Undeath and Taxes (2 page)

2.

Getting in to meet with Richard proved harder than I expected, but the majority of that fault fell on me. I’d forgotten that, while he is a perfectly affable and understanding man behind closed doors, he is also the head of all therian society in our city, and that meant there were certain procedures of respect I had to follow. Therians (short for therianthropes, a term that applies to all werewolf–like creatures regardless of which animal form they actually take), are sticklers for ceremony and etiquette. Yes, I’d been surprised too, but Bubba explained to me once that it was the best way to keep their animal instincts in line, making the human side of themselves constantly aware of their actions and the significance they held.

What this meant for my meeting with Richard was that I had to go to his place of residence—at an appointed visiting hour—and do a bit of bowing and thanking for the privilege of serving under him. This was done in his extravagant hallway at the top of the office building he called home, a myriad of other therians surrounding his marble throne and enjoying the show. It was a touch more extreme than therian supplicants had to go through, but that was mostly because vampires had never really gotten along with the were-community. If I were a particularly prideful person, I might have had an objection to going through it all just for a job. As it was, I treated it like I was in a tea ceremony. I might not understand the reasons for the actions required of me, but that didn’t give me an excuse to ignore them.

Once an appropriate amount of groveling had been achieved, Richard (standing at least seven feet tall, his golden hair hanging shaggily down to his shoulders) rose from the cold marble seat he’d been resting on and gestured for me to accompany him to his private chambers. These were tucked away behind a thick wall that was only moveable by one with strength beyond a human’s capacity. Only after that door had once again been sealed did he turn to me and allow his serious face to split into a wide grin.

“Thank you for coming, Fred,” he said, his voice only a few octaves above a growl. I’d never seen Richard look totally human; it was possible he wasn’t even able to. Richard was an alpha, a rare therian of such strength and power that he was considered unbeatable by anything short of another alpha. That status gave him his size, position of authority, and enormous strength, but I often wondered about the price that came with such blessings. In magic, I was slowly learning, there was almost always a price.

“Sorry about all the formality at the door,” Richard continued, running a hand through his golden hair.

“Quite all right. I know your people have never seen eye to eye with mine. If it makes things easier, then I’m more than happy to accommodate.”

“Any other week, I probably could have growled at my people and told them to piss off, but I need everything smooth right now,” Richard explained. “I’ve got a lot of meetings this week with therians who were driven out of a nearby community. Supposedly, they’re seeking sanctuary, though I’ll be shocked if none of them tries to make a play for the throne.”

“They’d have to be utterly suicidal,” I commented, setting down my briefcase and surveying the room. It looked largely the same as the last time I’d been there—a generous space filled with cushy, reinforced furniture and a large television. I knew the door nearest to me led to a kitchen, next to that was Richard’s room, and through the one after that would be the room belonging to his daughter, Sally. The other doors led to places I didn’t know, but presumably one of them housed Richard’s permanent guest: Gideon. “I mean, even aside from you and your gang of friends, who would attack the King of the West?”

Richard let out a low chuckle, the sort that would set your nerves on high alert if you heard it come from the dark shade of nearby woods. “Gideon does not intervene in my affairs. That too is part of therian society: if I cannot hold a position by my own strength, then I am not entitled to it. But no, I do not anticipate too much trouble with any who might think to become upstarts. They can challenge at the appropriate time and place, or I can put them down immediately if they think themselves above our laws.”

“Right. As certain as I am that you can handle that, I’m here about your taxes,” I reminded him. Talk of impending violence, even contained violence, always made me a little antsy.

“Of course, follow me.” Richard strode forward with his sizable gait, easily crossing the room and flinging open one of the doors I hadn’t yet been through to reveal a large office. Well, I say “large,” but I suspect Richard would have been quite cramped moving about in it. There were boxes of paper all over the floor, three sets of filing cabinets, and a desk nearly overflowing with unsorted documents.

“Here it is,” he announced proudly.

“What, exactly, am I looking at?”

“Forms, receipts, accounting ledgers, and other such paperwork I’ve accumulated in my time as this area’s therian overseer,” he explained. “I had it brought up from storage, assuming you’d need such things.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” I agreed. “But I only need stuff from the last year.”

“This is from the last year.”

Being a vampire means never having to cough in shock; our impulses related to involuntary expulsion are wiped out in the conversion process. Habit, on the other hand, is making the noise anyway, because sometimes words fall short of your power to convey thoughts. Which is why I coughed loudly in unabashed shock.

“My territory is a large one, with many therians,” Richard said. “And I am obligated to oversee this procedure for Gideon, as well. As you can see, the paperwork accumulates.”

I took a deep breath (another habit I’d never seen a need to break) and steadied my nerves. “Richard, I have a point I want to raise with you before I try and tackle this mound of insanity. If I didn’t, I’d feel like I was taking advantage of you.”

“Do tell,” he encouraged.

“You know I bill by the hour, right? And this is not going to be a quick job. I can do it, let’s be clear, but if you have someone who is better acquainted with this material and charges less, then maybe you should go with them. I mean, who did your taxes last year?”

“No one,” Richard admitted. “I just paid the bill the government sent me.”

I nodded. In my training, I’d learned that, since parahumans often led somewhat more chaotic and nomadic lifestyles, they had the option to not submit taxes and just pay whatever the government told them they owed. Many parahumans exercised this option, which was a crying shame, in my humble opinion.

“If it’s not prying, how much did they charge?”

Richard told me the number, and I made another chortled choking sound in the back of my throat.

“I can do it for cheaper than that,” I assured him. “Definitely, far cheaper than that.”

“Thank goodness,” Richard said. “And thank you, Fred, for your concern over treating me fairly. I deal so much with politicians and backstabbers that it is a pleasant change to see someone show genuine kindness.”

“Not a big deal. I just believe that good work and good service are the cornerstones to customer loyalty.”

“I’ll remember that,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to head down for another meeting. You’re free to start whenever you like. I’ll also have one of my people wait in attendance and take you through a secret entrance when you want to exit or re-enter the building. No need to make you parade about every time.”

“Wait, I’m supposed to work here?” I asked, though the answer was already quite obvious.

“Unless you’d like to haul all of this downstairs and across town,” Richard said.

He had a very good point. I’d gotten so used to the digital age that the idea of trucking paper around hadn’t even occurred to me. This was a useful lesson, though. Parahumans probably did most of their record keeping in the same manner as Richard. If I wanted to break into this segment of the market, I needed to adjust. And the sooner, the better.

“No, you’re right; it’s easier to do it here.” I pulled my slim laptop from my briefcase and set it on the desk. “Fair warning, though, I do keep late hours.”

“You are free to come and work anytime you like,” Richard said. “I really only use this room for playing computer games and hiding from my assistants. Yell if you need anything.”

With that, he was out the door, and I was left to start the nigh-impossible task of sorting through Mount Papermanjaro.

3.

I first became aware of another presence in the office after roughly three hours of work, but it was entirely possible that the person had been there for far longer than I realized—vampire senses might be exceptional, but I’ve always had a tendency to zone-out when working. Once I noticed, however, it was very difficult to ignore. Partially because, like someone drawing your attention to a rickety ceiling fan you were previously ignoring as white noise, it is very difficult to lose awareness once it is gained. And also partially because a toy unicorn was thrown at my head.

Credit to the pitching ability of my attacker; the plush figure struck me dead-center in the forehead, knocking my glasses somewhat askew. It is possible I let out a minor yelp of surprise, which I feel is perfectly forgivable given the unexpected interruption. I adjusted my glasses and glanced around, quickly scanning for any threats that required my special brand of dealing with (read: running away from). What I discovered was a small girl standing at the office door’s entrance. Her blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she wore pink overalls, along with a curious expression.

“Hello, Sally,” I greeted, carefully tossing back her toy. “How are you today?”

“Bored,” she replied, strangely enthusiastic given the negative news she was relaying. “Gideon is gone and Daddy is busy, so there’s no one to play with.”

I have never been particularly adept at picking up social cues, but this was a pitch slow enough for even me to get the speed of.

“Ah,” I replied. “That does sound rather unfortunate. Your father has asked me to come in and help him with his work, so hopefully he’ll finish soon and be able to play with you.” It wasn’t technically a lie, which was good, because I’ve found children strangely capable of sniffing out small deceptions despite their tendencies to wholeheartedly embrace big ones.

“But I’m bored
now
,” she reiterated.

“Perhaps you could color in your books, or watch a movie.”

“I tried. It’s not fun without Gideon.”

It had always struck me as a bit odd that the King of the West served as a daily playmate for Richard’s daughter. I trusted that Gideon had his reasons; given his age and power, perhaps he simply took enjoyment in the innocent wonder only children could conjure. Still, it seemed strange. It also seemed like inadvertently angering his daily companion was not in my best interests.

“I suppose we could play a small game,” I acquiesced. “But only if you promise to allow me to go back to my work when it’s concluded.”

“Promise!” Sally yelled excitedly, darting off to her room. From the rummaging sounds echoing forth, I presumed she already had a game in mind and was now excavating it from the rubble that was any child’s toy chest. I glanced at the clock and wrote down the time. It would be unethical to bill for accounting work when I was merely playing with Sally, so I had to chart when I went on and off the clock.

I carefully shut the doors to the office and stepped out into the living room. A quick scan told me that the coffee table would likely be an adequate space for all but the most sizable of board games. Then again, I was somewhat out of touch with the entertainment options purveyed to children these days, so it was possible the dining room table would present a more appropriate option. I was heading toward the aforementioned dining room when I realized the level of noise from Sally’s room had risen from merely “childish-roar” to “din of racket.”

“Sally,” I called. “Do you need help locating your game?”

The sound cut off immediately, which, in retrospect, should have been my first clue that something was amiss. Children do not cease noise-making so instantaneously, as I have now learned. At the time, I had no such wisdom, so I ignored the red flag. After all, I was in the headquarters of the most powerful therian in the entire metropolis of Winslow, Colorado. What safer place could there be?

“Sally?” I called again. This time, I received an answer, but it was not a verbal one. At least, not initially.

The two men who stepped into the living room had several hundred pounds and a couple of feet on me. They wore dark clothing and ski-masks, but tufts of fur stuck out from the eyes and mouth holes. Therians, transformed into their hybrid forms. Despite the fascination of their sudden appearance and evident heritage, the most eye-catching feature about these two was the limp girl in the taller one’s arms. She had blonde hair styled in a ponytail and pink overalls, now stained with a small bit of blood.

As anyone who has read my previous memoirs will be keenly aware, I am neither an aggressive nor anger-inclined being. I leave such tendencies to Krystal, who possesses the training and power to back them up. That said, upon seeing Sally’s body in their hands, I felt a curious prickle of cold in my stomach, and for the first time, I found myself wondering just how great a gap there was in the strength of a vampire and a therian.

“This him?” asked the smaller invader, light red hairs sticking out of his mask.

“Must be,” said the taller one, his own fur a dingy gray. His eyes focused on me, and when he next spoke, there was a new level of harshness in his voice. “Don’t move. The girl is just knocked out right now, but we can do a lot worse.”

Whatever uncharacteristic fantasies I might have been entertaining vanished in a puff of reality. Sally’s safety was first priority, and I had no reason to assume these men were bluffing. They’d broken into Richard’s home and assaulted his daughter. These were actions of men either too bold or too stupid to care about the ramifications such an assault would bring.

I raised my hands slowly, demonstrating my surrender.

“What do we do with him?” This came from the smaller one, who I’d mentally dubbed Red on account of his fur color.

“Bind him,” Gray instructed. “If we leave him be, he’ll just come after us once we’re gone.”

I resisted the urge to cock my head in curiosity, but only because I feared for Sally’s safety if I made any sudden movements.

“We could kill him,” Red suggested. I decided that I greatly disliked the smaller of these two, not just because he’d tossed out the idea of ending my life, but because I have no great affection for anyone whose first recourse to solving a problem is murderous violence. Thankfully, Gray shut down that idea immediately.

“We want leverage, not a feud,” Gray reminded him. “If we kill her bodyguard, Alderson is going to demand blood in return. Keep him alive, and we have another bargaining chip.”

“Fine,” Red agreed begrudgingly. He stepped toward me, pulling out a case from the fanny-pack resting on his hip. (Yes, you read that right. Evidently even criminals, unlike what films have led us to believe, sometimes have to put pragmatism over style and toughness.) As soon as he cracked it open, I recognized the scent: silver.

After becoming a vampire, I’d quickly learned that the myths about silver were one of the things the lore got right. It weakened me, to the point where I was scarcely able to move when bound in the stuff. What I hadn’t known, until Krystal filled me in, was that silver did this to almost every kind of parahuman. It was a magic insulator, like rubber to electricity, and there were few supernatural creatures immune to its effects.

That was likely why Red used great care as he wrapped the silver chains around my arms, then wrapped those around my torso, never touching them with any part of his body aside from the exceptionally thick gloves. When he finished with me, he did the same thing to Sally. I was actually somewhat glad she was being hindered. Sally was a precocious child who’d grown up with a powerful father. Without some binding, she might take action that would get her injured, and I had every desire to see such an incident avoided.

“Done,” Red announced at last, wrapping a thick blanket over Sally’s chains, so that Gray could still carry her without encountering the silver himself. Even with their precautions, the proximity of the stuff had to be making them feel queasy. I was having trouble even standing, thanks to the amount of it encircling my body.

Gray nodded and scooped her back up. “You walk in front,” he instructed me. “Say anything, try anything, vary from our orders in any way, and both of you are going to pay for it.”

I demonstrated my understanding by moving forward, allowing myself to be nudged along at their discretion. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew Richard wouldn’t take the kidnapping of his daughter lightly. I just needed to keep watch over her until he recovered us. I also sincerely hoped he wouldn’t take too long.