They walked into the duty-free shoppe. It was twenty-four hours. Marcus went
straight to the counter, passing a bored looking blue shirt who was half-
heartedly scanning this month’s Playboy.
“Pack of Virginia Slims 120s.”
The clerk looked at him, at Beth, and then handed over the cigarettes, taking
three and change in the transaction.
As he handed the cigarettes to Beth, the cop put the magazine down and
stepped in front of them.
“I’m going to have to ask your date for some ID there, mister.”
Marcus shook his head, as this was the last thing he needed right now. He
reached inside his coat and the officer stepped back, his hand drifting
towards his waist. Of course, with his service piece snapped down, Marcus
could have easily shot him. It never failed to amase him, the simple things
these beat walkers did out of order. Unclasping the gun should have been the
first thing he did.
The man paled.
Marcus pulled out his badge and let it drop open.
“That date is my daughter.”
The colour came back to the man’s face.
Marcus looked at his watch. There’d been an accident on the expressway and
they were already five minutes late. He didn’t even know what the agent looked
like. He was imagining some fifty-something battle axe who was going to treat
him like a greenie straight out of Quantico.
A woman walked past him- young, attractive, sleek legs, curly hair, sweet
eyes, and asked for a box of Marlboro Lights 100s.
“I still need to see ID, sir. From your daughter. I don’t care if you’re the
deputy director of the Bureau.”
The woman, her purchase complete, walked over.
“Agent Creivich ?” the woman asked pleasantly. When he nodded, she extended
her hand.
“Amy Pondress.” She turned to the officer. “Special Agent Amy Pondress, FBI.”
She took out her own badge and flashed it.
“Now, the way I see it, this man just handed his daughter a pack of
cigarettes. That means he’s her father. I think, and your precinct Captain
will probably back me up on this, is that what a man and his daughter agree on
about her smoking is not the business of some flat foot with too much time on
his hands. Now, I could have my AD call your CO, or better yet, maybe the
deputy police commissioner, and double check that. I’m sure they take calls at
home. It’s only about one thirty.”
“Ma’am-”
Amy took out her cell phone and dialed.
“Jim. I need a few phone numbers for AD Arose. Baltimore area. Private
residence of-”
“Stop,” the officer said. “You can go.”
They walked out of the shop and Amy looked at Marcus with bloodshot eyes.
“Sorry, I’m beat from the flight, so I’m going to blunt- Do you usually bring
your daughter along on official bureau business ?”
Beth was already out not only of earshot, but the front door. She was
lighting a cigarette.
“No, I don’t. The call caught me at an odd time. I was out taking a walk with
my daughter. My wife doesn’t let her smoke in the apartment and-”
“Never mind. I’m just annoyed. I have no idea why I’m here, and I’m willing
to bet you don’t, either.”
“No.”
“Great.”
She didn’t even wait until she was out the door to light her own cigarette.
Elsa was writhing like a banshee on the dance floor, a cyclone of embodied
energy. Charisma was watching silently, wondering where her friend was getting
the juice to keep moving. She was tired-and in this place, late at night,
well, it was the wrong place to be tired, wasn’t it ?
What good was all that working out if your brain farted out on you.
She sat down wearily, her eyes darting around the club. There were straight
couples, gay couples, and-
Them.
Charisma lit a cigarette and hoped it would clear her head. It was just about
two. When they finished Horny, Horny, Horny- a good song to end the night on-
the lights would come up and they’d start clearing the place out. Charisma
sighed. It was the masturbating which had tired her out. Once or twice would
have been easy, but not the third time.
She was amased at Elsa for continuing to smoke for her, but she certainly
wasn’t going to complain. It wasn’t as nice as if Elsa had decided to try
dancing on the other side of the sexuality fence, but it was close enough.
Charisma would try and get people to smoke, she had to, considering what she
knew, but she respected her friend’s alternate sexuality.
The lights came up and Elsa whirled over to her, hair still flying, arms
waving. She was a live wire bound in human form and the way the sweat was
making her forehead glisten-
Respect or not, Charisma wanted to offer to eat her out, right here and now.
Instead, she lit a second cigarette and handed it to Elsa, who drew on it and
smiled through a nicely done exhale.
“I suppose that we have to go.”
“First you smoke- now you dance. If you look good in a leather skirt, I might
really lose control.”
Elsa leaned close, hugging her friend breast on breast.
“You love me for my mind,” she said drunkenly.
They were both underage, but Charisma knew the bouncerette and they got in
and got drinks. Charisma had stopped an hour ago because-
Of them.
Elsa had drunk herself silly.
Cute silly drunk.
“Let’s go, girlfriend. You’ll be hating me in the morning.”
“Hate you,” Elsa said, and disagreed by kissing her in the general area of
her lips. Charisma reminded herself that she had a standing rule about taking
advantage of drunk straights and started them towards the door. When they hit
the cold air outside, it seemed to wake Elsa up more than a little.
“Shit. I’m drunk, Carrie.”
“No shit. You’re trashed.”
It was amasing how fast the street cleared. Well. Not amasing. A lot of the
regulars at the club knew this was not a street on which you lingered.
There was an alley cut through back to Exeter. Just two blocks and they’d be
safe. Charisma made a point to walk slightly ahead of her friend, her eyes
flashing from garbage dumpster to sewer grate to cardboard boxes with total
focus.
One block in, she realised she should have stayed on the main straight.
There was just one, behind them, stalking. Probably not a regular, as the
regulars knew better than to fuck with Charisma.
“Damn it. I left my wallet back at the club,” Charisma said.
“I’ll go with you,” Elsa said cheerily.
“No. They won’t let you back in. They do an after-hours thing on the qt. They
know me. Just head home. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Elsa drew deeply on her cigarette and smiled. “I’ll wait here.”
Charisma sighed. He was close now, maybe ten metres. Hidden behind that
dumpster, waiting.
“Elsa-”
“I’ll stand here and smoke, silly.”
“Fuck,” said Charisma as he moved out towards them. Why had she taken her to
a club they went to ?
These days, they were in all the clubs in Baltimore.
She didn’t have a stake.
There was a wooden pallet off to her left. She put that in the hopper and
hoped she’d be able to get to it when the time was right.
Elsa made a noise behind her.
He had his game face on and she wouldn’t know what to do with that. No, she
wasn’t ready for all this in one night.
Charisma stepped forward as he lunged for her. It was a good, cautious lunge
and she recognised that it was an experienced move. Never the less, she caught
his arm and set against the rush, pushing him backwards. Like all vamps, he
was light, strong but lacking body mass.
His dipped his head down and she turned away, hearing his incisors chomp air
next to her right ear.
“I could fuck you before I kill you,” he said seductively. There was a time
that would have made her pause. Straight or gay, those voices had a certain
power.
“I’m the best fuck you’ll never have,” she said, and then she drove her knee
deep into his groin.
He howled, but as her staggered back, his clawed hand flashed out and tore a
20 centimetre gash in her right breast.
Charisma took the pain and smiled. Oh, she loved it when they hurt her. The
agony cleared her head of the last few cobwebs. She leapt forward and pinned
him to the ground. She had him at her mercy now. He wriggled, but she was
using her hands and legs to hold him down.
He was wearing painter’s pants, the fly unzipped. She looked down and saw his
penis emerge from the opening and she moved herself up onto it.
“You want to fuck me, right here, before I kill you ?”
He answered by thrusting upwards, shredding the tights she was wearing,
entering her painfully. She moaned and then rocked back and forth, once,
twice. His mouth opened, beckoning her, thinking he had won.
She fell back, driving her weight towards the ground, moving her hands to
brace herself down low. He gave. She didn’t.
There was the most horrible popping sound in the world. She had done this
before, but she imagined he’d never had the excruciating pleasure. They didn’t
teach this one, but it always worked. She disengaged herself and looked down
at him. He was lying in a ruined heap, trying to sit up, his hands flailing at
his tortured member. She grabbed one arm and hauled him to his feet, twisting
him round and round until she saw the pallet. She threw him against it and it
shattered. Picking up a splintered plank of wood, she drove it into his chest.
Then she rolled back. There was a popping hiss and the body began to sink in
on itself to bubbling noises. After a minute it was almost two dimensional and
only then did it burst, leaving behind a pile of dust.
Elsa moved towards what had once been a body and reached down to touch it
even as she drew one last time on her shrinking cigarette. Charisma smiled
even as she batted her friend’s hand away. She’d been smoking the whole time.
“Don’t touch it. You’ll get infected.”
Charisma picked up a handful of the dust.
“This stuff- it’ll do worse than kill you.”
“But you’re-”
“I have the immunity.”
“Immunity.” Clearly, this was a lot for Elsa to take in, but she was doing
fairly well. “What immunity ?”
“It’s there, in your hand.”
Elsa looked at her cigarette. Dropped it and lit another.
“I still don’t-”
“You haven’t been smoking long enough. Next time I ask you to go along
without me-”
“I’ll listen,” Elsa said, and she sounded sincere.
“Larry ?”
“Marcus. What do you know ?”
Marcus sat down at the table, accepted the cup of coffee his wife offered him
without acknowledgement, and cleared his throat.
“Well, I take that the guys she placed didn’t come up with anything ?”
“Two Caucasian females stumbled into the building about 2:15, one of them
drunk. According to the landlord, the renter is a girl named Charisma Diane
Barry. The other woman we know nothing about. Barry’s a junior at the
university majoring in English. Her mother is a writer- romance trash like
what my wife reads.”
“I hope you’re in the office.”
“She knows they’re trash. I swear she just reads that shit to piss me off.
The landlord is Clyde Brückmanner. He gave me shit at first, but in the final
analysis, he seems like a stand up guy. I woke him from what must have been a
very deep repose at about five ten am, which accounts for his yapping at
first. Damn, he was pissed.”
“She didn’t tell me anything, Larry. I got the distinct impression somebody
sent her here without painting her much of a picture.”
“Well, maybe it’s time we all joined the Van Gogh of the Month club then.
This is starting to piss me off, and you know how I get when all I get is
shit.”
“You’re not the acting supervisor on this one, Lar.”
“When it involves my agents, I am. Call me later.”
“Will do.”
It was funny, really. Wendi was just about to scoop scrambled eggs onto his
plate. She never made breakfast anymore. He didn’t blame her. It wasn’t as if
he would. They’d long ago given in to fast food for breakfast. The only one
who ate a decent meal before noon was Beth, who was up and gone by six every
day. But she was making breakfast today, and that could only mean one thing.
She wanted him sitting down in one place with her full attention.
He supposed this was her idea of coming clean. As though telling him today
was being upfront and honest.
Well, fuck that.
“You want to drive in with me today ?” he asked.
She sat down across from him and shook her pretty blonde hair charmingly. God,
she was still attractive. That much he could give her.
“No. I’ll need my own car.”
“Well,” he said levelly, “I suppose you will, since ORM offices are cross-
town.”
She looked up at him, weirdly settled. “I was going to tell you, you
bastard.”
“You could have told me yesterday.”
“I had to write case notes for CG. Being that he’s going to take them over.
It was important. I didn’t want to risk losing the whole fucking evening to
you ranting and raving.”
“Am I ranting ? Raving ? No. You know, I always thought I would. I’ve
fantasized about this moment. Played it out in my mind. All the things I would
say- but you know what. I just can’t hate you, Wendi. Can’t say the mean
things. So here it is- we don’t love each other any more. I called Jill and
she’s meeting me for lunch-”
“Hoping to squeeze in a sympathy fuck with the papers ?” Wendi asked. She’d
always been jealous of Jill.
Why not ? Wendi was beautiful. Jill was stunning. And Jill actually liked
him.
“-and I’m sure she’ll have the papers ready by late this afternoon. I’ll give
you half the cash, and in return you leave Beth here in Baltimore so that she
can finish school.”
Wendi sighed. “I’d fight you on Beth if I could. I really would. I love her-”
“I never said you didn’t.”
“But I’d lose. I know it. I just want you to promise me one thing. Try to
remember she’s your daughter.”
“What the fuck does that mean ?” he asked, starting to feel his temper fray.
“That means that Marky Mark’s wee willy dances like a wolf when she lights a
cigarette. I see you with her when you let her smoke. She’s your daughter.”
“I do know that. You know, other adult women actually find me attractive.”
“It’s not that you’re not attractive to me, Marcus. It’s that- your ideas are
all wrong. You’ve gotten twisted. I can’t believe you’d take a case with that
Pondress woman.”
“What do you know about her ?”
“More than you. There’s a reason she can’t keep a partner and gets sent
hurtling all over the country. Watch your back.”
“Do you really care ?”
“I don’t want my only daughter losing her only father, even if he did turn
her into a smoker just to spite me.”
“There was a time you looked forward to lighting my cigars for me. Look, I
don’t have time for this. I’ll have the papers sent over to your new office,
how’s that ?”
“I’ll e-mail the address to you.”
He walked out without saying another word.
“You know, you might want to have mentioned that you were, I don’t know what,
a vampire slayer before I moved in.”
“Whedon only has it half-right, but that’s okay because I honestly think he
doesn’t know any of it. There’s not only one of us. We do have mentors
though-”
“You have a mentor ?”
“No. My mentor got killed about eighteen months ago. There’s a shortage these
days. And I would have told you if I could have found a pithy way to say `Oh,
by the by, in my spare time, I stake vamps.’ Hell, even my mother doesn’t
know. God, I was so stupid- I mean Valentine’s Day is a major event in the
vampire community.”
“I think I had you thinking not so straight-”
“I never think straight,” Charisma quipped, lighting a cigarette.
She walked over to the computer and looked over her friend’s shoulder.
“What are you doing ?”
“Emailing my parents a picture of me smoking that I took with the digital
camera. And a few shots of you, too. My dad thinks you’re hot.”
“I am,” Charisma said. Then she winced. The cut had closed up, and it was
healing nicely- her mentor had shown her how to make a special salve that did
wonders on cuts- but there was still a good chance for a scar. It wouldn’t be
the first.
“Did you say vampire community ? How many are there ?”
Finished with her email work, Elsa lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. She
was pretty damn good at smoking already, Charisma admitted.
“Look, there’s an awful lot to this, and I’d rather not tell it all to you
this morning. What I really need is coffee and a bagel. It’s-”
“How much do you know ?”
“A lot. Not all of it- none of us have all the pieces to the puzzle and we
don’t quite know who does. A lot of what we do know is wrong, too, and that’s
intentional.” Charisma drew on her cigarette and smiled. “It’s a virus. You
can get through bodily fluids, hence the whole biting thing, or by touching
the remains. There’s no sure defence against having it injected into your
blood stream, but killing a vamp releases a weaker version of the virus that
comes into being when the remains disintegrate.”
“But I saw that guy smoking a cigarette last night.”
“It’s a retro virus. It infects you, causes some sort of cellular mutation,
and then goes dormant until it hits a new host. But not before it turns you
into a monster. And once its work is done, it’s inert in the blood stream. So
nicotine has no effect on it. But I’m no freaking biochemist.”
“Who knows about this ?”
“Like I said, you don’t need to know everything in one day, and trust me, if
I tell you what I know about that, you will freak.”
“So,” Elsa said, taking a long pull on her cigarette, “smoking will give me
some immunity ?”
Charisma smiled. “A pack a day keeps the vamps away.”
Joanne handed her husband the first of four pictures.
It was the important one.
Of their daughter smoking.
“I guess we can tell her the truth now,” was all he said.
“I can’t believe that you have a lunch date you can’t break,” Amy said as
Marcus worked to pick the lock.
“I can’t believe we can’t just ring the damn bell. Look, I’m meeting a lawyer
to get divorce papers drawn up. My wife took a position with ORM and-”
Amy grabbed his shoulder.
“ORM ? Office of Risk Management ?”
“Yeah. You’re not making this easier, Pondress.”
“Jesus. ORM. Faster. We have to work quickly. If I’m right- oh shit.”
“What wrong with ORM ?”
“If these girls are at risk, there’s a good chance that ORM is involved. But
you can’t afford to act suspicious now. Go on your goddamned lunch date. Make
it quick though. I’ll stay here with the girls until you get back, and then we
move them. They won’t be safe here.”
“You will, at some point, tell me what the fuck is going on, right ?”
“Yes. Can you move your lunch up to say, eleven ?”
“Lunch at eleven ?” he asked as the lock gave way.
The look she gave him was enough to get him to reach for his phone as they
walked up the stairs.
Of course, Jill would have met him in a dark alley at dawn for lunch if that
was what he wanted, so it was an easy change.
Amy pounded on the door.
“Is that you, Mr. Brückmanner ?”
“FBI, ma’am. Open the door.”
“Why ?”
“We have reason to believe that you may be at risk.”
“At risk to what ?”
“To someone killing you, ma’am,” Amy said. Marcus looked at her in
disbelieve. What was going on ? Maybe Wendi had been right.
The door swung open there was the most gorgeous brunette Marcus had ever
seen. She was holding a Virginia Slims 120 and drawing on it. He felt himself
harden.
There was another woman in the room. She was a little shorter and her breasts
were merely human sized, but she was still attractive as well. Suddenly this
assignment didn’t seem so bad.
Amy swung the door closed behind them and then lit a Marlboro Lights 100.
Marcus wondered how something so weird- and this was weird in spades- could
also be so perfectly wonderful.
“What’s this about ? And can I see some ID ?”
Marcus and Amy flashed their badges.
“I’m Special Agent Amy Pondress and this is Agent Marcus Creivich. We have
reason to believe that your lives may be in danger. I’d like to stay here with
you for a while. Agent Creivich has another matter to attend to shortly, but-”
“Too bad. I think he likes the show,” Charisma said, drawing deeply on her
cigarette and treating him to a special exhale.
“-we’ll be providing around the clock protection until further notice.”
“Uh, we have classes this afternoon, Ms. Pondress.”
“Call me Amy. I don’t think class is a good idea right now.”
“I have a mid-term next week,” Elsa said. “I need-”
Amy sat down next to Elsa. She drew on her cigarette, held the inhale until
she felt calm again.
“I want to be nice about this ladies, but really I have every reason in the
world to think that you are both in serious danger here. You can chose not to
co-operate, but that just makes our lives more difficult.”
“This is all a little sudden, isn’t it ?”
“Yes. I got a call late last night saying that you were in some sort of
danger-”
Elsa looked at Charisma but neither spoke. They knew something, but all they
did was share twin exhales. Charisma looked at Marcus and then shook her head
faintly.
Amy caught it and had an idea.
“Marcus, why don’t you see if you can move- that other thing- up. To like
now.”
The frustration on his face was clear, but he didn’t argue. The truth was, he
wanted out of whatever this was. He was thinking of calling Larry and asking
him to get him out. Pondress was acting crazy.
Jill agreed to meet him in half an hour- very cheerily.
He said his goodbye- gruffly, and left.
“Now girls, tell me what happened ?”
Surprisingly, they did.