Lust for Life (15 page)

“Making sure this is locked.”

Dexter follows, concerned by my urgency. Both dead bolts are turned, as well as the
lock on the doorknob. Spencer once tested it to see if he could break in. He couldn’t,
so we figured the younger, weaker Jim would be unable to as well.

Now we have bigger problems than one vampire. Eight times bigger, to be exact.

“As I was saying,” Shane continues, “there aren’t many safe, affordable passenger
ships across the Atlantic,
so Deirdre doesn’t think the rest of Jim’s progeny will join up in time.”

“In time for what?” I pat Dexter’s head in an attempt to soothe him. Unconvinced,
he adheres to my leg as I walk back to the kitchen.

“Thanksgiving. The ultimate vampire holiday. To Jim, T-Day was practically a religious
occasion.”

By tradition, modern American vampires get together with their fellow undead on Thanksgiving
(or T-Day as they call it, though no one will tell me what
T
stands for—it’s not “turkey” or “Thanksgiving”—and I’m starting to wonder if they
even know). On T-Day, each vampire brings his or her favorite donor to the feast.
A grand meal is had, with all the best human food. Then afterward, instead of eating
pumpkin pie, the donors
become
the dessert. Whipped cream is optional.

Jim’s progeny probably mean to attack us when we’re understaffed. On T-Day, usually
only one person is at the station, whichever DJ is on the air. The humans are with
their families, and the vampires are with their donors.

“Deirdre says they plan to take a DJ hostage to draw the rest of us back to the station,
at which point they kill us all.”

The last three words strike me so hard, I sink back into the kitchen chair, tugging
up my towel. “Maybe
they
set the Halloween bomb at the Smoking Pig. The FBI told us they had no solid leads
yet.”

“They might have set it. At least this time we’ll have more than a few minutes’ warning.”

“Assuming Deirdre’s telling the truth.”

He holds up the notepad. “She gave me details about
all Jim’s progeny that she knows. See if they match what’s in those boxes under Jim’s
room.”

“The best way to lie is to sprinkle in a liberal dose of truth. She might think when
her details on these vampires check out, we’ll be more likely to believe the part
about when and where they’re attacking.”

“Why would she lie?”

“Because if she double-crosses us, we end up dead. If she double-crosses Kashmir,
her kid ends up dead. Easy choice.”

He grunts in acknowledgment, then goes totally still. “Wait.”

I keep my mouth shut while he thinks.

After several seconds he speaks. “If she wants us dead, even just to save herself
and her son, then why tell us anything at all? Why give us names? Why not let us get
ambushed without even knowing they’re out there?”

He has a point. What does Deirdre gain by betraying a man who makes Jim look like
a Sunday school teacher? “Maybe she wants us to kill Kashmir and the rest of Jim’s
progeny.” Besides her, of course.

Shane nods slowly. “Kashmir scares her. I could hear it in her voice. She wasn’t faking
it.”

“Regina says he’s a whole other level of bad.” My mind seizes on a terrible possibility.
“Kashmir could be feeding us disinformation through Deirdre. If he’s threatening her
son, she’ll do anything.”

“So maybe they’ll attack sooner. Either way, we need to prepare.” He rests his hand
near his cell phone on the table but doesn’t pick it up. “We should call in the Control.”

My, how times have changed. In the old days I would’ve been the one to suggest it.

“Can we trust them? The Control might have let Jim go, knowing either he’d kill us,
or that we’d kill him and start a cycle of vengeance.”

“How could they know about Kashmir?”

“If they were working with him in the first place to set Jim free.”

“I wonder if there’s a record of who visited Jim in the nursing home. They do let
outsiders visit, at least in the part that I was in. That’s how David rescued me.”

“Rescued” in a metaphorical sense. Shane was in a special ward reserved for young
vampires who have trouble adjusting to their new life. Suicide watch, basically. When
David started the radio station and hired Regina, she led him to her progeny Shane.

The rest is WVMP history. The station gave Shane something to live for. No way we’ll
let it be attacked.

“According to Deirdre,” Shane says, “the progeny will move in right after sunset,
once we all leave for T-Day, except for whoever has the first shift that night.”

The DJs’ three-hour shows go in chronological order on alternating nights. On nights
that begin with odd-numbered dates, Monroe, Spencer, and Adrian play their forties,
fifties, and sixties music, respectively. Noah, Regina, Shane, and Jeremy (seventies,
eighties, etc.) play on even nights.

“What’s the date for Thanksgiving?” I ask Shane.

“The twenty-fifth.”

A cold fire burns in my chest. An odd night: Monroe will be there. They’ll take him
hostage, knowing I’d do almost anything to save my maker. Killing him would be the
perfect revenge against me. “Tell me you have a plan.”

“I do. We hold T-Day dinner at the station. We’ll have Control Enforcement agents
pose as donors.”

I give an admiring nod. “So if Kashmir ambushes us, we’ll be ready.”

“We’ll have the tactical advantage of being inside the building. We could modify the
boarded-up windows, put little doors in them so we can shoot the vampires as they
approach.”

“Shoot them with holy water?”

“With crossbows.”

“You want to kill them?”

“They want to kill us. Just like Jim. They’re his progeny, so they won’t stop.
He
wouldn’t have stopped.”

“What about his progeny’s progeny? If we kill Kashmir and his blood siblings, we might
have an even bigger fight on our hands in another month. I think we should go nonlethal,
debilitate them with holy water and let the Control arrest them for attempted murder.”

“Ciara, have you forgotten Halloween? They tried to blow us up just for putting Jim
away. He wasn’t even dead yet. It made no difference to Kashmir.”

“It might make a difference to the next generation.” I lean closer to him. “I can’t
believe you, of all people, want to just wipe them all out.”

“It’s self-defense, Ciara.” He touches my shoulder. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again.
Ever.”

“Is that what this is about? You feel guilty for what Jim did to me?”

“I shouldn’t have let you meet him alone.”

“If you hadn’t, my cousin Cass would be dead. Jim gave us no choice.”

“I should’ve found a third choice.”

“We did the best we could with the time we had.” I move onto his lap and press my
cheek against his neck. “You can’t stop all the bad things in the world. I wish you
could. I’m not so proud that I’d rather be dead than have my man protect me.”

“I would do anything, Ciara.” He strokes my hair. “I’ve vowed on my soul to keep you
safe. You have to let me keep that vow to myself, even if it means losing my own life.”

“Stop it.” I push against him, my throat wanting to rip open with tears. “I don’t
like you this way. I want the old Shane back, the one who was too cool to fight.”

“Tough shit.” He holds on to me, gently now, so that if I wanted to pull away, I could,
but I don’t. “That Shane is gone until this is all over. One way or the other.”

15

Lawyers, Guns, and Money

The tile floor of the Control headquarters building was made to torture vampires like
Noah.

His compulsion is symmetry, sort of. His feet follow the patterns in carpet, hardwood,
sidewalks, whatever. He does what he can to avoid stepping on cracks, seams, tiles
of a different color from the ones around them, even drops of paint or tufts of grass
sticking up through concrete.

The floor outside Shane’s hearing room is made of tiles with patterns that point forward
and backward, alternating with tiles that point from side to side. One can align one’s
feet with the grain only by taking carefully spaced, awkwardly short steps. You’d
think it’d make it hard to pace, but Noah manages, head down, watching his sandals
mark the pattern. It’s like a hopscotch game without the hop.

On my other side, Spencer is adjusting the rug outside the hearing room so that its
edge is perfectly parallel with the threshold.

I’ve got no room to judge their compulsions—I had
to rotate the sign that said
2:15 AM, MCALLISTER TRIBUNAL
so that I couldn’t see it. It’s the marquee-style sign that has white block letters
on a black background, with no glass front. The temptation to physically rearrange
them as well as mentally is almost overpowering.

Monroe sits on the bench beside me, reading an antique copy of
Life
magazine he picked out of the rack. It’s from 1960, twenty years after he died. But
for him it’s the future.

It’s not that they don’t know what year it is or who’s president or who won the World
Series last week. They read the news out loud to their listeners every day. They’re
just happier and more stable when they can connect to their own “Life Times.” The
music does that for them. It’s why the WVMP DJs are probably the sanest vampires in
the country.

All of them but one. Even a seminightly psychedelic show couldn’t keep Jim from riding
the crazy train. That’s what we’ve all been called here to testify. Regina, Jeremy,
and Deirdre spoke last night, as well as Jim’s necro-psychologist at the Control nursing
home. Tonight it was me, Monroe, Spencer, Noah, and lastly Shane himself.

Before the tribunal, Lanham told us that he checked Jim’s visitor list for the last
month. No one outside the agency came to see Jim. Which is frustrating for our investigative
purposes, not to mention sad for him.

The tribunal room is soundproof even for vampire hearing, like most rooms in this
building. We’ve taken turns pressing our ears to the center of the door and every
crack, straining for a scrap of conversation among the five tribunal members. There’s
one from each major
division: Enforcement, Command, Recruitment, Logistics, and VHR (Vampire-Human Relations).
The Immanence Corps is the semisecret sixth division, a jagged line and shaded triangle
on the Control organizational chart.

When I testified, I watched each member’s eyes for signs of sympathy. I watched the
way they looked at Shane while I spoke. I tried to find some clue on which to hang
my hope or despair.

Nothing. I am never playing them in poker.

The hour drags on, until finally I can’t take it anymore. I cross to the sign, turn
it around, and start rearranging.

BAR MCALLISTER, UNTIL 2:15 AM
. No, they might take that suggestion literally.

I raise the comma and create
RUB’N MCALLISTER TAIL, 2:15 AM
. “Yeah, baby.”

Still no sounds from the hearing room. I pace a few more times, then add Shane’s last
name to the remix. This’ll keep me occupied for a while.

Fifteen minutes later I have
I’LL SCAM A BURNER TIL 2:15 AM
, but I can’t find a place for the second
T
.

The door suddenly opens. To a very quiet room.

I slip the white plastic
T
in my pocket and turn to see Shane walking out, chin high and jaw set. His entire
black-uniformed body is rigid.

“It’s done.” He sweeps past us, obviously eager to leave the building.

“What’s done?” Spencer and I say simultaneously. Noah and Monroe flank us as if in
protection, though no one else seems to be in a hurry to follow Shane.

“Suspended for sixty days without pay. Plus I have to repeat my nonlethal methods
training with the January Indoc class.” Shane sighs. “That’ll be humiliating.”

“You’ll teach those newbies a thing or two.” I glance back down the hall into the
hearing room, where everyone looks as creepily neutral as they were when I was testifying.
“I guess it could’ve been worse, huh?”

“Yes.” He makes a crisp turn toward the stairs. “They could’ve suspended me longer,
even thrown me in prison.”

“They shoulda given you a medal,” Monroe murmurs.

“One of the tribunal members argued for that.” Shane takes the stairs two at a time,
and we have to hurry to keep up. “But in this political climate, they had to make
an example of me.”

“‘Political climate’?” Noah asks.

“With the Project Blood Leash investigation going on, the Control is extrasensitive
about any anti-vampire violence.”

Spencer scoffs. “Don’t it matter that you’re a vampire yourself?”

“Colonel Petrea was a vampire,” I point out, “and he was the head of Project Blood
Leash.” I want to take Shane’s hand, but it’s forbidden when either of us is in uniform.
“So why didn’t they punish you worse?”

“Because of the circumstances. Jim had a history of violence against both of us, especially
you. The tribunal said they believe I acted correctly to preserve our lives.”

“Then why punish you at all?”

Shane sighs as he shoves open the outer door and stalks down the marble stairs that
gleam in the moonlight. “Remember when I told Deirdre how I’d run that scenario over
and over in my mind, so that if I ever saw Jim, I could act without thinking? So that
killing him would be a reflex?”

“Yeah.”

“Saying that was a moment of supreme stupidity. It made it sound like it was premeditated,
like I had a grudge.”

“You did.” Monroe stops at the bottom of the stairs to light his cigarette. “We all
did.”

Shane turns on his heel, impatient at the brief delay. “The tribunal board said that
it hampered my ability to adhere to the Control’s first precept: ‘Cooperation before
coercion.’ ”

“If you’d cooperated before you coerced,” I point out, “we’d be corpses.”

He looks at the others, then drops his gaze to the ground. “We’ll never know that
for sure.”