Wicked Game (25 page)

He tips back the brim of his felt hat and examines us. “Us” meaning Elizabeth. The look he gives me and David is the kind you give dog shit to avoid stepping in it.

Finally, after submitting her to a gaze more penetrating than an MRI scan, he nods at Elizabeth. His large, dark palm unfolds. “Give up the tree bits.”

I pull the stake out from under my shirt and hand it over with relief. I’d be more comfortable packing an Uzi.

The living room just inside the front door is larger than I expected; the wall between it and the adjoining dining room must have been knocked down to create one huge space. A space filled with vampires.

Some bop and jump to the wild, pulsing music; others stroll the perimeter with drinks of wine or blood, smoking cigarettes through long, silver-tipped holders. Judging by their dress, all are at least as old as Monroe. The epochs mix and mingle: a bob-haired woman in a red flapper outfit fox-trots with a man in a dirt-brown bowler hat and morning suit.

“Excuse me.” A plump young woman with curly red hair nearly steps on my foot. She brushes past in her cigarette girl outfit and edges around the room with her tray, delivering smokes and drinks. I’m pretty sure she’s human, judging by the way she wobbles in her high-heeled pumps.

Despite the vampires’ aura of cool, they all look faded. They glance at us with empty eyes, moving, dancing, and speaking as if they’re going through the motions of an endlessly repetitive existence, the meaning or purpose for which they’ve long forgotten. I hate the thought of the VMP vamps getting those cold, dead eyes. Better to be weird than catatonic.

“They’re waiting for you downstairs,” Lawrence tells us as he opens one of the doors in the hallway to our left.

The stairway is so dimly lit, I can’t even see to the bottom. Elizabeth steps in front of me and starts to descend. I grope for the banister and follow, willing my knees to keep their strength. David comes up behind me, with Lawrence bringing up the rear.

At the bottom of the stairs lies what looks like a typical basement family room. The only light comes from a large TV in the corner with a tiny black-and-white screen. My eyes adjust to see Spencer, Monroe, and Jim lounging in a set of armchairs.

Someone’s pacing behind the love seat with shaky steps. He sees me, and his hands fly to his mouth.

Travis.

For one moment, as I look into the eyes of the creature who tried to kill me, I wish I had that stake back in my hand. But his trembling fingers and tight face tell me that like most wild animals, he’s more afraid of me than I am of him.

Jim stands and takes Travis’s arm. “Go on now,” he says, “tell her you’re sorry.”

“No time for this jive,” growls Lawrence. “Gideon is waiting.”

Travis jolts at his maker’s name. His expression changes to rapture, like someone about to meet a celebrity. I notice he’s lost the mustache—for easier slurping, I suppose. He looks younger and halfway cute now.

I look around, expecting to see Gideon in another corner, but we’re led to yet another staircase, beneath the one we just descended, and I realize this is no ordinary house.

We descend the stairs to the next level. Though the
basement above held a musty smell, this second one feels dry and clean. I peer down the hallways lined with closed doors. The recessed ceiling lights provide an almost human amount of illumination.

Before turning to descend the next flight of stairs, Jim and Elizabeth stop on the landing and sniff. Her eyes narrow in anger, while Jim looks intrigued. I tap Elizabeth’s elbow.

“It’s the farm,” she whispers to me and David. “Just like we suspected.”

Odd, it doesn’t smell like a farm—no animal manure or straw or ...

Oh. They don’t keep animals here.

“Disgusting,” she mutters.

“But convenient,” Jim points out as we continue down the stairs toward the next level. “It’s like having room service instead of eating out.”

“You want to live here?” she snaps. “Go ahead.”

“I’m too young for this place.” He lowers his voice. “It’s full of squares.”

I glance at David beside me to see if we should worry about turning into livestock. He looks pissed rather than frightened, so maybe these people are volunteers. Food and shelter in exchange for blood might be a good tradeoff if a person came from rough circumstances. But it feels like prison, a reverse image of the Control’s vampire retirement homes. I have a strong desire to be somewhere altogether else.

Behind us, Travis mumbles to himself like a toddler. “Ice train. Slowly and carefully. No, I don’t want chicken.” At least I think that’s what he says.

At the bottom of this longest staircase, our guide leads
us to the right. This looks like the bottom floor—not that I can see much in the nearly nonexistent light.

We head down a narrow stone corridor, past open bedrooms containing writhing, moaning figures in candlelit shadows. Even my limited human nose smells blood. My pace slows until Travis bumps into me from behind. He gasps and leaps back.

Someone takes my hand. David. I sigh in relief and squeeze hard. His skin is warm with life that comes from eating hamburgers and salads and Nutty Buddys, and that’s all that matters.

Ahead to the right, near the end of the corridor, firelight dances against the wall. Our guide ushers us through a door on the left, which is flanked by two beefy guards who look like sewer rats on steroids.

A massive man sits cross-legged in the corner behind a campfire, his back to the wall. His face is hidden under the rim of a battered light gray fedora. The flames illuminate what must have once been a high-fashion morning suit and waistcoat. His posture is slumped but so perfectly motionless it gives the impression of rigidity and control.

Lawrence shuts the door behind us, blotting out all sound but the crackling logs and Travis’s shaky wheezing.

The man raises his head. David and I step back. The chills skipping among my vertebrae make my first reaction to Monroe seem like one long yawn.

His wide, ink-black eyes wield a movie-star magnetism beneath low, brooding brows. The look reminds me of Orson Welles in
Macbeth,
with just as much sanity. His dark hair, slicked back, sets off the flawless ivory of his skin, the color of piano keys in candlelight.

“Welcome,” he says, without a trace of it in his voice.

At the sound, Travis flings himself on the dirt next to the man who must be Gideon. Oblivious to the fire a few inches away, the detective presses his forehead to the ground next to his maker’s knee and utters a rapid, incoherent plea.

In response, Gideon pats him on the head, causing Travis to shudder and moan. Then the older vampire gives what seems to be, from his end, a light shove. This small effort sends Travis tumbling across the room to crash into the opposite wall. The other vamps gasp and hiss.

“Bastard,” Elizabeth snarls to Gideon. So much for detente. “First you turn him and leave him without food, then you reject him? What kind of vampire are you?”

“If I don’t conform to your code,” Gideon says evenly, “it’s for a good reason.”

“And what might that be?”

“He’s an example, a demonstration, if you will.” Gideon extends his arm toward Travis and crooks his finger once. Travis scuttles to him like a broken-legged crab. When he gets close, Gideon flattens his palm in a stop gesture. Travis freezes, staring at his maker with pleading eyes. I want to look away, for fear that Gideon will order Travis to stick his head in the fire. The detective would do it, happily—their connection is that palpable.

“Very nice,” Elizabeth says. “A demonstration of your sadism, like we needed further proof.”

“A demonstration of my power.” Gideon keeps his unblinking gaze locked with Travis’s. “And of what will happen again if the chicanery doesn’t stop.”

A corner of my stomach begins a cold burn.

“This WVMP foolishness,” he continues, “telling the truth disguised as a lie. Duping people with their own
skepticism. The slickest grift is no grift at all.” He shifts his eyes to me. “Isn’t that right, Ciara?”

I stammer, my throat pinned shut. It feels like he’s inhaling me with every breath.

“It must end before someone gets hurt,” he says.

“With all respect, sir,” Spencer says as he kneels beside the trembling Travis, “somebody already got hurt.”

“Then help him if you feel charitable.” Gideon waves them away. “The life of any one vampire is not my concern. My duty lies with us all.” He regards David, Elizabeth, and me. “Some humans won’t be fooled by your gimmick. They’ll come to understand that vampires truly exist. Then we’ll have a war.” He spreads his hands. “Or a curious person might want to see what happens if one of your friends meets the rising sun, or gets a taste of fire.” He lifts a log out of the flames and waves the burning end at the vampires, who jump back. “Just to jazz up a Saturday night.”

Maybe he has a point. Maybe this campaign has put them in mortal danger. Maybe things were better before. Safer.

Then I think of Shane’s transformation over the last month, the way he’s learned to love new music, learned to drive a stick shift—the way he’s learned to
learn
again. How he looks happy to exist in this crazy, wide-open, scary-as-shit world of Today. The Today that makes him look forward to Tomorrow.

“You’re right,” I say.

Gideon’s eyebrows pop up, then scrunch together, as if he’s surprised and confused to be addressed by a mere human.

“All of that could happen,” I continue, “despite our
precautions. They could all go
poof,
either by accident or design. But a vampire’s life—a human’s life, for that matter— is always a precarious thing.” I look at the walls of his cave. “Better to hide in the light than hide in the dark.”

“This is not a hideout,” Gideon says. “This is a fortress.”

I keep my voice soft. “And what’s a fortress for? Keeping out the things that scare you.”

“The things that
threaten
us.” His eyes narrow on Elizabeth’s face. “I’ve seen what they do”—his voice shakes with rage—”those Control humans and their vampire whores.”

Elizabeth maintains a stony demeanor. “The Control protects vampires.”

“By keeping us in line,” he says with a snarl, “by serving the goals of humans. We have a right to live in peace.”

“You call this peace?” She points at the ceiling. “Holding humans captive?”

“Our guests choose to be here,” he says.

“Because you’ve turned yourself into a cult leader, like Jim Jones or David Koresh.” She stops and shakes her head. “You have no idea who those men are. You have no idea how backward this all is, because you’re still stuck in World War One. Which is why you and every other vampire need the Control.”

This undead
Crossfire
episode is getting us nowhere. I step forward, closer to the flames than any of the vampires will dare, and speak to Gideon again. “If you’ve been spying on us, you know how happy the DJs have been this summer. They’re truly in the world. They’re living.”

“Perhaps living at the price of survival,” he says.

“Isn’t that their choice to make? You talk about freedom from the Control, but you’ll never be free if you let
fear make all your choices.” I can hear my mom and dad speak through me, and in my mind the tiny room turns into a crowded tent full of lights and music and hallelujahs. “I saw people who couldn’t walk because they were afraid to fall. I saw them rise out of their wheelchairs, throw away their crutches, and dance a jig, the moment they let go of that fear.”

“Your mind tricks may work on weak humans,” Gideon rumbles, “but vampires are not human.”

“You’re wrong.” I point at the three DJs. “Humans still live inside them, whether they admit it or not.”

Gideon looks amused. “And how long have you known them?”

“Long enough to know they believe in things. They believe in the music with every scrap of their souls. They believe in finding a balance between today and yesterday. Hell, they even believe I’m a crappy poker player.”

“Why should that impress me?”

“Because believing is what being alive is all about.” Daddy would’ve liked that one. I move in for the close. “Gideon, just let go of that fear, tell it to pull its poisonous claws out of you.” I gesture to the fire. “It’s fear keeping you crammed into that corner because you don’t trust anyone with your back. Fear made your neighbors in Camp David build bombs so that they have to hide underground like moles from a hawk. And it’s fear, in the end, that’ll kill us all.”

Imaginary
amens
reverberate in my mind as I turn to Elizabeth. She nods slowly and smiles. I step to her side to create a united front. Yeah, sistah.

After a long moment, Gideon speaks. “You think you know all about fear, little girl?”

He holds out his hand to Lawrence, who slaps a stake into his palm. Gideon keeps his focus on me as his arm flicks back, then forward. The stake blurs through the air.

I look down to see my shirt dripping with blood. Holy shit, did he just stake me? I wish I’d answered my mom’s e-mail.

My knees turn to gelatin as cries of dismay echo from a distance. Someone sobs the word “no” again and again.

My hands grab at my chest to pull out the stake, which, I realize, isn’t there. The drops of blood all point from the same direction.

Elizabeth.

I turn to see her crumpled on the floor, head and shoulders in David’s lap, legs skewed to the side. The bottom half of the stake protrudes from her chest, which is blanketed in blood. She clutches David’s shirt.

“P-pull it out. Please.” She coughs a spurt of blood over her chin. “It hurts, it hurts so bad.”

David’s face is soaked in tears. “I can’t.”

“Please.” Her voice pitches up to a spine-grating octave. “Pull it out, oh God, make it stop, David.”

He leans over her and grips the stake. The muscles of his arm tighten, then release. “I can’t do that.” He lowers his head. “Not to you.”

I kneel next to them and wrap my hands around the stake, covering his.

His grip tightens as he stares at me. “You don’t understand.”