Into the Shadows (10 page)

She slid her hands into the pockets of her
thick coat and faced me. "To test the level of free will you might
still possess, you may ask the first two questions that come to
your mind, if any. This offer should give you evidence of how
considerate I can be." A pause and then, "You may ask your
questions."

"Yes, Madame, thank you; I do have questions.
First, what does Doyenne mean?"

She grinned. "The word originated with the
French; it essentially means 'leader'. Do you have a second
question? And keep in mind that it may be some time before I let
you speak so informally to me again, so don't waste this
opportunity."

"Yes, Madame, thank you; I appreciate it."
Without hesitation, I asked, "Can I please use the restroom?" I
think the question surprised her, but, damn, I had to go.

Her thin eyebrows came together in a frown.
"You may relieve yourself after I depart, which will be after I ask
you about a very specific topic." I went back to a parade rest and
waited, trying not to piss myself. The Doyenne looked at me
intently again when she asked, "Have you heard the word 'Veleti'
before?"

"Yes, Madame, a few nights ago; some crazy
bum yelled that word twice before he ran off."

"And does that word have any significance for
you?"

"Uh, no, Madame; it sounds like an Italian
dish to me, but the bum said it like he meant a person."

The Doyenne nodded slowly. "You will not
speak of this to anyone, Leo. Now you may go."

I mumbled a thank you as I ran out of the
room.

ACCEPTANCE

When I came out of the roomy bathroom, I saw
Sarah standing nearby, twirling a lock of her sandy blonde hair
with a finger and smiling at me. Shit. "What are you doing here,
Sarah?" I asked with a sigh.

"I was brought here to be your tutor. I hope
you don't still think I'm bad luck."

"We'll see. Where is everyone?"

"Well, the Lady Le Meur said something to
Macie about a debt being paid and dismissed her. Then the Lady left
a few guards here and walked out with Mr. Dean - um, Evan. I only
call him Mr. Dean."

"She's already gone?" I hoped I didn't sound
panicky.

"You were in there for a few minutes, Leo.
Besides, it's not like she's going to wait on you. Come on," Sarah
said brightly as she took my hand, "let me show you around the
place."

The 'place' was originally a vast house -
easily as big as Everett's - built for some rich dude in the early
1900's. It sat in an area called the northeast, an old section of
the city not far from downtown. I knew the neighborhood; I grew up
there. As long as I ever knew, the place wasn't a house - it was a
museum of boring stuff. It wasn't a good part of town, although the
aging homes around the large, three-story stone museum were kept
looking nice. Sarah explained that all of the big rooms were being
renovated. Most of the place was empty except for scattered piles
of supplies and some construction tools.

There were three guards, all of them dressed
in Realm jackets and black ball caps. They alternated positions;
two in the house, one patrolling the grounds. I learned later that
those three were replaced by two other guards for the daytime
shift. One of them had already made a grocery run; with a
mini-fridge, and a microwave, we had enough for simple meals. They
also got me a bottle of Jack Daniels, thank God.

A couple hours before dawn, Sarah led me to
the room she was occupying while stuck with me there. Like my bed,
hers didn't have a frame, but she did have sheets. Her room wasn't
as big as mine, but it did have a door. She also had a desk and
chair. Considering that I only had a lamp and a bare mattress with
box springs, she had a pretty nice set-up.

"I know you have lots of questions," she
stated as she sat then fell back on her bed, "so have a seat and
I'll try to explain everything. We have a few nights, so take your
time."

I was too fidgety to sit; I had too many
questions and not having any answers for them caused me to pace.
"Could I start off by asking: what the fuck is going on here?"

Sarah chuckled and propped her head up
against a pillow. "That wasn't very specific, so I'll break it down
into a few basic concepts. First of all, Leo, you have to accept
one simple fact. If you don't accept it, then anything else I say
is worthless and I'm wasting my time."

"Okay, I'm a fairly open-minded guy; what is
this simple fact?"

"Vampires exist." Sarah noted how I stopped
pacing and stared at her, so she quickly elaborated. "I'll bet
you've seen some things you can't explain. Well, that's the
explanation. I only use the word 'vampire' because it's the
simplest way to get the idea across. I mean, it's the correct word,
but since Hollywood made it feel cheesy and cheap, some vampires
like other terms. I've mostly heard of names like daemon, strigoi,
or Eidolon. Take your pick. I've heard Lady Le Meur refer to
herself as an Eidolon once. Oh, and anything like 'bloodsucker'
will
not
go over well."

I continued to stare. "Are you fucking
kidding me? C'mon, Sarah, I want a real answer."

"You've been exposed to a whole new world,
Leo," she said with a shrug. "I don't expect you to accept it so
easily. I sure didn't. If you want, you can think on it for a
while, and come to grips with that being the only answer for
anything you might've been allowed to see."

So that's what I did. I went back to my bed
and tried to come up with rational explanations for things that
didn't seem humanly possible. I failed. There were questions I
tried to answer on my own, but all of the activities of a very long
night caught up with me. Exhausted, I finally fell asleep just as
the sky began to lighten through my decorative windows. I dreamed
of Madame Le Meur.

HEMOS

The next afternoon, I sat down with Sarah at
a folding table and a couple of stackable plastic chairs. I invited
the inside guard to have some sandwiches with us while we talked;
he said that he was allowed to be near us but not to interact much.
He was following orders; I respected that fact, but it also meant
that I wasn't going to give him any of my damn food. I didn't want
to be there; my duty - my urge - was to watch out for Lady Le Meur.
She ordered me to stay and I obeyed, but I wasn't happy about
it.

"Alright, Sarah," I began while making some
roast beef and mayo sandwiches, "believing what you told me last
night is going to be determined by what you can explain. I can't
just take it as truth without having something to back it up. First
of all, though, I need to make sure of something: I'm not one of
those . . . vampires, Eidolons, hemoholics, whatever, am I?"

She giggled. "Shit, no! And what was that
word, 'hemoholics'?"

"Just something I thought up this morning.
Hemo means blood, so, you know, hemos, hemoholics - it seemed to
fit. And in Evan's case, hemo could be mistaken for homo; again, it
fits."

"Yeah, well, fitting or not," she said,
unable to suppress a grin, "I suggest you keep that one to
yourself."

"Okay, so I'm not one. Last night I thought
about all that shit the movies said they could and couldn't do. I
remember some of the older flicks; some of the stuff like garlic
and no reflection in a mirror and not being able to cross running
water . . . that all sounds kind of stupid."

Sarah finished a bite of her pastrami on rye
and said, "That's because it's bullshit. They do have a couple of
the weaknesses that come to mind, like sunlight, but they - vamps -
have what they call Gifts that set them apart from regular people.
They're really not human anymore; they're more. And as they go
along without aging - years, decades, centuries - their Gifts just
get stronger."

"Gifts, like what?"

"All sorts of things," she answered with a
shrug. "They have terms for them, I think, but I just break it down
into three categories. The first is physical; you know, being
stronger, faster, or tougher. Then there's the mind stuff:
persuasion, heightened senses, making you forget, stuff like that.
The last one is what I just call creepy. Some of them can control
animals; others can even turn into one. There are other Gifts that
can make someone nearly invisible, or maybe they just mess with
perception."

"Whoa, hold on. Are you saying all of them,
even that walking anus Evan, can do all that?"

"No, no, not at all; I think it mostly
depends on the faction."

I stared at her with an annoyed scowl until
she realized that she was handing me tiny bits of information
without explanation, and it was pissing me off. She was my tutor?
She sucked at it. Only when I asked very specific questions did I
get any decent answers, but I didn't have much to work with. I
quickly learned not to let her elaborate on an answer. What a
twit.

MINION

I soon gathered that there were three
factions: the Adepts, the Outsiders, and the Deviants. The Adepts
pulled strings in business, finance, culture, and the arts - white
collar and highbrow shit. Lady Le Meur was an Adept. Sarah didn't
know much about the other two factions other than to describe
Outsiders as low middle class, and Deviants as even lower middle
class - yeah, big help.

Each faction had what was called emissaries;
kind of like ambassadors, I think. The leader over all the factions
was called the Doyenne (or Doyen if it was a guy). So I directly
served the lead hemo of the city. Not a bad gig. Adepts were
described to be pretty strong in mental Gifts - senses, power of
suggestion, that sort of stuff. They were also fast and tough;
crude strength was left to the lower factions.

What I found most surprising was, even among
monsters, there was a loose organization, a hierarchy. Go figure.
From there, it got a little tricky. Okay, age was a factor to their
power, I got that. Then there's a matter of genealogy. The whole
vampirism thing obviously had an origin, but Sarah had no idea when
or with who that was - no surprise. The main thing was, the power
got weaker as it was passed along. So, any hemoholic further up the
chain was stronger and had greater potential. Then, as progeny - or
scions
- passed the curse along, the blood got weaker and
hemos couldn't do as much with their Gifts.

Sarah used Evan the douche and the Doyenne as
examples. Evan was a distant scion, meaning his blood was fairly
thin and he was turned, or 'brought to the night', only like four
years ago. She didn't know what level of descending progeny he was,
but guessed it as somewhere in the teens. Like if my granddad
started the whole hemo thing, my asshole dad would have been a
second scion and I would have been a third. As for the Doyenne,
Sarah made a wild guess that she was an eighth or ninth scion. The
kicker was that Lady Le Meur was somewhere between four hundred to
six hundred years old, so there was lots of time to strengthen her
Gifts. It took me a while to fully grasp that. Six hundred years -
holy shit.

All of that made me wonder how many hemos
were running around out there. I was told that any city or town
with enough population probably had some. Sarah didn't know the
total numbers for Kansas City, but had seen at least five Adepts
that lived in town. That didn't mean there weren't more, and that
was only one of three factions. Midwest vampires . . . it sounds
kind of stupid, doesn't it? Well, except Chicago. But by that
reasoning, a town like Davenport, Iowa potentially had a handful of
hemos lurking around in corn fields; it sounded ridiculous to me.
No offense to Davenport.

Long after the night shift of guards was on
duty, I asked where I stood in this new, dark world. I was what
they called a minion. Sarah was a minion, as was Dominique Rondeau,
most of the Realm guards, and a number of others. Sarah had been
one for only a few years, but Ms. Rondeau had been a minion for
nearly a century. She was just like any regular person who goes
shopping or gets a tan or takes a crap, except she'd been doing it
for 92 years and didn't look a day over 35.

I was made a minion by two bottles of the Le
Meur wine, which had my Lady's blood in it, and a third taste from
the source. Being a minion made me healthier, stronger, and I was
told I wouldn't age; all as long as I was given my Lady's blood
once in a while. There wasn't any of that scion shit to worry
about, either, not really. Using Evan and my Lady again, I'd only
have to have a drink of her stronger blood once every few weeks or
so; with Evan's weaker blood, it'd have to be about once a
week.

Even with Sarah's half-assed explanations,
there was still a lot to take in. I wandered off by myself for the
rest of the night and roamed the huge, empty place while I tried to
believe everything I was told. I'd seen a few fantastic things with
my own eyes, but there was apparently a lot more I hadn't. The
trouble of me accepting it was that I hadn't had personal
experience; I hadn't seen things for myself.

I pulled a blanket over my head just past
dawn, missing my mom, and eventually drifted off into an uneasy
sleep. First I dreamed of Madame Le Meur; it was warm and
comforting. But then I had flickering images of Dan and Craig,
followed by the disturbing vision of my squad members Bill and
Rodney; Bill with his face blown off, Rodney with his guts hanging
out. The last dream, though, was somehow the most disturbing. It
was of the picture of my brother, the only one I had since my dad
destroyed the others after Al died. I saw that framed photo
crashing to the floor, over and over.

ORDERS

I woke up late on Sunday, nearly at dusk.
Then again, there weren't too many hours of daylight in early
February. I got up, did a short regimen of exercises, and had a
couple stiff drinks before I went to clean up. Since the only
shower in the place was missing fixtures, I'd been taking short
baths in an old claw tub. I planned on taking a longer one that
night, all because I wanted to spend less and less time with Sarah.
She was still sleazy-cute and had a nice ass, but I was tired of
her teen-style flirting and giggling. More importantly, she was a
shitty tutor, and I wanted to be prepared for Lady Le Meur.