Nightlord: Orb (60 page)

Thursday, December 3
rd

They say New York is the city that never sleeps.  Maybe so; I haven’t really tried to find out.  Las Vegas, on the other hand, is the three-ring circus that never sleeps.  It’s a wonderful town for a nightlord.  During the day, there are a thousand things to do.  At night, there’s a different thousand things to do.  And all the things you expect to close at night?  Somewhere, one of them is open.  Need to talk to a loan officer at four in the morning?  No problem.  Looking for a breakfast bar when you woke up at four in the afternoon?  Right this way.  It’s possible there are goods or services you can’t find twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  I don’t know what they are.  Las Vegas tries to be everything to everyone.

On the downside, the place is
crawling
with undead.

Last night, Mary and I saw several vampires.  We didn’t make ourselves known to them—none of them were Thessaloniki, or if they were, they didn’t brush against us with spirit-tendrils.  We simply took note of them and pretended not to.  Shortly after, we noticed a few more, here and there, usually alone but occasionally in pairs.  I started to wonder a little and counted people vs. vampires as we walked along, taking a random sample.

A little napkin math seems to indicate the vampire population of Las Vegas would therefore be around a hundred thousand undead.

Which is
ridiculous
.

That’s about one vampire for every twenty-five people.  Don’t get me wrong; it could be done.  Twenty-five people could support one vampire.  I have a sneaking suspicion that vampire saliva causes an increase in blood production.  One vampire might, theoretically, survive indefinitely on a group as small as ten adult humans.  To do so would require the active cooperation of the humans, though, and that’s not going to happen.

My best guess for the ridiculous numbers is that the undead tend to cluster around the Strip, which gives an abnormally high chance of encountering one.  But even if that changes the odds by a factor of a hundred—meaning one vampire for every 2,500 people—that’s still about a thousand vampires
in one city
.

That’s not ridiculous.  Preposterous, perhaps.  Surely, I’m missing something in my assumptions.  There must be some other factors involved I don’t know about.

On the other hand, Mary and I did some research on the local meat packing industry.  If no one is going to volunteer to be a blood donor and get their gallon pin all in one go, we have to look into other options.  We found a number of places that butchered livestock and packaged the meat.  And, strangely enough, were open twenty-four hours a day.

Even for Las Vegas, that seems odd to me.

What was even more odd was the price list at each place.  In addition to the regular cuts of meat and various organs—sheep’s kidneys, calf liver, ground beef, whatever—they also had prices for various types of animal blood.  By the pint, quart, and gallon.  It’s fairly expensive to fill a bathtub with blood, but you can
do
it here.  All you have to do is lay down enough cash.  It takes about forty gallons.  They’ll even deliver it in sealed five-gallon bottles, like the bottles for a water cooler.

Maybe I’m wrong about being wrong.  Maybe there are a thousand or more vampires in town.  That’s the only thing I can think of to cause such a drastic demand.

We’re surrounded by vampires.  They don’t seem to have noticed us, though.  Hopefully, we can blend in.  With so many in town, what’s two more?

The magician was as much a mystery the second time around.  The only possibilities that spring to mind are he’s a supernatural entity, a mutant with psychic powers, or an absolute master of misdirection.  While I’m confident in my ability to duplicate all of his tricks, it would take a week of work to gather sufficient power and set up the spells.  The cup and balls I get.  The bullet-catching illusion, I get.  The rest of it… I don’t see how he does it.

This frustrates me.  It’s entertaining, but also frustrating.  He’s good.

We also saw more vampires while we watched the shows.  I took another count and came up with roughly the same numbers.  Mary noticed me doing the math during the lounge singer’s performance of “I’ll Be Seeing You.”  I’ve heard Vic Fontaine sing that one; everyone else is just another singer.

“Shall we see if we can buy a liquid dinner?” she asked.  “You can see how many of the customers are interested in blood.”

“We could,” I admitted.  “It’s tempting.  You know it’ll be cold, refrigerated stuff, right?”

“Not necessarily,” she told me.  “I looked them up.  Two of these companies run their own slaughterhouse.  It might be fresh out of the animal.”

“And that tells us something, too, doesn’t it?  Don’t Phrygians have to drink human?”

“I don’t know if they
have
to,” Mary considered, thoughtfully.  “That’s what I understand, but they may actually be picky eaters.  Their powers certainly make it easier to be choosy.”

“But it would imply the locals are mostly Thessaloniki and Constantines.”

“It would.  Why?”

“Just wondering.  I’d think they’d need Phrygians by the gross to keep their secret with a population so large.”

“I don’t know,” Mary admitted.  “I’ve never had to supervise a city.  No one ever put me in charge of an area; I’m too young and not at all interested.  At least, not in doing it.  The details are becoming more interesting.”

“Let’s go get dinner,” I suggested.  “Your idea has me curious.”

We took a cab.  Arthur Marten’s Meats was definitely open, with lights ablaze and doors swinging.  They were doing a surprising amount of business for near midnight on a weeknight.  Either tomorrow was a meat-industry holiday, or…

Yep.  Vampires, or people who worked for vampires.  While most of the customers left with a wrapped package of meat, all of them left with a container.  Most were pint-sized.  A few were quarts.  One carried a gallon.  I presume the larger volumes were delivered; no one wants to be seen carrying a five-gallon bottle of blood out of the store.

“I don’t think I need to go in,” I told Mary.  “I’ve seen enough.”

“But I’m hungry,” she complained.  I shrugged and offered her my arm.  She hung on to it and we went in.  There was a line; we queued up.

The man behind the counter was human; you don’t get his sort of florid face and sweaty forehead without a pulse.

“What’ll it be?”

“Five gallons of beef,” I ordered, reading it off the menu on the wall, “and another five of mutton, please.”

“Ten gallons?” he asked, looking doubtful.

“Yes, please.”

“You sure?”

“I have help to carry it.”

“Okay.”  He thumped computer keys with thick fingers and nodded.  “Yeah.  It’ll be a minute.  Takes a while to fill.”

“No rush.”  We stepped aside to wait while he took other orders.  It wasn’t that long a wait before two large, plastic bottles appeared.  I noticed the bottles were warm to the touch.  I also noticed everyone in the room was looking at us with what I can only describe as hungry expressions.

I punched for a cab and we went outside, each of us carrying a bottle.

“Mutton?” Mary asked.

“Ever had it?”

“Not that I know of.”

“It’s good.”

We got into the cab and Mary reached for the plastic-wrapped mouth of the bottle.  I stopped her.

“Remember, if you open it near me, it’s going to crawl out.”

“Ah.  Good point.  I can wait.  Hey!”

“Hey, what?”

“Why don’t the bottles slide over to you?”

“What, you mean like magnets?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.  Maybe it’s more of an animation thing than an attraction thing.”

“You mean, the life in the blood actively tries to crawl toward you?” she asked.

“Maybe.  I don’t know.  I haven’t looked into it.  But that would explain it.”

“Could be.  At least now I won’t have to wonder.”

We returned to the hotel and the cab deposited us in the parking garage.  We climbed aboard our RV and locked the door.  Mary cracked the seal on one of the bottles.  It was a little awkward to horse it around and find the right angle, but spills weren’t our first concern.  Anything we spilled would crawl over to me anyway.

Mary got the majority of it.  She was surprised she could drink so much.  You wouldn’t think ten gallons would go into a human body, and it won’t.  She was under the impression a vampire could only drink about a gallon at a time.  But ten gallons of blood into a nightlord?  I’ve absorbed more than that by accident, just walking through a room.  I still don’t know where it goes, or how I metabolize it, or any of that.  Frankly, I’m not sure I’ll ever understand it.  Mary didn’t seem bothered by it beyond a mild curiosity; she was simply pleased to no longer be hungry.

I actually got to drink some, sort of.  It’s hard to actually drink free blood; it wants to crawl all over me more quickly than it can go down my throat.  On the other hand, my tongue will almost reach the bottom of the bottle, and it soaks up blood at a phenomenal rate—it’s strange to be able to actually see it in action.  Mary drank most of each bottle, then handed the rest to me.  I got a quart or two from each one.  I think I like the sheep’s blood better than the beef.

Mary dabbed at the blood on her chin.  I lashed my tongue across her bloodstains and they disappeared.  She grinned at me, waited until I retracted the thing, and kissed me.

“I want one.”

“One what?”

“A tongue like that.”

“I don’t know how I got it,” I admitted.  “I just woke up with it one day.  It’s kind of troublesome, especially with the knife-edged teeth.”

“I like it.”

“You like
mine
,” I retorted.  “It’s not as much fun to have one.”

“Oh, but I’d love to try!”

“Woman, you have a one-track mind!”

“I do not!  I also think about… um.  All right, maybe you have a point.”  She changed the subject.  “Did you find out what you wanted at the blood bank?”

“Yes and no.  I found out, but it wasn’t what I wanted.”

“How do you mean?”

“From what I saw, every midnight customer was buying blood.  Some of them I could recognize as vampires.  Teeth, eyes—little telltales mortal eyes probably can’t see, or don’t see without actually looking for them.  Kind of like how you can see I’m not human even when I’ve got my contacts in, makeup on, and hair combed.  But everybody in the place, without exception, was buying blood.  Which means they’re either going home and making sure Passover is observed in the original way—and it’s the wrong time of year for that—or they have some other use for it.  There may, in fact, be over a thousand vampires in one city.”

Mary gave it serious consideration.

“How many vampires were at your house?  Eight Constantines, six Thessaloniki, and three Phrygians?”

“Sounds right.  Wait—seven Thessaloniki.  I killed one as I came out of the house.  I presume he was a Thessaloniki; he had a shotgun.”

“A total of eighteen,” she mused.  “Think we can take a thousand?”

“Oddly enough, no.”

“Did you leave anything in the room?”

“Socks?  Toothbrush?  Other chattels of inconsequence.”

She started the RV, swung around the parking area, and I hitched up the trailer.  We pulled up to the exit of the parking garage and Mary ran a digital stick through the machine, touching various options—paying the hotel bill and parking fees right there at the terminal.  Then we hit the road and left Vegas behind us like a premature sunrise.

Paranoia?  Possibly.  I prefer to think of it as caution.

Still… a
thousand
vampires in one city?  Can that possibly be right?

We really didn’t want to find out the hard way.

Saturday, December 5
th

The one thing about living in Las Vegas I never could stomach; all the damn vampires.  I think they picked up our trail there.

Cruising southwest down the I-15 highway has been pretty much the same as always.  It’s a wonderful road trip.  We drive for a while, stop wherever we feel like it, have two breakfasts, two lunches, and multiple dinners.  We’ve both gone riding in the Mojave National Preserve—separately; someone is always with the RV.  Bronze is delighted about the open spaces.  She’s also careful about brushfires.  My horse is responsible like that.

We’re driving nowhere in particular and the magic charge is building up amazingly quickly—the faster we go, the more we take in.  I think it’s the first of the electromagical conversion spells on the RV’s power uptake.  I need to put a lot more layers of spell in there, but it does seem to be working.

The front scoop doesn’t seem to help, really; the Ascension Sphere soaks up anything we encounter anyway.  Maybe if I expanded the radius of action on the scoop—made the magical “funnel” larger—we’d get a better yield.  I’ll have to look into that.  The problem is it takes power to create a scoop, and the larger the scoop, the more power it takes.  In this low-power environment, the most efficient size may be awfully small.

The one on the trailer seems to work better, but I think that’s because it’s set higher, drawing in power that would normally flow right over us.

Between teaching magic to Mary and studying the workings of a gate spell, I’m never bored.  Mary’s getting better at her spell work, too; we’ve spent hours (which feel like weeks) inside my headspace and, more recently, in hers.

Her headspace is nicer than mine.  The décor is pretty.  No windows, but that’s typical.  There are still window curtain things to make it look as though there are.  The walls are decorated with murals, mostly of building layouts, possibly from some of her more carefully-planned thefts.

I find it vaguely disturbing that the “housebreaker” has an intimate knowledge of the Louvre, the Tower of London, and the United States Bureau of Engraving in Fort Worth.  I’ve resisted the urge to ask.  I’m sure she just has fantasies of stealing the Mona Lisa, the Crown Jewels, and the printing plates for cash.  That’s all it is.

Her bookshelves are a mess, of course, but she’s been sorting out her own memories.  We’ve managed a few experimental spells in her mental study to show how it can be done.  She’s getting the hang of using a search spell in her bookshelves to find memories.  That helps, but organizing it all is going to take a long time.

Her spell repertoire is limited.  She can create a small light, start a fire without a lighter, and damp down vibrations in the air—she can make herself almost entirely silent.  That last one was a spell she insisted on learning.  She tried to insist I use it when we go sneaking.  She changed her mind once I had her use it on herself.  Casting it wasn’t the problem; keeping it going for any length of time was the problem.  She agreed it might be impractical for routine use.

But I digress.

The vampires of Vegas are following us.  Not in person, obviously; they have a sunlight allergy.  Their servants, hangers-on, agents, employees, thugs, muscle, spies, and flunkies don’t have that problem.  Their technique, at least to this point, was to simply get a cab, set it to cruise mode, and have it get radar lock on the trailer.  Then it’s only a matter of sitting back and killing time.

We aren’t constantly zipping along the highway, though.  We pull over frequently.  This really shoots down our tails’ ability to be inconspicuous.  We spotted the first guy the next morning when he followed us from breakfast to breakfast to lunch.  After that, he started trading off with a partner.  Now they’re up to six people, taking turns being the lead man in the conga line of tails.

Mary spotted them.  Firebrand spotted them.  I spotted them.  Bronze, watching through windows in the trailer, spotted them.  They’re not terribly good at being unnoticed.  It makes me wonder how many other people we’re missing.  The competent ones.  The professionals.

Yet, Mary and Firebrand tell me there aren’t any more.  Mary says the people tailing us are actually doing a good job of it.  We’re not like a typical person being tailed; we’re suspicious and
know
, not merely intellectually accept, someone wants to kill us.  Firebrand says it can hear the people being bored with following us and agrees we’ve spotted all six of them.

I don’t know.  I have a bad feeling about this.  It’s a severe temptation to simply grab one some evening and ask him what he’s doing.  But that may be what they want; why else would they follow us for the past few days without
doing
anything?  Are they setting up an ambush farther down the road—and frustrated by our lackadaisical pace?  Or are they ready to spring a trap and they’re waiting for us to take the bait—that is, grab a tail?  Or are they only concerned with keeping track of us? Is it the same principle as having a wasp in the room?—you may not have anything to swat it, but you sure want to know where it is!  Will grabbing one of their guys tip them off that we know we’re being watched and start a new phase?

Someone once told me a statistic about smart people.  They generally have a hard time making quick decisions.  Why?  Because they think of so many options and potential outcomes, follow them down farther, look more moves ahead.  I suspect I have that problem; I’m moderately smart, although not terribly wise.

On the other hand, I know I shouldn’t let myself succumb to indecision simply because some courses of action
might
have bad consequences.  All I can do is my best; if that’s not good enough, I’ll have to live with it.  Or not, of course.

We’ll be heading through Cajon Pass tonight.  If I wanted to ambush someone, that would be a good place to do it.  We’ll see if they think so.  If they don’t, I think I’ll have words with someone.  Otherwise, they may be following us all the way into Los Angeles.

Mary drove, wearing her midnight go-to-thieving clothes.  I had my armored underwear on with some camouflage fatigues over it.  I sat in back with Firebrand and the rest of the weapons.  We were locked and loaded, ready for lions and tigers and bears and rutting musk ox.  We went through Cajon Pass without stopping.

All that preparation and there wasn’t so much as an annoying driver.  Not even a falling rock.  The only unusual thing was a succession of vehicles behind us, which was starting to border on normality by now.

Firebrand was disappointed.  Mary and Bronze were, too.  I might have been.  A little.

“We’re coming out of the mountains,” Mary noted.  “I still don’t see anything.”  I went forward, settled into the passenger seat, spun it to face front.  The moon was new and the night was about as dark as it ever gets; everything in front of us was black, white, or a shade of grey.  I searched it all, trying to find something out of place.  A spike strip on the road.  A hunting blind for the sniper.  Two cars parked on opposite shoulders with a suspicious number of people inside.  A landmine.  Anything.

“I hate to say it, but maybe they aren’t really trying to catch us,” I offered.

“Could be.  If I were in their boots, I wouldn’t be willing to come to grips with you after the fiasco at the farm.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.  “They lost a few people and we scared the rest.  I doubt the Elders will back off and pretend it didn’t happen.  They’ve been made to lose face.  I’m told face is important.”

“That’s criminals,” Mary corrected.  “The Elders don’t seem to care.  They’re the eldest and most powerful.  They know it.  Everyone knows it.  They don’t need to prove it.”

“They don’t?” I asked.  “Have you ever met them?”

“Well… no.”

“But you take it as fact they’re immensely old and powerful?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Everyone says so.  People considerably older than I.”

“How do they know?”

Mary opened her mouth to say something, paused, closed her mouth and thought.

“Maybe,” I began, “I’m not the only person who’s asking that question.  How many younger vampires are wondering it?  How many mid-level vampires get asked by their kids about the Elders and start to wonder?”  I shook my head.  “If they aren’t concerned with appearances, they’re stupid, and you don’t get to be old by being stupid.”

“You make a good argument,” Mary conceded.  “That’s why you’re sure we’re going to have problems?”

“Yes.  I’m not sure what kind of problems we’re having at this particular moment, though.”

“It’s not an ambush,” she stated.  “I don’t see anything ahead of us.  Everything behind us is still behind us.  Do you see anything new and unusual?”

“No, I don’t.”  Then I had a bad moment of realization.  Nothing ahead, nothing behind… I swiveled around and moved to open the sunroof.  Was there anything
above
us?

Most drones are multi-rotor things, kind of like helicopters.  They also make flying-wing versions in various sizes.  They can’t hover, but they have much greater speed and range.  Some of them can even carry cargo.  One of these paced us, about a thousand feet up.  There was no way to tell if it carried any cargo, but it was certainly large enough.  With my vision, I could easily see a camera array on it, presumably looking at us.

I sat down in the seat again and pondered.  It hadn’t commenced a bombing run.  It paced us, presumably to watch us.  Why?  There were enough people behind us to track a basketball team through a circus.  Just in case?  Or was someone else—another group—watching us?  Possibly multiple factions of vampires?  Thessaloniki and Phrygians sending employees and slaves to do their work while the Constantines had someone with amped-up reflexes flying a reconnaissance drone?  Vampire-hunting magi using technology when their spells failed?

Important note.  When trying to keep a low profile, avoid Vegas.

So, how do you lose physical pursuers, at least one of which flies faster than you can drive?  Answer: go somewhere they can’t.  If possible.  Could we?  Maybe.  Gates from point to point are orders of magnitude easier than gates from world to world.

“Keep us moving,” I told Mary.  “I need to do some research.”  I went back and told Diogenes to fire up the wireless cybernet.  What I needed was a tunnel.  We were in the mountains.  Surely there was a tunnel somewhere.  In short order, Diogenes found two fairly close by.  One of them was part of a hiking trail—something called the Road to Nowhere.  I doubted we could drive the RV up a hiking trail. 

The other was along Mount Baldy Road and somewhat closer.  Late at night, we might have it all to ourselves for a while.  Then I needed another tunnel… somewhere else.  Actually, there was a tunnel I’d seen not all that long ago.  It was to an underground parking garage in Atlantic City.  That would probably do quite well.

I gave Mary directions and she pushed us up to the speed limit.  I disconnected our wireless and fired up the miniature printer; I had glyphs to prepare.

As we went up Mount Baldy Road, twisting a bit along the mountainside track, we passed several pull-offs on the right, places to park and enjoy the view during the day.  We had the road almost to ourselves in the after-midnight hours.  That was ideal, provided we could get our tails to stop wagging for a bit.

“Mary?  How good a shot are you?”

“Pretty good.”

“Good enough to shoot down a drone a thousand feet up?”

“Give me a rifle and a stable shooting platform, sure,” she agreed.

“Um.  What about with a handgun and a moving vehicle?”

“I’ve got as much chance as you do.”

“That bad, huh?”

“What part of ‘handgun’ and ‘moving vehicle’ did I misinterpret?  You might as well throw rocks.”

“Fair enough.”

If I had a bow, I could cheat and guide the arrow with tendrils.  If it was closer, I could grab it with tendrils in the first place.  My ability to exert physical force—or drain life energy—drops off directly with distance.

Then again, I have a new talent.  That multi-tendril tentacle thing.  It takes effort to use it, but it exerts far more force than individual tendrils.  It seemed to have a synergistic effect, where the combination of all my tendrils became something stronger than the sum of the individual parts.  But, although stronger, did it also have more reach?  I could stretch with a tendril and touch things a hundred yards away—a third of the necessary distance to reach the drone.  How far can I reach with the other thing?  Enough to swat a drone out of the sky?

There was only one way to find out.  I’d need to be able to gesture; the tentacle effect wasn’t something I felt confident I could do casually.  It was usually an unintentional thing, reflexive.  To do it consciously, I would need to focus on it and focus on my target, preferably without worrying about slapping the roof or hanging on over the bumps.

“Next pull-off, pull off,” I told her.  “I have a drone to swat.  Then we’ll discourage people from following us.”

“Do I get to know in advance?  Or is it a surprise?”

“I’m going to open a local gate,” I told her.  “It’s easier than going from universe to universe.  We’ll drive down the tunnel, I’ll set up at the far end and we’ll drive through the mouth of the tunnel when the gate opens.  That will cause us to drive out of a parking garage tunnel in Atlantic City.”