey,” he said, “it’s like this guy said.” Walker pointed at Lafontaine. “We’re between a rock and a hard place. What did you expect me to do? What did you think was going to happen to us if he found out that I’d helped you, which he absolutely would have?”

“You could have just
not
helped us,” said Reginald, feeling genuine anger boil inside himself. He began reaching out — not just with tendrils of thought, but with fists. He wanted to claw his way inside Claude’s and Walker’s and Charles’s minds, then do some damage. But Charles seemed to feel that they’d done the right thing in alerting the president to treachery, and both Walker and Claude had raised solid mental barriers against Reginald’s intrusion. His only hope was finding a way to distract them. Keeping Reginald out seemed to require constant effort. With their attention focused on his intrusion, maybe they’d miss something else.
 

Like Nikki, who was bound in silver.

Or Reginald, who was weak and slow.

And that was it. Just the two of them. There was no other help to be had.

The humans were all down, all literally under the gun. Claude had thought of everything.

“They have bombs, Reggie,” said Walker. “Big bombs filled with black tar.”
 

“It’s actually an antivirus,” said Lafontaine. Claude raised a boot and kicked him in the head.
 

Walker continued: “Once we picked off a few of their troops on the way here, we found one of their walkies with the security code still entered while we were putting on their armor. There’s a bomb in New York and one in Geneva, but they were talking like there are a bunch more. We don’t know where they are, but we know they’re there. And after you got done with your little chat, he was going to kill us all.”
 

“Still can,” Lafontaine croaked. Claude kicked him again.
 

“We’ll find them,” he said, glancing at the human. “Especially if you can’t phone home and tell them that we spoiled your party.”
 

“The bombs are set off
unless
the others hear from us,” said Lafontaine, smiling around a mouthful of bloody teeth. “Is this your first tangle with someone willing to use a dead man’s switch?”
 

Claude shook his head. “We’ll find them,” he repeated.
 

Lafontaine spat blood into the dirt. “This doesn’t matter. Kill everyone here or let us live. Either way, we win.”
 

But they didn’t win.
Nobody
won. Reginald felt his panic return, now exacerbated by the presence of yet more people who wanted to kill first and listen to what Reginald had to say later. Claude and the others had signed their own death warrants. Even if they found every single bomb, what would come next? They couldn’t exterminate humanity, and they wouldn’t be able to subdue them this time. The edge of that particular knife had become too sharp. At this point, the remaining humans would rather die than bleed.
 

“You assholes,” said Reginald. “I came here for a reason. None of you have any idea what you’re messing with.”
 

“They can’t kill us all,” said Claude.
 

“Oh yes we can,” said Lafontaine.
 

Claude looked down. His eyes flashed. He used his fist to strike the man very hard, suddenly incautious about whatever infection he may have slathered on his skin. Lafontaine’s head reeled, his movements conveying a swimminess that his lack of eyes couldn’t. He didn’t reply. He was lucky that the punch hadn’t killed him.
 

Claude picked Lafontaine up by the collar, lifting him off the ground, and bellowed into his face.
 

“YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE! THIS IS NOT YOUR WORLD! THIS IS OUR WORLD!”
 

Lafontaine smiled slightly and mumbled, “The meek shall inherit the Earth.”
 

Claude dropped him, leaving the man to sputter in the baseball diamond’s dust and chalk. A bloody spit bubble came out of his mouth and popped, leaving a ring of red residue. Claude, above him, put his hands on his hips, looking around. The other vampires watched Claude. Then Claude turned and kicked Lafontaine in the ribs, making his body jump.
 
He stooped down, again yelling in the resistance leader’s ear.
 

“WE ARE ON TOP! YOU ARE FOOD! JUST MOTHERFUCKING FOOD, DO YOU HEAR ME?”
 

Reginald looked over the top of Claude’s head. Walker was watching Claude. Charles was watching Walker.
 

“This is your president,” said Reginald.
 

Claude’s head snapped up. His wide eyes met Reginald’s, and his tirade turned from the human to the fat vampire in chains.
 

“DON’T YOU MOTHERFUCKING MOUTH OFF! YOU WITH YOUR FUCKING HUMAN-LOVING, COMPASSIONATE BULLSHIT!”
 

Reginald looked Claude in the eye. He kept his voice calm, pitching it so the others could hear. “Compassion isn’t only for humans. The problem with you is that you’ve never had any loyalty. Not to your president. Not to your so-called friends and allies. Not even to your own brother.”
 

“IT’S FOR THE WEAK!”
 

“Calm down,” said Reginald. He tried to get inside, tried to get behind Claude’s eyes. He’d glamoured him before, but that had been before Claude had known who Reginald was or what he could do. Reginald’s lips asked Claude to calm down. His eyes asked Claude to calm down. But beyond that, he had no influence, and Claude wasn’t listening. But it hardly mattered. None of what he was saying was for Claude’s ears. It was for the others.

Reginald met Nikki’s eye. She was behind Claude, in front of Walker, still standing. Claude’s leash on her had loosened, but she would never be able to outmuscle him. Reginald considered going into her head, trying to use her like a puppet, but there was nothing he could use. Claude had no weapons Nikki could grab; the human soldiers didn’t carry sidearms and Claude had left his rifle behind when he’d brought her out. She’d have to use her hands, and even if those hands could outmatch a vampire two millennia her senior (which they couldn’t), she was weak from the silver. Besides, Walker was still behind her. Her hands, behind her back, were directly in front of him, and he’d see her move before Claude did. And of course, there was still Charles to think about.
 

“You think you’re better than us,” Claude said, his eyes boring into Reginald’s soul. “You always have. I know all about you, you know. I know what you can do with your mind. I know how you escaped from the Council, by sticking your hand inside the heads of the others. I know how you and Maurice were always trying to…”
 

“Don’t you
dare
mention Maurice,” said Reginald.
 

“… to enact some meatbag-loving law or another, to create all these inferior, fat, ugly, damaged fucking poor-excuse-for-a-vampire vampires. I know how you tried to save all those condemned wanton creation criminals, like yourself. And I know how, while we were trying to clear the planet of these
pests
, you were working to save them. Even when you came to Antarctica, you were fighting against us, and that’s why we followed you: because we knew what kind of a pathetic, weak-willed piece of shit you were. And so yes, I killed Timken. Because he was weak, like you. He took the ball most of the way, but as I’d always known he would, he fell short at the very end.”
 

Claude was bent at the waist, his breath hot on Reginald’s face as his final mask of civility dropped away and his true face emerged. His eyes seemed to burn. Saliva pooled in his mouth and his fangs descended. A line of spit fell from his lower lip as he spoke, unheeded.
 

“Timken got soft,” he said. “He
wanted
to talk to the humans when they reached out. He wanted to
negotiate
. He was even considering
letting them go!
As a gesture of goodwill. And that’s how he said it, too: ‘A gesture of goodwill.’ As if we had to pacify these animals. As if they weren’t ours to use in whatever way we saw fit. I wanted to tighten human movement within the farms and harvest more from the wildlands to join them, to shake up the gene pool. But Timken? He once proposed giving them a protected furlough once a year. And somehow, he expected them to come back without a fight? He expected the taste of freedom to not incite riots? Can you imagine it?”
 

“Compassion,” said Reginald, nodding slightly. “Believe it or not, I can imagine it just fine.”
 

Claude straightened. He didn’t look precisely angry, and that in itself was frightening. It was as if he’d gone beyond anger, as if he’d rolled right into a place where anger was pointless because it was impossible for anyone to disagree.
 

He turned and grabbed Nikki’s chain. He didn’t grab one of the loose ends. Instead, he grabbed the circle around her neck, the backs of his gloved knuckles against her throat. Then he dragged her closer, holding her at his side in front of Reginald.
 

“I know about
her
, too,” Claude said, turning his gaze toward Nikki. He regarded her for a second, seeming to scent her, his mouth open just far enough for his fangs to show. “Nicole Pilson. She was approved by Council before you got your hands on her. I looked up her evaluation, you know. Prime scores. Excellent strength, agility, and cunning. An appropriately dark backstory. Oh, she was
made
to be a vampire. Except for one thing: her
compassion
, as you say. She had her whole eternity ahead of her, but then she met you and it all fell apart. Impersonating a vampire. Treason. Murder. She backed Maurice, went rogue. All because she had
compassion
for the poor man who didn’t measure up. Because of that, she threw it all away.”
 

“She’s a vampire now, Claude,” said Reginald. His undead heart was starting to accelerate. He remembered how Maurice had come to his rescue and prayed for strength, but none came. So this would be his final failure: his progeny was in mortal peril, and the vampire agent in his blood wouldn’t even rise to help him.
 

Claude looked at Reginald, then back at Nikki. Now his mouth opened further, his fangs very near Nikki’s long, smooth neck. Reginald watched her swallow as Walker looked on from behind them.
 

“She
is
a vampire now, isn’t she?” he said. “Oh yes. Thanks to an act of wanton creation, because she wanted to be with you — and you, knowing you shouldn’t, had
compassion
enough to turn her anyway. The lines are fuzzy, following your criminal overthrow, but that’s how I’d judge her. And even if her creation wasn’t wanton, it was tainted. Because
you
were her maker. You, who should never have been here in the first place. You, who should have been left to die — but weren’t, because Maurice had
compassion
for you.”