“Yeah.” Sam didn’t meet my eyes. “It’s for … what’s the word? Propriety?”
“It’s proprietary?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Business stuff. I don’t understand it all, myself.”
“Yet you signed the contract.”
“I mean, I understood what I was signing. I just don’t know the business jargon.”
Maggie sighed. He totally didn’t understand everything in that contract. You do this shit for a living and you don’t understand it all.
I said as much to Sam and continued, “Look, I’m not here to ask you to spill your master’s secrets. I just want you to clarify a few things. On the surface, this contract appears far better for the thrall than most thrall-master agreements. From what I understand, most contracts go something like this: the thrall agrees to serve the master for a fixed period of time, after which the master will release the thrall from all debts, turn them into a vampire, and then cut them loose. Usually with a big cash payment to get them started on their new trip into immortality. Correct?”
Sam nodded unhappily.
“Standard agreement is twenty years?”
Another nod.
“And yet …” I shuffled through his contract again. “And yet, Boris’s contract is only five years. That’s barely a fourth of other vampires. Hell, that’s barely any servitude at all! Merely time you might otherwise spend on a college degree, and you’re a goddamn immortal. Pretty sweet deal. How long do you have left, by the way?”
“Two hundred and three days,” Sam answered, still not meeting my eye.
“Just keeping your head down? Waiting for it to be over? For you to have your own immortality and move out of that garbage heap and get your own place?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “What’s the catch?”
Sam finally looked up at me. He took a long, trembling breath, then looked back down at the contract. “It’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad?” I echoed. I turned to page thirty-four, where I’d highlighted a bit of language that Maggie had pointed out to me. I read, “The undersigned agrees to swear an oath of fealty from the moment of his immortality until he is truly, completely dead. Man, there isn’t even a release clause in here – at least not one I could find. Boris couldn’t let you out of this contract if he wanted to.” I leaned forward. “Do you know why vampires are only allowed to have four thralls at the same time? You ever heard of the country of Vlorech?” I know I hadn’t. It wasn’t even on Wikipedia. I got the story from Maggie, and she admitted she only knew the rumors. “It was a small country in Eastern Europe where a Vampire Lord made the entire population into thralls. He had such powerful will that he could command the populace like a goddamn hive queen. He committed atrocities that made Dracula look like a white knight. It took a coalition of the Ottomans and Christian powers of Europe to put him down, after which both sides agreed to salt the earth and remove all reference to Vlorech from their histories.”
Sam sulked across from me.
“Look, I know that when you sign on for a sweet deal like this you aren’t going to spend a lot of time on the overarching geopolitical implications. But in addition to those five years of thralldom, you also agreed to become Boris’s vassal vampire for eternity. You are contractually obligated to obey him.”
I continued, “He can compel you to do whatever he wants. Can you even comprehend eternity? Let’s say you only live to three hundred before you get bored and off yourself, or a Hunter corners and kills you. You’ve still lived four lifetimes. That’s a long time – and during that whole time, you’re still a slave of Boris.” I was finally getting to the crux of my problem with this whole thing. I rapped my knuckles on the table until Sam finally looked me in the eye again. “I need you to tell me something very important – something in here that is redacted.”
“What?” he asked.
“Does this contract provision for you to continue the cycle that Boris started, where your own thralls become vampire vassals to you, and then theirs to them, and so on?”
Sam shifted around in his seat. For a moment he looked like he was going to try and leave. Finally, he said, “Yeah. That’s the idea. Each of us gets our own little kingdom. The longer we live, the bigger the kingdom we get.”
“All of them, ad nauseum, vassals of Boris.” I breathed a sigh of disbelief. It’s kind of genius, I told Maggie.
It’s kind of terrifying, she responded. The Vampire Lords have their own vassals and coalitions, but nothing to this extent. Boris might already have a hundred vassal vampires. It won’t take him long to have thousands, then tens of thousands. If he survives long enough, he’ll have millions of full-fledged vampires who obey him. Sam himself will have thousands.
It’s a goddamned vampire multilevel marketing scheme, I snorted. Returning my attention to Sam, I said, “Have you considered the implications of all this?”
He shrugged.
“Right.” I got up, took off my hat, running one hand through my hair.
“Wait!” Sam suddenly said. “You told me this was all going to help Michael.”
“I was telling the truth.”
“How?”
I gave him a tight, businesslike smile. “Sorry. If I tell you, then Boris will just kill both of us.” I walked back to my truck, drove around for a few minutes to sort all the details out in my head before finding a shady place to park. I called Jacques. The dhampir answered on the first ring. “Alek, how is the hunt going?”
I put on my best exasperated voice. “Boris’s thrall is slippery. I tracked him down to the south side, but he was staying with … friends and they tipped him off.” I’d already decided not to tell him about the thrall halfway house. I was pissed about my tires getting slashed, but if a Vampire Lord found out about it, Father Orrock and all his charges would end up dead. “I got a glimpse of him, but he hopped across a freeway and lost me.”
“Did he have the blood tally?” No disappointing lecture. No ominous threats. Just a quick, succinct question.
“No idea,” I lied. “Is there anything I should be looking for?”
“Hmm.” Jacques typed something on a keyboard. “It should be quite large. A proper tome, probably. If you caught a glimpse of Michael, you would have seen the blood tally.”
“I don’t think so. He must have stashed it somewhere.”
Jacques was quiet for some time. I could hear him breathing on the other end, and his voice had just a tinge of annoyance when he finally said, “All right. Track him down. No more wasting time. No more worrying about Boris. The blood tally is all that matters. Deliver it to me by the end of the week and I’ll give you another ten thousand on top of what I offered last time. All of this will stay between you and I.”
“See,” I replied, “that’s what I’m worried about. If I take Michael back to Boris without the blood tally, Boris will find out what happened to it, and then he’ll come after me.”
“If you get me that book, I’ll take care of him and his thralls. Do your job, Agent Fitz.” Jacques hung up.
I took a few deep breaths. I’m out of my depth, I told Maggie.
I’ve gotten that impression, she replied demurely.
Boris’s blood tally contains the original contracts for this vampire MLM, without redactions.
That’s almost certain.