The Obscurati (24 page)

Oberon didn’t have any time to oversee the modifications of our jet, but he let the pilots take it back to Dallas for the changes. They also upgraded the electronics. How you upgrade state-of-the-art everything is a mystery to me, but they said they could make things better.

We had to turn down a few jobs in North and South America just because we were so busy at home. We didn’t have our jet to make the longer missions possible, so we just told them they would have to wait for a few months or deal with their own problems. I think they waited.

We asked Schmidt the banker to see about getting some island property in the South Pacific. She was able to find an entire island that was big enough for a runway for the jet, and we asked Lonny to work with Schmidt on the details. He even flew out to the island to get a look.

We got Lonny a silver American Express card for all his expenses and had it tied to our account. Naturally, Schmidt made him sign a thousand pages of promises and contracts.

Lonny brought back hundreds of pictures that he had taken of the island, and I grew to miss him when he was traveling to take care of our business ventures. He got engineers to work on building a runway on the island. There were several bungalows. We had a shielded and secure room so we wouldn’t have to use coffins. Lonny made the entire project green. The island was completely off the grid in terms of utilities. There was a generator for emergencies, but the electricity was solar, and the water was rainwater that was captured in large tanks. He really outdid himself on the island. He got our Bavarian groundskeepers to go there and plant a sustainable crop of native or near-native foods. We had mangos, papayas, oranges, and limes for the humans. It was our little corner of paradise.

I wanted to call it Island Obscurati, but Oberon said Île de la Nuit would get less attention. That’s French for “Island of the Night.” I don’t know what the locals call our tiny island, but we’ve always called it Île de la Nuit. And we can, because we own the entire island.

We spend about a third of the year on the island. Vampires in the South Pacific have long lists of missions for us, and they are always happy to learn that the Unseen Death is in the area. I don’t think anyone but the queen, Pierre, and Hamlet know about the island. Lonny and the rest of our human staff know about it, but they don’t know we are a world-famous vampire hit squad.

Lonny showed up one night with masks. He had made them: one for me and one for Oberon. He said something about how the Unseen Death could really be unseen. I couldn’t wear the mask while aiming or firing, but we both started wearing the masks when interacting with our local vampire guides. Thanks to Lonny, we were now completely anonymous.

“Are you in love with this human?” Oberon asked one night.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I am in love with you, and nothing has changed any of that.”

“I see the way you look at him.”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “There is something about Lonny, but that doesn’t mean…. Yeah, okay… yes, I love Lonny.”

“Should I pack?”

“No, no, no. Absolutely not, Oberon. You are my rock. I am more in love with you now than when we first met.” He walked over and stroked my back. He wiped a tear from my cheek.

“And I love you too,” he said. “Um, I like Lonny. Maybe I love him at some level, but I definitely like him. He obviously is in love with you, but it doesn’t feel like he is trying to cut me out.”

I nodded.

“You’ve been patient with me,” Oberon said as I looked up at him. “My sex drive isn’t easy for you.”

I shrugged. “But I love you just the way you are.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you do. Sex is so important to me, but I only love you. Period. I can’t….”

“I will tell Lonny to leave,” I said.

“No,” Oberon whispered. “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

I looked at him as he hugged me.

“I’m trying to say that it is okay if you love Lonny,” Oberon said to me. “You love me in spite of my sex drive. What I’m trying to say is that I love you in spite of Lonny. I like Lonny a lot. Pull him closer.”

“You come first,” I said. “You always will.”

O
BERON
and I own a building in Manhattan and spend several weeks a year there. The American vampires always had plenty of rogue vampires to help keep our bank accounts growing. From New York City, we can flash anywhere in the USA, Canada, or Mexico and be back in Manhattan before sunrise.

South America and the Far East are the only parts of the world safe from the Unseen Death. Pierre said that eventually we would have to get some property in Brazil and Thailand to have those areas covered, because rogue vampires would eventually learn they were safest there.

We take the jet when things get really out of hand. We stay in South America or the Far East for up to a week at a time, and we are really busy, with four or more hits a night. The local Obscurati are efficient with their preparations. The locals let us get in and out in just a few minutes.

It wasn’t just my trigger finger that made us effective. It was Oberon’s ammunition. Anybody could learn how to fire a sniper rifle, but only a few could engineer the kind of vampire deaths that Oberon could pull off. I got most of the glory, but none of it would have been possible without my mad scientist husband.

Once, in Burma, we couldn’t use the rifle because the doomed vampire was staying in a heavily wooded area. I couldn’t get a clean shot from a safe distance. Oberon rigged up a remote-controlled incendiary device. When he saw the vampire near the device, he pressed a button that incinerated the rogue instantly.

No shot? No problem. No cleanup necessary.

We became a real team, and our price per hit kept going up. The local vampires were very willing to pay, because we could take care of vampires that nobody in the world was able to kill.

I
T
IS
always nice to be home in Bavaria. It really is gorgeous country. Oberon loves to ski down the mountains, and he got some lights put in on his favorite slope so it always looks like the full moon. Naturally the lights are all run from batteries charged by the sunlight or wind turbines. We are very green vamps. Lonny always makes sure of that. He says we are keeping our “carbon footprint” as small as possible.

“I really want to turn Lonny,” I said.

“Did he ask?” Oberon said.

“No.”

“Then you shouldn’t bring it up.”

“What if he wants to be turned but doesn’t know he has to ask?”

“You really like this guy.”

“You do too,” I said.

“Yeah, but should I be jealous?” Oberon asked.

“Absolutely not,” I insisted, “but his butt is so pretty. I can’t bear the thought of it growing old.”

“Funny you should mention it,” Lonny said from the doorway of our room. “I was going to ask, but….”

“You know what you’re asking?” Oberon asked.

“I think so.”

“You know my husband really loves you,” Oberon said. “You know that vampires can be a little territorial?”

“I love both of you, not just Mårten.”

“Why?” Oberon asked. “Guys can get married now in Germany. Why not find some—”

“I love both of you,” Lonny said. “I didn’t ask for it, but there it is. Sorry for being blunt here, but I feel a little fragile. It is like either of you could devastate me. I have given you both my heart… all of it.”

“Come here,” Oberon said to him. “Both of you.”

“Group hug!” I said.

I
HAD
to convince Pierre over the course of several weeks of negotiations.

“I hear you have a new house manager,” Hamlet said, walking into the room.

“He’s my husband’s exclusive boy toy now.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Pierre asked.

“Not at all,” Oberon said. “I get to play too, and Lonny is amazing at running all our properties.”

“Lonny?”

“You remember, the Texan?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hamlet said. “He is cute, but he has more body hair than I thought you guys like.”

“We adapt,” I laughed. “Stunningly beautiful butt.”

“I’m a bottom,” Hamlet protested.

“Not always,” I sneered. “Not always.”

“Always. End of story.”

“Is there something I need to know?” Pierre asked.

“No, dear,” Hamlet said quickly. “He’s just being a poop.”

Once Pierre was convinced, we had to convince the queen. She was concerned that we would be losing our business manager. A vampire has a harder time running an empire because he or she is restricted to the night. We explained that Lonny had already gotten assistants to work at all of our properties. Each site had its own manager, and Lonny was the head of the other managers: the island, Manhattan, and Bavaria.

“You guys really are a multinational conglomerate,” she said. “Menz would be really proud of how you two have turned out. So there’s no way to change your mind about Lonny?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “We have him trained, and we don’t want to have to train a new one every few years.”

“Oh, please,” said the queen. “I’ve gotten blarney directly from Saint Patrick’s own mouth.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I knew Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick was a friend of mine. Mårten, you are not Saint Patrick.”

“No, ma’am. Then it’s set?”

“Heaven help us all. I want to meet with him first.”

“Blarney,” I said.

“You watch your tongue, mister,” the queen said. “I can make you speak with a forked tongue. Literally forked, and it isn’t pretty.”

“It won’t happen again, ma’am.”

Oberon insisted on being Lonny’s Maker. I was a little surprised, but he was sure he could do it. I think he wanted to cement a bond between himself and Lonny. There was probably a little bit of jealousy or territory protection going on. Lonny didn’t seem to mind, so I didn’t either.

Lonny met the queen and spent several hours with her alone. After the meeting, we had a green light on the project. Oberon went into training with me and Pierre. Pierre and Hamlet moved to Bavaria to work with Oberon and Lonny. I sometimes felt like extra baggage, but Oberon was approaching the whole thing with his usual thoroughness. Lonny was Oberon’s science project or lab experiment, and he wanted to make sure nothing went wrong. We brought a couple of our human staff into the discussion toward the end so we would have plenty of help during the daylight hours.

When he was ready, Lonny asked to have one more day. He wanted to see the sunrise and to eat some barbecue and chili. Once a Texan, always a Texan. Oberon didn’t really understand, and I didn’t exactly know how to tell him about Texans and their chili. He knew about not putting beans in chili but didn’t know someone from Texas would obsess over that kind of food. He thought it was just some kind of goulash.

We gave Lonny his final day, and that night, he was happy and ready.

The human staff had stripped the bed of all the niceties. They had put a plastic sheet over the mattress and two fitted sheets on top of that. There were no pillows or covers. We got Lonny nude, and he probably thought that somehow sex would be involved. We explained that whatever he was wearing would be ruined during the turning.

Oberon fed directly from Lonny’s neck, something that rarely happens outside a turning or a fight to the death. He drank and drank until he almost passed out. I had to nudge Oberon to make him stop. Hamlet was there, holding Lonny’s hand. Lonny was groggy after the first feeding, but he was conscious. He was still a little awake after Oberon’s second feeding on that first day.

Within two days, Lonny was in a coma. I sat with the two of them every night. Oberon was concentrating on Lonny, and I wasn’t used to his attention being so strong on anybody but me. I understood, but it was new territory for me. It was a little taste of jealousy on my part. Interesting. I’d have to watch for it in the future.

Oberon took too much blood one time and passed out. There was only one feeding for that night. After a week, Oberon was gorged. His face was puffy from drinking so much blood.

“I think it is time,” Pierre said. “Take one more short feeding, and then start the turning.”

He did exactly that, but Lonny’s heart completely stopped. He was dead.
No, that can’t be. Not after Menz and Paco. Oh, please, don’t let Lonny die tonight. Please, I can’t take it.

In a flash, Oberon sliced his wrist and got blood into Lonny’s open mouth. Nothing happened, and there was clearly no heartbeat. We had a portable heart defibrillator set up. Oberon was crying as he cleared off Lonny’s chest. The machine was ready, but we didn’t need to use it. The blood started draining inside Lonny’s mouth. Oberon started laughing through his tears. He jumped back onto the bed and got more blood into Lonny’s mouth. He had to fill up Lonny’s mouth half a dozen more times before Lonny’s eyes opened. His back arched like Oberon’s had when I turned him a hundred or so years before. We were all laughing and crying at the same time, even Pierre.

Oberon looked like a proud father. That was when Lonny attacked. All newly turned vampires attack their Maker, but we had plenty of help to control him. Lonny had a hunger for blood that was unrivaled by anything he had ever felt as a human. He needed to have blood, but any blood besides Oberon’s would be fatal at this point.

Lonny growled as we held back his violent lunges toward my husband. We made him take blood from Oberon in as controlled a manner as we could. We kept him restrained for the first couple of days when he was dead to the world. If he arose before the rest of us some night, he could tear apart every human being on the property, and we would have to put him down like a rabid dog.

Within a week, Lonny was as tame as we were going to make him. He wasn’t a very effective vampire, but he had learned enough to control his hunger. He was safe enough to interact with humans, and we slowly weaned him off Oberon’s blood and onto the regular rotation of human blood.

Lonny absolutely loved being a vampire. He was like a little kid at Christmas every time he found out about some new vampire power. Oberon took his training very seriously, and he made sure that Lonny knew all the rules about dealing with humans and animals.