Walk Among Us, page 11
“Great question,” said Jade’s disembodied voice from the opposite end of the alleyway. “Clea, would you like to tell her?”
Delaney’s head whipped around, and her eyes scanned the shadows for the source of the voice. “Who the fuck is that?”
“Maybe you should show her instead,” Clea said loudly, stepping out of the shadows.
“Cleopatra? What the hell—?” Delaney gaped at her and stepped back, whirling back around to face Finn. “What is this? What are you—?”
Finn’s hand clamped down hard on her shoulder and he leaned in close to whisper in her ear, “Sorry, I can’t promise this will be quick or painless.”
Then Clea felt Jade brush past her like a gust of wind, and Delaney didn’t even have time to scream before Jade grabbed her arms and forced them behind her back and whipped her around to face Clea, whose face was lit up in the dim light of the alley like something out of a nightmare.
Clea stepped closer so that she was inches away from Delaney’s face. “You asked who we think we are?”
At that moment, Jade’s fangs pierced her throat, and Delaney’s mouth opened in a soundless gasp and she tried to twist away. But Jade’s grip tightened as she drank, digging her fangs in more savagely than she’d done with Hannah, and she forced Delaney to her knees within seconds.
When Delaney went limp with shock and blood loss—her eyes wild and terrified, her breathing shallow—Clea leaned down and gave her a bone-chilling smile.
“We’re karma,” she said.
“Bet you didn’t see us coming.”
Fine Print
Cassandra Khaw
Man
The last light left a wet slick of gold upon Duke’s desk, a hulking antique liberated from the estate sale of a disgraced English lord. Vampire, the auctioneer had confided, pleased to have such gossip to market, clearly a skeptic but too much of a showman to let it do more than faintly stain his act. The lord was burned alive for suspicion of being a vampire.
That was all he needed to say.
Duke stroked a thumb along the mahogany, down to the charred edge antipodal to the corner on which one of his two guests sat perched, smiling, serene, and deeply catlike in her languor. He stared. The woman was art. Exquisite if slightly unearthly, the buttery sleekness of her black leather skirt as faultless as her complexion, both absent of any evidence of cellular degradation. To Duke’s eyes, she looked like something prototyped for the consumption of the far-future elite, and when she smiled, he thought of wolves.
“Duke Guillo. God, I hope that isn’t a real name.”
Opposite him sat an old woman in a charcoal suit, white-blond hair teased to stratospheric heights. Moonlight lapped through the slats of the blinds behind her, tiger-striping her round, unsmiling countenance. She tented her fingers, tipped her head one direction and then another before flashing an ophidian smile.
“What’s real in the era of deep fakes?” Duke countered, uncowed, and though something in the basal strata of his psyche flinched, he kept his expression level. He armored his expression with a shit-eating, country-boy-done-cosmically-well smile, leaned back in his chair, legs kicked out straight. “But that doesn’t matter, does it? I’m going to have to change names a hundred times over the next millennia.”
Both women laughed.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
“No,” said the older of the two. “What do you think being a vampire means exactly, Mr.—what was it? Guillo? What powers, what obligations, what pleasures”—and the woman closed her jaw around the word with so much ecstasy, Duke shivered despite himself—“do you think the status comes with? Before you worry, this isn’t a test. You’ll still be Embraced by the Clan of Kings, but I am curious about what you expect.”
“Besides all the goddamned power in the universe?” Duke’s attention rose to the ceiling, the crepe plaster resplendent with a replica of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Or an approximation, at any rate. Duke had decreed a few changes: Bill Gates to be sainted, Steve Jobs to be deified, and every last one of those anachronistic seraphim—the round-cheeked cherubim and their attendant angels—to be dethroned by a roster of hip-hop celebrities, nymphets in latex and rappers gorgeted by thick gold chains. “It means never having to worry about time. It means having time, time enough to pursue every idea to its logical end. Technology has always been about one generation passing on the tools to another, and you know what? It sucks. I want to be the one who shepherds my work into its final form. And if I don’t have to worry about death, I can do that. I can make it happen.”
Silence followed his panting denouement, resinous, cold from the fluorescent lighting that had activated on cue—like clockwork, a mechanical voice reeled out the hour and the extrinsic temperature and stock market predictions with the gravitas of prophecy—exactly at the stroke of seven. Duke realized then, with shuddering clarity, that his was the only breathing he could discern. But that wasn’t right, was it? He’d done his research. As best he could, at least. The old woman, Mara, everyone else he’d been trotted out in front of, they’d all been so opaque, so reluctant to seed him with even the most basic data. The ghouls—and that was what Mara was, like it or not, even if such labeling of her fine-boned face felt anathema—were always alive. Altered, ageless, but irrefutably alive.
And yet . . .
“Oh, Mara, my dear, I think we might have made a mistake about Duke.”
“I believe so as well.” Heterochromatic eyes met Duke’s, one green, one a duck-egg blue, spoked with gleaming clusters of nickel like it was full of shotgun shrapnel. Mara smiled glossily, blandly, without even the courtesy of polite interest.
“He would be so much happier with the Tremere, wouldn’t he? Or another of the more scholastic clans. The Toreador might find art in his obsessions too. There is something so wonderfully tortured about this side of—”
“No!”
“No?” said the old woman.
“Fuck. That.” Duke slapped his palm onto the desk with each word, ricocheting to his feet, chair slamming into the wall behind him. “Fuck being around another bunch of dreamers. I want power. Fuck the rest of them. I don’t want to be around more idiots for an eternity. Jesus Christ, have you been in Palo Alto lately? Have you seen the kind of smug assholes who’ve come to town? Fucking precocious geniuses who can’t even figure out how to get their dicks wet let alone land VC. I don’t need to be around people with their own ideas and no clue how to actually make them happen. I want people to just fucking listen when I tell them that this is optimal. That my way is the way. Not even the right way. But the definitive technique for getting shit done. I want . . .
“I want them to bow.”
“Like I said, Mr. Guillo, this isn’t a test. We’re sold on you.”
“Yeah? Then why does it feel like you’re fucking with me? You really think I don’t know what you’re trying to do? These bullshit power games are transparent as fuck.”
“I swear, Mr. Guillo. No games. A bit of friendly professional teasing, perhaps. Besides, your talent with—what was the phrase again, Mara?”
“‘Big data,’ ma’am.”
“Big data. Yes. Your facility at deciphering big data is astounding. Whatever your other faults, your predilections, your lack of reason—”
He bristled at that. Duke’s constitution for insults was dependent on whether he believed they were true. Call him abrasive and Duke would have clarified he was an asshole. But reason—crystalline and innocent of cheap emotion—was his oeuvre.
“Hey, listen—”
The old woman did not.
“We are deeply interested in your ability to quickly break this world down into its discrete parts. With your talents, my people can be assured of uninterrupted and well-demarcated access to the kind of victuals it needs.” She fluttered a bony hand, the skin brindled with liver spots and glutinous, puddling in the creases, ugly in a way Duke would never be, not if he could help it, not with this deal he cut. “Never again will my little family need to ask, ‘Does anyone know where exactly can we find provincial Belgian teenagers on short notice?’”
“Exactly. And that means you assholes aren’t getting any of this genius unless you meet my terms.”
“I could not forget if I tried. You’ve been so insistent. Insolent, even. To which I’d point out you’re not the only tech genius in the world. We could find a replacement. Maybe a subpar one, but one with a better personality. Yes, it might take more time, but time is something we have an abundance of.” The old woman sank her chin into the cup of an open palm and flapped her spare hand as Duke, ready for the counterattack, cleared his throat to speak. “Don’t worry. It won’t come to that. We remember what you asked for and we’re happy to oblige. The house in Iceland, done to your specifications. The Tesla. The harem . . . God help me. Are you sure you don’t want us to include a few willing boys and nonbinary people? You’re not hideous. There’d be people interested. Even if your performance might not be up to standard.”
Outside, a procession of fire trucks and ambulances slow-danced through traffic, ululating at top volume: Business is to be had so make way, San Francisco; give passage in case the clientele die in transit.
“Fuck. You.”
“Even when I cared for such things, you wouldn’t have been my type.”
Mara laughed, a sound poorly syncopated, eerie and erratic and unmusical.
Duke’s expression hinged shut. He knew when he was being intimidated. Different environment, different actors from what he was accustomed to, sure, but Duke knew a professional shakedown when it came for him. And with the boardroom swagger he’d spent a career meticulously cultivating, Duke enthroned himself again at his chair, head cocked at a warning angle.
“Listen,” he demanded again, trying as best he could to ignore the infinitesimal way the women’s smiles expanded, their disdain no longer covert but worn as mockingly as a stolen medal. “This deal isn’t done. I can still walk. I will walk if you don’t fucking treat me like an equal.”
The old woman laughed then, the sound high and mellifluous, hardly the croak of someone flash frozen at the cusp of senescence. “Here’s the thing, Marmalade.”
Duke stiffened. Marmalade. It had been months, years, decades of clench-jawed personal reinvention and no small amount of time spent high on illegal psychoactives, since he’d last heard the nickname. Marmalade. Spoken in that specific, singsong diction. Marmalade, like Duke had never found his way out from the back roads of Alabama, dirt-poor, not a whiff of good to him, no hope, not even the promise of military service because, God help him, he couldn’t run three blocks back then without falling apart. Marmalade, because his mother—bless her black heart—thought it was sweet, how he used to cry.
“You could pull out,” she said, her smile, perhaps, a fraction longer than previous. “You absolutely could. But I don’t think you’d be happy if you made that decision.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No,” said the old woman. “In the same way you’re not threatening us. Rather, what I meant by this statement is, if you walk away now, you turn your back on everything you’ve worked so hard to piece together, this arrangement with all of its collateral pleasures. You will grow old, Marmalade, which seems like a terrible thing to suffer given your family’s genetic predisposition toward pancreatic cancer, glaucoma, poor liver health. Alzheimer’s.” The last she said with particular relish. “Old and blind with a mind like a sieve, everything frightening because you can’t remember how to take an unassisted shit. Just like your granddad. You remember him, don’t you?”
Her grin opened into teeth.
“You’re too hungry, Marmalade, to be happy with an end like that. Up until the day you drop dead, your heart would still be jackhammering in its cage, wanting more, more, more out of life, and knowing you’re never going to get it.
“But such isn’t for me to say. This is your choice, of course. So, what will it be? You still intend to walk if I don’t treat you like one of the big boys?”
Duke did not hesitate, said the words before the old woman could cross to the end of her sentence.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
That laugh again. “Marmalade, you delight me.”
“Duke.”
“What?”
“That’s my name,” Duke said through gritted teeth. “That’s my goddamned name and you can start there.”
“Earlier in our conversation, you implied you weren’t attached”—and here, her voice lowered and became conspiratorial in cadence, the gap between each syllable intentionally elongated—“to that name and were, in fact, looking forward to experiencing iterations over the many, many centuries to come.”
Some quality in Mara’s mismatched eyes changed, the pupils engorging. She ran her tongue in an orbit around burgundy lips, a vulgar gesture that, if performed by just about any other woman, would have read to Duke as an invitation. But all it did was frighten him. It felt profane, somehow. Monstrous. Nonetheless, the epiphanic terror did nothing to dilute Duke’s bravado.
“I’ll be the one to choose what I’m called. So remember this: my name, my terms.
“Also, fuck you.”
The old woman guffawed and Mara joined her in a scintillant unholy chorus.
“Fine, Mr. Guillo. All the things you want, every last condition and sub-clause. It will be everything you asked for.” The laughter deliquesced into a warm smile. “And, Duke, let me just say: I am so looking forward to seeing what you will do with it all.”
Several days after the final meeting, Duke’s lawyer called to inform him that the paperwork, as far as he could tell between the ceaseless redactions, was sound. Every clause was met, every sub-clause acknowledged and initialed. He saw no loopholes or any malignant terminology snuck in. Whoever the other party was, he’d said in his quiet, clipped tones, they were very careful to remain within the letter of Duke’s stipulations.
“Nothing weird at all, then?” he asked his lawyer at the close of the call.
“Not unless you count the fact that they’re firm about their restrictions lasting into perpetuity. Ordinarily, there’s a statute of limitations. But—”
“It’s fine,” said Duke.
“It is anything but fine. The clauses extend to anyone who might inherit or have any link to your assets, Mr. Guillo,” said his lawyer, baritone still operatic despite the poor reception. Duke could picture him very clearly: little round glasses atop a beak of a nose, mouth slightly pursed. His lawyer was not a big man, was, in fact, exceptionally small for someone who claimed thoroughbred Dutch parents. What he lacked in stature, however, he made up for in presence and a predilection for expensive suits and imposing furniture. “Children, spouses, business partners. I’m not sure what else. And I imagine you do have plans to have progeny, correct?”
“Something like that.”
“Then, Duke . . . ,” he began, stopped, started again with a flutter of exasperation. “Duke, I’ve been your lawyer for a long time. We’re friends. And as someone who sees you as more than a paycheck, I have to tell you that it is hard to do my job without sufficient information. Are you in trouble of some kind? Because if you are—”
“I swear, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Corporate law is not my specialty, but I have friends I can refer you to. They’re excellent at the field. . . .”
“Really.” Duke couldn’t help but chuckle, warmed by his lawyer’s effusive concern. The little man prided himself on being a shark, a veritable monster, yet here he was clucking like a worried aunt. “It’s okay.”
“Duke.”
“I promise everything’s fine.”
A long pained sigh unwrapped through the phone line. “If it somehow ends with you murdering your boss, I’m not taking your case. Not even if you double my retainer.”
“What if I triple it?” said Duke.
He counted to five before his lawyer answered. “No.”
“You thought about it.”
“I’m still running a business.” Another sigh, this one more aggrieved, less manufactured. His voice whittled to a troubled murmur. “You’ll tell me if you get in trouble, right?”
“I’ll think about it. Send me the paperwork to sign.” Duke ended the call before his lawyer could object, and sat back in his massive chair, the silence a velveted weight. Into perpetuity, the lawyer had said. It made sense. Intimidating as the words were, Duke understood the caution, the incontrovertible necessity of them. Functional immortality meant new rules, new needs. You had to account for centuries-long machinations, plans cartographed on the movement of empires, the crescendo and collapse of economies.
And having pondered this, Duke relaxed into the work of tying up all the loose ends of his mortal existence, a task bracketed by calls to and from members of his old fraternity. It was the latter he cared about more than anything else. These were his boys, his brothers, his best friends to the bilious end, and moving on without at least one last hurrah was not a thing he could conjecture. By the end of the hour, plans were made and locked in stone. There would be a celebration, a final blowout, one last bender to send Duke on his way. It would be at a penthouse belonging to a white Californian man named Louis, who’d shared several of Duke’s classes when the latter was flirting with a detour into Eastern philosophy. No one in their circle knew precisely what Louis did for money; he seemed effortlessly rich. No one asked, either. Friendship meant ignoring the uncomfortable details.
A flurry of logistical banalities later, it was time for the bacchanal. The Wolf of Wall Street had nothing on what followed.
There was an excruciating amount of drugs present at the event, more even than what was traditional among his circle of friends, and Duke, to the delight of his frat brothers—a large majority of whom found jobs in complementary if not competing firms—indulged with gusto. The old woman had been explicit about how the Embrace would annihilate existing predilections, and while Duke could not tell if she was grossly dramatizing the situation, he understood it couldn’t be all fiction. Changes would happen, both physiological and metaphorical.
