As the pair of males came in, he didn’t bother to look away from the computer screen. “How did you sleep?”
A familiar, deep voice answered, “Like the dead.”
“How fortunate for you. Jet lag can be a bore, or so I’ve heard. We had a visitor this morning, by the way.”
Assail leaned to one side so his two associates could review the footage.
It was odd to have housemates, but he was going to have to get used to their presence. When he had come to the New World, it had been a solo trip, and he had intended to keep things that way for numerous reasons. Success in his chosen field, however, had mandated that he pull in some backup—and the only people you could even partially trust were your family.
And the pair of them offered a unique benefit.
His two cousins were a rarity in the vampire species: a set of identical twins. When fully clothed, the only way anyone could tell them apart was by a single mole behind the earlobe; other than that, from their voices and their dark, suspicious eyes to their heavily muscled bodies, they were a mirror reflection of each other.
“I’m going out,” Assail announced to them. “If our visitor comes again, be hospitable, will you?”
Ehric, the older one by a matter of minutes, glanced over, his face highlighted by the glow around the bed base. Such evil in that handsome combination of features—to the point that one nearly felt pity for the interloper. “’Twill be a pleasure, I assure you.”
“Keep him alive.”
“But of course.”
“That is a finer line than you two have at times appreciated.”
“Trust me.”
“It’s not you whom I am worried about.” Assail looked at the other one. “Do you understand me?”
Ehric’s twin remained silent, although the male did nod once.
That grudging reaction was precisely why Assail would have preferred to keep his new life simple. But it was impossible to be in more than one place at a time—and this violation of privacy was proof that he couldn’t do everything by himself.
“You know how to locate me,” he said, before dismissing them from his room.
Twenty minutes later, he left the house showered, dressed, and behind the wheel of his bulletproof Range Rover.
Downtown Caldwell at night was beautiful at a distance, especially as he came over the inbound bridge. It was not until he penetrated the grid system of streets that the city’s sludge became evident: the alleyways with their filthy snowdrifts and their oozing Dumpsters and their discarded, half-frozen homeless humans told the true story of the municipality’s underbelly.
His worksite, as it were.
When he got to the Benloise Art Gallery, he parked in the back, in one of two spaces that were parallel to the building behind the facility. As he stepped free of the SUV, the cold wind swept into his camel-hair coat and he had to hold the two halves together as he crossed the pavement, approaching an industrial-size door.
He didn’t have to knock. Ricardo Benloise had plenty of people working for him, and not all of them were of the art-dealer-associate type: A human male the size of an amusement park opened the way and stood to the side.
“He expecting you?”
“No, he is not.”
Disneyland nodded. “You wanna wait in the gallery?”
“That would be fine.”
“You need a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
As they walked through the office area and into the exhibition space, the deference Assail was now accorded was a new thing—earned through both the huge product orders he’d been putting in as well as the spilled blood of countless humans: Thanks to him, suicides among disenfranchised males age eighteen to twenty-nine with criminal drug records had struck an all-time high in the city, making even the national news.
Imagine that.
As newscasters and reporters tried to make sense of the tragedies, he merely continued growing his business by any means necessary. Human minds were awfully suggestible; it required hardly any effort at all to get middlemen drug dealers to train their own guns on their temples and pull those triggers. And in the same way nature abhorred a vacuum, so too did the demands of chemical supplementation.
Assail had the drugs. The addicts had the cash.
The economic system more than survived the forced reorganization.
“I’ll head up,” the man said at a hidden door. “And let him know you’re here.”
“Do take your time.”
Left to his own devices, Assail strolled around the high-ceilinged, open space, linking his hands and putting them at the small of his back. From time to time, he paused to look at the “art” that was hung on the walls and partitions—and was reminded why humans should be eradicated, preferably by slow and painful means.
Used paper plates tacked to cheap particleboard and covered with handwritten quotes from TV commercials? A self-portrait done in dentifrice? And equally offensive were the aggrandizing plaques mounted next to the messes declaring this nonsense to be the new wave of American Expressionism.
Such a commentary on the culture in so many ways.
“He’s ready now.”
Assail smiled to himself and turned around. “How accommodating.”
As he entered through that sneaky door and ascended to the third level, Assail did not fault his supplier for being suspicious and wanting more information on his single largest customer. After all, in the shortest of time, the drug trade in the city had been rerouted, redefined, and captured by a complete unknown.
One could respect the man’s position.
But the digging was going to end here.
At the top of the set of industrial stairs, two other big men stood in front of another door, sure and solid as load-bearing walls. As with the guard on the first floor, they opened things up fast, and nodded at him with respect.
On the far side, Benloise was sitting at the end of a long, narrow room that had windows down one side, and only three pieces of furniture: his raised desk, which was nothing but a thick slab of teak with a modernist lamp and an ashtray on it; his chair, of some modern derivation; and a second seat across from him for a single visitor.
The man himself was like his environment: neat, officious, and uncluttered in his thinking. In fact, he proved that however illicit the drug trade was, the management principles and interpersonal skill sets of a CEO went a long way if you wanted to make millions in it—and keep your money.
“Assail. How are you?” The diminutive gentleman rose and put out his hand. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
Assail went across, shook what was extended and did not wait for an invitation to sit down.
“What may I do for you?” Benloise said as he himself resettled on his chair.
Assail took a Cuban cigar from out of his inside pocket. Snipping the end off, he leaned forward and put the snubbed piece right on the desk.
As Benloise frowned like someone had defecated on his bed, Assail smiled just short of flashing his fangs. “It’s what I may do for you.”
“Oh.”
“I have always been a private man, living a private life by choice.” He put away his clipper and took out his gold lighter. Popping the flame, he leaned in and puffed to get the cigar into a sustainable burn. “But above and beyond that, I am a businessman engaging in a dangerous manner of trade. Accordingly, I take any trespass of my property or intrusion upon my anonymity as a direct act of aggression.”
Benloise smiled smoothly and eased back in his throne-like chair. “I can respect that, of course, and yet I am confounded as to why you feel the need to point this out to me.”
“You and I have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship, and it is very much my desire to continue this association.” Assail puffed on the cigar, releasing a cloud of French-blue smoke. “Therefore, I want to pay you the respect you are due, and make clear before I take action that if I discover any person upon my premises whom I have not invited thereupon, I shall not only eradicate them, I shall find the source of inquiry”—he puffed again—“and do what I must to defend my privacy. Am I being clear enough?”