Real Vampires Don't Sparkle (25 page)

The keys hung before him, waiting.

“Goddammit,” said Matheus and took them.

The needle danced with the hundred and twenty mark. Matheus pressed the accelerator to the floor and felt the answering pull in his gut. The car rode low over the pavement. Inside, smooth leather and chrome dominated the interior, buttons and levers turning the dashboard into a spaceship’s console, the deep rumble of the engine warming the air. Outside, the city blurred into streaks of light and shadow, the other vehicles nothing but statues littering the road. Matheus slid his fingers over the smooth wheel, the electric hum feeding into him, bonding him to the car, speed and adrenalin circling into an ouroboros. The engine growled out a call, and the answer rattled in Matheus’ bones.

“Truck, truck, truck.” Quin gripped the bar above the window with both hands, two seconds away from tearing it loose.

His panicked syllables sang like ambrosia to Matheus’ ears. He passed the truck with a casual twist of his wrist, whisking into a space in the next lane just wide enough for the Mercedes.

Quin made a choked noise in the back of his throat.

Matheus smiled at him, then zipped in front of the truck, nearly skimming its front bumper. The trucker let out an ear-deafening
honk
, making Quin jump as Matheus laughed.

The freeway crested as they approached the bridge that connected the city’s looping highway to the interstate. Overhead, long, white cables angled toward a triangular arch. A blue light lit up the base of each one, turning the bridge into a piece of modern art. Only a few exits back to the city remained. After that, the highway merged onto the interstate that ran up the coast from Florida to Maine. Matheus tapped his fingers on the wheel, waiting for Quin’s directions.

“Our exit is coming up,” Quin said. “The one right up th—” He cut off with a stream of harsh Latin as Matheus zoomed across four lanes of traffic. A cacophony of horns followed them. Quin squeezed his eyes shut, his lips moving wordlessly.

“Where now?” Matheus asked, slowing down as the exit fed into regular traffic. He stopped at a traffic light, glancing over at Quin.

“Left. Do not speed.”

Matheus revved the engine. The driver in the car to the right beeped and offered a thumbs-up.

Quin stared at the driver as though sizing him up as a late-night snack. The light changed.

Matheus deliberately squealed the tires, racing through the turn a heartbeat before the oncoming car across the intersection began to move.

Prying a hand free, Quin smacked Matheus upside the back of his head.

“Just because my limbs will grow back does not mean I am okay with them being torn off and scattered across the pavement,” Quin said.

“Oh, do you not like my driving?” asked Matheus. “What a shame. Maybe you should drive next time since it is
your car
.”

“Maybe you should su—stop sign!” Quin yelled.

Matheus blew through the intersection with the faintest tap on the brakes.

“No one was coming,” he said as Quin swore at him. “Problem?”

Quin rattled off a long string of Latin, too quickly for Matheus to translate. Quin’s pronunciations were not the same as the ones Matheus learned from the nuns. He understood a lot when Quin spoke slowly, but even that involved quite a bit of guesswork. Not that Quin’s rant required much translating. Matheus got the gist.

Since Quin offered no new directions, Matheus kept driving straight ahead. The brick townhouses crowding the road gave way to small, single-family homes. The road dropped from two lanes to one as the yards increased in size, the brick-red of the city giving way to clapboard of all shades. Saltbox houses with fences, and bushes covered against the approaching snowfall, lined the street, growing larger and newer as property values increased. Gates and walls hid wide, grassy lawns and houses that combined all the best architecture of the past with the overwrought pretention of the American nouveau riche.

“It’s the third one on the right,” Quin said. “Just look for the ugliest gate.”

Matheus couldn’t argue with Quin’s assessment. The entrance featured three stylized harpies despoiling a battlefield. He’d never seen entrails depicted quite so accurately in wrought iron before. One soldier writhed beside the intercom box, his face contorted to inhuman proportions. Matheus avoided looking at it as he pressed the call button.

“Can we help you?” an electronic voice asked.

“Quintus Livius Saturninus and Matheus Taylor,” Quin said, leaning across Matheus to call out the window.

“What, I couldn’t have said that?” Matheus asked as Quin sat back.

“You remember my entire name?”

“Maybe,” said Matheus.

Quin gave him a skeptical look.

“I knew it had a lot of
us
‘es in it,” Matheus added.

“We were expecting you,” said the electronic voice. The gates clicked loudly, then began sliding back, the iron scraping over the pavement.

Matheus started the Mercedes up the long drive. The lawn appeared so flawlessly green that Matheus imagined a team of gardeners working round the clock, replacing sod at the first sign of brownness. Weeping willows dotted the grounds, fresh dirt around their bases. As Matheus took the last sweeping curve up to the house, a peacock ambled into sight, snow-white feathers turning yellow under the house lights.

Matheus raised his eyebrows at Quin, then stopped, transfixed by the house. The gates dropped out of his head. He needed the mind-space to make room for the travesty before him.

The house dripped marble; columns sprang from nowhere, for no reason Matheus could see. Stained glass windows illustrated all the worse parts of human history, coupled with statues for the 3D effect.

He leaned on the steering wheel and gaped. “Oh sweet Jesus,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Quin.

Matheus climbed out of the car, expecting to see Virgil approach at any moment. Taken as a whole, the house embodied horrible architecture, but the details really brought it brain-bleaching levels. The statue of a man in a priest’s cassock leered at him, the body of a young woman split in two on his enormous cock, her head lolling back onto his shoulder into a grotesque approximation of ecstasy. The other figures offered even worse images. Matheus tried to imagine the artist who would accept such a commission and failed miserably. His head moved in circles as he attempted to stare at everything at once.

“Is that…?” he asked.

“Uh huh,” said Quin.

“And those gargoyles, are they…?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Is that even physically possible?”

“Only by dislocating several joints.”

“It’s like Lovecraft on LSD,” said Matheus. “Bosch with less subtlety.”

Quin waved a hand. “Grigori’s really embraced the whole Satan’s minion, creature of the night image,” he said.

“I can’t wait to see inside,” Matheus said.

After the exterior, the front hall seemed tame. Red and black dominated; the room looked like the antechamber of an expensive dominatrix. The floor was imported marble, as were the columns lining the walls. Apparently, someone never received the message that columns were for holding things up. Tapestries hung between them, mostly scenes of humans in the throes of violent death. The same man appeared in all of them, handsome, black-haired, and red-eyed. In most of the tapestries, a gaggle of nubile women gathered at his feet, staring up at him adoringly. Matheus began to think this must be some elaborate prank. He pointed to the black-haired man, asking Quin a silent question.

“That’s Grigori,” Quin said. “Poncy git.”

“That’s a lot of ruffles,” Matheus said, eyeing one particular representation.

“He wears a toupee,” said Quin with no small amount of glee.

Matheus shook his head. The soles of his shoes echoed over the marble as he paced around the room. There were a handful of couches, but they looked as though they’d been designed for reclining virgins in white nightgowns, and Matheus didn’t want to be punished for ruining the aesthetic.

A large staircase rose up at the far end of the hall, finials carved into the heads of horned demons. At the top, the banisters continued into railing that ran along the open landing. Ornate doors, decorated with more demons, sat on the left and right walls. A triptych covered the wall between them, more of Grigori with his fan-girls. The artist had opted for a surrealistic style, the orgies and torture chambers dotted with flying elephants and trees made of watches. Matheus snorted. He’d never been a fan of surrealism, and this representation looked as though the artist had just gone through a book of Dali prints and picked out the parts he or she liked.

“The master will see you now.”

Matheus jumped. A wisp of a woman in a wisp of a dress stood at his elbow. She looked very young, not older than sixteen, with smooth brown skin, and dark hair tucked behind her ears. Her feet were bare, a delicate golden bracelet around one ankle. The woman brushed his arm, gesturing toward the door to their left.

“This way,” she said, floating down the hall without waiting for Quin or Matheus.

The young woman led them to a disused ballroom.

Grigori sat on a throne in the center of the room, in the draped pose of an evil sorcerer-king, familiar to Matheus from every bad fantasy movie of his childhood. Grigori’s followers clustered around the throne, sitting on the floor. Matheus counted twenty in all, split between men and women. The women sat closer to Grigori, the men farther back. Their guide flowed through the followers, then took a seat on a stool beside Grigori.

Matheus and Quin stopped about ten feet from the staged scene. Grigori raised a hand, beckoning them closer. His fingernails were a deep red and shaped to tapering points. Matheus wondered if Grigori did it himself, or if he made regular visits to the local nail salon. He bit hard on his lower lip at the image this presented, trapping the laughter in his chest.

“Saturninus,” Grigori drawled. “Please, approach.”

His other hand stroked the head of the woman kneeling to his left. She was a statuesque brunette, her posture hiding her face. Her arm stretched along one leg, fingers brushing over the floor beside her ankle.

A red-haired man caught Matheus watching, and his face twisted. His neighbor grabbed his shoulder, whispering something in his ear.

If Grigori noticed, he made no sign of it. He directed his attention at Quin alone.

“Hello, Grigori,” said Quin. “I like the black eyeliner. Very stylish.”

An expression of rage flashed over Grigori’s face just long enough for Matheus to register it. Quin smiled his open, carefree, completely manufactured smile.
What is he doing
? Matheus thought. He glared at Quin’s ear, trying pick up any stray brainwaves that might be escaping.

“This must be your new disciple,” Grigori said, drawing Matheus’ attention back to him.

“Matheus, this is Grigori,” said Quin. “Formerly Edwin Pitts.”

The flash of rage reappeared. Grigori straightened, gripping the arms of his throne with his red-tipped fingers. The brunette on his left edged away, closer to the red-haired man and his neighbor.

“Unlike
some
, I have no desire to cling to my
human
name,” Grigori said. Flecks of spit shone on his lips. He wiped them clean with a swipe of his hand, streaking lipstick over his cheek.