Annie of the Undead (16 page)

Miguel kept his voice polite and level, with no
hint of strain. His decorum was impressive considering the sounds
coming from the other end.

Finally, he said, “I am being scryed.”

There was an instant change in tone of the other
speaker. All of the high tones were gone. In the background,
another outburst of crazy laughter. Then, Andy shouted something
that even I could hear four feet from the phone.

“Shut your pie holes, you sycophantic skank hos,
or I’ll dismember every last one of you!”

Absolute silence resulted. Not even a tap on a
drum followed the outburst. The party, wherever it was, was over.
Vampire Andy had spoken.

“It is the cedars…I am certain…More than one.
Yes, they must be cut down, but first I must secure the windows. I
need your help to do that.”

Cedars? Windows? Home improvements?

“I have some idea how this occurred. It will not
happen again…And you should know before you come…”

Here it comes.

“…I am not alone.

Dead silence.

“She cut down three cedars singlehanded after a
limb had fallen on me…You heard me…She saved me, Andy…I would not
stand for that…I have no intention of concealing anything from
you…I do not wish to argue either…You will have to be moved by you
own conscience…”

Miguel held the phone for a second in silence,
then put it back in his pocket. I was smart enough not to say a
word.

But only for a minute.

“Is he coming?”

“I believe he will.”

“When would he get here?”

“In his own time.”

“Soon I hope.”

“Soon.”

Did I really hope so? I’d almost rather fight
evil cultists at the door than meet this Andy. I didn’t have much
of a choice one way or the other, so I didn’t voice any of my
thoughts on the matter.

“So what was the deal with the trees and windows
and shit?” I asked instead.

“That was code. One never knows who might be
listening.”

“Like, tapping your calls? Like the
government?”

“One never knows.”

Great, vampire intrigue.

“Do I get a decoder ring when I become a
vampire?”

Miguel looked at me with what I thought for a
second was going to be one of
those
looks, then a smile
flickered across his face before retreating into that immortal
opacity of emotion.

“How can anyone so fierce be so goofy?”

“You should have seen me before all the gang
rapes in prison.”

Miguel leaned toward me, ever so slightly, and
inhaled through narrowly parted lips. He exhaled and opened his
eyes.

“One thing is certain,” he breathed.

I waited, hoping he’d dive in for round two on
the previous night’s kiss.

“Andy is definitely going to loath you.”

Another night fell, with another gym workout and
run for me and hunt for Miguel.

I ran through the congested French Quarter and
down St. Charles to where the old and new money lived in grand
mansions bigger than I had ever imagined a house could be. Was this
what the rich folk were hiding up in Grosse Pointe, that mythical
land of green grass and greener money that I had never seen, or did
they grow them bigger down south? Everywhere I saw structures being
renovated. Construction barricades attempted to conceal bare earth
in front of homes, heavy equipment parked in tiny side yards,
facades of mansions being completely rebuilt. People here were in
the process of forgetting about the storm. Time enough had passed
for them, and money was wiping the blemishes of a bad memory
away.

I ran and ran, and Miguel went his secret way,
to wherever an old vampire goes to kill.

After, we convened and strolled as usual through
the Quarter, at once so crowded with movement and merriment and
steeped in some kind of timelessness I’d never sensed in Detroit.
To be fair, maybe it was being with a vampire that made the
difference. It was the feeling that you could do anything down on
these streets, live your life, die, and the world would go on
without you, unnoticing. I have since heard the feeling of being in
an historic population center described as quite the opposite: a
feeling of connectedness, importance, being part of something big.
Both feelings speak of immortality, but to me, an ex-con with all
kinds of baggage best left in a former life, the sense of being
lost to the world was wonderful. Except when random people tried to
stick “Good Mister Goodwin” stickers on me, the French Quarter gave
me that.

I asked Miguel why we never strayed outside this
area, and he said it was so Andy could find us. What about the
witches? Wouldn’t they be here soon? And couldn’t they find us too?
I had the feeling that a piano or anvil was about to fall on my
head. Soon, yes, he said. They would be coming, and as soon as Andy
arrived we would change our daytime resting place, but by night
they would not touch him, he said. By night they would not
dare.

Okay, I thought. Vampire knows best. I let my
worries pass into the labyrinthine streets of New Orleans, to
pester someone else with pianos and anvils. I was on vacation. This
was an open city, vampire Disneyland. We were here to have fun, to
drink a little blood. I was determined to be just as naïve as
Miguel let me be.

We were sitting at one of the outdoor tables of
the bearably elegant Café Poisson Jaune, discussing the pros and
cons of subsisting on blood as opposed to human foods like, say,
Neapolitan ice cream –or rather Miguel was fencing with my bullish
inexperience and lack of real direction on the subject, when Miguel
suddenly and thoroughly stopped paying any attention to me
whatsoever and let the unreadable mask steal over his face. I was
smart enough not to take this change as a lack of interest in our
scintillating conversation, but as a signal that something wicked,
like, say, Satan, had come up behind me.

And so it had.

He was six-foot-something, pale as pearl, and
built like an Olympic swimmer, as evidenced by the egregiously
unbuttoned white linen shirt he left slouching to reveal two lean,
perfect pecs. The buttons on the shirt were abalone set in silver.
The cuffs were rolled up almost to the elbows, just so. The
beachcomber khakis fit his narrow hips just so. He stood with a
casual grace that belied his formidable height and disguised the
terrible power that must be in those limbs. He seemed no more than
twenty in age, judging by the perfection of his skin, but I knew he
must be many times my own age. His hair was pale gold thread
–short, but allowed to fall softly in his face just so. His face
was striking, with very high cheekbones, a long, masculine,
clean-shaven jaw with a sharpness to it, and eyes pale and blue as
a cold northern sky that sparkled… just so. He was just
so…gorgeous. He was impossible –an Adonis.

An Adonis who, when he opened his mouth to
speak, flashed huge white canines that would have made a Siberian
tiger cringe. I made certain not to cringe.

And the voice that came out of his mouth cut
like claws.

“Tell me you’re not still working that
understated-but-posh-bourgeois-intelligentsia-far-from-home
look.”

“Thank you for coming, Andy.”

“The eternal man of nowhere and everywhere. That
map-of-the-world look just won’t fly anymore. These days you have
to affiliate. I could see you working the first-generation Cuban
American mystique –
caro
like Miami, but with that
son-of-a-refugee, I’m-exiled-from-my-roots pathetic dignity. A
starched collar with three buttons undone, a rich, not-quite-black
suit, slicked-back coiffure –Think Andy Garcia or Vago Nuñez, only
thinner. Sweet Mary, the people I would kill to see you in an
Armani suit!”

“Now who the hell could wear a suit out in this
weather?” I said, unable to ignore the idiocy for one more
second.

The imperious undead fashion Mafioso looked down
at me from over those high cheekbones. Way down.

“Tell me this gender/ethnically-confused urchin
is not the creature that saved your life.”

“That I will not.”

“You’re joking. You’re killing me. Tell me you
work for ABC, and you’re interviewing the wretched thing for
Extreme Makeover. Tell me something sane!”

“I would never lie to you,” Miguel replied.

“Where did you find it? In a sewer? In a thrift
store? In a…” he paused, thinking of a particularly odious metaphor
for my origin, “public restroom?”

I started to get up. Miguel laid a hand on mine,
gently, but strong in its warning. I waited.

“Better,” said Miguel, “Jail.”

“Don’t tell me you decided to keep your dinner
as a pet.”

“I do not expect you to understand.”

That seemed to really piss Andy off, which made
me happy. He made a smug expression that made his chin seem even
more like a hatchet, but he had no answer. I didn’t get the joke,
if there was one.

A skinny waitress with eggplant-colored hair and
a tattoo of a fleur-de-lis on her arm sidled up to Andy the way a
cat does to a leg.

“Are you dining with us tonight, sir? Can I get
you a menu? ...Sir?”

After an initial attempt to deny the girl’s
existence, Andy snapped back with Category 5 irritation, “Do I look
like the kind of person who eats on the street?”

The girl fled, looking for other legs to rub
on.

I noticed that my vampire was sitting very still
–inert, like the dead guy he was, but he was gazing so relentlessly
at the other vampire that I could imagine he was burning a thousand
calories a second just on sustaining that level of attention.

The other seemed to soften a little after a
pause –one that I suspected was laden with all kinds of meaning I
didn’t understand. The blonde undead Marcus Schenkenberg pulled out
one of the iron chairs and sat down at our table. There was
something extremely weird about having him this close to eye
level.

“I suppose,” he said, inspecting his perfectly
manicured nails, “that some time with me would do you good. Maybe
getting you away from this little half-trash gold-digger for a few
will get you to see things clearer. After you’ve had a little of
what I have to offer you might just gain a little fashion sense, or
a little sense in general, and forget all about your unfortunate
little episode of mortal slumming. Did you tell her about that?
What it means to us to share blood?

He looked at me for a few seconds. Then he threw
back his head and laughed. It was an easy, wicked laugh, as of
someone very amused with himself, as of Satan having tricked
someone out of a soul.

“She doesn’t know anything, does she? She
doesn’t know about the blood bond or the ecstasy or the fugue? I
bet you haven’t even told her about the thirst. Has he told you,”
he said, speaking directly to me for the first time. “What you mean
to us? What you taste like to us? How it feels? You come to us
through the air. You don’t even know it. You don’t even have to
try, but you’re begging for it –
begging
for us to take you,
every one of you. Every moment.”

He leaned back in his chair –all six-and-a-half
feet of him, arms behind his head in a gratuitous use of
airspace.

“You must have told her a little about the
Covens, considering she supposedly killed a quarter of one, though
I think it’s more likely she’s one of them.”

He searched my face again.

“If you’re looking for a traitor,” I said,
“you’ll have to look in the mirror.”

A wave of fury passed over his face like the
flash of a drawn pistol, but it was as suddenly consumed by another
wave of that lofty, demonic laughter. When he had tickled his own
funny bone enough, he answered me.

“She hasn’t noticed the mirror thing yet! You
are so dense! See, little strumpet, my fashion-challenged old
friend doesn’t believe in telling humans anything about what’s
really going on in this world. He’s only told you anything at all
because he had to –and then only just barely enough to keep himself
alive. If he wasn’t in trouble, and if he hadn’t found some
gullible little street thug in such desperate need of romance she’d
tag along on this little escapade, he never would told you
anything. In fact, you’d be lying in a ditch somewhere decomposing
as you should be.”

“Yeah?” I said, “Well I don’t see him calling
you up to spill his secrets to. In fact, he hasn’t even talked to
you in years. You know why? Because you’re the ex. You’re history,
buddy. I’m in his bed now. I’m piping hot, and I bet you want some,
you big-mouthed walking corpse.”

Andy considered me for a second. There was
frustration in his undead-Nordic eyes. He decided to ask one more
question.

“Has he told you about the Mar-“

“That is enough.”

Andy never got to finish what he had meant to
say. Miguel had spoken suddenly and with such an authoritative
voice I scarcely could have distinguished him from the mad bastard
of a judge who had slammed down that gavel and put me away for two
years in the big house. He rose with an imperiousness that said his
patience was exhausted. He had let Andy have his little bit of fun,
but now it was over. The senior vampire had spoken.

The two dead guys stared at each other.
Eventually, I got bored with their little psychic dance.

“Look,” I said. “You two obviously have a lot to
sort out, and to be honest, I’m just not interested in sitting
through it. So, whether or not you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find
something more interesting to do.”

I stood up.

“I’ll take you home,” said Miguel.

“Don’t bother. Just don’t.”

So we’re begging to be killed, huh? Practically
irresistible…

I sensed what was going on here. I knew this
Andy wouldn’t dare touch me, and I wanted him to know it too. As I
moved past him stooped close to one ear and then the other, though
I spoke to Miguel.