"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN: “V”

 

            Darkness begot light.  I came to, and for an insane moment I thought I was in Heaven… resting on soft, purple clouds, staring up at a gossamer canopy, completely relaxed and with an eternally pleasant buzz.

            But this wasn’t Heaven.  No place for vampires there, for one thing.  The buzz was just the peculiar high of extreme blood-loss.  And I was fairly sure that Heaven wouldn’t have a thumping techno-bass-beat rattling the walls.

            I sat up in the four-poster bed, tossing a clingy lavender pillow aside, taking stock of my new surroundings.  Siren, Adrianos, and Spike were huddled around a large desk pushed against the far wall.  Bellissima was, with the extended claw of her index finger, poking at a pair of handcuffs that held the doors of a wardrobe closed.  Various paintings of picturesque places around the globe were on the walls: a Manhattan skyline, a mountain range that looked like the Rockies, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a Bavarian hamlet in Germany, and others.  We seemed to be in Siren’s office at the ‘Club -- of course it had an über-fancy bed in it!

            I started to stand up, noticing that my torn T-shirt was gone, and that a comically unnecessary band-aid was stuck to my chest… but, lightheaded and dizzy, I plopped right back down again, causing the bed to creak.  Spike tittered in amusement, but Siren and Adrianos were still far too engrossed in whatever they were looking at on the desk to even glance my way.  Siren had her hand on Ad’s back, and her agile fingers were absently playing with his ponytail.  Bellissima had just managed to finish picking the lock on the cuffs; she took a step or two in my direction, a concerned look on her face, but stopped and looked back over her shoulder as the door swung open.

            Draconus entered the office, accompanied by a swell in the volume of the techno dance music.  He was carrying a tray, upon which rested six glasses filled with a dark red drink and a celery stalk.  One of the drinks had two stalks, I somehow managed to notice, my head lolling.

            “Bebidas,” he declared, handing one of the glasses to Spike. “To restore your vigor, señorita!”

            “SQUEE!” Spike squealed. “I love Bloody Marys!”  She gave the cocktail a quick stir with its single stalk before drinking half of it in short order, a contented smile on her face.

            “Lady Siren?” Drac queried, holding up another glass for his partner’s inspection.  Siren gave a short shake of her head, and Adrianos only coughed.  Draconus appeared slightly put-out as he set two drinks down on the edge of the desk.

            Next, he walked over toward Bellissima, sliding his free hand over his slicked-back hair… and now he had my full attention.  I stood up again, leaning on one of the wooden posts of the canopy bed.

            “Bonita Belli,” he said, replete with smarm, “come, drink with me.”  His toned fingers brushed against the glass with the double-celery, but he handed her one of the others instead.

            “Grazie,” Bellissima said, holding the glass in both hands and sniffing the drink warily.

            Drac’s eyes grew a fraction wider, and he smiled broadly.  “Ah, che bella… tu parli Italiano?  You speak Italian?”  Bellissima nodded enthusiastically, and he chortled with approval.  “You have to love the Romance languages, n’est-ce pas?  The way they breathe, the way the words traipse off your tongue.”  Draconus clinked his own glass against hers.  “Il sangue è la vita,” he toasted, and they drank, together.

            Wiping a tiny smear of hot-sauce-spiked blood from the corner of Belli’s lips, Draconus glowered at me as I unsteadily approached them.  He had set the waiter’s tray, with the one glass left on it, down on a table in the middle of the room.  Drac snatched the last drink and presented it to me once I was in arm’s reach.

            “Nevik, here you go… extra-special ‘María Sangrienta,’ just for you, my friend.”  I took the glass, and took a whiff of the cocktail, not particularly liking the smell… but Drac and Bellissima were both looking at me, expectantly.  Nudging the double stalky-swizzle-sticks out of the way, I heartily quaffed the alcoholic beverage…

            …only to spit it all out a moment later.  “What the… there’s no blood in this, Drac!” I accused, thoroughly disgusted.  Belli grimaced as she wiped her chest, where some of my upchuck had stained her pretty top.

            Draconus effected a look of shock, but it was painfully obvious (to me, anyway) that he was holding back an uproarious guffaw.  “Lo siento mucho… I’m sorry, hombre.  I told the bartender to put mucho fresh blood in yours.  Oh, Dios mio, maybe he thought I said ningún blood -- it’s very loud out there right now…”

            I dropped the highball glass to the floor, freeing up my right hand.  And then I started to think about where exactly I had left my whip at Adrianos’s penthouse.

            That dastardly thought finally got Siren interested enough to turn away from her continuing analysis of… whatever it was.  “Play nice, now, boys,” she chided, “or I’ll Glamour you both into thinking you’ve been lovers for the past two centuries.”  She dropped her hand to her thin waist, rocking her hip thoughtfully.  “Mmm… that might be fun to watch, actually…”

            Draconus finally allowed a sliver of a laugh to escape him, and then he abruptly took Bellissima by her hand.  “Ven… come, Belli.  Let’s get you cleaned up, si?  And… there’s a little, pequeño corner of the ‘Club that I’d like to show you…”

            That said, Drac escorted Bellissima out of the office, closing the door behind them.  He wasn’t exactly dragging her, either.

            “Nevik…” Adrianos said, “now that your little ‘nap’ is over, come take a look at this.”  Siren winked at me before languidly turning back to the desktop, her black dress hugging every endlessly enticing curve.  I paused for a moment, considering… then swiped the now-unlocked handcuffs from the handle of the wardrobe, stuffing them into the pocket of my jeans.

            I walked over to the desk, still a bit off-kilter, and deliberately interposed myself between Siren and Adrianos.  They had a very long history together that I could not deny, but that didn’t mean I had to watch her rub up on him all night long.  I looked down, and I saw what they had all been examining for so long: the swatch of old parchment that Adrianos had brought along from his study.

            Except that… now I realized that it wasn’t parchment at all.  It was partially-desiccated skin, sure enough, but not from an animal.  It was humanoid… vampire…  a sickly off-white, with a piece of earlobe and a small, black tattoo -- the letter ‘V.’

            “I took this from the wretch who… ‘poisoned’ me,” Adrianos explained.  A soft moan escaped from Spike at the latest reminder of Ad’s condition.  I snuck a peek over at Siren, but she seemed completely unruffled.  Did she even care?  And what about…

            “Bellissima knows now, too,” said Siren, answering my uncompleted thought.  “She’s in complete denial about it.  Hopefully Drac will show her a good time, help her take her mind off such things.

            “And I do care,” Siren continued.  “But I’m not worried.  We’ll figure this out… we always do, don’t we?”

            She laughed it off, but I knew her too well -- she was worried.  And so was I.

            “So what’s with the ‘V’… is that, like, a Roman numeral ‘5’ or something?” I asked, turning the conversation back to the matter at hand.

            “Possibly…” Spike allowed.  She leaned over to get another up-close look, and the corner of the desk pushed her cleavage up in a way that was not unpleasant in the least.  “We considered that earlier.  But… now we’re pretty sure it’s the first letter of a name…”

            “The name of the b*****d’s Sire,” Adrianos finished, stroking his chin.  He picked up ‘his’ Bloody Mary, taking a tentative sip… but he belched it back up right away.  Suspecting more shenanigans from Draconus, I stole the glass from Adrianos -- marveling briefly at the ease with which I took it from his usually iron grip -- and sipped it for myself.  It was delicious, actually… fresh, savory blood (whether or not it literally came from a ‘Mary,’ who knew?), mixed with a splash of vodka, plus some of this and that.  Unlike mine, there was absolutely nothing wrong with this one… Ad just couldn’t keep it down.

            “Ok, so, uh… how many vampires do we know about whose names start with a ‘V?’” I asked.  I didn’t have to be a telepath to know what everyone else was thinking: quite a few.

            “Rodger told me about a Veronica, once,” Spike offered.  Then her sapphire-blue eyes clouded over, obscured by a cataract of longing memory.

“There was a Scion named Vincent, I believe,” Adrianos recollected.  “But he was killed by Jupiter, back when the ‘War was at its worst.”

Siren laughed, a sinister-sounding chuckle.  “And, later, poor Jupiter made the mistake of coming after me.  I finished him, right here in New York, in 2010 or so.”  I tensed, remembering the trace aroma from the Top of the Rock.  Siren placed the palm of her hand on my shoulder… and I had to resist a mad urge to kiss her.

“I knew a… a V…” I began, but my voice trailed off.  I couldn’t quite remember, truthfully.  And that was a very long time ago, the mid-1770’s, so it probably didn’t really matter.

“That’s very helpful, darling,” Siren teased, patting my arm before dropping her hand back to her waist.  “I knew a Victor… and a Valient… that was a fun night.”  She ran her pink tongue over her fangs, as if tasting the memory.  “Too bad neither of them quite made it through the night…”

            Siren leaned into me, and I could feel her searching my thoughts, her telepathy skittering through my mind like a spider, a black widow.  But I steeled my will, forcing her out the best I could.

When we had first met, in the mid-1970’s, I wasn’t the same vampire.  I was still serving my Sire, Reybeart, hopelessly under his oppressive thumb.  I’d had no memories of my human existence, my life as a Vampire Slayer, at that time… Rey had ruthlessly purged them when I was ‘turned’ by him, in 1775, the better to control me.  I finally got them back, when Spike and Bellissima helped me destroy Reybeart, but they were imperfect.  I definitely remembered her, though, and I still wasn’t quite ready to share the memory of her with Siren…

My lost Llewellyn.

When my eyes refocused, they made contact with Spike’s, and we shared an empathetic look.  Siren reached down, flipping the remnant of vampire-hide over with her nail, as if all the answers we were looking for were scribbled on the other side.

“What about the broker of bounties?” Siren posited.  “The bounty that somehow ended up in Ad’s hands started with him… maybe he could help us find this one’s Sire.”

Adrianos shook his head, scowling.  “No one knows who the Broker is.  Even in all my years, all my travels, I’ve hardly heard a hint as to his identity.  The Shadow Council protected him during the Great Vampire War… they still do, as far as I know.”

An odd thought occurred to me at that point.  Even though she was still ‘young,’ like me, if anyone could possibly know more about the mysterious Broker, it would be Bellissima.  Shame she wasn’t here at the moment… I tried not to dwell overly much on musings as to what she was doing whilst off with Drac.  Yet another failure.

            “Aussie Donna!” Spike exclaimed, a seemingly random non sequitur.

            Siren gave Spike an exasperated look.  “‘Donna’ doesn’t start with a ‘V,’ and I highly doubt that she’s been somehow moonlighting as the Broker.”

            Spike gave Siren an aggravated look as she tugged protectively on Adrianos’s arm.  “I don’t mean ‘bout all that… Aussie D is a mystic, a druid, a shaman… a healer!  If anyone can figure out how to ‘fix’ Ad, it’ll be her.”

            I scratched the back of my head, hoping to force some order back into my frazzled thoughts.  Aussie Donna… of all the women who’ve come (and gone) in my unlife!

            “You’re right,” I said to Spike, and to the rest of them.  I forced my misgivings and selfishness away, I owed it to them… I owed it to Lord Adrianos, my one-time friend, a true Elder.  A vampire, a man, who truly deserved to be called by the highest honorific that is used amongst Kindred -- Vampyre.

            “Where is she now?” Adrianos asked, a faint note of hope in his voice.

            “Australia,” Spike and I answered in unison.  Spike smiled happily, but mine turned upside-down as I quickly realized an inherent problem.

            “How do we get there?  More to the point,” motioning to Ad, “how do we get you there?”  I fretted.  He could not teleport anymore, couldn’t fly… what could we do, take a bloody cruise ship?

            “Spike,” I continued, “could you… you know…?”  I pantomimed drawing a circle on the floor.

            Spike shook her head emphatically.  “No, no, no… it’s waaay too far.  I’d probably land us all in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”  She pulled harder on Ad’s arm; he gently laid his hand over hers, since her talons were starting to shred the sleeve of his suit jacket.

            “I… may just be able to help with that,” Siren said.  “You all know of Sagaan, yes?”

            Adrianos and Spike both nodded, but I just stared at Siren, long and hard.  Of course we did… Sagaan was the Portal-Keeper, one of the powerful Superiors of the vampiric ‘Council.

            “Sagaan owed me a favor,” Siren elaborated.  She didn’t deign to expound on the how’s-and-why’s of that particular fact, but she added a fascinating little afterthought:

            “Let’s just say that I have the wherewithal… to get you wherever you need to go…”

 

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