They began to walk and by the end of that fifteen-minute conversation, Short Eyes knew she would follow de Vries anywhere. When he told her he would be headed for UCAS soon, and asked if she would accompany him, she hadn’t needed to think twice before accepting. She pledged her life to the cause, and no force of darkness, no matter how terrible, would ever sway her from her course.
Through the boom cameras field of vision, Short Eyes saw that the funeral was over and that Marco D’imato was being wheeled away from the grave as the casket finished its short descent.
The man standing behind Marco stopped for a moment and gestured for a younger man to approach. The latter was the one who’d come speeding up to the funeral gates, his sports car moving like the devil himself were giving chase.
Short Eyes zoomed in to catch a close-up of him, and she didn’t have to be a genius to see the physical similarities between the young man and the older one pushing Marco’s wheel chair.
Something in the young man’s manner caught Short Eyes attention. Unlike the rest of the mourners, who had approached both of the older men with respect and deference, this one seemed to show Marco cold indifference. That only broke when he shook the hand of the other man, whom she guessed was his father. The respect and admiration were apparent on both of their faces.
They talked for a moment, and Short Eyes wished she had a shotgun mike to catch the conversation.
Finally the man in the wheelchair frowned and motioned with his hand toward the waiting limo. The young man shook his head, and pointed toward his car. The two older ones nodded, reluctantly, and the three separated.
Short Eyes collapsed her equipment and stepped further back into the tree line as the funeral procession began to leave the cemetery. Then she loaded the equipment into the rented Ford Americar and drove it back to the hotel, where de Vries slept the day away.
5
Vampire, sanguisuga europa. Vampires are not a true species. but rather they are individuals of a human subspecies who have been infected with an agent that causes the vampiric condition. The infection only seems to reach its full virulence in a magic-rich environment, but there are indications that both the Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus (HMHVV) and vampires were present before the Awakening.
–
from Dictionary of Parabiology, edited by Professor Charles Spencer, third edition, MIT amp;T Press, Cambridge, 2053
Summer had returned with a vengeance to the Seattle sprawl. Even this near midnight, the air was close and humid, the heat still well into the eighties. No breeze stirred the noxious brew, and the night stank of hot desperation.
The normal noises of the city seemed muted and faraway as the sound waves struggled to penetrate the sluggish air.
Two vampires climbed out of a stepvan, leaving it running. They left a third vampire inside the vehicle and walked across the street toward a low tenement. At their signal, the two Fratellanza guards parked in a black Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit near the tenement’s front door pulled out onto the street and disappeared around the corner. Within seconds, the sound of the car’s motor had faded to nothing.
The two vampires continued on foot and walked up the steps to the door of the doss in the middle of the block.
Behind them, on the roof of the tire retread shop across the street, a clinging shadow disengaged itself like a slice of midnight, and vaulted silently to the ground. What the two vampires didn’t realize was that this piece of darkness had been with them ever since they’d left Magnolia Bluff.
Martin de Vries watched the two inhuman monsters dressed in double-breasted suits step lightly across the street. conscious of keeping their movements slow and controlled. De Vries watched carefully, studying them, searching for their strengths and weaknesses.
He knew that to these two vampires, the putrid night was a thing of beauty, something that still held incomparable wonder. These were young bloodsuckers, new to their enhanced senses and fantastic powers. It had only been a month since they’d been mere humans, trusted captains in Fratellanza, Inc.’s corporate structure, with nothing much of distinction to their lives.
Now, the whole city was their playground, and the night was the most magical time they’d ever experienced.
De Vries could sense their hunger, their bloodlust so strong it threatened to consume them. He could tell that they’d stifled it for now. Tonight, they were not abroad to feed, they were on business.
They passed the Honda Viking that was chained to the mangled parking meter, then walked calmly up the stairs to the doorway of the doss. One of them knocked three times.
It took a moment, but finally a man’s voice answered, full of suspicion “Who’s there?” De Vries could here it clearly even from across the street.
“Mr. D’imato? It’s Max Fein. I’ve been sent by your uncle. He needs to speak with you, in person. It’s very urgent.”
“Spirits be fragged!” came the muffled voice through the door. Then, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to come here?”
De Vries moved a step closer, wondering at the disappearance of the first pair of Fratetlanza guards. These vampires were from Marco D’imato, so why had the guards left? Why weren’t they used as travel insurance? Things didn’t seem right.
De Vries got his answer as the young man, so familiar from the trid images Short Eyes had obtained, opened the door.
Both of the vampires moved, and with a speed no uninfected could even hope to follow. The young man was knocked unconscious and carried across the street.
De Vries slid backward, blending perfectly into the darkness at his back.
The vampires toted the man’s still form to the van, then one of them opened the door.
“We got him, sir.”
De Vries heard the grunt of Marco D’imato from where the crippled vampire sat in the back of the stepvan. “Get him loaded. We don’t have much time to get to Hell’s Kitchen.”
De Vries stiffened at the sound of that voice, a voice he had studied and had begun to know so intimately. Then the van was gone, accelerating up the Street and taking the corner with precision.
Alone now in the darkness, de Vries stepped from the shadows. A moment later he was joined by Short Eyes.
“Your take on what just happened?” he said.
Short Eyes shrugged. “Body snatch, natch. Chum Boy got an invite he couldn’t refuse.”
De Vries nodded. “Sloppy work for someone as sharp as D’imato, unless he planned it that way.”
The two crossed the street and walked up the stairs to the still open doorway of Warren’s doss. Moving silently, de Vries stepped inside.
He let his vision shift into the astral, then gave a low whistle. When viewed in this manner, the entire room seemed to come alive. Small statues glowed with magical light, paintings seemed luminescent.
“Our boy Warren is no ordinary mundane.”
Short Eyes, just a step behind de Vries, giggled like a school girl. “Corner of the eye trick?”
De Vries walked over to the table that dominated the center of the room, splinters of stone crunching beneath his boots.
On the table, the crude form of a demon was taking shape in the marble block. De Vries looked straight at the form, and it seemed like nothing more than a statue, but as he shifted his eyes to the astral, the little demon seemed to move, straining to take flight.
As he studied the rest of the carvings, he noticed they all did that. When looked at directly, they seemed like nothing more than exquisitely carved pieces of art, but when viewed from the astral, the pieces seemed to come alive.
“They’re flip,” said Short Eyes, just a hint of wonder in her voice.