“I’d love to hear what,” said Tina.
Daniel smiled briefly. “They’re so powerful, they think they don’t have to be smart. All we have to do is outthink them . . . ”
“Okay . . . ” said Tina. “We’re doomed.”
“Follow me and bluff like crazy,” said Daniel. “Come on, we can do this.”
“Of course. We’re Hydes. And I have every confidence in you.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Just shows how tense I am.”
They left the tunnel mouth and headed for the party on the platform. Immediately, two figures appeared out of the shadows to block their way. Muscular young men in black leather bondage outfits, proudly showing off the bite marks on their necks. Their faces were very pale, but Daniel was pretty sure that was just makeup. He surreptitiously checked the mirror concealed in the palm of his hand, and the reflection showed they were definitely still human. The guards stretched their mouths in humorless smiles, to show off teeth filed to points. Daniel didn’t wait for whatever challenges or threats they had in mind; he went straight to the password Paul had provided.
“We’re here to see the Beautiful People.”
“Of course you are,” said one of the guards. He lisped a little, around his sharp teeth. “You’re late.”
“We’re extra security,” said Tina. “Checking out the perimeter, after what happened to the Frankenstein Clan.”
The two guards stirred uneasily at the name, and then stepped back out of their way.
“Be welcome to the gathering,” said the speaking guard. “Indulge yourselves in whatever gives you pleasure, but always remember: be respectful to the masters. This is their party, not ours.”
Daniel and Tina strode straight past them, heads held high. Someone had put some wooden steps in place, leading up to the platform, and they were already splashed with blood. Apparently someone had got impatient. A forest of candles set in a tall candelabra shed a diffused glow across the gathering, augmented by colored paper lanterns. It seemed the vampires preferred their illumination old school.
The large crowd milled back and forth, chattering loudly, packed close together as much for mutual support as company. It was easy enough to tell the vampires from their victims: The undead were glamorous creatures, strutting among their conquests like aristocrats of the Pit, their every glance and gesture infused with the arrogance of unchallenged power. But there was still something of the animal about them; of a predator ready to strike out, for any reason or none.
Their clothes came from many times and places, sometimes even different centuries, and the styles clashed like raised voices. Daniel assumed vampires clung to what they remembered from when they were alive and still part of the society they moved through. He wondered how vampires saw the world, now Time no longer had any hold over them. Did fads and fashions just go flashing past, glimpsed in the rearview mirrors of their lives? Things that came and went . . . like their victims.
Daniel studied the undead carefully as they glided back and forth. Impossibly sleek and stylish, they strutted and preened like supermodels on a catwalk in Hell. He couldn’t see any common feeling among them, no sense of family like the Frankensteins. He tried to make out the elders, the ancient nosferatu who ran the Clan, but all the vampires looked the same behind their glamours.
Impossibly beautiful, like works of art that had gone off.
Daniel stayed put at the end of the platform, not ready to join the gathering until he had some idea of what passed for normal behavior. The victims were easy enough to identify; there was nothing glamorous about them. Some had made an effort to dress up for the occasion, but shirt collars had been left open to allow easy access to necks, and the women mostly had bare shoulders. Many of them had fresh wounds, and blood soaked into their clothes from recent feedings.
Men and women of all ages and from all backgrounds, they partied fiercely together, determined to convince themselves they were having a good time. And that being at the vampire gathering was their decision. They drank and ate with eager appetites and babbled loudly to one another, to fill what would otherwise have been an awful silence. There wasn’t any music.
And whenever one of their undead masters passed by, the victims would immediately fall silent and stare at them with pleading eyes, like a junkie hoping their pusher would be kind.
“What’s the point of this gathering?” Daniel said quietly to Tina. “I can’t see anyone here wanting to make speeches or announcements about how well the Clan is doing.”
“It’s all about tradition,” said Tina. “The one thing the vampires have in common with the Frankensteins is a need to show off. To establish status and authority by demonstrating how many slaves they have, or how much power they hold over important people in the world above. It’s all about rank and station, and keeping score. No one knows how to hold a grudge or maintain a feud like vampires who’ve walked the night for centuries.”
Daniel was still studying the victims. Some were half naked, revealing bodies covered with bite marks and scars, as though they needed to show off what had been done to them; proud of what they had endured, and survived. They’d been used and abused by masters who would never give a damn about them, and yet here they were, back for more.
Because only the one who hurts you can make the pain go away.
And all the while the vampires paraded back and forth, inhumanly alluring and impossibly bewitching, strutting and posing like deadly peacocks. And though they made a point of ignoring the imploring looks from their victims, it was obvious they enjoyed being worshipped. Perhaps because they knew they weren’t worthy of it. Daniel strained his eyes against the false faces, trying to see past the glamours; but even though he was a Hyde, he was still human and they so very obviously weren’t.
The Frankenstein Clan was born of the Age of Science. The Vampire Clan had its roots in older, darker times.
And then he made a low, shocked sound and plunged forward, leaving Tina to hurry after him. Daniel shouldered his way through the milling crowd, paying no attention to raised voices or injured looks. Tina glared them into silence in his wake, without even slowing. Daniel finally came to a halt, staring at what was left of Commissioner Alicia Gill.
She was down on all fours, like an animal, with a collar around her throat. Being pulled along by a length of steel chain. Daniel looked at the man holding the other end, and he quickly dropped it and backed away. Daniel checked the mirror in his hand, but the reflection showed that Gill was still human. Naked and filthy, covered in cuts and bruises and bites, her face was almost blank, showing nothing but dumb suffering. Because all the personality had been beaten out of her.
Some of the victims had been pointing and spitting at Gill, laughing and kicking her in the hope of attracting a master’s approval—but they all found other things to do rather than face the anger in Daniel’s eyes.
He remembered Paul saying he made Gill disappear. And that after what Gill had done to them, she deserved everything that happened to her. Daniel had assumed Paul killed her, but apparently that hadn’t been enough. The proud and ambitious Commissioner Gill had been dragged down into the darkness and tormented by both the vampires and their victims, just for the fun of it. No wonder the police couldn’t find her; she wasn’t a part of their world anymore.
Daniel said Gill’s name, but she didn’t react. Tina watched his back, scowling at anyone who even looked like they were getting too close. No one made any objection. Submission to authority had been bitten into them. Daniel knelt down before Gill, putting his face close to hers. She wouldn’t look at him.
“Is that who I think it is?” said Tina. “What would the vampires want with a police commissioner?”