Fat Vampire (Book 5): Fatpocalypse (10 page)

“Council,”
said Karl with a scoff, again waving his long fingers in the air. “Is not a
Council
. They meet in secret, sharing their proceedings only with other Councils. They are not a government anymore as their image suggests. They are more like military, discussing plots and plans while smiling at their foes. Timken is like a man with two faces. There is the face he shows the humans and the cameras, and there is the face that was behind that red helmet the day of the putsch that ousted Charles Barkley. I have lost most communication with Council since leaving Luxembourg. The first face, see, is the face Nicholas shows me. He has been showing it to me for years, ever since he used to come to München for Oktoberfest. It’s clear now to me that he always wanted power. Now he has it, and he doesn’t want me to know he has it — or that he enjoys having it. So he tells me what he tells the humans and nothing of Council’s true workings, which I have learned of in small bits through other means. His estimation of my stupidity is insulting. But I can see through it.”

Reginald leaned forward. “What do you see?”
 

Karl narrowed his eyes before answering. As their eyes met, Reginald was suddenly aware that he had never been around Karl without Maurice nearby. Maurice was Karl’s peer — old-world himself, French by birth, significant in age, history, and strength. Reginald had always been the new guy in their trio, but as he looked at Karl now (and as he continued to sense Karl’s thoughts and feelings for some odd reason), he could see that the torch had been passed — and that he himself was Karl’s peer now.
 

“I see the way vampires move around. I hear reports from friends overseas. I see the Young Seditionists’ recruiting posters and hear their slogans — and when I do, I recognize similar echoes from the darkest corners of history. Nicholas Timken feels he has a mission and that his mission is holy. That makes him very dangerous. A man who feels compelled by a higher authority will never back down, because his mandate is righteous. Claude Toussant is similar, only for Claude it is even worse, because his mission has been twisted by hate. I do not think Claude believes himself to have the same holy mandate as Timken, but rather believes he has something even better.”
 

“What’s that?” asked Nikki.

Karl looked at each of them in turn. “Permission,” he said.

The air hung thick with implications. From Reginald’s vantage point, looking out from behind Karl’s thoughts and emotions despite his effort not to intrude, Reginald saw that Karl had suspicions within suspicions. The oncoming human-vampire war was but the surface of the onion. Further down was layer upon layer of horror.

“What else have you heard?” said Reginald.
 

“Your old friend, Charles Barkley? He is coordinating massive turning efforts. It has a harvesting feel to it — stripping the very best from humanity before discarding the rest of it.”
 

“Turning humans who are worthy?”
 

Karl tipped him a finger. “Exactly. You know how it was when you were turned, Reginald: you wanted to be a vampire, you trained, they found your conditioning and preparedness worthy of their standards, and you were allowed in. This is that process in reverse. They are looking at the human populations they survey, pulling out those who meet their standards, turning them to strengthen vampire numbers, and then discarding the rest… or, in cases where waiting is prudent, marking them for eventual slaughter once the masks come off.”
 

“Like they’re taking a census,” said Reginald.
 

“That’s what I hear. And do you know who is in charge of keeping those numbers? I will give you a hint. Someone who is close to Charles, making him a natural partner. Someone who is used to working for a company and is good at crunching numbers — at least according to two people who knew him well and who are in my apartment right now.”
 

Nikki’s mouth came open. “You don’t mean Todd Walker.”
 

“That’s the rumor,” said Karl. “He already has an impressive reputation, and he is just as big of a sonofabitch as your Charles.”

Nikki looked at Reginald as the conversation hit a lull. He could see the nudge she was giving him with her eyes, but could also feel the intention in her blood.
 

“Karl,” said Reginald with an acknowledging look to Nikki. “I don’t know how to put this.”
 

Karl shifted. “It is okay. I would have sex with both of you.”
 

“That’s not what I meant,” said Reginald.
 

Nikki had started to agree, but then lowered her hand. Karl, turned down by Reginald for about the thousandth time, looked disappointed.

“We heard about something. An ancient artifact, or body of knowledge.”
 

Karl shook his head.
 

Reginald explained about Claire, her growing ability, and the glamour trance he’d put her into. He told Karl what she’d said about an ancient and mythical vampire record. Finally he told him that Claire had told Reginald that he, himself, was destined to find it.
 

For a moment, Karl looked like he was going to brush the idea away and make another sex joke, but instead he stood from the leather couch and began to pace, interlocking his fingers with their many rings behind the back of his tailored suitcoat. He walked to the window and looked out, quiet.
 

“I am very old, Reginald,” he said, still looking through the window at the streets and river below. “Older than Maurice. I have seen things that most believe are mere superstition. But in my youth, many things that are laughable today were simply fact. There was a commonplace sense of magic in those days that we have since explained away. There was a wonder about the world before the arrival of stoicism and science. We were gods, and we believed in angels. We took them as a given. But before the Ring of Fire, we old ones were laughed at for even suggesting they existed.”
 

Karl turned.
 

“In those same superstitious days, there was talk of a grand plan. That myth, like the myth of the angels and the creation myth and even the myth of Cain and Abel, was, even in my day, considered hearsay at best. But to answer your question: yes, I have heard of the vampire codex. And yes, I believe in it as surely as I believe in angels.”

“What do you know?” asked Reginald.

“The legend,” Karl said, now pacing again, “goes like this: All things happen for a reason. All things exist for a reason, within a framework. But from time to time, the plan deviates, and that is good because the creators of the plan created
us
as well, to move nature forward. We — and by ‘we,’ I mean both humans
and
vampires — were intended to be flies in the ointment. There was the plan, and then on top of the plan there was us — those who unbalanced the plan. It was by design. But from time to time, there was need for a correction — a jilting of the train back onto the tracks, so to speak, to bring the chaos back into alignment with the plan for all that, in the end, must be. So I too am fatalistic about this war, Reginald, and I am afraid. The Ring of Fire? It may have been their first attempt. You and Claire bought all of us time. But I believe a reckoning is coming, and in the end fate cannot be fought. The plan must be re-balanced and placed back in the box. And if there really is a codex, then it contains the plan above the plan — that which details what must happen, even after as many corrections.”
 

“All the more reason to find it, then,” said Reginald.
 

“Perhaps,” said Karl. He shrugged. “Because who can say? Are you an agent of the plan? Or are you a rogue? Is it your job to read the plan and implement it, or to read it and disrupt it? I do not know.”
 

“Does it matter?” said Reginald.
 

“Probably not. What will happen, will happen.”
 

“I don’t buy that,” said Nikki.
 

Karl smiled at her. “Most people do not. But look on the bright side — if you are correct, then maybe the way it will happen will be to your liking. And if that happens, will it matter that it was set from the beginning?”
 

Nikki pinched the bridge of her nose. “Here comes that headache again.”
 

Reginald pulled himself from the chrome and leather chair, feeling the weight of the world once again settle onto his shoulders. “Where is it, Karl? How do I read to the end of the plan — whether it’s to disrupt that plan or not?”
 

Karl shook his head. “I do not know. But if anyone today knows of such a thing, it would be Timken’s bosses.”
 

“Timken’s
bosses?” Reginald had never heard of a power above the individual Councils, but now that Karl had said it, Reginald saw an image inside Karl’s mind: a box within a box within a box. And a seal broken, as if in case of emergency.
 

“The Vampire World Command,” he said.
 

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Reginald.
 

Karl shrugged. “You were not a Deacon.”

“
Maurice
never heard of it.” He felt suddenly certain of that. He’d tried hard to stay out of Maurice’s mind, but what Karl had just said sent out a tether, all the way across the sea, to Reginald’s maker. He found himself zeroed in on Maurice as if he were standing in the room, and realized the statement’s truth: Maurice, Deacon, two thousand years old, had never known of any such thing.

“Maurice was never
trusted
to be Deacon, even though he technically was one,” said Karl. He chuckled. “Let us just say that for a very long time, Maurice has been ruffling the feathers of those above him. But trust me, it exists. I would ordinarily be staked for telling you of it, but the VWC stays out of lower affairs unless in the case of crisis. This qualifies as that… and Reginald, not to make the burden upon you worse, but I fear your mind is the best hope we have.”
 

Reginald looked at the displaced EU Council Deacon, realizing that right here and now, he himself was the one in charge.
Reginald
was the one who would decide, who would move forward and leave Karl behind. He chose not to point out that Karl, who’d rolled his eyes at the idea of human optimism, had just used the laughable and pathetic word himself:
hope
.
 

“Where is it, Karl? Where can I find the Vampire World Command?”
 

“Where the sun never shines,” said Karl. “This time of year, it is below the frozen soil at the south pole.”

W
AR

THEY WERE IN A TENT.

They’d made it as far as the foothills of the alps before the sun began to rise, and then they’d taken shelter inside a tent that Reginald had bought from a vampire survivalist Karl knew in southern France. The thing appeared to be made of normal fabric, but it was actually an opaque, UV-repellant material that the survivalist (his name was Philipe; he had an Errol Flynn mustache and a beret and Nikki had, later, called him a walking cliche) claimed they’d never seen before. In the sun, he promised, it literally reflected 99 percent of solar rays.
Don’t leave eet in ze middle of a field, though,
he’d told them,
or ze glare you make will attract helicopters.

So they’d set the tent in a thicket of Swiss woods, miles distant from the nearest cuckoo clock house. Nikki said that Switzerland made her hungry for cheese, so before dawn, she’d run to town to buy some, later finding it unimpressive and dry. Reginald had her pick up Funions, delighted to discover that the Swiss sold them. They ate their human comfort food with the sun just beyond the special fabric, waiting for the day to end. They were both hungry for blood. They’d forgotten to feed the prior night, so Nikki promised to run out at sunset and wrangle them a deer. She made a face when she said it, but added that even if no permanent harm would be done, she couldn’t bring herself to feed on a human tonight, no matter how repugnant the alternatives.
 

They would need plenty of blood for the journey ahead of them. The only way they could make their journey was on foot, using whatever back roads they could find.
 

They’d stayed with Karl throughout the day to sleep, then had headed out at dusk with Nikki carrying Reginald on her back, Reginald carrying the tent and a few other supplies on
his
back. Before leaving, they’d turned on the Vampire News Network and human news feeds and discovered that overnight, a cell phone video of a vampire slaughter had gone viral. It had happened, coincidentally enough, in a Paris nightclub. The video contained a
best-of
reel of vampire abilities. Clear as day, Reginald, Nikki, and Karl watched as a trio of vampires ripped apart the entire crowd, leaping from wall to wall, blurring across the video’s field of vision with inhuman speed, jumping atop speaker stacks in single bounds. Right before the camera’s operator was killed, the camera saw fangs. Then blood. And then the phone had fallen into a puddle of gore.
 

It wasn’t clear how the video on that phone had leaked to YouTube, but it had. All of the human social networks were alive with it. Humans jumped in to corroborate the video’s revelations, sharing their own stories in the comments. All day long, while the three vampires slept in Karl’s lush apartment, humans had been adding their own videos to accompany the famous one — all claims that they were fake suddenly absent.

By dusk, the human president had taken to the podium, admitting in the most awkward speech ever given that certain quarters of the government were, in fact, aware of the existence of fanged creatures who drank blood and were supernaturally strong, supernaturally fast, and notoriously difficult to kill or wound. He avoided using the term “vampire,” but nobody failed to read between the lines. Within a half hour, the president’s speech — termed his “vampire speech” in defiance of his careful verbal two-stepping — had gone viral as well.